The People's Library of Occupy Wall Street Lives On

William Scott | November 22, 2011

Published on The Nation
(http://www.thenation.com)

http://www.thenation.com/article/164766/peoples-library-occupy-wall-street-lives

The People's Library at Zuccotti Park--a collection of
more than 5,000 donated books of every genre and
subject, all free for the taking--was created not only
to serve the Occupy Wall Street protesters; it was
meant to provide knowledge and reading pleasure for the
wider public as well, including residents of Lower
Manhattan. It was also a library to the world at large,
since many visitors to the park stopped by the library
to browse our collection, to donate books of their own
and to take books for themselves.

At about 2:30 am on November 15, the People's Library
was destroyed by the NYPD, acting on the authority of
Mayor Michael Bloomberg. With no advance notice, an
army of police in riot gear raided the park, seized
everything in it and threw it all into garbage trucks
and dumpsters. Despite Mayor Bloomberg's Twitter
promise that the library was safely stored and could be
retrieved, only about 1,100 books were recovered, and
some of those are in unreadable condition. Four library
laptops were also destroyed, as well as all the
bookshelves, storage bins, stamps and cataloging
supplies and the large tent that housed the library.

For the past six weeks I have been living and working
as a librarian in the People's Library, camping out on
the ground next to it. I'm an English professor at the
University of Pittsburgh, and I've chosen to spend my
sabbatical at Occupy Wall Street to participate in the
movement and to build and maintain the collection of
books at the People's Library. I love books--reading
them, writing in them, arranging them, holding them,
even smelling them. I also love having access to books
for free. I love libraries and everything they
represent. To see an entire collection of donated
books, including many titles I would have liked to
read, thoughtlessly ransacked and destroyed by the
forces of law and order was one of the most disturbing
experiences of my life. My students in Pittsburgh
struggle to afford to buy the books they need for their
courses. Our extensive collection of scholarly books
and journals alone would have sufficed to provide
reading materials for dozens of college classrooms.
With public libraries around the country fighting to
survive in the face of budget cuts, layoffs and
closings, the People's Library has served as a model of
what a public library can be: operated for the people
and by the people.

During the raid, Stephen Boyer, a poet, friend and OWS
librarian, read poems from the Occupy Wall Street
Poetry Anthology (see peopleslibrary.wordpress.com [1])
aloud directly into the faces of riot police. As they
pushed us away from the park with shields, fists, billy
clubs and tear gas, I stood next to Stephen and watched
while he yelled poetry at the top of his lungs into the
oncoming army of riot police. Then, something
incredible happened. Several of the police leaned in
closer to hear the poetry. They lifted their helmet
shields slightly to catch the words Stephen was
shouting out to them, even while their fellow cops
continued to stampede us. The next day, an officer who
was guarding the entrance to Zuccotti Park told Stephen
how touched he was by the poetry, how moved he was to
see that we cared enough about words and books that we
would risk violent treatment and arrest just to defend
our love of books and the wisdom they contain.

At 6 pm on November 15, a group of writers and
supporters of the People's Library appeared at the
reopened park carrying books, and within minutes we
received around 200 donations. All night and into the
next day folks stopped by to donate to and take from
the collection. Because the new rules of the park
forbid us from lying down or leaving anything there,
Stephen and I stayed up all night to protect the books
until other librarians came to take over for us.
Frustrated and exhausted, but still exhilarated and
eager to maintain the momentum of the movement, we kept
the People's Library open all day in the pouring rain,
storing books in Ziploc baggies to keep them dry.

Then at 7:30 pm on November 16, the People's Library
was again raided and thrown in the trash--this time by a
combination of police and Brookfield Properties'
sanitation team. The NYPD first barricaded the library
by lining up in front of it, forming an impenetrable
wall of cops. An officer then announced through a
bullhorn that we should come and collect our books, or
they would be confiscated and removed. Seconds later,
they began dumping books into trash bins that they had
wheeled into the park for that purpose. As they were
throwing out the books, a fellow OWS librarian asked
one of the NYPD patrolmen why they were doing this. His
answer: "I don't know."

Five minutes after it started, the raid was over and
the People's Library's collection was once again
sitting in a pile of garbage. Yet just as the trash
bins were being carted off, a man stepped out of the
crowd with a book in his hand to donate to us: Joan
Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem. We joyously
accepted and cataloged it, placing it on display under
a new sign for the library that we made right then on a
blank sheet of paper. A true people's library, after
all, doesn't depend on any particular number of books,
since it's ultimately about the way those books are
collected and lent out to the public.

We're still accepting donations and lending books just
as we always have, but we've reorganized ourselves
somewhat. We now have three mobile units staffed by OWS
librarians, which we can take anywhere we want. For the
November 17 Day of Action, we made sure the People's
Library was there to supply books to anyone who wanted
them. All day long, OWS librarians walked among the
crowds shouting, "The People's Library 3.0, mobile and
in the streets!" For me, it was easily the most
rewarding day in the six weeks I've been with the
movement. The people we met at our mobile
units--Occupiers from New York and other states, friends
of the People's Library, tourists--went out of their way
to express their joy that we were still here. They also
struggled to articulate their feelings of loss,
frustration, anger, disgust and outrage over the
seizure and destruction of the library. All we could
say in response was, "We're here to stay! Please take a
book! They belong to you!" A group of eight OWS
librarians even started a new chant: "Whose books? Your
books!" It quickly caught fire with the other marchers.

Libraries are where we learn about things that are new
to us. Their books broaden our perspectives, change the
way we see the world and, at the most basic level,
provide us with free and open access to knowledge and
information. Over the two months that the People's
Library has been in operation at Zuccotti Park, we
librarians have come to see how vital this mission is
to the enrichment of our broader society. What's more,
in the course of our day-to-day work there, we had--and
are still having--the best time of our lives. The
library provides a space of dialogue, creativity,
intellectual and cultural exchange and personal growth.
When freshmen and sophomores in college ask me, "What
should I be reading to understand what this movement is
all about?" I see it as an opening for a great
conversation. And when they come back to the library to
return the books they took, I love to hear about the
new horizons that the books helped to open for them.

Although we often shout, "This is what democracy looks
like!" on our marches, it's also something we can say
every day to those who pay a visit to the OWS library.
In fact, it's something that the People's Library, by
its very presence--in any location, in any form, with
any number of books--is perfectly capable of saying for
itself.

Image courtesy of David Shankbone Source URL:
http://www.thenation.com/article/164766/peoples-library
-occupy-wall-street-lives

Links: [1] http://peopleslibrary.wordpress.com

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