Dear Jessica McGilvrary,
I read, with disappointment, the latest news from today's District Dispatch regarding the meeting with the CPSC. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 is overreaching and will have devastating effects on our economy at a time when we can least afford it - without affording children the "protection" that is its purported purpose. I am a mother, and as such, my first concern is my children's safety. I don't believe that the CPSIA does anything to assure that safety; however, it may deprive them of access to books - both old and new - and to handmade goods made by individuals and small businesses whose main reason for being was to produce safe, original children's products as an alternative to the mass-marketed toys and clothes that have been the subject of recent recalls.
I looked through those recalls. The only ones related to books involved faulty (dangerously faulty) technical instructions, and a few books with painted wire bindings (lead content). Most recalls involved toys or jewelry made in China, or clothing with small detachable parts (choking hazards) or drawstrings (strangulation hazards).
I have been following this since the holidays, which is when I first learned of the CPSIA. As a children's book author, I am affected by this law. My publisher is a small, woman-owned business (its president is a retired teacher and fellow author) that publishes mostly children's and young adult books.
As a mother and an author, I am horrified at the notion that our public libraries are faced with a choice like "remove books from the shelves" or "ban children from the library." As a mother and an author, I hope that your decision is to (temporarily) ban children from the library and mark the children's section "Intended for Adult Study of Children's Literature." (We subversive parents can still check books out for our children, but the ban might help to publicize the ridiculous, largely unintended - I hope - consequences of this law.) I am urging solidarity between authors, artisans, publishers, printers, clothiers, and others affected - we need to repeal this law, not get multitudinous tiny exceptions to it that will no doubt tie up valuable resources in numerous court cases, while small businesses die off waiting for relief.
--
Holly Jahangiri
http://blog.jahangiri.us
http://trockle.blogspot.com
I am drained by the constant having to prove that we are not making something up, that we are not alarmists, that we really have read and researched and know what this law is going to do to our nation. And people still say we don't know what we're talking about. Ish.
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Hopefully someone will listen. We are all still trying to make our voices heard. At this point, it is the best we can do. We still need millions of voices to be heard and the ones that need to be heard the most aren't doing anything about it. I sent a letter directly to President Obama, included a copy of my book with an inscription to his daughters and hope that the message gets through that this is what will be destroyed if this law stays as is. I only hope the urgent message I put on the envelope gets to him in time (of course, I'm sure the envelope will not make it to him intact and the urgent message will be lost and they will make sure there is no lead in my letter and my book so that I'm not sending something to poison his daughters).
ReplyDeleteGood job with the letter. I hope someone really has a light bulb go off soon and realizes that this law will be more damaging than they ever thought possible. E :)
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