Why are you a critical librarian?
I'm tempted to say every librarian should be a critical librarian, and while that's not untrue, I think we need to be clear about differences between critical thinking/information literacy-critical and systems-of-oppression-critical. I am a critical librarian because we need to recognize and combat racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, microaggressions, and all of the othering that people of non-dominant identities experience in the world and in education. (I'm speaking as an academic librarian, but the word "education" of course applies to school and public libraries.)
Why do you identify with these ideas?
Not sure how to answer this!
Why do you participate in these chats?
To me it's a great opportunity to share and learn, and I like the variety of perspectives--type of library, but also there are theory people, practice people, and praxis people. I love that people from many career stages participate (though it seems like it skews to LIS students and librarians with fewer than 7 years on the job--even if one of the other moderators and I have been at it longer).
I like spending an hour every other week putting energy and thought into one topic of critical librarianship that I may or may not make time to think about otherwise.
I appreciate most people's emphasis on hospitality (in the sense of making it a welcome space and trying not to let disagreements become personal).
I'm bummed out that there are some people who don't feel like #critlib is a hospitable space and am interested to hear more about that.
In case this needs to be said, I don't know that everyone needs to be comfortable with and interested in every topic, and I don't spare concern for people whose values don't align with the concepts of critical librarianship as a critique of systemic oppression, especially if they're people with a lot of privilege and/or other forms of social capital that they won't acknowledge. But that's just me.