Library Defending Icons, A Fabulous Two-fer: Reverend Billy, The Stop Shopping Choir AND Michael Moore

Rev. Billy and Michael Moore, Dec. 16 in the lobby of The Public

What excitement!  Getting to watch two library defending icons meet, hug, and trade jokes: Reverend Billy and Michael Moore.  Reverend Billy and his Stop Shopping Choir are, of course, known for the songs they generate and perform about resisting the soulless, rampant consumerism that commercials and advertisements are perpetually seeking to claim our attention to promote.  As such, Billy and his choir are generally performing and getting extra attention around Christmas as they put out the message that Christmas can and should be a more spiritually based holiday. . .

 . . .  Michael Moore, knowing the work of our dear reverend, no doubt is quite aware of all this–  When Moore met the Reverend for the very first time he performed for Billy one of his own self-composed satirical songs about the commercialization of Christmas: written in 1966.  Indeed, he did so under our very eyes and close up: We have a snatch of video of Moore’s merry musical ditty.  We’ll share it with you below.

This is how our little two-fer came about.  At the end of December, Sunday the 16th, while sending out emails to invite other library defenders to join us at a library-defending table, we caught Reverend Billy and his Stop Shopping Choir who were featured at Joe’s Pub again for a few Sundays.  We recommend, whenever you can, catching a full fledged performance of the Rev and his choir in all their Hallelujah glory and Joe's Pub is one of the locales where you can often see them.

Joe's Pub December 16 performance

You'll never know beforehand exactly what will happen at a Reverend Billy+choir show or who might be attending in the audience.  Full disclosure, at one show the Reverend, who is always looking out for good work to trumpet about, declared library defenders in the persona of two of the individuals attending, Carolyn McIntyre and Michael D. D. White, saints in his church.  These individuals and the library defending cause were introduced to the rest of the audience with ceremonial pomp and then some extra laid on.

After this Sunday, December 16th performance, as we ourselves departed, Michael Moore was out in the lobby of The Public (of which Joe’s Pub is a constituent part).  You'll never know who will be in the audience for a Reverend Billy show.  Now, it actually turned out that Michael Moore hadn’t caught Billy's performance, although he said he’d like to catch one.  Still, performance artist Laurie Anderson (“O Superman") was one of those in the Stop Shopping audience that afternoon.  Not shabby!

We got talking with Mr. Moore who we have had the chance to speak with about the libraries once before.  Had we known enough to be able to recognize them when we ran into Moore and were thanking and appreciating him for his work, we would have realized he was with film makers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, founders of Elsewhere Films, who work with Moore.  So, although we didn't know it, we were obviously praising their work too.

We should tell you more about both Reverend Billy and Michael Moore as library defenders.  Who should we tell you about first?  Let’s start with Moore. . .

Talking with Mr. Moore we mentioned that we have a few pages up at about him and the libraries.  They are:

    •    Michael Moore (Who Says The Attacks On Libraries Are An Effort To Dumb Down The Public and That Librarians Saved His Book From Censorship) Has A Terrific New “Must See” Film: Fahrenheit 11/9

    •    Books As Catalysts In A World Where Information And Points of View Are Often Suppressed

    •    Michael Moore’s Anti-George Bush Book Was Saved From The Censorious 9/11 Tyranny by A Courageous Librarian Mobilizing Comrades

    •    How Did Trump Get Elected?: Michael Moore In “Terms of My Surrender” Envisions That It Was A Dumbing Down of the Country That Involved Closing Libraries

Mr. Moore did correct us on one thing though, the gentlemen we once identified as Mr. Moore’s bodyguard with him outside after his Broadway show, a gentleman who know well about the Inwood library sell-off, was actually his regular driver.

Reverend Billy and his choir have been the special guests with us at many a library demonstration almost from the start.  And the choir wrote and performed a don’t destroy libraries song to defend the 42nd Street Central Reference Library incorporating the words of Ada Louise Huxtable in her very last column: “You Don’t Update a Masterpiece.”  Ms. Huxtable’s last column was influential and inspiring in multiple ways.

Here are some of the links (including videos): 

    •    PHOTO GALLERY: June 3, 2013 Vigil At Central Reference Library Protesting Loss of Our Cultural Patrimony- Evening of NYPL Fund-Raiser (includes extra videos)

    •    New York Public Library SERMON by Rev. Billy + "Breaking Into Public Space" SONG

    •    SAVE THE STACKS! - NY Public Library Protest "Shoutin' out in Public Space" song

    •    Reverend Billy choir goes to save the libraries from sale a (includes “You Don’t Update A Masterpiece)

    •    PHOTO & VIDEO GALLERY: September 25, 2013 Rally Outside NYPL Trustees Meeting At the Countee Cullen and Schomburg Center Libraries In Harlem, 515 Malcolm X Blvd

    •    PHOTO & VIDEO GALLERY: February 14, 2015 Library Lovers Gather on Valentine's Day to Speak and Sing of Aching Hearts

    •    Valentine's Day- Open The Rose

Sometimes Rev. Billy and his band have soloed without other library defending groups.  In August of 2014 the Reverend Billy led a small band of fellow activists out to discover and visit the ReCAP facility site in New Jersey where the NYPL’s exiled research books are now entombed.  His plan was to lead a ceremonial “Stonehenge Circle” protest about the books’ removal.  The protest was interrupted, its completion effectively prohibited, because it turned out that ReCAP shares an area of Princeton University with the nearby Forrestal Campus, a high security level federal site.

Here are some of the photos we got of the meeting of these two great defenders of libraries and the public interest and who somehow also always manage to maintain the good humor to have some satirical fun with it all at the same time.   It’s followed by the video snippet we can share of Michael Moore singing his Christmas song to Billy.

Michael Moore with Citizens Defending Libraries co-founder Carolyn McIntyre

In the background Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, founders of Elsewhere Films. In the foreground right Citizens Defending Libraries co-founder Michael D. D. White.

Michael Moore sings his Christmas Song to Rev Billy (Click through to YouTube for best viewing)

While we are on the subject of satirical Christmas songs, we should mention that Tom Lehrer wrote his, “A Christmas Carol,” which has in it this stanza:

Hark the herald tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.
God rest ye merry, merchants,
May you make the yuletide pay.
Angels we have heard on high
Tell us to go out and buy!

And while we are on the subject of defending libraries songs, and great personalities who entertain us as we fight for causes, let’s remember the “Don’t Sell Our Libraries Song” written for our cause by Judy Gorman who, still with us, sang on the same stage with an admiring Pete Seeger.

Michael Moore’s Anti-George Bush Book Was Saved From The Censorious 9/11 Tyranny by A Courageous Librarian Mobilizing Comrades

After we wrote here at Citizens Defending Libraries about our Citizens Defending Libraries encounter with Michael Moore (exciting!) after his one-man Broadway show “Terms of My Surrender,” and how in that show Mr. Moore surmised to the audience that defunding and closing libraries, part of the dumbing down this country, likely helped put us on the path of Trump being declared president of the United States.  See: How Did Trump Get Elected?: Michael Moore In “Terms of My Surrender” Envisions That It Was A Dumbing Down of the Country That Involved Closing Libraries.

Our writing about Mr. Moore and his expressed appreciation for the libraries when we met with him caused another of our library defenders, Judy Gorman, to head to Broadway and catch Mr. Moore’s show, which means that now we can tell you something more about Mr. Moore, book protection and librarians.  The story we can tell you adds to the reasons Mr. Moore has to view libraries and librarians as precious. It’s a story about a personal debt Mr. Moore has, in fact a personal debt we all have, to a group of librarians in the fight for democracy, freedom of speech and freedom of thought.

(Don’t go out to try to catch Mr. Moores’s show now.  It finally closed after a very respectable run.)

Michael Moore’s show each night was not exactly the same.  It varied from night to night as Mr. Moore reacted to the latest news, varied the stories he told with the constraints of available time, and welcomed different guests visit him on stage.  The night library defender Judy Gorman attended the show expecting him to speak to speak about libraries again, he included another story about librarians he hadn’t told when we were first there.

In 2001 a heroic librarian mobilized a network of librarians and saved Michael Moore’s “Stupid White Men ...And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!” from being suppressed from publication by Mr. Moore's own publisher, HarperCollins, who deemed the book too critical of George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11.  What might have happened?: Mr. Moore had nightmares of his pulped book being recycled to come back as “Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly books.”  The rescued book, spent weeks at the top of the best seller lists.

Moore completed the book shortly before 9/11 when it was set to be released.  December 1st Moore read chapters of his book to an audience in New Brunswick, New Jersey telling them with dismay that they would probably be the only ones who would ever hear the words because of his publisher’s intention to deep-six the book.  He said he did not ask for any help.  Without his knowing anything about it Ann Sparanese, a librarian in the audience sent word to fellow librarians on various email lists and there was an immediate and enormous response.  The response reportedly angered Moore’s publishers but put them in a position where they had no choice except to publish (but they were nevertheless vengeful about not having a book tour.)

We would have loved to have revisited the Belasco theater with Judy Gorman that night to hear Moore tell this story personally, but apparently the best night for library and librarian lovers to have gone to see “Terms of My Surrender” was August 17th when Mr. Moore’s guest of honor was Ann Sparanese in person.  “I never expected to be on Broadway,” Sparanese  said according to this first hand account that described her as having “twinkling eyes and long white hair.”

Ms. Sparanse was also in the audience opening night and received “a standing ovation.”  She certainly deserved it.   Let us applaud her here.

You may recognize the name Judy Gorman, the library defender whose visit to see Mr. Moore at the Belasco occasioned our launching into this follow-up piece.  Ms. Gorman is another heroic activist, a singer song writer who performed with and received praise from Pete Seeger who said of her:

She came, she sang, she conquered. No two programs that she gives are the same. She is always thinking how to find the right phrase, the right song to hit the nail right on the head, to shoot the arrow straight to the heart of the matter.

Judy Gorman also wrote the Don’t Sell Our Libraries Song for us.  It’s always a beautiful song to sing at demonstrations or canvassing when we are out defending libraries, books and the librarians who defend books.  Thank you Judy Gorman and thank you Ann Sparanese.

Michael Moore far left.  Carolyn McIntyre of Citizens Defending Libraries far right.

PRESS RELEASE & ADVISORY- City Council Vote On Library Sell-Off & Shrinkage Program Prototype- Many questions to be asked about backroom deal involving de Blasio

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New York City 

WHAT: The New York City Council's expected vote is expected to vote this Wednesday,on the precedent-setting proposed fire sale of a major public asset, Brooklyn's second biggest library, the central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn.  A decision from Mayor de Blasio (who has been taking money from the developer and whose Department of Education as of Thursday per an announcement last Thursday is redeploying substantial resources to promote the library sale) is expected soon afterward if the Council approves. 
WHEN: Wednesday, December 16, 2015, 1:30 P.M. 
WHERE: Council Chambers, City Hall, City Hall Park New York, New York 10007  
WHAT ELSE?:  Citizens Defending Libraries will be on hand to provide facts about the decision before the City Council.

Last Thursday, the City a Council Land Use Committee and its subcommittee voted to approve the sale and shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights Library (down to 42% of its current size) based on a complicated backroom deal kept under wraps until the last minute.

Tomorrow, Wednesday the 16th, the City Council will be asked to confirm the Land Use Committee's vote, its first ever of this kind, initiating a program of similar library sales based on this prototype.

Here are questions that we hope the City Council members, the NYC Comptroller, NYC Public Advocate and members of the press will be asking about the backroom deal (hopefully before the vote), and which Citizens Defending Libraries is distributing accordingly:

    1.    What is the now reduced amount available from the sale that could become available to other libraries?  When the backroom deal was announced Councilman Levin, Councilman Lander and Brooklyn President Linda Johnson all made statements to the public and press that they still expected an estimated “$40 million” netted from that sale that could go to other libraries.  However, at her Tuesday board meeting this evening Linda Johnson told her board the net amount will actually have to be appreciably less because the shrunken Brooklyn Heights Library will be 5,000 feet larger (“that much more to fit out”) than previously planned (and there will actually be “less money” to go elsewhere).

    2.    What is the amount of money that the BPL and Levin have agreed to redeploy to the enlargement of the Greenpoint Library (“earmarked specifically” from the Brooklyn Heights sale said Ms. Johnson)?  The Greenpoint library, another in Levin’s district, for which Ms. Johnson said Levin has an “affinity” is to be demolished and enlarged.  Why was this item on Levin’s backroom deal list not disclosed to the public with the rest?  Was it disclosed to the Land Use Committee and its members?

    3.    What exactly is the K-12 "STEM" facility that the de Blasio administration is putting into the developer's proposed tower when the Department of Education buys back from the developer (at what cost) previously public property pursuant to its commitment which involves also outfitting the space (at what cost) and operating it (at what cost)?  Linda Johnson told her board that “what exactly” a "STEM" facility "means" still has to be fleshed out.  Since disclosure of the deal, Steve Levin has said that, based on estimations, the space might be room for up to three (K-12) classrooms.  Also, since disclosure of the deal, he has said DOE will lease the space for ten years with an option to buy.  Levin did not say what the lease amounts would be (hopefully less than installment-to-purchase payments) and said that DOE’s outfitting costs were unknown.  Are they estimated? $6.75 million?

    4.    How long were plans spent working this out in City Hall with the Mayor's office?  How long was the plan that was reached kept undisclosed, specially in is major aspects?  Linda Johnson referred to "months" of prep work and refereed to many days sitting in City Hall working on it.  At the meeting the BPL trustees were told that Deputy Mayor for Development Alicia Glen had personally adopted this project as "her own." The item on the list that was saved for the last to put in place involved some (relatively feeble?) concessions to the unions.  Only days before Levin denied a deal was in the offing.

    5.    What is the story with the promised tiny new DUMBO library (which will also be  in Levin's district).  This will also be subtracting from what funds could (but can’t be guaranteed to) go elsewhere.  Linda Johnson said how this will be “executed” needs to be figured out. (She suggested that in the small space they would be at lot of children’s and tech services.)   Even for a library that is just 5,000 square feet, DUMBO is expensive.  Will it be leased as was the plan for it conceived in 2007 (the same time the Brooklyn Heights and Donnell sales were being conceived and implemented)?  How much will it cost to lease or buy?  How much will it cost to outfit?  $3.75 million?  What then is the overall estimated reduction of funds that might thus be available elsewhere?

    6.    Is the proposed DUMBO library still considered a model for much smaller libraries in the future as was planned in 2007?  With the shrinking 2,500 square foot library in the Walentas BAM South project (286 Ashland Place) we now seem to have two of these very small libraries.  (The DUMBO library was originally supposed to be just 1,700 square feet.)  (Anything less than 10,000 square feet for a library is considered “woefully small.”)

    7.    According to Johnson's report to the board, under its potential "profit sharing" deal with the developer, NYC will pay Kramer's development company $1.5 million for its slight reduction of rents for the off-site "poor door" style "affordable" housing, but only if the developer makes enough money.  Explain this.

    8.    How is this first sale and shrinkage offered for the Council's approval viewed as a “model” for other deals throughout the city and in all three systems as Ms. Johnson testified at City Council’s hearing on the matter?   At the BPL trustee meeting with the trustees applauding this sell-off, the trustees were reminded how sale of this library was chosen as a demonstration for what was possible.  They were told that this was a “huge turning point for the library system” and “across the city in general” with Johnson `pioneering’ the future of libraries.  They were told that Alicia Glenn, de Blasio’s Deputy Mayor for Development has been “one of the best resources to get the project across the finish line.”

That is a short list of the myriad questions surrounding the proposed sale and shrinkage the City Council is asked to approve.  Before this de Blasio/Levin backroom deal there were many more outstanding questions that have never been answered.

Big picture, it is important to remember that this is valuable, recently expanded and fully upgraded library, one of the most modern in he BPL system, that is being sold off for a minuscule fraction of its value to the public, a tiny faction of the more than $120 million it would cost to replace.

We hope that City Council members, the NYC Comptroller, NYC Public Advocate and members of the press will be asking the questions that need to be asked.

While those questions get mulled over we offer you a soundtrack: A new song written and performed by Judy Gorman specifically for the fight to save out libraries from real estate sales (an especially good addition to a radio or podcast news story).

See:

Judy Gorman's Don't Sell Our Libraries Song

CONTACT:
Carolyn E. McIntyre, Michael D. D. White
Michael White, 718-834-6184, mddwhite [at] aol.com
Carolyn McIntyre, 917-757-6542 cemac62 [at] aol.com

Follow us on Twitter: @defendinglibraries

For photos and videos of prior Citizens Defending Libraries rallies opposing the sale, shrinkage, underfunding of New York City libraries, and elimination of books and librarians in the two and a half+ years since its founding, see:

PHOTO GALLERIES- PAST EVENTS

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Citizens Defending Libraries
(718) 797-5207
http://citizensdefendinglibraries.blogspot.com
@DefendLibraries on twitter
backpack362 [at] aol.com