Why Is New York City Planning to Sell and Shrink Its Libraries?

Defend our libraries, don't defund them. . . . . fund 'em, don't plunder 'em

Mayor Bloomberg defunded New York libraries at a time of increasing public use, population growth and increased city wealth, shrinking our library system to create real estate deals for wealthy real estate developers at a time of cutbacks in education and escalating disparities in opportunity. It’s an unjust and shortsighted plan that will ultimately hurt New York City’s economy and competitiveness.

It should NOT be adopted by those we have now elected to pursue better policies.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

For Distribution At NYC Democratic and Other Political Clubs: A “Rigged System”: The Case For New Democratic Leadership

Citizens Defending Libraries has prepared a flyer for distribution at NYC Democratic clubs and other political clubs: "A “Rigged System”: The Case For New Democratic Leadership."  The flyer is also good for distribution at events like community board meetings.

The text appears below (you can copy and email it to fiends and associates that way.  You can also right click on the jpg (picture) or pdf version below to print and photocopy it for distribution.  It is set up with two flyers per sheet to reduce the cost and use of paper by half.
You can download and/or print this jpg (picture) for photocopying and distribution.  By cutting it in half your costs will be cut in half
 Text of flyer (can be copied, including its embedded links, into emails) is below.   

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A “Rigged System”: The Case For New Democratic Leadership   
Every notable candidate in this last election, Jeb Bush, Bernie Sanders, Hillary, Trump (and more Republican candidates) spoke to the voters about how the system `is rigged exacerbating income inequality. . . Between the two choices finally presented the electorate chose the threat of a Trump wrecking ball over Hillary’s status quo.

How “rigged” is the system?: Trump’s de facto campaign manager, chief political advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was a principal financial beneficiary of the sudden, secretively shrink-and-sink sale plundering the Donnell Library.

Did Hillary make political hay of the millions upon millions of dollars that went to Kushner at public expense via a rather non-credible behind-the-scenes “bid”?  (See: Hillary Clinton & The Winning Campaign That Might Have Been- Thoughts From Citizens Defending Libraries.)  Unfortunately, Hillary’s national campaign headquarters were adjacent to and, for real estate development purposes, actually a part of another library, the Brooklyn Heights Library (at Tillary and Clinton), subject to a shrink-and-sink sale modeled on the Donnell sale, some of the same people in the background.  Her landlord, Ratner, is a gatekeeper to the transaction.

That shrink-and-sink Heights library sale entangles local Democrats. It is now subject to a federal pay-to-play investigation of Bill de Blasio (Hillary’s one-time campaign manger) for his hand-off of the library to an inferior bidder who channeled him funds behind-the-scenes.  The shrink-and-sink sale, and the other similar library sales, have been supported by Brad Lander, and his fellow local councilman, Steve Levin, has perpetually refused what he once promised: To insist on transparency for this and the other Brooklyn library sales (See: Citizens Defending Libraries: Open Letter To Councilman Steve Levin About His Letter To Brooklyn Public Library Demanding Transparency About Library Sales).

Despite what Trump may have managed, Democrats should know that they handicap themselves immeasurably when they campaign against `a rigged’ system while embedded with those rigging and who give license to such rigging.

This last election should have should have been impossible to lose. . . Impossible to lose even notwithstanding the voter suppression that included a multi-state coordinated Republican-managed voter purge (exit polls and the number uncounted provisional ballots tell us it was probably enough to swing the electoral college result). But that raises another issue: How are we to effectively fight rigged “voter purges” when the Democratic machine similarly purged over 200,000 NYS voters from the rolls in Brooklyn.*

                               Sign our petition on the web: Citizens Defending Libraries
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(* We need to update the flyer, or you cane by hand before photocopying- a more dramatic effect: The number is now recently acknowledged to be more than 200,000 Brooklyn voters purged.)

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