Woe To Ralph Nader and All the Rest of Us: Our Frames of Reference Shifting To The Right Undermine His Metaphors About Libraries As Dependable Bastions of Democracy

Ralph Nader’s book, “Breaking Through Power- It’s Easier Than You Think,” is so hot off the presses that, if you own a copy, you might be surprised its cover isn’t still warm.

It’s an important book to add to your reading list, but is the ground shifting under our feet so fast, are we moving so fast toward more privatization of public assets, that some of the book’s metaphors are already sadly out-of-date?

Consider how Mr. Nader seeks to get his point across instances of the following quotes (emphasis supplied) from his book.  The first two quotes below concern Mr. Nader’s arguments that since the public airwaves are a public trust and are supposed to serve the public which owns them, they should do exactly that, and without the relentless assault of advertising.

They do not demand of it what they do of their national parks, roads, and bridges, though the airwaves are theirs no less than Yosemite National Park or the Grand Canyon.  As we do not---- and would not-tolerate corporations taking over our libraries, so too should we not tolerate them controlling our airwaves.  [Page 57]

    * * * *  

That’s how deeply ingrained the private exploitation of our common property is these days, free of charge, by the One Percent who have succeeded in gaining near total control of national resources while operating in bald non-compliance with the mandate that the airwaves be used in the public interest.  If One Percenters could somehow make money from advertisers in the Library of Congress or in Yellowstone National Park, they would, because they have done exactly that with our great national treasures the airwaves. [Page 59]

The third quote concern’s Mr. Nader's observation that our schools ignore and don’t teach about the civic ‘heroes’“threaded throughout American History” who stand as “examples” to “teach how truth can speak and discipline power,” but instead teach the stories of more controversial figures like military heroes and business leaders whose positions are less easy (and less desirable?) for students to aspire to:

Few students can join these ranks, but they can all aspire to becoming heroic citizens since democracy, like a public library, does not have any price of admission for participation at the local, state, or national levels. [Page 123]

Sounds like Mr. Nader is offering our libraries and national parks as sacrosanct commons that we can naturally expect to be free from encroachment, usurpation and rampant depredations of private cooperate interests who would seek to make profits by advertising everywhere and charging admission even to public libraries. . . .

Tim Wu's book, “The Attention Merchants,”and his Sunday op-ed, "Mother Nature Is Brought to You By"

. . .  Well, just a few weeks ago Tim Wu (who has another new book out: “The Attention Merchants” was writing about that in an Op-ed in the New York Times: The burgeoning onslaught of advertising and the privatizing takeover of “spaces long thought inviolate” from the assault of commercial advertising, places such as our national parks, schools, churches, our homes and libraries.  It’s what is new book is about also.  See: Privatized National Parks as Realms For Advertising? Tim Wu, Author of "The Attention Merchants" Writes About This And The Similar Invasion of Schools and Libraries In NT Times Op-ed.

Read Mr. Wu’s new book, and his prior one, “The Master Switch,” if you want more background and overview with respect to Mr. Nader’s points about how the public owns our broadcasting airwaves and how what so many regard as the current abuses never needed to be the `model’ we adopted.

But the loss of our public spaces and commons like our libraries goes beyond just the introduction of advertising.  Libraries officials in New York now look to mangle libraries by contorting them in “partnerships” with the private sector that pull them astray.  New York City libraries are being converted into real estate deals where the public loses out as libraries, the bequeathed investments of prior generations, succumb to overriding priorities of real estate developers. . .

. . . And are our libraries still free?  Sometimes, like with the NYPL simply snuffing out the Science Library that is at its 34th Street and Madison central destination library location, the libraries are no longer available.  Sometimes, the journals and materials you need now will only be available if you can penetrate pay walls by being a professor or college student incurring huge debt to attend a university, something that Aaron Swartz was directing his attention to and something that many people would say, because of government reprisals, he died for. .

. . .And then there are the public “library” spaces, like the top floor of the Williamsburg Library that you will now have to pay the private Spaceworks company, or the public “library” space in Coney Island, converted to a television studio production space that you now may not be able to pay enough to access. 

But have no fear, you may still be able to access these public spaces, some of them, because of the original aspirations, grand, if you want to have a high class society wedding.  You can have the "library" spaces for this, but there are fees that will be paid for those that can afford them.  (Elected officials with whom library administration officials want to curry favor for such privatizing of library space may get to use those spaces for free.)

Let’s conclude (or begin to conclude) the above meditation with a bit of segue: in October, Ralph Nader was in Berkeley promoting his new book and he had something else important to say about our libraries.  He said that whether people where left or right on the political spectrum they didn’t want libraries to be zones of surveillance under the PATRIOT Act.  We have his quote (which we incorporated into a video) here (emphasis supplied):

If you start out with 1% or less surrounding a particular issue that reflects what Abraham Lincoln called the public sentiment, that is public opinion, you're almost unstoppable. And if you connect on the left/right issues. . . . . Civil liberties, the PATRIOT Act, left/right with a vengeance. They don't want the government to search your home and not have to tell you for 72 hours or get into your medical, financial records without probable cause, or your library records without probable cause.

   . . . You want to see a legislator or a lawmaker go pale and have the knees shake?: Walk into their office with conservatives and liberals and say "We are a left/right coalition." They don't know how to game you.. . They don't know how to game a union of both.

(See: Articles About Library Privacy and Surveillance In Libraries.)

Last thing, and this really will wrap it up. . .

. . . Those public airwaves that Ralph Nader was talking about?  We are headed to some upcoming sell-offs of the airwaves. The current holders of "public" licenses of the airwaves will be paid by the federal government to surrender their licenses to “clear out” some these UHF TV broadcasting channels (like channels 33 to 51).  Those airwaves will be converted to space for more mobile data.

The for-profit owners may do very well and may even reinvest in the new shape their businesses are taking by buying up parts of the spectrum for the very sort of mobile data transmission that is replacing the former sorts of broadcast TV and radio.  But what of the public TV station license holders?  Whenever they sell we are apt to see another proportionate shrinkage, a sell-off reducing what was previously available in terms of public broadcasting with no proportionate growth of some equivalent or substitution for public broadcasting and public serving information elsewhere. . .

. . . It is somewhat analogous to the real estate deals where libraries own properties where part of the inherent value of the property is what is possible in the future, that the library can enlarge and grow as an institution, but then the property is sold off, the library frequently suffering and shrinking in the process, while some private developer scalps any potential for future growth seizing it for the generation of his own private profit.

Here is part of what Craig Aaron, president of the group Free Press had to say about this lack of consideration of the public good when the airwaves are sold an interview with Counterspin: ‘We’ve Got to Start Talking About How Are We Going to Build an Alternative’- CounterSpin interview with Craig Aaron on funding local media, by Janine Jackson, December 7, 2016.

The Federal Communications Commission is in the midst of auctioning off a big chunk of the public airwaves. And they're asking broadcasters-or they're not really asking them, they're paying them-to go off the air or move their stations to another channel, in order to create more space for mobile data. So they're going to move the TV stations out and turn around and auction off those airwaves to mobile phone companies and others.

In the middle of all this are a number of public television stations, at least 54, considering it, by our count at Free Press. And we think these are public stations using the public airwaves with public interest obligations, and yet the public hasn't been brought into this conversation about what happens when these stations are auctioned off, and what happens to all the money. And we're talking potentially about a lot of money, billions and billions of dollars, that will go to the license owners of these stations.

So when we're talking about public stations, these are state and local governments, universities, other nonprofit institutions. And we were particularly interested in the state of New Jersey, which owns four public TV stations, valued by the FCC for as much as $2.3 billion. So even if only some of the stations are sold, and the price comes down in the auction, which it will do, we could still be talking about hundreds of millions of dollars created, going into the coffers of New Jersey.

NYPL Announces Its Intention To Sell Inwood Library (Enlarged and renovated in 2001) For Redevelopment- Is This What Gets Called a “Robin Hood” Deal These Days?

Our Facebook post about Inwood Library sale and Manhattan Community Board 12

INWOOD LIBRARY FOR SALE?: IT WAS STANDING ROOM ONLY JANUARY 4th as the sale for redevelopment was announced.

This page will be updated.

This is a recent Facebook Post with some more recent information.

The Inwood community has posted a video (on January 29th) of neighborhood residents confronting library selling officials at the library about the sale.

Citizens Defending Libraries has a January 26, Facebook post with updating information about respecting confirmation that the local city councilman Ydanis Rodriguez decided to back the sale of the library before the public knew about it or even had a chance to give him any insight or feedback into what the community's own view of the subject might be.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer standing next to City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez in blue suit where he has come to even to promote the sale of the Inwood Library.  The man with the folded arms on Gale Brewer's other side is from de Blasio's HPD, also there to promote the sale of the Inwood Library.

Ditto on Gale Brewer dittoing library sales- same info as caption above.

Another crucial elected official disappointing library defenders at this point is Borough President Gale Brewer who showed up at the library alongside of City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez to indicate that she is generally supportive of the sale!

Now as Gale Brewer stands condoningly by, she, as borough president, has two Manhattan libraries suffering these such sales, the snuffing out of SIBL, the central destination Science, Industry, and Business Library at 34th Street (new for $100 million in 1996) with the total elimination of the Science portion of that library (in the science-annihilating age of Trump?) and the complete elimination of collection of science books!  SIBL is being sold for a suspiciously low amount.  Its sale is also connected to an overall library shrinkage affecting the Mid-Manhattan Library with a wholesale elimination of books.

The NYPL has now announced the Inwood Library in its sights for a disruptive sale for redevelopment.

Sale of the Inwood Library for redevelopment is being sprung on the community. The community members present at a January 4th Community Board committee meeting, just catching up with things, were pretty angry. The NYPL is aiming for quick low-on-the-radar pass of the plans by the community furnishing it with very constrained ability to comment- two Charrettes before the end of the month:

    Wednesday, January 25th (4:00-8:00pm), and

    Saturday, January 28th (10am-2:00pm)

which the NYPL will then reinterpret as blessing their plans (including, they indicated there may be a possible override to increase the zoning).

Interestingly, learning from the Sunset Park Library sale in Brooklyn, the NYPL and HPD are saying that they have already picked a partner to work with (board members include the Donnell-connected Starwood head, Goldman Sachs, the Related Companies), but, even so, that they will only officially award development to their development partner after a formal RFP.. .. ?

Sound good to you? . . . . Right!  (That’s sarcasm.)

The Inwood Library is a very nice, highly used, very functional, three story library that was expanded and renovated in 2001.* (January 4th the NYPL misleadingly stated that it hadn't been renovated for 30 years.) It is next to two large schools. These plans would take the library out of commission (Donnell, sold in 2007 took nine years and the NYPL still doesn’t expect to replace the teen center until 2020) and then make it unexpandable in the bottom of a privately-owned residential building.

(*  This information coming officially from the NYPL is inaccurate, according to a neighborhood resident communicating with us, who says that the last renovations of the Inwood library were even more recent than 2001.)

Interestingly, even though NYPL officials said that they were appearing before the community board members that night to make sure that the public knew about these rushed charrettes, there was only on small almost impossible to find announcement about the community board meeting in the library itself that did not state the purpose of the meeting and also did not tell people about the upcoming charrettes they are supposedly trying to publicize.

click to enlarge- Do you feel informed about the library sell off?  All the library patrons we spoke to about it were entirely surprised.

The only real coverage (and it was good coverage from our standpoint) was in DNAInfo:

    •    DNAInfo: Inwood Library to Be Sold to Developer for Affordable Housing, City Says,  By Carolina Pichardo, January 6, 2017 (Comments are possible)

Officials announced that the city is planning to sell the property to a developer who would build an apartment building, the height of which is not yet determined, in collaboration with the New York Public Library, HPD and anti-poverty nonprofit The Robin Hood Foundation.

* * * *

The surprise announcement angered many locals at the CB12 meeting who said they're frustrated that the city is moving forward with the plan so quickly, and that most pieces appear to already be in place before the public hearings.

"I'm wondering how constrained the whole concept of the workshop is going to be, whether you already have the idea that this is going to be affordable housing... you mentioned that you have a partner and I didn't hear anything about possible competitive bid or other possible partners," said Michael White, founder of Citizens Defend Libraries.

"Robin Hood sounds like a great name, and I'm sure you guys do a lot of good things, but I look at your board and I see Starwood, which was involved in the sell-off of the Donnell Library, I see Goldman [Sachs], which is involved in selling off libraries, and I see Related Companies, which get a lot of favors. I don't know that I would pick Robin Hood to slice-and-dice my library," White said. "If you're going to do just two sessions, it sounds like you already have an idea and you just want to do some rubber stamping."

The CEO of Starwood is a member of Robin Hood's board of directors, and the CEOs of Goldman Sachs and Related Companies are members of its advisory board, according to the nonprofit's website.

White, who has worked with communities in Sunset Park and Brooklyn Heights when they went through similar development projects with local libraries, said the project is basically "giving the library away to developers."

* * *

The current Inwood Library is one of the most heavily used locations in Manhattan and one of the few libraries open seven days a week, with enhanced services, programs and hours, officials said.

* * *

White accused the city of going "through the motions" to make it seem like they got input.


“Basically, they’re letting the public know ‘we’re selling the library and we want to know what you want after we sell it. It’s not ‘should we sell the library, or preserve plans to enlarge it in the future?” White said.

White said the city faced a lot of pushback from the community after it sold a Brooklyn Heights library to developer Hudson Companies for $52 million after critics accused Mayor Bill de Blasio of supporting the deal because of donations his campaign received from the development company.

We have a post up on Facebook and have Tweeted about the sale.  There is a Facebook discussion of the sale on another post by TAkeBackNYC.  BTW:  Interestingly, the "Robin Hood Foundation" gets mention in this week's New York Magazine cover story about the ascendancy to power or Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

There is the sort of quick non-coverage, mostly a press release pass along, that we’d regularly expect of such transactions by Curbed and the Real Deal, although Curbed mentions and connects this deal to the community’s recent rejection (its “fierce opposition”) of the upzoning of a neighboring site (but bot the Curbed and Real Deal articles do  mention the possible upzoning this could bring to the library site-  comments on both articles are possible):

    •    Curbed: City officials push affordable housing redevelopment for Inwood library- After recent rejection from City Council for a nearby site, the city explores its options, by Ameena Walker Jan 5, 2017

    •    Real Deal: In wake of failed Inwood rezoning, city returns with new affordable housing pitchDe Blasio administration wants to bring "100% affordable" apartments to the site of a library, by Will Parker, January 05, 2017.

Click to enlarge

Something of real estate interest likely going on here that Curbed and the Real Deal didn't mention and make explicit is that, after an import of FAR (and the site already has a playground running track included in it that will help it hit a high FAR), there could be a mayoral override of the current zoning, that would be a camel's nose under the tent in a neighborhood where the city has already been maneuvering for more increased zoning.  Adjacent to the library there is a succession of one-story buildings (with some recent transactions where they traded hands).  It is easy to import the FAR from all of those sites to the library to get a tower, or the existing properties there may themselves get sacrificed to redevelopment.

The Inwood community can learn from what's happened and gone on before.  As with Brooklyn Heights, the former Donnell, Sunset Park, anytime you sell off the library land and put a replacement library in the bottom of a privately-owned residential building you can never enlarge or expand it as the community grows afterward. . because it's a problem that the building is privately owned, and because it's a problem with the building being residential. - - - Closing this library, next to two large schools for `redevelopment' is inherently disruptive. Donnell started shutting down at the end of 2007. It's inadequate replacement didn't open until this summer 2016. The NYPL hopes to open the replacement for what was the newly renovated Donnell teen center in 2020. - - - When you turn libraries into real estate deals the priorities become those of the real estate industry, not the library patrons. ERGO: This plan to let the public comment on a done deal where the priorities have already been skewed.

One useful reference is this statement of principles that dates back to the proposal that the Sunset Park Library  be sold for 'redevelopment' and similarly turned into a multi-use project:  Proposed Statement of Principles Concerning Any Possible Redevelopment of Library-- Sunset Park Branch - .

If it really makes sense to tear down recently enlarged, renovated and very functional libraries for redevelopment, then what actually makes sense is to build the replacement library in a free standing enlargeable building first and then move it.  That way you avoid disruption, down time and bait and switch deals.

Politics?:  Gale Brewer as Manhattan Borough President has very key say-so over this Manhattan library along with SIBL, another Manhattan library she is letting go down the drain.  On the immediate front line is Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez.  From talking to Russell Murphy (rmurphy2[at]council.nuc.gov), his representative at the hearing, it sounds like Councilman Rodriguez is already warmed up and predisposed to favor sacrificing the library for development.  A word to those with less experience in these matters: The NYPL and library officials don't generally proceed with the unveiling of library sell-off unless Mayor de Blasio, the NYPL and the rest of the powers that be already believe they have bagged and tagged the pertinent elected officials, particularly the local city councilman, and have them on board.  (For instance, the deal could even go back to when the last upzoning was slain by the community's opposition.)

One reason the Community Board 12 meeting was crowded was because local residents had sent an email to members of the Facebook Inwood Community Group (including):

Will we be losing our well loved and well used library? Because our community doesn't show up represent push back special interest. If they are willing to tear down our library, where will it end?

Will we let the city build questionable "affordable housing" on the Inwood Library site? I say NO not on my watch..... . . .

* * * **

"This is so unacceptable I can't put into the words . . .

. . .   it is urgent that as many Inwood residents who have time show up at this meeting in strong support of our library, and way of life...........

Who Is Jared Kushner (Trump’s Son-in-law) In Relation To The Sale of Libraries And The Sell-Off Of Public Assets?

Jared Kushner is getting a lot of attention these days (like the cover of New York Magazine) for his ascendancy to enormous power by virtue of being Trump’s son-in-law and key adviser.  See: Jared Kushner's Rise to Unimaginable Power - The Young Trump- Jared Kushner is more like his father-in-law than anyone imagines, by Andrew Rice, January 2017.

Even before he was this, he was an interesting person to keep track of and fairly recently New York Magazine devoted a fair amount ink to him about his and his father’s weird interconnections with Chris Christie’s bridgegate scandal.  See:  The Former Classmate Who Could Take Chris Christie Down- Most Likely to Destroy a Governor- Will David Wildstein, star witness in the Bridgegate trial, take down his old high-school classmate Chris Christie? By Andrew Rice, September 18, 2016.  New York Magazine, picking up from the Washington Post, reported how Kushner sent David Wildstein, going to prison as a mastermind of the Bridgegate plot, an email that said, “For what it's worth, I thought the move you pulled was kind of badass.” - - -

 - - - Kushner actually recruited and hired Bill Stepien for the Trump campaign.  Stepien was Christie’s former top (“ruthless”?) political adviser, one of the people whom Christie fired for being embroiled in the Bridgegate scandal.

Now we have all sorts of articles coming out of the woodwork like the Village Voice and Lo-Down Jared Kushner-is-an-excruciatingly-evil-landlord stories: Jared Kushner's East Village Tenants 'Horrified' Their Landlord Will Be Working in the White House, by Steven Wishnia, January 12, 2017 and Lower East Side Groups to de Blasio: Jared Kushner is No Friend of New York City Tenants (being Tweeted a lot).

It’s time to provide some Citizens Defending Libraries context. . . .

. . .   Who is Jared Kushner in relation to the sale of libraries and the sell-off of public assets?

Here from Noticing New York:

The rushed and secretive sale and shrinkage of the Donnell Library (with a subsequent "ratification" by the NYPL board) stank and looked like an obvious scam with only the merest pretense of an effective bid:  There were only two ostensible bidders on the secret sale and since both bidders were inevitably destined to be doing a coordinated real estate deal there was no real incentive for them not already to be acting in partnership.

The sale was kept confidential until the last possible minute.  It was finally announced publicly in November of 2007 only because, as a publicly traded company, the purchaser, Oriental Express Hotels Ltd., had to disclose the agreement within within four days of the execution of the transaction.

. . .  and one of the principal financial beneficiaries of the secret sale of Donnell was Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and top campaign advisor.

There is, however, apparently one criminal investigation: US Attorney Preet Bharara is understood to be investigating Mayor de Blasio's apparent pay-to-play hand-off the Brooklyn Heights Library.  Like the way that an effective and above-board bid process was apparently side-stepped with the Donnell Library to hand off the library real estate to a new owner for far less than its value, the Brooklyn Heights Library is being handed off for far less than its value to the public and is being given to a developer who was not the high bidder.

See: Noticing New York: Snowden, Booz and the Dismantling of Libraries As We Know Them: Why Was A Private Government Spy Agency Hired to Take Apart New York's Most Important Libraries And Turn Them Into Something Else?,  October 30, 2016.

Remarkably, even with the insatiable eagerness of virtually the entire media establishment to cover all things Trump (something that surely helped "The Donald" get elected), all the media outlets ignored our Citizens Defending Libraries press release, sent to thousands of press addresses, of the Trmp/Kushner tie to the library sale: PRESS RELEASE: Donald Trump Connected To Sell-Off of NYC Libraries? This Explains Exactly How, August 24, 2015.

In this instance, what the media ignores has consequences and results in the public failing to make relevant connections soon enough.

Donald Trump has gone on to appoint, as a top economic advisor and liaison:

library-destroying Stephen A. Schwarzman, head of Blackstone, the world’s largest real estate investment firm (among other things), the NYPL trustee who helped push the Donnell real estate deal out the door to Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and was even rumored to be personally involved in the deal through his own companies beforehand.

 See: Noticing New York: Donald Trump (Whose Son-In-Law Was In on Donnell Library Sale) Puts Library-Selling Stephen Schwarzman In Charge of Economic Policy, December 8, 2016.

This forebodes a sell-off of public assets in general, something that Citizens Defedning Libraries has been working to raise consciousness of and fight against: Our Public Assets Under Attack- A Calamity of the Commons Unfolding That We Must Act Collectively Against- How best To Express It?

A recent New York Times article started off reporting how privatizing prisons costs the public much more and delivers a far inferior product.  That's not to mention (as the article didn't) how privatizing prisons further incentivizing increased mass incarceration our country that already has the highest incarceration rate in the world housing around 22% or more of the world's prisoners, with less than 5% of the world’s population overall).  The article is probably a too cautiously conservative and somewhat too friendly to the idea of privatization in general, but it goes on to observe that the Trump administration wants to privatize lots of public assets and explain why that wouldn’t be good:

 privatization is likely to sweep through not only prisons. The president-elect wants to privatize health services provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs. He wants to privatize public infrastructure - drawing private sector companies to fix, build and manage bridges and roads, water supplies and airports. He is selling privatization as a surefire winner that will deliver better services for less public money.

"There's a magical thinking among business executives that something about the profit motive makes everything run better," noted Raymond Fisman, a professor of economics at Boston University. "What is government going to be like when it is run by billionaire C.E.O.s that see the private sector as a solution to all the world's problems?"

A serious body of economics, not to mention reams of evidence from decades of privatizations around the world, suggests this belief is false. 

See: Prisons Run by C.E.O.s? Privatization Under Trump Could Carry a Heavy Price, by Eduardo Porter, January 10, 2017

The article tells us about how Trump expressed hopes to privatize prisons on the campaign trail:

"With prisons I do think we can do a lot of privatizations and private prisons," Mr. Trump said on the campaign trail last year. "It seems to work a lot better."

Privatized prisons is one of the investments that library-selling Trump-appointed Stephen Schwarzman has involved himself with.

A month ago the New York Times reported how stocks went up for private companies in the wake of Trump’s election: Trump's Win Gives Stocks in Private Prison Companies a Reprieve, By Jeff Sommer December 3, 2016.

So who is Jared Kushner?

“Jared Kushner is the man,” said none other than Stephen Schwarzman introducing him in December at the Times Square headquarters of Morgan Stanley to a crowed assembly of NYC’s most powerful business leaders there to discuss the results of the presidential election.  . .

. . . That's from the Andrew Rice New York Magazine cover story although the article never mentions either Kushner's or Schwarzman's respective and integral involvements in the Donnell Library sale.  Similarly, although the Mr. Rice's New York Magazine article several times mentions Kuschner's purchase of 666 Fifth Avenue, his family real estate business's "flagship" building where Kuschner and his parents now have their offices, and although it goes into fair detail describing many aspects of that real estate purchase and its importance to Kushner, it never mentions* how integrally the 666 transaction and all its economic were tangled up with Kushner's simultaneous involvement with the sale of the adjacent Donnell.

(* It does however have a quick mention of Kushner in relation to the Robin Hood Foundation.)