I’ve started posting “Straws In The Wind” posts over at Fire on the Mountain to focus on how the burden of the economic meltdown is being placed on ordinary working folks and on their developing consciousness and resistance.
As 2008 draws to an end, and with it the tax year, we are seeing what will rapidly become a tsunami of cuts in public services starting to gather force around the country. Every state and municipality will be hit in different ways, but no place is gonna stay high and dry.
Want an example? The estimable Suzy Subways (one-time literary voice of Brooklyn’s bike delivery folk) has done my homework for me. Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia announced just last month that 11 of the city’s 54 libraries will be shuttered, effective New Year’s Day. This has produced a riptide of anger in neighborhoods all over the city, and several City Council members have gone to court to block the closings.
But I recommend a look at this cable broadcast of one of the neighborhood meetings Nutter and Library Director Siobhan Reardon held to try and quell opposition to library and other cuts.
It’s a long meeting–folks in predominantly Black Southwest Philly are steamed–but Suzy has put in the time to transcribe the highlights, and included time checks so you can slide straight to the exchanges she typed up below.
Do these folks seem like they are gonna sit quietly and watch their communities stripped of libraries? Not to me. I’m gonna be checking the news from Philadelphia over the next few days.
TRANSCRIPT (courtesy Suzy Subways)