ALA Executive Director Tracie D. Hall writes: “Associations have long been among the most effective catalysts, carriers, and counters of evolving social thought and political development. They serve as a ‘powerful instrument’ when ‘applied to a wider range of purposes,’ as French historian Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in the early 1800s in Democracy in America. It is that potential and ability to shift public policy—and inform practice and attitudes at the service level—that make ALA so necessary.”