Occupy Wall Street’s latest complaint; and how leftism is the opposite of Thanksgiving

You couldn’t make this up. Former New York Civil Liberties Union president Norman Siegel hosted a conference yesterday protesting the injustice that in the clearing out of Zuccotti Park last week, many books—“a full-fledged outdoor library with 5,000 volumes”—were thrown out or damaged. So, because the protesters had this illegal camp (which the liberal mayor of New York improperly allowed them to maintain and build up for two months), and because, along with their tents, tarps, sleeping bags, cooking gear, easy chairs, and assorted junk, they also collected books and had a “library,” this “library” acquired sacred status and should somehow have been carefully preserved when the police and sanitation workers finally cleared out the camp (which they were forced to do rapidly in the middle of the night in order to surprise the occupiers and prevent them from becoming violent). And the failure of the police and sanitation workers to pack up the books carefully in boxes (perhaps along with the card catalog?) was yet another act of oppression by an inhumane society.

Yet, as absurd as this seems, it is not absurd, but the logical expression of the Liberal Credo: “We can do whatever we like, and the government has to subsidize us, provide for our needs, and protect us from the consequences of our own behavior.” Now we have the Zuccotti Park Corollary to the Liberal Credo: “We can do whatever we like, including creating a stinking illegal encampment in the middle of a city, and when the authorities finally remove this disgusting encampment, they must make special efforts to keep in pristine condition the books we have accumulated there.”

Note that the McLatchy Newspapers report the protesters’ claims straight, not offering any counter view.

I also find it significant that this story was published the day before Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving holiday is an expression of the reality that this world and all the goods in it are given to us, provided to us, for us to develop and use and so flourish in our human lives; it is an expression of gratitude for the fact of existence. Leftism is the opposite of Thanksgiving. Leftists have no gratitude for the fact of existence. They take all the gifts of the world for granted, and then complain that they are not distributed equally. Leftists make impossible demands on society and the universe, demands that cannot be satisfied by man or God (see above). And when these impossible demands are not satisfied, it is further fuel for the leftists’ bitterness against a world that refuses to respect their “rights.”

If evil is the rejection of the good, leftism is the political expression of evil.

But liberal society—meaning America and the rest of the modern West—will not stand clearly against this evil, but largely sympathizes with it, harbors it, and supports it, and so is doomed.

Here is the article:

NYPD raid on Occupy’s Zuccotti Park camp destroyed thousands of books
By Gianna Palmer | McClatchy Newspapers

NEW YORK—What started in September as a few piles of books on a tarp in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, the de facto headquarters of the Occupy Wall Street movement, had grown into a full-fledged outdoor library with 5,000 volumes and an online catalogue by November.

On Wednesday, a group of library workers and supporters of The People’s Library, as it’s known among Occupy protesters, gathered in midtown Manhattan to discuss what had become of the library during the Nov. 15 eviction of protesters from Zuccotti Park ordered by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The event was held around a conference table covered in library books from the park in varying states of damage—torn, wrinkled, coverless and even mangled. Among the books visible on the table were a leather-bound copy of the Bible, a collection of Chinese mythology and a volume of selected poems by Allen Ginsberg. The speakers present shared their collective disgust with the raid that had destroyed the donation-supported library in Zuccotti Park.

“Today we are here questioning the appropriateness and the legality of the confiscation of approximately 4,000 books,” said former New York Civil Liberties Union director Norman Siegel, who hosted and moderated the event. Siegel said that 1,275 books of the 4,000 books seized had been recovered; of those, one-third were damaged to the point of being unusable. He estimated that 2,725 books had been destroyed.

The self-appointed Occupy librarians said that many of the books were not easily replaced, including signed copies, handmade publications and a special edition.

“Our nation’s poet laureate, Philip Levine, came in the morning before the raid and donated and signed a copy of his book, ‘What Work Is,’” said Stephen Boyer, 27, an Occupy librarian who had been living and working in the library until Nov. 15. Boyer held up the book, displaying its damage. “The NYPD and Bloomberg trashed it,” he said.

Mayor Bloomberg’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Boyer said that he’d been at the library on Nov. 15 when the New York Police Department ordered occupiers out about 1 a.m. Besides his personal belongings and an armful of poetry anthologies, Boyer said he was unable to rescue much else from the library.

“I just got what I could in one load and that was all I could save,” Boyer said, adding that once he had left, the police wouldn’t let him back into the park to take more books.

In a photo posted to Twitter on Nov. 15, Mayor Bloomberg’s office showed piles of books, neatly stacked on a table and arranged in plastic bins below. The accompanying message said that property from the park, including the Occupy Wall Street library, was being “safely stored” in a sanitation facility and would be available for pickup the next day.

When protesters went to retrieve the books from the sanitation facility the next day, they said that the only books they found in good condition were those shown in the Twitter photo. The other books retrieved from a back room by sanitation workers were in much worse shape, said Michele Hardesty, 33, one of the protesters who had gone to retrieve the books.

“It was clear from what we saw at sanitation that our books were treated like trash,” Hardesty said.

Speakers at the event called on Bloomberg to acknowledge that a wrong had been committed and to guarantee that similar actions would never occur again.

They also asked that Bloomberg replace the books and provide a space for the People’s Library to be recreated.

Mandy Henk, 32, a librarian at DePaul University, said she saw the library’s destruction as an attempt to silence and destroy the Occupy movement.

“What kind of a people are we if we can’t create a public space in which people can come and share books with each other? In which people can come and share ideas with each other?” she said. “Who are we as a country if we don’t have room for that?”

[end of article]

Here are Lucianne.com’s responses to this absurd yet logical story:

Reply 1—Posted by: Rather Read, 11/24/2011 5:32:59 AM

I work with a very radical librarian who was MASSIVELY outraged about this. Since she’s way bigger than me, I just kept quiet, but honestly I can’t get all upset about it. It’s not as though these were the only copies of the books in question.

Reply 2—Posted by: MindMadeUp, 11/24/2011 5:33:06 AM

Drama queens, all of them. If they valued these books so much, why were they keeping them in a what was essentially a garbage dump instead of a real library, of which there are tens of thousands across this country?

Reply 3—Posted by: strike3, 11/24/2011 5:45:09 AM

Those confused layabouts don’t read or they wouldn’t be so stupid. The books were obviously for their campfires.

Reply 4—Posted by: PoliticalJunky, 11/24/2011 5:47:35 AM

They want us to value the things they value but they have caused millions of dollars to be lost by businesses and municipalities showing their lack of consideration of what we value: peace, order, cleanliness, and the ability to earn a living.

Reply 5—Posted by: Kansas Conservative, 11/24/2011 6:00:38 AM

Thankfully, we have a very productive capitalist economy that will, in no time, reproduce all of those copies of The Communist Manifesto and The Anarchist Cookbook that went missing at Zuccotti Park.

Reply 6—Posted by: Jon Fraud Carry, 11/24/2011 6:06:18 AM

Of the 5000 books destroyed by the capitalist oppressors were 4,999 signed copies of “Dreams from my Father”.

Reply 7—Posted by: pineledger, 11/24/2011 6:06:20 AM

Enough with the sacred cows, already.

Reply 8—Posted by: Attercliffe, 11/24/2011 6:13:55 AM

FTA:

Mandy Henk, 32, a librarian at DePaul University, said she saw the library’s destruction as an attempt to silence and destroy the Occupy movement.

“What kind of a people are we if we can’t create a public space in which people can come and share books with each other? In which people can come and share ideas with each other?” she said. “Who are we as a country if we don’t have room for that?”

Um, isn’t that what taxpayer-funded public libraries are for?

Mandy, dear, why don’t you persuade your private university to welcome the Occupiers to your private library, give them unfettered use of the private bathrooms and maybe private kitchen facilities too. Let them occupy your private library so their books can be safe. Just because your university is a private fee-paying institution supported privately by alumni and other private means is no reason to keep the dear Occupiers out, is it? Or do you really want to “silence and destroy the movement” as you accuse others of doing?

Reply 9—Posted by: srhcb, 11/24/2011 6:15:58 AM

First off, Zuccotti Park is NOT public property. It is private land, owned by a large corporation which just happens to be receiving millions of taxpayer dollars for questionable projects from the Obama Administration.

The space is being made available for public use by the company in exchange for property and income tax breaks and insulation from civil liability.

Maybe the OWS “protesters” should expose this scam and sue the Park’s real owners?

Reply 10—Posted by: worstnightmare, 11/24/2011 6:16:54 AM

#8, please please please send your comments to Ms. Henk!

Reply 11—Posted by: vwlarry, 11/24/2011 6:26:28 AM

What else is one supposed to do with books that have human feces on them. These people crap on EVERYTHING.

Reply 12—Posted by: NuGoddess, 11/24/2011 6:31:05 AM

Were they able to save (or not save) their card catalog? /s

Reply 13—Posted by: mws50, 11/24/2011 6:50:58 AM

How many books are destroyed on a weekly basis for each library? How many books are destroyed each and every day by publishers? Hey Mandy & Norman, why are these particular books so special???

These libtards are truly stupid people.

Reply 14—Posted by: Aunt Agnes, 11/24/2011 6:55:36 AM

FTA—“torn, wrinkled, coverless and even mangled.” Using my imagination here—were they using these books the way the Sear’s catalog of old was once used in the out house?

- end of initial entry -

James P. writes:

The article notes,

Mandy Henk, 32, a librarian at DePaul University, said she saw the library’s destruction as an attempt to silence and destroy the Occupy movement. “What kind of a people are we if we can’t create a public space in which people can come and share books with each other? In which people can come and share ideas with each other?” she said. “Who are we as a country if we don’t have room for that?”

Isn’t that what the public library is? Doesn’t New York City have the largest public library in America? I don’t know about the NYPL, but around here, the public library is a place for dirty, smelly, drink- and drug-addled bums to congregate and “share ideas” as well as use the bathrooms and the internet. During the spring and summer, there is even a homeless encampment in the wooded lot next to the library. Bums and books, just like Zuccotti Park!

I suspect those books in Zuccotti Park deserved the Fahrenheit 451 treatment, not preservation at a sanitation facility.

Jim C. writes:

I know Norman well—helluva nice guy. He’s principled, in his own wacky way.

Paul T. writes:

First it was the great library of Alexandria, and now this! As Robert Crumb once wrote (ironically), “How much more #%$! will the people take?!” (That was in response to one of his characters suffering a welfare cut.) Mark my words: where they begin by burning libraries, they end by burning fast-food containers, smelly old boots, abandoned tarpaulins, and leftover leaflets.

Buck O. writes:

Happy Thanksgiving.

You write the truth beautifully: “the reality that this world and all the goods in it are given to us, provided to us, for us to develop and use and so flourish in our human lives; it is an expression of gratitude for the fact of existence.”

You also write: “But liberal society—meaning America and the rest of the modern West—will not stand clearly against this evil, but largely sympathizes with it, harbors it, and supports it, and so is doomed.”

This may seem to be a quibble, but to me it is an essential truth of our condition. I continue to suggest and to encourage us no longer to refer to (modern) liberal society as America, but rather as the United States—that which we are no longer substantially of.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 24, 2011 08:31 AM | Send