Activist Toolkit

1. What motivates you to seek this office? What skills, experiences, and perspectives would you bring to the Village, and why would those contributions be valuable in the role of Library Board Trustee?

Candidate’s video response

I love the library. I was  first asked by outgoing Trustee Mohanraj to consider running, but I made my decision when I met with the sitting Library Board president, Matt Fruth, and he told me that approximately 90% of the library’s budget comes from property taxes. That makes the library’s budget  relatively stable even during financially emergent times like these. This is great, of course, for the operations of the library, but it also means that at times when people might be hurting financially, their taxes are still funding library services at the same rate. The library, then, is inevitably a significant stakeholder in equity in the community, and I want to be part of the discussions that keeps this position of the library at the forefront of decision-makers’ minds. I want to be part of the work of having the library be an antiracist, equity-focused, and inclusive space.

I am an Associate Professor in the English and Creative Writing department at Columbia College Chicago. Last year, when the pandemic hit and our college, like others, was faced with unprecedented changes, I ran for and won seats on the faculty senate and then its Executive committee. I understood that the coming months would be especially trying times for educators, and I wanted to make sure that the faculty had as strong an advocate for them as possible during these times. It is this belief in advocacy, especially for those who don’t have a seat at the table, that I hope to bring to the Oak Park Public Library Board.

2. What are the three biggest challenges or opportunities you expect the Library to face in the coming years, and how would you work with your colleagues to address these challenges or realize these opportunities?

I expect that the primary challenge facing the library will be the financial fallout of COVID. Even though the library’s budget is relatively stable, I suspect we will see  greater scrutiny from our community of the services we are able to provide at a time when needs are intensifying. Conversely, this opens up the opportunity for us to recommit to library services such as access to wireless internet and electronic devices to have them be the most accessible to the most number of people.

An opportunity that I believe OPPL can’t afford to pass up is to remain engaged with and be at the forefront of discussions around social justice. OPPL already has some impressive programming around race and ethnicity-- I’d like to point to the work that Juanta Griffin has done as the library’s multicultural learning coordinator, and that the library staff, at all levels,  is undergoing antiracist training with RGW Consulting. 

I believe we can continue anti-racist practices in our programming as well-- below (in response to question 8), I briefly outline initiative I’d like to develop around social justice classes for teenagers in our community. Additionally, I believe that the OPPL board needs to be a staunch advocate for expanding access to free wireless internet, another equity concern.

3. How will you balance competing interests, such as your own deeply-held values and opinions, input from Library staff and fellow board members, and diverse views from the community? How would you describe your leadership style and your decision-making process generally?

I am an academic, a teacher, because I believe in evidence, and am most convinced by positions and arguments that are supported through vetted sources. At the same time, I am a literature teacher because I care about what counts as evidence. Though a fan of data and numbers, I also understand that stories-- fictional ones that can increase our empathy for those we’ve never encountered as well as the narratives of those that institutions traditionally ignore-- can provide a powerful way for us to reshape our thinking. 

My ten plus years in academia means I have significant experience working in a large, cumbersome institution that is trying to do good work while at the same time being tied to complex bureaucratic processes. I have learned to work for equity, for antiracism, and overall for healthy institutional practices from all perspectives (not just majoritarian) through a process I call pushing out—getting involved in the structures of an institution in order to reimagine what is possible within it.

I welcome honest arguments that are based on disagreements around values and processes. In my experience, these are necessary first steps to generate nuanced, nimble, and ultimately healthy policies.

4. What values would you bring to the budgeting process? What changes do you favor in the process by which the Library conducts its budgeting and fiscal planning?

I see my intervention in the budget to be at the level of providing a fresh perspective on the aims of the budget, rather than to the process. Because the library’s budget is relatively stable, this takes out much of the surprise when it comes to planning, though, of course, if 2020 was a year that taught us anything, it was that we can’t underestimate surprises. It has also taught us that moments of emergency put tremendous pressure on the economic and social fault lines that already exist. In terms of the budget and difficult financial decisions that will need to be made, I see my role as having to consider who budgetary cuts will affect and bringing to the table a qualitative analysis of our quantitative decisions. 

5. How will you balance the community's desire to decrease the property tax burden with the Library’s mission of sharing information, services, and opportunities, and the need to maintain facilities?

To be completely honest, I’ll probably err on the side of the library’s stated mission and personal commitment to providing services to as many as possible. As a homeowner in Oak Park, I am not immune to property tax increases, and even my family, lucky as we are to have kept our jobs and our health, has not been completely exempt from financial pressures during this last year. I understand the need for being fiscally responsible with people’s hard-earned money. But, looking at the composition of the library board and who many of my colleagues on the board will probably end up being, I am confident that this will be a careful Board. I fully expect to be among those who advocate for the preservation of library services and operations, coupled with strategic and thoughtful visions for moving forward. 

6. How do you define equity? Have recent discussions in the larger community informed or changed your thinking?

The fundamental thing that I believe about working to make communities more equitable is that we need to do the work not out of a sense of charity, but because disenfranchisement, impoverishment, and racism are daily and hefty processes with the weight of institutions behind them. We need to mount equally significant counterprocesses to begin undoing their damage. Though doing the work can seem thankless, it is nonetheless selfish because working for as many people as possible to have a fair shot at success is just the first step to a thriving environment for everyone. 

The fight for equal access to opportunities to flourish looks different across the axis of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, nationality, immigration status, and especially across the combination of these, and so conversations need to be supple and nuanced. Likewise, as more people are empowered to speak, to represent their own political desires, to influence decisions, and to truly become agents of their private and public lives, our definitions of what it means to live in an equitable world will change. Though we think of equity as a fixed condition we hope to achieve, I believe it is better understood as a constantly changing process.

7. How do you plan to solicit feedback from people who may be experiencing Oak Park’s libraries in a different way than you? What barriers do you believe may exist in this process?

Given the complex nature of Oak Park residents and our varying affection for technology, I am glad that OPPL uses a variety of methods-- print and virtual-- to communicate with the community and to encourage it to speak back. In recent years, the Board has also decided specifically to survey patrons regarding its services, and I look forward to seeing how this develops. 

Increased virtual services, like panels and conversations, have the potential to be more inclusive because of the lack of restraints of physical presence and commuting. However, the inclusivity of these formats is also restrained by, for instance, access to reliable internet connections. Any attempt by the libraries to increase or clarify communication with the community has to take into account systemic hurdles that might amplify the voices who already have access to resources while they hide the experiences of those who don’t, and my intent is to push the Board to be at the forefront of identifying, confronting, and combating those hurdles.

8. How will you collaborate with neighboring communities? Discuss a specific initiative you would wish to undertake. What benefits and challenges would you anticipate?

I am excited to think about the library  coordinating and being the venue for social justice courses—multi day- or week-long summer courses that provide free college-level curriculum to local teens. As with all library programming, it would be free, and OPPL would also be well positioned to provide access to course materials. Such an initiative would require collaboration with other entities in Oak Park (such as the E-team, local youth groups like ROYAL), local-area colleges, neighboring libraries, and even other local organizations like Chicago Freedom School.

We are learning that, as with many different kinds of boundaries, the borders of Austin Ave, Harlem Ave, North Ave, and Roosevelt Road are both incredibly powerful-- in that these lines can have a significant impact on regulations, taxes, and resources-- and arbitrary-- in that we on either side of those streets actually have more in common with each other than what divides us. In the last year, we have seen that the health and success of our neighboring communities has practical implications for Oak Park. Healthy libraries, specifically, have always embodied this value of interconnectedness, understanding that their collections gain more traction the more connected they are to other libraries’ materials.

9. In recent years, the Library has replaced security guards with social workers, increased salaries for its lower waged workers, and eliminated late fees for borrowers. Do you believe these initiatives have been successful? Why or why not? Are there ways in which you would anticipate expanding or rolling back this work?

I give a solid two thumbs’ up to all these initiatives. The elimination of the late fees has not had a significant impact on the library’s budget, and is part of a larger trend among libraries to remove hurdles to people’s interaction with them. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure that I would characterize increased wages for the least compensated among the library staff as an initiative as much as an imperative, but I’m nonetheless grateful that this work has been done, and I hope to continue to bring this lens to the Board. I will also say that the hiring of social workers to replace security guards recognizes that libraries are community spaces for everyone, rather than property that needs to be protected. The presence of social workers has also meant that the libraries are providing free mental health assessments in partnership with Rush during COVID, something else that acknowledges that our libraries are the sites for a wide range of patrons with many different needs. 

10. What lessons learned from the services provided or not provided during the pandemic do you believe will be applicable going forward, even after the pandemic abates?

Some services—like home delivery of library materials to those who are incapacitated—became even more visible during the pandemic, and I would like to see this expanded awareness of services continue.

The pandemic has also forced many into adopting technology whether or not they wanted to--this dependence on technology must be supported with expanding access to free high-speed internet, resources on digital literacy, as well as concerted efforts to be on the forefront of social justice discussions that both use and think about expanding technological dependency.

As we think about our digital presence, I have also heard from Oak Parkers that they are not sure whether the library is “open” or not, even though they are picking up and dropping off materials. I take this as a clear statement that the in-person services or programming that OPPL offers is entrenched in our understanding of the library- that the space is an important part of how we see the library, and that, once it is safe to do so, we should recommit to the rich programming we’ve offered there.

11. In an era of radical changes to how people find and consume information, what should and shouldn’t change about the services provided by the Library?

In concert with the kind of initiative I outline in response to question 8, I believe that libraries are crucial places where we can potentially help people discern the difference between data and analysis, or opinion and fact, between information and misinformation. This is part of a three-pronged approach to technology and access that I hope to see strengthen our commitment to a real, practical, move towards equity in technological access that OPPL should head: a) increase access to free high-speed internet and devices (this would build on current practices during COVID such as extending the rental period for devices); b) help expand digital literacy so that we all are able to parse through massive misinformation dumps that come our way as our access to technology and social media increases, and c) develop strong antiracist and equity-focused curriculum that encourages positive uses of expanding technology.

12. How do you feel services and supports for homeless patrons fit within the mission of the Library?

I think that public libraries like ours are radically unique spaces because they don’t require payment or credentials for people to use the facilities, or even be sheltered. I understand that the presence of unhoused people at the library has reportedly unsettled some patrons, but being nimble and nuanced in our understanding of the tools people need to succeed is absolutely, in my opinion, within the fundamental mission of libraries to provide safe environments for people to learn. 

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[The above answers were supplied on 2/19/21.]