Ambush! Watch Citizens Defending Libraries Corner Squadron At Borough Hall Rally

By on September 17, 2013 11:09 pm in News

Citizens Defending Libraries, the Brooklyn Heights based group lead by Montague Street’s Michael DD White, attended Daniel Squadron’s Public Advocate rally at Borough Hall on Sunday (9/15).

NYS Assemblymember Joan Millman was on hand and brought up her belief that Brooklyn’s libraries, including the Brooklyn Heights branch must be saved from developers.

White asked Squadron if he intended to write the Brooklyn Public Library to ask that the not shrink or sell the Brooklyn Heights branch or send the business and career library away. Squadron refused to parrot that statement from White and his group on camera, saying “I don’t do things on command in that way.”

The video ends with Squadron promising to work with Millman and NYC Councilmember Steve Levin on the library issue.

Here’s a cleaner video of the full presser – Millman speaks at around 12 minutes in:

As for Squadron’s position on libraries his here’s a statement posted on his campaign website:

“I am opposed to the proposed plans by the city’s library systems in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

As always, I believe that meaningful community input is absolutely necessary; when it comes to these proposed plans, transparency and responsiveness have been insufficient.

I also believe that it is simply unacceptable to sell or shrink libraries for profit.

And I am deeply opposed to cuts to library funding, which put our libraries in crisis.

I’ve been proud to work on these issues in the State Senate, receiving an ‘A’ from New Yorkers for Better Libraries on my voting record last year.

I continue to be focused on protecting funding and finding solutions that ensure strong, healthy libraries across the five boroughs.”

And now we digress — this is a blog and this is our POV:

What’s missing from this dialog about libraries? No one on the preservation side is talking about what the function and mission of a library is in the 21st century. Nor have we heard (please feel free to fill us in if we’re shooting too much from the hip) about how this is a chance to INNOVATE and to DISRUPT the status quo.

Forbes recently published a piece called “Reinventing Libraries for the Future” which included this passage:

“In 2020, the public library will be a concept more than a place,” wrote Bill Ptacek, director of the King County Library system in Issaquah, Wash., in Library Journal. “The library will be more about what it does for people rather than what it has for people. As society evolves and more content becomes digital, people will access information in different ways.”

And recently, internet pioneer Vint Cerf sat down with “media pundit” Jeff Jarvis and said this about libraries:

“You have no idea how eager I am to ensure that the notion of library does not disappear – it’s too important. But the thing is, it’s going to have to curate an extremely broad range of materials, and increasingly digital content,” says Cerf.

So, is it so strange for us to be more focused on that sort of forward thinking than to fight for a building with broken air conditioning, nannies on cell phones, homeless men fighting and creeps surfing for porn?

So if that makes us the jolly swagman handmaiden of the BHA’s war on whatever, then so be it.

This post was updated on 9/17/13 at 7AM with additional information regarding the rally and Squadron’s position statement.

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  • wally

    A library card is free. Battery free.

  • Michael D. D. White

    “Ambush” connotes surprise. As for surprise: Citizens Defending Libraries was surprised that one half hour before his kickoff press conference Daniel Squadron issued a press release changing his position on the sell-off of New York City libraries, the Brooklyn Heights Library among them. I would say we were surprised and pleasantly gratified to have had an effect.

    As for Mr. Squadron being surprised by us: Normally, when you issue a press release in connection with a press conference with your campaign staff handing out stacks of those releases at the conference, you expect to be asked about that statement you have released. Too bad Mr. Squadron did not use the opportunity to speak to NY1 about libraries and their sell-off if he truly wants the public to know his position.

    If “ambush” means that the ambusher springs out from hiding; no one was hiding- We were standing in plain site of Mr. Squadron with our protect-the-libraries signs for well over a half hour before we approached Mr. Squadron to ask him to speak about his written statement. Some would infer from the issuance of the Squadron library position statement a half hour before his kickoff (plus the fact that they emailed it to us at that time) that Squadron and his campaign managers were expecting Citizens Defending Libraries long before we ever showed up.

    Well before the press conference started began I spoke with one of Mr. Squdron’s campaign managers saying that we were hoping to get an oral statement that morning from Mr. Squadron based on his new release and I even used the contact phone number his campaign provided to initiate this conversation, meeting with at the press conference site with his designated representative.

    I politely waited to speak to Mr. Squadron until he had completed all other business and was not distracted by other matters.

    Where the Brooklyn Heights Blog switches into “Point of View” it raises some interesting topics about libraries that are worth discussing. I think you will find that those topics are covered by the questions that Citizens Defending Libraries presented to Mr. Squadron in the form of a questionnaire and in connection with its Candidates Forum on libraries, questions about his position on libraries to which Mr. Squadron has not yet responded. I think you will find that those topics are amply discussed and debated by others on Citizens Defending Libraries web pages.

    As for referring to the air conditioning at the Brooklyn Heights Library as “broken,” the better adjective would be “unfixed” given the very strange documentation provided by the BPL attempting to explain what went wrong with the library’s air conditioning AFTER its decision to push this library onto the chopping block for real estate developer benefit. (cf: The Donnell Library.)

    From using and canvassing the Brooklyn Heights Library I know that it is intensely used by a broad swath of society including families such as our own which are definitely at the high end of the socioeconomic spectrum. I think it is unfortunate that in arguing for the sale and shrinkage of the library you offer a `profiling’ and, I think, false caricature of people using the library whose resources are not equal to ours. Sadly, you are not the first to suggest that selling the library would evict what you are portraying as a different and undesirable population. (Note that our last forum was co-sponsored by the NAACP.)

    I am glad that Mr. Squadron’s press statement is now up on the web. When I last checked I had to inform his campaign people that it wasn’t.

    Michael D. D. White
    Citizens Defending Libraries

  • Martha

    Ambush? Hardly. This was a public event and Squadron had just finished speaking on camera with a reporter for New York 1. You can clearly hear Michael White saying politely (to Squadron’s campaign manager or someone in his campaign) that he would like to ask a question. The question was posed calmly and politely and was entirely reasonable considering that it was about a press release that had just been distributed indicating an important change in Squadron’s position on an issue of considerable importance in the campaign and, in particular, for the community where he was speaking. The fact that Joan Millman spoke on the subject of libraries was very good to hear, but that was not Daniel Squadron himself stating a clear position. The question remains, why was he not willing to state his position, or even just read the press release out loud, when asked?

  • BrooklynBugle

    Dude, you need to go to the library and look up “Elevator Pitch”.

  • Martha

    Concepts are all well and good for disembodied spirits. I don’t know about Bill Ptacek and the folks at Forbes, but I’m a physical entity and exist in actual physical space. Whether libraries evolve in the sorts of things they lend does not change that reality. Public spaces and buildings are an essential part of a democratic society and should not be considered dispensable when the possibilities of profit enter the equation.

  • http://selfabsorbedboomer.blogspot.com/ Claude Scales

    Must all discourse on serious and complex issues be reduced to sound bites? If your answer is, “It has to be if you want anyone to pay attention,” my answer is, you can hook the listener or reader with an appropriately zippy opener (“Friends, Romans, countrymen….”)

  • http://selfabsorbedboomer.blogspot.com Claude Scales

    Must all discourse on serious and complex issues be reduced to sound bites? If your answer is, “It has to be if anyone’s going to pay attention” my answer is, you can grab attention by an appropriately zippy opener (“Friends, Romans, countrymen….”).

  • BrooklynBugle

    Ladies and gentleman, it is our goal to take this library back from the perverts, freaks and malcontents who have made it a most unpleasant place to learn. Furthermore, our goal is to embrace new technology and innovation to create a first class facility in Brooklyn Heights that will be the envy of not only our fair city but of the world. We demand that whatever happens to its current location, that its architectural elements be preserved and made part of any new structure erected on this site.

    Have an electric day.

    Sincerely,

    People who might just go to a much better smelling and run library that has air conditioning and a staff that is not recalcitrant.

  • Marilyn Berkon

    There was no ambush involved. People holding signs were in plain sight. They were respectfully protesting the sale of our public libraries to private developers. The only surprise was the fact that Squadron refused to comment on the campaign sheet his manager had distributed just before his speech in front of the camera. Confirming what appeared to be a change in his position on the sale of our libraries would have served as a benefit for him. Previously, it was clear that he favored a high rise luxury condo replacing our Heights library with the promise of a new library one quarter the size in its basement. Nor did he object to the loss of the Business-Careers library within the building. His refusal to speak in front of the camera on what seemed a new position indicated to me that the sheet he distributed was meant to deceive us. Otherwise he would have been happy to write any letters meant to protect the sale of our libraries, and he would have been happy to state that!
    Mr. Ptacek tells us that by 2020 a library will be a concept more than a place. Perhaps by that year he will be a concept more than a person. People will have to imagine him when he enters a room. And we will feed him a plate of digital food.

  • Marilyn Berkon

    Before the city refused to repair our air conditioning or give us funds for any other necessities, there was never a problem in our Heights library. The city will not give us the funds because it needs “disrepair” as an excuse to sell it off. The city used “poor air conditioning” as an excuse to sell the Donnell library for a luxury high rise. Closed in 2008, it is still not open. When it is scheduled to open in 2015 it will be in the basement of that high rise and only one third its original size. Is that the model people want for our Brooklyn Heights library?

  • http://selfabsorbedboomer.blogspot.com/ Claude Scales

    Well said, though I’m not sure where these “perverts, freaks and malcontents” or “recalcitrant” staff (not to mention the unpleasant odors) have been when I’ve visited the library. I guess I’m just a lucky guy.

  • Michael D. D. White

    HenryLoL doesn’t like hospitals either. He seems to like selling off public assets to benefit developers at the expense of the public- Here is what he similarly said about LICH:

    “Close this dump down! The City has NO RIGHT to tell this organization
    what to do. We have more hospitals in a few square miles than most
    cities have in 100. Getting to the point of ABSURD! And it is all
    because of unions!”

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