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| Libraries Not Condos. Library card sign for Lady Liberty on Monday's action Books Not Billionaires @Power2thePuppet pic.twitter.com/TAv54qAuvI |
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| Billionaires and opponents converging on the NYPL on December 16th, 2013 |
Library
Lovers come in all shapes and sizes. My Mom spent years and years of her life
exploring the libraries of Europe for clues about the iconography of an illuminated manuscript.
Throughout the middle ages, monasteries
protected such manuscripts and the ideas they represented from marauding,
invading armies.
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| chi rho page from the book of kells |
Images
such as the Chi
Ro Page in the Book of Kells represented the idea of turning darkness into
light. Such books have always needed
their protectors from ignorance and hostility toward the new ideas. Today, instead of marauding armies, libraries
and the books they hold face an equally destructive onslaught from developers
and their brand of neoliberal urbanism.
Some of the greatest writers in history were
librarians. Reinaldo
Arenas worked in the National Library in Cuba, where he found a freedom of
ideas and a space to write before political pressures crashed down, and he
spent years in prison for his writings.
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| reinaldo_arenas |
“I have
always imagined paradise will be a kind of library,” noted the grandfather of
magic realism, Jorge Luis Borges. He confessed
that he could not sleep unless he was surrounded by books. Unable
to separate himself from the stories he found in these books, he explained: “I
am not sure that I exist, actually. I am
all the writers I have read, all the people
that I have met, all , all the women that I have loved; all the cities I
have visited,” seemingly channeling Tennyson
himself. We are all parts of the places
we have been. Books and libraries are
places where these stories start, take room, move from ideas to pen, paper, publication,
and storage for the ages. They thrive
here, finding new devotees, sleep, and outlive us age after age. This was always the case on 42nd
street.
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| Bottom quotation from the Tower of Babel and other images of Jorge Luis Borges and his beloved libraries of the imagination. |
Times Squareis a place where stories started Jimmy Breslin used to say. It used to be lots of things. When the city began whitewashing, sanitizing,
privatizing, and cleaning up the square, I didn’t think it meant the
library. But such is the logic of
neoliberal urbanism. Sell off hospitals,
shut down schools, and gut libraries to make room for a better business climate
for condos and corporate control of public space. Privatize profits and socialize losses.
Yet,
there are still stories growing from this space. At least, they were yesterday at 42nd
Street and 5th. Fearing
real books will be evicted from the NY Pubic Library, theatrical books would be
converging at the library in hope of finding their way back home. Their library supporters would take part
in a in theatrical improvisation
as mock plutocrats try to displace the books, and the books alternately
lament their fate and seek to stand their
ground.
This is the site of some of my favorite moments in New York.
This is the site of some of my favorite moments in New York.
We
kicked off the largest protest in world history here on February 15, 2003,
top. And just this fall, we reminded the
world that AIDS is not history when the NYPD put up an exhibit about AIDS
activism. Bottom photo by Peter Shapiro
Arriving
by bike, I saw kids dressed as displaced books and their supporters carrying
signs declaring:
SAVE THE
MID-MANHATTAN
––––
DON'T SELL AND SHRINK OUR LIBRARIES!
@LibraryLoversNY
These kids, several
home schoolers, have been fighting for the libraries for months now. Their nemeses,
the billionaires were also on hand peddling their lines about the benefits for
the public of privatization of services and our public commons.
"Books not billionaires," they chanted.
My friend Michele, from the Occupy Wall Street
People’s Library was there as well. This
administration has been tough on books. Recall the city destroyed this library
during the raid at Zuccotti Park two years ago and activists fought back, suing
the city. Just a few months ago, the
city agreed to settle, paying
activists some $47,000.00 back for the damaged books, destroyed during the
raid. Like the NYPL, the People’s Library represented the dissemination of
knowledge into the public commons. This
is what the seems to oppose. Yet, Michelle reminded a reporter this is a place
where scholars search for the clues through the stacks of the most accessible research
library in the world.
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| Michele Hardesty speaking above, her photo of books destroyed from the people's library, middle and suing the city with Norm Siegel below. |
Yet,
today this space is under assault by a plan hatched
by developers. The
Central Library Plan, at enormous cost to New York City and its taxpayers,
calls for the sale of the Mid-Manhattan Library at 40th St. and 5th Avenue, the
most heavily used library in the entire city. It would also irreparably damage
the 42nd Street Research Library – one of the world’s great reference libraries
and a historic landmark. The NYPL plans to demolish the 42nd Street Library’s
historic seven-story book stacks, install a circulating library in their stead,
and displace 1.5 million books to central New Jersey. The new circulating
library would replace the Mid-Manhattan Library and the Science, Industry and
Business Library (at 34th and Madison), despite being less than one-third the
size of the two existing libraries.
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| One of the library lovers carried this apt sign. |
This plan was created through a
closed process with no public input, and has been condemned by leading
architecture critics.
Kim
Velsey notes in the Observer:
Is
the city is making bad—or at least short-sighted—deals in exchange for a little
cash right now? As The New York Times, which examined the sudden spate of sales argues: the decision
to sell certain properties and keep others is being driven by the logic of
developers, not the virtues and the problems of the library branches and
schools themselves.
And when private, rather than public interest dictates the
city’s real estate decisions, that’s a real cause for concern, even if those
sales will ultimately benefit the public, as the city claims.
"The designs [for the new circulating library which will replace the 42nd Street stacks] have all the elegance and distinction of a suburban mall... what results is an awkward, cramped, banal pastiche of tiers facing claustrophobia-inducing windows, built around a space-wasting atrium with a curved staircase more suited to a Las Vegas hotel.
“...A new Mid-Manhattan branch
should cost a fraction of gutting the stacks and could produce much better
architecture."
In her last column before she died, Ada
Louise Huxtable, wrote in the Wall Street Journal:
"The current Central Library
Plan was conceived internally, using commercial consultants known for doing the
numbers and moving the pieces around for organizational change and the best
bottom line. It has the approval of Mr. Marx and his predecessor, Paul LeClerc,
under whom it took shape, and a 60-member board of successful business leaders
with a few writers and scholars for literary embellishment. Commercial
consultants are generally clueless about nonquantifiable architectural and
cultural values. And so, apparently, are most of the 60 trustees. There is an
obvious paucity of architectural historians and structural experts among them.
This is a plan devised out of a
profound ignorance of or willful disregard for not only the library's original
concept and design, but also the folly of altering its meaning and mission and
compromising its historical and architectural integrity. You don't
'update" a masterpiece.'
....Sell the surplus Fifth Avenue
property at 34th Street. Keep the Mid-Manhattan building; the location is
perfect. Let Foster+Partners loose on the Mid-Manhattan building; the results
will be spectacular, and probably no more costly than the extravagant and
destructive plan the library has chosen."
Kim
Velsey continues in The Observer.
“The public has been generous to
private developers—particularly in the case of Barclays, with city and state
subsidies granted on the basis that their developments would be enriching the
entire community, rather than just the developer. If that’s the case, why is it
that the local public library by Barclay’s can’t afford to stay in its long-time
home? What can we expect of even more public-private partnerships that transfer
public property to the private sector, relocating to inferior spaces on
property that was once theirs in exchange for a one-time windfall?”
While my
friend Ron was there as the aptly titled book, all that’s solid melts into air, written by CUNY luminary Marshall Berman. The book recalls the devastating implications of developer generated plans on New York's streets and very consciousness. Ron was one of many, including friends from Billionaires for Bush,
Occupy Wall Street, Lower East Side Collective, Committee to Save the Public
Library, and Lower East Side Collective, joining us.
Peddling their lines, the billionaires were
the most vociferous.
“I think we can all
agree that what the average New Yorker needs is another block of luxury condos
that they can't afford to live in, not a library that serves everyone equally,”
noted a
billionaire dubbing herself Ivory Leagy.
“If we can get our hands on the libraries, just think of the
possibilities for future acquisition. I've always loved the Statue of
Liberty--why not put it up for sale to the highest bidder? America's
huddled billionaires are yearning to breathe free! If I can afford it, I should
be able to build myself a luxury penthouse in the crown...That's the American
way, isn't it?”
For the billionaires, libraries
are creeping socialism. “Did you know
that anyone who lives in New York can become a "member" of the public
library for FREE?” Ivy Leagey
continued. “This is an affront to anyone
who supports uncontrolled capitalism. Sending these books to New Jersey
is a first step towards ending dependence on free book loans. What are we
teaching little Sally when we allow her to "check out" a book for
free? That knowledge is free and should be shared? Balderdash!”
“I don’t want to go to
New Jersey, I moaned, shuddering in the cold with a placard featuring the cover
of the 1962 edition of the beloved To Kill a Mockingbird. A symbol of a struggle against the ignorance
of the Jim Crow era South and the struggle to create something better, one case
at a time, the book is represents solidarity in a social struggle. “I wanted
you to see what real courage is,” Atticus explains to his son after he took
care of an aging friend who had just passed in the novel. Yet, she kept going, even when she knew her
illness was taking over. “[I]stead of
getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. Its when you know that you are licked before
you begin but you begin anyway. And you
see it through no matter what. You
rarely win but sometimes you do.” And
there is certainly a guarantee to lose if you do not try to fight. Hopefully, the struggle for the libraries is
not such a fight. But it might be.
“Could we maybe just go
back home and out of the cold?” I asked one billionaire on hand, who was
escorting the books out into the cold away from the library steps.
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| Billionaires and books. Photo by Alex Vitale |
“NYPL wants to sell off the Mid-Manhattan Library, one of the
country's busiest and most popular library branches?” I explained to another passer-by. “A luxury tower would go up where these books
once lived. Plus, it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird,” I implored, noting
the moral of the book I was dressed as.
“Luxury Housing is a Right,” the
billionaire plutocrat chimed in. “If
people want books, they should just buy their own. Or I'll tell you what-- it's
the holidays season, so I'll buy everyone here the book of their choice if
they'll just stop all this fuss about preserving the library. How's that sound?
You get a book, I get a luxury condo: it's a win/win.”
I don’t want your blood money, I retorted,
rejecting his offer.
I have a book for you, he continued. Fahrenheit
$451 million.
While the street
theater was staged, the plans for the library are real. Today, the New York Public Library is in peril.
“Real
estate should not be driving decisions about the New York Public Library,” another
library lover explained to a reporter. “This plan would take the busiest branch
in New York City and replace it with a shadow of itself. Libraries have tight
budgets everywhere. They cannot start
seeing their real estate as capital to see.
We have to draw a line.”
Some
reporters seemed skeptical of our argument, seemingly defending the move and
logic of austerity propelling it.
“That’s
short sighted thinking,” I noted. “New
York needs these resources. They bring
us social and economic development. The point
to our past and future. We have to
reject the claim that the city cannot afford these resources. This should not be book of laughter and forgetting," I concluded, referring to the Kundera novel of censorship in Eastern Europe I was now dressed as.
“What
do you think of the public library’s plan to move some of the books into a
storage area under Bryant Park?”
“The original plan was to ship all of the 3 to 3.5 million books in the 42nd Street stacks to NJ,” another
libray lover interjected, quoting from the "NEGATIVE IMPACTS ON THE RESEARCH
COLLECTIOS" section of the CSNYPL fact sheet. “After all the protests when the plan was first released, the NYPL announced in the summer of 2012 that it would build additional storage for 1.5 million books
under Bryant Park. This is obviously an improvement over the original plan, but it still means that over half of the books in the stacks will go to NJ - somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million books.”
“Libraries
are more than books, these are public commons, community spaces where people of
all walks of life share their experiences,” I followed. “These are community spaces where people of
all generations and backgrounds teach and are taught. Old people come for air
conditioning. That’s a New York
tradition. These are also spaces for exploration. It is not the books one is searching for. It is the book to the left and right that you
stumble upon or that the librarian suggested or you found that you are looking
for. These are spaces for
more than entertainment; they help us expand, who we are, while enriching our
cities cultural capital.”
Some of the Lovers passed out flyers declaring:
Real-Estate
Interests Shouldn’t Drive Library Policy.
The New York Public Library is in
peril. Plans are afoot to
exile much of its legendary research holdings to storage in New Jersey.
Why?
So the nearby Mid-Manhattan Branch, one of the country’s busiest libraries, can
be sold to billionaire real-estate developers and replaced with a luxury tower.
A much smaller Mid-Manhattan library would then be crammed into the space made
available by evicting the research collection from the legendary research
stacks.
“We
don’t want to go to Jersey!” cry the books, as they are chased from the library
by rich developers. “This plan would take the busiest branch in New York City
and replace it with a shadow of itself. Libraries everywhere have tight
budgets, but if you sell them off now, they are gone forever.”
Speak up for the libraries you love!
This Books Not Billionaires Flash Mob brought to you
by
Library Lovers League
Twitter
@LibraryLoversNY
facebook.com/LibraryLoversLeague
Looking forward to
2014, the Library Lovers hope to stop this crazy, developer
driven “renovation”, beating back the transformation of New York’s
cultural history. To this end, we look to Mayor elect Bill DeBlasio,
to halt this plan. He said he would
do so on the campaign.
“I
am calling on the City to halt the New York Public Library’s plans at the
Central Library, and for a thorough, independent cost audit and review of the
proposed project…” he explained. “This review should evaluate the complete
financial risks associated with the current plan, and seriously consider
alternative ways to use City funds to ensure the preservation of the NYPL’s
valuable collection stored at the Central Library and preserve the
Mid-Manhattan branch as a functioning library.”
As
of today, Library Lovers League via Susan Bernofsky, that Bill de Blasio has already
removed from YouTube the video of himself railing against the gut renovation of
the NYPL stacks area; fortunately the advocacy group Citizens Defending
Libraries snagged the
video for their own video channel before it was too late.
Thank you to the Interface Archive, the Puppets of Occupy Wall Street, the Billionaires for Bush, the Committee to Save the NYPL, and other supports of books not billionaires.
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| Diane Green Lent. |
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