As The Brooklyn Public Library Holds Gala At The Barclays Arena Honoring Nets And Barclay’s Arena, Citizens Defending Libraries Is There With A Message: End Faux Philanthropy; Take Less And Don’t Sell Our libraries!

The date, May 22nd, finally came and the Brooklyn Brooklyn Public Library held it’s 2019 annual gala at the Barclays basketball arena, of all places, honoring the nets basketball team and the Barclay’s arena itself.

. . .   “Of all places” has several implications.  A weird place to hold the gala?  Yes, but weirder if you know that BPL president Linda Johnson has shacked up (in a Brooklyn Bridge Park apartment) with real estate developer and mega-subsidy collector Bruce Ratner who created the arena as part of the ill-famed Atlantic Yards eminent domain project.   And that weirdness grows more ominous when you realize all the connections that exist between the real estate industry, Mr. Ratner’s Forest City Ratner development company in particular, and the sale and shrinkage of libraries, the elimination of books and the deprofessionalization of librarians.

That weird ominousness continues when you consider how the BPL now likes to focus on “partnering” its public, supposedly democratic commons with private corporate interests such as the Nets and the Prokhorov/Ratner arena.  That, in fact was something that the BPL’s press release made a point about.

Sometimes you just gotta be there- Citizens Defending Libraries was outside the gala leafleting with a message as gala attendees arrived.

Our message which we chanted was “Put a stake in faux philanthropy: Take less and don’t sell our libraries!”   We also sang our library don't sell our libraries song written for us by Judy Gorman.  We displayed this visual:

Admittedly, our chant about eliminating “faux philanthropy” and “taking less” instead of selling libraries was borrowing from the spirit of Anand Giridharadas, author of  “The Elite Charade of Changing the World” (we've written about him before), who has said that “giving has become the wingman of taking. Generosity has become the wingman of injustice. Changing the world has become the wingman of rigging the system.”

Upon hearing our chant one of the developers entering the arena came over to joke with us: “How about if I want to buy a library?”  David Kramer, whose Hudson Companies is replacing the downtown Heights central destination library with a luxury tower in a shrink-and-sink real estate deal, was one of the attendees. Although often quipful himself, Kramer was not the fellow who offered this clever quip.

This is the flyer we handed out to those entering plus to some passersby:

Here is the text.

Spending Public Library Money To Partner and Party With Private Real Estate Interests Destroying Our Libraries?

 NYC Public Libraries Are Mostly Public Tax Dollar Funded– And The BPL Is Partnering & Partying With Private Interests, Honoring Real Estates Interests Dismantling Libraries?

Our libraries should be a civic commons for public discourse and learning.  Instead, the mantra afoot with our library officials is to “partner” with, advertise, and undeservedly burnish commercial corporate brands and the reputations of companies unraveling our democracy, companies involved in privatizing our public assets and turning our libraries into real estate deals that eliminate the  books, librarians and libraries the public has invested in.   

NY Times columnist Jim Dwyer wrote that NYC libraries “have more users than major professional sports, performing arts, museums, gardens and zoos - combined,” but the city diverted its funds instead into subsidies for the very controversial private Ratner/Prokhorov “Barclays” arena with:

at least $464 million to build new baseball stadiums . .  and $156 million for the Barclays Center. That's $620 million for just those three sports arenas - a sum more than one-third greater than the $453 million that the city committed for capital improvements to the its 206 branch libraries and four research centers, which serve roughly seven times as many people a year as attend baseball games. ( . . the teams are getting an additional $680 million in subsidies spread over 40 years.)

Our presidential-candidate mayor underfunds libraries as an excuse to sell them while the BPL holds a gala to honor the Barclays Center and the Brooklyn Nets, brought to us by subsidy-collection meister Bruce Ratner?  It’s insane and absurd: BPL president Linda Johnson said turning libraries into real estate deals was her biggest priority. Topping the list: Two libraries next to Ratner property, including Brooklyn’s second biggest library.  Ms. Johnson is now literally shacked up with Bruce Ratner.  The dots to be connected are myriad.  See:

The (Ugh) Upshot After Brooklyn Public Library President Linda Johnson Shacks Up With Bruce Ratner?: The BPL Will Hold Gala On May 22nd Honoring The Ratner Barclays Center And Nets!

It Gets Personal, But This Gossip Is, In Fact, Real News About The Business of Selling Libraries- Two From That Constellation of Library-Selling Stars Hook Up As A Couple: Bruce Ratner and Brooklyn Library President Linda Johnson– Guess Where?

Sign our petition on the web: Citizens Defending Libraries

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Note that the two Citizens Defending Libraries posts above contain a ton of information about the almost unbelievable number of dots that connect when it some to library real estate sales, Linda Johnson, her shackmate Bruce Ratner, Forest City Ratner and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation board similarly pushing for development there.   

The BPL issued a press release that day:  Brooklyn Public Library Honors Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center ..  [plus a few more]

This is some of what it said (emphasis supplied):

Nearly 500 supporters gathered at Barclays Center last night to raise funds for Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) and to recognize Brooklyn’s leaders in business, sports and literature.

“In addition to raising funds for our collections and services, the gala provides Brooklyn Public Library the opportunity to recognize organizations and individuals emblematic of Brooklyn’s innovative and creative spirit,” said Linda E. Johnson, Brooklyn Public Library President and CEO.

“The Barclays Center and Brooklyn Nets have inspired the borough with the power of sports, and in the process supported the Library and local community-based organizations. We are delighted to honor all of their accomplishments.”

* * * *

BSE CEO Brett Yormark—who oversees the business enterprise that manages and controls the Brooklyn Nets, Barclays Center and other sports and entertainment venues—accepted the award on behalf of the Barclays Center. In his remarks, he announced a special initiative to provide two free tickets to a Barclays Center event to every child who completes Brooklyn Public Library’s summer reading challenge.

“We are honored to be recognized by the Brooklyn Public Library, one of our borough’s pre-eminent cultural institutions,” said Yormark. “Hosting the Gala aligns perfectly with Barclays Center’s mission of bolstering other key Brooklyn organizations and we are proud to continue that support by partnering on the summer reading challenge.”

Opened in 2012, Barclays Center hosts an extensive variety of events, including the Brooklyn Nets, premier concerts, major professional boxing cards, top college basketball, family shows and the New York Islanders. The Nets relocated from New Jersey upon the opening of the arena, and have reached the postseason four times since moving to the borough. In all of its community efforts, BSE Global aims to inspire lives through the spirit and the power of sports and entertainment.

* * *

Furthermore, the Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center have partnered with Brooklyn Public Library on a number of literacy initiatives including Team Up To Read, a program to support children ages 5 to 9 as they work to become strong readers.

* * * *

Special guests included Brooklyn Borough President Eric L. Adams . . .

* * * *
Baratunde Thurston, a trustee of Brooklyn Public Library and Emmy-nominated futurist comedian, writer and cultural critic, served as host for the evening. Thurston helped re-launch The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. . .

(An aside: Does it seem that the Daily Show has gotten increasing flat and corporate in its messages recently?)

As for the "nearly 500 supporters," that's also what the BPL told the police, but our own count was far below that.  We had an idea of the number based on the number of flyers we handed out to those who arrived plus a good sense of the high proportion of people taking them.  Maybe nearly "nearly 500" is the number of people for whom tickets had been bought, rather than people who actually showed up?

It was amazing how many of the people who showed up didn't know about the library sales or dismantlement.   One of the attendees walked over to specifically thank us for handing out the flyer.  At least of the police officers on duty for the even was also very thankful to learn about much that he said he didn't know.

There seems to have been virtually no coverage of the gala.  The BPL, itself, put up pictures here:

Join the crowd?

On the right it's Bruce Ratner

Ratner girlfriend BPL president Linda Johnson, glad to have her arms around two local politicians who want to become mayor, City Councilman Corey Johnson on left, and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams on right.  Borough President Adams has been a regular attending BPL galas.

Early September 2015: Borough President Adams ponders over 2000+ signed and individualized petitions opposing the sale of the second biggest library in Brooklyn that were collected by Citizens Defending Libraries in August.  The petitions impressed him, and he surprised the real estate industry by refusing to approve the deal selling the library that had been brought to him.  After the City Planning Commission and the City Council ignored his opposition, Borough President Adams eventually fell in line behind everyone else giving a last approval of the shrink-and-sink sale that converted the library site to a luxury tower project. 

Here is a link to must read from National Notice how on issue after major issue, a robust system of NYC libraries being an excellent example, elected officials, succumbing to the influence of money  are not giving the public what it wants and could easily have (plus how the corporate press is complicit):

Everybody’s Realizing It Now: The Political Establishment Is Not Willing To Give The Public The Things The Vast Majority Of Americans Want And That We Could Easily Have, May 11, 2019.

Outside the gala we took some of our own photos.

A guest of honor, Bruce Ratner, the BPL president's Brooklyn Bridge Park development shackmate, arrives.

David Giles who now works for the BPL after writing to endorse library sales working at the Center for an Urban Future

Library trustee and Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation board member Hank Gutman.

In addition to our own posts, there was pre-coverage of the event by Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report:   Ball for Brooklyn: Barclays Center site of Brooklyn library gala, where arena is honored; Bruce Ratner and BPL's Linda Johnson buy a Pierhouse condo, May 03, 2019.

Here is some of what Mr. Oder wrote:

It's unsurprising that the library, like the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Children's Museum [which itself is involved with a BPL library real estate deal] and the Brooklyn Historical Society, would enmesh itself with a major company. Still, it remains unfortunate that such nonprofit institutions, which are supposed to act in the public interest, ally themselves with big-money sponsors whose interests are not necessarily in sync.

* * *

I don't think--I don't like to think--that the need to keep warm relations with potential sponsors affects Brooklyn Public Library programming decisions or materials selection.

Let's see. The library, during the height of the project controversy (and before Johnson's time), faced charges of censorship for culling certain politically charged pieces of art when re-mounting an art exhibit called Footprints. (It was unwise caution, but I thought other omissions were even more meaningful.)

About library real estate deals (which have been in the works since about 2004 or earlier, at first mostly in secret) Mr. Oder said:

The devil is in the deal, and the details: clearly the New York Public Library's Donnell Library deal in Manhattan was a disaster. I'm reserving judgment on the Brooklyn Public Library's Brooklyn Heights Branch.

As comments to Mr. Oder’s article Citizens Defending Libraries co-founder Michael D. D. White wrote:

One might reserve judgement about the sale of the central downtown Heights library, a central destination library that was the second biggest in Brooklyn and hope that it will be a good deal for library patrons in the end, but that hope must factor in what we know now:

It will no longer be a Business Library.
It will no longer be a Career Library.
It will no longer be an Education Library.
It will no longer be a federal depository library.
It was all of these things until recently.
It will be approximately 40% the previous size.
The proportion of space the public visits will be pushed underground: Previously there was almost 38,000 square feet of space above ground (plus two underground stories kept books at the ready). The new library will have just 15,000 square feet above ground. [More of the comment at the site.]

And:

For those interested in the Curriculum Vitae for BPL president and Ratner apartment mate Linda Johnson, her work as an environmental lawyer (on the wrong side) and her “rise” via her father’s company, we have it posted here:

Brooklyn Public Library Trustees- Identified + Biographical and Other Information Supplied.

A few days after the gala, BPL trustee (also Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation board member) Hank Gutman, dressed for tennis out side the Brooklyn Casino on Montague Street, ran into CDL co-founder Michael D. D. White.  Gutman attended the gala, while White was outside with other leafleting library defenders.  Gutman told White that White should have come to gala and `why not contribute to the library to do so.'  He asked White why White wasn't busy donating to the library--  But that sort of missed the basic point of the flyer that was handed out that evening, that we the taxpayers do pay for our libraries, that "NYC Public Libraries Are Mostly Public Tax Dollar Funded," and that when taxpayer money is diverted into huge subsidies for projects like the private Barclays arena and then the BPL is induced to use our publicly funded libraries to advertise that private arena, it's not charity, and our public tax dollars are being stolen to support private interests.

There is now available a brand new Project Censored Radio Show radio interview with CDL co-founder Michael D. D. White that provides, in one-half hour, a superb up-to-date comprehensive overview about what is going on with respect to the dismantlement of NYC libraries and issues related thereto.

(PS: To catch up with several other recent commentaries about the thereat to the public commons and democracy posed by "philanthropic" wealth that puts this event in a larger context see: A Flourish of Stories About So-Called Philanthropy Being Used As A Guise For Diminishing The Public Commons– That Includes Libraries.)