Oakland Liberates Shuttered Library

[joshcryer]

Last edited Mon Aug 13, 2012, 06:40 PM - Edit history (1)

The building unveiled today as the Victor Martinez Community Library was part of a Carnegie Foundation endowment of four libraries given to the city of Oakland between 1916 and 1918. Oakland’s librarian at the time, Charles S. Greene, believed that the city’s people would benefit most from libraries placed within their communities.

Despite this vision, the building was one of seven branch casualties of budget cuts in the late seventies, severing vital library life-lines in poor and working communities. Since then, the “Latin American Branch” library building located at the corner of Miller and 15th st. has mostly sat empty, despite the fact that the next nearest library is miles away, and increasingly difficult to access in a city like Oakland with an increasingly expensive transit system. With its eroding chain link fence and decaying, armored exterior, the building is much more than an eyesore; the unused, but inaccessible, space creates a life-draining dark vacuum of stability that serves at best as a convenient place for the unscrupulous to dump their old mattresses, couches and assorted garbage.

This morning, a group of activists opened this building again for use as a library. Inside is the modest seed for a library and community center—hundreds of books donated by people who envision the rebirth of local, community-owned libraries and social and political centers throughout Oakland. We’ve named the building after recently deceased author, Victor Martinez, who overcame a young life of hard agricultural work to become a successful writer in the Bay Area. His semi-autobiographical novel, Parrot in the Oven, has become a seminal work of the Latino experience. Martinez died last year at 56 of an illness caused by his work in the fields.

http://occupywallst.org/article/oakland-liberates-shuttered-library/

[FirstLight]

1. bravo!

we need more of this...we recycle plastic, paper, etc....let's start recycling BUILDINGS! and re-create our communities!

thanks for sharing this.

[truedelphi]

2. I hae viewed film footage of the shuttered Detroit libraries,

With its floors and floors of abandoned book shelves, filled to the brim with rotting books, so all I can say is good for Occupy!

People need to get to the buildings before the roofs blow partially off, and the books are ruined by water damage from broken pipes and all the other problems that come about when buildings are left vacant.

[joshcryer]

3. I hope the city plays nice and lets them keep it.

I expect raids will be forthcoming though under grounds of "condemned building" or some shit like that.

It's a fucking waste.

[Zorra]

4. What an awesome direct action. Beautiful.

I love this.