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Zephyr Teachout left at halt our the library sales rally with Citizens Defending Libraries |
Here’s video of our Saturday Teachout/Wu library event held on the steps of the 42nd Street Library with guest speaker Barry C. Lynn speaking about Amazon and the threat to the independent book selling industry. (
Click through to Vimeo for best viewing.)
Democratic Candidate for NY Governor Zephyr Teachout at Citizens Defending Libraries News Conference, Sept.6, 2014 from
Michael D'Elia on
Vimeo.
If you want, you can share the video via this
Facebook post link or this
Twitter link.
Here are more pictures from the rally extracted from the video:
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Barry C. Lynn spoke of the importance of the public commons and how Amazon is driving independent booksellers, once plentiful in NYC and important to its economy, to go out of business. At the Brooklyn Public Library trustees meetings, the trustees are talking about how the BPL and NYPL Book Ops plan, buying fewer books and driving down prices will drive more independent booksellers out of business. |
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Researcher Linda Casey |
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Maria Roca from Sunset Park where the Sunset Park is one of the city's libraries threatened with redevelopment to turn it into a mixed-use real estate development |
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Barry C. Lynn in photo from article about the rally below |
Our rally was covered in this article:
5 Reasons for the Zephyr Teachout Phenomenon, and 5 Reasons Andrew Cuomo Is Still Governor, by Matt Stoller, September 10, 2010.
Earlier the same day of the rally Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu appeared on the same steps of the 42nd Street Library to receive the endorsement of economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, see pictures below.
Earlier in the week (see below) Zephyr Teachout and her running mate Tim Wu received the endorsement of anti-fracking activist Mark Ruffalo at a rally on the steps of the Tweed Court House. Fracking like the sale and shrinake of libraries is another sell-off of public assets for the short-term benefit of a very few at
the long-term expense of the many.
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Zephyr Teachout and Mark Ruffalo at anti-fracking rally, fracking being another sell-off of public assets for the short-term benefit of a few at the long-term expense of the many. |
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Teachout and Wu |
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Sierra Club endorsed Teachout and Wu and fracking was one reason |
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Center Lucy Koteen of Citizens Defending Libraries and the Sierra Club. On the left Mark Ruffalo. On right an activist and victim of fracking, his water poisoned by fracking |
Tim Wu's "Master Switch" book was, presciently, part of the December, 2013 "Books Not Billionaires" rally outside the 42nd Street Library.
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Tim Wu earlier in the week on steps of Tweed Court House at anti-fracking rally, fracking being another sell-off of public assets for the short-term benefit of a few at the long-term expense of the many |
One week earlier, Zephyr Teachout held a press conference outside Long Island College Hospital on the boarder of Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights, essentially a neighborhood bookend to the proposed sale and shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights Library. Teachout called for an investigation into the way that the assets of LICH had been raided and the hospital run into the ground financially in order to transform it into a real estate deal to replace the major hospital with luxury towers eliminating or shrinking the hospital down into virtual nonexistence as a health facility. To watch the video at NY1 see:
Teachout Calls Out Cuomo on LICH Transparency, NY1 Debate, By: NY1 News, 08/30/2014.
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From NY1 coverage of Teachout's press conference calling for an investigation into the raiding of the LICH assets to intentionally bankrupt the hospital. At the other end of Brooklyn Heights Citizens Defending Libraries has launched its Citizens Audit And Investigation of the Brooklyn Public Library for very similar reasons. |
Mentioned at the rally: The thing that makes it ironic that this bus advertising the Broadway Musical of Roald Dahl's "Matilda" is seen outside the Grand Army Plaza library where in Brooklyn Public Library administration officials are plotting the sale and shrinkage of Brooklyn's libraries. See: Tuesday, February 25, 2014,
Musical On Broadway: The "Revolting Children" of "Matilda" Throwing Away Library Books? No, It's Revolting Adults! Really!
The Teachout/Wu campaign was important for getting messages to be heard and indeed that was accomplished. Turns out Teachout spent $1.57 per vote vs. Cuomo’s $60.62 per vote, but Teachout and Wu won the votes of more than half the counties in the State, including the capital district’s Albany and Rensselaer. Cuomo was forced to listen and swing in the right direction on a number of issues and we will be following up on libraries in particular. An important overriding message: Money should not prevail over the public interest.
Here is the media advisory Citizens Defending Libraries issued in connection with the event:
New York City
WHAT: Zephyr Teachout, Tim Wu and Citizens Defending Libraries
will call for an immediate halt to library sales, shrinkage and
underfunding
WHEN: Saturday, September 6, 2014, 4:00 P.M.
WHERE: 42nd Street Central Reference Library, 476 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10018
Zephyr Teachout has, throughout her campaign for governor, called for a
return to the adequate funding of libraries and related public benefits
like schools and hospitals, rather than what we have now, a political
system that is out of control, with special interests diverting funds
from the real needs and priorities of the state’s citizenry.
Tim Wu, candidate for Lieutenant Governor, is Ms. Teachout’s running
mate. Before Mr. Wu joined Ms. Teachout in this campaign he was writing
and commenting extensively about those who, through monopolization and
privatization of the public commons and shared assets, would limit,
control and commercialize the free flow of information, ideas and public
content. A lawyer and recognized expert in the field of
communications, Mr. Wu is credited with coining the phase “net neutrality.”
Citizens Defending Libraries was formed to fight the sale of public
libraries to private developers with the shrinkages of New York City
libraries and the elimination of books and librarians for the purpose of
creating real estate deals that benefit the well-connected, but not the
public. Libraries are about democracy.
Saturday, Citizens Defending Libraries, Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu will
join together will calling for a halt to the impoverishment of the
public realm represented by the sale of irreplaceable public assets.
In today's world the effects of wealth and political inequality are
rampant and this imbalance is of the utmost importance to where we are
headed as a society. The best example of how far things go awry with
such inequality gaining the upper hand is the plundering of our publicly
owned assets. Selling, shrinking libraries, putting their resources
out of reach, leads to a vicious cycle of decreased democracy and
opportunity, leading to more wealth and political inequality.
CONTACT:
Carolyn E. McIntyre, Michael D. D. White
Michael White, 718-834-6184, mddwhite@aol.com
Carolyn McIntyre, 917-757-6542 cemac62@aol.com
Follow us on Twitter: @defendinglibraries
For photos and videos of prior Citizens Defending Libraries rallies
opposing the sale, shrinkage, underfunding of New York City libraries,
and elimination of books and librarians in the year and a half since its
founding, see:
PHOTO GALLERIES- PAST EVENTS
http://citizensdefendinglibraries.blogspot.com/2014/01/photo-galleries-past-events.html
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