Philadelphia Youth Commission Budget Forum

We Love Our Library Celebration

Feelin' the Cuts visited Charles L. Durham Library on Valentine's Day to partake in the "We Love Our Library" celebration happening there. Youth and their parents that use the library on a regular basis got together to show their appreciation for the library and tell our elected officials that they want it to stay open! The event was put together in part by the Coalition to Save the Libraries. To get involved visit coalitiontosavethelibraries.blogspot.com .

Kingsessing Town Hall Meeting

Hello, again! We apologize for the delay in our posts, but V-Media and the whole VOICES crew had to take a long healthy break for the holidays (Check out the UCCP Leaders Corps Holiday Video featuring V-Media's Aaron Kennedy and Earla Joseph). We are happy, however, that the people of Philadelphia didn't stop organizing and fighting for what they believe in!

If you haven't heard about it, we are totally excited about the 1st Victory for our libraries - a decision by Judge Idee Fox to halt the closing of the libraries and bring it to a city council vote. Read more about it here!

Also, if you are interested in being involved in securing the future of the libraries, check out the Coalition to Save the Libraries blog which is run by a group of concerned citizens working to keep the libraries open. They are having WEEKLY meetings to organize around the issue.

Finally, here's our video from the Kingsessing Town Hall Meeting, which was by far the rowdiest. The video has the local residents' reactions to the budget cuts, shows how some people would distribute the budget priorities, one man talking about an alternate plan for the kingsessing neighborhood in case the library does close and a member of the philadelphia student union asking Mayor Nutter a very powerful question! Watch it and let us know what you think!

Youth Development Conference 2008

On December 11th, members of the Leaders Corps and V-Media attended and presented at the Youth Development Conference at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Youth from all over Philly, even Camden, came together to highlight their successes and projects, participate in workshops and become better leaders in their communities. The youth also had a chance to talk to Mayor Nutter about the budget crisis and how it is affecting them and their education.

Here are some bits of that conversation:



We learned that one of the libraries that's getting closed is the Fumo Family Library, and found out why this particular library is so important to its community.

North East

Phew. V-Media had a long week traveling to each of the town hall meetings in the North East, Roxborough and at Ben Franklin High School. That's 6 for 6! We also presented two workshops at the United Way Youth Development Conference 2008 on "Youth, Media and Identity" and "Connecting through Spoken Word" and interviewed a lot of young people there about how the budget cuts are affecting them. We are in the process of editing and uploading all the great footage we got, so stay tuned for more entries. For this episode, Mosi Blaylock reports on the North East:

This was my second town hall meeting; my first was at the School of the Future. It was interesting how each of the town meetings were different from each other. For example, at the School of the Future, the crowd was more focused on the libraries and asking the mayor about how he made the decisions. The crowd at the School of the Future was also more diverse: people from the community, people from City Hall and people from other communities that were just concerned about the issues. At the North East meeting, the support was mostly coming from people from that local community and the majority of their questions were geared towards firehouses.

Here are two questions about libraries from the North East that we thought were interesting.

Will BookMobiles replace our libraries?




A teacher's view on libraries:





Again, check back soon for some really interesting interview footage.

Save Our Libraries Rally

This Saturday, December 6th, V-Media was at the Save Our Libraries Rally on 19th and Vine. Mayor Nutter announced that he'll be cutting 11 library branches out of 54, a decision that has upset a lot of people, groups and communities. Among the groups present were Friends of the Free Library, who are organizing petition drives and raising money to keep the libraries open. They were also suggesting that instead of closing some of the libraries, the whole system should share the cut, by closing on some days or reducing their hours.

Check out the video from the event! (We started editing our footage to make it more digestible - let us know what you think :)



Some of the reasoning behind choosing to close 11 library branches was looking at the branches that lend out the least books. But from all the interviews we did, and all the people we talked to, young people and community members use libraries more to access the internet, apply for jobs and find resources that are not available to them in their homes or already underfunded schools. Librarians serve as pathfinders and instructors, guiding library patrons to accurate sources and assisting them in using the software they need to get jobs and do their homework.

The other reason 11 library branches are getting cut is because apparently Philadelphia has more libraries per capita than many other cities, and the director Siobhan Reardon would like to make it a "smaller, stronger system". Sure, Philly may have "too many" libraries. But it also has one of the highest crime rates, drop-out rates, unemployment rates and one of the lowest literacy rates in the country. Maybe cutting libraries will make sense, when you fix our schools, community centers, after-school and violence prevention programs.

If that is not convincing, maybe the man who convinced the whole country last month will be. President-Elect Barack Obama says he got his community organizing job at the library. Philadelphia, are you sacrificing the future of potential president-elects?