Dear Editor:
Re: Response to the August 8, 2010 article of Ricardo Kaulessar as to Director Priscilla Gardner’s continued effort to end the Operation of the Community Awareness Series of the Jersey City Free Public Library (CAS) using the budget crisis as justification.
My name is Steven Pinkney Sr. For more than 20 years, I have been both consultant and volunteer to arguably the best program in the Public Library and Black Community –The Community Awareness Series of the Jersey City Free Public Library (CAS).
CAS’s operated initially without a budget and grew to $40,000.00 under then City Council President Cunningham and to $140,000.00 under Mayor Gerald Mc Cann.
It has three full-time and two part-time employees and houses World Class Artist in residence Jazz Band the Spirit of Life Ensemble. The musicians who play at the library are recognized in the jazz world as the best there are in the world. We have also sponsored performances by bigger than life jazz musicians. Jazz is deemed classical music argued by some to be the only original American art form created by African Americans. CAS and Spirit of Life Ensemble were created in the early 1970s by Daoud David Williams, who also created the Afro-centric Miller Branch Library.
Director Priscilla Gardner is a product of this idea and expanded that identity, but is directly responsible for continued attempts to kill this vital program. I don’t know her reasons, but I compare it to a married couple who have to live together and no longer love each other. She has decided to destroy her husband and probably will destroy her home in the attempt. A house divided will fall.
In the last few years she has done deliberate things to destroy this program and now, under the guise of the budget crisis, is again attempting to kill the program.
CAS is a department of the library. There have been no Library Board meetings since June 2010 but decisions have been made to not provide CAS with information concerning our budget line item, which Director Gardner would not reveal to us. But thanks to The City Business Administrator’s office and City Council, it was defined as $90,000.00 and was reduced to zero the day after the City Council meeting. Director Gardener indicated CAS should apply for other grants as she does. What she failed to say was that her direct actions cost us almost $50,000.00 in grants. Despite having provided proof of numerous efforts to destroy this vital program to the mayor, city council, business administrator, and library board of directors, no one has challenged her on these provocative and intentional efforts. We are now being told by city council that they have no power to challenge what that have known she has been doing for numerous years to CAS.
Everyone must share the budget cuts the library is being forced to absorb, but no one else is being demolished. We promise to keep up our tradition of demonstration and struggle in this fight.
Steven Pinkney Sr.