Two days ago I posted detailed information here concerning an attempt by a limited number of officials of the City of Worcester, Massachusetts to challenge the liberal legacies of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Deal by evicting our nonprofit FDR American Heritage Center Museum from the space we have had for almost three years as a growing cultural resource to New England. I am following up this initial information with an urgent plea for all of you to assist us in this dire hour to share this information with your friends and colleagues, and join us in keeping alive the spirits and legacies of FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt by challenging this bureaucratic attempt to destroy our museum!
Please share this email with everyone with whom you correspond on email. Please tell them to visit the homepage of the Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center Museum at http://www.fdrheritage.org for a special message.
BREAKING NEWS: The Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center Museum is under attack from the Worcester City Manager's Office! Without consulting us in any way, the City Manager's office has signed a lease with a company to take over large portions of the second floor of Union Station, including the space occupied by our nonprofit museum of American history, which means that we are being evicted. We have also been told we have until the end of July, 2007 to move out. Please visit our Emergency Action Page to help us defeat this attempt to attack the legacies of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Deal!
SAVE THE FDR CENTER MUSEUM!
The purpose of the Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center, Inc. is to provide educational and other learning opportunities concerning Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, with focus on the New Deal in American history during the 1930s and 1940s, the continued importance and relevance of the New Deal legacy in the world today, and to promote dissemination of such topics to the public. The Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center is a charitable, not for profit organization with IRS 501(c)(3) status. For more information please contact Dr. Joseph J. Plaud.
During the past three years the FDR Center Museum has become a major cultural resource to the citizens of greater Worcester, Massachusetts, including New England and many areas around the country whose citizens have visited our museum of American history. In a recent article published in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette chronicling our imminent demise, Julie A. Jacobson, assistant city manager, was quoted as saying that we had ample opportunity to remain at Union Station, and that we knew for years that our time would be up as tenants in this beautiful building. These statements are not true, supported by a July 11, 2006 Telegram & Gazette article about the FDR Center Museum in which Ms. Jacobson told the reporter that "The museum and the city will revisit the arrangement in a year's time." The sad story here is that the City Manager's office at no time approached our museum to renegotiate the lease, never offered us any means to stay at Union Station, and only informed us of the new tenant arrangement several hours before the deal was announced to the media. Those are the facts. I wonder whether there is some anti-New Deal sentiment in City Hall manifesting itself in this behavior? But this is all a side story. The more important issue is this: the people of greater Worcester, the people of New England, and indeed the citizens of America will in all probability lose a major social and cultural institution, and a public building renovated with over thirty million dollars of taxpayers' money will become a glorified private office building. Worcester and its people deserve better. Please read the May 9, 2007 letter sent to Congressman James P. McGovern (D-Worcester) concerning our urgent plight.
What you can do to help:
Contact the Worcester City Manager's Office and voice your concerns about their short-sighted and inexcusable behavior:
Michael V. O'Brien, City Manager, City Hall Room 309 - 455 Main Street Worcester, MA 01608 - (508) 799-1175
Send a Letter to the Editor of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette (250 words or less):
The Editor, The Worcester Telegram and Gazette - 20 Franklin St., Box 15012, Worcester, MA 01615-0012 - (508) 793-9100; Fax: (508) 793-9313; Email: letters@telegram.com
Thank you for your support of the legacies of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Deal!