The assault on libraries must end
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Here in Massachusetts, we understand the power of libraries. The Boston Public Library was the first large free municipal library in the United States, founded on the principle that access to knowledge is a right. Our mission is 'Free to All,' with equal emphasis on both 'free' and 'all.' No one is excluded from the vast resources and opportunities we steward, because public libraries are living proof that the concepts of equity, diversity, and inclusion can and do work to build stronger communities. Just ask the 15,000 English language learners who passed through our doors last year.
The BPL welcomes more than 2 million visitors annually, and circulates more than 6 million books and digital resources to residents across the Commonwealth. Public libraries across the state play a similarly crucial role: According to the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, more than
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A view of the grand staircase lions by Louis Saint-Gaudens at the Boston Public Library.
David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
Nationally, libraries have vast, bipartisan support. A
And yet, the freedom to read and access information is threatened by an unprecedented wave of book challenges across the country.
Libraries are at the forefront of defending these fundamental rights. Programs like BPL's 'Books Unbanned' initiative are critical, ensuring that teens nationwide — nearly 10,000 to date — can access vital information, even in communities where those resources are being restricted. As one teen reports: 'Having this access allows me to broaden my understanding of the governmental system, class struggles, the impact of race in our society, and minority group struggles.' Libraries are sanctuaries of intellectual freedom, ensuring that everyone — regardless of background — can explore the diverse perspectives that strengthen our democracy.
While the library is a bastion of intellectual freedom, its value goes beyond supporting noble ideals. For many people, their library is the only place to access the internet, apply for jobs, or to find a quiet space for study and reflection. Libraries also provide essential services to vulnerable populations, offering literacy programs, citizenship classes, and career workshops. They are not just buildings filled with books and big ideas; they are dynamic centers of opportunity, fueled by passionate, skilled library workers who understand and serve the unique needs of their communities.
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Michael Fulkerson, center, laughs with his granddaughter, Hannah Greenwell, while looking through records during the Record Show at the Daviess County Public Library on Apr. 5, 2025, in Owensboro, Ky.
Greg Eans/Associated Press
An inscription on the facade of the BPL's McKim building in Copley Square reminds us: 'The Commonwealth requires the education of the people as the safeguard of order and liberty.' Weakening libraries means weakening one of the supports of American society — a rare, precious space, open to all, where facts, knowledge, and education are celebrated.
Without these vital spaces of learning and access for all, our democracy risks eroding further from within. As the structures that fund and support our libraries are systematically dismantled, we as a society must protect these institutions by championing access to information and fostering inclusion.
Without strong libraries, we risk losing one of the last truly nonpartisan spaces where all voices are heard. Now is the time to act — through advocacy and action. Run for your local library board; join your local Friends of the Library group. Advocate for funding at local, state, and federal levels. We must stand up for stronger libraries and a stronger democracy — one based on freedom, not fear.
David Leonard is president of the Boston Public Library.
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Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Chicago Tribune
Two priests who serve the poor at Evanston church could be forced to leave US, parish fears
Walking out of Catholic mass at St. John XXIII parish in Evanston Thursday morning, Lois Farley Shuford expressed alarm that the parish's two priests, who both came to the United States with a mission to serve the poor, might be forced to leave the country. The possibility of losing the immigrant priests intensifies the worry for people in the parish, where about half the congregants are immigrants from Mexico. They're facing heightened fears as they see news reports about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seizing immigrants on the streets. The priests, Rev. Koudjo K. Jean-Philippe Lokpo, of the west African nation of Togo, and Rev. José Manuel Ortiz, of Mexico, are here on R1 religious worker visas that permit them to serve in the United States. But the federal government is so backed up in processing paperwork that Rev. Lokpo might be forced to leave in October, and only an attorney's intervention saved Rev. Ortiz from having to leave the country by the end of July. That has upset parishioners, who say the two men have devoted their lives to serving others, and have done tremendous good for the people in the parish. 'We were scared,' Lois Farley Shuford said after leaving the church service. 'I mean, in this [President Donald Trump] administration, we're scared about everything.' 'We're scared for many of our parishioners,' added Bob Shuford. About half of the St. John XXIII's parishioners are Hispanic in the multilingual parish, which offers mass in English, Spanish and French Creole. 'We're aware of what's happening with our priests,' Bob Shuford said. 'It's a part of a larger concern that we have, and we've all been through training on how we can best support our fellow parishioners.' The Archdiocese of Chicago consolidated the parishes of St. Nicholas and St. Mary to form St. John XXIII parish in early 2022. By the end of that year, Lokpo led the parish as its pastor, assisted by Ortiz as the parish's associate pastor. 'The core of this place, particularly at St. Nick, but the core of the whole parish has been that all are welcome. That's a critical thing here in this parish home, and so I think that has been extended to Jose and Jean-Philippe as well,' Lois Farley Shuford said. Ortiz remains philosophical about the possibility of being forced to leave St. John XXIII and return to Mexico. 'It is what it is,' Ortiz said. What really matters to him is his connection to the members of his parish, he added. 'You try to do what's best for the parish and for the people.' In an April letter to the parish, Lokpo wrote his initial concerns that his and Ortiz's green card application for continued residency had yet to be processed by the federal government, despite submitting his required documents to the government in 2022. At the time, he anticipated that Ortiz's visa would expire in July, which would require him to return to Mexico; however, immigration lawyers were able to obtain a 240-day extension on Ortiz's visa due to the time lost because of the pandemic. Lokpo is now seeking the same extension, according to Ortiz. Lokpo's visa is set to expire at the end of October. 'I ask for your prayers and your understanding as we navigate this challenge. I am concerned about the disruption this will cause for our St. John XXIII Parish, yet I trust in God's hand in this and in His care for our faith community,' Lokpo wrote. St. John XXIII is administered by an international Catholic organization called Comboni Missionaries, according to Comboni's Senior Communications Specialist Lindsay Braud. Comboni ministers to the 'world's poorest and most abandoned people,' according to its website. Comboni has 3,500 missionaries worldwide and operates in 41 countries, according to its website. Comboni's priests in North American parishes are selected by the Provincial Superior Rev. Ruffino Ezama. 'We are an international religious order,' Ezama said. 'Wherever there is need, we don't look at if someone is an immigrant or not, because we go there to serve the church.' Despite the mission serving in 41 countries, Ezama said the United States has the most rigorous requirements for religious workers. Comboni priests take vows of poverty, which prevents them from being paid for their work, chastity and obedience, which beholds them to orders from their superiors at Comboni. Lokpo did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Shelley Benson and Tom Lenz, the chair and vice-chair of the Parish Pastoral Council, respectively, responded on Lokpo's behalf, asking Pioneer Press to speak to the Archdiocese of Chicago. The Archdiocese commented, 'While we hope the federal government recognizes the special status of religious workers, we do not discuss personnel matters.' The archdiocese, like many others in the United States, is facing a shortage of priests as fewer men choose that vocation. Some Chicagoland parishes rely on immigrant priests to fill the gap. Nearly 60% of younger diocesan priests — under the age of 50 — who serve in the Archdiocese of Chicago are immigrants, according to a 2023 report. The number is a considerable contrast with priests over the age of 50, of whom 81% were born in the U.S. The average age of a priest in 2023 was 64. Prior to 2023, it would typically take 12 months for the government to process for a green card. That's well within the five-year time frame that an R1 visa gives a religious worker, according to immigration lawyer Tahreem Kalam, with Minsky, McCormick and Hallagan. But that changed drastically after a 2023 decision from the Department of Homeland Security during the Biden administration. That created a significant backlog, according to Kalam, who said the five years might run out for some R1 visa holders. She said they're in an 'impossible' situation. A workaround that some attorneys try for their clients is to have them apply for an H-1B visa, Kalam said, but that won't work for most religious since they take vows of poverty. 'It's a huge problem in the community,' she said. 'Especially an institution like the Catholic Church — It's a global [institution] — They send people to different countries all the time.' She represents a large group of Catholic nuns, and 'they've all just kind of come to terms now that they have to leave [the country],' she remarked. At the national level, some dioceses are taking their demands to government. Last year, the Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey, and five of its priests sued the federal government over its backlog of green card approvals. Steps are being taken in the U.S. House and Senate to bring a resolution for religious workers' status, according to the Associated Press. 'I think the only way for changes in their visas is if some of these bigger religious organizations were to lobby and show Congress how much they are being affected by losing their religious leaders,' Kalam said. On a warm summer evening on the grounds of St. Nicholas Church, one of the two churches that make up St. John XXIII parish, attorney William Quiceno volunteers his time to give immigrants free legal consultations every other month. He has been doing so for the past 10 to 12 years. On this particular July evening, he had eight new clients. Of those, he really only had a path forward for three, he said. 'People have more fear, for sure,' Quiceno said. 'They're worried more about their future, their kids, the lives they've established here. They're looking for any kind of way they can fix their status.' 'A lot of them have known they haven't had any options, but they're hoping that one day, there would be an option. Now that kind of hope disappears.' 'Their hope kind of disappears,' he repeated to himself. Inside the makeshift waiting room, Teresa Infante and Mireya Terrazaz take names on a sign-up sheet and usher clients into the lawyer's temporary office. In the wake of promises from the Trump administration to crack down on immigration enforcement in Chicago, Infante and Terrazaz confirmed the renewed tensions felt in the immigrant community. In the months since Trump's return to the Oval Office, as many as 22 people signed up for free consultations one evening, creating the need for the lawyer to stay one hour later than he usually volunteers. What the two didn't count on, after decades of volunteer work for the parish, is that their own priests would be in danger of not being allowed to stay in the country. 'It was very sad,' Infante said of Ortiz's situation. A group of parishioners had met over the weeks to pray for Ortiz to stay in the country. 'Please, don't take our priests away,' Terrazas said. Now they wait to see whether Lokpo's visa will be extended past October. 'We have to pray,' said Infante. 'A lot.'
Chicago Tribune
5 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: CPS doubles down on ‘sustainable community schools.' Where are the results?
Education is the great equalizer, and we believe everyone should have access to a good one. So we took notice when Mayor Brandon Johnson announced late last week that the city would be nearly doubling the number of so-called sustainable community schools in the city. What is a sustainable community school? It's a model — widely supported by teachers' unions — which turns public schools into community hubs offering services such as housing and food assistance, medical and dental care, mental health support and classes, including parenting or English for non-native speakers. Right now, Chicago Public Schools has 20 of these schools, but the number is going up to 36 — with more to come after that. Each of these schools costs an extra $500,000 annually, so adding 16 will cost an additional $8 million next year. You may be asking yourself why, when the district has a deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars it needs to sort out by the end of the month, that Johnson is announcing this. Well, it's simple: The new Chicago Teachers Union contract requires an additional 50 sustainable community schools by the end of its four-year term. To some degree, the district's hands are tied. We should say here that we don't think the idea of sustainable community schools is meritless. It makes sense that low-income and disadvantaged kids may need more to succeed than just the three Rs. But is the sustainable community school model the way? Let's look at the track record of these schools in Chicago. Chalkbeat reported that since 2018, enrollment at the 20 schools in the program has dropped by 15%, with six of them losing more than a quarter of their students — a far steeper decline than the district as a whole. And many of these schools are among the city's worst-performing academically. We'll allow that numbers don't tell the entire story when it comes to a program such as this one, but they're not meaningless either. And so far they're downright discouraging. Johnson, the former CTU organizer who has spent his mayoralty attempting to make his former employer's demands reality no matter how unaffordable or questionable, doesn't think we should be considering metrics at all. He dismisses using test scores or graduation rates to gauge success, defining the effort's worthiness instead as 'when every child has everything they need.' Perhaps that's because the data don't support this investment. Even the most ardent public school advocate should never say something like that. Just like any other program, sustainable community schools need to justify their investment, and they do so at least in part by demonstrating measurable success. Here's the reality. The situation with Chicago's low-income kids warrants urgent attention. Among low-income CPS students, just 22% are proficient in reading, 12% in math, and nearly half miss 10% or more school days. Those numbers cry out for meaningful solutions. Improving this woeful reality is challenging, and schools aren't well-positioned to be everything to everyone. The best thing schools can do is help foster stability. An environment of reassuring routines, predictable interactions and secure relationships helps children feel safe and ready to learn. Here are some extra school services that seem to work. One-on-one or small-group tutoring, especially in the early grades, provide some of the strongest evidence for boosting achievement. In Mississippi, intensive early-literacy tutoring, among other reforms, helped raise fourth-grade reading scores to above the national average. CPS has made strides with its Tutor Corps program and Tutoring Chicago help, but more is needed. Before- and after-school programs, summer learning and extracurriculars boost attendance, engagement and outcomes. And pairing students with consistent adult mentors (through Big Brothers Big Sisters, for example) improves graduation rates and reduces disciplinary incidents. These add-on services boost learning — but only with a solid academic foundation; without it, they risk distraction over results. Based on the CTU contract, CPS doesn't have a choice — it has to move forward with these sustainable community schools. If CPS' own data showed these schools were moving the needle academically, this investment could be justified — but so far, that hasn't happened. We're not convinced spending more and expanding on this model is the answer Chicago kids need. Schools can connect families to outside help, but they cannot become the housing authority, the health department and the social services office without sacrificing their core mission: teaching children to read, write and think critically. When schools try to be everything to everyone, they risk doing nothing well. So the jury is out on sustainable community schools. Supporters of the concept, including the mayor, should focus on delivering results for students rather than defining success in terms of how many new CTU members are employed.
Boston Globe
17 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Los Angeles school year begins amid fears over immigration enforcement
As children played in the schoolyard, there were no reports of federal agents in the area. Advertisement Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has urged immigration authorities not to conduct enforcement activity within a two-block radius of schools, starting an hour before the school day begins and until one hour after classes let out. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'Hungry children, children in fear, cannot learn well,' Carvalho said in a news conference on Monday. He announced several measures intended to protect students and families, including altering bus routes to accommodate more students. The district will also distribute family preparedness packets that include know-your-rights information, emergency contact updates, and tips on designating a backup caregiver in case a parent is detained. The sprawling district, which covers more than two dozen cities, is the nation's second largest, with more than 500,000 students. Some 30,000 students are immigrants, and an estimated quarter of them are without legal status, according to the teachers' union. Advertisement Under US law, children have the right to an education regardless of immigration status. Districts across the country have grappled with what to do if federal agents came to school campuses, with some, including LA and Oakland, declaring themselves 'sanctuary' districts. While immigration agents have not detained anyone inside a school, a 15-year-old boy was pulled from a car and handcuffed outside Arleta High School in northern Los Angeles on Monday, Carvalho said. He had significant disabilities and was released after a bystander intervened in the case of 'mistaken identity,' the superintendent said. 'This is the exact type of incident that traumatizes our communities; it cannot repeat itself,' he added. Administrators at two elementary schools previously denied entry to Department of Homeland Security officials in April, and immigration agents have been seen in vehicles outside schools. DHS did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Carvalho said that while staffers and district police officers can't interfere with immigration enforcement and don't have jurisdiction beyond school property, federal agents parked in front of schools have left in the past after conversations with staff. The district is partnering with law enforcement in some cities and forming a 'rapid response' network to disseminate information about the presence of federal agents, he said. Teachers say they are concerned some students might not show up the first day. Lupe Carrasco Cardona, a high school social studies and English teacher at the Roybal Learning Center, said attendance dipped in January when President Trump took office. And when raids ramped up in June, graduation ceremonies took a hit. One raid at a Home Depot near MacArthur Park, an area with many immigrant families from Central America, took place the same morning as an eighth grade graduation at a nearby middle school. Advertisement 'People were crying. For the actual graduation ceremony, there were hardly any parents there,' Cardona said. Raids in California's Central Valley in January and February coincided with a 22 percent spike in student absences compared with the previous two school years, according to a recent study from Stanford University economist Thomas Dee and Big Local News. One 11th-grader, who spoke on the condition that her last name not be published because she is in the country without legal permission and fears being targeted, said she is afraid to return to school. 'Instead of feeling excited, really what I'm feeling is concern,' said Madelyn, a 17-year-old from Central America. 'I am very, very scared, and there is a lot of pressure.' She said she takes public transportation to school but fears being targeted on the bus by immigration agents because of her skin color. 'We are simply young people with dreams who want to study, move forward, and contribute to this country as well,' she said. Madelyn joined a club that provides support and community for immigrant students and said she intends to persevere in that work. 'I plan to continue supporting other students who need it very much, even if I feel scared,' she said. Some families who decided the in-person risk is too great opted for online learning, said Carvalho, with virtual enrollment up 7 percent this year. The district contacted at least 10,000 parents and visited more than 800 families over the summer to provide information about resources such as transportation and legal and financial support, and is deploying 1,000 workers from its central office on the first day of classes to 'critical areas' that have seen immigration raids. Advertisement 'We want no one to stay home as a result of fears,' Carvalho said.
