Scott Bonner’s library in Ferguson, Missouri, became the focus of worldwide attention in the aftermath of civil unrest over the police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. Scott will be a keynote speaker at this year’s CILIP Conference and here he talks to Update’s Rob Green about the lessons he learned and how the library and its staff helped unite a broken community.
On Saturday 9 August 2014, a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot and killed an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown.
The fact that the police officer was white and Michael Brown was black triggered a wave of reaction that culminated in protests and clashes on the streets of the small city. Heavy-handed policing of early memorials resulted in large numbers of people taking to the streets. Tear gas, rubber bullets and curfews were all deployed in the ensuing days amid reports of looting and violence.
This largely played out on social media before the increasing tension in the city of 22,000 people caught the eye of the local and national media. As the tension mounted Scott Bonner, Director of Ferguson Municipal Public Library, followed the proceedings.
‘I first became aware of Mike Brown being shot via social media – like everyone else,’ says Scott. ‘I was tracking it that night on social media and trying to make sense of it… I had to make the decision next day whether to open the library. So I would stay on social media at night and get up early in the morning to check the news and see what the official word was.’
Unrest began to flare shortly after Michael Brown’s death. Memorials held on the Sunday began peacefully, but reports of unrest began to emerge following evening candlelight vigils. Around 150 riot police were deployed on the streets and unrest escalated to violent protest, looting and arson.
Ferguson’s population is largely black and there was widespread anger at the lack of action against the police officer. The protests continued throughout Sunday night and on the Monday morning Scott headed to the library.
He said: ‘I came into work fully expecting to open the library. But the first words out of one of my employee’s mouth were “if you open today you are an idiot’. So I said: “OK, let’s talk - why would that be stupid?”’
The issue turned out to be a large gathering outside the local police station, just a few hundred yards down the road from the library. Scott realised that the likeliest outcome would be that the police would try to disperse the crowd by forcing it past the library – because that end of town had not had money spent on revitalising it.
He said: ‘We had seen tear gas and rubber bullets appear and we did not know whether those tactics would be used during the daytime – I couldn’t get the image of tear gas floating past the parking lot out of my head, so then I said we are going to open after that crowd gets pushed through.’
Scott sent his staff home and said he would call them when the crowd had gone and he was ready to open. However after the crowd had passed and Scott felt it was safe to open the library he discovered the internet was down and decided to wait until the problem was fixed.
‘But of course it never came back up,’ says Scott, and the library remained closed all day. ‘Nobody gave me any criticism for that – I never heard anything from the board, or the staff or patrons. But the next morning as I was taking my shower I stopped and it dawned on me that I had done wrong. If we had already been open and the internet had gone down we would have stayed open, we wouldn’t have closed. I had taken the easy path.’
That realisation was a turning point recalls Scott, who says. ‘I decided that morning that the rules were – "If safe, open. If open, do everything we can."
‘No other thing would keep us closed. I changed the way I do librarianship and the way the library worked – from that moment forward we were open.’
And it was not just open, but open and proactive. Scott and his team were adamant that the library could and should be there for people who needed it. He said: ‘In times of fear and doubt, libraries provide comfort and knowledge. They provide stability and they are not trying to sell you anything. The library doesn’t have an agenda; it’s open to every human being; it doesn’t discriminate or play favourites.
'We have a reputation that makes us open to everyone and at times like that people needed somewhere to gather where they feel welcome and no one is trying to play them or use them. In Ferguson at that time everyone had an agenda. The way it turned out, our only real agenda was to provide opportunities for people to get together.
‘In a crisis the important role of a library was to say yes when people ask if they can help. People were desperately looking for ways to help and to have some sort of control.’
And that is exactly what happened. Ferguson’s library became a unifying hub, offering practical support to people from all walks of life. The protests in the city saw business suffer – either directly through looting and arson – or indirectly as people stopped coming to the city.
The library hosted the Small Business Administration, a US Government agency, that provided emergency loans and other support to local businesses. Listening sessions were held, that literally surrounded business owners with people who could help them.
Scott says: ‘We had an inner circle of owners and an outer circle with political and organisation representatives. Someone would raise their complaint and then someone from the outer circle would come forward and say “this is what you can do".’
Children were due to go back to school at around that time, but the local schools department kept them shut, meaning many parents were stuck for childcare at short notice.
Scott said: ‘When you work three part-time jobs just to survive and you could lose one at any time, even if you have a great reason for not showing up to work you are screwed. Children were stuck in that summer slump.
‘A teacher came in and said if you have some tables I can get some teachers together and we can do something. I said yes and we blew it up as big as we could.’
The idea caught on – not only with locals, but also with the media who freely admitted to Scott that they were looking for a new angle and the ‘School for Peace’ was it. Scott says: ‘It was the counter melody of the song of Ferguson, the first positive story to come out of Ferguson.’
The schools were supposed to open on the Thursday following Michael Brown’s death, but stayed shut for almost a fortnight. During that time, more than 200 pupils and 100 volunteers signed up to help deliver the library’s School for Peace. It grew so big that they took over the local Methodist church as well.
Many more programmes were initiated during the period, with many of them continuing to this day.
Scott says: ‘The main thing we did was just do what we normally do – but louder, busier and with even more activity going on. We tried to muscle our way into the public consciousness so they would realise we are there to use.’
It worked on many different levels. Not only did it offer people a safe space and practical support when they needed it most, it helped to reinvigorate the library itself by reminding people of its existence.
‘I started as the director five weeks before this happened,’ says Scott, ‘so I was brand new. The sense that I got was that not too many people knew the library was here. It had faced huge budget cuts over the past five years and had cut down on special programmes, staff and hours. It had drawn in on itself because it needed to do that to survive. A lot of people had stopped thinking about the library. Now everyone knows that we are here. We are crazy busy. We are standing room only some days.
‘We are doing more programmes than we have space for and the issue we have now is how do we do this with limits we have on space and staff. Whenever we stepped up the community responded very positively.’
Now the biggest fear for the library is that funding will dry up. The library received tens of thousands of dollars in donations after being thrust into the media spotlight. However, since then it has seen a reduction in its core funding which comes from a property tax in the city, and Scott can see a time when he has to rein in the library’s ambition.
‘It’s incredibly frustrating,’ says Scott. ‘I have this powerful need to help people and I can see all these needs in the community and I can see all the ways we can do good.’
Scott adds: ‘Libraries are absolutely vital every day, but they are particularly vital in times of crisis. When people are questioning themselves and wondering why something has happened, the library has a role to play to give them perspective; to give them information; to give them a place to gather and to start putting things back together. My belief in the library mission has been magnified by the power of ten.’
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This article was originally published in CILIP Update Magazine, June2016.
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