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Librarians host a story hour to protest library cuts

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Nicole Jones/OaklandNorth.net

“It’s nightmarish to us in the library,” Amy Martin a children’s librarian at the main branch said. “We’ve worked so hard to provide materials for people who are in the poorest communities.”

Cyclists at Ogawa Plaza got more than free pancakes, bike repairs and goodie bags at this year’s East Bay Bike to Work Day. Over a loudspeaker in front of City Hall, a couple of Oakland librarians had something else to share with them. “I went walking, what did you see? I saw a brown horse looking at me,” Amy Martin said as she stood in front of City Hall and read aloud from a giant children’s book.

Nearby, children sat in parents’ laps, clapping and reading along with the book, I Went Walking, and enjoying the impromptu session of story hour. But this story did not end with a happily ever after. Instead, after finishing the book for her young audience, Martin, a children’s librarian at Oakland’s main branch, delivered news of a public library system in peril — telling her listeners that 13 of the city’s 17 library branches may be closed come June. The audience booed and, following Martin’s lead, began to chant “No cuts to libraries!”

A $56 million budget deficit hovering over Oakland means public services like libraries face an uncertain future. In the most extreme budget cut scenario proposed by Mayor Jean Quan, the library system, which currently receives 2 percent of the city’s General Fund, is being threatened with a 60 percent cut — the largest compared to other city budget departments. The cuts would trigger a further loss of funding from the Measure Q parcel tax, creating a potential 85 percent loss in funding for the library system.

Read the rest of the story by Nicole Jones at Oakland North.

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Categories: News
Oakland North

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