Democracy Café

Rivkah Sass is to me the ideal librarian -- imbued with creativity, curiosity, openness, social conscience, as well as an abiding, passionate sense of mission. Rivkah is determined to make the libraries in the Sacramento, CA, library system (the fourth largest in that vast state) the go-to place for reading, for inquiry, for belonging, indeed for human flourishing on sundry scales. Rivkah, named by the Library Journal their Librarian of the Year in 2006, has been director of the Sacramento Public Library since 2009. Thanks to her, I had the great pleasure of holding a Constitution Cafe there in 2012 -- and can't wait to return this fall to convene a Democracy Cafe. Rivkah believes libraries play a more vital role than ever in this era of our democracy: "Where we’re going now is we’re really embedding ourselves out in the community and looking externally and saying, 'What do people need, how can we be more inclusive? How can we help children who don’t have the advantage of going to robotics camp of having