The Northbrook Public Library Board has reversed a two-year-old policy banning political and religious organizations from using library meeting rooms.
Representatives of some of the five liberal groups refused use of the rooms attended a Jan. 19 Library Board meeting ready to argue, but that wasn’t necessary.
“Don’t worry, you’re preaching to the choir,” board President Carlos Frum said.
Longtime board member Marc Lonoff added, “We’re going to fix this.”
And the Library Board quickly voted 7-0 to reverse the edict, passed in the spring of 2015.
Executive director Kate Hall said that she had relayed the groups’ concerns to board members in previous days.
“It’s not very often we appear before a board that treats us so well,” longtime progressive activist Lee Goodman said.
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The library had voted to ban partisan groups as a ground floor rehab job spruced up and expanded the three meeting rooms that surround the auditorium, which was also rebuilt. Hall said she was unsure at the time what the purpose of the ban was, but it seemed, she said, that it was to cut down on difficulties that might stem from the use by groups attracting extremist individuals.
The 2015 policy change was in conflict with the American Library Association’s Bill of Rights, which states that libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public should make such facilities available on an equitable basis to all groups, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals.
Other libraries have policies featuring restrictions, however.
Glenview’s public library has long banned politically affiliated groups, and the Indian Trails Public Library, which serves the Wheeling area, bans both political and religious groups.
Libraries in Skokie, Glencoe, Winnetka, Deerfield, Park Ridge, Arlington Heights, Schaumburg and Mount Prospect abide by the nonbinding association policy, as Northbrook now does.
One of the groups that was refused was MoveOn.org, a Democratic party-leaning organization. The group’s Susan Cohen said she found that ironic, since she had to move the meeting to her synagogue, Shir Hadash Congregation, in Wheeling. She said that 22 years ago, the new congregation held meetings in the library.
“If it were not for the library, Shir Hadash would not exist today,” the Northbrook resident said.
Another Northbrook resident, Sharon Sanders, said that she had twice been questioned by Hall about the nature of her Jan. 10 meeting featuring speeches about gun control, “anti-fascism” and progressivism, before Sanders promised the group was nonpartisan, and Hall relented.
Sanders said that through it all, she was treated politely.
“Kate was wonderful,” she said.
She looked over the gathering of her group, tentatively called Democracy for America Now, Jan. 10 and said, “They were welcome, but I don’t think there’s a single conservative here.”
Northbrook resident Nancy Goodman said that it was important that the library get back its open meetings attitude, adding that a group she and her husband, Lee, helped found, the Northbrook Peace Committee, had been born in the library.
“People in other towns thought Northbrook was a pretty special place,” she said.
She said that partisan speech can lead to social change and progress, and libraries should want to help foster it.
“What if Ben Franklin had wanted to use a room?” she asked. “You would have wanted to say yes.”
The library’s Pollak Room was booked 131 times since September 2015, and the smaller Civic Room 173 times, Hall said. The library’s interactive classroom was booked 10 times in roughly the same period. The Northbrook library doesn’t charge for meeting room use.
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