EDITOR'S NOTE
One Year Later
by Brandi Scardilli
In June 2020, in response to the May 25 murder of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin (enabled by fellow police officers) and the resulting protests, ALA’s Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services published Libraries Respond—Black Lives Matter (ala.org/advocacy/diversity/librariesrespond/black-lives-matter), a toolkit for library workers looking to educate themselves and their communities. ALA states, “Many people are feeling helpless, but there are many ways we can center the voices and experiences of Black library workers, the Black community, support the broader Black Lives Matter movement, fight against police violence, and help the cause of racial justice.”
It’s been a year since then, and we should still be looking at the resources in this toolkit, still learning, still working to become anti-racist. This issue, starting on page 14, Woody Evans shares some nonprofit, academic, and government efforts to provide information on policing, writing that if the institution “is going to change, to improve, and to be more about service and safety than about domination (and, too often, death), then policymakers need good information. Starting with the data and academic resources such as those in this article, let’s all of us information professionals get familiar with sources and strategies for providing good, quality information on policing so that we can do our part, however small, in changing things for the better.”
I hope you find Woody’s list helpful in furthering your education.
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