For my fellow SRRT/ALA members...and others concerned with professional social responsibility,
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WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
A Statement by a "senior" Member of SRRT and SRRTAC
What once was a vital force for radical conscience within the American Library Association is now confronting a crisis- not simply of direction, but of identity and purpose.
Recent conflicts in leadership and Action Council opinion reveal a deepening uncertainty about who we are and what we stand for.
Those of us who have walked the long road of struggle within SRRT-veterans of library activism, elders in the field, and unapologetically militant voices-are finding ourselves dismissed, sidelined, or patronized as "outdated," "too political," or "not aligned with the times."
Let us be clear: this is not simply a generational dispute.
It is a battle over the soul of SRRT.
SRRT was founded NOT to offer comfortable reforms, but to provide a space for bold critique, direct action, and principled resistance to the structural injustices embedded in our profession and our society. We believe(d) that libraries are not neutral spaces. They are sites of struggle-over access, over truth, over power.
Today, more than ever-when book bans spread like wildfire, when right-wing censorship, neoliberal privatization, and corporate influence grow unchecked-we cannot afford a politics of accommodation. We cannot shrink from our responsibility as the social conscience of the ALA. We cannot retreat into sanitized language or bureaucratic proceduralism.
I, among some of the seniors of SRRT, reject the idea that militancy is a relic of the past. On the contrary, it is the legacy we must carry forward.
I reject the erasure of radical history.
I reject the silencing of dissenting voices in the name of "unity" or "professionalism."
And yes-I reject the AGEISM that dismisses seasoned experience as irrelevant.
This, too, is a form of oppression.
So where do we go from here?
• We must reaffirm SRRT's original mission: to be the radical conscience of the library profession, to challenge injustice wherever it manifests, and to speak truth, not convenience.
• We must call for intergenerational solidarity, not dismissal. Let the past speak to the present-not to dominate, but to inform, to ground, and to strengthen.
• We demand a democratic and transparent Action Council, one that represents all voices-not just those aligned with the status quo.
• We urge all SRRT members to resist the drift toward institutional passivity, and instead to reanimate the radical, intersectional, anti-racist, anti-capitalist roots that gave birth to this Round Table.
We are not going anywhere.
We are not, quite, fading away.
We are here-and we are watching.
Let SRRT once again become what it was meant to be: not a hollow committee name to put on one's curriculum vita, but a living force of resistance within the ALA and beyond.
In solidarity,
Mark C. Rosenzweig
IRTF/SRRT Co-Coordinator
Member, SRRT Action Council
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Mark Rosenzweig
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