TESTIMONY OF RALPH NADER

March 20, 2003

Kevin Chavous, Chair and Members of the Committee on Libraries, Education, Parks and Recreation

We are meeting today in the war’s shadow. Here we are, talking about budgets and libraries. But it is time to speak out for the libraries. Libraries are a democratic institution. They represent the best that is in all of us. They are of, by and for the community. We may act look a superpower aboard, but not at home. Billions for bombs, pennies for books.

Meanwhile, the Mayor has imploded on the libraries. That’s why we must speak this morning. We must defend the library system. We are talking about budgets here, but that is a little abstract. We are talking about people and children.

The budget presented to you by the Mayor is a devastation attack on D.C.’s libraries, and the communities they serve. What makes it worse is that this had been going on for years and years. During his tenure, the Mayor has chipped away and chipped away at the library’s budget, so the latest cuts are only the most recent assault on a helpless system. The Mayor has crippled the library, and now he is kicking it when it is down. His “vision” words champion libraries, but his decisions belie his words.

The District of Columbia Public Library may be a system all right, but it is also our children, and our neighbors. It’s all of us, and the Mayor has been taking the library away for us on the installment plan.

The library is not a subsidized baseball stadium. It is not a one time heavyweight prizefight. It is not an annual auto race. Libraries are the permanent fibers of neighborhoods. The city needs money, but it also wastes money. Why should the library uniquely suffer? Libraries help everyone-rich and poor. It helps us one by one, and it helps the city. It also makes the city more attractive to companies. Maybe those companies will build here. Maybe they’ll create jobs. That’s what’s wonderful about libraries. A library is jobs, but it is many other things too.

But in this city, libraries offer people so much more. There are books inside, yes. There are computers too. And there are people who can help others find out about the world. But libraries also provide safe havens for children whose parents work. They offer other children help with their homework. They help people read to read- didn’t this Mayor say that literacy programs are among his highest priorities?

And here is what the mayors want to do now. After cutting the libraries’ budget, after forcing branches to close one day a week, after forcing libraries to close during hours when they should be open, he wants to break yet another promise. The Mayor said he was going to rebuild four libraries, but he has now gone back on that commitment. This will create a gaping hole in the library’s budget for 2004. The 04 budget envisioned a “saving” of $350,000 dollars while the libraries were closing for rebuilding. But now the library must choose between remaining open on severely reduced means, or forced to close four branch libraries altogether. The sums of $350,000 in saving have disappeared-like the mayor’s promise.

Libraries are vital neighborhood resources- the Mayor said that when he was trying to get elected in 1998. The would-be Mayor of 1998 understood that libraries are the most important places “where children want to go to read and learn.” and promised to fix an already broken system. He cited broken chairs, leaky roofs, inadequate lighting, outdated books and technology etc. But when we sent our photographer around to document the state of the libraries in December of 2002, the libraries were in the same condition as they were in 1998- or worse. What happened? The Mayor didn’t fix things, he made them worse. He took and took from the library. Why? Because he could. Because no one outside complained. The budget for the library went down and down, and when it hit bottom, the Mayor took more.

Under Mayor Williams the District has been engaged in a race to the bottom of a list of dysfunctional libraries for which Baltimore is the only competitor. The effect of the cuts now recommended on the library system will be to reduce the proportion of the overall District budget from .7% to .65% from a high of 1.4% in 1965, earning our nation’s capital the dubious honor of placing last in all of the cities in the nation. We are not talking world-class libraries here, but world-class embarrassment.

And what of the libraries- what do they do that merit our resistance to reducing their budgets? Libraries have the power to nurture the creativity of children and citizens, to make new citizens of immigrants drawn to the United States attracted by our liberties- liberties made more precious to them by the bitter experience of seeing them trampled in other countries. Libraries enlarge democracy by providing the information and tools necessary to fight growing global corporate power, manifestly the great threat to democracy in the twenty-first century.

But in the District of Columbia, libraries are especially important. Here there are two cities- an affluent city and a city mired in poverty. For the poor of the second city, the libraries furnish essential services. Libraries provide safe havens for children in the district who have working parents; they help children with homework in homework centers; they provide information to immigrants, reading programs for children, and literacy programs for adults.

Many of the branch librarians in DC’s most beleaguered communities occasionally act as surrogate mothers and fathers, day care workers, teachers, and social workers. Libraries provide places in which the poorest citizens can gather to discuss the needs of their community, and where they can organize to defend themselves. The cuts in the budget now being considered must disproportionately impact the poorest communities in the District if libraries are closed, and shortened hours will further deny public services to residents who cannot afford to pay for them otherwise.

We are told there is a 37 percent functional adult illiteracy rate in the District, and the mayor say literacy in his highest priority. So cut the libraries? The Mayor is concerned for the welfare of the poor in the District, and it is likely that the illiterate are also the poor. So cut the libraries? The Mayor wants jobs-good jobs- in the District- jobs that only the literate can fill. So cut the libraries? The Mayor wants to attract 100,000 literate people to the District (is he abandoning nearly 100,000 functionally illiterate residents of the District) so that companies will locate here-but soon there may be no functioning library system.

The Mayor needs to improve his vision statement and not only talk the talk, but walk the walk. The library budget must not be cut back any further- it must instead be restored. The budget of the libraries in first class cities amounts to at least 1% of the budge for their Cities- that is what we are asking for the DC Library system. The nation’s capital demands a first class library system.

Please do not disappoint the large number of DC residents from across the District who are rallying to bring their libraries back to a reasonable level of service- advance one of the top goals of the District’s people and its government- literacy.