Occupy Wall Street Librarians Address Bloomberg for Destroying Books

Over 4,000 Books, Documents, Were Trashed by NYPD & Dept. of Sanitation in Raid

OWS Library Staff Recovers Books and Supplies, Less Than One-Fifth is Usable

What: Press conference to address the destruction of the OWS People’s Library by Mayor Michael Bloomberg during the 11/15 raid.

Photo Opportunity — All of the recovered, destroyed books will be at the press conference.

Where: 260 Madison Ave, 20th Floor, between 38th and 39th St

When: Wednesday, November 23, at 12:00 noon

Who: Norman Siegel will host and moderate. Speakers: Gideon Oliver of the National Lawyers Guild, Hawa Allan a Fellow at Columbia Law School, and Occupy Wall Street Librarians from the People’s Library. Law professors from Columbia, members of the American Library Association, various writers and others have been invited.

So far, the People’s Library has received 1,099 books back from the Dept. of Sanitation after last week’s raid (some of which were not library books to begin with), and out of these, about 800 are still usable. About 2,900 books are still unaccounted for, and less than one-fifth of the original collection is still usable. These numbers may change slightly when the People’s Library gets an exact count of the recent (and final) retrievals from Sanitation, but not considerably.

“The People’s Library was destroyed by NYPD acting on the authority of Mayor Michael Bloomberg on the night of the raid. In addition to all our supplies, laptops, and tent, they threw roughly 4,000 books into garbage trucks and dumpsters that were adjacent to the park, as well as assorted rare documents that were associated with OWS,” says William Scott, an Occupy Wall Street Librarian.

Click here to watch video of the NYPD and Dept. of Sanitation destroying the OWS People’s Library tent apart and throwing away all the books.