SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS, January 22, 2006 (Andrei Codrescu) - Here are excerpts from Andrei Codrescu's electrifying keynote speech, "The Make It or Break It Century," presented at the ALA's Midwinter 2006 conference:

Thank you for – once again - giving me the opportunity and pleasure to address some of my favorite people. I feel that you and I, writers and librarians, along with publishers and booksellers, are keeping the flame of literacy flickering in these pixilated times.....

I was born in a place [Romania] where people were forbidden to read most of what we consider the fundamental books of Western civilization. Not only were we forbidden to read authors like James Joyce, but being found in possession of a book such as George Orwell’s “1984” could lend one in prison for years. My good luck was to meet Dr. Martin in my adolescence. Dr. Martin was a retired professor who had collected and kept in his modest three room apartment the best of inter-war Romanian literature..... Also among his treasures were translations of Sigmund Freud, Robert Musil, Klebnikov, George Orwell, and Paul Claudel..... Dr. Martin’s library could have earned him years of hard labor. In addition to owning them, he lent them to us, young high-school writers, who absorbed them thirstily and read them deeply because we knew what risks our older friend – and ourselves - were taking. Those books influenced me profoundly because they were essential to my intellectual development. I became a writer because I read forbidden books. Books forbidden by an authoritarian government are the only reason I am now standing before you.

I knew about the American Library Association for a long time.... The ALA fight for the freedom to read, against censorship and the Patriot Act has been one of its magnificent accomplishments. Another has been the promotion of human rights and intellectual freedom worldwide. To quote from the ALA policy manual, “freedom of expression is an inalienable human right, necessary to self-government, vital to the resistance to oppression, crucial to the cause of justice, and further, that the principles of freedom of expression should be applied to libraries and librarians throughout the world.”

Given these crystal-clear positions, it was with a great deal of dismay that I learned that the American Library Association has taken no action to condemn the imprisonment of librarians, the banning of books, the repression of expression and the torture of dissidents only 90 miles away from our shores, in Cuba. In March 1998, two residents of Las Tunas, Ramón Colás and Berta Mexidor, opened a private library in their home, dedicated to offering Cubans books not officially available. The Félix Varela Library was the first of a network of private libraries that were established by volunteers in Cuba to bring light to the oppressive darkness of Castro’s police state. 103 libraries and 182,000 registered patrons were affiliated with the expanding Independent Libraries Project by the end of 2002. From the very beginning of their existence, the private librarians were subjected to threats, harassment, evictions, arrests, police raids, and the seizure of book collections, books that disappeared so quickly they could have only been burned..... Since then, those “individuals” have been subject to brutal imprisonment and their books have been disappeared. The ALA councilors have remained silent on the issue to this day. Am I
hallucinating? Is this the same American Library Association that stands against censorship and for freedom of expression everywhere? There are some people like the civil liberties columnist Nat Hentoff, and Robert Kent, founder of Friends of Cuban Libraries, who have accused the ALA leadership of a cover-up. I hope not. This organization cannot logically... act against provision 215 of the Patriot Act and approve of Fidel Castro’s order 88, which denies all the rights we cherish.

I went to Cuba in 1997, just before a papal visit later that year, and I was appalled by the lack of books. I was reminded of my poor, sad Romania in the 1950's, a dismal prison where food for body and mind were nearly inexistent. Cubans were literally starving physically and intellectually. Looking through the desultory pages of the Communist Party’s official paper, Granma, reminded me also of the pathetic simulacra of phony writing that stained the pages of Romania’s official papers during the years of the dictatorship.... Cuba today is the Romania of my growing up and I only hope for the sake of the Cubans that a hundred thousand Dr. Martins are ready to rise to take the place of those who had been arrested and tortured by the Cuban regime. I also hope that, in keeping with its tradition and charter of defending the freedom to read and freedom of expression, the American Library Association will immediately pass a resolution condemning the Castro regime for flagrant violations of basic human rights. To not do so is self-defeating and wipes out any credibility the ALA might have in fighting the much milder provisions of the Patriot Act. Not to speak of the fact that it’s much easier to fight for freedom to read in a country where every book is available, while it is much more difficult to make meaningful a statement in a place where books are an enemy of the state....

WASHINGTON, June 29, 2003, (Los Angeles Times Op Ed/Charlotte Allen) - When the Supreme Court last week upheld a federal law that requires public libraries receiving federal aid for Internet technology to install pornography-filtering software on their computers, the American Library Assn. protested vociferously.... "It's a fundamentally flawed and terrible decision," said the ALA's outgoing president, Maurice J. Freedman....

The "right to read" is dear to the heart of the ALA, which has a history of hyperalertness to the smallest hints of censorship at U.S. libraries....  It is thus ironic — although perhaps telling — that the very same ALA, meeting in Toronto for its annual convention the very week the Supreme Court handed down its decision, refused to issue even the mildest condemnation of Cuba's harsh treatment of some of its own librarians who were targets of Fidel Castro's sweeping crackdown on dozens of dissidents in March....

Among those being held are 10 directors of independent, nongovernment-affiliated lending libraries specializing in books that were either hard to find in Cuba or offensive to the Castro regime. The independent librarians, whose tiny libraries typically consisted of a single room in their homes, were trying to do exactly what the ALA librarians said they were trying to do in the Internet-filtering case: make material available to the public free of government censorship and control. Their crimes consisted of disliking Castro and lending out books such as George Orwell's "Animal Farm...."

Human Rights Watch has condemned as a travesty of justice the proceedings against these nonviolent dissidents, whose books, computers and papers were confiscated upon their arrests. Amnesty International called the 75 "prisoners of conscience." The International Federation of Library Assns. and Institutions issued a statement May 8 expressing its "deepest concerns" over the long sentences for dissidents and extending support to "the Cuban library community in safeguarding free access to print and electronic information."

The ALA, by contrast, did zilch on behalf of its members' imprisoned Cuban colleagues. At the Toronto meeting last week, the organization's 175-member governing council failed to vote on a resolution similar in wording to that of the international librarians' federation....

Adding insult to injury, the ALA held a panel discussion at the convention on libraries in Cuba. All five Cuban delegates to the panel were representatives of Cuba's state-owned public library system, including Eliades Acosta Matos, head of the Jose Marti National Library, a government-controlled enterprise. Acosta Matos is on record as calling the independents "traitors," "criminals" and "mercenaries...."  [When the Friends of Cuban Libraries asked the ALA to include diverse viewpoints on the panel, such as independent librarian Ramon Colas], the ALA turned down the request, contending that because Colas lacked a degree in library science, he was not a professional librarian. (On that argument, neither is Acosta Matos, nor for that matter, is James Billington, the librarian of Congress). Freedman finally agreed to allow a separate debate on Cuban libraries but changed his mind just before the convention....

What seems to be at issue in the ALA is politics. Mark Rosenzweig, chief librarian of the Reference Center for Marxist Studies (the repository of the archives of the Communist Party USA), is a leading figure of the ALA's Social Responsibility Round Table....  Listening to Rosenzweig talk is like listening to a reading from "Animal Farm" — or maybe "1984."

"There was hardly even the pretense that these people were librarians," Rosenzweig said in a telephone interview last week. "I have got books in my apartment too but that doesn't make me a librarian. These are people who have been dissidents for many years. They're pro-U.S. They have connections with the Miami dissident groups." Translation: In Cuba, it's a crime to be a dissident, especially if you have relatives in Florida.

Larry Oberg, university librarian at Willamette University, participated in an ALA fact-finding trip to Cuba in 2001. This is what he told me last week: "They're opening libraries as a front...."

[At] around the same time that Oberg was in Cuba making his observations, Marion Lloyd, reporting for the Houston Chronicle, sent a Cuban friend to request two books for her at a state library: Orwell's "1984" and exiled Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante's novel "Three Trapped Tigers." The librarian refused to provide the student with Infante's novel, telling him that it was "counterrevolutionary." "1984" was not even in the library's catalog. [See "Independent Libraries Irk Cuba's Communist Government Bureaucrats," Houston Chronicle, May 26, 2001]

"I'm genuinely committed to freedom of access to information," said [ALA president] Freedman.... There is a final irony, too: While the ALA frets about Americans' lack of access to some Web pages, 99% of Cuba's 11 million people lack any access to the Web — by deliberate design of the Castro regime.

"They're afraid of what would happen if they allowed access," Oberg said.

 Now, doesn't that sound familiar?

Full text: (http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-allen29jun29,1,5526015.story)

Library Association excludes Cuban independents from meeting

WASHINGTON, June 20, 2003 (Georgie Anne Geyer/Universal Press Syndicate) - It seems that the American Library Association, which represents public, college and other libraries in America and has no fewer than 64,000 members, this spring invited the official Cuban government librarians to speak at its June 19-25 ALA convention in Toronto -- but adamantly refused to invite any of the librarians from the 105 independent libraries in Cuba....

It means that the ALA has nothing to say about the fact that, only this winter, at least 10 independent librarians, along with journalists and other political "dissidents" (anybody who does not completely agree with Fidel Castro), were sentenced to 20- to 26-year prison sentences as the police raided some 22 of the independent libraries.

Betty Turock, a professor at Rutgers University, former ALA president and current international relations chairman of the group, was quoted when the situation erupted this spring as saying that the convention program was planned 18 months ago, way before the crackdown in Cuba. "I have never known the ALA not to take the side of intellectual freedom," she told The Washington Times.

Now, librarians should be our heroes of words, but these words should bring shame to even the most cynical men and women....

Librarians are supposed to be the sacred guardians of our search for knowledge. Why do American librarians -- at least as interpreted by their own professional organization -- allow these things to be said and done in their name?...

I have always adored librarians, always thought them a different breed, saw them as my living contact with my beloved books. Might they not drop their specializations for a week in Canada and consider the purposes for which their noble name is being used and abused?

NEW YORK, June 20, 2003 (Wall Street Journal/Mary Anastasia O'Grady) -At the American Library Association annual meeting in Toronto this weekend there will be a Cuba program. But there won't be any panel debate about intellectual freedom in Fidel's tropical paradise.

Efforts to include Cuba's independent librarians -- considered enemies of the Revolution -- on the ALA program have failed. That means that only employees of El Maximo Lider will be featured speakers. That should be downright riveting.

The Toronto event might be a non-event if not for the fact that only a few months ago, Castro's goons raided 22 independent libraries and threw 10 librarians in the slammer for up to 26 years. The brutality of the crackdown against unarmed civilians is more evidence that what Fidel most fears is the free exchange of ideas. Press reports quoted Vladimir Roca, the son of the late Cuban Communist party bigwig Blas Roca and now a prominent critic of the government, making just that point. "What kind of a hunter uses a cannon to kill a sparrow," he asked.

A group called Friends of Cuban Libraries led by Robert Kent, a librarian with the New York Public Library, is pleading with the association to speak up. They want the ALA to pass a strong resolution in Toronto calling for the release of the librarians and pledging solidarity with their cause.

Joining that chorus is Nat Hentoff, a columnist for the Village Voice and a prominent civil liberties proponent. "It would be astonishing -- and shameful," Mr. Hentoff wrote to Mr. Kent, "if the American Library Association does not support -- and gather support for -- the courageous independent librarians of Cuba, some of whom have been imprisoned by Castro for very long terms for advocating the very principles of the freedom to read and think that the American Library Association has so long fought for in this country."

That fight has featured some extreme positions over the years, including refusing to back efforts to block Internet porn sites in public libraries on the grounds that "access to information" is sacred. Yet strangely enough, the ALA's Cuba position heavily favors state-controlled libraries.

Ramón Colas and his wife Berta Mexidor began Cuba's Independent Library Project in Las Tunas in 1998. They were emboldened by a Castro speech proclaiming that, "In Cuba there are no prohibited books, only those we do not have the money to buy." The idea of the project, according to the founders, is "to promote reading not as a mere act of receiving understanding, but to form an opinion which is individually arrived at without censorship nor obligation to one belief."

Thinking outside the box got Mr. Colas and Ms. Mexidor into lots of trouble with Fidel, including multiple detentions, loss of employment and expulsion from their town. They fled Cuba when their daughter began to suffer unbearable harassment at school but they left behind a fledgling independent library system. At the other end of the island, Roberto de Miranda, who is also the founder of Cuba's largest independent teacher's union, initiated a similar movement in July 2000 in Havana. He is now serving a 20-year prison sentence.

On April 16 Michael Royal, a student at the University of Virginia Law School and Director of the Human Rights Study Project, testified before Congress about a research trip he took to Cuba. In his remarks he spoke of Victor Rolando Arroyo, an independent librarian and journalist in the town of Pinar del Rio who was active in the Varela Project [a Cuban democracy movement].

Mr. Arroyo wrote for the Union of Independent Cuban Journalists and Writers, according to the testimony. For his work he earned the Hellman-Hammett grant by Human Rights Watch. "Arroyo's crimes were writing news stories and running a private library and his sentence is 26 years in prison," said Mr. Royal.

The ALA claims that it disqualified the independent librarians from its Toronto program because the funding grant stipulates "professional" exchanges. According to Michael Dowling who heads the ALA's International Relations Committee, the ALA could not include those who are not "professionals," presumably anyone lacking Fidel's imprimatur. Yet the lack of "professional" training won't keep Eliades Acosta, Cuba's director of the Jose Marti National Library, off the program. When I mentioned to Mr. Dowling that Mr. Acosta is not a librarian, he said: "Well, neither is the librarian for the U.S. Library of Congress." That answer contradicts the ALA assertion that the librarian title is crucial to library work.

All of which suggests that the ALA's attitude toward the Cuban independents has more to do with the politics of some of the ALA's activist members than with professional credentials. A January 2001 report on Cuba by the ALA's Latin American subcommittee relies heavily on the testimony of Ann Sparanese, who "asserted that she has seen no evidence of censorship or confiscation of books on her many visits to Cuba." The operative word here is "many" since Ms. Sparanese, who is influential in ALA policymaking toward Cuba, is a longtime member of the Venceremos Brigade. U.S. brigadistas have been traveling to Cuba for 32 years to promote Fidel's agenda.

Rhonda Neugebauer, another ALA member and an important source for subcommittee findings, testified in the report that she saw no government censorship in Cuba either. Last month she signed Fidel's May Day petition designed to counter criticism of his crackdown on dissidents from such former loyalists as Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago.

A third activist ALA council member is Mark Rosenzweig, who is also the director of reference for the Center for Marxist Studies in New York, the repository of documents of the Communist Party U.S.A. Mr. Rosenzweig staunchly opposes ALA support for the independent libraries and has accused Mr. Hentoff of seeing the problem through "the eyes of the imperialist power," meaning the U.S., of course. In a telephone interview this week he told me: "We cannot presume that all countries are capable of the same level of intellectual freedom that we have in the U.S." After all, he added, "Cuba is caught in an extremely sharp conflict with the U.S." And finally, "I don't think [Cuba] is a dictatorship. It's a republic."

In the U.S., unlike Cuba, contrarians aren't slapped in jail. But I thought the ALA's 64,000 dues-paying members might like to know who's setting policies in their name.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

(Thanks Very much to Bob Kent and the Friends of Cuban Libraries for keeping a good list of these editorials as they appeared. Some of the copies here are linked to the FOCL page, but all originals
 can be found through database searches)