Tag: Democracy

MLK Day

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is observed on the 3rd Monday of January as a Federal Holiday in the United States. The day is observed in celebration of Dr. King’s birthday, January 15, 1929. In 2026 MLK Day is observed on Monday, January 21.

As we witness the alarming and horrifying events currently unfolding in the United States, and throughout the world, we are reminded to take inspiration from Dr. King and to cling to hope in his message of transformative non-violent resistance. Those who believe in a world of justice, equality, freedom, and peace, must stand up and demand it.

Source

Martin Luther King Jr. was the leading figure of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s in the USA. In life Dr. King was at the forefront of the fight against segregation, discrimination and other forms of racism, especially as entrenched in state and federal law. Tragically assassinated in 1967, the legacy of King has continued to inspire those who fight against racism and other forms of social injustice.

Martin Luther King Jr. was committed to the principles of non-violence. King was convinced that the only way to fight against the hate and violence and injustice of racsim was to counter it with peaceful resistance and non-violent protest. Perhaps more than anything else, this is why Dr. King is a hero to millions of people in the US, in Canada, and around the world.

Find out more:

The King Center

12 Historic Facts About Martin Luther King Jr.

Nobel Peace Prize: MLK

NAACP: Dr. King

Stanford University: King Institute

Image Source: editor Eugenio Hansen, OFS, CC BY-SA 4.0 OTFW, editor Eugenio Hansen, OFS, CC BY-SA 4.0, via wikimedia

Get Caught Reading Banned Books

In the past few years, the number of challenges to books in both Canada and the United States has exploded. And while sanity prevails in many cases, in more and more places the censors have been successful. In some jurisdictions, hundreds and hundreds of different titles have been pulled from libraries, schools, government offices and other public institutions. In the private sector, bookstores and publishers have reported the increasing pressures of censorship. Writers have commented on the chilling effect this has on intellectual freedom.

Stand up for your rights and freedoms. Democracy is built on upon your right to information. You have the right to choose for yourself.

Adults have the right to choose for themselves what they want to read. Adults don’t have the right to choose what other people get to read. Parents have the right– and the responsibility– to teach and guide and discuss with their children about what types of library materials are right or wrong for them. Parents are free to have their opinions on what materials are good or bad for children in general They even have the right to express their opinions about why they think certain materials are good or bad for children. Parents do not have the right to decide for other people’s children what they can or can’t read.

February 23 to March 1 is Freedom to Read Week in Canada

Freedom to Read Week

February 23 to March 1, 2025, is Freedom to Read Week in Canada

From freedomtoread.ca: “Freedom to Read Week provides an opportunity for Canadians to focus on issues of intellectual freedom as they affect your community, your province or territory, our country, and countries around the world. Whether you are a librarian, bookseller, educator, student, or member of the community, there are lots of ways you can help mark this annual event.”

Visit your school library in person, or online here at tweedsmuirlibrary.ca, all week long to find out more about Freedom to Read in Canada, how you can celebrate, and how you can join in the ongoing struggle to protect your rights and freedoms.

Freedom to Read is Useless if People Don’t Read

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”

Source: Unknown*

The rights and freedoms of Canadians include the right to read what you want to read. Such rights and freedoms are fundamental to democracy. However, such rights and freedoms are meaningless unless citizens exercise these rights and freedoms.

There are authoritarian forces at work in our society that seek power by attacking your rights, including attempts to censor or limit your freedom to read. Totalitarian states know that uneducated and illiterate citizens are easier to control and oppress. Such forces can only celebrate that the work is much simpler when significant portions of the population choose not to read. Censorship becomes less pressing when “aliteracy” becomes prevalent.

A true democracy guarantees fundamental rights and freedoms to its citizens. But to work effectively, indeed, to survive, democracy requires that citizens exercise those rights. In particular, democracy breaks down if citizens aren’t educated, informed and active.

The rise of powerful new information technology in the last few decades has made it more important than ever that citizens are highly “information literate.” Citizens must not only have access to information, they must have the tools required to wade through increasingly destructive levels of misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and outright lies. Citizens need to have access to information that is credible, accurate and trustworthy.

The rise of anti-intellectualism and anti-science movements, perhaps most recently represented by anti-vax conspiracies, are part of the wider breakdown of democratic institutions. There is little doubt that attacks on public education over many years have reaped some these results and are integral to the rise of authoritarianism.

It is not enough to celebrate the Freedom to Read. As citizens of democratic societies, we have an obligation to exercise our Freedom to Read, in part so that we are equipped to defend our democratic rights and freedoms.

It is clear that democracy is under attack, throughout the world, and in our back yard. We must act.

Find out more:

Note* The above quote, or variations on it, are often popularly attributed to Mark Twain. However the original source of this quote, or its variations, remains unclear.

Madeleine Albright

Madeleine Albright died on March 23, 2022.

Madeleine Albright was born in 1937 in Prague ( in what is now Czechia). Her family fled from both the Nazis and the Communists. The family first left the country after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, returned after the end of the Second World War, only to flee again, this time from the Communists in 1948. Albright was a brilliant student who would go on to earn her PhD from Columbia University. She then served in both academic and government positions, providing expertise as a foreign policy advisor. In 1993 she became U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. In 1997 she became Secretary of State, the first female to be appointed to that prestigious position in the U.S. Cabinet.

Madeleine Albright leaves many legacies from her life of academics and public service, including the book Fascism: A Warning.

Democracy v. Fascism

Our students will leave our school and soon become the adults who will hold the future of democracy in their hands.  We must educate and equip our students to recognize the rights and responsibilities of democratic citizenship.  We must help them see the precious nature of the democratic traditions that have been handed to them by previous generations. We must help them see the fragile nature of those institutions and the peril that is represented by those forces that are at work to undermine democracy.

Most pressingly, we must help our students to recognize the rise of fascism, both in the world and in our own backyard.  We must equip our students to denounce fascist ideology and to defeat fascist attempts to destroy our democracy.

The politics of fear, division, and hate will fight for the souls of our students.  We must counter those dark forces with hope, unity and love.  Forces are at work undermining the foundations of democracy, including the rule of law, freedom of the press, public education, respect for science and reason, confidence in free and fair elections, and peaceful transitions of power. We must build up faith in those ideals in our kids, and equip them to demand them as their rightful expectation for a civil society.

Polarizing forces are at work which divide us, resulting in extreme “othering” to the point of dehumanization. We must find ways to help the next generation to reconcile that which divides us, or at least to find respectful and peaceful ways to engage with those divisions.  Somehow we must find common ground with our beliefs about truth. We must find some way to agree on “the facts” even if we don’t agree on what do with those facts.

Please check out our display of items related to the struggle between democracy and fascism.