Where Are the Neighbors?

Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up.  ~Jesse Jackson

I was not surprised to hear that Adams Memorial Library in Central Falls, RI had closed.  Central Falls is in the middle of a devastating economic crisis that was a long time coming and libraries are first on the chopping block.   

The smallest, but most densely populated, city in the smallest state was a successful manufacturing hub 150 years ago, thanks to the power of the Blackstone River that courses through its heart.  Mills churned out iron, cloth and even chocolate that were used to create enough goods to make Walmart proud:  weapons, lace, cloth, brooms, snuff, webbing, candy, aprons, stationary, hosiery, etc..  

You name it, they made it.  The city prospered, grew and added infrastructure; like the beautiful Adams Library, a Greek Revival building designed by McLean and Wright of Boston and opened in 1905.
But in 2011 rivers don’t run factories and tiny New England factories are far and few between.

Today 20,000 people live in Central Falls. The average household income in the year 2000 was $22,000.  40% of the children live in poverty.  47% of the population are Hispanic and 21% of the families are led by single mothers.

Three years ago, when the city struggled to pay their bills they decided not to make the yearly pension contribution for the firefighters and police force and now the fund is running out of money.

Robert J. Flanders had recently been appointed as the state receiver and everyone is headed to court.  The city has slashed pensions, dramatically increased employee contributions to health care and closed the community center, pool and library.  Taxes are already as high as they can go - the citizens of the city have no more money to give.  And we haven’t even talked about the schools.  

While the lawyers, politicians and unions fight to the death, I think about the children, the elderly, the unemployed and the recent immigrants.  Where will they go?  Who will help them get services and jobs?  How will they learn the language?  How will they learn to read?  

The research is clear, if these populations are ignored, they will go on welfare & food stamps, dropout of school, be incarcerated, become isolated and depressed and turn anywhere they can for solace.  While there is no money to keep the library and community center open, there is a not much hope for the city if they are closed.

So while I am not surprised by a once thriving town struggling to recover from the loss of industry and the influx of immigration in our current economic downtown, I am surprised, maybe even stunned, by the lack of response from Central Falls’s neighbors.

According to the Pro Jo coverage, when the news came that the Adams Library was closing, RI libraries did not rush to open their doors to Central Falls residents, they did not welcome them into their air conditioned sanctuaries or invite them to story time.  In fact, the Ocean State Library consortium announced that they have a current policy of cancelling library cards if a town’s library closes.  

Pawtucket, as the closest city, grudgingly conceded to let Central Falls patrons borrow books at their library for a month or so and clearly stated that they would no longer be welcomed as of July 15th.  

They informed residents of Central Falls that they could then pay the $40 non-resident fee or the $115 fee to get books from the larger OSL system.  Most libraries require that patrons have an active library card before giving them access to computers.

In the Providence Journal, Doug Hadden (a spokesman for Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien)  said that they “wanted to help Central Falls out, but they were concerned that “city residents not be inconvenienced or displaced.”

Rhode Island is a tiny state, I lived there for 20 years and it takes about an hour to drive anywhere.  It’s hard to believe that libraries in this tight knit state would not come together to help their neighbors in Central Falls, to offer the limited resources they have or to organize a bookmobile, mobile lab or used book sale to ease the loss of their library on the most vulnerable citizens of the city, and perhaps the state, during the long days of summer.  

Meanwhile the state Office of Libraries and Information were planning a meeting to come up with solutions.  The Executive Director of the OSL, Joan Gillespie, stated the obvious,  “This is a community that desperately needs a library” and hoped that the Adams Library trustees would reopening the building.

I think there is a simple answer from a well know source that has been temporarily forgotten in our focus on budgets, pensions, lawyers and taxes:   Love your neighbor as yourself and loan them a book.