More Than a Pub Crawl: Supporting the Freedom to Read

In October, the Redwood City Library Foundation (RCLF) held its 5th Annual Upscale Pub Crawl. The event was another success, with more than 500 tickets sold and $50,000 raised for important Library initiatives. But the Pub Crawl, held in recognition of Banned Books Week, has another important purpose: raising awareness about the freedom to read and to choose what to read.

California’s Freedom to Read Act provides protections against censorship in public libraries and safeguards library workers from retaliation. But book challenges continue across the U.S., and challenged books might be removed from shelves, at least temporarily. The American Library Association reported 4,235 unique titles challenged in 2025.

Nearly 40 percent of these titles represent the experiences of LGBTQ+ people and people of color. Other challenges involve controversial subjects or difficult chapters of history. George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy is one example.

Best known to many as Lt. Sulu on Star Trek, Takei was born in Los Angeles in 1937 to Japanese American parents. During World War II, his family was forcibly removed from their home and incarcerated by the U.S. government, along with thousands of other Japanese Americans. In his graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy, Takei recounts his childhood behind barbed wire and explores the consequences of fear, prejudice, and the loss of civil liberties. The book received an American Book Award in 2020, but has faced repeated attempts to restrict its availability.

Takei, an honorary chair of 2025 Banned Books Week, has said that the freedom to read allows “all Americans [to] find ourselves and each other in books” and to “see and understand each other.” Books allow us to encounter experiences different from our own, learn about difficult periods in history, and decide for ourselves what we think. That’s the message behind Banned Books Week—and one we hope our Pub Crawl helps spread.