The Cherry Hill Public Library and WHYY both aim to be channels for members of the public to share opinions and voice opposing viewpoints in a safe and respectful way.
This was demonstrated by the library hosting WHYY for a conversation on book banning on Sept. 10.
According to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, it tracked 821 attempts to ban library materials or services last year, with 2,452 unique titles challenged.
While these numbers are lower than those in 2023, they are still higher than reported ban attempts before 2020, which is one of the reasons why WHYY decided on the topic for the talk.
They began their event with moderator Brisa Luzzi Castro, a community convener at WHYY and Tony Cuffie, senior manager of community and engagement at the organization showing the group a “60 Minutes” piece of book banning throughout the nation.
After showing the piece, the group was given a hand out outlining agreements to participate in the discussion and five questions.
“We’re out with you today to share our perspectives, but listen to the perspectives of others, and be willing to be here with an open mind, listening to some of these, of the lived experiences of the folks who are sitting next to us,” said Castro.
The rules for the group included to come with an open mind, listen to learn from others, respect the other speakers, no personal attacks and an acknowledgement that facts are universal while opinions are subjective.
“It’s all a matter of one’s perspective in terms of how they think to solve the challenge,” Cuffie said, adding there’s no right answer.
The audience was broken into four small groups for a 20 minute small group discussion to discuss the five provided questions.
The questions consisted of why the individual wanted to participate, the biggest challenges related to the issue, key groups or issues related to the issue that are often missed, what they feel people with opposing viewpoints get wrong and what they would like key stakeholders to change or improve about the issue.
Conversations featured people saying that librarians are not being defended, parents having the right over their own children’s educations but not rights over all public school curriculum, lack of respect for one another fueled by social media and the need to hear other perspectives.
Kathy Hogan is a Cherry Hill resident and lawyer who came out to share her views and hear those of others.
She shared similar views in attendance, noting that it is important for maintaining freedom of speech to not allow a few people to ban works based on their own views.
Many in the group also said that due to this similarity in views, they thought it would have been more productive to have more people with varying views.
“It’s so important, especially now for communities to get together,” Hogan said.
