Books and the truth in words can unite us

For those who read books, you know that a good book can help immensely, to make you smile, laugh, wonder, learn, improve your mood, challenge you and, yes, make you cry. Books can be the elixir to lighten a load and soothe the soul. Books help us see how big and wonderful and complex our world and universe is and how people – you – are both the same and different from other individuals, how small and insignificant humans are and how significant each of us is.

Books are the key to tomorrow, however well or ill our actions may be based on what we read.

There are better books and worse books and even bad books, but in no public space can there be banned books. Here in the United States, where part of the Constitution’s First Amendment states “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press” no local government, including school and library districts, can ban books from their collections.

However cautious and limited parents choose to be with their children’s learning in the privacy of their own home, those restrictions cannot extend into the public square or be imposed on the community.

Banned Books Week starts this Sunday, Sept. 26. Its theme, “Books Unite Us, Censorship Divides Us,” is especially appropriate and timely. Our sadly divided nation’s huge gap is made worse by neighboring citizens choosing different realities about the coronavirus pandemic. If we are able to unite around books about science and public health responses to pandemics, fewer people would end up in emergency rooms and ICU wards. If we allow books to unite us, metaphorical temperatures between those of differing views will come down.

That possibility exists every moment. Each of us has the power to bring it into reality.

How fitting that this year’s Banned Books Week coincided with – finally – the physical start of the new La Conner Swinomish Regional Library. More than a channel separates the La Conner and Swinomish populations. The financial gifts of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community have made the construction of the new library possible. Now, the library staff, board, members and friends must continually and actively reach out to engage and encourage Swinomish members to use the library and make it their own.

Banned Books Week ends Oct. 2 this year. Here in greater La Conner, let us work so there is no end date to the theme “Books Unite Us.”

We have the opportunity to make that true across the Swinomish Channel first and use that as a model to share words, literacy, empathy and the excitement of exploration and learning however far our reach extends.