In light of recent political events I felt strongly motivated to pony up and renew two long dormant professional memberships that I let expire because I didn't feel like they gave me much personal benefit.
In the current climate, it's about more than myself. I renewed my membership both in the national American Library Association as well as my state-level Texas Library Association membership. For reasons mainly personal, aesthetic and symbolic I also renewed my membership in the Progressive Librarians Guild that I was more active in when I was in library school in the early 2000s. Yearly membership in PLG is cheap so tossing them a few bucks is no skin off my back.
No, where I really dug deeper is renewing those aforementioned ALA and TLA memberships and associated round-tables tailored to my current role in Inter-library Loan work. I feel like it is important to bolster these civic institutions in a time of rising authoritarianism and outright white nationalist fascism on the American political right. It's about more than myself and how these professional associations may or may not personally benefit my career aspirations. I want them to remain strong advocates for intellectual freedom, the right to read, etc. It's also because I lack imagination as to what else to do other than keep voting the way I do in every election (e.g. for Democratic Party candidates and against every Republican candidate). But it was something I could do so I did it. If you're still working in the library profession and have let your ALA and state-level library association membership lapse, maybe let the spirit of the season move you to generously revive your memberships and participation in these professional associations. We need all hands on deck in the defense of small-d democracy and intellectual freedom and civil rights.
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