librarypunk - 164 - NYC PLAN

Episode Date: April 25, 2026

We’re talking with Abby and Hal about NYC Public Library Action Network (PLAN)! Learn about what they’re doing, how you can help, how you can copy them, and what’s working for them by having a community-led library advocacy group that is separate from the library itself.  How can people get involved? nycplan.org  Email your city councilmember https://actionnetwork.org/letters/city-council-we-demand-half-a-percent-of-the-overall-city-budget-for-libraries   May City Council meeting [e-mail] for agendas Media mentioned Mamdani failed to deliver on the campaign promises that NYC PLAN pushed him to make. Here's a roundup of coverage in case it helps: NYC PLAN (Newsletter, Feb. 17th, the day after the preliminary budget release) Mariame Kaba Mayor Mamdani Breaks His Promise to NYC Public Libraries (Feb 18th) NEW! The Dreaded NYC Library Budget Dance Continues… (March 23rd) Seven Stories Press: Guest Post: Hal Schrieve on the Fight to Fund NYC Libraries (Feb 27th) WNYC: WNYC_Budget Cuts.mp3 (Feb 20th) The City: Mamdani Promised a New Era for Parks and Libraries. His First Budget Falls Short. (Feb 19th) Literary Hub: New York Mayor Mamdani is breaking his promise on library funding. (Feb 19th) Gothamist: Taking page from Adams, Mayor Mamdani proposes NYC library cuts (Feb 19th) La Voce di New York: Mamdani Proposes Cuts to Public Library Funding–Despite Campaign Promises (Feb 20th) New York Daily News: Budget shortfall may close the book on Mamdani’s library funding promise FOX 5: Clip_Budget Cuts.mp4  (Feb 19th) The New York Post: Mamdani wants to slash NYC library budgets by $30M— despite calling similar cuts by Adams ‘cruel’ (Feb 20th) Here are some details on NYC PLAN's recent assembly event: https://nycplan.org/peoples-assembly-march-21-2026/ And a slide deck from part of the event: Public Library Funding in NYC (Queens, March 2026) https://www.librariansequalliteracy.org/ All transcripts: https://podscripts.co/podcasts/librarypunk  Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/qWPTurTnkT

I'm Justin. I am no longer in a job as of three hours ago. And my pronouns are he and they? I'm Jay. I'm a cataloging librarian still. And my pronouns are he, him. And we have guests which are like to introduce yourself. Sure. My name is Abby Emerson. I'm an educator here in New York. And I'm Hal. I am a librarian between jobs also and I'm under Z here. Welcome back.

Welcome back, Al. Abbey, it's great to meet you. Yeah, it's nice to meet you all. Thanks for having me. And we are currently staggering episodes, so this won't come out for a couple weeks. But we did have Emily Draminski on. And as soon as I mentioned, we were talking with you this week, she was like, oh my gosh, I have to talk to you about NYC plan real quick. Make sure you mention. So we're going to properly have gassed you up before this episode comes out. Great. For people who aren't aware what NYC plan is, could you let us know what it is and how it got started? So basically when Eric Adams was mayor, there was the budget cycle of 24 when Eric Adams cut 58 million from the library budgets of the three New York public libraries, Brooklyn, Queens, and NYPL.

And every year, there is a budget cycle. And so the cuts that year really just highlighted something about the broader back and forth, where the mayor does a preliminary budget that under, like, that underestimates by a lot what every city service needs to run. And this really started with Bloomberg during the recession, though maybe a little, I don't know before Bloomberg. I'm not sure what was going on, but during the Bloomberg administration, the libraries had huge cuts. And ever since then, even good mayors for libraries have given preliminary budgets, which massively, like, cut something from the library budgets, often from parks to. And then there's this haggling that has to happen by city council members to get it back up. And Eric Adams just did a more extreme version of what de Blasio did as well, which is like every budget cycle, you know, they talk about, oh, you know, there's just so much deficit or that we need so much austerity that we can't afford to run the libraries. systems. And the effect of this is often taken to be nothing because in the end, the budget gets

restored in the final adopted budget. So the final adopted budget comes out in June, and after that, libraries can actually plan with the money they really have for the rest of the year. But it would be nice if there was a year-to-year funding that you could count on, because what always happens is during those months of budget negotiations, the libraries usually do a hiring freeze or a hiring slow way down. The libraries can't really make any plans for capital investment for the next year until the budget thing gets started out. And there's a lot of, you know, up in the airness around programs, around long-term planning, around grants, et cetera. So during the Eric Adams cuts, there was this huge pause in everything. There was a reduction in books acquired. The after-school program at NYPL

where I was at was up in the air in terms of like they had planned an expansion of it, but were they even going to be able to keep doing it? And then, like, we saw on the shelves that there were fewer new books for kids. The actual tangible impact was happening because we didn't have the money to do it because it was being negotiated. So in that atmosphere, a bunch of people got together and were like, okay, the librarians have urban librarians unite to advocate for library budgets. But there also probably needs to be a kind of joint organization of patrons and library workers to advocate for a continued, a continued like year to year. funding for the New York libraries. And so Marianne Cabo was one of the first people to get involved. Dylan helped set up this call, talked a lot about city budgets in early meetings. And my understanding

is right now, it's like a coalition of library workers, library patrons, educators, people who care about that funding being a stable percentage of the city budget rather than something that can fluctuate erratically year to year. And so they pressured really hard to try to get the NARAL candidates last year to all promise to 0.5% of the city budget for libraries. And that was a number based on the fact that currently library budgets have sat around somewhere around 0.4% of the city budget. And it's just never enough to catch up with like capital planning stuff. So like building repairs that have been years and years out of date or whatever. It's not enough. So 0.5% might be enough. And if it was that every year, then people could plan. And it would also be tied to inflation. Abby, if you have anything else,

you want to add to that. No. I mean, I mean, I think that's really good background, and that's kind of where it, you know, came in. And so now we're a group that, you know, is our main ask at this point is that 0.5% that how mentioned. And, you know, we're meetings to figure out strategy and talk about, okay, who do we target? Okay, so the mayor, we got to talk to that guy. Okay, the city council, we got to talk to those folks. And so we're kind of working as, you know, we said, to push on. the different levers that are available to us. And what Hal mentioned that I think, you know, I'm not a library worker. I'm an educator. But so in the spaces of schools and education, you know, the administrators might not always listen to teachers because, oh, you know, yada, yada. But if parents show up, right, and then that's when they're going to start to listen. And so that's kind of some of the approach that plan takes, where it's like, okay, maybe they're not going to listen to library workers, the administration, but maybe, maybe the folks that are kind of

in charge of the funding, either at, you know, branch level or higher up, maybe they will listen if patrons are asking for more complaining and, you know, putting their their neck out there for it. Yeah, and when you have like patrons echoing your, your demands, right? Like, it's easy for, I think, for them to ignore, like, a union calling for zero point five percent. but if, you know, the knitting circle shows up and says 0.5% for the library budget, right? Because I think Miriam Kaba said, like, she was talking to her neighbor, neighbor cornered her the other day and was like, I'm getting all my friends on, on emailing City Hall about the 0.5%. And Marine was like, oh, we're winning this. This is it. We've got people.

I think libraries are very popular when you talk to people about them. I think like the moment where we learned that the preliminary budget didn't have the funding that Zoran Mamdami and the other mayoral candidates had all committed to, which was 0.5%. There was a moment of kind of shock and confusion, but it's like, okay, we're doing this budget advocacy thing and at least there is this sort of partnership already in place. So the 21st, there was like a meeting at Make the Road, New York, where there was several presentations by the union leadership for Brooklyn and Queens libraries. and then a discussion of like what the budget system is and who to call and who to talk to. And then like I know your rights training wrapped in there as well. And it was very organized. And I think that the more people talk to their neighbors and then more people talk to people at their local, you know, story time circles or whatever programs they're using at the library.

People care about the library because it's a point where sort of the city infrastructures touches their lives. Anyone who uses the library enjoys it. And so they want to make sure that. they're still funding. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask is, it's like, how, what sort of in y'all's advocacy and trying to speak more to, like, non-library workers, but like people who would care? Because so often, I mean, I come from, I'm in public libraries now, but I used to be in academic libraries. And famously, faculty don't give a shit about the library workers, the librarians, they care more about their journals. They're like, well, fire that person. I

care more about you paying for this journal that only I care about, right? And so I get very jaded. I'm like people don't actually care about librarians and library workers. They care about the services that they want. And so I'm always very focused on like, you know, we have to make sure that, you know, if we're going to disrupt services, that there's those relationships built. And so anger can be directed where it's supposed to be. So I'm wondering like what sort of like, how are you translating these numbers? Because yeah, there's the capital projects thing.

And like you mentioned like the children's book, but what sort of like other sort of tangible ways are you translating these budget numbers to like impact on services to non-library people to get them on our side? One thing I can say, I don't know if this directly answers your question, but maybe it does in a more roundabout way is, so as Hal mentioned, we've had now, we had our third People's Assembly last weekend. So we had one in Brooklyn. Oh, nice, great. Yes. So we had a Brooklyn one last May. We had the Manhattan one in October, and then we had Queens last week. And one thing that we've done at all of these, in addition to sharing information about how libraries are funded and whatnot,

is we've structured it so that there's small group time for folks to share what's going on in your branches. How are you experiencing this? And, you know, what do you enjoy about your libraries? what do you wish you could get more of out of your libraries? And so from those conversations that we've had with people both internally in NYC plan and externally, I think that that was actually a growing point for us to learn that the staffing and the library workers' experience, I think originally that was maybe not as a priority for us, but through those conversations, I think that we identified that as kind of like the main,

you know, sticking point in some ways. And at one point, I don't know if we're really still using this as much, but we talked about the three P's when it came to funding. The first P being people, so the workers and whatnot, the second P being place. So that was around the buildings, right? And like making sure you said the capital budgets and whatnot to fix up these Carnegie buildings that are starting to age, right? And then the third P being programming. And I think for a patrons, they tend to think of maybe programming first, but we've sort of really made sure that those other peas, the people and the place, are really central to what we're advocating for as well. Yeah. And it's cool to go into a really big meeting and see workers' rights and sort of foregrounded and then overlapping with patron interests. So libraries as cooling centers during the summer required the library to be air conditioned.

And if the library has broken HVACs, the library will not be air conditioned. And that affects both the workers and the people using the library in a really significant way in a city that has too few pools to cool down in, too few parks to cool down in, and a whole lot of people whose ACs also break in the summer. And I think that as everyone's power grid gets overloaded more and more, I think having energy efficient, cool libraries in the summer is going to be more. important to people. And I think that talking about it in settings where both the workers and the patrons using the library at present manages to kind of sidestep of a problem that I've seen in advocacy before where patrons will be like, we would love libraries seven days a week. And then all the unions are like, okay, well, we really got to have a time about that one of the power. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think

that's a good example. I think that was something that last year when some of us were doing testimony as patrons, that was something we, you know, we were like, yeah, you know, we tossed in our testimony. But then through these conversations, we were like, oh, well, maybe strategically that is not, you know, sure, maybe that could be part of the argument of why they need funding, but that's not necessarily the priority. Right. You know, when you hear that there are library workers who haven't been paid properly in a long time or library workers who, yeah, are just being so underpaid. Coming from education, I'm familiar with that struggle. Yeah, and I don't, I think maybe last time you were on how I asked

how this was affecting NYPL, but like I can't imagine that like Baker and Taylor going under as like, I'm sure that's probably put like a lot of strain on your technical services, like staff across the NYU

the NYCC yeah. And I also, so I, I, part of the reason that I'm here talking frankly is because I quit my job at NYPL and I'm seeking work. So I don't know exactly what's happening at NYPL. right now. But yes, Baker and Taylor, like ordering complications, things that affect book publishing broadly affect collections development as well. Yeah. Yeah, it's a huge strain on my department

right now as now like Ingram can't do shelf. We're not set up for Ingram to do full cataloging for us like Baker and Taylor could. And yet now there's like, oh, no, it's totally not a hiring freeze, wink, like, yeah, then who the fuck is supposed to do all these books, you know? T, I can spill about NYPL is that the last I checked in, they had like one person doing all Chinese cataloging for NYPL.

And I know that my co-worker who spoke Korean did a lot of acquisition in Korean for the system, even though that was not her job title, because she was one of the only staff anywhere in NYPL, who spoke Korean and was knowledgeable about children's books. So that kind of like job creep, and just like not filling a title that's open because they can save money by not and just asking one person to do more people's jobs

and cataloging, that ends up being... They do all of the Arabic cataloging where I work, yeah? Yeah. That's not my job. Yeah. Yeah. That's... I'm interested when you're in these big meetings with like patrons, how, you know, and the discussion goes from like services seven days a week to other things.

How, like, I'm interested in like place. So how have patrons been expressing as part of NYC plan their thoughts about place, right? Because I'm really interested in this. Like, I think last week we talked, I think Emily mentioned like this new library was built at all these service points. And the library was obsessed with staffing all the service points by breaking all their full-time jobs into part-time jobs to come to get the flexibility needed to cover all these new fancy service points, even though they could have just not staffed the service points. and had people get full-time jobs with benefits. So, like, how are people talking about, like, place and how they think about the library as a place I'm interested?

I think that there's... I think that when there have been conversations, either at our assemblies or when folks have, you know, been testifying, it seems like there is a real appreciation for not just... And I think that's been an important kind of message. we've, you know, a sub message we've tried to push is that libraries are not just books and really trying to foregrounds their place as one of commons, right, as one of that is a free, accessible space, right? You know, that everyone has the right to exist in regardless of what their deal is. And it

feels like there's a real appreciation for that. And when people do kind of speak about their libraries, it goes well beyond the services or the programming, but really also just like its existence in its place as like a society centerpiece, if you will. Yeah. One thing that came up on the 21st was that there was a library manager and steward for the union in Queens who was asked about the number of staff that she would consider fully staff for her library.

And so she started talking about how it, you know, it varies based on service points and number of floors and whether you can see other staff and whether it's safe. And so she can't give an exact number off the top of her head, but she can say that there are libraries with three floors that management says can be run with two staff. And that can't be done because you can't staff simultaneously all of the floors at once. And then ideally you would have two people on each floor. And then ideally you would have some programs sometimes. So you would have you know, maybe 12 to 15 people for a three-floor branch instead of seven people for a three-floor branch. And that's not the kind of estimation that has been really changed in a long time.

I think there were staff cuts back during the recession. And literally, like, the former staffing levels have never been restored for a lot of local community branches. Because people have figured out how to run them with less people, even though that's a worse level of service. It leads to people who are irritated and distracted because they're trying to do five things at once. And then that leads to a worse patron experience, too. but I think that curiosity about place was interesting. And also a fun thing that was at the 21st at the people's forum for rallies for libraries

was there was a big slideshow of photos of all of the different public libraries throughout New York. Someone had gone around to photograph the inside and outside of a whole bunch of different community branches of libraries and it was playing the whole time. And I thought that was a great, that was a great thing to be happening on the wall

because you could see just like flashing by just like one at a time, the interiors was like, 200 different libraries and like all of the different ways that they look and all the different like little bulletin boards of kids art and stuff that was going on. And I think that also, it also kind of highlighted how old a lot of these branches were because the ones that are not Carnegie libraries are usually from the 60s. And so they're also probably, you know, a little bit dated in terms of the linoleum and the stuff on the ceiling and stuff. I think that that photo series was

really affected at highlighting place. Yeah, that I just looked it up that the, it was a photographer who passed away in 2024 and her name is Elizabeth Felicella, Felichilla, I don't know how to pronounce it, but I believe Dylan said her partner gave permission for us to, you know, share these photos. And I think that Dylan curated it so that at the Queen's Public Assembly, it was just Queen's branch photos. And at the Manhattan Assembly, it was just Manhattan photos and, et cetera. And so, but I do think in terms of the idea of place, I think one thing that has been helpful for patrons to kind of make sense of what that means, right? And what, you know, in terms of, oh, okay, there's not a budget to help support the space is kind of like you said of like the AC not

working or whatever, or if the elevator's broken down, or if it's closed, you know, the branch near me was closed for three weeks for HVAC repairs because, and they, you know, and before that, they would close during the winter and the summer if it was extreme, you know, one way or the other. And so kind of seeing those interruptions in like understanding the connection between, okay, if they don't have the funding, then they can't pay for the, you know, capital development repairs. And then this is what happens. And then I don't get to go to the library and pick up my book this week or whatever it is. Kind of seeing that flow, I think is helpful for people to make sense of place in a new way. Yeah. I mean, that's really atrocious staffing for like a three floor building to run by two people. because that's basically just one person to watch the door who can never go to the bathroom.

And then another person to manage the rest of the building. Where I just worked, we had a two-floor library and we could close with two people. One person didn't let new people in, and the other one went and closed, but that's a bit. Otherwise, you were very tied to the desk. We would only staff that low during spring break when no one was here. The strategy that, like, NYC plans have been using, how have you felt like it's a been effective or ineffective at like getting its messaging out to people. Because I imagine a lot of people who aren't in New York City want to look to this and say like, hey, this sounds like it's

been really good at getting a consistent message out. Like that sounds like it's been really impressively done like getting the 0.5% thing out. But what do you think is like some lessons that other like particularly cities probably could be taking from NYC plans organizing? I think strategically, yeah, there was definitely discussion and some, you know, figuring out alignment around the 0.5% of, you know, is that what we want to ask for or not? I think that both in terms of strategically, you know, that made sense, but also in terms of stickiness, like 0.5, it's like a number that can stick in people's heads as opposed to if we were to say it's this number, right, like 523 million or whatever it is, that number is going to change.

based on, you know, the year and whatnot. And so we're like, okay, if we can just stick to this point, I think that will help resonate with people. What brings me a lot of hope about this is that last year, when we were asking for this, demanding this, 0.5%, we were more aggressive than the libraries themselves. When the budget process was happening last year, the library heads, because of course they're in a political position

where they need to say, oh, you know, thank you so much city council, you know, and thank you so much to the mayor. They have to kind of do that sort of work. So they couldn't, they were, you know, they're being, they're being strategic around their position. And so we felt we were in a position to be a little bit more aggressive, if you will. And so in the fall, when some of us from plan were meeting with our city council folks or city council staff, a question that some of us got was, oh, well, how do the libraries feel about this? Like, are they asking for 0.5%? And at that point in time, we said, well, no, actually, they're not. But we are. And we're trying to kind of support in that way. But then last week at the hearing, all of the library heads, I believe it was all three. Definitely a couple of them mentioned it said 0.5%. All three of them. And to me, that was like great because I felt-y-man on your side.

Yeah, basically. Amazing. And I don't know if it's necessarily that it went from us to them or if it went from us to Zoron because Zoron, you know, that he added that to his campaign last year when we were pushing on him. And so he added that. He was saying it a lot. He was saying it. Yes. He was saying it. So it might have gone to him. And then he was saying it. And then they said, okay, now we can say that too. But either way, that did feel like hearing that was really, that made me feel. like, okay, we're making progress because now they're pushing the way we want them to push. Yeah, that makes me, so like, y'all are in this position where because you're not directly affiliated with either the library or its unions, like you're a separate entity, you can kind of put, you can be in a different sort of position politically and strategically than maybe the library management or the unions can put themselves in. But I am curious, how has the relationship been with either union representatives or if you have met with library management at all? Like, what has

been like having those discussions with those groups? So last year, or wait, when was this? Yeah, early 2025 when the, when the mayor elections were kicking off, the, the NYC plan group wrote to all the mayoral candidates. And at the same time, people were sort of bringing the messaging into the union meetings of like there, there is a new library advocacy group. And they are pushing for this number. And we have now gotten the narrow candidates to say this number, isn't that fantastic. And so I'm not sure, I'm not sure about Deborah Alman, the president of 1930, because she's, sometimes she answers emails and sometimes she doesn't from long experience in 1930. But other people on the executive board of 1930 are like very down with the messaging from NYC plan about

increased funding, consistent funding. And Debra is too when she weighs in on it. I think that she's less involved than it seems like the Brooklyn and Queens unions are for my impression. But I think that everyone hears, you know, zero point five percent consistent funding and is like, oh, that would be great if that happened. And I think however it has gotten to management, it has gotten there via sort of going directly to political candidates and being like, I want you to have this as part of your platform. And then the political candidates respond, I think, to an organized seeming group of citizens advocating for a cause that seems like a popular and easy cause. And that's sort of where we've gotten now, which is like now we're in a silly budget cycle again, where the preliminary budget undercut,

but the city council seems to be on the library side. And I think the city council has probably internalized that number. We'll see what they do with their response to the preliminary budget and where they pull from for that. We can cross our fingers that a state income tax goes through, and then we have far more money to work with, and then everything works out. But regardless, I think the city council members will figure out how to pull more money towards the libraries and parks because of these commitments and these fights. Because it was also like the 1% for Parks fight was also happening simultaneously to NYC plan. So they kind of went together. It was 1% for parks, 0.5% for libraries, with this idea of building like a usable commons for everyone

in the city that is open to everyone, that improves life for everyone, that lowers crime, that helps people go to the bathroom, that is a net benefit for the entire city. And I think that partly the energy of this last campaign cycle put those things a little bit more out there. I don't know if every city is going to have a really rambunctious mayoral election going on, where that comes with the fore, but there might be other strategies. Abby, do you want to talk about like strategies that you have used to like reach out to people in your communities or people around you to talk about stuff? Sure. I mean, I've definitely done, you know, some classic tabling in, you know, a few places. Although it's been interesting, I tried to table

outside the branch near me just so. And they said no. They said I was not allowed to, even though I was like, well, I'm just outside. I can like make myself, you know, a little bit away and clear that I'm not like with you, but I was not allowed to do that. But I tabled at a place, you know, like a corner near my kid's school where like I know a lot of people. I knew a lot of people would stop and talk to me. And I think that was, you know, it's a busy corner. And so I was there at like 8 a.m. at drop off and whatnot. So I've tried to just, you know, have conversations with anyone that would frankly listen. And I'm sure all my friends are really sick of my social media because I'm just always posting about, you know, this campaign and what we're working on. But I also then have done, you know, beyond just kind of

blanket invitations and blanket outreach and whatever, you know, some targeted stuff to say, oh, I think you might be interested in this or, you know, you seem kind of aligned with this type of thing. And so a few folks have kind of joined the group or said, you know, I want to. I'm going to get there. I'm not ready yet. I don't have the bandwidth yet. But, you know, and so that's, that's kind of just how I've been about it. But kind of going back to a question that you had asked earlier about kind of almost like strategies or things that could help folks in other cities or other locations around their kind of advocacy with libraries. So as of right now, as Hal was saying, so we have six city council members who have, quote, agreed to our demand. Whether that

translates into actually getting 0.5 percent, we will see. And we will see. And we have, did have one person who actually said no. They said they didn't just not respond. They said I do not support zero point five percent, which was, you know, a choice. As I said it. Yeah. I mean, I looked up, I had not heard of this person. I looked them up and I was like, yeah, I guess that tracks with their record. I think she was like arrested for like pointing a gun at a citizen or something like that. Let's fucking go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is a city council member? Yeah.

I'm like, is this for Staten Island? Oh, yeah. Or it's like, this isn't the woman who bit someone, is it? Oh, yeah. No, no, it's not her. It's not her. But I remember. Councilman and Rottweiler.

I love New York. But I mean, I think what we've tried to do strategically is figure out who is in charge of this, right? It's the mayor. It's the mayor's office and the city council. And so as of now, those have been. are kind of two, you know, targets and efforts, if you will. But we've also started to strategize around who else has power, right, that can pull in different directions. And so we've started to think about, okay, who's on the boards, right? It's millionaires and billionaires. And so how do we

get some regular folks, some patrons, some library workers, like, you know, people that are not in the 1% who can kind of participate in those? And we've also started to entertain and think about, I think last week at the Assembly, someone floated the idea. And I think it's great of like coalition work, right? Like could we team up with those climate change advocates around, you know, if we're talking about cooling and heating and energy efficiency and stuff like that? Or could we link up with parks because they also were promised and I think they were not, you know, handed what they asked for. And so, yeah, boards, coalitions, I think those are kind of things. things that are on the horizon for us to explore more and see what's possible pulling on those levers, so to speak. Another direction that I have been thinking about that I think would be useful is pushing even more on schools, whether it's CTAs and parents or whether it's like teachers unions and trying to tie connections between like libraries help the work of education and a fully funded library support students in being able to do

what they're in school for. A fully funded library is able to help kids do homework and print and learn to read and do math and experience STEM programs and stuff like that. So I feel like pushing more on the links with education also makes sense. Yeah, because I was going to ask since if people aren't, you know, listeners aren't aware,

like the New York City libraries, like Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, like those are technically like not part of, It's not like another other cities where the library is like a city department. It's like its own little thing. It does get city funding, but it's not technically.

Yeah, they precede the city of New York becoming one thing. So the libraries were created as their own like gilded age, give back schemes as non-profits during the gilded age. And then they became under, they came under the purview of the city because they get most of their funding

from the city. They are city funding institutions. Oh, okay. They are technically nonprofits, and the people who work for them are city workers, and they get city workers. Yeah, they get city worker health benefits and stuff, but the libraries themselves are technically nonprofits, which I think has to, like, that is why there's the weird board of trustees for NYPL where all of the rich people get together in a room and talk about how AI can replace librarians or whatever. Those meetings are public, and you are allowed to go and sit there. You can't talk. but if you wanted to go and sit and stare at them, you could. A colleague has been trying to make the recorded meetings more scrutinized

because these trustees often don't know what they're talking about. But I think that that's because it's not a city, technically a city institution that that's how it's run. I don't know. Boston's is the same way, and it is a city department, and it's a bunch of millionaires. Yeah. I think that's just what big cities do, which is bad.

Yeah, because I was like, I didn't know if, because I know in other city libraries, it's like if the city workers are unionized, like the public school teachers and the library workers, they might not be in the same union, but they're like sister union because they're all like city workers. So I just didn't know how that had affected this fight or the budget numbers or anything. And the library unions ended up with the city unions in 1968 because of like the wave of strikes and everything. like they got they got sort of swooped under the wing of city unions there had been a union before in NYPL in the 30s and 40s and then I got crushed because of anti-communism basically

yeah yeah and then they didn't have one until the 60s and then I think just because of the conditions of the wave of strikes that hit they wanted to make sure I think that library workers were sort of bound by the same no strike clauses as the other city workers probably. And I think that was probably one of the reasons why they ended up in the union with city workers. Gotcha. Okay. That makes sense. I mean, that's not good, but that makes sense. I didn't know how that had affected to him. I am curious. I don't normally get into like the electoralism of it too much. But you did mention how the mayor has the ability to kind of send in a low ball budget and then everything is clawing back. So like how much. authority does the mayor have to just like set the budget? Is it similar to like how the president submits a budget and it's just a wish list and then other people, and then Congress actually

has to write it or does the mayor actually have a little more power than that to like set the baseline of the budget? My understanding is they have to agree. The council and the mayor have to agree on the budget for it to become an adopted budget. And they do have to do it in order to fund the institution. So they really, they can go a little bit over, but they really have to do it by July. So the council does have power over, you know, how much they, how much ground they give. It's going to be a question of a whole bunch of different institutions that they're trying to find funding for things that like COVID funding for has last or whatever. And so it's like the mayor is trying to use this low ball as pressure on the state to give the city more money. By the low ball, it's kind of like all of these things will be lost if we don't get money from the state.

and I think most mayors, and I think Zoran is in this camp, I think they are not actually willing to see those massive cuts go through because it is a PR problem if they do go through. Eric Adams became more unpopular after this, after the cuts. But I think that mayors also have a whole city's budget in front of them, and I think the logic of austerity has been in operation so long. I mean, I was shocked by it. I was like furious with Zoran on.

because I spent so many hours of my life last spring, like knocking on doors and being like, I'm a librarian. Zoran supports libraries. Did you know that he's promised 0.5% of the city budget for libraries? And I'm like, you made me a liar, Zoran. I really like all in your policies. If you can implement them, I would like that. But also like there's the, there's the thing of like, there is this budget shortfall. It's not the most historic budget shortfall in the world, but it's still something that they have to solve. So it's going to be about pressure and whole to fund the city so that the city can fund its institutions. But I do think that the position of the council members on whether libraries get funded or not will hold sway. Like if they care more about something,

they are more likely to not sacrifice that thing versus something else. So if this is on their minds, it's good. Yeah, how much of a raise are the cops still getting? I mean, like, if we're 0.5% of the city budget, they're like, I don't think I think I think they're 12. I already are going up though. Yeah. Yeah. Is it the same amount that yours is going down? Probably. Well, plus they always go over budget. If they eliminate that the cops, we would be, we would be grazy.

Everything would be golden. Utopia. Imagine that. We can just swap their budget for one year. Plus, they can go over their budget because of all the misconduct lawsuits as well, which runs into over. Plus, they have to have, they can under budget for the overtime. Yeah. So it just eats everything else.

Actually, 12% is kind of low for a city. Most small cities, it's 30 to 50% of your budget goes to the cops. Really? Oh, wow. Yeah. If you're like a regular city, like Houston or whatever, it might be like 25 or something, but small town might be like 30 to 50. It's kind of all your local city does is grow, grow cops, like some sort of old. That's just all the money.

It just goes to cops. That's talking about other cities that reminds me. So when I testified, I went and looked up the library. percentages for a couple other cities just because I was curious of how New York compares. And Chicago is at 0.7%. San Francisco is 1.3 and L.A. is 1.9. Wow. Yeah, which I did that math. I was like a few times. I was like, really? Like that seems

but, you know, there's obviously much, they're smaller cities. So then New York, even though they're still very big for the country. So it's, they have very different budgets, both the city budget and library budgets. But I was like, you know, if they can get those percentages, we should be able to get 0.5. Yeah. So Tampa, it's 41% of the city budget goes to policing. Vera.org put out a publication of what policing costs in different cities. I think it would be nice to make an interactive map like that.

I can actually put the link in the chat if you want to play around with it while we're talking. But I saw a lot of these coming around. during the during like George Floyd and during other moments of like Black Lives Matter and policing

abolition discussions of just making maps like this and so it might be an interesting exercise to go to your city and see what percentage of your budget goes to libraries and making an interactive map like that and just like...

Boston is only 16%. Yeah, well because Boston's so big. It shrinks down the bigger the city is. So smaller cities, it's like 50%. And then it kind of shrinks as it gets smaller. But like Houston is still like 36. Austin's still 40. Like it's massive in the cities.

Wow. But yeah, the bigger your city gets the kind of smaller, the percentage gets. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was just going to say, I love the idea that you said of making one of these for the library. Yeah. That could be really interesting. It's probably a lot more difficult because libraries are so weirdly funded.

Like there's always like levies and county stuff. So I'm sure it's a lot harder. But at least if you could get big metropolitan cities like Chicago, L.A., Miami, maybe, but it would be a little easier. Jacksonville. Because Jacksonville is just one big city ever since home rule. I only know city history in Florida because I don't really know about it in other states. But they just made one giant county back in the 60s.

Another fact I know about revenue for libraries is 1.7% of Ohio's total general revenue fund goes to libraries. Ohio's, and I learned this because I went to the Columbus Library Book Fair as like a visiting author when my last book came out. And I was there and there was 200 authors there all being paid to go to the Columbus Library to give talks and panels and stuff. And it was all done on the library budget. there was no special. I mean, maybe there was special grants, but it was like, they were like, we're going to do this every year. And it's because they have consistent revenue stream. And I think that's because of like, maybe like aerospace manufacturing and stuff in Ohio, like airplanes and heavy manufacturing and stuff. So there's revenue from, from just like the economy of the state.

Like it goes in, it goes directly into like a public library fund that's used for public libraries. So Ohio's libraries are surprisingly amazing. Sorry for the surprisingly if you're from Ohio, but I didn't know. No, Ohio sucks. Yeah. I did go to IFLA back in 2016 or something when it was in Columbus. But that's surprising. Usually the red, quote unquote, red states usually don't maybe have the best support for libraries, but that's... Your inner Illinois is showing.

What? Oh, because... You're just so fast to say Ohio. sucks. I mean, it does. I was born there. I'm like to say it. How, like, how have you felt about NYC plan recently in terms of like, do you feel like you're gaining momentum stagnating? Like, how does it feel like it's going as, as of like the day of recording? Like, how do you feel like you just came off another big meeting? I think it will come down to what we are doing in the next couple months, right? Because this is the budget deliberation period. So if we want this

effect to it who knows what will happen this budget cycle but if we want to affect this budget cycle it'll be in the next few weeks so something i personally am trying to figure out how to do is like in my neighborhood as a patron i'm like figuring out if the friends of the library organization still meets or still is existing they fund things before they fund a book sale every year and if not there's like a commons space in my neighborhood and i'm kind of hoping that i can figure out a way to do like a postcard writing campaign to council members or something and then get people to turn out for it. We'll see. Like there's more budget negotiations to happen. So pressure during this time, like maybe calling council members in NAS or getting a whole bunch of people from an organization to turn out at a

park and talk to people about libraries, that kind of thing is going to have the effect it's going have in the next few weeks. I'm, yeah, I'm very curious to see how the next month or so is going to go. I do feel like, you know, I'm not so interested in scaling as a metric for, you know, success necessarily or anything. But I do, when I do think of, okay, last year how many people we had kind of showing up and, you know, saying what we are message and whatnot. And then this year, we already have more people from, you know, members of NYC plan participating in that, you know, it's, that's one way to participate in the, you know, process. But I do think that having more folks that are kind of saying what we need to say gives me some hope there. I also, I know that, you know, our newsletter now has over 2,000 people on it. And one of the people, I don't work on the newsletter or any of that stuff,

but I heard from someone that they were looking at it. And we have a really high open rate of the email. They were saying they're like, marketing executives would be so impressed. Like every, you know, not everyone, but like, well, you know, pretty close. A lot of the, everyone that's getting that email, they're opening it and they're, you know, maybe hopefully reading it, which is hopeful. Digital outreach is so tricky these days. I mean, there's, there's no guaranteed approach.

Like, kind of seem to be going back to email, but because social media is kind of not really where it's at, and it's, that's even more fragmented, particularly generationally. A lot of people are on Instagram, a lot of people are on Facebook. Where do you find people anymore? And Twitter is just a mess. So like, what do you do? Right. So I'm glad to hear that just good old fashioned emailing is working.

I think so. On that note, like are, how can people get involved? You mentioned there's lots of ways of getting involved. So like if someone's listening right now and says, oh, I want to, I want to get involved. Like, where are some things I can do? So one thing for sure is to email your city council member. if you're in New York City. And of course, this is kind of translatable into other settings as well. So you'll have to kind of see who your people are in your settings. But for sure, we have an action

network. It's on our website, NYCPlan.org. It's linked there. But in general, we're encouraging people to email, to call their city council members and ask them, will you support 0.5% for libraries? and also even encouraging them to meet with their, you know, council member and just, and if you're someone from their, you know, staff, perhaps they have a budget person or whatnot. And having those conversations, I think, is kind of the biggest thing. But then also as we, you know, go through this budget cycle in the next couple months, we are anticipating there being a city council hearing in May. That's when it was last year. That is, you know, folks from the libraries. and folks from the finance team. And we encourage people to testify. You can testify in person. You can testify over Zoom.

And you can just submit written testimony if you are unavailable that day. So there's information about all of that on our website. But those are kind of the big things. And if you are in New York, we meet like one Sunday a month. And it goes back and forth between on Zoom or in person. And, you know, we, of course, we need more. people. We always need more people on these things. So we invite people to come on out. Yeah. I'm sure that the links can be added to the show notes. Info at NYCPlan.org is email you can contact to receive the

agenda of the next meeting if you are interested. I think the next one is on Zoom and I think it's on the 19th of April. I found out about y'all because my union sent me to the October assembly and I thought it was like really cool. And I was wondering if y'all could like talk about like, because we've been having this. Oh, you've been having an assembly. But it's like, can y'all maybe talk more about these like people's assemblies that you have had? And like what was the sort of rationale behind going that route of having assemblies? What's it been like organizing them? Getting people to show up to them. Like all of that. I mean, I think that it was, it's kind of this format of a large egalitarian conversation where there are speakers.

and there is like sitting and listening, but there is also a breakout groups where everyone in the room is encouraged to talk to each other. And I think rather than just an outdoor rally where people may not engage with other people that they didn't come with, I think that this format is like a large-scale organizing practice to try to get people thinking and talking and activated.

That also provides sort of space and care for them to be activated. For example, there was lunch provided at the one we just have. So I think that, I think it's the logic of like, if we can just get everyone in a big enough room, we can have good ideas, and then everyone goes away knowing more people and feeling like they're part of more of a movement than if they come and listen and leave or if they come and yell at something and leave. I think rallies are so important. And I hope that we can have some big library rallies either with, you know, the libraries organizing, they often have library rallies this time of year or like union presence or an NYC plan one. But I think that this

kind of the assemblies as organizing format. I mean, it's coming kind of from like an anarchist principle sort of. There's there's someone who's running the show, but like everyone is encouraged to speak up. And I, I see people sort of coming out of their shell and interested. There was a woman who worked at Make the Road who was, when she was asked about like what she valued in the public library. She had, she had some stories to tell. And she was just here because she worked to make the road. But like she was, she was sort of also wrapped into the conversation because she was there. Yeah. I think Z is exactly right there. And one thing that I've really gotten a lot out of at this assemblies, what are the panels that we've put together. And the panels are intentionally

across party, I guess, conversation. So we, at each of them, we've had, yes, a union president. and we've had a library worker and we've had a patron. And then at two of them, we've had a city council member. We had Lincoln Wrestler and Christopher Marte come out to two of them. And so we're trying to kind of bring different perspectives together to see, you know, what we can figure out if we all kind of share the positions we can come from. And what I really appreciated about when Christopher Marte came to our assembly is that it felt like was giving us some tips a little bit, you know, some like insider knowledge where he said,

okay, one thing for you to be aware of is like city council, we X, Y, Z. And so we, you know, it was, it was helpful to kind of get those ideas. But like Hal said, I think the real, I think, strength of them is exactly that is like that social connectivity that is so necessary for kind of movement work. You have to have, even if you don't have to be friends. or best friends with people, but there has to be some ties that bring, that bring you back in a way. And I think the assembly is a really great way to show up and kind of get a feel of like the conversations and the concerns of, you know, the group without it feeling, you know, our meetings are working meetings. We're, you know, we're in motion. The train is going. And so I think sometimes,

when I first joined, I was like, okay, trying to get my, you know, my footing. So that can be a little daunting, but the assembly is like really, I find a very accessible entry point for people. Yeah, I remember, I think the patron at the Manhattan one was also. A young person. Yeah, like a young person. I don't know if they were even a teenager yet. Yeah. They were just a very young teenager.

But it was like really powerful to like hear their perspective alongside like the library workers perspective. Like, for example, like I really, I think that. was like my favorite part of the whole day was that was that panel. Yeah. Just because it was so great hearing everybody. Mm-hmm. Kind of going back to what you said earlier, how about possibility for collaborating with

schools, that makes me think about, this is a little bit of an aside, but I feel like I really want to share it with you all, is that New York City public schools have completely, not completely, but very much so lost their libraries in the last 15 years. And so even though there's, I looked up the numbers earlier, even though there's about 1,600 public schools in New York City, there's only 270-ish full-time librarians. And part of that was, yeah. And a thousand of those schools have a library. So the schools have the infrastructure for libraries, but there are no library workers or librarians, I guess they would be called. And that came from under the blue.

Bloomberg administration, there was a school initiative to, you know, in New York City, the school buildings are huge, right? Like very, very big buildings. And so they had this initiative to help improve graduation rates to split schools up into smaller schools. So instead of having a building with like a school of 3,000 kids, let's split it into like three schools, kind of and whatnot. And whether that's good or bad, I think it did ultimately help the graduation rate. That's great. However, if you have less kids in a school, you have less pupils, you have less per pupil funding. And if you have less funding, then you can't pay for the extra, quote quote, extra folks, right? And so that means art, PE, music, librarians, all of that.

Principals have to make some, you know, decisions of like, do I have a librarian or do I have music? and usually they are going to pick art and music over a librarian. So I'm not super active with them, but there's a campaign called librarians equal literacy. And they have been really working on this to try and get more librarians back into New York City public schools. But it's a real bummer. And a big room for improvement there too. Yeah. And this is like even in Midtown where there's a lot of relatively rich kids, there was a local elementary school.

that didn't have a library. And there was a group of parents who were taking turns volunteering there after school with like their collection of donated books that like a parent had come up with for their library or whatever to do like checkout at the library after school. And so like in a very involved school with lots of involved parents, you can get something like that where they, they sort of bring back from the dead some version of a checkout library. But they're not trained library staff. They can't do it all the time. And I'm sure that teachers have classroom. collections and, you know, if you're reading in class as much as they can. But, you know, it's not the same, it's not the same thing. Yeah, it's a real vantage on the problem. And everyone's like, oh, see, it's working, isn't it? But it's not working. That's, that's kind of worse than it not working as you're just watching people kind of spread themselves too thin and work too hard. And literacy rates are not great. Like, kids are experiencing reading delays. And some part of that is like social media, some part of that is still COVID delay. because kids missed a lot of classroom time and a lot of reading time and did a lot of, like, learning how to navigate a screen rather than learning how to navigate books, which is like they're navigating screens all the time.

But they're not necessarily building the long-form text reading skills that they'll need to build critical analyses as they're starting to do research projects or get older and like encounter more information about the world online. We need libraries because we need critical reading skills. If we want an informed public who can make decisions about important things in the future like climate change, but every. kid today is going to be living with, they need to be able to read about science. Yeah. I think it definitely is going to have to be a renewed, you know, insistence on just early literacy training, something that people have seems kind of fallen behind. I was, you know, you read, you read studies about like, do millennial parents read to their kids and like how high, how high do they rank that importance and how much do they enjoy doing it? And it's just like a, just a cratered.

So I think there's got to be like a new sort of like read to your kids, PSA campaign going on to reverse some of this because it's pretty shocking how bad the drop-off has been. I think there might be one. It's like I don't know the number of like a million words by kindergarten or something where it's trying to get. It's just like about, yeah, a million word gap or something where they're trying to get just do exactly that, promote. that like you have to read so that your kids hear a million words by kindergarten, and that's going to set them up to be, you know, strong literacy skills and whatnot. I don't know. I haven't heard about it in a while.

It might be old. I think teach to test kind of stuff is really cutting out how much silent reading time is built into a child's day at school, which in turn cuts into how much they enjoy reading on their own time. Because if you have a sort of free period for reading as part of the school day and you get to select your own material. It's a great assertion of agency. And then also it's a great sort of private learning experience that a child learns to have fun with if that's built into the day more. But if you have to teach to standardized testing by grade four, then you can't spend as much time allowing kids to sort of develop reading enjoyment at their own pace. You have to push them through hoops to get

them there. And we're in a really conservative swing around reading right now because there was, you know, quote, quote, balanced literacy was kind of like the in vogue teaching strategies, which had that sort of independent reading time and whatnot. But then a lot of, there was kind of like a big shakeup during COVID when a lot of families realized like, oh, they're getting, you know, independent reading time or whatever. And that's great. That truly, that's wonderful. But they also were not getting phonics instruction. And all kids learn differently. So for some kids, that was not a big deal. They could become literate without the phonics instruction as explicitly. But some kids absolutely need that, right?

And so there's that podcast sold a story. And so then there's like this big swing. And now schools are, especially in New York, are really leaning into, quote, quote, the science of reading. And so there's a very strong emphasis on phonics and passages. And that's all related to common core, no child left behind, which is legacy. of, you know, Reagan and a nation at risk, like all of the, it's like all interrelated in ways that literacy people know much more about than I do. But it does mean that a lot of kids are not getting that joyful reading time in school that they really need. And librarians would help with that.

We have the books. Yeah, and just being able to open the library too, like open your, your library and and be able to have students go in there. I guess I had one final question. I don't know what other questions Justin might also have. So NYC plan largely focused on this big budget ask, right? Say that happens or say it doesn't, you're still fighting, but like what other sort of like adjacent like causes around libraries would NYC plan maybe think about organizing around?

I'm thinking particularly right now about like what do we do about ice in our libraries and like protecting patrons and their families and employees and their families. And so it's like what kinds like has that been on MIC plans radar or, you know, anything like that? So there was a know your rights training about how to spot ice agents at the meeting that we had on the 21st. I think that right now ice agents haven't been targeting libraries as far as I know in New York. Most of the abductions that I think are happening are happening at like 7 a.m. as people are leaving for work. And then at like 3 p.m. in the afternoon, that's when I see rapid response groups light up a little bit. And they're often happening in the Bronx or deep in Queens and working class neighborhoods. And we've had, the libraries have had like their formal legal counsel instructions on what to do if there's ICE agents in there for a while. The ones that I encountered at NYPL were disappointing because they were like, You can't instruct anybody to go into a private area because then you're hindering the pursuit of illegal aliens or whatever. So they can't tell you to do something that's going to be a liability for the library. But I do think that a group like NYC plan could also partner with immigrant rights groups.

I think that one would need to try to not put a target on the back of those groups because immigrants use libraries a lot. And I think that to be like all of the immigrants are in the libraries at a time. time when there's a crackdown and immigrants happening. Yeah, but we can we can continue to try to, you know, thread together the concerns of, you know, we want a just society with access to information and we want everyone to be free and safe in that society. And so continuing, you know, rapid response kind of knowledge sharing within the organization to make sense. I think for future causes for NYC plan, if we don't get the, if we don't get the 0.5% this go around, hammering on, know, like summer air conditioning is probably a big one or like keeping libraries open and cool

during the summer so that people can cool down. I do think also like if ice cracks down on New York City, I think being like libraries should be a no cop, no ice kind of zone would be a campaign that could be done. And then I think like other than that, it's just there's a bunch of libraries that are closed for renovations that are enclosed for endlessly delayed renovations for a long times. So I think putting pressure on to get that taken care of would be another point of emphasis locally. What house said? Well, is there any final plugs you want to do for yourselves or for NYC plan before we wrap up? I've been applying at the Brooklyn Library since last July. So if you work at the Brooklyn Library and you're hooked up to HR, hit me up. I have young adult novels that if you

want to check out, they are NYC libraries. And other, some other libraries, too. They're out of Salem, which is about a zombie and a werewolf in Salem, Oregon. And there's how to get over the end of the world, which is about three queer teenagers saving near queer youth group using a rock opera gala. And there's Sons Blood, which is a vampire novel about a trans girl who runs away to try to find her friend who she thinks he's death to become a vampire. So if you are interested in young adult fiction, that's a totally off the wall thing. But those are my books. Hell yeah. Amazing. I'm going to have to check them out. My first book is coming out in the fall.

I wasn't planning to talk about it, but I'll mention it. Why not? It's from anti-racism to abolition, professional learning for liberating schools. It's for educators, school leader audience about how we can use teacher professional development time more strategically to work towards, as we said, liberating schools, justice, racial justice, explicitly all of that good stuff. Hell yeah, we love that. Yeah. Great, I'll put all that in these show notes.

Thank you guys so much. Yeah, thanks for coming on. Of course. No, what a lovely conversation. Good night.