ON READING IN THE SAN JOAQUIN: STOPPING A BULLET WITH A BOOK
Photographer Robert Dawson and photo historian Ellen Manchester spent several years documenting the culture of public libraries and literacy efforts in the city of Stockton and San Joaquin County. The City of Stockton is one of the most diverse medium sized cities in the United States. It is also the largest American city to declare bankruptcy and has been described as one of the most dangerous places in America. In 2007 Stockton led the country with the highest rate of foreclosed homes. It also has one of the lowest rates of literacy in the nation. With such large problems Dawson and Manchester are using photography and a public media campaign to bring attention to individuals and groups bringing education, literacy and hope to a place with many challenges. The project is sponsored by The Library and Literacy Foundation of San Joaquin County and by the Stockton-San Joaquin County Library. Major funding for the project has come from a grant from the Creative Work Fund and also a Guggenheim Fellowship.
The San Joaquin Valley, a part of Californias large agricultural heartland The Central Valley, is sometimes called Californias Third World. It has one of the highest poverty rates in the United States. Here is where education and literacy can make a real difference between a life of poverty and despair or one that offers the possibility for change. Knowing that possibilities exist for change can help lift a person out of hopelessness and point them in the direction of positive action. The single most significant predictor of a childs success in school is the familys literacy level. Shockingly, seventy percent of prisoners in the United States are at the lowest levels of reading or are illiterate. Low literacy leads to low earning potential or high unemployment and welfare dependency sometimes making it more difficult for parents to keep their children in school. Literacy is key to pulling people out of poverty and suffering. As social services wane in poor communities like Stockton, libraries have come to fill a void for people who have fallen on hard times.
Connected to this gap in education is our national crisis of growing income inequality. In 2010 the top 1 percent of income earners in the U.S. took home 93 percent of the growth in incomes. The American dream a good life in exchange for hard work seems to be slowly dying. The growing divide between the 1 percent and the rest is an inequality not only of outcomes but also of opportunity.
Dawson spent the last eighteen years photographing the role of public libraries in communities throughout the United States. Libraries and literacy help level access to information and provide opportunity and hope. They are a shared commons of our ambitions, our dreams, our memories, our culture and ourselves. In 2014 Princeton Architectural Press published the book from this project with Dawsons photographs and fifteen essays including a forward by Bill Moyers and an afterword by Ann Patchett.
Dawson and Manchester learned much about the critical importance of libraries as a commons. They saw how our nations widening income inequality can be partly offset by increasing access to literacy and education. Ultimately, this work was about the value of the commons. The commons cannot be commodified. It is a shared gift that is inclusive rather than exclusive. Public libraries and literacy are part of that public good. They are our collective intelligence battling the enclosure of knowledge and information. They are our debt to past generations and our link to the future.
The Raising Literacy Project contributed to the public discourse about Stockton, libraries and literacy; and help foster civic engagement, public awareness and pride in community. Ultimately, it's goal was tohelp Stockton, San Joaquin County and its librariesdevelop a path to a better future for all its citizens.