what the heck happened to public libraries? : rspod

Portland Central Library was one of my favorite places when I was a kid. It was built about a century ago, back when public buildings were supposed to show your city's prestige, so it's got huge marble staircases and cavernous rooms with high ceilings and shelf after shelf of books. Now at least half the people there are homeless and there's sheriff's deputies constantly making the rounds, walking by about every 10 minutes. And they still can't stop people from going into the restroom and pooping on the floor right in front of the potty.

I knew somebody who became a librarian. She was always kind of a leftoid but not in your face about it. When she started going for the library degree I notice she got way more political. This was around the late 2000s and she was already all about Foucault and s and stuff. At the time I thought it just grew out of her own personality, but in hindsight it's obvious that the librarians were just woke way ahead of everyone else. She cared about all these weird issues that nobody else cared about, but around 2014-2016 those issues suddenly became the only thing the left would ever talk about.