Dear friends of the People’s Library, we recently hit a turning point in the history of our beloved library. As you may remember, last spring we reached a settlement with the city and it’s various departments and officials. We received $47,000 and a not-quite-apology. We got lots of questions about what we were going to do with all that money.
As the city and the NYPD have made it an impossible thing to plant libraries such as we once had, we knew it would be futile and wasteful to attempt such a thing. Further, we are tired and busy, and many of us have moved on to other projects and several have left NYC for less hellish homes. Besides which, money being power, and power corrupting… we didn’t want it. After all, it wasn’t really about the money, it’s just that money is how capitalist government says it’s sorry. Earlier on in the lawsuit process, we were offered a settlement without the not-quite-apology. We didn’t take it.
Anyway, we had no use for it, but we knew there were lots of groups that could use it. We drew up a list of groups we’d like to help out, divided, and wrote some checks.
Of course, it wasn’t actually that simple. There was a ridiculous group video conference, where we spent more time trying to get the damn thing to work than actually talking, for example. It obviously took a while. I’d especially like to thank Michele, Danny, and Zachary for staying on top of it and doing most of the legwork. I’d also like to thank our liaisons from Finance for helping us out along the way. And, as always, big thanks to our lawyers.
For transparency’s sake, here’s the list of groups we gave it to. We’ve held on to a little bit for things like maintaining the domain registrations of the blog and what-have-you.
- Word Up Community Bookshop
- The Brecht Forum
- Bluestockings Books
- Queers for Economic Justice
- National Lawyers Guild
- Food for Thought Books
- Waging Nonviolence
- Reader to Reader
- Silvia Rivera Law Project
- OWS Jail Support / Just Info
- Indiana Prison College
- Free University NYC
- Books Through Bars
- Housing Works
- NYC Anarchist Black Cross
- Pink and Black
- Urban Librarians Unite
- Queens Café (new community space in Queens)
- Leadnow
- Free Press
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- NYCLU
- Demand Progress
- Brooklyn Public Library
- Queens Library Foundation
- New York Public Library
- New Alternatives
- Bailey House
- Lesbian Herstory Archives
- Interference Archive
- American Indian College Fund
- Brooklyn Base
- Tamiment Library
- OWS poetry Anthology
So, that’s pretty much it, y’all. It’s been great to serve you as your faithful librarians. You’ll hear from us occasionally as we work on further projects. And next time things go all insurrection, we’ll be there, too, books in hand.
Occupy Wall Street Library 
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Thanks for all your work–you’ve truly inspired many of us around the world to look beyond the walls of the library. I hope we get to meet in person someday.
You gave money to Tamiment Library? Seriously? They are part of NYU Library, a private university that not only charges students insane amounts of money to go there, but also doesn’t pay their own library staff nearly enough. I can’t even imagine what kind of rationale went into that decision.
Where exactly is Queens Cafe located? I reside in Queens and would like to spread the word.
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This made me tear up. I remember back in Zuccotti in November 2011, a tweet came through from Lupe Fiasco, my favorite musician, that commented on the beautiful tents in the park. I had just laid down in my tent for a nap, but I went out and found him at the corner of the stairs and was able to speak with him for half an hour about life and politics. He had multiple copies of Crime Thinc’s Expect Resisitance for the People’s Library and he gifted me with one. It was one of the most memorable moments of my life. Thank you for all that you all have done these past few years and I look forward to meeting you all in the future again, wherever the next uprising will be. Til then… Solidaridad.
Fare Thee Well
Great job well done and all my best wishes go with you
Until we meet again :-) Don’t know where don’t know when, but
We’ll all meet again some sunny daaaay!