We Need Our Library, No Strings Attached

I am a longtime community organizer who made my home in Brewerytown Sharswood nearly 20 years ago. It’s the richness in history, the proximity to Fairmount Park and Kelly Drive, and the cohesion of resident-led community organizations that made me stay. Our community is a resilient one whose progress is entirely grounded in robust partnership, engagement, and neighbor-led decision-making. Self-determined as we are, we do have expectations that our government will help us support and protect the basic resources that help us to thrive, like our community library.

The Cecil B Moore Library stands closed. Photo credit: James Izlar

Libraries are L.I.F.E: Long-term learning, Instructional and historical support, Fundamental to creating Excellence in education. They are repositories of knowledge, hubs for community connection and self-enrichment. They are extensions of home to the communities they serve, and very often provide resources that are lifelines for their neighbors. Libraries, rec centers and schools are the glue that keeps communities together. The Cecil B Moore Library served my community in all those ways, yet has been allowed to suffer from deferred maintenance, lack of funding and generalized institutional apathy for decades.

Organizing for the library in and around my community has brought me close to its history; I’ve been blessed to receive stories from elders who have been in this community for generations. The memories of when it first opened in 1962, or the official renaming for Cecil B. Moore in 1987, are invaluable pieces of community history. In our most recent community survey, neighbors wrote, “My children and neighbors’ children go to the Library to get help,” and, “I grew up around the corner from this neighborhood. Don’t knock it down”. 

One of my best memories of the library is a random day almost 10 years ago. They had the street blocked off with activities for children – I stumbled across that event while I was trying to figure out what fun thing my daughter, nieces, nephew, and little cousins could do. They had the best time.

Meanwhile, libraries and school programming are historically underfunded. Schools in Philadelphia are struggling to provide even basic education with minimal resources. Communities have faced multiple libraries going offline at the same time across the city for REBUILD projects, right after a long stretch of inaccessibility during the pandemic. Now there’s an executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. I remember a few weeks before this, walking through my house thinking about what’s happening with this library, stopping and saying to myself, “We’re in a time of metaphorical book-burning. I feel like this is Fahrenheit 451”. The attacks on our pillars of education are coming from the highest institutions. That’s what makes this all the more urgent. More than ever, we need the library renovated now – we can’t afford to waste any more time.

Photo credit: James Izlar

But the battle over the Cecil B Moore Library has been going on since 2022. Neighbors had been making their voices heard over the course of years through surveys, phone banking, canvassing, and attending community meetings. 

The Save the Cecil B Moore Library’s town hall on March 11th was a showing of community: North Philadelphians whose needs had been ignored, deprioritized, redirected, or conditioned upon development projects that would ultimately hurt them and the history of the culture of the neighborhood. Most people were the neighbors of Sharswood, Stanton, North Central, Strawberry Mansion, and Brewerytown who are differently impacted by the library’s lack of funding and threat of an indefinite shutdown. Some people came from places across the Fifth District and even outside of it.  Of all the people who attended, almost 20 were elected officials, and at least 12 reporters. 

Photo credit: James Izlar

The conversation surrounding the town hall became fraught at times (I even received a death threat on social media), but our community was resolute. We will not be quiet about making sure we have what we need. Our elders, our youth, and all our communities need our library. We need the things that will enrich us with no strings attached. The proposal the Fifth District Councilman made at the town hall –  namely, to demolish the library and remake it with housing units above it – was met with overwhelming opposition by the community, and it felt like once again, our needs would be co-opted for the benefit of entities of political or monetary power, not for the people.

On March 26th, we cheered when we heard that the Councilman is laying aside plans for housing above the library to serve the wants of the community.

We are elated to hear that the Councilman heard us.  We are ready to partner with him to finalize the decision to provide a satellite site for the library, as the library is being renovated, because it’s what the community needs and what we asked for. For organizers and organizing groups that are interested in standing with us for Cecil B Moore Library, for Brewerytown Sharswood, or for the Fifth district, you can become a partner or allied organization.