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 