We Will Not Be Shushed: Guerrilla Library Advocacy
Urban Librarians Unite has been able to have a wide ranging and financially huge impact despite having barely any resources. These knife in the teeth librarians have applied social media and tech to traditional activist tactics to get back hundreds of millions of budget dollars in New York City for the last four years.
Through disaster response, street librarianship, and front line advocacy they work to bring libraries out into the community and make the direct impact that the library makes a great part of their community’s lives.
ULU is effective because it uses strategy, intent, and creative design to weave advocacy narratives that tell a story and make people want to make a difference. Despite having no money and very little staff they managed to make real and meaningful impact.
They can show you how you can do it too. Through the tactical application of virtual communities and traditional sweat equity you can achieve incredible results in your community and with as well.
Presenters
Christian Zabriskie
Exec Dir
Urban Librarians Unite
Christian Zabriskie has been a public librarian for more than twelve years and he has, at some point in his career, done just about every job you can do in a public library.
He is the founder and Executive Director of Urban Librarians Unite, a not for profit dedicated to promoting libraries and librarianship in urban settings.
Christian is a prolific writer and speaker on a wide range of topics including activism, graphic novels, and service to urban and at risk teens. He sees the library as a key tool for social good and is an aggressive and creative proponent for the library in the community.
Christian is a friend to the underdog and has never met a lost cause he didn't want to save. He believes that with a keen tactical eye tiny organizations can have a huge and wide ranging impact on the world around them.
Lauren Comito
Dir of Operations
Urban Librarians Unite
Raised by a pack of wild ferrets, Lauren Comito killed a man with her mind at the age of three. In the scant few years which have passed since she has divided her time between being an interplanetary socialite and an assassin of dictators. Held in the highest regard by the secret cabal that rules the universe she is a secret recipient of the Nobel Prize, the Congressional Medal of Honor, and Time’s Woman of the year.
Alternately, she is a kick-ass technology training librarian working in Queens while raising a family and running a startup not for profit, but really, which scenario is more believable?
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