Stalin
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2008
- Messages
- 2,254
Libraries are a threat to the ruling class as they educate the masses as to what is going on. If you want to keep the poor and the weak from learning their rights and getting an education supplement, you kill the public library system
Driving this obscenity is financial parasite Michael Bloomberg; a man who has built a fortune on advising people how to extract as much dosh as possible from a rancid and decaying financial system
"New York City’s billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced plans to cut nearly $100 million from the city’s libraries. This will have devastating consequences for a wide cross-section of the city’s population. At a time of growing poverty, unemployment and homelessness, public libraries are one of the few free services used by millions of working-class people in America’s largest city.
New York City has three public library systems: one each for the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, and a third for New York, which serves the boroughs of Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx. The three systems have a combined total of over 200 branches. Each is a truly gargantuan system that provides services to millions of people.
The New York system circulated over 21 million items last year. It not only includes branch libraries used by some of the poorest sections of workers, but also world-class collections of music, photography, manuscripts, and the premier public research library in the country, on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, with over 44 million non-circulating items. In Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, libraries held classes last year that over 820,000 people attended. 31,000 people used job-search programs at local libraries in the three boroughs.
The CEO of the New York Public Library, Paul LeClerc, told a New York City Council hearing that the cuts amount to the “the worst scenario ever,” with $40 million in budget cuts, on top of $17 million in cuts since 2008. Since that time the New York libraries’ 90 facilities were forced to lay off 423 workers or 18 percent of staff. The system will now be forced to eliminate 687 positions, mostly though layoffs, a full third of its staff.
The anticipated cuts will result, according to LeClerc, in six million fewer visits and two million fewer computer sessions. For many working class families, particularly in the Bronx, the poorest urban county in the United States (83 percent of families earn less than $50,000 a year), public libraries are the sole access they have to the Internet. The Bronx would have fully one million fewer yearly visits because of the cuts.
The Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) had 14 million visits in 2010, up two million from the previous year. 20 million items were circulated in 2010, an increase of 18 percent from 2009, the highest in its history. Its 1,100 Internet-linked computers are a lifeline for unemployed workers looking for a job. These achievements came in spite of an $11 million budget cut in 2009. “Literally millions come through our doors each year to improve their lives,” one leading library administrator noted.
The cuts proposed by the Mayor will axe over $25 million in funding from the BPL. Over 400 staff members will be laid off and another 160 vacant positions will not be filled. Sixteen branch libraries will be closed and service will be reduced overall by 40 percent. The library anticipates a drop by a third in circulation and attendance in its programs.
...
New York City’s libraries all date from the 19th century movement for free circulating libraries for the entire population, regardless of social status. Libraries were widely regarded as a cornerstone of democracy, guaranteeing what we would call today freedom of information. As early as 1803, Thomas Jefferson argued in favor of public lending libraries as an antidote to misinformation and as being necessary in a democratic republic.
Nearly 100 years ago, the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin noted in amazement the masses of books that were circulated to ordinary people in New York’s library system, and the speed and ease with which they could obtain them, “The aim that is constantly pursued is to have a branch of the Public Library within three-quarters of a verst, i.e., within ten minutes’ walk of the house of every inhabitant, the branch library being the centre of all kinds of institutions and establishments for public education.”
Although he was an enemy of American capitalism, Lenin understood that access to libraries was a major achievement of the American working class, and that it was denied to workers in Tsarist Russia.
more of this public disgrace at
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/libr-m27.shtml
Comrade Stalin
Driving this obscenity is financial parasite Michael Bloomberg; a man who has built a fortune on advising people how to extract as much dosh as possible from a rancid and decaying financial system
"New York City’s billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced plans to cut nearly $100 million from the city’s libraries. This will have devastating consequences for a wide cross-section of the city’s population. At a time of growing poverty, unemployment and homelessness, public libraries are one of the few free services used by millions of working-class people in America’s largest city.
New York City has three public library systems: one each for the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, and a third for New York, which serves the boroughs of Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx. The three systems have a combined total of over 200 branches. Each is a truly gargantuan system that provides services to millions of people.
The New York system circulated over 21 million items last year. It not only includes branch libraries used by some of the poorest sections of workers, but also world-class collections of music, photography, manuscripts, and the premier public research library in the country, on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, with over 44 million non-circulating items. In Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, libraries held classes last year that over 820,000 people attended. 31,000 people used job-search programs at local libraries in the three boroughs.
The CEO of the New York Public Library, Paul LeClerc, told a New York City Council hearing that the cuts amount to the “the worst scenario ever,” with $40 million in budget cuts, on top of $17 million in cuts since 2008. Since that time the New York libraries’ 90 facilities were forced to lay off 423 workers or 18 percent of staff. The system will now be forced to eliminate 687 positions, mostly though layoffs, a full third of its staff.
The anticipated cuts will result, according to LeClerc, in six million fewer visits and two million fewer computer sessions. For many working class families, particularly in the Bronx, the poorest urban county in the United States (83 percent of families earn less than $50,000 a year), public libraries are the sole access they have to the Internet. The Bronx would have fully one million fewer yearly visits because of the cuts.
The Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) had 14 million visits in 2010, up two million from the previous year. 20 million items were circulated in 2010, an increase of 18 percent from 2009, the highest in its history. Its 1,100 Internet-linked computers are a lifeline for unemployed workers looking for a job. These achievements came in spite of an $11 million budget cut in 2009. “Literally millions come through our doors each year to improve their lives,” one leading library administrator noted.
The cuts proposed by the Mayor will axe over $25 million in funding from the BPL. Over 400 staff members will be laid off and another 160 vacant positions will not be filled. Sixteen branch libraries will be closed and service will be reduced overall by 40 percent. The library anticipates a drop by a third in circulation and attendance in its programs.
...
New York City’s libraries all date from the 19th century movement for free circulating libraries for the entire population, regardless of social status. Libraries were widely regarded as a cornerstone of democracy, guaranteeing what we would call today freedom of information. As early as 1803, Thomas Jefferson argued in favor of public lending libraries as an antidote to misinformation and as being necessary in a democratic republic.
Nearly 100 years ago, the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin noted in amazement the masses of books that were circulated to ordinary people in New York’s library system, and the speed and ease with which they could obtain them, “The aim that is constantly pursued is to have a branch of the Public Library within three-quarters of a verst, i.e., within ten minutes’ walk of the house of every inhabitant, the branch library being the centre of all kinds of institutions and establishments for public education.”
Although he was an enemy of American capitalism, Lenin understood that access to libraries was a major achievement of the American working class, and that it was denied to workers in Tsarist Russia.
more of this public disgrace at
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/libr-m27.shtml
Comrade Stalin
