Salinas library closings show poor priorities

By PATRICK FONTES
Special to The Collegian

America is a set of ideals: representative government evolved from a long history of Western ideals. It is a shared identity of common values of free speech, private property and meritocracy. The free flow of ideas not hindered by religion or an oppressive government, all of which are handed down by means of books.

The written word has immortalized these precious ideals of America. Where can the majority of Americans, whether rich or poor, black, white or brown, first generation immigrants or Mayflower descendants, go to learn about what makes America great? The public library.

Libraries are treasures that hold the keys for imbuing democratic ideals into new generations. Without an educated population there will be no America; there will be Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, the Great Lakes, but no America. Ponder these quotes by Thomas Jefferson, founding father of this great nation:

“Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day.”

“I cannot live without books.”

When the Italian Renaissance blossomed in Florence and gave us such men as Michelangelo, Boticelli, Leonardo, Raphael, Machiavelli, and Donatello, Lorenzo D’Medici was greedily gathering books, scrolls and more books from anywhere that he could buy them. This patron of the arts, literature and culture knew that his Florentine nation’s soul lay in the written word. Lorenzo, called Il Magnifico, knew the value of books and the library’s effect on the Florentine Renaissance.

And how will we be judged by future generations looking back on us? Throughout California, elementary school librarians are being laid off, while most districts are top-heavy with fat-cat administrators. There are, moreover, more than 40,000 illegal immigrants incarcerated in the California prison system, with millions of dollars being pulled from public funds to feed and house these criminals.

If this were a movie, now would be an appropriate time for sorrowful violin weeping.

John Steinbeck’s hometown, Salinas, Calif., is closing all its libraries. What irony.

Steinbeck wrote about the downtrodden, dregs of society, Okies; and now his hometown is closing a public library system that provides knowledge to the next generation.

It is fascinating that medieval villages and towns could erect enormous Gothic cathedrals, pulling their resources together for the pride of the whole community, and a modern California city like Salinas doesn’t have the creative energy to keep public libraries open. Come on!

Salinas has numerous boards and committees: Advisory Council, Appeals Board, Design Review, Grievance Board, Redevelop-ment Agency, Airport Comm-ission, Library Commission, Planning Commission, Recreation-Park Commission, Traffic and Transportation Commission, Youth Comm-ission, Animal Shelter Committee, Bicycle Comm-ittee, Police Community Advisory Committee.

All these brains, all these professional thinkers meeting around large oak desks in pressed suits, all these committees and councils and they can’t keep the libraries open?!

To put it in Grapes of Wrath speech: “Then what the hella’ y’all good fer?”

What makes a society, a culture, a town, a Salinas? Education, a sense of identity, of belonging to a shared past and common purpose. Why did the city council erect so many signs and monuments around town proclaiming to the world that this is Steinbeck’s hometown?

Why? So they could make a profit off tourists? Wasn’t it to instill in the hearts of the community that one of their own sons wrote so beautifully about the human condition that the whole world felt the agony of the “Grapes of Wrath”?

And now they crucify his legacy and cheapen and reduce those signs and monuments.

Let’s not be surprised if the descendants of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath migrate from the middle class lifestyle back to the lettuce fields because the Salinas city council had their own book-burning party.

The irony is too much to bear.