If you [current and aspiring LIS practitioners at UCLA] want to do a revolutionary thing, start listening to the voices of people who are unhoused — Theo Henderson
Theo Henderson, who hosts the podcast and YouTube series “We the Unhoused” and is the 2022 Activist-in-Residence at the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy,[1] told me that when he goes to the public library he always looks side-eye at the signs reading “Libraries are for everyone.” Rules barring bulky items, like luggage and carts, prevent many unhoused folks from making it past the front door of the library. The same goes for hygiene policies.[2] Henderson said, during inclement weather, one of the biggest challenges for people who are unhoused is staying dry. “If you have an odoriferous presentation around you, the library refuses to understand that, and utilizes that to weaponize not only security, but lately there are police officers that go into libraries, too, and they have harassed unhoused people, too, so it’s both.”[3]
I spoke with Henderson and my unhoused neighbors Demon and JT for a previous project, looking at how carceral practices in public libraries impact people who are unhoused in L.A. and their visions for more accessible and anti-oppressive library spaces. I aim to return to those conversations and explore their relevance in the context of reading chapters from Simone Brown’s Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness and from Michel Foucault’s Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. I also want to acknowledge that as a white, middle-class, housed person, and as an organizer with Street Watch LA, I am holding myself accountable to centering the experiences, concerns, and visions of unhoused neighbors throughout this post, and want to emphasize that reimagining how public libraries can be spaces for mutual aid, affirmation, and connection, requires the expertise and leadership of unhoused neighbors.
Considering Michel Foucault’s theory on creating disciplined bodies, I’d ask: what does it mean to exist efficiently in a public library space, and what implications does that have for people who are unhoused? What discipline and infrastructure is in place to maintain that efficiency? How does that ultimately develop discourse that shapes the way ‘everyone’ gets classified in public library spaces? These are huge questions that I hope to merely begin to explore in this post, but I’d argue that most often, public libraries prioritize information services for housed people over the priorities and needs of unhoused people, which in turn produces carceral environments for unhoused neighbors in what gets designated as “public” space. I also aim to explore these questions within the context of acknowledging how public libraries are critical resources for people who are unhoused and have the potential to play a role in hyper-local mutual aid networks. I’ll wrap up with imaginings from my neighbors about how library services and practices could foster anti-oppressive, accessible, and joyful spaces for unhoused communities, which continue to guide me in my scholarship, aspirations to work as a public librarian, and as a housing justice organizer in my community.
What does it look like to exist efficiently in a public library space, and what implications does that have for people who are unhoused?
In Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, I found Foucault’s section on “docile bodies'' and “the art of distribution” helpful to explore how patrons are “located,” “supervised,” “assessed,” and “judged” in public libraries to maximize its efficiency as a space.[4] He argues “the division of time” is “a question of constituting a totally useful time,” which made me reflect: how does the conception of “useful time” shape what activities get labeled as ‘appropriate’ in public libraries?[5] Most public library mission statements emphasize their role in providing educational services and free, easily accessible information. Based on conversations I’ve had with my unhoused neighbors, the top reasons I’ve heard people list for using the library have more to do with the library as shelter and as public space than they do with accessing informational and educational services. For example, my neighbors Demon and JT said their local public library is a critical resource for them because there are outlets to charge their phones, bathrooms for personal hygiene, and overall the library is a place of shelter during winter rains and 100-degree summer heat.[6] Henderson also highlighted the library as a space for work. As a former educator, he relied on the library as a place where he could tutor. With that said, if library missions statements emphasize information exchange as the space’s priority, where does that leave folks who are unhoused who might have different priorities and needs when utilizing the space? Foucault also names the construction of efficient distributions of time as a way systems/infrastructures can “capitalize the time of individuals.”[7] At public libraries, many services fall into brackets of time (i.e. story times, tutoring, events, time limits on computer usage, exchanging books). My neighbors said that they’ve faced open hostility when trying to spend full days at the library to take shelter from the rain, and have been told that if they’re not actively using materials or services at the library, they should leave. This discussion also cannot be parted from the rise of neoliberalism and how libraries increasingly must quantify their value in economic terms, putting the library’s public values in competition with market values, and consequently reconfiguring the public library as a place that prioritizes the private interests of hegemonic culture (i.e. white, male, cis, straight, abled, English-speaking, middle-class, US citizen) over the wellbeing of the public as a whole.[8] As a result, many libraries have expanded their dependence on policing and carceral practices to protect those interests.[9]
What discipline and infrastructure is in place to maintain an "efficient" public library space?
While library placards say that they’re there to serve “everyone,” Demon, Henderson, and JT said the presence of security and police, metal detectors, and carceral library rules have made them feel otherwise. I keep returning to Simone Browne’s discussion of Didier Bigo’s banopticon framework when reflecting on how whiteness defines who gets to exist freely and effortlessly in public library spaces, “where those whom the state abandons are often banned on a racialization of risk” and how the anticipation of that risk perpetuates an expansion of security and surveillance.[10] The large majority of people who are unhoused in L.A. are Black and Latinx; around 34% of Black people make up LA County’s unhoused population, while Black people make up about 8 percent of the county population overall.[11] Henderson, who’s Black, said librarians have utilized police to remove him and other Black unhoused neighbors for sleeping in the library or outside under awnings to take shelter during inclement weather. When the weather is bad, there’s almost always an uptick in the number of unhoused neighbors visiting the library, and that uptick, Henderson said, is met with additional surveillance and security presence. He went on to share:
The reason why [public librarians] see [unhoused people] as a growing threat is because our society has stigmatized the unhoused, they're stigmatized as people that have mental health challenges. They’re stigmatized as people that may have substance usage issues. And so they use that as the vanguard to talk with law enforcement officials who are ever so ready to run in and create a carceral solution for people that are vulnerable and having other issues.
Browne also writes about the power of the “oppositional gaze” and “disruptive staring” as means of resistance to disrupt racialized surveillance.[12] On his podcast “We the Unhoused,” Henderson shows up with a mic and a camera wherever unhoused neighbors are facing injustices, documenting police brutality, sanitation sweeps, carceral housing, and more, and he challenges mainstream media representations of houselessness.[13] He recently collaborated with Katy Fishell, who runs the Instagram account Sex is Weird, on a comic about the experience of being unhoused during the pandemic, highlighting the near impossible task of finding a place to the use the bathroom or a place to rest and being turned away by police or business owners at every location he tried Downtown.[14] The last place he tried was the public library, but he was “eventually kicked out from there too.” The illustration shows Henderson looking back at two white police officers kicking him out of (presumably) the library. Through this comic, Henderson talks back to the anti-unhoused sentiment and surveillance by centering and making visible unhoused people’s lived experiences in the face of institutions (private and public alike) and police, trying to render them invisible by denying access to basic human necessities.
Visions for public libraries from unhoused neighbors…
While I found Foucault’s book to be helpful in examining how these systems of oppression play out in public library spaces, I felt frustrated by his lack of offering re-imaginings and means of resistance from folks directly impacted and on the frontlines of the issues he’s critiquing. I am sitting with Melissa Adler’s reflection at the end of “Disciplining Knowledge at the Library of Congress'' where she writes, “the only way to find a larger vision is to be somewhere in particular.”[15] Processes for reenvisioning how public library services and space can feel safe, abundant, affirming, and joyful have to begin and end with centering the imaginings of unhoused communities. This is not a comprehensive list, but I want to leave you with offerings from Demon, Henderson, and JT about how public libraries could play a role in strengthening mutual aid networks and contributing towards community abundance:
Training services for people who are unhoused to reenter the workforce and workshops on how folks can start their own businesses and be entrepreneurs (since people who are unhoused are often excluded from the labor market)
Deescalation trainings and resources on alternatives to calling the police
Harm reduction resources and safe usage sites, health clinics, showers in library parking lots
Housing office hours with LAHSA, The People's Concern, etc.
Storage spaces for bulky personal items
Series on mutual aid and the public library's role
Screenings of “We the Unhoused,” showcasing unhoused neighbors’ art, storytelling circles
[2] “Rules of Conduct,” Los Angeles Public Library, December 12, 2019, https://www.lapl.org/about-lapl/rules-conduct.
[3] Theo Henderson, November 10, 2021, Personal interview.
[4] Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, (New York: Random House, 1977), 143.
[5] Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 150.
[6] Demon and JT, October 24, 2021, personal interview.
[7] Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 157.
[8] John Buschman, “Public Libraries Are Doing Just Fine, Thank You: It’s the ‘Public’ in Public Libraries That is Threatened,” Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science 43, no. 2 (November 2020): 158–171. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/772364#info_wrap.
[9]Allie Fry and Jeanie Austin, “Whose Safety is the Priority? Attending to LIS Grassroots Movements and Patron Concerns Around Policing and Public Libraries,” The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion 5, no. 3 (May 2021): 224-237. https://doi.org/10.33137/ijidi.v5i3.36187.
[10] Simone Browne, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), 38.
[11] “Homelessness in Los Angeles County 2020, Los Angeles Almanac, 2020, http://www.laalmanac.com/social/so14.php.
[12] Browne, “Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness,”58-59.
[13] Theo Henderson, “Home,” We the Unhoused, accessed on January 24, 2022, https://www.wetheunhoused.com/.
[14] Theo Henderson and Katy Fishell (@wetheunhoused), “#unhoused Blues By @thhheohenderson / @wingchuninchinatown and @sex_is_weird,” Instagram, January 29, 2022, https://www.instagram.com/p/CZVdezdARJC/.
[15] Melissa Adler, “Disciplining Knowledge at the Library of Congress,” Knowledge Organization 39, no. 5, 2012: 370-376.
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