Thugs and barbarians.
Ergo Bloomberg & the NYPD.
From a commentator:
What is meaningful in a library? The books and media? The access to information, or to story, or to history? The gathering and cultivating and cataloging of those elements so necessary to civilization? The refuge from ignorance? The refuge from isolation? The people who make it all happen and help us understand the resources available to us? The open door?
A library to me is a public place, defined by who is allowed in rather than by public ownership. And on that measure, as well as every measure which I mentioned above, the library tent at Occupy Wall Street was a public library. They had over 5000 published books, original writing and poetry and art, people who volunteered there, and people who used the library. They had all that until New York City made the conscious decision to destroy the library.
That act of destruction was, to me, not qualitatively different from the book burning in Opernplatz in 1933. Both were political acts of destruction intended as statements of power, demeaning and diminishing those disfavored by the state, targeting the tangible instantiations of knowledge and discourse.
It's so weird how our primary media are reporting these matters -- the Italians protesting Berlusconi are considered worthy of our support, understanding and even admiration. Even the vaguest semblance of public protest on the part of the non-1% here is at best ridiculous and at worst lese majesty that deserves at least very long prison sentences.
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