Recently our President announced his budget. A budget that would cut all funding to The Institute of Museum and Library services. Effectively cutting all federal funding for libraries across the nation. We need to save our libraries.
Libraries provide books and after school programs for children. They encourage literacy with summer programs. They help inspire a life time love of learning and reading in children of all ages. Without them where will kids with no internet at home do their homework? Where will kids have a place to study or get tutoring after school hours when they cannot concentrate at home? No where. We need libraries for our kids.
For adults, libraries serve as a place where they can use the internet to apply for jobs, get job training, early voting centers, book clubs to help make new friends, or just a place to pick up a book and learn something new.
Libraries save our information for the next generation. When we live in an era of alternative facts, where science is ignored in favor of personal feelings, we need libraries now more than ever. We need them to educate ourselves on the facts and hold the government accountable to them. We need them to have strong civic participation. We need them so kids can grow up with a place, other than school, where learning and exploration is encouraged. We need them so adults have somewhere to go to either learn something new or to rent a book and get away from it all. We need our libraries.
If you agree with me do not be silent on this issue. You can write or call directly to the White House and tell the President to save our libraries. You can also write to both your state Senators and your district representative. If you do not know who they are you can find out here. Let them know this is a bipartisan issue because all parties use public libraries. Go out and save our libraries.
Sheetal Tadiparty
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