CDL’s Michael White Featured in BKLYNR, Brooklyn Brief

By on July 10, 2014 2:01 pm in Brooklyn Heights

Montague Street resident Michael D. D. White, who along with wife Carolyn McIntyre has been a mainstay of Citizens Defending Libraries, an organization advocating for New York City’s public library systems, recently sat down with with Mike Hicks for a lengthy interview in BKLYNR.

Mr. White — a frequent BHB commenter — is perhaps the most visible opponent of the Brooklyn Public Library’s announced plans to sell the Brooklyn Heights Library branch building and site for development as a high-rise residential tower, a project that will include a new library as well as affordable housing units.

Brooklyn Brief, also features White — a long-time denizen of the Heights —in an article today about the possible future of BPL’s Pacific branch.

RELATED: Brooklyn Heights Blog coverage of the Brooklyn Heights Library issue

Publsiher’s note: Thanks to the generous support of BHB readers who have underwritten our reporting on this important hyper-local story.

Photo Credit: NY1

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  • Justine Swartz

    Citizens Defending Libraries Michael White is more than just a DENIZEN of Brooklyn Heights. this brilliant man is a Leader
    of thousands of book lovers. Michael and Carolyn demonstrate heartfelt caring to the Brooklyn Heights Community and beyond, as they passionately work to prevent the selloff of libraries.

  • Roberto

    1989. Tianamen Square. 19-year old Weilin Wang, the “Tankman” stood against the Red Army during the pro-democracy uprising.
    2014. Brooklyn Heights. Michael White and thousands of book lovers stand against the BPL and its fierce army of developers.

  • Name

    Seriously? Wow. Your energy could be so (perhaps) useful if it were put to some good use. Oh well – enjoy.

  • Heights Observer

    Why, precisely, isn’t saving libraries a good cause?

  • District 13 parent

    Superb article–thanks for the link.

  • bethman14

    And the Micheal White Crazy Convention finally jumps the proverbial shark. Comparing the Brooklyn Public Library to Chinese Communism. Stunningly insentive and moronic.
    Surprised DD’s co-chair Marsha hasn’t commented here!

  • Justine Swartz

    Your posts should be banned. Instead of arguing the issues you make personnal attacks.

  • gatornyc

    In fairness Justine, such hyperbole deserves rebuke.

  • Remsen Street Dweller

    I made the very same analogy about the fight to save our hospital — LICH. If you think we’re living in a democracy, look around you and process all that goes on here — how much power only the very wealthiest have.

  • bethman14

    And the offensive absurdity continues….no Remsen St. Dweller, I don’t think a debate about public policy that is occuring well within the bounds of the American political systems is in any way whatsoever comparable to the tryanical Chinese government mobilizing the millitary to crack down on protesters demanding the sorts of basic civil liberties that are expressed on this blog (and thousands like it) day in and day out. A political system in which your viewpoint is not always triumphant is in NO WAY similar to represive political system where disent of any kind is a criminal act.
    To equate Andrew Cuomo, Brooklyn Library and real estate developers with anti-democratic tyrants who throw their critics in jail is deeply, deeply offensive and frankly displays a profound and remarkable ignorance about the world. You and your friends simply damage your own cause and identify yourselves as fanatics by making these sorts of irresponsible comparisons.

  • Remsen Street Dweller

    LOL

  • Court Street Jester

    My comments have been blocked by a faceless fascist to Brooklyn Height Blog because I compared someone and their comments to a turkey vulture and maggots. There’s plenty of tyranny, suppressed dissension and sanctimony to go around. Plenty. Plenty of hypocrisy.

  • marshasrimler

    I am not his co-chair

  • Quinn Raymond

    Whether or not one agrees with Mr White, this is a wildly inappropriate comparison.

  • Quinn Raymond

    I unequivocally support LICH and cannot stand Cuomo. But this is really inappropriate and not helpful.

  • Quinn Raymond

    Please read the basics about the Tiananmen Square protests before making this comparison. My god. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989

  • Remsen Street Dweller

    Please, understand the basis of political cartoons before you get all huffy and puffy.

  • Remsen Street Dweller

    I have been involved in this battle for over a year and I stand behind my depiction of the situation. The cartoon shows Cuomo and LICH running over protesters in a tank and this is just what has happened. Get a grip, man.

  • Quinn Raymond

    A good political cartoon has an element of truth to it and is funny. This one is neither.

    I’m assuming that White and most of his other supporters are equally as uncomfortable with this as I am.

  • Remsen Street Dweller

    You’re entitled to your opinion. The cartoon is about the hospital not the library so while I’d certainly appreciate Mr. White’s support, I wasn’t looking for it. And, the cartoon certainly did stir you up!

  • Doug Biviano

    Many thanks to Michael and his important work…

    Like you, I am frustrated at the corrupt waste and lack
    of smart government in Albany that is causing this state to have the
    highest taxes pushing the middle class and businesses out and causing
    suffering of the poor. Hospitals have been disappeared throughout NYC
    for condos for over a decade now. The leadership and professionalism
    that made New York the economic, cultural and idea capital of the world
    has gone, replaced by a generation of politicians whose elective office
    will be the best and only jobs they have.

    Campaign promises have become disconnected from governing. As a cynical
    class of insider politicians have mastered the election process, the
    public is powerless to stop them. Case in point, Bill de Blasio, Steve
    Levin, Daniel Squadron, Brad Lander and Peter Sikora used LICH
    hospital as an election prop last year and they’ re at it again.

    Council Member Steve Levin makes that perfectly clear in the Brooklyn Eagle on July 1, 2014:

    …Levin also credited Sikora with coming
    up with the idea to get arrested to try to keep LICH open. “At the time,
    the candidate who was third in the polls, candidate Bill de Blasio,
    said, ‘That’s a really good idea…’”

    Now these elected officials — City
    Councilman Brad Lander, City Councilman Steve Levin, NYS Senator Daniel
    Squadron — are endorsing Sikora, a candidate who has never been
    involved in our community unless he was paid mostly working for their
    election efforts. They are supporting Sikora not to empower our
    community, but to give themselves more power to control us.

    No mater who is elected, the permanent
    government, as journalist Jack Newfield called them a generation ago,
    stays in power. Today’s elected officials are put in power by the
    permanent government and kept in power by their campaign contributions.

    Breaking campaign promises
    — whether it’s LICH, condos in Brooklyn Bridge Park or shrinking and
    closing libraries for more condos — is unfortunately only a symptom of
    the damage to our neighborhood. The worst thing today’s political class
    of politicians has done to us by controlling the election process is
    the taking of power of governing away from our community and you and
    consolidating it for themselves and the permanent government to do as
    they please.

    The progressives attacked Dick Cheney, and
    rightly so, for spinning facts and creating fake realities. But sadly
    our local parties in power (Democratic and Working Family Parties) have
    copied his methods. Mayor de Blasio recently sent out a propaganda
    letter via his PR machine, Campaign for One New York, rejoicing ‘less is
    more’ without a full service hospital. It was clearly paid by a PR
    front but signed by Gary Reilly represented as a board member of Carroll
    Gardens Neighborhood Association. This deceptive representation was
    pure Orwellian.

    The
    question our elected officials and the media is not asking is why did
    SUNY buy a losing money hospital ($300 million a year) and
    turn around to sell it to developers? Was it to save Stanley
    Brezenoff’s company (Stanley got a golden parachute). Shortly after
    taking office, Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is obviously close with Sikora,
    hired Stanley Brezenoff the former President of Continuum, the company
    that took control of LICH and bleed it out. When hospitals close
    people die.

    I was the guy at the Community Board 6
    meeting in 2008 fingering Brezenoff, asking him how much he was being
    compensated as he slit LICH at the throat by trying to close Pediatrics
    and OB/GYN at the time (strategic step even just announcing it if one
    wants to slay a neighborhood hospital). Council Member Bill de Blasio
    was there and asked Brezenoff nice-nice questions about his bio,
    allowing Brezenoff a platform to not only look like a qualified and
    dedicated man but almost celebrate how lucky we were to have him.
    Apparently, Council Member de Blasio believed Brezenoff so much that he
    hired the mastermind of LICH’s doom when he became mayor or maybe it is
    just plain old corruption. How anyone could have been at that meeting,
    professing to care about our community, yet turn around to hire this man
    once elected to higher office is not unclear, it’s simply disturbing.

    It was nice to know LICH was there. LICH
    saved my child’s life when he had a bad Asthma attack a few years ago.
    I’ve met countless folks over the years and again petitioning the last
    few weeks who believe LICH saved their lives. Without full cardiac and
    stroke centers, our seniors in our community face unnecessary and
    unprecedented peril. This is shameless.

    And don’t believe that these
    elected officials are powerless. Interfaith Hospital just a few miles
    away from LICH faced a similar fate yet African American elected
    officials went straight to Governor Cuomo, flexed their representative
    power and saved the hospital. Our community elected officials all come
    from inside the political system. They put pressure on only in front of
    the cameras. In the back rooms, they bow to the permanent government
    who got them elected.

    We have to give power back to the communities — back to you the voter.
    Today’s elected will not attack the special interests that put them in
    office. I am running for Assembly because I believe this permanent
    class of politicians who have seized control of our city, state and
    country is destroying the future not only for us, but our children and
    grandchildren. We must take New York back for them.

    Doug Biviano
    Candidate for Assembly