VICTORY! Monteith Branch Library is Re-opened! 1 down, 3 to go!
Build the New Civil Rights Movement – Save Dr. King’s Vision for Detroit
We Demand Lincoln, Richard and Mark Twain Libraries be re-opened NOW and Stop the Decimation of Our Neighborhoods and City! Defend Our Dignity!
COME OUT AND USE THE POWER OF OUR NUMBERS TO STOP THE EVICTION OF RICHARD LIBRARY!
ALL OUT to RICHARD Library
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Starting at 7:00 AM, for as long as it takes
Richard Branch: 9876 Grand River Ave (one block west of Livernois)
- 4:00-5:30PM rally at Richard Library Mon and Wed
- 4:00-5:30PM RALLY at Lincoln Library Tues and Thurs
- Call 313-585-3637 if you see boxes being taken out of the Library and we will come immediately, but also stay and demand that the items not be taken out
Tomorrow, moving vans will be pulling up to the door of Richard (9876 Grand River, one block west of Livernois). Specially-commissioned movers will try to move every computer, every book, every desk and every chair out of Richard. If they succeed, our library, which is now a safe haven for young and old, will become one more abandoned drug house. Our community has the power to stop this from happening. We need every person, young, old and in-between, to come out and SURROUND Richard Library.
IF THERE ARE A LARGE NUMBER OF PEOPLE SURROUNDING THE LIBRARY THE TRUCKS WILL NOT EVEN PULL UP. We must do this every morning until the library is re-opened. If we start with a smaller group of people, we can take the items that the movers are moving out of the building, back into the building or we can block the doors of the library. We need to be more determined to keep the items in the library than the movers are to take them out. The people who are moving the items out of Richard Library know that what they are doing is wrong. If we give them an excuse not to do it they will welcome it. This is the tactic that our community needs to employ to stop the closure of our library, and in the future, to prevent their friends and neighbors from being evicted from their homes.
We are winning so far, but the fight needs to be strengthened. On Tuesday, January 10, Detroit City Council unanimously approved an emergency resolution to keep all the libraries open. The resolution calls on Governor Snyder and the Michigan state legislators to appropriate some of the more than one billion dollar surplus in the state coffers to keep our libraries open. On Jan 17th the Library Commission voted to re-open Monteith. We can get the others libraries opened if we keep pushing on all fronts.
If we mobilize our communities we have the power to determine the destiny of our city. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks and the other great leaders of the last civil rights movement did not have the money or the support of any of the mainstream politicians. What they did have was masses of people prepared to act, and the determination to organize and win.
Dr. King understood that our strength is in our numbers. If we can get the people of Detroit to understand the power in our numbers again and to take direct action, we can build a new civil rights movement in our city that, like the civil rights movement of Dr. King, can defeat the rich and the powerful and the politicians who get in our way.
The fight to save our branch libraries can play an important role in building the new civil rights movement. If we use the power of our numbers, the people of Detroit have the power to make Detroit what we want it to be. We are the only force that can prevent the further destruction of our city and create a Detroit that serves the interests of the vast majority of Detroiters.
