I also challenge you to visit MiRightToRead.com, created and coordinated by MLA and join the coalition to ensure intellectual freedom and access to library materials are better understood and supported as we continue to face friction in upholding the rights of readers. Encourage that your colleagues, volunteers, and library supporters are aware of current issues, and how MLA and the library profession in Michigan are ready to lend a hand when needed.

Just this week, we have been hit again with the god-awful news of yet another mass school shooting. That, in addition to the racist and hate-motivated killing of innocent lives at a Buffalo supermarket last week, reminds us with blunt, searing forcefulness, of the broken state of our laws, politics, and priorities. Things have to change. The lives of children, students, friends, and families have to be given value over perceived rights and political blindness. Enough is enough. 

In times like this, may we all exhibit courage like the children’s librarian yesterday at the Uvalde, Texas Public Library who somehow had the ability to stand before 10 children, singing and reading, and encouraging joy, and hope. Things can change, and librarians can be part of it.

Ryan Wieber
MLA President