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Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
PBS 'Free for All' documentary explores why public libraries are necessary for democracy
When New Orleans was battening down in the 1960s for the arrival of Hurricane Betsy, Dawn Logsdon's mother was preparing by getting children's books from the library to read by candlelight. 'From that moment on, I was hooked,' remembers Logsdon in 'Free For All: The Public Library,' an 'Independent Lens' documentary airing April 29 at 10 p.m. on Detroit Public TV and other PBS stations. Made by Logsdon (who's the producer, director, editor and narrator) and Lucie Faulknor (producer and co-director), 'Free For All' is a persuasive, clear-eyed love letter to the public library system that lauds its ideals, while also chronicling when it failed to meet them in the past. The film also serves as an urgent call to save public libraries from ongoing efforts to limit their programming and books, cut taxes that support them and, in some cases, shut their doors permanently. The latest threat to the future of public libraries? The Trump administration's cost-cutting plan to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a move described in an executive order as continuation of 'the reduction in the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary." Early this month, the American Library Association and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees filed a lawsuit to stop the dismantling of IMLS, which is a prime source of federal funding for public libraries. For some of us, public libraries have long been a part of our everyday lives. Logsdon recalls how her family would spend summer vacations driving across the country on camping trips. At each stop, her mom would take her to the nearest public library. 'By the time I was 12,' she estimates, 'I'd visited over a hundred libraries in almost every state in the union.' 'Free For All,' in essence, is a continuation of Logsdon's journey. For about a decade, she has been recording what happens at public libraries and noticing along the way how they have gone 'from being America's most trusted and least controversial institution to a battle ground in the growing culture wars.' Why? It's the sort of question you could turn to the books in a library to answer. The documentary presents a compelling history of public libraries, warts and all. "Free For All" introduces viewers to some extremely contradictory figures, like the powerful, flawed mega-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who provided the money to build hundreds of public libraries, but simultaneously paid meager wages to the workers who made his steel fortune possible. Another key figure is Melvil Dewey, who came up with the Dewey Decimal System and started the first library college for women -- and later was driven out of the profession by librarians, as Logsdon states, for his pattern of sexually harassment. But the heroes of the documentary aren't the figures mentioned in history books. They are the virtually unknown librarians who devoted their lives to serving their communities -- and who defied the racism and prejudice of their eras in order to do so. While exploring the Seward Park Branch Library in the lower east side of New York, Logsdon tells the story of librarian Ernestine Rose, a reformer who defied the pressure to 'Americanize' immigrants at the turn of the century and instead helped them adjust to their new home offered them books written in the languages of their native countries. Later, at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library in Harlem, Rose integrated the library staff. Black librarians like Regina Andrews were vital to making the site a hub of the Harlem Renaissance that was visited by literary icons by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. An audio clip shares author James Baldwin's childhood memories of frequenting the branch and reading 'everything there.' Groundbreaking Black librarian Annie McPheeters, whose mother taught her to read and write by drawing in the dirt on their farm, remembers how a white librarian stood in the door of a new Carnegie library in the South in order to block her family from entering. Years later, McPheeters would work in an Atlanta library that a young Martin Luther King Jr. would go to several times a week. Contemporary librarians are honoring their predecessors with their innovation and enthusiasm. Elizabeth Timmins of Muehl Public Library, a Wisconsin librarian of the year, outlines her approach to welcoming children with games and activities: 'My philosophy is I'm throwing a party every day and everybody is invited to the party." Bookmobile driver Tameka Roby of East Baton Rouge Parish Library in Louisiana shares how much she enjoys going out into neighborhoods and helping bring resources to people who can't just access information online, since 'over 40% of our population still doesn't have internet access.' Logsdon makes a strong case that today's public libraries are remarkable places that can be everything from havens for the vulnerable to gathering hubs for activities and arts performances -- and still fulfill their traditional role as a gateway to all kinds of knowledge and entertainment. As Logsdon says in her narration, 'Going to the library, it's a rite of passage many of us share.' I grew up in a small town going to a library that was located in the same strip mall as the laundromat where my mother washed our clothes. It was hard to imagine a better place to be than scouring its shelves for a new adventure to take, a new character to meet, new things to learn about animals or dinosaurs or planets. As an expert source for 'Free For All' describes public libraries at one point, they are 'one of the purest expressions of the possibility of democracy.' Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@ This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 'Free For All' PBS documentary: Public libraries crucial to democracy
Boston Globe
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Still very much in circulation
'Free for All,' part of PBS's 'Independent Lens' documentary series, airs on GBH 2 Tuesday at 10 p.m. and will be available for streaming on Advertisement The Webster Free Circulating Library staff, New York City, c. 1904. Credit: New York Public Library Logsdon, who serves as narrator, is a library lover of long standing. By the time she was 12 she'd visited almost a hundred, in most of the 50 states. Overall, there are currently 17,00 public library buildings in the United States. It's useful to specify 'buildings,' since many public library systems have multiple facilities. The After an extended introductory segment, the documentary visits the BPL, the first urban public library, founded in 1848. Visits are also paid to a neighborhood library on New York's Lower East Side, which has provided services to immigrants for more than a century; a library system in rural Oregon facing closure, because of lack of funding; and the Salt Lake City Public Library, whose public events to attract new patrons are pretty spectacular. Advertisement Those visits occur within a basically chronological narrative. Expect to encounter the names of Melvil Dewey, who in addition to devising a certain decimal system of classification was a serial sexual harasser, and Andrew Carnegie, whose funding of more than 1600 public libraries in the United States was underwritten by robber-baron exploitation. 'Free for All' employs vintage photographs, archival and modern-day footage (book-return conveyor belts!), animation (not a good idea), even artwork by the painter Jacob Lawrence. Young patrons at the self-checkout at the Presidio branch of the San Francisco Public Library. Lucie Faulknor There are also talking-head interviews. Some of the interviewees are well known, such as Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and Harvard historian Jill Lepore. Others aren't. One of the pleasures 'Free for All' has to offer is making the acquaintance of Timmins, who works in the rural community of Seymour, sees her job as 'throwing a party every day.' Among the partygoers are a family with 14 kids who are being home-schooled. They use the library a lot . That family is a reminder of the diversity (uh-oh, that word) of library patrons. They include home schoolers, computer users who don't have online access at home, immigrants taking English-language courses, homeless people keeping out of the cold. 'What I'm doing now as a librarian is a bit like being a social worker,' a San Francisco librarian says. Advertisement There's so much in the documentary to like — and a fair amount not to. Logsdon braids together her family history and personal experiences with the larger narrative. It's an unnecessary attempt to enliven and humanize a story that's already plenty lively and humane. The result comes across as, at best, self-indulgent, and, at worst, distracting. A score that's alternately chirpy and goopy doesn't help. Perhaps it's fitting that 'Free for All' offers a few causes for complaint. In so doing, it reflects its subject — and the double meaning of that title. Some of it will make you proud and feel inspired. Some of it will make you angry. Sometimes it may even make you tear up. Most of all, maybe, it'll make you glad you have a library card. Wait, you do have a library card, don't you — and if you don't, why not? Mark Feeney is a Globe arts writer . Mark Feeney can be reached at
San Francisco Chronicle
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘Free for All' documentary highlights libraries' cultural legacy amid rising censorship and funding threats
Libraries are under assault. Those who would censor what children or even adults read demand book banning. Reactionaries have stormed drag queen storytelling events, trying to stop them, including an incident in 2022 when members of the Proud Boys invaded a reading at the San Lorenzo Public Library. At the end of March, the Trump Administration gutted the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the federal agency that provides funding to public libraries. What will be lost if the anti-library forces get their way is made manifest in San Francisco filmmakers Dawn Logsdon and Lucie Faulknor's documentary, 'Free for All: The Public Library.' Created over 10 years and premiering as part of the PBS series 'Independent Lens' on Tuesday, April 29, the film argues for the importance and continued relevance of the institution. Logsdon's own story provides the film's spine. Her parents were teachers who would load her and her sister in the car every summer to crisscross the country on road trips. In every place the family stayed, the girls would get temporary library cards so they could spend the days buried in a book. It was never Logsdon's intention to include her own story in the documentary, but the film needed connective tissue. 'A year into the edit, all these stories were not holding together into a coherent narrative,' Logsdon admitted. 'The editor said, 'You have to put yourself into the story and guide us through it.'' Much like those trips Logsdon took as a child, 'Free for All' travels back and forth across America to libraries big and small, explicating both the history of the library and its place in contemporary society. Logsdon and Faulknor's original intent was to focus solely on three libraries in San Francisco and in the New York boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. But when they screened a sample reel they shot in San Francisco at an American Library Association meeting, they heard a repeated sentiment that the San Francisco Public Library is a wonderful organization that benefits from robust public support. In other places, keeping the library open can be a daunting prospect. 'The small rural libraries are especially hard hit,' Fauklnor said. 'So, we decided to take it around the country.' Hearing about nationwide challenges facing libraries prompted the filmmakers to change the focus of their film to one that not only looks at the state of the American library today but also at the library's place in American society since Ben Franklin established the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1731. San Francisco is still a large part of the documentary, as are other big city libraries, but in opening up the film, Logsdon and Faulknor introduce a range of experience. In small-town Wisconsin, librarian Elizabeth Timmons not only knows all of her patrons' names, but she also saves books for them because she knows them so well. In that same library, a homeschool mom brings her many children there on a weekly outing. She expresses discomfort with some of the books on the shelves but still supports the library. In Baton Rouge, La., the filmmakers found a particularly special subject in ebullient Tameka Roby, who drives a book mobile as part of outreach efforts. 'Tameka is a really great blend of being passionate about her work and also funny and insightful,' Logsdon said. 'We could have made a whole film about her easily.' The historical portion of the documentary is expansive, covering everything from Scottish American robber baron and philanthropist Andrew Carnagie's four-decade project building libraries around the world to pioneering New York librarian Ernestine Rose, who hired the first African American librarians. That number would include Regina Andrews, who oversaw the Harlem branch during the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance. In the run up to the broadcast, PBS offered a shorter version of 'Free for All' to screen in libraries and community centers. They were expecting 30 to 40 requests. They received more than 400, a testament to the library's continuing relevance. 'We want to preach to the choir because we need them to lift the voices up, but we want to go beyond the choir as well to possibly get new members,' said Faulknor. 'Not to say I'm a recruiter or anything, but I feel like it's important for people to see these are our spaces. We paid for them. We have paid for them for the last 150 years.'
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Yahoo
A mass hunger strike transformed solitary confinement in California prisons. This documentary captures the fight
In 2013, nearly 4,000 California inmates in long-term solitary confinement (for decades, in some cases) went on what would become a months-long hunger strike. The collective action was designed to get the attention of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and protest the conditions of those in extended solitary confinement. At the negotiating table, the corrections department was met by a united front of inmates who, understanding the injustice of their dire circumstances, decided they would try to change the very policies that had left them 'buried' in concrete cells. 'The Strike,' which premiered on PBS' 'Independent Lens' on Monday and is currently available on the PBS app and PBS' YouTube channel, chronicles that feat of activist organizing. In the hands of filmmakers JoeBill Muñoz and Lucas Guilkey, the documentary shines a spotlight on the men who helped organize and mobilize their fellow inmates. But it is also a living record of the recent history of the carceral system in the U.S. in general and in California in particular. 'We wanted to trace the arc of the rise of mass incarceration on a deeply personal, intimate level,' said Guilkey. But also, this is not an individual story. It's a story of collective solidarity. And it's a story of organizing across racial lines.' As title cards inform viewers at the start of the film, Pelican Bay State Prison's Security Housing Unit once held hundreds of inmates for more than a decade. Now, it's nearly empty. The film tells the story of how the 2013 hunger strike helped make that happen. Former inmates such as Jack L. Morris (a Chicano man who served 40 years in prison, with more than 30 spent in solitary confinement) and Michael Saavedra (who served close to 20 years, many of them in solitary) share their painful experiences on camera. Through them, 'The Strike' offers unprecedented insight into what led these California inmates to organize the largest prison hunger strike in U.S. history. With limited access to their families, the outside world and even one another, Morris, Saavedra and other Pelican Bay inmates found increasingly creative ways to connect with those they couldn't see face to face. Those included notes in library books and conversations had over toilets and vents. 'We all actively, collectively, did what we did,' Morris says. 'But in reality, we were siloed from others. We didn't know what was taking place. I just had to believe that what I was doing, others were doing. And seeing it on the film, it inspired me. But it disappointed me, too. Because I couldn't do as much as I saw many others do.' For his wife, Dolores Canales, co-founder of the California Families Against Solitary Confinement, the film offers a chance to address the rhetoric pushing for solitary confinement in the first place. 'The narrative was: These are the worst of the worst,' she says. ''We are keeping you safe. We're keeping the guards safe. Everybody's safe because we're doing this.' But I feel this film contradicts that narrative and reaches the very depth of humanity.' Morris and Saavedra share how dehumanizing it felt to hear the rhetoric while imprisoned. They were among the men (many of them quite young when they first entered the carceral system) branded as violent gang members. That was often enough to strip them of the scant freedoms they were afforded in prison, decisions that were made not by judges but by corrections administrators, and that were all too difficult to undo. 'I hope that the film will help the general audience — the people outside — to really see that people can change and grow,' Saavedra, who has been pursuing a law degree since his release, says. 'I'm hoping it gives audiences a different outlook upon us. And not just us people. But then also looking deeper at the system. This is what your system does. This is what the California Department of Corrections does to people.' The Pelican Bay State Prison, which opened in 1989, served as a limit case for the practice of solitary confinement. As the documentary outlines, the building of that 'state-of-the-art" penitentiary in the middle of the redwood forest in the northernmost part of California helped dehumanize those housed within its walls. They were kept away from their loved ones, but also from public scrutiny. 'This is mostly men — Latino, Chicano, men from Los Angeles, mostly — who are on the Oregon border in this windowless, concrete fortress cell, in this massive institution designed to hold over a thousand people in solitary confinement,' Guilkey explains. Such context makes the hunger strike all the more remarkable. And it's what made producing 'The Strike' so challenging in the first place. 'It's a protest that happens inside the most high-security prison you can imagine,' Muñoz says. 'How do you visually piece this together? How do you tell this story?' Mostly, it required getting recently released inmates such as Saavedra and Morris to share their experiences, and then piecing their stories together with archival footage for historical context. But viewers of 'The Strike' also get to witness a tense meeting between the corrections department and the coalition of leaders organizing the hunger strike. Guilkey and Muñoz wouldn't disclose how they got that secretly-shot footage, but it's an explosive moment when those inmates present their requests calmly. They explain they have little to lose: What else would the corrections department do? 'When we think of the prison system, we usually think of power belonging to the administrators,' Muñoz adds. 'To the wardens. To the folks who decide the policies. To the jailers. And what was extraordinary about these protests, but especially this footage, was that it was all flipped on its head. Now, this collection of incarcerated guys have come together and represented a collective of power. The whole system was on its head.' The documentary may be squarely centered on the fight to abolish solitary confinement as it exists and is enforced right now. But for its filmmakers, 'The Strike' offers a broader road map for how to face the current political landscape. 'This is multiracial, working-class, collective solidarity,' as Guilkey puts it. 'This is social movement organizing and what it takes to do collective direct action to effect material change in your lives. This shows how to fight authoritarian power.' And as 'The Strike' shows, that takes work; one person at a time. 'Activism is not necessarily having a thousand people with you immediately,' Morris says, summing up the film's message. 'It's taking the steps by yourself and bringing people as you move along.' Get our Latinx Files newsletter for stories that capture the complexity of our communities. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
06-02-2025
- Los Angeles Times
A mass hunger strike transformed solitary confinement in California prisons. This documentary captures the fight
In 2013, nearly 4,000 California inmates in long-term solitary confinement (for decades, in some cases) went on what would become a months-long hunger strike. The collective action was designed to get the attention of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and protest the conditions of those in extended solitary confinement. At the negotiating table, the corrections department was met by a united front of inmates who, understanding the injustice of their dire circumstances, decided they would try to change the very policies that had left them 'buried' in concrete cells. 'The Strike,' which premiered on PBS' 'Independent Lens' on Monday and is currently available on the PBS app and PBS' YouTube channel, chronicles that feat of activist organizing. In the hands of filmmakers JoeBill Muñoz and Lucas Guilkey, the documentary shines a spotlight on the men who helped organize and mobilize their fellow inmates. But it is also a living record of the recent history of the carceral system in the U.S. in general and in California in particular. 'We wanted to trace the arc of the rise of mass incarceration on a deeply personal, intimate level,' said Guilkey. But also, this is not an individual story. It's a story of collective solidarity. And it's a story of organizing across racial lines.' As title cards inform viewers at the start of the film, Pelican Bay State Prison's Security Housing Unit once held hundreds of inmates for more than a decade. Now, it's nearly empty. The film tells the story of how the 2013 hunger strike helped make that happen. Former inmates such as Jack L. Morris (a Chicano man who served 40 years in prison, with more than 30 spent in solitary confinement) and Michael Saavedra (who served close to 20 years, many of them in solitary) share their painful experiences on camera. Through them, 'The Strike' offers unprecedented insight into what led these California inmates to organize the largest prison hunger strike in U.S. history. With limited access to their families, the outside world and even one another, Morris, Saavedra and other Pelican Bay inmates found increasingly creative ways to connect with those they couldn't see face to face. Those included notes in library books and conversations had over toilets and vents. 'We all actively, collectively, did what we did,' Morris says. 'But in reality, we were siloed from others. We didn't know what was taking place. I just had to believe that what I was doing, others were doing. And seeing it on the film, it inspired me. But it disappointed me, too. Because I couldn't do as much as I saw many others do.' For his wife, Dolores Canales, co-founder of the California Families Against Solitary Confinement, the film offers a chance to address the rhetoric pushing for solitary confinement in the first place. 'The narrative was: These are the worst of the worst,' she says. ''We are keeping you safe. We're keeping the guards safe. Everybody's safe because we're doing this.' But I feel this film contradicts that narrative and reaches the very depth of humanity.' Morris and Saavedra share how dehumanizing it felt to hear the rhetoric while imprisoned. They were among the men (many of them quite young when they first entered the carceral system) branded as violent gang members. That was often enough to strip them of the scant freedoms they were afforded in prison, decisions that were made not by judges but by corrections administrators, and that were all too difficult to undo. 'I hope that the film will help the general audience — the people outside — to really see that people can change and grow,' Saavedra, who has been pursuing a law degree since his release, says. 'I'm hoping it gives audiences a different outlook upon us. And not just us people. But then also looking deeper at the system. This is what your system does. This is what the California Department of Corrections does to people.' The Pelican Bay State Prison, which opened in 1989, served as a limit case for the practice of solitary confinement. As the documentary outlines, the building of that 'state-of-the-art' penitentiary in the middle of the redwood forest in the northernmost part of California helped dehumanize those housed within its walls. They were kept away from their loved ones, but also from public scrutiny. 'This is mostly men — Latino, Chicano, men from Los Angeles, mostly — who are on the Oregon border in this windowless, concrete fortress cell, in this massive institution designed to hold over a thousand people in solitary confinement,' Guilkey explains. Such context makes the hunger strike all the more remarkable. And it's what made producing 'The Strike' so challenging in the first place. 'It's a protest that happens inside the most high-security prison you can imagine,' Muñoz says. 'How do you visually piece this together? How do you tell this story?' Mostly, it required getting recently released inmates such as Saavedra and Morris to share their experiences, and then piecing their stories together with archival footage for historical context. But viewers of 'The Strike' also get to witness a tense meeting between the corrections department and the coalition of leaders organizing the hunger strike. Guilkey and Muñoz wouldn't disclose how they got that secretly-shot footage, but it's an explosive moment when those inmates present their requests calmly. They explain they have little to lose: What else would the corrections department do? 'When we think of the prison system, we usually think of power belonging to the administrators,' Muñoz adds. 'To the wardens. To the folks who decide the policies. To the jailers. And what was extraordinary about these protests, but especially this footage, was that it was all flipped on its head. Now, this collection of incarcerated guys have come together and represented a collective of power. The whole system was on its head.' The documentary may be squarely centered on the fight to abolish solitary confinement as it exists and is enforced right now. But for its filmmakers, 'The Strike' offers a broader road map for how to face the current political landscape. 'This is multiracial, working-class, collective solidarity,' as Guilkey puts it. 'This is social movement organizing and what it takes to do collective direct action to effect material change in your lives. This shows how to fight authoritarian power.' And as 'The Strike' shows, that takes work; one person at a time. 'Activism is not necessarily having a thousand people with you immediately,' Morris says, summing up the film's message. 'It's taking the steps by yourself and bringing people as you move along.'
