Trina Magi: A Good Patriot Raises Hell

By Eve Thorsen

When it comes to listing off Vermont rabble-rousers, the name Trina Magi doesn’t spring to mind instantly. Yet last month, there she was, staring out at the world from her photo in the latest edition of the radical national magazine, Mother Jones. Her picture, and the article about her activities, ran under the interesting tag line of "Hellraiser."

That isn’t a title that most who know Magi would normally associate with her. She is poised, calm, and collected. She dresses neatly and with New England elegance. She speaks in a quiet and reassuring tone — an asset in a library, which is fortunate because that’s where Magi works. She’s worked on the reference desk at the University of Vermont’s Bailey Howe Library since 1998, helping patrons in their attempts to access the bountiful resources available.
And that, incidentally, is why the rabble-rousing started. Free access to information is a matter of principle so important to Magi that when she feels it’s threatened, she can’t help but create a stir. That’s what happened in 2001, when libraries first encountered the federal government’s USA PATRIOT Act (ed. Note — in full it’s always styled in caps), a law passed by Congress, with little debate, six weeks after the September 11 attacks.

The PATRIOT Act

Section 215 of the statute allows law enforcement agencies complete access to records that were previously considered private and sacrosanct from government eyes. These include records from libraries and bookstores. From the librarians’ point of view, what this means is that the government can check any and all documents, hard drives, floppy disks, or other media used by patrons in a library. They can see who went to which Web site and when. They can read your email, check your appointments or any other documents you’ve used on library computers, and find out what books you’ve been reading. All of this can be done under Section 215 without a warrant or providing probable cause. Moreover, the organization whose files are being rifled is forbidden to inform anyone that the search is being made.

Calling Out the Brigades

This sounded an alarm for Magi and other librarians. "We’re concerned that it will make people think twice or worry about what they’re reading," says Magi. "It might make people reluctant to ask questions about sensitive topics. What about the student trying to choose a term paper topic and wondering how it would look to do it on biological warfare or something like that? The university is devoted to the creation and dissemination of knowledge and to do that we have to preserve that openness of inquiry."

While out to dinner with a few other librarians shortly after the law was passed, Magi and her friends wondered how they could raise awareness of the issue. They decided to write a letter to Vermont’s congressional delegates. Magi took that letter to the Vermont Library Association board — of which
she is a past president and board member — and found unanimous support for it. The VLA became the first state library organization to officially oppose the PATRIOT Act, and Magi has since led efforts to have further scrutiny and a reconsideration of the law.

This has meant speaking at meetings and appearing on television and radio shows across the state and in Utah and Maine, sometimes solo and sometimes along with other opponents of the law, including members of the American Civil Liberties Union. She also took her message to Washington last year when she spoke at a press conference organized by Rep. Bernie Sanders. His measure to have libraries and bookstores exempted from the law has garnered 140 co-sponsors from all sides of the political spectrum.

This confrontation from a normally quiet and cooperative segment of society has drawn Capitol Hill’s ire. John Ashcroft rounded on librarians last year for their solid opposition of the new law, berating them in a highly slanted style as "hysterical," and claiming they had been "duped by the ACLU." This baseless accusation puts a crackle in Magi’s normally dulcet tones.

"I’m not a person who rants and raves," she says, with a tart tinge to her voice. "I do my research, I get my charts and gather my facts, and I just want to make people aware of it."

Information for All

The issue of open access to information has been at the core of Magi’s life. She grew up in New Jersey, the daughter of an elementary school teacher and a draftsman who, she says, encouraged her to ask questions, develop opinions, and express them. This habit of questioning didn’t lead to any great rebelliousness as a teenager or college student but instead helped her appreciate the advantages of open communication and to develop a skill at working with information. Her initial career, after graduating in 1985 from Columbia Union College with a degree in Media-Journalism Communication, was in public relations and marketing. It was after she completed a Master’s degree in General Administration Marketing ten years later that she realized she needed a change.

"The same things that drew me to public relations are also present in librarianship — a love of information, a desire to communicate clearly and in ways people can understand," she says. "Making the switch was a way to stay in touch with text and information, and to share it with people. But to do it in a way based around their agenda and based on their needs for information, rather than shaping that information, which is what you do in public relations."

Could she have predicted that this love of information would lead to her being at the spearhead of a state movement to overturn a law? Magi thinks not, although she recalls a couple of instances in her past of quiet-but-determined activism — a bid in the 1980s to convince her church to ordain women; and a period as an escort for Planned Parenthood patients in Washington D.C.

"Some people define themselves as activists and that’s the focus of their lives," she says. "I’ve never been focused on that, but when there are issues that emerge and I feel deeply about them I try to raise awareness and change things."