(Copenhagen) The proposal was intriguing: “borrow a human” for 30 minutes. During a recent visit to Copenhagen, we came across the “Menneskebiblioteket”, a human library where we want to promote exchanges between different people in order to fight discrimination.
The idea for this project is that of four friends, including the Dane Ronni Abergel. The 48-year-old man, born to a Danish mother and a Moroccan father, wondered in the late 1990s how to fight prejudice.
He was working at the time for the organization Stop the violence Copenhagen, which he himself co-founded in 1993 following the death of a friend, stabbed by strangers. Seeing that violence among certain groups of young people was still present in his city, he wanted to act.
Mr. Abergel thought about it. He remembered that in his youth he could be violent. “I would fight sometimes in the schoolyard. A little with my friends. But a lot with people I didn’t know. And I said to myself: the best way to lower the tension between people is to get them to know each other, ”he says.
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, THE PRESS
Ronni Abergel launched the first edition of the Human Library in 2000.
He then came up with the idea of allowing people from different backgrounds to meet and discuss. In 2000, a first edition of the Human Library was created. Ronni Abergel finds a dozen “books”. Humans with unusual backgrounds or simply having an intriguing profile.
“We have identified 14 pillars that can make a person a victim of prejudice. It can be his gender identity, his mental health, his job … If they have a life story linked to these 14 pillars, we can publish them, ”explains Mr. Abergel in an interview.
The policeman’s test
The first edition of the Human Library lasts a weekend. The event brings together 25 human books, including a policeman, an obese person, a man entirely tattooed on his face, a drug salesman from the Christiania district in Copenhagen … “There were 1,100 loans during the event which lasted four days, ”says Abergel.
During the event, a police officer was “borrowed” by a group of three young people from the far left. Mr. Abergel remembers that the tension was high at first, but that it eased as the conversation progressed.
Towards the end of the meeting, another friend of the youth group arrived. Shocked to see his friends talking with a police officer, he threatened and insulted the latter. “It was his friends who finally calmed him down and asked him not to talk to the police like that. At that moment, I knew that the Human Library was working, ”says Ronni Abergel.
Over the course of the events, the organization has grown. The Human Library now lends human books a few days a week at its headquarters in Copenhagen. It also organizes special sessions in schools and businesses.
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, THE PRESS
The “book” Nikolai Hasselbalch
During the passage of Press, Nikolai Hasselbalch, 49, was there. The man who had surgery for a cancerous brain tumor in 2017 likes to share his experience. “I was paralyzed on the left side. I had to relearn everything. I love to talk to people and show that there can be life after cancer, ”he says.
A concept that makes children
The profile of human books available today at the “Menneskebiblioteket” is variable and diverse. “There is a homosexual rabbi. A person with Asperger’s syndrome. An adopted child … ”, enumerates Mr. Abergel.
The concept made children. Several other cities in Europe and elsewhere in the world have reproduced the concept of the Human Library, which is intended to be “neither political nor religious”.
Renting a “book” from the Human Library is free. “But when I do events in large companies, I charge the total. Companies nickname me “Ronni from the hood” [Ronni des bois] “Laughs Mr. Abergel, who has lugged his Human Library around to companies like Google and Heineken.
As society is more polarized than ever, Abergel said, a project like the Human Library is becoming essential. “Everyone is divided now. We only have to think about politics, vaccination … We have a lot of work to do to help the world come to an agreement, he says. I think our concept can help. Because we offer a neutral space for discussion. Turning your back on people you don’t like doesn’t help. ”