2018 Brooklyn Heights Association Annual Meeting - (The BHA promoted the sale and shrinkage of the Central Destination Business, Career and Education Brooklyn Heights Library)

2018 Annual Brooklyn Heights Association meeting

Wednesday night was the annual meeting of the Brooklyn Heights Association.

Two non-affiliated community grassroots groups were there handing out flyers to promote worthy causes.  One group was assisted in its flyering efforts by the BHA president, but the BHA president sought to quash the flyering work of the other group.  Can you guess which is which?

    •    FLAC (Flower Lovers Against Corruption) was handing out a flyer urging protection of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden against overdevelopment in the form of an upzoning that would result in the intrusion of huge towers around what is supposed to be the protected perimeter surrounding the Garden.  With those new towers the Garden would no longer be experienced as a the bucolic nature preservation it is.

    •    Citizens Defending Libraries was handing out a flyer urging the protection of another public commons, our libraries, and urging that the Brooklyn Heights Association lobby for a bigger “replacement” library to replace the Central Destination Business, Career and Education Brooklyn Heights Library that the BHA helped destroy.

The group that the BHA didn’t want handing out information to the attending public was us, Citizens Defending Libraries, and the fact that the Brooklyn Heights Association would seeks to stymie us as we informed the community that we were beseeching the Heights Association to come out for a bigger better library (while selectively helping our comrade-in-arms activist group also looking to preserve the public commons and realm), is indicative of the increasingly elitist and dictatorial behavior of the Heights Association.   . . . Is it purely coincidence that this was the year that the Heights Association abandoned its three decade tradition of fundraising house tours because board no longer thought the general public should be invited in to see the stately homes of neighborhood residents?

Every year in recent history the Brooklyn Heights Association has conducted its annual meetings in ways that increasingly circumscribe public feedback, comment and input about what people want in the community.   The timing of such curtailment coincides to a great degree with something the BHA did against the community’s wishes and disregarding its objections: That was the BHA coming out in favor of selling and shrinking the second biggest library in Brooklyn, the Central Destination Business, Career and Education Brooklyn Heights Library in downtown Brooklyn.

Here are the two flyers, FLAC’s and our Citizens Defending Libraries flyer respectively, handed out at the annual meeting.

FLAC Flyer - Click to enlarge

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Citizens Defending Libraries flyer

Here is the text of the Citizens Defending Libraries flyer:

IT IS NOT TOO LATE TO LOBBY FOR A BIGGER LIBRARY

For years running the Brooklyn Heights Association supported the sale and shrinkage of the second biggest library in Brooklyn, the central destination downtown Brooklyn Heights Business, Career and Education Library.  As a result, replaced in a luxury tower shrink-and-sink deal, that library, now a hole in the ground, will be smaller, more underground and will have far fewer books (while a looming tower overshadows Cadman Plaza Park).

Not long before, BHA support had won the community the expansion and complete upgrade of the library.  It is not too late for the BHA to reverse course again and lobby for a bigger replacement library.  (This would also restore funds raided from the Department of Education!) 

ALLOWING SALES THAT LOOT OUR LIBRARIES,
(pushing our libraries out the door to plundering plutocrats, handing them over to developers) HAS CONSEQUENCES

It has been noted that if Steve Mnuchin had been vigorously prosecuted at the local level for his business’s mortgage fraud, misrepresentations, backdating and falsification of documents to rev up the pace of his OneWest foreclosure mill, he wouldn’t be Treasury Secretary, appointed by Donald Trump today- Similarly, had NYS Attorney General Eric Schneiderman investigated the shrink-and-sink Donnell Library plunder with Blackstone’s Stephen A. Schwarzman involved on the selling side and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner as principal financial beneficiary, those two Trump henchmen might not be in significant positions of power today.  The whole political landscape at the national level could be different, not to mention having healthier local politics.

When our local officials and organizations allow the corrupt plundering of valuable public assets, like the shrink-and-sink Brooklyn Heights Library deal modeled on the sale of Donnell with some of the same people in the background, it feeds the beasts who go on to prey on us in so many other ways.

It doesn’t serve us that Stephen A. Schwarzman, spearheading Trump’s economic policy and sale of American infrastructure, is also one of Senator Schumer’s biggest donors, just as Schumer’s wife’s connections with selling libraries and privatizing public assets also do not.  City Councilman Steve Levin misleadingly assured that he would do his job and insist on transparency respecting the library sales but, betraying his constituents, never has. Thus the lack of transparency in Brooklyn Heights helps Donnell sink unchallenged into the sunset (even as Preet Bhrara investigated the mayor’s play-to-play).

Sign our petition on the web: Citizens Defending Libraries

The BHA reported this year that it had constructively received a donation of $2 million from the law firm of  Jenner & Block for the pro bono work that attorney Richard Ziegler has done attempting to block development of towers at Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park.  Unfortunately, the faltering fights against development in the park, the over-tall Pierrehouse included (same architect involved in trashing the library) are examples of fights where the BHA entered the fray late.  “A stitch in time saves nine.”
                                       
The Heights Association’s cause–de-jour at the meeting is an effort by the association to get legislation passed in Albany to allow reconstruction of the cantilevered BQE (Brooklyn Queens Expressway) roadways under the Brooklyn Heights Promenade to be handled through a “Design Build” contract rather than through the normal competitive bid processes that are normally prescribed for this kind of public construction.  The Brooklyn Heights Association is promoting passage of the legislation with a petition and other lobbying efforts including a bus trip to Albany.

The BHA’s featured speaker of the evening, NYC Department of Transportation Deputy Commissioner and Chief Bridge Officer Robert Collyer, addressed the subject.  Interestingly, he mentioned that the Pier 6 Towers being built near the BQE in Brooklyn Bridge Park and other luxury towers going up in the vicinity were going to make the needed repairs to the BQE more difficult to do.  He said that the impending tower construction was creating a “narrow window” to get the repairs done as efficiently as possible.  We know that some library defenders have raised the question of how construction to build the luxury tower to replace the library may conflict awkwardly with BQE repairs as it is predicted that the Hudson Companies construction at the former library site will often block both Clinton Street and Cadman Plaza West.  This might happen just as traffic from the BQE is diverted through the same set of neighborhood streets.

Collyer noted that Furman Street under the BQE needed to be raised because of climate warming and rising sea levels.  He said there was no plan to raise the levels of the BQE roadways.

When Mr. Collyer was asked why the “Design Build” legislation was not yet enacted, he said that it had not passed in the NYS senate, but said that he did not comment on politics.

The Brooklyn Heights Association has communicated to the community its conclusion that the BQE should be reconstructed via a “Design Build,” contract and it has communicated this to the community as if it is a no-brainer.  It did not offer for discussion any of the reasons that “Design Build” could be less preferable.  The BHA may have reached the right conclusion about this, but it is hardly a no-brainer.

“Design Build” diminishes certain competitive bid and cost protections.  It also scrambles loyalties and duties of those doing the construction for better and/or worse giving the overseeing city public works engineers less control over the project.  It could possibly be argued that the balance of interests in play if a “Design Build” contract is used for this section of the BQE is that the work, including work on the Heights Promenade would be completed more quickly, but at a higher cost paid for by all the city’s residents.  (Neither is absolutely provable or certain.)

Through performance specifications, one has to be careful that “Design Build” does not encourage inappropriate cost cutting on the part of the contractors.  For instance, costs may be cut that increase the cost of maintenance and repair later on.  That is one reason that one of the several variations of “Design Build” contracts are DBOM contracts, “Design-Build-Operate-Maintain” contracts.  But as you contemplate such a concept, you may begin to recognize how “Design Build” partakes in an overall and increasing tendency to contract out more and more of the traditional work of government to the private sector.

There is plenty of work, there are plenty of endeavors, that, final analysis are probably best handled by the private sector, but when more and more work is handed off to private sector and the government that is supposed to oversee that work and is simultaneously starved of resources it can be a problem.  It is especial a problem when there is corruption that needs to be protected against.  It should be remembered that government is supposed to be the guardian of the public interest, even if it is more and more often abdicating or selling off that function.

Point of interest: When it came to the sale and shrinkage of the library, Citizens Defending Libraries asked the Brooklyn Heights Association to get involved in fighting the corruption involved and the Brooklyn Heights Association declined.

Quite a few times during the meeting Mr. Collyer was asked about what design decisions were being made with respect to repairing the BQE and answered that he didn’t know, that was to be determined . . . (in essence by a contracting out).  His answers in this regard were quite consistent with being headed toward a contracting out of such analysis to the private sector with a “Design Build” handling of the matter.

Here are articles about the considerations inherent in deciding whether or not to do a “Design Build” contract.

    •    American City and County- The growth (and growing pains) of design-build construction, Edward J. Pabor and Richard Pennington, April 1, 2012 (terrible date for a serious article)

    •    Schiff Hardin- Seven Legal Issues Unique to Design-Build, by Mark C. Friedlander, June 5, 2015

    •    Design-Build Effectiveness Study, Final Report, Prepared for: USDOT - Federal Highway Administration, January 2006

Want to read more about the meeting?  Here is where you can go:

    •    Brooklyn Daily Eagle- Repairs to Brooklyn Heights BQE & Promenade hit home at BHA Annual Meeting- Waterfront tunnel not option, dire local traffic scene feared; Bus trip to lobby Albany, By Mary Frost

Testimony Respecting Proposed Sale of Inwood Library for Redevelopment and Upzoning of the Inwood Community

The community's message in chalk outside the library vs. that of elected officials creating "done deals" without public knowledge or participation: Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer standing next to City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez in blue suit as he promotes the sale of the Inwood Library.  The man with the folded arms on Gale Brewer's other side is from de Blasio's HPD, also there to promote the sale of the Inwood Library. The man with the lowered head is a PR official from the NYPL.

Here is the testimony that Citizens Defending Libraries has submitted to Manhattan Community Board 12 and its Land Use Committee respecting the proposed sale of the Inwood Library for redevelopment and the upzoning of the Inwood community.

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February 20, 2018

Mr. Wayne Benjamin, Chair
Land Use Committee
Manhattan Community Board 12
c/o Ebenezer Smith, District Manager
Manhattan Community Board 12
ebsmith@cb.nyc.gov

Re: Testimony respecting proposed sale of Inwood Library for redevelopment and upzoning of the Inwood community

Dear Manhattan Community Board 12 and Land Use Committee:

Don’t let the NYPL and de Blasio administration put another notch in the belt sacrificing a public library to real estate interests with real estate deals that harm and don’t benefit the public as they waste and squander public assets.  We are asking that Manhattan Community Board 12 and its Land Use Committee not let another such notch be put in that belt with the sale for redevelopment of the Inwood Library which is tied in with another attack on the Inwood neighborhood. . . that is the upzoning of the neighborhood as real estate greed goes on the war path.

As the community will surely testify, the upzoning will drastically change the character of the neighborhood with the expected introduction of upsurging gentrification that will displace existing residents.  Existing lower income residents are likely to be hit especially hard.  Plus what thought has been given to how the existing fabric of the neighborhood and its culture will be shredded as change evicts the familiar and affordable mom and pop stores?

The sale of the library has been laminated to the upzoning.  Why?  What a strange thing to do.  At the developer meeting held in connection with the prospective sale of the Inwood Library the developers when they asked were told by city and library officials the library sale would only go forward if the upzoning goes forward.  Therefore the developers were told not to prepare any packages of proposals that did not assume that the upzoning would not go forward at the same time.

But to show you how out of control this process is, a developer at the meeting noted that the Request For Proposal guidelines specified that the proposals for a redevelopment of what is now the Inwood library should take into account the character and nature of the surrounding neighborhood.  The developer pointed out that the upzoning was going to change the neighborhood tremendously, probably in ways that can’t even be predicted.  He asked whether proposals should take into account the character of the existing neighborhood or the character of the neighborhood as it might possibly be after the effect of the rezoning.  “You figure it out,” library and city officials told him.  That illustrates not only how out of control these proposals are, it also illustrates an attitude that is execrably cavalier.  The last thing it illustrates is just how completely laissez faire public officials are being in turning over the public welfare to the whims (or worse) of the real estate industry and those trolling for profit at public expense.

The real estate industry looks at libraries, not as the community does, but as playthings with which to manipulate the community and perhaps bamboozle it into accepting what is against the community’s interest.  At a January 12, 2015 New School conference that addressed the real estate uses of libraries the New School’s host told the assembled professionals that in the end “a library is real estate” and that she had found:

it's often a nice placating gesture in a real estate development. You want to do commercial development?: Put a library in it and you win a new public that you might not have had on your team initially.

The sale of the Inwood Library may have been strangely and confusingly laminated to the upzoning in this instance, but probably the greater fool-or-confuse-the-community manipulation associated with the proposal to redevelop and privatize much of the site where the library now stands is the talk of the so-called affordable housing that is unlikely to replace the affordable housing lost when existing residents are displaced.

It is wrong to sell a library that has just been renovated and expanded.  It is impossible to recoup that investment when you destructively tear down and have to rebuild all over again.  The proposal is to give up most of the library real estate that the public now owns and put a replacement library in the bottom of a privately owned residential building.  That means the library can never be expanded when it needs to be.  If the library were to be put into a city-owned building that was also commercial it could be expanded, but that is not the proposal. .

. . . The proposal is the shrinkage of what the public owns, a shrinkage of the public realm, a shrinkage of the public commons.  And because libraries are the public commons that represent democracy so quintessentially, this is a shrinkage of democracy.  Because the shrinkage is laminated to an overall upzoning of the neighborhood that shrinkage is proportionately all the greater.

And the NYPL and de Blasio officials do not care one whit about that loss.  At the meeting they held for developers submitting RFP’s to tear down the Inwood library and acquire the site for redevelopment we made sure certain questions were asked and answered.  Will developer proposals supplying a bigger library get extra credit? No. Will developer proposals supplying more above ground space for the library get extra credit?  No. Will developer proposals that create the possibility for an expansion of the library in the future get extra credit?  No.  Is there a particular shape or configuration that would be good for the library that officials would like to specify would be good (rather than just leaving the public with the dregs after the developer has creamed off for itself the space the developer likes best)?  No.   

It is to be remembered that all these Nos were after the plan to sell the library was presented to the community as a `done deal’ with unaccountable local politicians signing onto the plan before it was ever communicated to the public for reaction in any way.

As others in the community will surely testify, the library is an essential ancillary facility to the neighborhood schools it abuts and is immediately proximate to.  These schools stand to suffer loss for a generation of the student classes passing through.  This loss should not be underestimated.  No interim arrangement is going to come close to meeting the community’s true needs- But then, from the standpoint of the real estate industry, and therefore city and library officials, that is not the point.  Don’t let them put another notch in their belt.

If you let them sell the Inwood Library for a concocted real estate scheme, you put every other library in New York City more at risk.  And even if you want to move out of Inwood after the rezoning and loss of the library you stand to be affected in those other neighborhoods.

Citizens Defending Libraries, formed in the beginning of 2013, has been witness to the callousness of the many concocted plans of the real estates industry supported by the library and city administration officials. We invite you to study our web page where we lay out and catalogue a record on the part of those officials that is not at all pretty.  Please consult the attached addendum with more information about what is on our web page.  It is the intent of Citizens Defending Libraries to shine a light and hold accountable over the long term all those participating in the irresponsible sale of our libraries.

Sincerely,
       
Michael D. D. White
Citizens Defending Libraries   

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Citizens Defending Libraries Web Page Information

Citizens Defending Libraries Main Web Page is at:

https://citizensdefendinglibraries.blogspot.com/2017/12/citizens-defending-libraries-main-page.html

Or you can read the page LONG FORM if you want to read straight through to go more deeply into topics without clicking on them to do so as you read:       

https://citizensdefendinglibraries.blogspot.com/2017/12/

Here is the way that our web page now breaks down into important subject headings, each of which can be individually read:

SIGN OUR PETITION TO SUPPORT LIBRARIES (Defend our libraries, don't defund them. . . . . fund 'em, don't plunder 'em)

When Citizens Defending Libraries Started and Why
Achievements of Citizens Defending Libraries

What Libraries Are Affected By New York City Plans To Sell Libraries As Real Estate Deals, Shrink And Underfund Libraries And Eliminate Books?

Are The Libraries Being Shrunk, Pushed Underground, Books and Librarians Eliminated Because the World Is "Going Digital"? NO, That's NOT a Reason It Should Happen.

Are Libraries Just Too Expensive a Luxury to Pay For? Absolutely NOT!

NYC Libraries Are Being Sold For Huge Losses And For Minuscule Fractions of Their Value

WHO Is Selling Our Libraries?

When Did The Plans To Sell Libraries (Plus The Launching of The Concomitant Underfunding of Libraries) Begin?

It's Not Just The Real Estate Industry Threatening Libraries: Examining The Panoply of Other Threats

Who Is Hurt Most When Libraries Are Defunded and Dismantled? The Poor, The Racially Discriminated Against, Scholars, Future Leaders

How Many Books Are Disappearing From New York City Libraries?

Why Turning Libraries Into Real Estate Deals Isn't The Good Deal Library and City Development Officials Describe

Selling Libraries And The Broader Issue of Private Sector Plunder of Public Property
   
The Biggest Lies To Watch Out For When Officials Sell Libraries

How To Defend Libraries - What You Can Do

Library Selling NYPL Trustee Schwarzman Becomes $1 Billion+ CEO

Did you catch the news last week in Crain’s that library selling NYPL trustee Stephen A. Schwarzman is going to be the first $1 billion+ CEO?  He's the head of the Blackstone Group.  His salary must have just gone up a few hundred million this year.  It is hardly surprising that as Schwarzman’s salary went up, the NYPL trustee library-sale-pushing Schwarzman is doing all sorts of deals with Trump son-in-law/advisor (without a permanent security clearance) Jared Kushner.  Kushner was a principal financial beneficiary of the plundering Donnell Library sale the NYPL trustees pushed out the door.  Worse yet, amongst the swirl of Trump/Schwarzman/Kushner/Saudi deals that are going on Schwarzman is leading the charge with Saudi money to sell off American public assets to private interests . . .

. . . The Trump administration is helping with SALT (State and Local Tax) deduction curtailment and otherwise striving to impoverish all government in furtherance of the Koch agenda.

For the latest and more about the Schwarzman Kushner deals see Noticing New York: Reporting About Multiple Troublesome Real Estate Deal Connections Between Presidential Son-In-Law/Advisor Jared Kushner and Presidential Advisor Stephen A. Schwarzman, New York Times & Press Overlook Connections, Including Library Sale (January 29, 2018)

NOTE: Crain's did not publish a comment on its article linking to information about the Schwarzman/Kushner deals.  If you want to come to a forum about where you get your information and how mainstream media often unreliably curtails the information you get see:

Coming March 4th- Forum: Where Do You Get Your News? What Are The Channels of Public Information Communication Can You Plug Into?

Coming March 4th- Forum: Where Do You Get Your News? What Are The Channels of Public Information Communication You Can Plug Into?

We hope this interest you.  Citizens Defending Libraries is all about people getting the information they need and should have.

Forum: Where Do You Get Your News? What Are The Channels of Public Information Communication You Can Plug Into?

Sunday, March 4, 2018, 1:00 Pm to 3:00 PM
First Unitarian Universalist Congregation Chapel
119-121 Pierrepont St, Brooklyn, NY 11201

Join a discussion to exchange information and ideas about how you get your information about important events in the world.  Where do you go to seek reliable news and complete information?  Should the country’s main stream media have reported the recent succession of unprecedentedly calamitous weather events without mentioning climate change?  Does a media drumbeat for war seem off-base? Do we hear about its cost?  Picking up newspapers, do you feel like you are reading compiled corporate press releases? As much of media ownership is consolidated in fewer corporations and when a wealthy few with disinformation agendas like the Kochs buy up ownership of outlets like Time magazine, where does truth take refuge to be found?  If your media literacy tells you that the most important part of narratives you are being served is what has been edited out how do you find what fills in the blanks?  Let’s identify what kinds of critical stories go unreported and how can we find out about them.

Conversely, when things need to become news, need to be known by the general public, what channels are there to transmit that information?  When structural reforms need to be made in our society they cannot be made unless we are able to exchange information about the changes that are needed: Serviceable channels for circulating information may be our threshold basic need.  How reliable is social media as an avenue for transmitting information and in what ways is it deceptively not?

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Facebook Event Pages To Share and Say You Are Coming

There are now two Facebook Events posted for this event:

•        One Facebook Event Page is posted by Citizens Defending Libraries (if you click on "see all posts" on the event page there are postings of relevant articles for discussion).

•        The second Facebook Event Page is by the UUU Weaving the Fabric of Diversity host.

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A Grist For Thought Sheet For the Forum

See if the sheet below helps you think about and prepare for the forum.

Grist for thought.  (Click to enlarge- You can also print it.  Or you can save the image to zoom in on it.)

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Maybe you would like to start early?  In the comment section to this page you may want to supply information about where you go to get your news and why.  Or maybe you'd like to post about what you think are the biggest issues that mainstream media is not reporting on?  Climate change?  The cost of war?  Voting irregularities in the last election?

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NYPL’s Presentation of its “Master Plan” to alter and commercialize the 42nd Street Central Reference Library

The NYPL has been presenting and getting public reaction to its “Master Plan” to alter the 42nd Street Central Reference Library (see our videos linked to below).

One big question is whether the plan is a stealthy new working-in-from-the edges version of the NYPL’s reviled and loudly rejected “Central Library Plan.”

The 42nd Street Library was designed and built around its famous research stacks designed to hold 3 million books.  The new master plan inverts this process leaving unspecified what is to be done with this core element of the building, saying that it will be dealt with following launch of the current construction overhaul as a mere afterthought.

Meanwhile, the observable bent of the “Master Plan” is to commercialize the building, focusing on tourists, not researchers or traditional library patrons.  It proposes to convert Map Room and map reading space into an apparently fancy wine-serving wait staff-equipped café.  Rather than being alarmed by this NYPL trustees wanted to make sure officials were considering expanding and opening up the café to absorb some of Bryant Park’s public space.  (As if there weren’t already enough pricey cafés and restaurants already girding the library in the public space of Bryant Parks.)    Also proposed is new entrance/exit with the intent of renovations to have the NYPL gift shop (“exit through the gift shop"?) abut it.

Some massive amounts would be spent on added elevators and still more staircase space although the need to add these features to and already well designed, well equipped building is inexplicable.   The building has done very well without these features for more than one hundred years.  This alteration to circulation plan is being proposed when theoretically it is unknown what will be done with one huge and key portion of the building: The research stacks.

As you can see from the video presentation, the architects for the plan say they have now clue about how much expense insertions of the new stairs and elevator would cost, either percentage-wise of dollar-wise.  The “Master Plan” was presented to the public for comment, sprung on the library users, only after the NYPL trustees approved its launch (another “done deal’).  It is supposed to a huge amount of additional funding ($144 million before cost overruns).

The huge cost of the plan is being used by the NYPL as an excuse to sell SIBL, New York City’s biggest Science library. . .  . . . The Science Library will go out of existence.  The NYPL says you can do your science research on the internet instead. . . .
                  
SIBL, needs NO renovation.  It was built in 1996 for $100 million and the state-of-the-art library was pronounced the “library of the future.”

While the federal government is eliminating net neutrality and information about climate change from federal websites . . . . .  NYPL officials are explaining the elimination of its science library (housed in 34th Street’s SIBL- The Science, Industry and Business Library) and its collection of science books by saying that people can get their science information from the internet instead.

We want the books brought back to the research stacks where they belong.  We do not want the science library sold and closed.  We do not want to see the 42nd Street Central Reference Library turned into a commercialized tourist spot.

The Committee to Save the New York Public Library has weighed in with a sober and withering assessment.

Committee to Save the New York Public Library: Response to the NYPL Master Plan - Improving A Research Library For The 21st Century

Here is some of the Committee’s sober assessment:

There is little in this plan that advances the goal of providing researchers with faster and better access to NYPL’s collections; in fact, the plan to relocate the maps does exactly the opposite. Instead, NYPL concentrates on commercializing the first floor with a larger café and retail store. The questionable need for a third stairway in the south side of the building may also be driven by commercial considerations—the needs of caterers. Smaller second floor rooms once housed expert curators and special collections. The Mecanoo/BBB proposal substitutes unspecified uses for these rooms, but without books and curators, their utility is diminished, and collections remain remote from readers. This grand building can accommodate many uses, but changes should serve the needs of readers and researchers above shoppers and diners.

NYPL’s promise of an open, transparent, participatory planning process has a hollow ring when its trustees approve a master plan based on a video and a few renderings without public consent. Where are the actual plans? Why was approval given before any public comment? . . .

* * * *

Finally, a master plan that ignores the stacks is no master plan at all. Returning the collections to this great unused asset should be the central feature of any sensible plan.

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The video below is the NYPL's first presentation of the "Master Plan."  Public comment and reaction in in the latter part of the video.

NYPL Presentation of Master Plan For 42nd Street Library (Monday, November 20, 2017)

 

NYPL 2nd Presentation of "Master Plan" Part 1, Dec 7, 2017


   
NYPL 2nd Presentation of "Master Plan" Dec 7, 2017 Part2

In the video below you cans see questions about the staircase and elevators with the architect disavowing knowledge of how expensive those alterations would be.   You can see questions about the "Stephen A. Schwarzman" name being on the building while the NYPL gift shop displays "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer recounting Schwarzman's participation working with the Kochs to hijack American democracy.

You can also see the hedge-funders holiday party after the "Master Plan" presentation, and a demonstration just outside on 42nd Street protesting the elimination of net neutrality, elimination of another information commons.  Listen to the NYPL tell us we can get our science information over the internet rather than collect books in the science library. 

   

Library Defender Testimony at City Council Dec18, 2017 Hearing
 Below is testimony of Inwood Library defenders and CDL's Michael D. D. White against the plan.
  

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

We were recently telling our library defenders about film maker activist Michael Moore and the connections he makes between libraries and the political freedoms essential to the underpinnings of Democracy.  One of the stories we told was about how his own censorious publisher was going to suppress and pulp unpublished a book he wrote that was critical of George W. Bush.
   

The happy ending to that story was that Moore’s book, “Stupid White Men: ...And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!,” was rescued by a courageous librarian who mobilized her comrades and the book went on to top the best seller lists and may be helped people start thinking more circumspectly about the George W. Bush off-to-America’s-longest-ever-war administration when it was critical for Americans to do so.  See:  Michael Moore’s Anti-George Bush Book Was Saved From The Censorious 9/11 Tyranny by A Courageous Librarian Mobilizing Comrades, December 4, 2017.

In world where information and points of view get suppressed books can be a catalytic part of the media ecosystem that should never be underestimated . . .  even when it appears they are on the ropes losing the fight to pummeling suppression.

Another book suppressed by its own publisher was “JFK and Vietnam,” by Dr. John Newman, a retired U.S. Army Intelligence Officer and historian.  The book broke ground in documenting how president John F. Kennedy was engaged in significant preparatory steps to withdraw the United States from Vietnam just before he was assassinated.  The book has since been championed by James K. Galbraith, son of economist and writer John Kenneth Galbraith who served Kennedy as Ambassador to India and from whom Kennedy sought help to steer toward withdrawal from that war.  The book received praise from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and former CIA head William Colby.

The National Security Agency didn't have a basis and couldn’t stop publication, but the publisher cooperatively pulled it from the book store shelves anyway.  The public lost access to it for 26 years.  See: National Notice- As The Kochs Acquire Ownership of Time Inc.- More About Where On The Spectrum Of Left/Right Politics That Publishing Organization Was Once To Be Found Plus More About What Once Did and Didn’t Get Said/Published In The U.S. Media, December 31, 2017.

But here’s what is odd to relate about the book’s sort of round about victory as it wended its way around to republication.  According to it’s author, Dr. Newman, the book became the catalyst for much of the content of Oliver Stone’s film “JFK.”  That led to the Congress acting to get documents declassified, which then helped Dr. Newman to be able do his research for his next book and that helped his original book finally get published.

Another example of a book being a catalyst for the publication of suppressed news was described recently by former New York Times reporter James Risen who now works for The Intercept.  He and another Times reporter, Eric Lichtblau, wrote a story about the  secret illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of the American public by the George W. Bush administration that won the New York Times a Pulitzer Prize in 2006.  But that story was published by the New York Times only because Risen was about to publish a book, “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” that would disclose the story (the story that ultimately unfolded even further with the Snowden disclosures).  The Times, even though it didn’t want him to publish the book, wanted even less to be scooped.

Before that, in 2004 in the months running up to the Bush/Kerry presidential election and up until Risen’s move to publish his book, the Times was cooperating with the Bush administration to suppress the story that ultimately won it the Pulitzer Prize.  That cooperative suppression of information no doubt affected the course, if not the final outcome, of the Bush/Kerry election.  The saga of how Risen was threatened with prison by the Obama administration for not revealing his source became the basis for his next book, “Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War.”

Risen says that, in the very end the Times actually accelerated the publication of the story because there was word that the Bush administration was considering going to court to seek prior restraint on the story, the first time the government would have been doing so since the Pentagon Papers.

Right now there is a movie about the publication of the Pentagon Papers, “The Post,” that is vigorously contending for Oscars.  That film arguably has its catalytic genesis in a book that was pulped unpublished by its publisher, “Katharine the Great : Katharine Graham and the Washington Post,” a biography of Washington Post publisher written by Deborah Davis for publication in 1979.  The film is not based on that biography, which Graham considered unflattering and had a hand in keeping away from the public when first written.  The film began with a script by Liz Hannah, who “fell in love with” reading Graham’s autobiography “Personal History” that came out in 1997 not long before Graham died in 2001.

It’s easy to argue that one thing that compelled Graham to write the much more flattering official version of her life (and it won a Pulitzer Prize too) was her wanting to overwrite the version of facts in the Deborah Davis book.

Liz Hannah also reportedly read and relied on other sources flattering to the main characters in her film like the autobiography of Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, “A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures.”  Ben Bradlee also worked to prevent the publication of Deborah Davis’ book.  There are quite a few very interesting, not easy to explain, things about things about Bradlee’s life that Davis and others have inquired curiously about that are far less flattering than the Bradlee of Hannah’s script of that of the earlier Washington Post film, “All The President’s Men.”  Fascinatingly, Hannah intends her next script to be a 9/11 story: “Only Plane in the Sky,*” about some of the strangest aspects of the panoply of very strange and bizarre things that happened that day, what was going on with George W. Bush.  Much of the content that would need to be used as her source must be material that is widely considered unflattering.  Hannah is reading “The Pet Goat.”  It’s a children’s book, the famous one.  Hannah says she empathizes with Bush that day.

(* There was a previous 9/11 film made about an airplane, an -accurately?- theorized docudrama?: “United 93.”  “Come From Away” is a Broadway 9/11 airplane musical.)

Hannah says that although she grew up in a household that was worshipful of figures like JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, (all of them assassinated) her script still “calls out John F. Kennedy” for his responsibility for the Vietnam War.  ("Lying is bipartisan," says Hannah.)  If she had been paying attention to Dr. Newman’s book about JFK’s plans to pull out of Vietnam that were overturned by Johnson or the fact that the Pentagon Papers contain a 60 page chapter devoted to those plans maybe her script needn’t have been so hard on JFK.  (Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were all opposed to the war.)

In Hannah’s script Katherine Graham comes across as opposed to the war as the Pentagon Papers came out.  Davis’ book says that is not the case and that government deception of that kind didn't necessarily bother her either.
 
Davis, who reviewed Katherine Graham’s autobiography says that it is “in many ways, a remarkable book—startlingly honest in some places and profoundly dishonest in others” revealing some of the same things that made Graham “furious” when Davis was writing about them.  That includes, among the more difficult, discussion of the strange and odd story of her husband Phil’s mental illness and August 3, 1963 suicide, “which must have been a very difficult thing for her to relive while she worked on the book, is quite thorough in some ways, and takes up a good hundred pages.”  Indeed those hundred pages include out takes from quite a few letters between her husband and others plus lots of long contemporaneous quotes of what Graham says her friends said at the time indicating that Graham, writing well over thirty years later either kept a crushingly detailed diary (or legal notes) or has a prodigious memory.  (Or did she, like Nixon, her one time antagonist, have her environs wired to provide posterity with a recorded history?)

Deborah Davis sued her publisher for shredding her biography of Graham and won an out of court settlement.  In addition to financial compensation it involved reacquiring full rights to her book.  Her book has since been published in two more editions, in 1987 and 1991, each adding to the tales Deborah Davis has to tell with additional events of major consequence transpiring in the ensuing years.

Graham’s book was finally published so that public could read it by National Press, “a small Washington publisher.”  Davis includes an introduction to the version of her 1991 edition titled: “How This Book Was Censored.”  At the end of that introduction she explains that before her 1987 edition went to press Graham and Bradlee were “asked to notify the new publisher of any changes they would like to have made to the original text” and that they “responded by reiterating their general disapproval of the book, and declined the request.”  Davis notes that since publication “neither Bradlee nor Graham made any public comment” about the book and that “no one has ever sued for libel.”

Nevertheless, that introduction tells a harrowing story about how her Graham and Bradlee put pressure on her original publisher successfully blocking publication of her book and disparaging her own reputation in the process.  Much like what happened to Michael Moore, her publisher suspended publicity tour plans intended to make it a major book with hopes it would win or be nominated for the American Book Award.   David writes that her lawyers “thought the CIA might have something to do with the books destruction.”  Documents obtained by Davis in the lawsuit showed how much Bradlee and Graham had to do with the suppression efforts, but did not show any involvement of the CIA, unless you might consider Bradlee or Graham an extension of the secret agency.

Part of Davis’ book, and part of what has been subsequently revealed was about things that Bradlee did for the secret agency.   Bradlee came out of Naval Intelligence as did Bob Woodward, who he hired.  Woodward’s name, also a reporter for the Wall Street Journal was invoked in the tactics to stop publication of her book.  Davis’s lawyers counseled her that so long as Bradlee and Graham were acting as private citizens, not the government, they had protected free speech rights when trying to attack her book.  The personal appeals Bradlee and Graham made to the publisher to achieve their censorship read like coded messages about how the publisher and they are all in the same club.

At the end of the first chapter of her book introducing Katherine Graham Davis writes that, “One who writes about Katherine Graham’s life is led unavoidable to a study of the political uses of  information.”  A big topic for Davis in writing about this subject is the news that Graham, cooperating with high government officials, didn’t want to share with the public.  That was despite her popularized Watergate scandal coverage persona. 

Davis said that one theory of her lawyers was that:

publishing companies control information as a public trust, and so have an implicate First Amendment responsibility to make controversial ideas available to the public.

And that her lawyer planned to argue:

the publisher must publish it “in its full sense,” which involved “placing and keeping the book before the public” and letting it enjoy its full life.”

We at Citizens Defending Libraries would like to think that essentially that same “public trust” and “implicate First Amendment responsibility” applies to libraries too, and that just as librarians came forward to rescue Michael Moore’s book from suppression, librarians will stand as guardians to our access to controversial ideas, especially those that make the powerful in government (and their handmaidens) uncomfortable.

We thought it would be a good time to spot check the relative availability in our New York City Libraries of some books that present such ideas.

Here is the result of some spot checking:

•    “Katharine the Great : Katharine Graham and the Washington Post,” by Deborah Davis is available as follows: The NYPL has a copy of the 1987 edition and a copy of the 1991 edition in its 42nd Street Central Reference Library.  It has no circulating copies available and neither do the other two NYC library systems.  The Brooklyn Public Library has one non-circulating copy indicated to be the 1979 suppressed edition as does the Queens Library.

•    “Personal History,” the flattering Katherine Graham autobiography, albeit a Pulitzer-Prize winner, is amply available.   The 42nd Street Central Reference Library has two copes and the NYPL has 29 circulating print copies.  The BPL has two print copies and 5 ebook copies.  The Queens Library has 7 print copies.  Which is to say that if you wander into the stacks of a city library looking for a biography of Katherine Graham you may well find a copy of “Personal History,” but don’t expect any serendipitous discoveries of   Deborah Davis’s biography of Ms. Graham sitting beside it.

•    “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” by James Risen, that got he Times moving to publish his article and collect their Pulitzer has one copy in the 42nd Street Central Reference Library.  The NYPL has another three circulating print copies.  It has about 20 ebook copies that practically nobody seems interested in reading, perhaps with good reason given that this book is about secret surveillance and the reading of electronic books is not a private affair.  The BPL has one circulating copy.  The Queens library has 17.

•     “Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and the Endless War,” James Risen’s follow-up book has one copy in the 42nd Street Central Reference Library and the NYPL has another sixteen circulating copies.  The BPL has twelve.  The Queens Library has twelve.

•    “JFK and Vietnam,” by Dr. John Newman is pretty scarce.  There is one copy in the 42nd Street Central Reference Library and the NYPL has no circulating copies.  The BPL and the Queens Library have one copy apiece.

•    “Stupid White Men: ...And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!,” Michael Moore’s almost suppressed nest seller fares only a little better.  There is one copy in the 42nd Street Central Reference Library and the NYPL has no circulating copies, but the BPL and the Queens Library have two copies each.

•    “Understanding Power : the Indispensable Chomsky,” by Noam Chomsky is the book that Aaron Swartz  wrote was “The Book That Changed My Life.”  He said it was “completely shocking, at odds with everything you know, turning the way you see things upside-down.”  Swartz was a proponent of libraries who died while being persecuted for his efforts to get information out more broadly and shared with the public.  He said he read this book when he picked it up “at the library.”  There is no copy of the book in the 42nd Street Central Reference Library, but the NYPL has seven circulating copies.  The BPL has no copy of it at all (apparently it's not "indispensable" to them).  The Queens Library has two.

•    “Timber Wars,” by Judi Bari is a book very important to the activist history of the northern California yet it was inexplicably part of a massive book purge from the California's Berkley Public Library (along with other books on social issues and activism).   Judi Bari was an environmental activist importantly active in that Northern California region who paid a price when Bari, apparently under federal surveillance, was severely disabled by a suspicious, unsolved car bombing that was probably inadequately investigated by the FBI.  There is one copy in the 42nd Street Central Reference Library and, other than that there are no circulating copies at the NYPL, BPL or the Queens Library.

•    “Red Alert” aka “Two Hours To Doom” by Peter Bryant (a pseudonym for Peter George) is the book from which Stanley Kubrick made “Dr. Strangelove.”  It was published in 1958 in the United Kingdom and preceded the more popular “Fail-Safe” published in the United States.  Terry Southern, screenwriter for “Strangelove,” asserts that because “national security regulations in England, concerning what could and could not be published, were extremely lax by American standards” George was able to “reveal details concerning the `fail-safe’ aspect of nuclear deterrence . . . that, in the spy-crazy U.S.A. of the Cold War era, would have been downright treasonous” and thus give all the “complicated technology of nuclear deterrence in Dr Strangelove” a base “on a bedrock of authenticity” that gave the satirical film the strength of credibility.  This one is interesting: The only copies available in the New York City libraries are ebook copies (if you want to risk reading them), 2 at the NYPL and one at the BPL.  Those copies may evanesce when the libraries’ lease of them expires.

PS (Added December 3, 2018):  “The C.I.A. and the Cult of Intelligence” by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks.  This book published in 1974 is another one the C.I.A. worked to suppress, reportedly the first the agency worked to suppress.  If New Yorkers want to read Mr. Marchetti’s groundbreaking book, the NYPL has one copy in its research collection that cannot be borrowed (or discovered by browsing the shelves) and it keeps it off-site so that it must be requested in advance; the two other public library systems in New York City, the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Library do not have any copy of the book.

WFUV Covers Citizens Defending Libraries And The Sale Of New York City Libraries

Citizens Defending Libraries is featured on the new episode of WFUV Radio's “Issues Tank”- “Libraries: They Are a Changin'” December 28, 2017.

WFUV is the New York public radio station that broadcasts from Fordham University at 90.7 on the FM dial.

You can listen via iTunes to the Issues Tank podcast.  Or, we suggest you list to the episode on the WFUV Issues Tank  website.

They made us sound really good!*  Our interview is the second half of this episode devoted to libraries.

(* NOTE: This is the first time we have been on radio when it wasn’t a live interview or just sound clips.  The editing, to which we have not previously been subject and which makes us sound so good, probably enhances the listening experience considerably.)

The entire Issues Tank episode is about the future of libraries and while we don’t agree completely with all of the summing up, it is all worth listening to.  The interview with Michael D. D. White that is the second half of the program starts at a few second in from 14 minutes if you want to use the slider.

(NOTE- The public reaction and objections to the NYPL's presentation of the "Master Plan" for the alteration of the 42nd Street referred to at one point by interviewer Kacie Candela is available for viewing at our YouTube channel:   NYPL 2nd Presentation of "Master Plan" Dec 7, 2017 Part2.)

This is the first time we have been on WFUV.  We have been on WBAI, another New York City public radio station quite a few times and have a page up collecting the coverage.  See: WBAI Reporting About The Sale and Shrinkage of NYC Libraries- “Behind News,” "The Morning Show," Plus News Reports.

WNYC (WNYC FM and AM and WQXR), perhaps New York City’s best known public radio station, takes an appreciable amount of financing from corporate sponsors (as you will be told when you listen to the station), including very significant amounts from the pro-library sales Revson Foundation.   WNYC has provided virtually no coverage of the library sales from our point of view except for Leonard Lopate Show coverage of the NYPL Central Library Plan by journalist Scott Sherman whose articles in The Nation Magazine evolved into a book.  WNYC has since fired Leonard Lopate and there is virtually no equivalent direct coverage of Citizens Defending Libraries on the station.