YOUR HUMBLE SERVANT IN THE THEATRE, DARRYL MAXIMILIAN ROBINSON, NOTES HIS REVERENCE FOR OUR US LOCAL PUBLIC LIBRARIES!
Long ago, and we're talking the 1960s and 1970s, as a school student growing up on the West Side of Chicago ( a place of poverty and street gangs and frequent outbreaks of violence ), one of safest places to be was in a public school.
Even the criminal element in the neighborhood refrained from committing the worst of their offenses on school grounds ( during daytime class hours ) because many of them had their own relatives attending there and they did not want to be seen by their own family members displaying their worst behavior.
Another place of safety were the local community churches because perps knew they might need a pastor, a deacon or a church elder to speak at trial for them if a judge wanted to know something about a defendant's character or potential to be safely returned to a neighborhood after serving their sentence.
Back in the day, most thieves and violent criminals also avoided doing harm in and around a church, knowing that members of their own families and close friends were congregants.
And, to be clear, I have never condoned or excused or supported the criminal acts and behavior of hundreds of black, latinx ( and yes, occasionally white ) men and women on the West Side of Chicago who chose to live the life of a felon.
But an inability to obtain a full and proper education, the lack of real, paying jobs, the continuation of brutal and unending systemic racism in employment and housing were major factors in their making that tragic choice.
And this ongoing lack of opportunities continues to plague many urban and rural areas throughout our nation today. This is not an excuse for the criminal behavior, it is merely a verifiable fact!
Now for this veteran theatre artist ( who was more likely to break out into a lively rendition of "The Charleston" as physical excercise than ever take part in any kind of violent, aggressive sport ) the absolutely safest place ( and most peaceful place ) on the West Side of Chicago was The Public Library.
You always had to be respectful and quiet in a library. You always had to follow the library's basic rules of common courtesy and decency, or The Librarian ( and by the 1970s, The Unarmed Security Guard ) would ask you to leave. And you followed the rules.
Parents by law had to send their kids to some form of school. But The Public Library was a place that both Adults and Children would visit as A Choice.
And because there was no funding for The Performing Arts in most of schools on the West Side of Chicago during the 1960s and 1970s, it was in the dozens of aisles and hundreds of shelves of The Public Library that I polished my reading skills and critical thinking skills ( not to be confused with CRT - Critical Race Theory, a college level course that has been horrifically misrepresented by fanatic extremists ) regarding visual art, literary art and, most importantly, The Art of The Theatre.
A librarian may not be an educator in the traditional sense of teaching a specific or general course of study.
But a truly knowledgeable and trained librarian can direct and professionally guide a visitor ( whether scholar, student or curious intellectual ) to a wealth of knowledge in the confines of that quiet, safe and peaceful space we call our public libraries.
Wearing required headphones in an audio / visual booth of a public library I listened to my first original Broadway cast album recording. I listened to a recording of the late, great Sir John Gielgud's one-man show of Shakespeare "The Seven Ages of Man". I would watch video of James Earl Jones as King Lear.
In the reading room of a public library I read of the heros and heroines of African-American History in this country.
I read in newspapers and magazines the real-time struggles of The Civil Rights Movement and the injustices of Jim Crow and Apartheid in South Africa.
I would borrow and take home books on The History of American Theatre and World Theatre and novels by James Baldwin, Ernest Hemingway, Alex Haley and plays by Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee and William Shakespeare.
If not for the safety and quiet and peacetime to study the texts found at The Public Library ( I had multiple siblings, so quiet time was a difficult commodity at home to obtain ), I might never have mustered the nerve to become a live theatre artist.
And growing up in a neighborhood deeply deprived of ANY ART, THE PUBLIC LIBRARY BECAME A TEMPLE TO ME! A place to this day I have the highest regard for because it is OPEN TO ALL AND ALLOWS FOR DIVERSITY OF IDEAS AND THOUGHTS!
NOW, IN 2023, IN THIS HYPER-VIOLENT AGE, WHERE MASS SHOOTINGS ARE DAILY OCCURRENCES IN OUR COUNTRY, WHERE CERTAIN WHITE RACIST INDIVIDUALS DESIRE TO BAN BOOKS AND WHITE-WASH AMERICAN HISTORY BY OMITTING THE GENOCIDE OF THE ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS OF THESE LANDS AND PRETENDING THAT FOUR CENTURIES OF THE HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT OF BLACK PEOPLE DIDN'T HAPPEN ( OR WORSE, THEY ENJOYED IT! ), WE HAVE MEMBERS OF A SICKENED AND DEPRAVED NATIONAL POLITICAL PARTY ATTEMPTING TO MAKE OUR POPULATION EVEN MORE IGNORANT AND UNINFORMED BY CUTTING THE FUNDING TO OUR PUBLIC LIBRARIES?
WHITE SUPREMACISTS...PLEASE!
THE REPUBLICAN MAGAMANIACS HAVE TRULY GONE TO FAR.
THE MAGAMANIACS WON'T ALLOW A WOMAN TO HAVE AUTONOMY OVER HER OWN BODY! A WOMAN'S BASIC CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO AN ABORTION AT ANY TIME OF A PREGNANCY SHOULD AND MUST BE ENSHRINED IN FEDERAL LAW IN ORDER TO END THE IMMENSE PAIN AND SUFFERING CAUSED BY THE CORRUPT ACTION OF THE SCOTUS WITH THE ENDING OF ROE V WADE! AND THE MAGAMANIACS CLEARLY DON'T CARE THAT WOMEN AROUND THIS COUNTRY ARE DYING AS A RESULT OF THE REVOCATION OF ROE!
THE MAGAMANIACS REFUSE TO MAKE LAWS TO PROTECT OUR ENTIRE POPULATION ( ESPECIALLY CHILDREN ) FROM RELENTLESS GUN VIOLENCE! AND THE MAGAMANIACS HAVE PUBLICLY STATED THAT THERE IS ( THANKS TO SELLING THEIR SOULS TO THE NRA AND RECEIVING MULTIPLE DONATIONS FROM DEEP-POCKETED GUN LOBBY DONORS ) NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT ON THE LOCAL, STATE OR FEDERAL LEVELS!
THE MAGAMANIACS WISH TO MAKE THE SANE MAJORITY OF THIS COUNTRY INCAPABLE OF OBTAINING A BASIC EDUCATION AND UNDERSTANDING BY STRIPPING TAXPAYERS WHO PAY THEIR SALARIES OF THE ONE PLACE OF LEARNING THAT HASN'T BEEN THE TARGET OF MASS SHOOTINGS!
The Public Library.
In 2024, while you still have a right to do this, DO IT!
VOTE DEMOCRAT!
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