Beltane Early Growth Moon
So, I went into the St. Louis Park Public Library, looked around for the session on literary agents (see below) and noticed an armed and uniformed policeman talking with a librarian. When I left, the same policeman was still there. I didn’t ask if this was part of the NRA initiative to make all schools safe by putting police with guns in them (and, BTW, arming teachers and administrators, too), but a part of me retreated at the sight, a sanctum of my childhood, and there was, in fact, a boy of maybe 8 or 9, pulling books off the shelves and examining them, invaded by guns and police.
Police powers and the rights of free speech and learning live an uneasy balance, one that needs to be uneasy, one that should not be thrown off balance by seeming to grant police powers the right of access to a place devoted to freedom of thought. This is inappropriate to the young one hunting for just the right book, the immigrant hunting for clues to American politics and the radical hunting for information for their arguments.
Police presence has a chilling effect on freedom of thought and freedom of action, as, of course, it is meant to have, but in the street, at the bar or the broken in house or where shabby accounting practices prosper, but not, I would go so far as to say never, in a library.
