Wednesday, January 14, 2004
What constitutes "news" in the newspapers is often far from the truth. All too often a few telephone calls are made to higher ups of various interests here and there, many of whom do not have the low down on what is going on downstairs, and there you have it, the so-called news. More often than not it is replete with hypocrisy, prevarication, and outright ignorance.
Take for instance the December 24, 2003, article in The Kansas City Star entitled 'Plan seeks ring around library - Criminals would have to keep distance.' Community leaders are worried that vagrants, panhandlers, petty criminals, and homeless people who loiter in and around the old library near the courts, jail and police headquarters, will ruin the fancy new library, "Jonathan's building", scheduled to open this coming Spring.
The new library, in a renovated bank building across the street from the office of Jonathan Kemper, president of Commerce Bank, is intended to be the centerpiece of an 8-block commercial real estate development project - the Library District. At the very least, the powers that be want to empower city and county judges and prosecutors to keep petty criminals away from the new library being located in the old First National Bank building at 10th and Baltimore. The "Safety Ambassadors" of the Downtown Community Improvement District - a reputable organization funded by downtown businesses - will help keep the new neighborhood safe. Rumor has it that Mr. Kemper's Tower Property Security forces, who have the "meanest" reputation in town, will assist.
The proposed legal "ring" around the new library would be drawn by city and county judges and prosecutors; they would require, as a condition of probation, criminals convicted of crimes near the library to stay several blocks away from the new library - incidentally, vagrants already tend to loiter at the open-air Metro bus center directly across the street from the new location.
As far as I am concerned, a convicted criminal who robs the Osco store on the corner adjacent to the new location should have just as much access to the library's free education as the criminal who robs the Grand Slam liquor store several blocks outside of the designated area. In my lay opinion, - derived from my six years of daily experience with a fine, 5-million volume library that happens to be frequented by a few serious-minded "homeless" people who are entirely welcome there - anyone who violates regulations in or around the immediate premises of a library should be ticketed with a TRO (temporary restraining order), and arrested if they return.
Here is the hypocrisy: The old library is located in the historic Civic Center. Civic leaders have so little respect for their own workplace that they do not see to it that their own area - adjacent to several missions, half-way houses, churches and apartment buildings - is adequately policed during daytime let alone after dark - after they have gone home to the suburbs. Indeed, residents of the Pinnacle Tower can look down and behold vagrants drinking, dealing drugs, and fornicating on the Catholic church steps on the corner. The rule of thumb among local residents is:
"Do not go out after dark."
City officials have sworn that the historic Civic Center area has been made safe: they lie through their teeth, and the cops not on that beat know it. The unofficial police policy, according to a cop with twenty-six years of experience, is:
"Keep them over here on the east side so they will have some place to go, and harass them elsewhere."
Another law enforcement officer who works for the federal government, said, "If I were commander, I would not tolerate these people. I would throw them in jail. When they got out, I would thrown them back in jail. And I would keep throwing them in jail until they learned their lesson. Not enough jail space? Build more."
Fortunately, everyone in the neighborhood at night knows that the officials are lying when they say that the Civic Center district is safe: they cloister themselves in their apartments after dark to keep the crime rate down in their neighborhood, which, by the way, has only one small store open at night - a convenience store whose clientele are feared. If a local resident becomes desperate for a hot dog or a pizza, and decides to run the risk to get to the Diamond Shamrock, the rule of thumb is:
"Avoid groups of threes, and anyone who looks behind him as he approaches you."
A standing joke in the historic Civic Center district among not only the residents but among the few business that close early in the afternoon, is that the closer one gets to the Metropolitan Kansas City Police Headquarters, which is in the Civic Center, the more dangerous the streets are at night, and the longer it will take a cop to respond to a call.
Wherefore a few questions arise in the minds of local residents and investors in the Civic Center district who have not already become too cynical to bother asking questions:
"Where is the safety and the new stores the mayor promised us? Why didn't they build a new library in the vacant plaza where those stores were supposed to be, between the City Center and Federal Court House? Why didn't they provide the security we have all needed, not only at the library but in the entire neighborhood? Why don't civic leaders have respect for their own workplace and employees? Why didn't the mayor put her Christmas tree and some lights down here for government workers and residents to enjoy?"
In any event, almost everyone is grateful for the new, "free" library, although they keep thinking that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and suspect that the new facility will virtually be a private library. However that may be, the old library is a fetid dump, and the library administration is at odds with the co-tenant and former partner who controls the building maintenance: the Board of Education.
The new library is called the "Jonathan Kemper Library" because Jonathan Kemper is its prime mover. We blame civic leaders for the blighted east side, but we do not blame Mr. Kemper for not wanting to drag the blighted aspects of the old facility into "his" remodeled-bank library. I have not spoken to every librarian, but several have expressed this opinion: If Mr. Kemper would avoid the old problems, he should also use his influence to dump most of the current library administration including its director, Joe Green, because they are (allegedly) top-down, intimidating managers who have allowed the library to sink into a cesspool; they do not know what is going on because they do not come downstairs for any length of time - they use a private elevator to exit the building. But all that might be said of many organizations public and private. Still, one wonders at the following statement in the aforementioned article:
"Joe Green, executive director of the Kansas City Public Library, said homeless people would be welcome at the new library, and he did not believe they would pose a problem or drive off others."
Mr. Green is prevaricating, or quibbling at the very least. Of course he refers to the future, perhaps with the new security measures in mind, the ones that he should have had in place at the old location. And he did not define "homeless." The term is difficult to define other than to say that, generally speaking, we might mean that a "homeless" person is someone who is "houseless." Is not a man's home where his heart is? or does he need a roof over his head and a pot to micturate in?Incidentally, I like to work in libraries, hence a security guard once asked me if I was "homeless" since I was there for long periods of time. But I am tired of mincing words: why not use the term "vagrants"?
But never mind; here is the fact: Librarians who have been on the scene for many years know very well that vagrants ran off the regular clientele who used the library for its traditional purposes: to educate or mentally cultivate themselves.
"The homeless people frightened away our patrons, and to tell you the truth, sometimes they frighten me," said one librarian.
"Oh, he's (Mr. Green) wrong," said another, "the difference is between night and day. People used to come in from the offices during lunch and right after work, but not no more, not since these people took over."
Of course the American tradition differs between rich and poor, between private and public libraries. The aristocratic interest in limiting free speech to the rich and in keeping the majority ignorant and poor was resisted by the early democratic-republicans during the Federalist - Republican struggle - we note that a prominent proponent of public libraries and public education was called a traitor and charges were brought against him for sedition. Many of the clients of the early democratic libraries, which sometimes comprised a few volumes collected in a log cabin by a volunteer librarian, most likely had a grubby appearance and were smelly even shortly after bathing. Some of them were practically illiterate, and came to the library to keep warm: that situation provided an opportunity to the librarian interested in enlightenment, just as it does to the minister with a sandwich and a bible.
Wherefore, in respect to vagrant library frequenters, we have certain political interests to consider and balance. First of all, we must not, like the director of the library, lie to sound good, to be politically correct; or we must not be ignorant because we do not allow the truth to reach our ears, or do not care to visit the works we manage and get our hands dirty. The best reporters are on the street; the best managers practice hands-on management; the best kings go incognito into the streets to take their subjects' pulse.
The best leaders want to know the truth about problems. They accept responsibility for and directly address problems - not "issues." The fact of the matter is this: vagrants come to the library to keep warm and to use the bathrooms to relieve themselves and to wash their clothes. If that sort of usage is deemed legitimate for public libraries, then let us provide adequate day-care facilities, perhaps on a separate floor: restrooms, showers, laundry facilities. If not, then security should prohibit those uses. As for criminals, criminals should be arrested, period.
According to the The Kansas City Star article, Evie Craig, director of reStart, the downtown homeless shelter, said that the library is "often critical for homeless people who use its computers to search for jobs or to contact family." No doubt some homeless people use the computers to search for jobs; nonetheless, as anyone knows who actually monitors usage at the library, very few people use the computers for that purpose. According to my direct observations, the computers are being used primarily to listen to music on the headphones provided by the library, to play the games provided, to watch Internet videos, to visit sports and pop-culture sites. On one occasion only did I observe a man using the resume program and searching job listings. On several occasions (every morning) I observed unauthorized computer usage by certain persons - including unidentified illegals - who had obviously managed to breach the computer security system; I wasted my breath trying to report it to the administration on the fifth floor; after making a pest of myself, a librarian finally took notice.
In almost any event, anyone who wants a decent steady job needs much more than Internet access. Job sites are a highly overrated resource. To land a good steady job, a seeker needs a telephone and voice mail; a neat and clean appearance; and a mailing address. That is to say that what she or he needs is a home or a close resemblance thereto.
Furthermore, a pertinent, ironical note on the original sin of private capitalism, that it must keep things scarce and keep some people in desperate need of jobs in order to keep wages down and make a profit: The historic Civic Center was a success Depression Era public works project - of course pseudo-conservatives try to repudiate the success of such projects. People who have a duty to work do not have a right to work, a right to a job one cannot be provided by the "free" market system, in this great nation of ours, hence we hear from such folks as the Governor of Kansas, "The government cannot create jobs."
As for emailing home, what home does a homeless person have? Is not that the problem? Can someone please get on the telephone and persuade the families of these poor creatures to take them in, get them off the streets? Yes, email is frequently used at the library, and, everywhere else Internet is available it is the most common feature used - I am beginning to believe more personal, face-to-face contact will do a lot more good for many people.
"Why don't we just tell the truth about what is really going on at this library and deal with it?" I asked a librarian. "Otherwise the same thing will go on and on at the new location."
"That would be utopia," he responded.
"What is the ALA (American Library Association) position on this problem?"
"It is not the position of rank and file librarians. The people at ALA sit around in their offices reading liberal papers and talking on the phone - they don't know what is going on," he said.
Star reporter Joe Lambe called the executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty in Washington and the executive director of the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri to find out what is going on. Apparently it is legal to harass poor people whose crimes are petty, and illegal to harass rich people whose crimes are large; and, we might add, largely legal because they make the laws; even so, many business and government leaders should be fired and/or arrested and imprisoned. Still, nobody, rich or poor, should have a right to harass anyone. The definition of harassment is flexible, but everyone has a pretty good idea of what it means. We are allegedly equal under the law, we all have the same civil rights. I refuse to believe that people have a civil right to harass anyone, or to make a nuisance out of themselves at a public library. As far as I am concerned, the rules should be clear, and violators should be arrested when appropriate, or tossed out on their ear with a temporary restraining order in their pocket.