Author: John Gehner

A letter to the editor submitted on behalf of the HHPTF…

James Kelly’s “Barefoot in Columbus”—published in Public Libraries, May/June 2006—is a useful and well-written contribution to the literature on library risk management. Library directors can now sleep more easily at night. But not so the nine million low-income working families who struggle to get by.

The national discourse on library service to poor people is inordinately dominated by the specter of Richard Kreimer, concern with the “unruly homeless,” and attempts to police odor. Frustration and fear inform the ongoing conversation about homeless patrons, whose presence mortifies us like so many decomposing B-movie monsters.

ALA’s new president, Leslie Burger, maintains that “libraries transform communities.” Yet few librarians quoted in the news mention partnerships with social service providers, advocate for affordable housing and living wages, or express much interest in people who never come to the library—due to a lack of transportation, the burden of multiple jobs, inadequate child care, language barriers, unreasonable fees and fines, or simply because no one has ever invited them.

This is a far cry from the near-decade British information professionals have invested to study social exclusion, the systems and policy decisions that produce disparities, and the benefits thoughtful remedies deliver to all social classes. See The Network, for example: www.seapn.org.uk. While our colleagues across the pond engage poverty’s causes, we remain fixated on punishing those who display its symptoms.

Sociologists Dale Parent and Bonnie Lewis observe,

Social exclusion is not simply a result of “bad luck” or personal inadequacies, but rather a product of flaws in the system that create disadvantages for certain segments of the population. Therefore, the unequal distribution of power in society from which social exclusion is derived should be the primary focus of attention for researchers and policy makers. Everybody does not start the race at the same place.

Libraries may be operating within the law when wielding appearance and hygiene policies. But without a simultaneous effort to engage poverty—to reach out to men, women, and (increasingly) children who suffer it daily—librarians deliberately perpetuate inequality by withholding the knowledge, resources, and power they possess.

John Gehner, Coordinator
Hunger, Homelessness & Poverty Task Force (HHPTF)
Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT)
of the American Library Association (ALA)

The Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law offers two important new tools for advocates of low-income people.

“Rebuilding America’s Lower Ninth” is a campaign to frame a national dialogue on poverty in late summer:

When Katrina devastated the Gulf States last year, the hurricane alerted the nation to a state without borders, a state whose geography extends beyond the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans—it is the State of Poverty, America’s undeclared disaster area. As part of our State of Poverty initiative, the Shriver Center is coordinating media outreach events between August 21 – September 1, 2006 in a campaign called Rebuilding America’s Lower Ninth …

Our efforts are improving the lives of low-wage workers, helping families advance toward economic security, and preserving communities of opportunity throughout our country. However, we know that we are not alone. As we look to constructive policies that move people from poverty to prosperity, we are asking you to lend your voice and your solutions to this week of outreach and public education.

The newest issue of Clearinghouse Review “focuses on what the federal government must do to end poverty in America.”

The jam-packed May/June 2006 edition features topics ranging from arguments against a “small and passive federal government” to ways to combat adult illiteracy and improve public housing.

For more information about these and other Shriver Center projects, visit www.povertylaw.org.

If you are in New Orleans for ALA, be sure to check out the following program (forwarded by Isabel Espinal):

“Race, Poverty, and Aging Baby Boomers”

Sunday
June 25, 2006
10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Morial Convention Center (MCC) Room 393

Sponsored by:
AFL-CIO-ALA Library Service to Labor Groups, RUSA

The tragic aftermath of hurricane Katrina has laid bare the race and class disparities in this country like no other event in recent history. Twenty-eight percent of the residents of New Orleans lived below the poverty line prior to Katrina and 84% of them were African-American. Katrina demonstrated that along with race and class, age matters in America.

While many aging Baby Boomers will be healthier and wealthier than their parents’ generation, the number of older adults in poverty and at risk will increase significantly so that by 2008 there will be 6.7 million persons aged 55 or over below poverty, a 22% increase from 2000. This panel will present findings from recent research, explore implications for librarians, and provide an update on efforts to clean up and rebuild New Orleans.

Speakers:
Andrew Sum, PhD, director, Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University; Monique Harden, Esq., co-director, Advocates for Environmental Human Rights

According to the Associated Press, the Porter County (Indiana) Public Library System has revised its access policies with respect to homeless people.

Changes were enacted May 10th in response to reported material losses worth $4,000, attributed to temporary shelter residents. Assistant director James Cline considers the new policies “fiscally responsible to the taxpayers.”

Homeless children will not be allowed to check out material from [the] northwestern Indiana library system, which also has limited adults living in shelters to taking out three books at a time …

The policy allows adults living in shelters to receive a renewable library card on a three-month basis. Children 17 and under who live in the shelters will not be eligible for a library card …

Rachel Jamieson, 26, and her three children have been living at Spring Valley [Shelter] the last week and a half as they seek permanent housing. She called the policy unfair.

“I don’t think we should be responsible for other people’s mistakes. It doesn’t mean everybody is like that,” she said.

While the educational rights of homeless children are well established, public libraries are not apparently governed by this legal framework (i.e. the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act).

The HHPTF encourages Porter County officials to review the work of groups like the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY) and study their materials.

A good place to start? “Homeless Education: An Introduction to the Issues” (PDF).

UPDATE: According to American Libraries, on June 21 the Porter County Library board voted to rescind its problematic access policy.

“Yes, we did jump and made conclusions,” board President Scott Falk said, according to the June 22 Gary Post-Tribune … Assistant Director James Cline, in turn, apologized to shelter representatives at the meeting for not consulting with them first.

The House of Representatives recently passed a pay raise for itself but just killed a bill to increase the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour.

CNN’s Lou Dobbs today offers some choice criticism of these actions:

Raising the minimum wage … would positively affect the lives of more than 8 million workers, including an estimated 760,000 single mothers and 1.8 million parents with children under 18 … Don’t you think these families just might need that cost-of-living increase a bit more than our elected officials who are paid nearly $170,000 a year?

With no Congressional action on raising the minimum wage since 1997, inflation has eroded wages. The minimum wage in the 21st century is $2 lower in real dollars than it was four decades ago and now stands at its lowest level since 1955, according to the Economic Policy Institute and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Also, since the last time Congress increased the minimum wage for our lowest-paid workers, buying power has fallen by 25 percent. Yet over that time our elected representatives have given themselves eight pay raises totaling more than 23 percent.

For more information about living wages, check out the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign: www.letjusticeroll.org.

The minimum wage is where society draws the line: This low and no lower. Our bottom line is this: A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it.

The Campaign conducts an ongoing educational program to inform people of the severity of conditions facing low-wage working people and what must be done to bring about constructive change. It is organizing actively at the federal level and in selected states to raise the minimum wage.

To contact your Representative, visit www.house.gov/writerep.

After an impressive six-year run, Kathleen de la Peña McCook’s Community Building column in Reference and User Services Quarterly will be coming to an end.

The column—which Kathleen wrote, co-wrote, and edited—has routinely featured articles on the needs of low-income people and other socially excluded groups. With editorial changes at RUSQ, the journal is purportedly moving in new directions.

The HHPTF applauds Kathleen’s work and wishes her continued success in her professional pursuits. Among other recent projects, she authored Introduction to Public Librarianship and teaches a University of South Florida course titled “Librarians and Human Rights.”

RUSQ Community Building columns to date:

Volume 40, Number 1
“Librarians and Comprehensive Community Initiatives”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Volume 40, Number 2
“Service Integration and Libraries: Will 2-1-1 be the Catalyst for Renewal?”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Volume 40, Number 3
“Community Building and Latino Families”
Marcela Villagrán, Guest Columnist

Volume 40, Number 4
“Community Indicators, Genuine Progress, and the Gold Billion”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook and Kristen Brand, Guest Columnist

Volume 41, Number 1
“Collaboration Generates Synergy: Saint Paul Public Library, the College of St. Catherine, and the ‘Family Place’ Program”
Carol P. Johnson, Ginny Brodeen, Helen Humeston,
and Rebecca McGee, Guest Columnists

Volume 41, Number 2
“Authentic Discourse as a Means of Connection Between Public Library Services Responses and Community Building Initiatives”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Volume 41, Number 3
“Service to Day Laborers: A Job Libraries Have Left Undone”
Bruce Jensen, Guest Columnist

Volume 41, Number 4
“Cultural Heritage Institutions and Community Building”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook and Marla A. Jones, Guest Columnist

Volume 42, Number 1
“The African-American Research Library and Cultural Center
of the Broward County Library”
Henrietta M. Smith, Guest Columnist

Volume 42, Number 2
“Alaska Resources Library and Information Services: Building Community in the Forty-Ninth State”
Juli Braund-Allen and Daria O. Carle, Guest Columnists

Volume 42, Number 3
“Sustainable Communities and the Roles Libraries and Librarians Play”
Frederick W. Stoss, Guest Columnist

Volume 42, Number 4
“Using a Homeless Shelter as a Library Education Learning Laboratory: Incorporating Service-Learning in a Graduate-Level Information Sources and Services in the Social Sciences Course”
Lorna Peterson, Guest Columnist

Volume 43, Number 1
“Suppressing the Commons: Misconstrued Patriotism vs. a Psychology of Liberation”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Volume 43, Number 2
“Transformations of Librarianship in Support of Learning Communities”
Eino Sierppe, Guest Columnist

Volume 43, Number 3
“A Passion for Connection: Community Colleges Fulfill the Promise
of Cultural Institutions”
Carmine J. Bell, Guest Columnist

Volume 43, Number 4
“Community, Identity, and Literature”
Elaine Yontz, Guest Columnist

Volume 44, Number 1
“Public Libraries and People in Jail”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Volume 44, Number 2
“A Digital Library to Serve a Region: The Bioregion and First Nations Collections of the Southern Oregon Digital Archives”
Mary Jane Cedar Face and Deborah Hollens, Guest Columnists

Volume 44, Number 3
“The Homeless and Information Needs and Services”
Julie Hersberger, Guest Columnist

Volume 44, Number 4
“Building Lead-Free Communities”
Frederick W. Stoss, Guest Columnist

Volume 45, Number 1
“Human Rights and Librarians”
Kathleen de la Pena McCook and Katherine J. Phenix, Guest Columnist

Volume 45, Number 2
“Poverty, Poor People, and Our Priorities”
John Gehner, Guest Columnist

The National Institute for Literacy is one of four partners that sponsor America’s Literacy Directory, a searchable database of literacy programs available nationwide.

[ALD] is a web site that allows users to find local literacy providers in all 50 states and the U.S. territories. The ALD includes literacy programs for adults, children, and families. You can also search … for volunteer opportunities in your neighborhood.

By entering an address or a ZIP code, you can find detailed information about area literacy programs and the services they offer. You can also generate a map and driving directions for all programs listed … the ALD includes a directory of state and local hotlines and contacts.

Broken Beaks is a new children’s book written by Nathaniel Lachenmeyer. It tells the story of an injured sparrow that is befriended by a homeless man.

In the words of one reviewer:

“The image of the broken beak is well chosen, as it is a simple flaw, easily explained, but still mysterious. Something just snaps, and the bird’s life is never the same again. Watching this perfect bird become broken, dirty and homeless prepares us for the introduction of the man experiencing homelessness and allows the reader’s identification with the sparrow to easily empathize with the equally broken man. Broken Beaks is about the strength of the human spirit and is rich in detail and gentle simplicity.”

Lachenmeyer previously published The Outsider, an award-winning chronicle of his father’s struggles with schizophrenia and homelessness. Library Journal called it “highly recommended.”

Lachenmeyer also maintains the Web site Exile on Main Street, featuring information about mental health and homelessness.

The Hunger, Homelessness & Poverty Task Force announces two important additions to its Web site (www.hhptf.org).

The new Resources section compiles links to documents, publications, and tools in the following categories:

• featured links
• books
• children & families
• community building
• funding & grants
• law & public policy
• library services for poor people
• periodicals
• personal accounts
• research aids
• social exclusion
• statistics
• teaching aids

The new Organizations section features a variety of agencies, institutes, and nonprofits that assist low-income people and address poverty:

• featured links
• economic justice
• government
• homelessness & housing
• hunger
• law & public policy
• library & info science
• poverty research
• social exclusion

The task force welcomes feedback and invites resource tips. For more information, e-mail jgehner@hhptf.org.

The University Daily Kansan notes that students from the University of Kansas recently utilized the Lawrence Public Library as a survey site for local homeless people.

The survey, conducted under the social welfare class Advanced Communication and Advocacy Practice, focused on the options that Lawrence provides for the homeless …

Part of the reason why the survey was conducted was because [of] a report that named Lawrence the second “meanest city” to the homeless in the United States. The title was given in an annual survey, which was released in January 2006, conducted by the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty …

The class … brings with them various items to give the homeless after they fill out the survey. Items include socks, batteries, radios, bus passes and water bottles.

At first the incentives were a concern because they wanted to give participants something they would use. “We wanted to give them choices and provide things that maybe the shelter doesn’t have for them,” [said] Krista Lee, [a] Topeka graduate student.