When life hands us lemons (and book bans), library defenders make lemonade!
This summer, For The People invites you to join us in defending public libraries by talking with your neighbors. Hand out free lemonade to your community, and spread the word about what makes public libraries so great.
Participating in LIBRARIES & LEMONADE is easy: pick a day, time, and location for a lemonade stand, download and print out copies of the toolkit, and have conversations with your neighbors about public libraries over a cool refreshing cup of lemonade.
Want to offer more resources and reading material to your neighbors? Consider downloading and printing this incredible zine, THE PEOPLE AND THE LIBRARY, including oral histories from Philadelphia library defenders, a series of reflections, and beautiful papercut art by Erik Ruin.
You can also download and print this version of Ariel Aberg-Riger’s visual story, THE FIGHT FOR THE AMERICAN PUBLIC LIBRARY (originally published April 2023 in Bloomberg).
You can also find even more stickers, postcards, social media assets, etc on our Resource Library page. A big thank you to artists Flynn Nicholls, for the wonderful lemonade stand illustration, and to @Lizartistry, for the library coloring page!
Before you get your lemonade stand up and running:
Be sure to double-check your local food permit regulations. Some municipalities may require certain permits for free food distribution, while others may make exceptions for situations like lemonade stands. You can look up these regulations by searching for food permit exemptions + [your town or county].
Why Libraries & Lemonade?
Setting up a lemonade stand is a great opportunity to get the word out to your neighbors about why taking action for our public libraries is essential.
Whether that’s joining a Friends group, attending a library board meeting, thinking about running for office, or even just getting a library card, we need more folks involved in libraries.
Let’s talk with our neighbors about strengthening and defending our public libraries. There are so many reasons to value and protect local libraries—they provide free public space, resources, and information, and in many communities, they’re one of our most important remaining shared common goods!
Lemonade stand illustration by Flynn Nicholls
Tell us about your stand!
Once you’ve picked a day and a time, tell us about your stand! If you are comfortable with us sharing the location, we’ll add you to our For The People lemonade stand map.
A privacy note: you can absolutely opt out of having the location shared, if you prefer; we still hope you’ll tell us about your stand so that we can keep track internally of how many folks participate.
Need some extra support to get going?
For The People is offering up to $50 to cover costs of lemons, sugar, cups, and photocopies to the first 30 people who register their lemonade stand and request funding. You’ll need to have access to Paypal in order to receive funds.
