Worth passing on- Severel items, including NOON City Hall event TOMORROW

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Michael White

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Oct 21, 2013, 3:36:45 PM10/21/13
to MDDW...@aol.com, cem...@aol.com
Several things worth passing along: 1.) Article on TPP, 2.) Article on relationship of government shutdown to global climate change 2.)  Information about the tomorrow Noon City Hall steps Citizens Defending Libraries petition presentation to Bloomberg, and 4.) information about upcoming November 3rd forum sponsored by Citizens Defending Libraries (and others) about the sell-off of public assets in general.

Articles:   

Saturday, October 12, 2013
The Other Government Shutdown Now In The Works (One You Are Not Hearing About): A Corporate Replacement Of Government Via The Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty
http://nationalnotice.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-other-government-shutdown-now-in.html


Thursday, October 17, 2013
If the Government Shutdown Wasn’t About Obamacare (And It Isn’t), Then It Was About?. . . Ready To Be Hot Under The Collar?
http://nationalnotice.blogspot.com/2013/10/if-government-shutdown-wasnt-about.html

 
Petition Presentation event:

Tomorrow, Tuesday, October 22, 12 NOON- Steps of City Hall event to present Citizens Defending Libraries petition to Mayor Bloomberg.  The event is on a Facebook events page and also a MoveOn Action event page.  Come no matter what but you can use either (and BOTH) pages to sign up and signal that you are coming and as tools to help invite friends, but, for various reasons it is especially helpful for you take a brief moment and at least sign-up for the event using the MoveOn event page.

Here are the links for those pages:


November 3rd, Citizens Defending Librraies together with others is having a forum (which may be just  the first) on the sell-off of our public assets in general-  Below is the form of email we are sending out to various potential participants.

Re: November 3rd Forum on Sales of Public Assets- STAKEHOLDER

Hello STAKEHOLDER,

We would like to invite you or representatives fighting to STAKEHOLDER

November 3 Forum on Sales of Public Assets

Since February, Citizens Defending Libraries (CDL) has been hard at work to prevent the Bloomberg administration's sell-off of NYC public libraries. This effort from the administration has taken place behind closed doors away from public debate. Public assets like libraries are being offered in a fire-sale to politically connected real-estate developers for their private profit, not public benefit. We are keenly aware that public libraries are not the only public assets being sold off in such private-profit deals.  Schools, hospitals, parks and public housing are also among the long list of public assets up for grabs.

On Sunday, November 3, from 2:00-4:00 PM, the weekend before the elections, CDL in concert with the Unitarian Universalist Weaving the Fabric of Diversity Committee, will be hosting a public forum. The purpose will be to discuss and, bring awareness to a larger community, the prodigal disposal of assets serving the public and to share, identify and highlight our many common concerns and challenges. Among other things, we hope to provide New York elected officials and candidates running for office (particularly those identifying themselves as progressive defenders of the public) with information and public input about the need to keep valuable public assets in the service of the public. 

The November 3rd forum, which may be just the first that we hold, will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church, corner of Pierrepont St. and Monroe Place.  You can take the 2,3,4,5,or R to Court Street Borough Hall or the A,C to Jay Street.

Your organization is invited to attend and to coordinate inviting other organizations that are facing tactics such as the following when public assets are besieged and handed off for sale (help us identify other characteristically common aspects of the threats faced):

    1.    Deliberate underfunding of targeted assets running them into the ground, deteriorating them and driving away their constituencies. 

    2.    Manufacturing crisis conditions and seeking to promote a “TINA” narrative (“There Is No Alternative”).  This can include overestimating or otherwise inflating repair and maintenance costs.

    3.    Opportunistically taking advantage of income inequality- Picking on and going after assets that have more value to a less advantaged and less politically powerful population than they do to those members of the population with greater influence.  Beneficiaries of these plans tend to be .01% rather than other New Yorkers. 

    4.    Underestimate the value of the assets to the public.  As in the example of the sale of the Donnell library, this may result in assets being disposed of at far less than their true value. 

    5.    Do top-down designed deals that the public will be the last to know about, part of a general effort to eliminate the public from discussions to the maximum extent possible.

    6.    Stacking decision-making boards with people who are unsympathetic to those served by the targeted assets.

    7.    Rush deals through (especially, as we have seen recently, at the end of the Bloomberg administration).

    8.    Dismiss alternatives to protect and preserve the assets.  (Includes obfuscating and ignoring better alternative courses of action, minimizing the downside of asset sales while exaggerating expected benefits while PR expenditures seek to capture the press and lobbying and campaign money is spent to win over public officials.

We hope to be able to work together to present elected officials with documented expressions of our common and related concerns relating to preservation of our public assets.  As the purpose of our efforts will be to get our story out, please consider whether you wish to contribute for distribution a short writeup of problems you feel your organizations has in common with others.

If you know of people working on this problem, we would welcome the opportunity to reach out to them.  We can be reached at 718-834-6184 or contact those of us listed below.

Thanks so much for your time and your consideration.  We hope to hear from you soon about attending this forum.

Best,

Here is a list of some of the assets that are being sold off:

    1.    Sell-off of libraries.
    2.    Sell-off of schools for redevelopment.
    3.    Sell-off of school properties in co-locations for for-profit charter schools.
    4.    Sell-off of public housing properties, including playgrounds.
    5.    Sell-off of hospitals.
    6.    Sell-off of parks.
    7.    Sell-off of the South Street Seaport.
    8.    Sell-off/privatization of public spaces and sell-off of streets, avenues and side-walks.
    9.    Sell-off of waterways (more landfill).
    10.    Sell-off of capital assets of Post Office system.
    11.    Sell-off of cultural resource assets.  The science building of the Brooklyn Botantic Garden is being sold.  The Botanic Garden now charges admission when it didn’t used to do so, just the way that the Zoos are no longer free.  Now charging admission and having received substantial donations it can no longer support itself?
    12.    Sell off of the environment. 
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