Librarians:
Frontline Fighters

Jun 23, 2025

Librarians have stood up for decades to defend the right of ordinary people to freely access books, the internet and the creative wonders of human culture. The Patriot Act, passed after September 11, 2001, tried to force librarians to disclose who was reading what. Librarians refused!

Since 2021, right-wing politicians and fundamentalist religious groups have stepped up the push for book bans. Librarians have organized their communities to push back. As a popular slogan puts it, “It’s never the good guys who ban books!”

The recent firing of Carla Hayden, who served as the Librarian of Congress since 2016, came as a shock. Ms. Hayden was the first black female to head the national library. It is the largest library in the world.

In a PBS interview after the firing, Ms. Hayden described this library as a treasure chest of photographs, film and books. It does not loan books to children, so the claim that Carla Hayden was fired because of “putting inappropriate books in the library for children” is a lie. What is true is this firing signals a new attack on libraries.

It puts a spotlight on the far-right’s “hopes” for the future—a “future” of going backwards! A future of narrowing access of the working class and the population to learning and culture.

In the PBS interview, Carla Hayden mentioned that librarians have been called “feisty fighters for freedom.” She spoke of plans by librarians, nationally, to try to mobilize public support for libraries. “It’s been known that restricting access to books and reading is often a tactic.… As centuries of dictators, tyrants, slave owners and other illicit holders of power have known … if you cannot restrict a people from learning to read, you must limit its scope.”