Meet Art Meza, who works at the circulation desk at Cypress Park Library in the heavily Latino community in Northeast Los Angeles, not far from Dodger Stadium. Cypress Park is surrounded by hills on one side and railroad tracks on the other. It’s a working class neighborhood, mostly Hispanic and boasts a strong community. Census data shows it’s predominantly Hispanic at 81%. The library is active in their community, going out to schools to read to the children and recently, with the arrival of Meza, getting lively on social media.
Meza started a Twitter account for the library, @CypressParkLAPL and is working on getting them into Facebook as well. They have a Google Plus account and he’s posting away. Art cares passionately about his job. He cares about the community he works in, cares about literacy and cares about this little library. He’s become their champion, Tweeting at people like Luis Urrea, Ozomatli and Luis J. Rodriguez to try and get them involved donating time to the library.
Meza is organizing things like the recent Strike a Reading Pose, where he asks people to send in a photo of themselves reading. He’s actively getting the community at large involved and into the library. There’s an open mike night coming up with Mike de la Rocha and other future events he’s planning. He has no map, no experience in PR or Marketing, but he’s making it happen for this library out of sheer heart and soul. If you’re in Los Angeles, head on over and see what you can do to support Art and his library.
I first met Art Meza on Twitter many months ago and was amazed at his devotion to promoting literacy in his community. I started to re-tweet his tweets and we became friends who chat daily. I love reading his blog, which of course plugs the library a whole lot. Today, I made my way down to his library to meet him in person. We had lunch first, then stepped into the library. He showed me around the library and introduced me to the amazing people that work there. For me, librarians and others that devote their time to books are a combination of saints, angels and all things good. As I walked around, I noticed a few things. There were empty shelves, lots of them and the ones that had books on them had way too many spaces and gaps. They need books.
I asked Art’s boss if they had a budget to send Art to BEA. They don’t. Art isn’t a librarian and if there were funds, they wouldn’t be for him, they’d be for someone else. Personally, I think someone needs to sponsor Art and Anna because I don’t think you will find a couple more devoted to the library and to literacy. Art’s boss informed me that they do accept donations and if I knew of anyone who wanted to donate them to please let them know they’d gladly accept them. No, this doesn’t mean run over with your ninety-nine boxes of Harlequin Romances that you supposedly “found” in your grandmother’s rusty shed. No, this library needs children’s books. They need graphic novels. They need all the Cybils, Caldecott, Newbery winners. They need new books, engaging books, Latino books and mostly bilingual books. They need poetry, they need cookbooks, they need books for the children here to educate themselves, they need books that will make a child dream big and fly high. They need books. They need help. There are empty shelves that need filling. I counted less than ten poetry books and that made me cry.
Art is trying to do it all. He’s actively on Twitter, promoting his beloved library, trying to get people involved. He’s started a blog for it and even a Pinterest. His lovely wife Anna, also works hard to promote the library and literacy in the Latino community at large, even though she doesn’t work in the library system.
If I lived in this community, I’d be so grateful for Art Meza and all he is trying to do to save his library. The latest I hear, he may start a vlog with his co-workers going out into the community to read to the elderly. He going to try to get library patrons involved in a community outreach, a read to your community night where the people from the community go out and read to people that live here.
Someday, not too far in the future, there will be a grownup who reflects on what pushed him towards education, the great job he/she has and a life possibly far away from this small community. He or she will remember that it was this crusader of Cypress Park that fueled his/her dreams with books, with action, with non-complacency. He or she will remember Art Meza and how he spent his time changing lives, one book at a time.
Note: This library needs books – donate one or donate one hundred, but please – send them a book. Their future and the future of this community depends upon us, the community at large. We are the future of libraries since economic cutbacks are doing their best to eliminate this finest of American institutions.
