Open Letter and Invitation To Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders For Event About Protecting Public Assets At Tillary Clinton Library

July 10, 2015

Mr. Bernie Sanders
Bernie 2016
Campaign Office
P.O. Box 905
Burlington, Vermont 05402

Dear Bernie Sanders,

This will follow up on our previous efforts reaching out to you and your campaign.  Citizens Defending Libraries would like to hold an event with you.

Everyone understands that we face a crisis of growing income inequality.  We invite you to join with us to decry the way that escalating income and wealth inequality are leading to attacks on our public assets, presenting a viscous cycle where deals to sell them off are stacked to favor those at the top.

We believe that a broad swath of our public resources are in similar jeopardy, libraries being just one example but suggest that the best place to hold a rally would be outside the Brooklyn Heights Library, Brooklyn's central destination downtown library on Cadman Plaza West at the corner of Tillary and Clinton.  It stands next to Hillary Clinton’s national campaign headquarters.

In order to hand this library off to a developer who wants build a tower of luxury condominiums to take its place, the library, last substantially expanded and fully upgraded in 1993 at appreciable public expense (it is actually five years newer than the building in which the Hillary Clinton headquarters sit), is proposed to be sold for a fraction of its public value and traded for a shrunken “replacement” library of just one-third size.. .  This when the use of New York City libraries that democratically serve everybody is way up, circulation of physical books in particular, libraries cost little to fund, and the city is wealthy and growing.

We greatly look forward to hearing from you and holding this event soon.

Sincerely,

Carolyn E. McIntyre

CC: Campaign Staff