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Socio-political movements happen to make their way using culture as a tool for mobilization, as a detonator capable of releasing social energy, and it was an energy ecosystem last year in Colombo, Sri Lanka, that fueled the protests that led to the ouster of President Gotabaya Rajpaksa, responsible for the country’s worst national economic crisis.

The Watchdog group of journalists, computer scientists and statisticians born in 2019 to check news and sources coordinated the creation of a library. They succeeded by building an electric grid welded to solar panels mounted on a truck and connected to a battery, capable of powering dozens of smartphones and thus illuminating the 15,000 books housed under a tent: the library that Borges called the universe.

Activists understood something fundamental, the importance of using open source data, which is also used to build a map of protests (and better organize and communicate them, understanding the causes) and prompt responses in a timely manner; Moreover, in Sri Lanka they understood and met the need for those who show a common place for information: the library as headquarters.

From Occupation Wall Street Everyone remembers the faceless mask, with the features of Guy Fawkes who in 1605 attempted to blow up the English Parliament, and the march through the streets of New York near Zuccotti Park; Few know that the first act of the protesters was to create People Library In the northeast corner of the park, also in this case immediately the nerve center of the militants’ action, a place for strategy development and press conferences.

On November 15, 2011, along with the protesters’ camp, the library was also cleaned up, personal computers destroyed and the 4,000 volumes the People’s Library had collected through donations and collectibles taken to the landfill.

But if the peaceful protest against economic and social inequality, economic models of development and information technology rights is dispersed after 59 days, better luck for the infringed books: In fact, New York City, taken to court by the managers of the library space, has been ordered to pay nearly $300,000 in damages to materials and legal costs.

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Ten years later, they occupied a protest revolution

more happyan international example of a cultural action capable of influencing – their heart – the fate of society is the Colombian city of Medellin, headquarters between the seventies and eighties of the last century of the drug trafficking organization of Pablo Escobar, which in the nineties is still among the most dangerous and violent in the world, reborn from its ashes thanks to the development of the civil and urban planning process that in turn entrusted social libraries.

In Colombia at the beginning of the 2000s, a new expression was born to designate a new solution: the park of the library parque, the park of the library, urban complexes formed by a group of buildings intended to house the institution of the library surrounded by large green spaces.

An equal number of the five initial parks joined forces between 2005 and 2011, giving impetus to the creation of a similar venue in Rio de Janeiro, Parque Manguinhos. They are places that encourage citizens to meet, to undertake educational and recreational activities, to engage with new technologies together, where they can above all express their human, social and creative potential. Even if budget cuts in some departments lead to deterioration over time, for example, the Park of Spain, the impact of these parks on the social and economic life of the neighborhoods in which they are created is enormous, also in terms of increasing literacy and employment.

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Korean community libraries and knowledge spaces

Even the Sahrawis, refugees from the Western Sahara occupied by Morocco, realized that the library could be the cornerstone in building the features of a city and the political identity of a nation; In the capital of the refugee nation, Rabouni, the people are not subject to authorities, and have lived since 1976 in a quasi-sovereignty granted by Algeria, strengthened by an institutional system in which the library, national archives and museum occupy a decisive place alongside parliament and ministries.

this happens In the world. Antonella Agnoli narrates it in the article “everyone’s home”, published by Laterza, is in its second edition one month after publication. The library expert, responsible for opening many knowledge boxes, and borrowing another title from her books, has always focused more on the cultural projects proposed for the departments she consulted on the concept of shared social space than on the heritage of libraries.

Libraries as agora, friendly places of social contact and comparison that rescue from the loneliness of private spaces inadequate (in terms of services and human relations) are able at the same time to free the young from the periphery of devices and the more mature from the drift of technological isolation.

In Italy? With the happy proverbs of Lecce and Bologna, examples of latent planning due to political and administrative disasters emerge. The glossary that concludes the book presents the basic principles of a political project that sees the construction of libraries as welcoming and military spaces with the display of books.

From the accessibility to the user in the centre, through the cafeteria and the FabLab, Agnoli’s world recalls the organizing and diligent ability of the Alice Commune in Doris Lessing’s “The Good Terrorist”. But if this is the narrative of a fractured (and therefore no-place) utopia, then there are spaces and communities that do exist and can (could) fight on our side.