Defending The Libraries At the Brooklyn Book Festival: Don’t Let Eric Klinenberg Neuter The Narrative

Eric Klinenberg headed in to tell librarians how to

Our Library Defense team was out at this year Brooklyn Book Festival collecting many pages of new petition signatures.  It also where we spotted our favorite ringer, author Eric Klinenberg delivering a deceptive message, an address to New York City Librarians telling them how to defend NYC libraries and what is at stake in terms of their survival.

We were outside as people, including Mr. Klinenberg, entered handing out this flyer with critical information and our point of view:

The flyer read:

DEFEND OUR LIBRARIES! . . . YES, THE RIGHT WAY
    Don’t Let Eric Klinenberg Neuter The Narrative

  Eric Klinenberg was solicited to write about libraries (a nice `official’ story?) and the “defense” that libraries need, by the library-sale-promoting Revson Foundation. That’s the same Revson Foundation that has promoted the so-called “re-envisioning” of libraries, which has been accompanying a substantial dismantlement of NYC libraries with elimination and off-siting of books, and a  deprofessionalization of librarians.    

Mr. Klinenberg says that although he spent a year doing extensive research in New York about libraries to write his book he never heard of Citizens Defending Libraries, never heard of The Committee to Save The New York Public Library, or our actions to oppose and defeat the NYPL Central Library Plan, and apparently he never heard about selling libraries to turn them into real estate deals, the elimination of books or the commercialization of the libraries.  Nonetheless, he adopted a host of our major op-ed talking points retreading them as his own, but with key points about defending our NYC libraries oddly and conspicuously omitted.

The difference between Mr. Klinenberg’s narrative and ours?  We talk about:

•    Shrink-and-sink library sale deals like the sale of the Donnell Library and the sale of the second biggest library in Brooklyn, the downtown Heights Business, Career, Education and Federal Depository Library.
•    Sale and elimination of SIBL, NYC’s central science library (This still new library is being turned into a comic book museum).
•    The shrinkage and elimination of books at the 42nd Street Central Reference Library and the Mid-Manhattan library (renamed “SNFL”).
•    The hand off of library space as “underutilized” to the political “Spaceworks” real estate entity.
•    The huge expense to the public of such plunderings.
•    Commercialization of the libraries, including with privatizing “partnerships,” including the NYPL and Brooklyn central libraries, including shorter hours for users that facilitate society weddings–*
•    The pretextual underfunding of libraries to facilitate the above
•    Why pushing the library using public to less preferred digital books the internet for their information is problematic.

(*This week our community protests caused the NYPL to stop its “reputational laundering” grant of 42nd Street public library space to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (“MBS”), responsible for the Yemen War and reputedly also for the dismemberment killing of Jamal Khashoggi.  MBS was going to teach young people about “reputation management.”)

Sign our petition on the web: Citizens Defending Libraries 

Here is more about the Book Festival and press freedom

Look Who’s All On The Same Brooklyn Book Festival Panel This Week Discussing U.S. Press Freedom!: Jim Acosta, Suzanne Nossel, and Joy Reid– All of Whom Have Very Astute Critics As To Whether They Actually Support Press Freedom

Real library defenders were there to great Klinenberg

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!

Do we think, under the circumstances of a certain `coupling,' that the BPL's "Ball For Brooklyn" Gala site where the library honors Bruce Ratner's arena is just a little cartoonish in its absurdity?  We took a try at making it more so.

Ugh, Ugh and double-ugh!  It’s ugly indeed! . . .

No, you can’t make this stuff up!: It’s really just days, barely a few weeks since we reported about how Bruce Ratner and Brooklyn Public Library President Linda Johnson were shacking up (See: 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?).

When we passed on the news from the real estate industry reporting website The Real Deal we noted that the shacking-up shack was the view-impairing Pierhouse development in Brooklyn Bridge Park at 130 Furman Street. . .  

And that then let us go on to explicate with an extensive eight (count ‘em, eight) bullet points connecting all sorts of dots with respect to how the nesting together of these two real estate minded adversaries of our libraries related in so many ways to the selling off of our libraries and the abuse of our library system and public assets. . .

. . . It’s a real estate story, a library selling story, and it’s an Atlantic Yards (Pacific Park) story, and . . .

. . .  OMG, it didn’t take long, but we’ll now have to lengthen our dot-connecting bullet point list item with another significant connection!  Consider for yourself if this one is just too embarrassing to be believed?. . .

At Tuesday’s February 26th Brooklyn Public Library Trustees meeting as BPL president Linda Johnson smiled at her board, NYPL trustee Michael Liburd* told his assembled fellows that on Wednesday, May 22nd the BPL would hold its annual fund-raising gala at the Bruce Ratner developed Barclays Center and that “one of the reasons” for locating the gala at the Barclays Center “is that we are honoring the Barclays Center and the Brooklyn Nets.”  Liburd’s mention of the gala being held at the Barclays Center was greeted with some outbursts of delighted laughter.   Then someone at the table jumped in to call attention to the cleverness of how this library fundraiser was named the “Ball for Brooklyn” with the emphasis on the “Ball.” . . . Yes, indeed that’s exactly how the gala is being promoted–  Top of the list before and mention of cocktails or dinner is “Honoring: Barclays Center & Brooklyn Nets.”

Isn't that a nice gift for BPL prez Linda Johnson to be giving her boyfriend Bruce?

(* Liburd has pushed real estate development as head of Community Board 9's Land Use Committee.)

Joining the club to attend the “Gala” is apt to cause nose bleeds: With “limited Availability” the BPL is posting some pricey positions for attendees to opt into: “Lead Sponsorship” at $100,000, “Principal Sponsorship” at $500,000, “Visionary Sponsorship” at $25,000, “Contributor Sponsorship” at $10,000.  Liburd said that working with the CEO of the Barclays Center there was motivation for the Ratner/Prokhorov Center to make the event “even more financially successful than previously.”  And do contributors get special consideration if afterwards they want to “bid” on libraries that go up for sale?

Liburd waived a page of names distributed to the trustees asking them to hit up a bunch of monied so-and-sos for gala contributions.  The list included thirteen designated individuals targeted from the “Blackstone Charitable Foundation.”  Of course when it comes to libraries and turning them into real estate deals the name of Stephen A. Schwarzman’s “Blackstone” is already exceedingly familiar.    
Conferring Awards to Rewrite History -or- Rewriting History to Confer Awards– How Taking Over Certain Organizations Factors In (And Affect The Course of Future Events)

This is not the first BPL “partnering” to promote the Forest City Ratner brand, including the Nets and Barclays.  Our previously provided bullet point list already mentioned the BPL veering into such promotions for Ratner–  it was, in fact, one of the first things thought of when the BPL and Linda Johnson were thinking about as examples of the kind of private “partnering” the BPL could do.  The library, as the BPL trustees are aware, has a strong brand that somewhat automatically enlists public approval.  With partnering some of that approval can be expected to `rub off’. . . in both senses of that phrase.

As for “awards” and “honoring,” this is also not the first time that what should be a public commons asset like the library has been commandeered to lend the Ratner organization a faux burnishing of its reputation that it does not deserve.

In April of 2008, a problematically comprised and compromised Brooklyn Museum board of trustees taking Ratner money led straight to, as reported in Norman Oder’s Atlantic Yards Report:

A protest organized by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn in response to the Brooklyn Museum's honoring of Bruce Ratner draws an angry (and creative) crowd, with chants of "Shame on you" and signs like "Dung Deal." Borough President Marty Markowitz's wife Jamie takes a few too many pieces of swag. Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris [who was also in change of the launch of the Bloomberg’s initiation of efforts to turn libraries into rel estate], a key advisor to Mayor Mike Bloomberg on charitable issues, is also present, a sign--as became clearer during the mayor's effort to override term limits--of the intertwining of charity and politics.

The Brooklyn Museum board acted to “honor” Ratner just as essential city approvals hung in the balance for Ratner’s huge Atlantic Yards mega-monopoly project of which the Barclays Center was a conspicuous part.  No doubt it was hoped that the “honoring” would help push the mega-project through over community objection (and even get it more taxpayer subsidy) despite what was then the increasingly bad reputation of the mega-project.   

One for instance of how badly regarded the Ratner megadevelopment was as it lumbered toward its eventual first groundbreaking was Kent Barwick, president of the Municipal Arts Society, calling the development “the poster child for what goes wrong when process is ignored. . . a poorly designed project that has polarized the community and that squanders both opportunity and public trust.”
But criticism like that can be naturalized if you commandeer the criticizer.

As Citizens Defending Libraries co-founder Michael D. D. White wrote in Noticing New York

The Municipal Art Society was once thought of as representing the public and standing up to developers in the face of abusive development.  . . .   Not so long ago, MAS had scores of forums about development in the city invoking the name and principles of Jane Jacobs in which, while the moderators kept civil order, the Atlantic Yards mega-monopoly was excoriated by expert panelists and attending public alike, for a zillion villainous transgressions against the public interest.
  
More recently, after an orchestrated reconstituting of the board, essentially, as it was disclosed to me, happening as something of a coup, MAS has reversed itself to the extent that many no longer regard it as representing the public.  This new version of MAS has given not one, but two, awards the to the Atlantic Yards mega-development, essentially praising Forest City Ratner for the kind of neighborhood destruction that was previously decried, an absurdity that’s siren for satire, essentially an award for “preserving a swath of Prospect Heights by tearing it down to build the Ratner Prokhorov Barclays arena while letting the rest of the destroyed neighborhood acreage lie fallow for a few decades.”   (See: Monday, June 16, 2014, Ratner, Gilmartin & the MAS Onassis Medal: selective memory, glitzy gala, and enduring dismay.)

(See: Is Forest City Ratner, As Victor, Writing Our History?- WNYC's Press Release on Appointing Forest City Ratner's MaryAnne Gilmartin to Its Board of Trustees, November 16, 2014,)

White, wrote there about how MAS events now reportedly can degenerate to “almost unbelievably depressing pro-development spectacle.”  Indeed, more recently, in another Noticing New York article, White wrote about MAS gathering unsuspecting listeners to hear Linda Johnson extol her vision of turning libraries into real estate deals in a supportive, noncritical environment.  See:  Municipal Art Society, Once Venerable, Becomes Platform For Disseminating Misinformation Promoting Development, In this Case Backing Library Sales and Shrinkage, June 15, 2015.
   
Norman Oder, who has written voluminously and extensively focusing on Atlantic Yards (renamed Pacific Park as a probable ruse to escape its history of criticism) has, after assiduous study, boiled things down to a synthesis that Atlantic Yards has always relied upon a “culture of cheating.”   One of the supreme cheats the cheater can employ is to rewrite history. 

At the 2008 demonstration outside the Brooklyn Museum when the Museum was “honoring” Bruce Ratner, protesters were sharing and Michael D. D. White was reading “quotes through the ages about `honor’” such as Thomas Jefferson’s “Nobody can acquire honor by doing what is wrong.”  Real “honor” certainly cannot be acquired that way, but the wind that blows against that quote are the many variations of quotes about how “history is written by the victors,” which means that the verisimilitude of honor can be acquired that way, or to use a quote often attributed to Napoleon, “history is a pack of lies agreed upon” that can confer such verisimilitude.
  
Winston Churchill (“Winnie” to a Brit we know who remembers him from living through the WWII era), albeit, definitely had his commendable achievements. However, Churchill said that “history will be kind to me because I intend to write it.”  Indeed, because he actually did write it (with very appreciable help from the British taxpayers), and in the process his ruthless past apparently got quite forgotten.

When White was writing about the about face of the Atlantic Yards critique that occurred when the MAS board was taken over partly for that purpose, he was also writing about how radio station WNYC issued a history-falsifying press release when appointing Forest City Ratner  Chief Executive Officer MaryAnne Gilmartin to its board of trustees.  It was an inappropriate thing for WNYC to do. WNYC is another public commons and public trust that should be serving the public.

The Brooklyn Museum, The Municipal Art Society, The WNYC Public Radio Station, The Brooklyn Public Library: These are all organizations that are supposed to be serving the public with the goal of being a conduit of information free of their own manufactured bias.  We think of our libraries of repositories where we safely entrust with all our history.  Whatever the reason, personal relationship between BPL president Linda Johnson and Bruce Ratner, or not, it is frightening when the library is an organization enlisted to rewrite history.  Furthermore, the BPL’s obsession with being in the thrall of huge private contributions from those with conflicts of interest is likewise scary in a compounding way.

The effect of rewriting history?  “Whoever controls the past controls the future,” wrote George Orwell in “1984.”  It’s similar to another quote that’s various attributed to ancient the ancient and wise: “Those who tell the stories also rule the society.”  Or, if we adapt the words of George Santayana: Those who are able to rewrite history so that we forget the past can condemn us to suffer the repetition of their misdeeds.

As for those who would like a crack at repeating their misdeeds, the urgency of seizing the pen to rewrite history is directly related to how unflattering a truthful telling of history is.  As the BPL seeks to confer its `honors,’ there is, another story, a very different narrative to be related.  The so-called `success’ of the Barclays Center is highly disputable as far the arena itself is concerned, and Atlantic Yards (aka “Pacific Park”) of which that arena is an integral part is also a continuing embarrassment in multiple ways.

Intimately familiar with its myriad details, journalist Neil deMause has, with reasons he lays out, called the arena “an epic train wreck.”  The bonds issued to finance the Barclays Center (even after a refinancing to reduce financial stress) are not doing well becoming “nearly junk”: The rating agencies have been threatening to lower their ratings (“just barely within `investment grade’ and above junk, but with a negative outlook, indicating that the rating was unstable.)  The original overall project presentations touted a ten-year course to completion in 2003, but quite recently it’s been admitted that it may take till 2035 to complete it even while questions are being deflected about whether it will take even longer than that.  In 2009 and Marisa Lago, then head of the state’s ESDC agency overseeing the project indicated it could take “decades” or 40 years to complete.

Meanwhile, the mega-monopoly mega-project has suffered extremely embarrassing and delaying cost overruns getting it into litigation.  The promise of the so-called affordable units has turned out to be deceptive and those units will be extra long in coming.  Another of the highly touted reasons for giving the project to Ratner was to close the gash and knit the neighborhood streets back together by building over the open pit rail yards at that location– But addressing that goal, which should have been a priority, will now be postponed until the tail end to be done only when the project is finally reaching its finish line.  For this mess of pottage other recently developed buildings and what was more truly affordable existing housing (not over the rail yard) were torn down and developers competing with Ratner were chased away and shut out. 

Simultaneously At The NYPL “Billionaire Graffiti.”

While the BPL is lending its we-are-a-library halo to supply a good reputation to Linda Johnson’s boyfriend’s project, the NYPL is similarly willing to invert things and put its own we-are-a-library halo to work to improve the reputation of two of the main people, trustees on its board, Stephen A. Shwarzman and Marshall Rose, associated with the library-shrinking, library-selling, book-eliminating Central Library Plan.   The NYPL had to officially abandon the reviled plan, but the latest set of alterations at the 42nd Street Central Reference Library involve putting the name of Stephen A. Schwarzman, the piratical plutocrat on the library building in yet one more place.  This is the man who, aside from driving library plundering plans ahead has said the poor should pay more taxes and the loopholes that allow him to pay especially low taxes compared to the rest of us need to be protected.  Along with this, an outdoor plaza will suffer an ostentatious bedecking with the name of real estate mogul Marshall Rose.  People are calling it “Billionaire Graffiti.”

Entrusting Our History And Narratives To The Current Library Administration Officials And Boards

Other things happened at the BPL trustees meeting.  It was announced that rather than just be repository of books and content, the BPL is going into content production; it will start creating its own podcasts (“Borrowed”).   What stories will ultimately be told as the content is generated by administrators and trustees eager to “honor” Mr. Ratner?  At a recent NYPL meeting the NYPL trustees were told that they too would be going into content production by partnering with HBO.
               
Ms. Johnson made it a point to mention and promote to the trustees Eric Klinenberg’s recent book “Palaces for the People,” which according to the acknowledgments in Mr. Klinenberg was created by him after he was approached by the Revson Foundation which has funded all sorts of initiatives in connection with promoting the sale of libraries.  And the Revson Foundation works closely with those at the library like Ms. Johnson so one could think of this as another example of the BPL getting involved with content production. Ms. Johnson advised the trustees that the first chapter of Klinenberg’s book was about the New Lots Avenue Library (665 New Lots Ave. at Barbey St), which she advised them was being targeted for a `complete branch renovation’ because it is in the “worst shape” of any library in the system needing one.  We will have to be alert for what is in store for the library.

The BPL trustees are also, it turns out, working at their level on directing people about what they should read.  Coming back to our collection of connect-the-dots bullet points when we first found out that Linda Johnson and Bruce Ratner were shacking up together, BPL trustee Hank Gutman was at the meeting.  Gutman, like Johnson and Ratner also (under somewhat scandalous circumstances) also has an apartment in the view-impairing Pierhouse development in Brooklyn Bridge Park at 130 Furman Street.  Gutman is the head of the BPL’s new “Digital Strategy Committee.”  (It includes members besides the trustees.)  Gutman said that one of the things the committee was working on in terms of new digital technology was to refer library users to books “they should be reading” (including “books they are perhaps unaware of”), but he said it would be done in by “privacy respecting, non-intrusive means.”  Gutman said that almost the entirety of the committee’s last meeting was spent talking about “the nudge” project, which he said was directed to encouraging people in a more friendly way to return books to the library.

Do we want a man like Gutman working on digital technology that steers what gets read when people come into their libraries?  Part of the connect-the-dots the dots bullet points is that Gutman not only lives in the same Brooklyn Bridge Park building as Ratner and Johnson, but that he is also on the board of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation and that there is a weird amount of overlap between the BPL board and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation board.  Thus Gutman winds up pushing development by selling off libraries by being on the BPL board as well as pushing development in Brooklyn Bridge Park by being on that board.

Tuesday morning, the day of trustees meeting, was also the day of a ribbon cutting for one of the housing developments in Brooklyn Bridge Park.  Before the meeting Gutman, with a certain amount of haughty disdain, carefully explained to one of the BPL employees why the community should not have been opposing development in the park.  He said that his Brooklyn Heights neighbors were opposing the development in Brooklyn Bridge Park because it involved “low income” units and that his neighbors didn’t want to live with such people of a different class.  It was probably true that, if you searched, you might have been able to find some upper class Brooklyn Heights residents who didn’t want to see lower income subsidized units in the neighborhood, but Gutman’s was hardly, we believe, an accurate overall representation of why more development in the park has been widely opposed by the community.  Gutman’s tended explanation is probably better thought of as another eager try at rewriting of history.  Should we trust Mr. Gutman to steer library users to the books they “should read”?

Gutman favored the sale of the BPL’s Business, Career and Education Library, a central destination and federal depository library in Brooklyn’s downtown center that was the BPL’s second biggest library, newly renovated, expanded and completely upgraded.  It was a shrink-and-sink deal, jettisoning books and eliminating most of the library’s previous functions.  The luxury tower at the site replacing the library is now taller than all the neighboring buildings.  (It’s tall enough to be seen now from the Grand Army Plaza central library where the trustees were meeting.) Linda Johnson told her board of the trustees that they were still working on* the design for the much smaller, more underground, much more bookless library that is to be in the luxury tower.  She said that as they did so they also wanted to please those who had an “old time version” of what a library should be.

 A new, very big investment for the BPL, a $650,000 media buy to “change the way that people think about BPL.” _picture we took of the presentation at the meeting,

More about how people should think of libraries?–  also big news from the meeting: In a new initiative, the BPL will be launching a $650,000 high profile media buy to sell the BPL brand with the number one purpose to “change the way that people think about BPL.”

(* The question has always been how much of an afterthought to the developer’s plans the “replacement” library will be.  The library space is already configured as an awkward horseshoe shape around space the developer is preemptively devoting to the luxury tower’s use. Another library space in a luxury tower that is turning out to be very much an afterthought about what is supposed to go into a luxury tower is the library space along with “arts space” that is supposed to go into the Walentas, Two Trees development Ashland Place tower “Southside project” near the Brooklyn Academy of Music where the space is not being delivered because the city– and the library– don’t know what the deal is that they cut with the building’s developer when it acquired the land and the developer got special exemptions and approvals to build bigger based on providing library and cultural space within the building.  The whole thing was already a scandal because the developer when “bidding” was actually supposed to be getting from the Bloomberg administration the ability to build a parking garage, not a luxury tower.  That changed and then, further along the way a deal was altered again for a bigger building with more luxury apartments if 15,000 square feet was provided for libraries. More recently, BPL spokesperson David Walloch said there was only going to be 1,500 square feet of library space.  What is not stalled?: The Whole Foods and the Apple Store have already opened in the building.

At the trustees meeting the problems with the non-delivery of space were mentioned and the trustees were told that the BPL would “just wait around till that gets resolved.”  BPL trustee Jordan Barowitz from the Durst Development organization who heads the capital projects committee in charge of the BPL’s real estate development said the project was “on hold” while the city and the developer “resolved their differences.”  He said he didn’t know “exactly what the differences were,” but “it was not surprising” there was a difference between the city and developer.  Any guesses whether the Walentases will come to the May 22nd the "Brooklyn Ball" gala honoring the Ratner arena?)

(Addendum: What to know what the previous BPL Trustees meeting in December was like?– It too taunted ironic response in a spectacular way.  See: Atop Empty Bookshelves of The Flatbush Library, Brooklyn Public Library Trustees Meet Displaying Holiday Spirit As They Fuss Over Expensively Tiny Library Space.)

Michael Kimmelman’s Unfortunate Suggestion That Amazon Invest In NYC’s Public libraries (per Eric Klinenberg)- See: “Amazon’s HQ2 Will Benefit From New York City. But What Does New York Get?”

There are a lot of people alarmed and/or already woeful about the announcement of the imminent arrival of an Amazon headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, even people who have not fully thought through everything there may be to get alarmed about in connection with the book industry-disrupting and imagination-defying growth of Amazon.*  One of those people quickest out of the starting gate with such opinions, is New York Times architect critic Michael Kimmelman.  See: Amazon’s HQ2 Will Benefit From New York City. But What Does New York Get?

(* See: National Notice- Interesting to Think That it All Began With BOOKS? Except That Amazon and World’s Wealthiest Man (As We Know Jeff Bezos Today) Didn’t Exactly Begin That Way. . . )

The arrival of Amazon is a huge topic so people will have to do a lot of thinking about it and it is too much to expect that everyone is going to get all their best thoughts together quickly.  This time, Kimmelman, who has done some good work in the past, has some worthwhile observations, but he also falters somewhat unfortunately with respect to his key recommendation.
                               
On the perspicacious side, Kimmelman wonders how well a huge tech company like Amazon will fit in in New York City:

    . . .  the tech industry isn’t culturally urban. Its insularity, secrecy, its bedrock libertarianism and algorithmic notions about progress, land use and corporate independence have never easily meshed with the slow, open-society, regulatory-heavy, greater-good mission that defines city living. Disruption is a virtue and instrument of efficiency in tech circles. But it isn’t repetitiously welcome where protections and a focus on collective welfare remain abiding democratic ideals.

As the title of Kimmelman’s essay implies and as he, in his essay, then directly states, for Kimmelman the, “The question for city residents is what these companies give back.”

That’s hardly the only question, but Kimmelman presents one particularly unfortunate suggested answer.  He suggests that Amazon make “self-interested” investments in NYC public libraries per the thinking of “Eric Klinenberg”:

In turn, Amazon, which dominates the book market, could, up front, make self-interested commitments in local school programs and, as Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at New York University, advocates, in public libraries, our most vibrant, multipurpose community hubs.

In other words, Kimmelman clearly sounds as if he is dangerously suggesting that Amazon engage in exactly the kind of public/private partnerships that library administration officials repetitiously crow that they are eager to promote now-a-days, projects that unfortunately commercialize the libraries and are all the more and especially dangerous when the private corporation `partners’ in them are acting `self-interestedly’ . .

Where do we start?  Do we start by saying Amazon, the great disruptor, has already been “partnering” with NYC library administration officials to promote more reading of digital books (in the subways)?  Do we wonder at the fact that Kimmelman, bypassing others (for instance John E. Buschman and Ed D'Angelo), is constituting Eric Klinenberg, “a sociologist at New York University,” as the new automatic go-to expert on what is desirable with respect to public investment in libraries after Klinenberg’s just publishing a book that he just recently put together in short order as the result of his being approached for a “collaborative project” on NYC libraries by the Revson Foundation?—  While Mr. Klinenberg describes the Revson Foundation as a “fierce champion of public libraries,” the foundation can probably more accurately be described as deeply involved in promoting (with behind-the-scenes funding) the current notion of selling libraries and turning them into shrink-and-sink real estate deals, their book collections drastically reduced, the talents and contributions of librarians dramatically deemphasized.

Do we point out that what the Revson Foundation promotes as the new libraries of the 21st Century future is all tied in with the neo-liberal, capitalist, private-market orthodoxy that promotes public/private partnerships between libraries and benefactors like Amazon?  Do we point out how Amazon’s ethos of, and roots in, data collection and its ties to the military, going back and forward, is gratingly at odds with the tradition of libraries as the havens of privacy as free speech requires?  That's what's makes their acting `self-interestedly’ far more scary if they partner on library investments.*

(* Next we are bound to hear that Queens City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, who oversees libraries- and their sell-offs- and who has made himself initially visible opposing Amazon's arrival, will fold his opposition to Amazon when Amazon promises such library investments because Van Bramer doesn't believe that concerns about Booz Allen or surveillance in the libraries is real enough to worry about.)

Kimmelman once wrote a very important column of his own lambasting the NYPL's Central Library Plan following in the footsteps of Ada Louise Huxtable’s very last column, published just weeks before her death (Wall Street Journal: Undertaking Its Destruction, December 3, 2012), in which she railed against what they were doing to Manhattan’s central libraries and the elimination of books.  Mr. Kimmelman (New York Times: Critic’s Notebook- In Renderings for a Library Landmark, Stacks of Questions, January 29, 2013) likewise scorned how the “potential Alamo of engineering, architecture and finance would be irresponsible,” the result of “a not-uncommon phenomenon among cultural boards, a form of architectural Stockholm syndrome.”   We think he also got caught up with the fact that what was happening to the libraries, with its real estate deal underpinnings, was something very different from what was being touted.

When it comes to Amazon, however, Kimmelman seems to have some more catching up to do. . .

. . .  By the way, not too long ago, Forbes ran an op-ed arguing that Amazon should simply replace libraries with Amazon retail outlets–  “Amazon Should Replace Local Libraries to Save Taxpayers Money” (out of embarrassment Forbes quickly took the piece down): At least Kimmelman is not going so far as to make that exact same argument.

Authors Anand Giridharadas, Eric Klinenberg, Kristen Ghodsee, and Activist Blair Imani, On Panel at Brooklyn Book Festival Discuss, `How To Change The World’ (With Libraries and Social Infrastructure!) Plus Who NOT To Trust— When In Jumps Untrustworthy, Library-Selling Councilman Brad Lander!!

Brooklyn Book Festival "How Do We Change the World?" panel. Left to right, after moderator (and fellow author) Jessica Bruder: panelist authors Kristen Ghodsee, Eric Klinenberg, Blair Imani, and Anand Giridharadas

Sure you want to charge out and get started `changing the world’: You’re revved up because it sure seems the world could use a lot of changing these days!  But it is amazing how twisted things can get right at the outset and how insanely easy it is to trip up in trying to choose your allies. . .

Starting off the morning Sunday (it was the 16th) at the Brooklyn Book Festival was a panel of authors (two of whom we have written about already, Anand Giridharadas (Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World) and Eric Klinenberg (Palaces for the People: How To Build a More Equal and United Society*) and two of whom we have not yet written about, gender and communism scholar Kristen Ghodsee, (Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence) and activist Blair Imani (Modern HERstory: Stories of Women and Nonbinary People Rewriting History).

(* Mr. Klinenberg has both a British title for his book for U.K. release, “Palaces for the People: How To Build a More Equal and United Society,” and a United States Title, “Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life.”)

The panel's topic was: "How Do We Change the World?"

We wrote about Mr. Klinenberg because he wrote an op-ed derived from his new book about the importance of libraries as an example of how critically libraries represent the need for us to conserve and build our social infrastructure.  His op-ed sounded extraordinarily like it was cribbed directly from the web pages of Citizens Defending Libraries, including his assertion that one reason libraries are besieged these days is because those in power see them as “out of sync with the market logic that dominates our world” plus his rallying cry that libraries need “defending” because they are ties to our freedom and equality.

See: Eric Klinenberg in NY Times Op-ed calls for Defending Libraries Promoing His New Book- "Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life"

We wrote about Mr. Giridharadas because of his warning about who not to trust and more specifically his book’s admonitions that when the wealthy, all the “new philanthropists” who come out (to once again use Mr. Klinenberg’s phrase) infected by their “market logic that dominates our world” we should, indeed, stop to look their gift horses in the mouth— because the gifts they are presenting are likely to be more harmful than beneficial.

See: There’s Much You Should Not Trust When The Wealthy Give- Anand Giridharadas’ “Winners Take All- The Elite Charade of Changing the World” and David Callahan’s “The Givers: Wealth, Power and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age”

The panel discussion was in the Brooklyn Borough Hall Courtroom, the very same space where multiple “hearings” have been held about the sale of Brooklyn Libraries to turn those libraries into real estate deals, such as the shrink-and-sink sale that got rid of Brooklyn’s second biggest library, what was the Business, Career and Education Federal Depository Library, the central destination Brooklyn Heights Library in Downtown Brooklyn.   . .   BTW: The luxury condos in the tower replacing that library are just now coming to market.  See: As Condo Apartments Set Brooklyn Heights Sales Records (You Heard About Matt Damon’s $16.645 Million Penthouse?) Central Library Sold To Build (Now About To be Marketed) Luxury Condos Nets Mere Pittance.

Thus it was highly ironic in multiple ways that, before the panel even had a chance to commence, who should jump in but library-selling Brad Lander who previously grabbed the spotlight at so many of such hearings leading those who  champion and push for the selling of libraries in deals that will impoverish the public.  (For instance, see him in several clips here: Will Steve Levin Save the Brooklyn Heights Library?)

Brad Lander presenting himself as a progressive activist at the Brooklyn Book Festival's "How to Change The World."  The lectern is the same one where so many people have testified opposing the NYC library sales Mr. Lander promotes when he testifies.

Lander did a breathless double-time spiel associating himself with the `politics’ of ‘activism.’  Like every other knave these days who dresses up in fauxmanteau progressivism, Lander ventured forward in his “bonding” with the audience, starting with an all too usual and easy `I am anti-Trump pot-shot.’   Here are the Landerisms the audience had to sit through before the panel they came to hear got to talk:

I am so exited to come and listen to this panel- I don’t know about you, but I feel like my normal day is something like, you open Twitter and you’re like `Oh my god, what did Trump do today? . . .Who is going to be harmed by it?’  Then you see all this incredible activism taking place.  You think: `Wow!; people are really rising up in creative and new ways, and maybe there is a new world we could build that reflects people’s full selves!’ . . . What would it take to actually bring the change that we need?  I feel like we are in a moment when people have woken up for the need for really big change.  The question of how to bring it remains really, really challenging, so people are focused on just how big the inequalities are economically, but across so many lines of difference as well.  What would it look like to have real equality, real representation in our world, the climate crisis, weakness in our democracy.  But each of those challenges also presents a challenge for the kind of activism that we need to make that change, those very lines of division that general hopelessness about our institutions, they present those challenges: How are we going to make those changes? . . .

This is the same city councilman whom the library selling BPL president Linda Johnson and the library selling Jimmy Van Bramer both proclaimed to be  "very clever."

It gets worse, as we will come back to, during the Q&A that wrapped up the panel discussion, Mr. Klinenberg told the audience that those seeking to change the world (including apparently people wanting to defend and build libraries) should seek out Lander to help them, because they were not going to be able to do it alone.

In the same room, at the same lectern where Brad Lander pitched himself as a (library supporting?) activist, many members of the public testified against library sales Lander was promoting.

We were prepared, in fact we were on the very edge of our seat, trying to get called upon during the Q&A.  We wanted to ask a question about the degree of care with which we need to select our allies for activist change.  We were eager to ask this given the example of Mr. Lander’s usurpation of the opening moments with his self-promoting appeal, and also because of many cautions from Mr. Giridharadas during the session telling us to beware of how the wealthy use their money and foundations.  Giridharadas told us the wealthy try to always to be in the driver’s seat steering, or “changing change” so that change will never take off in a direction offensive to what they have in mind respecting continuing their self-enrichment; over and over again their goal is to just soften the abrasive edges of their self enrichment by appearing to be on the side of the public  — Ah well, we did not get called upon and therefore did not get to ask our question about how to decide who to trust before it was all over.

Here are some highlights of the discussion preceding the Q&A that pertain most interestingly to libraries:

    •    Mr. Klinenberg told the audience that “a week ago, I did an op-ed about libraries, public institutions, which for me are extraordinary a source of inspiration and are in neighborhoods that we live in . . . a place that deserves our resources, our attention, our love. . .”  (We should note that Mr. Klinenberg should have a certain amount of credibility dating a ways back- We previously wrote how Jane Jacobs, in her last book, admired Mr. Klinenberg’s work as a graduate student done a number of years ago.)

Anand Giridharadas

    •    Mr. Giridharadas sounded the alarm not to trust appearances or announced good intentions when the wealthy deploy their philanthropy.  His words sounded sharper than we’ve heard them before (we wrote more about this before):

       •    “We live in a day where the elites seem to really want to help, and yet this is by any reading of the numbers this is the most predatory elite we’ve had in America in one hundred years.  I became interested in how billionaires are helping us while screwing us at the same time. . . . Is the help what upholds their hoarding?”
       •    “When rich people . . . come into the space of changing the world, they never sit in the back row of changing the world; they sit in the front row.  They always get on the board of directors of changing the world.  The wind up as the COO or CEO or something with a `C’ of changing the world, and they change change.  They defang change; they tend to define change in ways that don’t threaten winners.”
       •    He said we get a “light facsimile of change that is the kind of change Mark Zukerberg can get on board with.”
       •    We shouldn’t be looking at these “sugar daddies” to fix inequality and “outsource change.”
       •    He said, “I don’t think that we should be turning first to the `woke’ billionaires to fix this.  My goal is to remind people that we built things like this [the grand court room and Brooklyn Borough hall building we were in] again, and we don’t need permission slips from the powerful to make changes.”
       •    He said we have to clear the brush of a lot of widely believed bullshit and terminology that needs to be dismantled:

          •    “Win-Win”- Neoliberal bullshit.
          •    “Thought Leaders” are thinkers that don’t threaten power.  There are “thinkers” and then there are “thought leaders”- You don’t want to be a “thought leader,” bad thing to be.
          •    “Doing good by doing well, and doing well by . . .”  Again, not good, not real change.
          •    “Innovation”- Not the same as “progress.”  We got a lot of innovation in the last 30 or 40 years.  Unfortunately it just skipped about half of us.
          •    “Giving back”- Sounds nice?- Not the same as “taking less.”

        •    “There is a significant silent minority within the power institutions of our age that understand that they are sitting in temples of cruelty, that understand that they are part of system that’s indefensible.”

Kristen Ghodsee

   •    Kristen Ghodsee said,  “I am trying to think outside of the box of capitalism.  I am trying to push back: Why is it we always turn to the billionaires?  And why do we think of our social infrastructure as something that has to happen within a fundamentally private market where the prices of good and services are always informed by the caprices of supply and demand.”  She blamed “a particular form” of “unregulated neoliberalism capitalism” as the “source of all our problems,” devastating us with “the idea that everything has to have a price” and “even our most intimate experiences are increasingly commodified.”  (She also said she was “totally on board with” the practical benefit of building more libraries.)

   •    Klinenberg said he believed in turning toward the state for help, not billionaires.  We agree with him on this.  It’s one reason why it is so worrisome when the city cuts back on funding libraries with private partnerships and “new philanthropies” stepping up as the potential replacements.

Following the panel, there was this self-explanatory exchange with Mr. Klinenberg that starts with the following email from Citizens Defending Libraries co-founder Michael D. D. White:

Dear Mr. Klinenberg,

When we talked after the morning Brooklyn Book Festival panel and you signed my copy of your new book (inscribing it “solidarity”) I noted that during the Q&A when you were answering for the audience the question of `what to do to change the world’ you told them to `find Councilman Brad Lander’ and work with him; and I was clear with you about how Councilman Brad Lander has been in the forefront promoting turning New York libraries into real estate deals, their sale and shrinkage and elimination of books, (basically across the board) and including specifically, for example, the NYPL’s Central Library Plan and the shrink-and-sink sale of Brooklyn’s second biggest library, deals that benefit real estate developers, not the public.  The latter, the shrink-and-sink sale of Brooklyn’s second biggest library was modeled after the shrink-and-sink sale of the Donnell Library.  Those two shrink-and-sink schemes were conceived essentially at the same time.  I also see that, although you say that Citizens Defending Libraries and the Committee to Save the New York Public Library were unknown to you when you wrote your book, your book includes descriptions of both of those library sales we were so active in criticizing.

I have reviewed your Brooklyn Book Festival remarks when you told people who were seeking to change the world to `find Councilman Brad Lander’ because I intend to write about what you said, and it seems reasonable that people hearing how you phrased things and the context in which you were offering your advice, would probably conclude that you were instructing them that, rather than work alone (which you said would be unsuccessful), they should “find Brad Lander” because they could “believe” in him, should “support” him, that Lander is some who we can think of as helping to “build libraries,” and, finally, that Mr. Lander is someone who exists safely exterior to the trap of neoliberal thinking.

I’ll also remind you that just before the panel began its discussion, Councilman Lander jumped in to speak to the crowd and portray himself with some heavy duty rhetoric as a fellow political activist looking to make the same changes the audience of activists were wanting.

Accordingly, before I write about your instruction to “find Brad Lander,” I wanted to contact you and see if you wanted to retroactively supply some sort of caveat or warning that I can pass along from you, perhaps particularly to people seeking to defend libraries and our public assets and infrastructure, about Mr. Lander and what to expect from him. . . before they put themselves in Mr. Lander’s hands or let him lead them.  Would you like to do so?

Perhaps I should also mention that I have found the descriptions in your book about the Donnell and Brooklyn Heights Library sales. The flaws I find in them is the overall mildness of what you wrote and what is missing be virtue of what you elide in your descriptions.  I can take that up with you further a bit later.

Mr. Klinenberg responded:

Dear Mr White,
   
I respectfully ask that you do not misrepresent my statement. I told the audience that they cannot change the world by asking alone. I told them to speak to people like Mr Lander because he is an elected representative in our local democracy. That is clearly not the only way to change the world, and I said that as well. The way you’ve described it here is a gross simplification of my remarks.

I believe in solidarity. I’d like to see advocates for the city libraries work together more effectively. I know there are differences in strategy and in opinion about some matters, including how to finance the system. I take a position in the book. You can write Bantu it, of course. I simply ask that you represent it fairly.

Bets wishes,
Eric

Mr. Klinenberg did not take up the first or a subsequent invitation extended to him to join Citizens Defending Libraries in warning people about what Councilman Lander is up to in terms of the libraries.

— Another thing that Mr. Klinenberg could do in the interest of “solidarity” (and staying informed) would be to sign our Citizens Defending Libraries petition that the New York City’s administration should adequately fund our libraries,  not sell them as real estate deals. 

Mr. Klinenberg's book inscribed with "Solidarity," by him.

Here is exactly what Mr. Klinenberg said in answering the question about how to change the world.  It is up to you to decide its implications with respect to Mr. Lander who had orated entreatingly earlier.  To be fair, Mr. Klinenberg does not technically say exactly why it would be good to seek out this elected representative.

Mr. Klinenberg:

The question is how can I as an individual do something to change the world?  The answer is you can’t.  But if the question is how do we do something, then there is a world of possibilities, because these are major problems that we are fighting right now; it’s about the shape of the world.  The only way we do something is if we do something as a collective.  And that means that we export that collective out of the space of neoliberalism that has made us think of ourselves as individual actors who can change the world with our consumption.  So whatever it is that’s your passion, and in this room there are going to be a lot of passions (there are a lot of things that are fucked up and need to be changed), find the other people who share your passion, persuade people who don’t know what they are passionate about that this is a passion worth fighting for, take time out of your schedule to meet with those people and do something.  Find Brad Lander and other members of the local political infrastructure or the national political infrastructure; find the organizations that you can believe in and work with them and support them.  And I am not an opponent of social media, but we are not going to change the world by “liking” things; we are going to change the world by building libraries and day care centers, and safe places where people can spend time and enjoy each other’s companionship.  That’s the world we want to make together.

Perhaps you want to know what Mr. Klinenberg’s book said about the library sales that we think is misleadingly mild?

Below are the paragraphs he wrote. For balance and perspective we will intersperse them with our comments to indicate his shadings and what he left out of the story- 

Klinenberg: The current battle pits the library's executive leadership, which is anxious about the system's declining fortunes, against local patrons who fear they'll lose neighborhood branches and specialized services if the system consolidates.

[Our comment: Portraying the library's executive leadership (presumably the library boards interconnected with that “leadership”) as “anxious” (does that mean “caring”?) about the “declining fortunes” skips over possible characterization of the board and “leadership” as being real estate deal oriented and wealthy in the kind of way* that Mr. Giridharadas scrutinizes in his analysis.  It is also perhaps inconsistent with Klinenberg’s own endnote buried at the back of the book- for those who read endnotes- mentioning the NYPL’s Central Library Plan describing it as a “misguided, massively expensive, and ultimately ill-fated effort . . .led by elite trustees who, as one former library executive said, “only care about the 42nd Street Building” and “don’t care about the branches.”  For that quote, he refers to Scott Sherman’s book “Patience and Fortitude- Power, Real Estate, and the Fight to Save a Public Library” about the Central Library Plan which was derailed in part by the efforts of Committee to save the New York Public Library and Citizens Defending Libraries and by two lawsuits in which Citizens Defending Libraries was the first named plaintiff, but Mr. Klinenberg told us he’d heard of neither group when he wrote his book.

(* In fact, just a few pages before Klinenberg has a few sentences that make him sound perplexingly, but not exactly, similar to Giridharadas: “Like Zuckerberg, corporate leaders are always happy to experiment with projects that promote the common good while raising their market capitalism.  But there are limits to how much they can accomplish by giving while taking.  How much more wealth do they need to accumulate before they are ready to help?”  Both men’s books are promoted by Greenlight Bookstore.– Klinenberg next writes he finds the lack of support for libraries from the corporate tech world “puzzling,” but the minute you start wondering about that question there are plenty of answers available.  Amazingly, Klinenberg acts as if he comprehends so little that he cites as an exception to this stinginess, as an example of generosity, the transfer of money by Stephen A. Schwarzman to the NYPL on the understanding that the NYPL would proceed with the Central Library Plan selling major Manhattan libraries.) 

At this point in Klinenberg’s narrative, it would have been an excellent time for him to mention the Central Library Plan and how it involved the proposed sale of central destination libraries: Mid-Manhattan, New York’s biggest circulating library and SIBL, the Science Business and Industry Library (among other things the city’s biggest science library), and, as it was announced at the same time, the central destination arts and media Donnell Library.  It also involved the banishment of millions of books intended to be shelved at the 42nd Street Central Reference Library.  He could have mentioned these things here, but they go unmentioned in his book.—   Klinenberg does mention what he calls the current “renovation” of the Mid-Manhattan Library and money for it coming from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, but only in a way that his readers would assume that it was unquestionably good, not questioning the shrinkage or book loss involved or the questionable expenditures of money.

“Consolidates,” the word used by Mr. Klinenberg, sounds relatively neutral, like a possible good thing, compared how we more fully we convey the threat of these “leadership” proposals describing them as “consolidating shrinkages.”]

Klinenberg (continued): They have good reason to fear. According to the Center for an Urban Future, the New York Public Library system has more than $1.5 billion in construction needs-just for repairs and maintenance on existing facilities. In Manhattan, the city sold land and air rights to the beloved Donnell Library, across from the Museum of Modern Art on Fifty-Third Street, in 2007, for $59 million, promising to open a new facility within the new luxury hotel and condo building there by 2011. It opened in summer 2016, and while some appreciated its twenty-first-century design, both users and critics complained that it felt soulless, more like an Apple Store than a community hub.

[Our comment: The “They have good reason to fear” formulation, splits the possible blame for that fear between the described underfunding of the libraries and the first mention of any sell offs of NYC libraries.  This doesn’t describe for Klinenberg’s readers our admonitions about efforts on the part of the library “leadership” to overstate and exaggerate repair figures (even while holding back available funds) and, as can been seen in part from the minutes of the BPL trustee meetings, an agreement with Bloomberg city administration officials to start building up those repair figures made just as they were also launching the library sell-off plans.  In his back of the book endnotes, Klinenberg says he is taking his figures from the testimony of Jonathan Bowles of the Revson funded Center For an Urban Future at the September 30, 2013 City Council hearing.  That hearing, at which Citizens Defending Libraries delivered copious opposing testimony, was the first city council hearing about selling libraries, and was set up and orchestrated by the City Council and Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer to justify selling libraries (including at that time the NYPL Central Library Plan) shortly after plans for selling libraries were eviscerated (including follow up in the newspapers) in at a June 27, 2013 state assembly hearing on the subject. Klinenberg doesn’t note that Bowles and the Center For an Urban Future have actually advocated the library sales that Klinenberg is only softy bemoaning in his text here.  (In our communication with Mr. Klinenberg we said that we wondered where he was getting his information.)

While “beloved Donnell Library” is the phrase we consistently use remembering its unforgivable sale, Klinenberg says that the library was sold “for $59 million,” without indicating, especially for non-New Yorkers not knowing real estate prices here, how much less this figure was than the huge central library’s actual value to the public.  He also does not note that this is a gross figure and that if he was paying attention to Scott Sherman’s book, what the NYPL netted after expenses for selling the valuable library was probably less than $23 million at best.  Also, maybe because he doesn’t know, Klinenberg does not say that the Donnell was sold off in what was for practical purposes a no-bid deal where one of the principal financial beneficiaries of the transaction was Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

Klinenberg says the NYPL promised to open “a new facility” in what was rebuilt.   What they really promised was that the Donnell Library would be rebuilt.  Ultimately, the NYPL was too embarrassed to call what was built a new “Donnell”: it became just a “53rd Street library,” jettisoning reference to the past.  They did not, at the time the sale was announced, tell the public about the huge luxury tower that was coming.  The NYPL just talked about an “11-story hotel” being built.

For Klinenberg to say that the criticism of the “new facility” was that it “felt soulless” is an extreme understatement.  What about the fact that library was smaller, just over a fourth the size?  That it was largely underground?  That books were largely eliminated, along with other facilities like that auditorium and media center as well?  That, to add insult to injury, the new facility was showing huge picture screen slides of fancy real estate developments and construction?  And how can Mr. Klinenberg be aware of any of this criticism at all without knowing that Citizens Defending Libraries and the Committee to save the Public Library were leading demonstrations about it, plus consolidating the published criticism that regularly quoted us?    As for the “twenty-first-century design” gibberish, that’s pure Center for and Urban Future PR speak, some of the “brush” and “widely believed bullshit and terminology” that needs to be cleared away in this context.

To point out that the library’s opening in 2016, after almost nine years, was later than promised is to miss the point that its opening lagged the opening of the luxury hotel, restaurants and condos by more than a year or what that, in turn, said about the NYPL’s priorities in making the library into a real estate deal.]        

Klinenberg (continued):  In Brooklyn, where estimates for repairing the borough's sixty branch buildings top $300 million, the public library board tried to sell the historic, heavily used Pacific Library branch in Boerum Hill to real estate developers, only to withdraw the offer because of fierce neighborhood protests. Soon after, the board voted to sell the land rights to the Brooklyn Heights Library for $52 million, so that another developer could build a thirty-six-story, mixed-use tower that, as in Manhattan, would include a new library, considerably smaller than the current one. Once again, neighbors protested, but this time for naught. The Brooklyn Borough Board approved the sale in early 2016.

[Our comment: Again, Klinenberg promotes the believability of the repair figure that “leadership” trotted out to sell libraries they were intentionally underfunding to have an excuse to sell these valuable assets.  Klinenberg notes the “fierce” opposition to the sale of the Pacific Library, but somehow again, by his account, never noticed our Citizens Defending Libraries leadership in the fight?   Once again, Klinenberg describes the sale of the central destination Business, Career, and Education Federal Depository Brooklyn Heights Library in downtown without noting that it was the second biggest library in Brooklyn, recently expanded and fully upgraded, or how much below its value it was sold for, for less than its tear down value of that of a vacant lot in what was criticized as pay-to-play deal for campaign contributions to the mayor.  He doesn’t lay it out for non-New Yorkers or indicate that, $52 million aside, the library sale will, just like Donnell, actually net far less than that gross figure he gives.  This time, Klinenberg does say that the new library will be “considerably smaller,” (about 40% of what it was), but he doesn’t note the loss of books, the discontinuation of the Business, Career, and Education plus Federal Depository functions banished from the site, and he doesn’t note that, again, like Donnell, the public will be pushed more underground.  Again, he notes the protests and, once again we must wonder how he professes to be unaware that we led them.  Mention of us would, of course, have the consequence of leading people into a more informed state of affairs.]     

Klinenberg (continued): The fiscal crisis in the New York Public Library has had more immediate consequences too. Between 2008 and 2013, New York City cut the library system's operating funds by $68 million, resulting in a 24 percent drop in staff hours. A century ago, most branch libraries were open seven days a week; today, most are closed on Sundays, which have always been popular days for immigrants, blue-collar workers, and families to visit. No other institution can fill the void.

[Our comment: There is no reason for the libraries to be underfunded, especially when they are a top public priority and cost relatively little to fund.  Mr. Klinenberg writes as if he does not recognize the games that are being played here, dangerous ones at that.  If underfunding of the libraries is allowed to work as an excuse to sell libraries then that underfunding will persist as long as the real estate industry and its allies still want libraries to be sold.]

If Mr. Klinenberg is writing so mildly, taking the edge off what he is telling the public every conceivable which way, should we be wondering why?

In the acknowledgments to his book, Mr. Klinenberg offers an origin story with respect to his writing of his book— It started with an approach to him to write about libraries— And that approach came from the Revson Foundation which has funded all sorts of initiatives in connection with promoting the sale of libraries (it has on its board Sharon L. Greenberger who lead the Brooklyn Public Library’s launch of its library sales, while Reynold Levy, another of its board members is president of the unaptly named Robinhood Foundation spearheading the Inwood Library sale)– emphasis is supplied:

I am also lucky to have met Julie Sandorf, president of the Charles H. Revson Foundation and fierce champion of public libraries.  In early 2016, Julie came to IPK [Institute for Public Knowledge- established in 2007 by the President and Provost of New York University] and pitched a small, collaborative project on the state of New York City’s branch libraries.  I raised the bid, and came back to the foundation with a proposal for what ultimately became a wide-ranging project on libraries, social infrastructure, and civic life.  Julie and her team have been all in ever since, and I thank them for their support.

We have asked Mr. Klinenberg about his funding from the Revson Foundation and how much it was.  He hasn’t informed us about that.  He did respond to another inquiry when we asked whether his writing about the library sales was reviewed by the Revson Foundation or the Center for an Urban Future (whose promotion of Library sales is funded by the Revson Foundation).  He told us he did not have the “Revson or CUF vet my writing.”

Mr. Giridharadas tells us to be wary of the foundations of the “new philanthropy,” because they are not what they seem, often wanting to soften the edges of greed to let it persist in its pursuits.  And he also describes foundations that veer off course from what would actually be helpful, because keeping the interests of the wealthy always in mind they set the wrong priorities. But until we have settled down with his book to read it through, we won’t know whether he has ventured to describe foundations such as the Revson Foundation, the Robinhood Foundation and the Center for and Urban Future (not to mention the oddly comprised boards of the libraries themselves), who apparently represent something worse, efforts to use the guise of charity to plunder public assets, case in point, turning libraries into real estate deals that benefit the real estate industry, but impoverish the public that relies on libraries.

Back of book blurbs

Mr. Klinenberg’s book is likely to get good readership.  He seems to have risen to a certain level of access that plugs him into the mainstream media.  He has appeared on Bill Maher.  The back of his book has endorsement blurbs from a number of recognized names: Jon Stewart (Citizens Defending Libraries would over to have had Mr. Stewart or John Oliver pay attention to our publicizing of the library sell-offs; hasn’t happened yet), Renzo Piano (who designed the New York Times building), sociologist Alie Hochschild (who credits Mr. Klinenberg with a “Jane Jacobs-eye”), Rebecca Solnit (of “mansplaining” fame) and “How Democracies Die” authors  Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.  That may mean that Klinenberg’s story about what is happening with New York City library sales will tend to become more the official one than ours. . . Especially if our press releases are not picked up. . . .

 . . . We think it would be unfortunate if that proves to be the case.  Among other things, we think the information we provide is far better researched and is a far more neutral and careful expression of the facts and the concerns that face us.  And, we are careful about with whom we ally; we don’t take money from the Revson Foundation!

Eric Klinenberg in NY Times Op-ed calls for Defending Libraries Promoing His New Book- "Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life"

The New York Times Sunday Review his past weekend included an op-ed by calling for defending libraries by Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist who has authored the forthcoming “Palaces of the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life.”  We didn’t hear from Mr. Klinenberg prior to the publication of his op-ed, but no, if you are wondering, we didn’t enlist Mr. Klinenberg him for ventriloquism purposes of having him recite top themes from our website . . .     

. . .  It just sounds a little that way.

Mr. Klinenberg is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University here in New York City.  He tweets at: @ericklinenberg.

Emblematic of our modern world, Mr. Klinenberg’s essay got totally different titles and subtitles in the print and digital editions of the Times even if they conveyed somewhat the same message.

Here is a link to and a sample of what he wrote.  If you want you play a game and try to match his sentences up with many of those on our Citizens Defending Libraries web pages.

New York Times OpEd- Why Libraries Still Matter- To Restore Civil Society, Start With the Library (In an age of polarization and inequality, the are the bedrock of civil society. -  This crucial institution is being neglected just when we need it the most.), by Eric Klinenberg, September 8, 2018.

Libraries are already starved for resources . . . . But the problem that libraries face today isn’t irrelevance . .  in New York and many other cities, library circulation, program attendance and average hours spent visiting are up. The real problem that libraries face is that so many people are using them, and for such a wide variety of purposes, that library systems and their employees are overwhelmed.

    * * *
Libraries are being disparaged and neglected at precisely the moment when they are most valued and necessary. Why the disconnect? In part it’s because the founding principle of the public library — that all people deserve free, open access to our shared culture and heritage — is out of sync with the market logic that dominates our world.* 

     . . .  they’re open, accessible and free.

(* For more about what's previously been written exploring such thoughts as this see the books: “Dismantling the Public Sphere- Situating and Sustaining Librarianship In the Age of the New Public Philosophy,” by John E. Buschman and “Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library: How Postmodern Consumer Capitalism Threatens Democracy, Civil Education and the Public Good,” by Ed D'Angelo.)

    * * *
   
    . .  not everyone can afford to frequent [establishments like Starbucks], and not all paying customers are welcome to stay for long. . .  elderly library patrons . .  told me that they feel even less welcome in the trendy new coffee shops, bars and restaurants . .  Poor and homeless library patrons don’t even consider entering these places. They know from experience that simply standing outside a high-end eatery can prompt managers to call the police. [Like the two black young men in a Philadelphia Starbucks for two minutes before the police were called.]  But you rarely see a police officer in a library.
   

    * * *
Forbes magazine published an article arguing that . .  Amazon [should] replace libraries with its own retail outlets, and claimed that most Americans would prefer a free-market option. The public response . .  was so overwhelmingly negative that Forbes deleted the article from its website.

     . . .  it’s important that institutions like libraries get the recognition they deserve. It’s worth noting that “liber,” the Latin root of the word “library,” means both “book” and “free.” Libraries stand for and exemplify something that needs defending.

Yes libraries do need defending!   . .

. . . Mr. Eric Klinenberg's book includes a footnote reference to Scott Sherman's “Patience and Fortitude- Power, Real Estate, and the Fight to Save a Public Library,” in which Citizens Defending Libraries and our sister library defending group the Committee to Save The New York Public Library are written about.  Mr. Klinenberg's book doesn't mention us, but we are reaching out to him about how so may of our thoughts seem to be on the same page.

PS: (9/25/2018)  For a second chapter to what is written here and to find out what happened at the Brooklyn Book Festival panel discussion that involved Mr. Klinenberg see:  Authors Anand Giridharadas, Eric Klinenberg, Kristen Ghodsee, and Activist Blair Imani, On Panel at Brooklyn Book Festival Discuss, `How To Change The World’ (With Libraries and Social Infrastructure!) Plus Who NOT To Trust— When In Jumps Untrustworthy, Library-Selling Councilman Brad Lander!!