New York City Public Library Action Network Newsletter, Issue #2

Colorful image of a library, with two desks, a comfortable chair, and 5 bookcases. The leftmost bookcase has a bookshelf ladder attached to it. Overlaid are the words "Libraries are essential"

Illustration Credit: Yuliya Pauliukevich, Vecteezy

Get Ready for the Election!

If you’re reading this newsletter on the day we sent it out, you’re just in time to vote in the Democratic Party Primary for the NYC Mayoral election. Election day is June 24, but early voting has already started!

You’ll be able to pick up to five candidates on your ranked-choice ballot, and we asked each of them if they’d commit to increasing library funding to 0.5% of the city’s budget.

Find out each candidate’s stance below, and remember, DON’T RANK CUOMO!

Image of a scrambled pile of Scrabble tiles. At the top of the pile are four clear tiles whose letters spell out the word "vote" (V-O-T-E)

Photo credit: Glen Carrie, Unsplash

Candidates’ Stances

We reached out to each person running to become the next Mayor of New York City, asking them to commit at least 0.5% of the city’s budget towards funding our three public library systems throughout their tenure — and have recorded each of their responses on our website, here.

At time of writing, only Zohran Mamdani, Michael Blake, James Manning, and Corinne Fisher have written commitments, and Zohran Mamdani added our funding goal to his platform.

Image of a person filling out a form on a red-clothed table. Only their arms are visible, dressed in a cuffed shirt, holding a simple ballpoint pen. Other bodies can be seen, slightly blurry, in the background, one with a black t-shirt with red lettering

Photo Credit: Sollange Brenis, Unsplash

Sign Our Letter

In addition to your vote, you can also continue putting pressure on the candidates by signing our online letter petitioning for increased library funding.

Over 885+ of you have already helped us send out over 10,800+ letters telling our future mayor that we won’t abide by the defunding of one of the city’s last reliable third spaces!

Sign here!

Want to know more about NYC PLAN?

Check out the NYC PLAN website and our FAQ explaining what we do, why we do it, and how we get things done. It outlines our values, structure, and the ways you can help us help the libraries.
If you want to get involved with NYC PLAN, we’d love to see you at our next meeting! Email info@nycplan.org, and we’ll give you details regarding our meeting dates and locations.