This is an Action Story. The Faust Public Library of Westland, Michigan, fired 5 librarians to expand the library. Please choose one or more of the action steps below to help the people of Westland Resist. The outcry has been amazing: People filled the meeting room and stood in the hall to listen to the above library board meeting, and to date 15,000 people have watched the following FaceBook video.
The Videographer’s Text
This is a recording of the Westland Library Board meeting 3/8/17 where the board of directors tried to justify to former staff and Westland citizens why they let 5 full-time librarians go and are planning on replacing them with 3 part-time (no benefits) paraprofessionals, all while planning a $3 million expansion to the building. No one was convinced.
Highlights:
- Mark Neal, the board president, likened professional librarians to “just bodies” in regards to staffing.
- We learned Mark Neal previously called the IT guy a "snowflake."
- I arrived a little late and missed Marilyn Kwik, the Head of the Reference department putting in her resignation in total frustration because of the board's unethical decisions regarding her staff, the ongoing library governance issues, and total lack of accountability. This means that they will now have only 2 librarians left in a department that had 8 just last week.
- Many people asked why these librarians couldn't be offered reduced hours, and he kept citing costs. However, the new paraprofessionals would only be starting at about $1-$2 an hour less than these librarians. This is very little savings. 4 out of the 5 librarians will not be getting their 401(a)s because they are not vested.
- Mark Neal promised that there would be no future reprisals against library staff who tried to organize a union (BTW all 5 librarians who were let go were trying to organize a union).
- Sheila Collins, the Library Director, promised that all library programming and services would resume as normal in the next few months. I will hold her to that, because I know for a fact, there is no one to train any of the new paraprofessionals on how to run the adult literacy program that I started (before I resigned 4 years ago — I trained two librarians to take it over and it took me a full month).
- In summary, they thought the path of least resistance was to fire 5 loud librarians instead of the quiet do-nothing director. They were dead wrong.
#formerwestlandlibrarians #notjustbodies
(Disclaimer: All commentary here reflects my own views of this situation, personal experiences as a former librarian of Westland, and should not be construed as necessarily representative of everyone else involved.) ~ Kristy Cooper. [Used with permission.]
The Value of a Transcript
The five fired librarians and their supporters will benefit from a transcript of the above video, as will many other groups of people, as detailed here. The FAQs of the Community Transcripts Project are located here
The Community Transcripts Project
This story introduces a joint project of Support the Dream Defenders and the Community Transcripts Project as introduced here.
Action Steps
Ways to support the Westland Five: Social media, donations, attending Westland City Council and Library Board meetings:
Social Media
- Share on social media: FaceBook and Twitter. Please share the original video and/or this Daily Kos story.
- For Daily Kos members: Republish, recommend, comment, and/or tip.
Donate — “Many a mickle make a muckle”
- Via PayPal: Log in to your PayPal account, click “Send Money & Request” at the top of the page, choose to Send money to friends or family. Send to communitytranscriptsproject.dk@gmail.com.
- Via electronic payment: Send an electronic payment from your bank or credit union to communitytranscriptsproject.dk@gmail.com.
- Via snail-mail: To mail a check, please contact 2thanks by kosmail or email.
The goal of our fundraiser is $500, which is expected to cover our transcription expenses. Any funds remaining will be donated directly to the five librarians via their GoFundMe page or used for other transcripts for the librarians.
The Transcript
We will provide links to the completed transcript here in this story, and the transcript will be available in this archive and as a Google Doc.
This is a community story of the Daily Kos groups Support the Dream Defenders and the Community Transcripts Project.
Update #1: FaceBook video finally embedded. Sorry, for the delay. ~2thanks
Update #2: At 9:30 p.m. on 03-17 we received our first donation, $20.