As The “Library Squasher” Rises, Developer of Luxury Towers Advertises Views From Middle Apartments (On 26th Floor) That Look Down On Federal Courthouse Once Challenged as Too Tall

The wealthy who can afford to buy apartments on the floors in the upper portion of the luxury building replacing the central destination downtown Brooklyn library may expect to look down on justice, both figuratively and literally.   This view of federal courthouse is from the 26th floor.

The luxury condo tower, which in a shrink-and-sink deal is replacing the Business, Career and Education Federal Depository Library in Downtown Brooklyn, is still only around two-thirds complete, but the developer is advertising the impressively commanding views that will make new residents coming to the building feel like they are the kings and queens of the neighborhood.

The stratospheric views offered on the developer’s website are not from the very top of what will be the 36-story, 400+ foot tall building; they are only from partway up, from the height of the 26th floor. . .

Nevertheless, from that still much lower height, the view that will be offered looks down on the federal courthouse across on the other side of Cadman Plaza Park that was once challenged, with some success, by neighbors in the locality as being too tall.

There is another interesting twist in this, the neighbors who legally challenged the federal courthouse building as being too tall hired a lawyer and urban planner named Michael White to mount their legal challenge.  The Michael White that they hired is not the same Michael White, the Michael D. D. White, the lawyer and urban planner who, as co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries, opposed the wreckage and sacrifice of the central downtown library to build this truly enormous luxury tower.  The two Michael Whites did once meet professionally however. . .

. . . Michael D. D. White, the co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries, contrary what the other Michael White said, thought that the federal courthouse, an important public building, was not too tall.  Even if it had been taller, it would be no match for height of the luxury building going up now.  For more on this back story see Noticing New York: Not THAT Michael White, August 13, 2008.

       

With Scathing “Perpetual War Letter” Email William Arkin Self-exiles Himself From NBC (And the Rest of Corporate Mainstream) Thus Adding Himself To Our List Of Journalists Similarly Absent Or Banished Because of Their Views

Just a few weeks ago, we added Marc Lamont Hill, fired from CNN for expressing views sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, to our:

List of Journalists Fired or Self-exiled From Mainstream Media Outlets Because They Expressed or Wanted to Express Views (Like Being Critical of U.S. Wars) Unacceptable to the Outlets They Were Working For.

We have also recently been busy updating our list of importantly catalytic books that have been suppressed:

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

Now with his dramatic publication of what has been termed his “Perpetual War Letter” email, journalist William M. Arkin has exiled himself from NBC and the rest of the mainstream, corporately-owned media, at least for now with his 2,228-word farewell “blistering critique” of what he calls “perpetual war” and the “creeping fascism of homeland security.”

Arkin’s letter, a fascinating read, is a lot to absorb and it helps to go beyond the letter itself in figuring out exactly what his departure means and just how incompatible with corporate mainstream media the things he is saying now make him.   Listening to his interview on Democracy Now is particularly valuable in this regard.  On Democracy Now Arkin was clear his critique “applies to all of the mainstream networks,” CNN, Fox, etc, not just NBC.  And Arkin said he wanted to “step back” and “think about how we can end this era of perpetual war and how we can build some real security, both in the United States and abroad.”  See: Longtime Reporter Leaves NBC Saying Media Is “Trump Circus” That Encourages Perpetual War, January 09, 2019.

That Arkin is a critic of “perpetual war” and the “creeping fascism of homeland security” seems to be one of the key, agreed upon takes to characterize his departure (media columnist Brian Stelter works that pronouncement in as paragraph seven of what he wrote for CNN), however Democracy Now’s blunt summary that Arkin was accusing the national media itself of “warmongering” is probably fair and on target, certainly worth thinking about.

Perpetual War and Warmongering

In his letter Arkin says he’s “proud to say that” he “was one of the few to report that there weren’t any WMD in Iraq and remember fondly presenting that conclusion to an incredulous NBC editorial board” and he says:

I find it disheartening that we do not report the failures of the generals and national security leaders. I find it shocking that we essentially condone continued American bumbling in the Middle East and now Africa through our ho-hum reporting.  

On Democracy Now Arkin pointed out that in the last year the United States has been bombing nine countries, ten if you include all of the U.S. participation in the bombing of Yemen, the other nine countries being: Mali, Niger, Somalia, Libya, and then, in the Middle East, it’s Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria.

Arkin wrote in his letter that he realized how “out of step” he was with his employer’s mainstream media reflexive support for war and conflict because of the way the network responded to Trump’s various “bumbling intuitions” toward possibly sometimes taking the U.S. in more peaceful directions, saying of Trump and the NBC response:

Of course he is an ignorant and incompetent impostor. And yet I’m alarmed at how quick NBC is to mechanically argue the contrary, to be in favor of policies that just spell more conflict and more war. Really? We shouldn’t get out Syria? We shouldn’t go for the bold move of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula?  Even on Russia, though we should be concerned about the brittleness of our democracy that it is so vulnerable to manipulation, do we really yearn for the Cold War?

Arkin likewise seems to feel for (his words) another president:

 poor Obama who couldn’t close Guantanamo or reduce nuclear weapons . . . because it was just so difficult.

Arkin’s letter says that, after Trump got elected, everything:

got sucked into the tweeting vortex, increasingly lost in a directionless adrenaline rush. . .  I would assert that in many ways NBC just began emulating the national security state itself – busy and profitable. No wars won but the ball is kept in play.

On Democracy Now, however, Arkin dated the cessation of responsible mainstream media coverage of this country’s war activities even earlier saying that something happened post-9/11 where the mainstream media’s coverage of war has been taken over by talking heads who are “former government officials,” and “retired generals,” whose voices replaced the points of view civilian experts on war like university professors who have been banished from the airwaves so that there is “shallower and shallower” coverage, “particularly in an area like national security” so that:

We’ve just become so shallow that we’re not really able even to see the truth, which is that we’re at war right now in nine countries around the world where we’re bombing, and we hardly report any of it on a day-to-day basis.
   
So, to me, the crisis is that we condone perpetual war by virtue of our lack of reporting and investigation, and then, second, we fill the airwaves or we fill the newspapers with stories about the immediate and don’t give an adequate amount of space to deeper investigations or what I would say would be net assessment investigations of what really is going on.

He told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman:

the real crisis is that when we have a panel discussion on television, in the mainstream press, and even in the mainstream newspapers, we don’t populate that panel with people who are in opposition. We have a single war party in the United States, and it’s the only one that is given voice. And so, really, the crisis is not so much that there are experienced government officials speaking out; the problem is that there aren’t critics who are sitting next to them saying that “You’re full of it.” And so, to me, we need to balance that.

Worse, he said “because of the phenomenon of Donald Trump”:

what we see on TV now is former Obama administration officials masquerading as analysts who are nonpartisan, when in fact they are partisan. And indeed we see fewer retired generals and fewer retired admirals, who sometimes are useful in terms of explaining the profession of arms and the conduct of military operations, in favor of these political figures who have a partisan view.

Arkin refers to us as being in “hostage status as prisoners of Donald Trump.”

In his letter, Arkin said it was “clear that NBC (like the rest of the news media) could no longer keep up with the world.”  (Or at least, NBC and the rest apparently aren’t keeping up with the world.)   He went on to say about the “leaders and generals”:

To me there is also a larger problem: though they produce nothing that resembles actual safety and security, the national security leaders and generals we have are allowed to do their thing unmolested. Despite being at “war,” no great wartime leaders or visionaries are emerging. There is not a soul in Washington who can say that they have won or stopped any conflict. And though there might be the beloved perfumed princes in the form of the Petraeus’ and Wes Clarks’, or the so-called warrior monks like Mattis and McMaster, we’ve had more than a generation of national security leaders who sadly and fraudulently done little of consequence. And yet we (and others) embrace them, even the highly partisan formers who masquerade as “analysts”. We do so ignoring the empirical truth of what they have wrought: There is not one country in the Middle East that is safer today than it was 18 years ago. Indeed the world becomes ever more polarized and dangerous.

Although Arkin, finding it “disheartening that” the failures of “the generals and national security leaders” go unreported, is clearly calling for their military exploits to be examined skeptically and much more deeply by the press, who knows whether examination of the expensive ineffectuality that embroils us in perpetual wars would lead to the conclusion that such ineffectuality is wholly just incompetence or might even involve certain aspects of intentionality.  In figuring that out, it is relevant that Arkin says that, faced with how “perpetual war has become accepted as a given in our lives,” we need to “better understand” what is actually driving “terrorists” to fight, and notes how American “airpower” is the future and “the enabler and the tool of war today.”

Arkin’s letter speaks despairingly of how the NBC and other media coverage descends to a base “political horse race” narrative (sometimes as if the casualties of war are only those who suffer political defeats): “Rumsfeld vs. the Generals, as Wolfowitz vs. Shinseki, as the CIA vs. Cheney, as the bad torturers vs. the more refined, about numbers of troops and number of deaths.”

Creeping Fascism

While the above pretty much covers what Arkin expressed about “perpetual war,” there are also his not unrelated warnings offered about the “creeping fascism of homeland security.”

In his letter, Arkin listed Trump’s “attacks on the intelligence community and the FBI” among Trump's “bumbling intuitions” that are of likely merit, which Arkin says he was “alarmed” to see NBC “mechanically argue” against.  In his letter Arkin says he’d “argue that under Trump, the national security establishment not only hasn’t missed a beat but indeed has gained dangerous strength. Now it is ever more autonomous and practically impervious to criticism.”

On Democracy Now he referred to as the “crazy collateral damage of Donald Trump” that:

there are a lot of liberals in America who believe that the CIA and the FBI is going to somehow save the country from Donald Trump. Well, I’m sorry, I’m not a particular fan of either the CIA or the FBI. And the FBI, in particular, has a deplorable record in American society, from Martin Luther King and the peace movements of the 1960s all the way up through Wen Ho Lee and others who have been persecuted by the FBI. And there’s no real evidence that the FBI is either—is that competent of an institution, to begin with, in terms of even pursuing the prosecutions that it’s pursuing. But yet we lionize them. We hold them up on a pedestal, that somehow they are the truth tellers, that they’re the ones who are getting to the bottom of things, when there’s just no evidence that that’s the case.

At one point the Democracy Now discussion steered into the subject of the money being spent on the intelligence and surveillance industry and the huge percentage of the American population that owes its livelihood directly to the military and the surveillance industry.  In his letter, Arkin mentions his having written “about the increasing power of the national security community,” and how he produced “long before Trump and `deep state’ became an expression . .  .one ginormous investigation – Top Secret America – for the Washington Post” (which he did working with Dana Priest-- it was also made into a PBS “Frontline” report) about the huge growth of resources being channeled into secret surveillance and intelligence.

“Ginormous” is also a good adjective for our nation's military spending, and especially the amount of money and resources going into surveillance and intelligence operations that we know little about and don't know the spending amounts associated with.

That military spending drives more military spending through a cycle of lobbying and drives the actual use of weapons (our arsenals of bombs dropped need to be replaced) is itself an important story and key insight.  What makes the spending on the part of the industry devoted to surveillance and the intelligence perhaps the most alarming part of this brew is the secrecy that prevents those numbers from being known and that prevents accountability as trillions of dollar slosh around unaccounted for.  In fact, government accounting standards have just been changed to make it acceptable to lie about how money is being spent for black ops.  You may be told that money is being spent for something that doesn't disturb you when it is really being spent on something else.  (For recent stories related to this see: Counterspin- ‘The Pentagon Has Steadfastly Stonewalled Against Making Its Budget Auditable’CounterSpin interview with Dave Lindorff on Pentagon budget fraud, Janine Jackson, December 14, 2018, Project Censored Show- Dave Lindorff Explores the Pentagon’s Financial Mysteries, December 11, 2018, and The Nation: Exclusive: The Pentagon’s Massive Accounting Fraud Exposed- How US military spending keeps rising even as the Pentagon flunks its audit, by Dave Lindorff, November 27, 2018.)
  
In his letter Arkin also notes that he wrote “a nasty book – American Coup – about the creeping fascism of homeland security.”

It should be noted that Arkin’s background was originally in Army intelligence.

On Democracy Now Arkin said that we’ve “shifted from the dominance of the military-industrial complex, if you will, to a much more insidious and much more difficult-to-diagnose information complex. . .” so that:

most people would be surprised to learn, for instance, that Amazon is one of the largest defense contractors, that they’re building the cloud and they’re building the data centers which support the intelligence community and support the military. And there are other civilian companies, that we associate with being civilians, who are also terrific beneficiaries of the military’s largesse.

(People wouldn’t be so surprised about that if they were reading what we are making available about the book industry-destroying Amazon– now coming engorged with subsidies to Queens–  at Citizens Defending Libraries.)

Arkin spoke about the increasingly insidious invisibility of it all, how “the national security state has the ability to do what they want to be doing autonomously, with very little intervention on the part of civil society,” because it’s “become more invisible as a result of the style of American warfare” that is now conducted with drones, airpower, space and cyber.

The “creeping fascism of homeland security”?  Arkin on Democracy Now said we may have been told “Homeland Security” was about “counterterrorism,” but:

    . .  we’ve seen they’re creeping into cybersecurity. We’ve seen them creeping into election security. We’ve seen ICE and TSA become the second and third largest federal law enforcement agencies in the country. And so, now homeland security sort of has become a domestic intelligence agency with really an unclear remit, really with broad powers that we don’t fully understand.

Arkin says “`Homeland security’ sounds a little bit brown-shirty to me.”

Arkin’s recent departure from NBC and mainstream media hasn’t lasted long enough for it to have yet stood the test of time.  Has he nevertheless said enough to qualify himself now as a legitimate exile from mainstream media who, like so many other journalists on our list, can’t return to jobs in mainstream media after expressing views that are problematic for that corporate conglomerate industry?  Most often the views of those exiled journalists are problematic in that they, like Arkin, are critical of the wars the United States wages.

Is it possible Arkin could ever return to mainstream media?  Arkin refers to his departure only as taking “a break.”  (And, as noted before, he also referred to it as taking “a step back.”)  Moreover he expressed much praise for co-workers at NBC and said he was “proud of the work I’ve done with my team and know that there’s more to do.”  In his letter Arkin refers to himself as “a difficult guy” and gives NBC credit for tolerating him “through my various incarnations.”  Arkin’s announcement of his leaving coincides with his announcement that he is working on several books, both fiction and nonfiction, one of which sounds like he wants to release it soon.  Is this good publicity as well as a good time for a convenient break intended to be just temporary?

Arkin, ends up saying about his consulting role that: “There’s a saying about consultants, that organizations hire them to hear exactly what they want to hear.”  Although he says this wasn’t the case with him at NBC, it’s not clear that mainstream media is going to want to hear any more from him after what he has now said.

So, even though Arkin’s departure has not yet withstood the test of time, given the strength of his  statements and how eloquently those statements express things that accord with what's been said by other exiled journalists on our list, we think he should, indeed, be added to our list of exiled journalists.  Plus the unlikelihood that mainstream media will take Mr. Arkin back is so extreme that it seems almost guaranteed Mr. Arkin won't be rehired.

WBAI Radio- An Important Voice- Keeping It Meaningful & Alternative (Library Defenders Running For Its Local Station Board)

With the consolidation of most media into just six conglomerates and the pervasive influence of monied interests, it is increasing important that alternatives to the dominant corporate narratives be preserved and remain strong and grow more robust.  WBAI Radio is a rare asset to which we still have recourse as an alternative, and it is particularly important as a terrestrial broadcasting signal, which, when it broadcasts the kind of subversive, transgressive content capable of changing things, can remain off the grid and avoid manipulation (unlike the digital conduits for communication that we are increasingly shunted towards).

WBAI was one of the few media outlets that has been giving Citizens Defending Libraries, and the news about the selling off libraries substantial and somewhat regular coverage, particularly, for example on WBAI’s Morning Show.

WBAI needs to be strong, strongly supported and there is critical value in its growing stronger still.

There are things everyone can do to support and strengthen the station:

    •    Listen to the station.  Familiarize yourself with what you can find there and let others know about shows broadcast on it such as FAIR’s Counterspin, The Project Censored Show, national news throughout the week on Democracy Now, local news coverage via the Morning Show, media critiques with satirically informed asides via the Jimmy Dore Show, Law and Disorder.  Increased listenership ripples outward in its effect bringing more awareness, resources and contributors.  It also qualifies the station for more public broadcasting funds.

    •    Provide the station with feedback about the content broadcast on WBAI that you like or that you don’t enjoy (that much) so that programming can continually improve.  We know that some people don’t always appreciate all of what they hear on WBAI, but listener feedback and participation can help steer where the station goes, keeping it on track and on mission, plus making changes when changes make sense.  It is also important to know that the station has long been suffering through, and is only now just catching up from, a period where it was drastically under-resourced in its efforts to generate quality broadcasts.  That was a result of 9/11 and the ensuing drain of exorbitantly expensive antenna charges that have finally been eliminated (plus the effects of Superstorm Sandy).

    •    Contribute to WBAI.  WBIA is truly a listener supported station.  That’s unlike the WNYC stations where, when we checked recently, WNYC was getting only about 30% of its support from listener membership dollars.  Those WNYC listener support dollars have to compete with the rest of the funding from corporate sponsorships and from the sort of very wealthy individuals typically associated with those kinds of corporations and interests.  That’s almost certainly why, if you listen attentively to WNYC programming, you will find that much of it more and more often reflects a corporatist bent. . . . WBAI produces what it airs with a much smaller budget than WNYC, so each dollar listeners give to WBAI supports a much greater proportion of the station’s overall programming.   Having done some rough calculations, we work it that each listener dollar currently given to WBAI supports, on a proportional basis, 62 times as much of the station’s overall content production: Each listener dollar released into WBAI’s shoestring budget pond swims there as a much bigger fish.* You should also know that there is crossover point where additional dollars going to WBAI, transition from being survival dollars to being dollars that can go straight into significant upgrades of the content it delivers.

            (* Of course only “rough” comparisons are possible.  If you think of WNYC listener dollars as being `leveraged’ by the corporate dollars, you might think of them as supporting more of the overall programming, but if you think of those listener dollars as first having to wrestle with and neutralize the effect of the much greater corporate funding then you will think of those dollars as ultimately funding even less programming.  There are also webcasting streams, web accessible archives and podcasts associated with both WBAI and WNYC.  Further, WNYC, with its FM, and AM station and its also running the WQXR Classical stations, two of them taking into account the HD, High Definition broadcasting, that WNYC does, means that WNYC could be thought of as three or four stations thus allowing one to do the calculations that assume WNYC listener dollars go slightly further in catching up.  In the future though, WBAI’s new, much less expensive, antenna is also capable of HD broadcasting which means that WBAI can itself start broadcasting three terrestrial HD broadcasts simultaneously on its 99.5 signal.)

   •    Volunteer at WBAI.

   •    Vote in the WBAI elections to elect members to the Local Station Board.  If you have been contributing to WBAI (that can include volunteer work contributions) in the prior year you should be on the look out for your ballot for the local station board elections.  If you haven’t been contributing during the past year, it is a reason to start contributing now so you will be eligible to vote next election.  (If you contribute signing up as as a WBAI Buddy you won't have to remember to renew.)  This year there are names of people running that library defenders will recognize as other library defenders in the fight t save NYC libraries: Citizen Defending Libraries co-founders Carolyn McIntyre and Michael D. D. White, Katherine O’Sullivan from the fight to save the Inwood Library and Michael Jankowitz.  Those familiar with defnding libraries will also recognize some other additional names of people who have been very helpfully involved.  Considerations about who to vote for follow below.     The fight to protect WBAI as an information commons obviously involves a significant overlap with the fight to defend the libraries.  (The deadline for voting in the election is March 5th.  Last minute votes can be cast electronically.  There have been problems with listener contributors not getting their ballots.  To request a ballot to vote CLICK HERE FOR THE BALLOT REQUEST FORM https://goo.gl/forms/BvfLLCrl4DnnB0pD3.  Also, if you have problems alert the National Election Supervisor with an email to nes@pacifica.org   Lastly, please search you emails for for vote@simplyvoting.com. Email reminders are sent with the ballot weekly on Wednesdays. Subject will start with "2018 Pacifica Station Elections")

The governance structure of WBAI is a trifle intricate.  The power of WBAI’s Local Station board is somewhat limited in that much of the decision-making with respect to programming is handled by the national Pacifica Foundation board of which WBAI has been an affiliate since the beginning of the 1960s.  But the WBAI board appoints some of the members of the Pacifica board, and, after serving on the Local Station Board for a qualifying period, members become eligible to be appointed to the national board.  There is also a third board, the Community Advisory Board, which is one mechanism through which the public can give feedback to the station about content and shows WBAI broadcasts.

The key issue of this local station board election involves whether WBAI might be sold and lost to the public: This means lost in terms of what has historically made the station great; in terms of what its mission statement dictates WBAI should to aspire; and what WBAI can be in the future.  The station could also be lost in other ways than through an outright sale: It might be lost through a lease or through other more subtle legal mechanisms that would surrender programming decisions and control so that the station would no longer be nimble and able to accountably respond to listeners and supporters with the programming they want.  (A very good, very clear, succinct description of the issues surrounding the election is available here:  Don’t Let Listener Supported WBAI Radio Succumb To a Privatizing “Partnership”.)

Recently a great deal of effort has been put into eliminating financial handicaps faced by the station by transitioning the station to a new, better, far less expensive antenna arrangement and improving WBAI’s accounting to ensure it qualifies for public broadcasting funds and keeps its tax exempt status secure.  The same people who worked to do that are also working hard to ensure that the station and its programing independence and accountability to listeners are not lost through sale or lease of the station or by any other more complex, harder-to-understand legal arrangements.   

In this age of rampant privatization we cannot afford to lose such an important public asset, another public commons essential for free voices to be heard.  And, as noted above, protecting WBAI as a free and open channel for information distinct from what gets filtered through mainstream corporate sources has much in common with the fight to save libraries and ensure that those libraries remain robustly stocked with a full range of books. 

Flyer about election- Click to enlarge, download or print

A mailing went around to WBAI listeners (see above) endorsing a slate of candidates for the local station board, including the candidates known from the library fight mentioned above, who are opposing the sale or lease of the station (or surrender of program decision making).  Those candidates are known as the “Indy” or “Independent” slate.  (There is a website- with pics- furnishing information about the Indy candidates). . .

. . .  Local Station Board elections are run according to a form of instant run-off voting, something we approve of.  Not all forms of instant run-off voting are the same and the devil is in the details.  Voters can vote for whomever they want, but it has been explained to us that the way that the system works in this instance is that votes will go the furthest in electing the greatest number of candidates from this slate if voters rank their candidates from the slate in the same order. .  At least to a reasonably close degree.  (Votes for other candidates than these would work against the election of candidates from this slate.)

Back of flyer about election- Click to enlarge, download or print

This suggested ranking is not a reflection of particular candidates, but it does mean that to elect the most candidates firmly opposing the sale or lease of the station in any way shape of form, it is probably best to follow the suggested ranking of the widely circulated flyer, which flyer also took in some guess-spectations about which candidates will top the list as vote recipients.

Let’s save and protect the libraries. . . And let’s also work to make sure that WBAI is the best most robust station serving the public interest that it can be.

* * * *

The ranking of Indy candidates in the flyer is:

    1.    Randy Credico
    2.    Alex Steinberg
    3.    Mitchel Cohen
    4.    Carolyn McIntyre
    5.    Michael D. D. White
    6.    Marilyn Vogt-Downey
    7.    Carolyn Birden
    8.    Jim Dingeman
    9.    Linda Zises
    10.    Katherine O’Sullivan
    11.    Shatia Strother
    12.    Jack De Palma
    13.    Michael Jankowitz
    14.    Michael Lardner
    15.    Neale Vos
    16.    Maxine Harrison-Gallmon

For WBAI staff members (who vote separately) the flyer ranks:

    1.    Max Schmid
    2.    Shawn Rhodes
    3.    R. Paul Martin
    4.    Paul DeRienzo

For more information about the candidates and to read their full statements and their answers to the Pacifica’s questions for LSB candidates go to the Pacifica Foundation site: Pacifica Election Candidate List (or click on the links above for particular candidates).

(DISCLAIMER: As should probably be obvious, this post is a Citizens Defending Libraries product, and is not the result of or through any affiliation with WBAI or Pacifica.)

The statements of Citizens Defending Libraries co-founders Carolyn McIntyre and Michael D. D. White are below (+ click on link for Q&As):

Statement of Carolyn E. McIntyre

As a social worker, therapist, and Co-Founder of Citizens Defending Libraries, I am actively dealing with social and environmental justice issues in the face of growing inequality and the disempowerment of diverse community voices.  I see WBAI as having an increasingly important role in providing a forum for underrepresented voices.  The WBAI market is the largest market and with listenership much lower than what it used to be; there is much that can be done to change that.  My husband, Michael White, and I have hosted forums on Where Do You Get Your News, Voter Disenfranchisement, and the Sell-Off of Public Assets including public libraries, NYCHA housing, public parks and public schools.  We have been a supporter and contributor of WBAI and have been guests on the WBAI Morning Show.  It is an integral part of my social work values and personal ethics to value the worth of all as well as the environment and foster compassion, the felt sense that we are all connected.  I seek to keep WBAI on the air and listener supported, protecting it from exploitative real estate contracts, protect the signal from being sold off, providing outlets for whistle blowers and under-represented democracy protectors.  I would like to greatly expand the WBAI memberships and listenership, grow the volunteer culture with live events and events live streamed from places like The Commons and regain grant money from Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Statement of Michael D. D. White

I want to be on the board of WBAI because I think it is essential that WBAI grow, strengthen and thrive to perform the role that only a truly listener supported public radio station like WBAI (eschewing corporate-mindset sponsors) can: Offering a variety of rich and wide-ranging counter narratives to the constrained and in many ways often destructive memes of that pass for “public discourse” in the mainstream corporate media.  On an X Y axis, the content of WBAI should, on the one hand, be about what is most critical to the public interest, and, on the other hand, it should provide the information and insight that tend to be most buried and censored today by the monied interests controlling most media access.  I envision WBAI as a discovery porthole through which any listener tuning in can discover what they are unlikely to discover elsewhere that is important to their understanding of the world, its past, and our possible futures.  That includes regularly providing pointers toward sources for further information and exploration (including other WBAI and Pacifica programming).

WBAI programing should be alert for the fresh, new and surprising that will enthrall listeners and keep them curious, turned in and coming back for more.  At the same time history lets us connect the dots to hold power accountable and put the present in context.  We need to be able to depend on WBAI to transgress conventional media boundaries, escaping the usual ruts other media falls into (while not falling into ruts of our own).  The most effective guide star for escape?: integrity!

Let’s recognize how powerful it is that the New York metro broadcast area WBAI serves is the nation’s largest. Furthermore, New York is a hub of media production and WBAI needs to respond to the culture based here with a meta-awareness and media-literate criticality of how other New York-based media institutions don’t serve the public faithfully.  This could be great fun, liberating and involving for our audience.  It could also launch syndication of several nationally relevant programs.  Similarly, WBAI broadcasts should showcase the best nationally relevant Pacifica programs . .

But, WBAI also needs to take advantage of the rich local flavor of New York for programming that addresses local issues.  WBAI needs to distinguish itself by sinking its teeth into local news coverage, because local news coverage in NYC is embarrassingly poor, so much of it bowing to influence, ownership and control of the real estate industry, which is to local politics what oil money is to national politics.

Lastly, and quite important, there are many reasons why WBAI needs to continue broadcasting its signal terrestrially to the New York metropolis via its antenna.  Reasons that get discussed too little are that dissemination of thoughts and ideas and real time building community in such fashion is less subject to surveillance and cannot be throttled, censored or neutralized by internet algorithms, or if net neutrality is abolished.  

No Available Publishers, Threat To Abandon The Book, Then A Pulitzer: Should Gilbert King’s “Devil in the Grove,” A Black Lives Matter Book About The Groveland Four, Be On Our List Of Suppressed Books?

Gilbert King, author of “Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America” on Democracy Now and a picture of his book

 It’s about what happened 70 years ago.  The book about what happened back then came out in 2012.  It’s news now because Florida’s governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, just granted posthumous pardons to four young African-American men accused of raping a white woman near Groveland, Florida, 70 years ago.  Although the facts were already egregious enough, the book, by Gilbert King, “Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America,” uncovered previously unknown unredacted FBI reports that had been suppressed, evidence that there had been, in Mr. Kings words, “a ton of perjury,” fabrication of false evidence, and that law enforcement agents admitting torturing the four black men from whom they wanted to extract “confessions” so as to accuse them of the rape of a white woman that almost certainly never occurred.

King also was the first person to see a report that was “quashed” by the FBI and the U.S. attorney that showed that one of the accused black men was murdered by the local sheriff and his deputy.

The book is also important as a sort of origin story about Thurgood Marshall, the nation’s first African-American Supreme Court justice.

Coverage of Florida Governor’s pardons and the underlying back story was available through Democracy Now this week: The Groveland Four: Florida Pardons Men Falsely Accused in Jim Crow-Era Rape Case in 1949, January  14, 2019.

Should we add  “Devil in the Grove” to our Citizens Defending Libraries list of books that have been suppressed?                   

The story of the book’s almost non-publication, its near disappearance from the public commons of the book world where it could be part of ongoing public discourse and then, finally, its receipt of the Pulitzer Prize (also nominated for an Edgar) is reminiscent of the tales that attach to some of the other of the books on our growing list of suppressed books, including other Pulitzer Prize winners.  See: Books As Catalysts In A World Where Information And Points of View Are Often Suppressed.

Mr. King tells how, the book was “rejected 38 times by publishers.”  When it was finally published “it didn’t really get a lot of attention, didn’t get a lot of reviews.”  Really?  Why?  And then his publisher informed him of their intent to abandon the book and remainder it.  Remaindering a book is perhaps not quite so squalid an end for a book as being “pulped” out of existence, a threat that faced other books on our suppressed list, but it’s similar.

And then the book’s merit was recognized when it received the  2013 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, was nominated for a 2013 Edgar Award, and got the Book of the Year (Non-fiction, 2012) The Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor!

Like other books on our list of suppressed books it was a catalyst for change- Would the Florida Governor’s pardons be forthcoming at this time without this book?  Doubtful.

Perhaps this book was not suppressed as obviously as other books already on our list, but it is important to recognize that in the tales of suppression that we have collected we are not talking about outright censorship, but about something more subtle.  The more subtle ways books on our list have been held back from the public is a continuum.   That continuum of suppression shapes public discourse, but it is hard to know where on this continuum to stop pointing out the effects of how the media industry is organized to deliver or not deliver content to us.

It will be noted that other books on our list of suppressed books deal directly with federal power or the power of the media, or some with issues of the surveillance and the intelligence community.   A book, like “Devil in the Grove,” about a racially based miscarriage of justice that occurred seventy years ago might not seem so equally challenging to government and existing power structures so as to be a candidate for suppression. . .   That is not unless you consider past to be prologue, in which case you can consider that this book is ever so relevant to today as a Black Lives Matter history book. 

Is the government threatened by “Black Lives Matter” thinking?  Apparently it is: The FBI, as documented in its own internal memorandum is, just like the old days, characterizing black activists protesting police brutality as terrorists.  The FBI has even labeled them with the newly coined term “Black Identity Extremists” (BIEs).  See:  ‘The Bureau Is Once Again Profiling Black Activists Because of Their Beliefs and Their Race’, by Janine Jackson, October 24, 2017.
   
Why is the Republican governor issuing his pardon for the Groveland Four now?  It is interesting to think that one reason may be that Florida voters just changed the law of the state reenfranchising and allowing to vote 1.4 million people previously convicted of felonies.  Florida is a state where about 10% of adults, 1 in 5 black adults, 1.5 million people in all were disenfranchised.  Crime convictions are often discriminatory: People who are poor, black or brown are tried and convicted for things others wouldn’t be . . .   Is the Republican governor’s pardon a political tip of the hat to that fact?  Is it also an acknowledgment to the newly reenfranchised voters that too often, as the convicted themselves must surely know, such people who are convicted are also innocent of the crimes of which they are convicted?

As noted, “Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America,” was published in 2012.  The book was  rejected 38 times by publishers, but it was published.  It is interesting to think whether it would be published now.

The publishing world has changed.  In a recent sermon about Amazon given by Ana Levy-Lyons a Unitarian Universalist minister in Brooklyn Heights, Ms. Levy-Lyons suggested that the changes that Amazon has brought to the book world are bleeding money out of that world (with the consequent layoff of marketing and sales people and editors and the shrinking of author royalties and advances).  She said that, “publishers are less able to take risks on first-time authors or authors with some off-beat weird idea.”  She referred to her own book, “No Other Gods: The Politics of the Ten Commandments,” published just recently in March 2018, and said that these changes are continuing to happen so fast that she knows “for a fact that” if she had pitched her book even one year later, her “publisher would not have bought it.”  Thus “authors are finding it harder and harder to make a living.”

The ways in which the book publishing world have changed recently have been so fast and so vast they are difficult to assess.  It’s a moving target.  That includes assessing any changes on the continuum of soft suppression of what does and does not get published . .

. .   So “Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America,” was rejected 38 times by publishers, but would it have been published at all now?

If you are a New Yorker looking for this book in your public library you might face a challenge.  Non of the five copies the Brooklyn Public Library has are currently available.  None of the NYPL's four circulating copies is currently available.  The NYPL doesn't keep a reference copy of the Pulitzer Prize winner in its 42nd Street Central Reference library, so don't go there.  It does keep a reference copy on hand in the Schomburg Library.  If you want, you can try for the e-book or the audio book they have.  Queens residents will have the best time of it: Six of the ten copies on hand are currently available.  At least until recent years the Queens Library system was not as hell bent as the NYPL and BPL on getting rid of books.

As Striking L.A. Teachers Push Back, Analysis That Profit-Seeking Billionaires Are Desperate To Privatize In Order To Lower Expectations And Prove Government Doesn't Work (cf: Fights For Green New Deal and Universal Healthcare)

On Deomcracy Now's report on the Los Angeles teachers strike against privatization: Cecily Myart-Cruz and Eric Blanc

We could write about the teachers strike in Los Angeles with respect to one very direct relationship to defending libraries: They are demanding more librarians, along with their other demands (for smaller class sizes, higher pay, the regulation of charter schools and more nurses, and counselors).  But the more important connection to make is how the teachers fight against privatization is part of a bigger overall fight against privatization of all our institutions, including places like schools and libraries where we go to develop our minds, educate ourselves, and learn about democracy and how to understand power.

It is sobering, how closely the attacks on the Los Angeles public schools involve tactics parallel to those used against New York City public libraries as those launching those attacks attempt to lower the expectations of what the public can expect from government and the benefits that can flow to the public through the public commons.

The Democracy Now coverage of the strike this week is very good: “Public Education Is Not Your Plaything”: L.A. Teachers Strike Against Privatization & Underfunding, January 15, 2019.

In the words of Eric Blanc, a reporter covering the strike for The Guardian and Jacobin: “the question of privatization here in Los Angeles has been put to the fore” as 20,000 people marched through downtown Los Angeles protesting the privatization of Los Angeles public schools.  In The Nation Blanc wrote: “Pro-charter billionaires like Eli Broad and Reed Hastings spent an unprecedented $9.7 million in the spring of 2017 to ensure the election of a pro-privatization majority [to] the school board.”

This resulted in new superintendent, Austin Beutner, taking charge of the system, “who was imposed by billionaires who bought the 2017 elections” and who:

has a plan to downsize the district to push students into charter schools. . .

So, what we see by Beutner is fundamentally a push to really dismantle the institution that he’s nominally supposed to be leading.

Does this sound familiar to ears of library defenders here in New York City?  The following will also sound familiar.  Beutner maintains:

that there’s a financial crisis, that he would love to meet the demands of teachers. But we know that there’s actually a $1.86 billion reserve. And so what’s at stake is, he doesn’t want to use that money to improve the schools, because if he were to do that, it would undermine his mission to basically dismantle and privatize L.A. public schools.

Substantial reserve funds that those running the system won't access when they want to privatize the system's assets?  Yes familiar.

This assessment of strike leader and National Education Association vice president at United Teachers Los Angeles Cecily Myart-Cruz will add still more to what library defenders will find familiar: That there is (as with the policies pushed by Betsy DeVos Trump's U.S. Secretary of Education who is deeply involved in pushing the charter schools she is connected to) a:

systematic underfunding of public education, we’re talking about a privatization model that has swept the country

Of all the things said during the discussion, the analysis of Mr. Blanc’s below is what struck us as the most wise and most critical to think about:

I think the most important thing to keep in mind there is that public education is like the last bastion of the public sector in the United States. They’ve taken away most of everything else we had, and put it into private hands. And so, really, what you’re seeing is working people really concentrating around public education as the last right that we have for all people in this country. And so, at the same time, big business wants to dismantle this, because they know that if they can lower people’s expectations . . that they don’t deserve anything, then it’s going to be much harder to fight for other gains that we need, such as Medicare for all or a Green New Deal. So, really, what we’re seeing is: Is this going to be a country that uses its vast wealth to fund human needs, or is it going to be using this wealth to fund, you know, really big billionaires?

We previously covered in detail the assessment that the success of libraries, by their example are a threat to the privatizers here: Libraries As A Threat To The “Perspective” That Virtually Everything Should Be Dictated And Run By The Forces of Market Capitalism.

That’s right, if the public can be convinced that government can’t do anything successfully, it means there are a lot of things we can never “expect” to get, like medicare for all, or a solutions for our climate chaos crisis and global warming.  (See: If the Government Shutdown Wasn’t About Obamacare (And It Isn’t), Then It Was About?. . . Ready To Be Hot Under The Collar?)

Our Defending Libraries Testimony On Councilman Steve Levin's Proposal To Change NYC Law To Pour More Money Into Mayor de Blasio's Legal Defense Fund For Fending Off Pay-To-Play Investigations

Steve Levin at the hearing on his proposal to help de Blasio pay his legal bills for being investigated for selling off public assets like the Brooklyn Heights Library

Below is our Citizens Defending Libraries Testimony on Councilman Steve Levin's proposal to change New York City's law so as to pour more money into Mayor de Blasio's legal defense fund used by him to fending off pay-to-play investigations.

If you read our testimony it will be quickly be evident what is in issue.  And why is Councilman Levin the one proposing this law change? He shouldn't be, and that's something that will be quickly evident too.

If you would like to refer to some of the minimal reporting on this as background, you can look at:

•        New York Post: Opinion- editorial-  Don’t give de Blasio a sleazy way to pay his legal bills, by Post Editorial Board, January 8, 2019.

•        Politico: City Council introducing legislation that would help de Blasio with unpaid lawyers' bills, by Sally Goldenberg, January 7, 2019.


•        Politico: De Blasio approves his own contract for legal fees after city comptroller rejects it, by Sally Goldenberg, November 20, 2018.

Video of the largely unheralded January 14, 2019 City Council hearing taking oral testimony is also available. 

Our Citizens Defending Libraries Testimony:

* * * *

January 14, 2019

Committee on Governmental Operations
Fernando Cabrera, Chair
Committee on Governmental Operations
c/o Elizabeth Adams eadams@council.nyc.gov

Re: Testimony respecting Councilman Steve Levin’s proposed change in law respecting a legal trust fund to facilitate Mayor de Blasio’s payment of legal bills related to investigation of his conduct.

Dear City Council Members and Committee on Governmental Operations:

This letter states why Citizens Defending Libraries is opposed to the current move to change the law to allow much larger scale donations for the purpose of enabling Mayor Bill de Blasio to pay his legal fees for fending off and defeating investigations of his conduct while in the office of mayor, including what appears to be pay-to-play conduct involving public assets that need to be properly protected by our public officials in office.   

Citizens Defending Libraries has called for Mr. De Blasio’s conduct in selling off the Business, Career and Education Brooklyn Heights Library to be investigated.  See our letter attached and available on-line:

Open Letter to US Attorney Preet Bharara, NYS Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer, et al: Use Your Staggering Powers as Law Enforcers & Public Guardians To Immediately Halt the Corrupt Sale & Shrinking of Brooklyn Heights Library

We do not currently feel that investigation has ever been properly attended to.

We feel that passage of this change in the law to deal retroactively with this situation of concern still outstanding signals that impunity for Mr. De Blasio is acceptable, rather than the appropriate further investigation that would be appropriate and should be conducted.

As for what is signaled to be “acceptable,” we must note that while we and others think that there should be investigation as to whether criminal and/or civil laws have been broken, it is widely viewed that Mr. De Blasio’s conduct was at least improper to the degree that it skirted the law thus raising both the question of whether the law has actually been broken, and, if it hasn’t, whether the law needs to be changed.  Changes to the law that retroactively coddle this conduct sends the wrong message about what we expect from our public officials.

Next, and very significantly, we have a problem with the fact the change in this law (this change in the administrative code of the City of New York) is sponsored for adoption by another public official, Councilman Steve Levin, who worked with Mr. de Blasio to hand off the valuable downtown Brooklyn Heights Library to a developer for a pittance. (This recently enlarged and completely upgraded central destination library was Brooklyn’s second biggest library.)  Department of Education funds were also raided to push through the deal. Quite clearly, if the investigation we have called for were to be conducted Councilman Levin would be central to its scrutiny.  It is therefore a public embarrassment that Mr. Levin is the one who is proposing this change in the law at this time.

Lastly, the law as it currently stands serves a good purpose: It allows the public to deliver a verdict.  Contributions can indeed currently be made to pay fees to defend Mr. de Blasio’s conduct, it is just that they must be limited to $50.00 per person.  The reason a change is being requested in this law is because, without that change, there are too few New Yorkers with whom Mr. de Blasio’s conduct would find favor to pay these bills.  Mr. de Blasio and his administration officials represent that he is selling off valuable libraries to give the public a better deal.  But that is not actually believed by enough of the eight million-plus New Yorkers so that the minimal number will endorse the mayor’s conduct by paying his bills.  More typically, we regard such conduct on Mr. de Blasio’s part as generating public losses that hurt the average citizen.

Changing this law, allows Mr. De Blasio to turn to another, quite different, class of citizen for his verdict.  It’s a more well-healed, less democratic elite able to pay $5,000 without flinching, and they are the same class of citizen, who are more likely to be involved in schemes to sell off our libraries, turning them into real estate deals like the deals we have asked be adequately investigated.           

Accordingly, we oppose this change in the law that blesses past behavior of the mayor, which we think should be investigated rather than blessed.

Sincerely,

Michael D. D. White
Citizens Defending Libraries

* * * *

Here is more testimony submitted by Marilyn Berkon another of our activists who has long been active in our fight to defend our libraries against sale and shrinkage, the removal of books and elimination of librarians.

* * * *

Subject: Steve Levin's proposal allowing legal defense fund for public officials

Submitted on January 11, 2019 for Public Hearing scheduled January 14th, 2019 at City Hall, 10 AM

To Whom It May Concern:

Mayor de Blasio  has requested that a bill be passed allowing a defense fund to aid public officials with their legal expenses.  The names of contributors would be recorded with amounts given, so that the process would have the appearance, at least, of propriety.  But how easy it is to disguise actual names and amounts and motives for contribution!  Passing such a bill would give permission for even more corruption and would create a new, even longer list of victims.  And corrupt officials would not be deterred by the fear of personal expense in a lawsuit.  Moreover, we would be back to square one when de Blasio was under scrutiny for questionable campaign donations to him from people with business pending before the city.  Or for donations to his so-called non-profit funds, which were actually from lobbyists in disguise.  That was Campaign for One NY.  People contributing to such a fund are looking for favors in return for their donations.  Printing their names and amounts does not hinder them since they escape with a shrug, saying that they were favored simply because their project was deemed the best.  And the politicians who benefit from these contributors concur with the same explanation.

Naturally, de Blasio would request such a bill, and naturally his good friend Steve Levin would promote it.  De Blasio may have had charges of corruption dismissed against him, but thousands of people were astonished when word came through, only days after the firing of Preet Bharara by Trump, that de Blasio was exonerated of all wrongdoing!  Preet Bharara's investigation was meant to continue for a long time until all investigations were complete.  That never happened.  The prosecutors admit that although they could not indict him, it was clear that he had engaged in corrupt practices.  And I recently learned that the taxpayers, who were actually his victims, ended up paying for his legal troubles involving Campaign for One NY.  Now he is looking to pay off his remaining $300,000 debt to a private law firm.  He knows he can't get the taxpayers to do it for him again!

One example where de Blasio escaped investigation altogether regards the Brooklyn Heights Library.  Bharara had a full report of the corruption, but was fired before the investigation of the pay-for-play campaign contributions to de Blasio from the developer who tore down the Brooklyn Heights Library to replace it with a luxury condo.  What we were promised was a replacement library less than half the original size, crushed beneath the condo, half below ground, and the ugliness of construction noise and toxins, traffic tie ups, shadows over our park from a condo that no one wanted, except the people who would benefit financially from the deal.  There was hard evidence of pay-for-play with pictures, names and dates of the developer's fund raiser, and hard print evidence of other campaign donation amounts from the developer, all occurring illegally during the time his application to build was still pending.  The so-called affordable housing connected to the condo will be built two miles away in another neighborhood.

That is only one example of de Blasio's corruption throughout the city, never properly investigated.  One could cite many examples that stir up anger and bitterness against this mayor who responds by dismissing the accusations as unimportant, or nonsensical.  We remain his victims in this city.  He won the re-election on only 24% of voters, people who dutifully came out on that raw, rainy, windy day, but had no choice other than de Blasio.  No one knew who was running against him because his excellent opponent Sal Albanese was kept off the second debate on some absurd technicality.  Bo Dietl was allowed to debate him, a man that no one took seriously.  Even de Blasio's re-election created suspicion.

Now de Blasio wants a handout, and his friend Levin is providing it with bill #1325.  Levin betrayed 98% of his constituents, a percentage he himself offered in a video that revealed the fierce opposition to the condo plan.  Yet he gave us the clear impression at the final City Hall hearing that he would stand by his constituents.  We even made calls to his office to extend our praise and thanks for the way he questioned the developer there.  And in a radio interview one day before the vote, he said that he had no compromise in mind with the developer.

But clearly, he did not want to cross, or fall out of favor with de Blasio, who took the pay-for-play donations from the developer and gave permission for the library demolition and the luxury condo construction on the site.  So Levin made a last-minute backroom deal with the developer and stunned us all with his vote against us as we sat at City Hall waiting for him to save our library.  Nor did members of the council cross Levin since they feared retaliation, not getting whatever they might need for their district in the future. And, as for the STEM program he received in that deal--the chancellor, Carmen Farina, had already told him that the Department of Education absolutely did not want a STEM program, that the district already had more than enough, that he was depriving the Department of Education of funds that were much needed elsewhere for students throughout the city. So we see that even before the last-minute deal, he was already conferring with the developer about a compromise he was hiding from his constituents.  How can we possibly respect any bill Levin puts forward on behalf of de Blasio?  It is already tainted, and it would fail to be taint-free in the future. 

 Let de Blasio pay his own legal bills, and let all politicians who have to fight corruption charges pay their own bills.  De Blasio is a public official who escaped punishment, having slipped through many loopholes that were cleverly designed for him.  Our outrage is against him, not his accusers, since we are his victims.  Let public officials keep clean, and no one will be able to sully them.  If anyone tries and fails, that false accuser should be forced to pay the legal expenses incurred.

De Blasio was simply lucky that Trump fired Bharara.  He got off free because the ones aiding in Bharara's investigation perhaps could not manage all the bulk of evidence, or the heavy pressure coming from friends of de Blasio in corrupt government.  He got off free, but we remain his victims.  And he with his smug, self-important attitude, dismisses our complaints as unimportant.

Please don't set up a defense fund for him or any other public official.  It is sure to end in more corruption since the regulations applied will be no stronger than the people who oversee them. And they, too, will be easily corrupted.  Nor do the regulations, in themselves, protect against corruption.  The loopholes are huge, no different from the ones that have already eased de Blasio's path.  And it is not believable that anyone contributing to such a fund would not want a favor in return.  Levin wants the limit to be $5000!  Who would give that kind of money without a favor in mind?  Nor would anyone want to contribute even the $50.00 amount, considering that it is essentially a gift for corrupt politicians.  De Blasio has wreaked destruction here and cares nothing for our consternation. Let him pay his own legal fees..

I repeat, please do not support this bill proposed by Steve Levin regarding a legal defense fund for public officials.  It will only lead to more corruption in government, give unsavory politicians a free pass to act without regard to ethics and the law.  They will do what they do with impunity and will not have to think twice about any consequences they might have to suffer for it in an expensive law suit.  Nor will they ever have to worry about their victims and the price we have to pay.

I end by saying that there is good in everyone, in de Blasio, in Levin--but the good must not be an excuse to ignore the deeply harmful effects of corruption in our city.  That corruption will be made all the more possible, if the proposed bill is passed into law.

Thank you for your attention to this.

Respectfully submitted,
Marilyn Berkon 

Brooklyn, NY 11201       
   

NYPL Trustee Stephen A. Schwarzman, With His $1 Billion Salary, Claims Success `NOT Because We’re Smarter’, But Because `We Just See Things Others Can’t See,’ Have Data Others Don’t, And Get Advance Warnings

Its sort of a creepy thought: Seeing what “others can’t see.”  We wondered who else might be unnerved by some of the things in a new Barron’s interview. . .

Stephen A. Schwarzman is the head of the Blackstone Group (and the highest paid CEO in the country- the first $1 billion CEO).  Many are familiar with the fact that the 42nd Street Central Reference Library has awkwardly been renamed after Schwarzman, who, is not exactly about spreading the wealth or being magnanimous to the common man or general population.  He wants the poor to pay more taxes, while he pays, along with others in the hedge fund industry, an exceptionally low rate in taxes due to the carried-interest tax loophole, from which he personally benefits.  He has opposed that loophole's repeal saying repeal would be akin to the German invasion of Poland. And Mr. Schwarzman has also been leading the Trump administration’s initiative to privatize America’s public infrastructure. Mr. Schwarzman is a trustee of the NYPL.  What?  Of course!  What could be more natural than to name a major research library after such a man?

The library was renamed after this living individual (something of a no-no) after Schwarzman transferred $100 million to the NYPL based on his understanding that the consolidating shrinkage of the Central Library Plan was to proceed.  That plan involved selling off major central destination libraries in Manhattan.

Barron’s just released an interview with Mr. Schwarzman.  No doubt the interview is intended to be flattering, as there is little doubt that the parties mutually understood it was to follow the prescriptions of “access reporting.”  See: Barron's:  ‘We Can See Things Other People Can’t See.’ Stephen Schwarzman Talks Blackstone’s Edge, Succession Plans — but Not Trump, by Jack Hough, December 28, 2018

So it was probably meant to be both Mr. Schwarzman’s feint at humility plus, hint, hint, a lure to future Blackstone investors (communicating that he had an inside track) when Schwarzman explained that Blackstone successes (and implicitly his own record-setting $1 billion salary), was “not because we’re smarter,” but because the Schwarzman Blackstone crew “can see things that other people can’t see” and have extra data that others don’t.  Specifically, in response to how Blackstone “finds” what Schwarzman says are “new areas that have good returns for the risk” that appeal to “Blackstone’s DNA”:

That enables us to see trends and patterns and avoid risk and lean into return. We can see things that other people can’t see—not because we’re smarter, but because we have more data.

We have businesses that generate a lot of intellectual capital. That enables us to see trends and patterns and avoid risk and lean into return. We can see things that other people can’t see—not because we’re smarter, but because we have more data.

For example, in real estate, we own major asset classes all over the world. We can tell more or less without consulting anybody what’s happening economically in different locations. We also have private equity in those countries. . . .  We can get advance warnings of when something looks interesting or when to avoid it.

Recently, from research done by Jeffrey Wollock, we learned that, as the Inwood Library is now yet one more NYPL library being sold as part and parcel of the rezoning of Inwood, a Blackstone portfolio company, purchased a major interest in a portfolio of 12 multi-family buildings in the vicinity, both in Inwood and adjoining Washington Heights, an ownership that will likely profit from these City/NYPL plans.  Mr. Schwarzman is a trustee of the NYPL.

Blackstone was also investing in buildings around neighboring Bryant Park when it was expected that the NYPL would sell the Mid-Manhattan library there as a result of the transfer of funds from Mr. Schwarzman that got the 42nd Street Library named after him.  The fact that Blackstone was actually buying up that real estate makes less comically playful the remarks of NYPL president Tony Marx back then on February 1, 2013.   Talking about the Central Library Plan before the Association For a Better New York Mr. Marx said, “little hint,” it would be a good idea to buy up such real estate in the area (and “I think I can say that as long as I don’t actually do it.”)

It is worth mentioning that, just before the NYPL sold the Donnell Library, its first major sale of a library to benefit the real estate industry, before that sale was even publicly known about, there were rumors that Schwarzman’s Blackstone would be involved in the sale, but it is impossible to say exactly what actually then happened behind the scenes.

When Schwarzman crows about the information and things he and Blackstone get to see that others don’t, is it disconcerting that ownership of one of the buildings bordering Bryant Park (1095 6th Ave #25B, New York, NY 10036, aka 3 Bryant Park) made Mr. Schwarzman landlord for Booz Allen Hamilton?. .  Or is it disconcerting that Booz Allen Hamilton is known more than anything for its surveillance work for government (the U.S. contracts out the huge preponderance of its surveillance to private firms, and mainly to just a few firms with Booz Allen Hamilton regarded as the “colossus” of those few), and that Booz has been one of the prime players in the library sell-offs?  That’s because the NYPL trustees hired Booz for that role not long after librarians had proved troublesome for the government in terms of PATRIOT Act surveillance efforts, and shortly after the NYPL’s board (according to its minutes) was advised that it was expected that the federal government was going to “require” the NYPL “to reengineer their Internet service facilities to enhance law enforcement’s ability to monitor and intercept communications.” 

Of course you don’t have to have even a single conspiratorial thought in your head to simply worry about the implication of how, with monopolies and mass consolidations everywhere, the world is increasingly becoming just a few conglomerate firms.  When everything boils down to just a few huge companies, it gets to be just too easy; then it seems like the dots always connect.

And maybe that’s why it should also be disconcerting to read in this article about Blackstone’s acquisition of a controlling interest in a major information company, the main competitor to Blooomberg.  (It will rename the unit “Refinitiv.”)  Schwarzman told the interviewer it was an example of what Blackstone could do, by exercising its special advantage, that “few firms in the world can do”:

    . .  our $20 billion Thomson Reuters (TRI) deal [for a majority stake in its financial-data unit]. We did that in private conversations. There was no auction. We got a chance to study the business. That’s a real advantage.

In theory, acquisition of the “financial-data unit” of Thomson Reuters might not affect the Reuters news `unit.`  The international Reuters news service had its origins in the mid 1800s with the distribution of radical pamphlets distributed by Paul Reuter in connection with revolutions in Europe.  As of 2002, it was reported to be one of the three major new agencies, along with the Associated Press, and Agence France-Presse that provided most of the world news.  Basically, all the major news outlets still subscribe to it.   

In 2008, Reuters was acquired by Thomson (with Reuters staff worrying about continuation of the editorial independence of which it had, historically been fiercely proud, plus already worrying about other overall acquisitions such as this in the future).  In 2009, Noticing New York wrote about the strange competition between Thomson and Bloomberg LLP that, among other things, catapulted the formerly not very significant wealth of Michael Bloomberg, turning him into the richest New Yorker while in office as New York City Mayor.   There is a lot to think about here.

Reportedly, according to an article behind a Bloomberg paywall, in 2016 Reuters went through a restructuring eliminating 2,000 jobs around the world as it sold “its intellectual property and science operation for $3.55 billion to private equity firms” (Onex Corporation, “Onex” and Baring Private Equity Asia, “Baring Asia”) in cash.

Meanwhile, as an enduring part of the NYPL Central Library Plan that Schwarzman helped to push forward with a $100 million transfer of cash, the NYPL is getting rid of the city’s largest science museum.  It will be turned into a comic book museum.  Interesting, what is happening to information in this society.

NYPL officials excused the loss of the science library and its collections saying that people who want science information can get it from the internet.  At the same time, the FCC, is being extremely non-transparent and surreptitious as it tries to eliminate net neutrality, the free and open access to resources on the web.

The Barron’s interview briefly touched upon the possibility that Schwarzman’s Blackstone would convert to a “C-Corp” allowing it to be included in index funds.  Blackstone already files SEC filing as a “public,” company.  Maybe someone else who understands this better wants to comment, but it seems a C-Corp status would mean more filings making public information available.

Traveling with Trump to Saudi Arabia in 2016, Schwarzman brought back $20 billion for Blackstone as seed money for the selling off and privatizing of American public assets.  Asked, in the Barron's interview, about the recently much more obvious moral problems of working with those in power in that government, Schwarzman said:

We deal with the government, and we’ve been doing that for decades. Our approach is to maintain consistent relationships.

Maintaining consistent relationships. . .  Interesting fellow Schwarzman.  Do we all find all this creepy?

BTW:  Libraries are about sharing information so that everybody can see it, not just a few among the lucky elite.