The cash-strapped District of Columbia Public Library, the sorry state of which was documented throughout the year in the Washington Post, may have found its champion in Ralph Nader. The consumer activist and former presidential candidate hosted a $10,000-a-table benefit dinner at the Carnegie Institution December 11 to rally philanthropists and business leaders around the library.
“If I don’t do it, no one is going to do it,” Nader told American Libraries lamenting the abysmal state of support for the library. Less than 0.7% of the district’s budget goes to the library, he said, noting that the system had 200 more staff members in 1976 than it has now.
The initial goal of Nader’s campaign is to raise $350,000 for an 18-month improvement blitz that will include repairs to the system’s 27 branches. Nader also wants to gain long-term political and community support for boosting the library’s budget and for new activities focusing on children, the arts, and literacy.
DCPL Director Molly Raphael said the project was “a tremendous opportunity” that Nader proposed to her last summer after reading about the library’s plight. “Somebody of his stature will open doors for us,” she told AL.
A lifelong library patron and nearly 50-year D.C. resident, Nader said in the December 10 Post that the library’s short hours, inadequate collections, and neglected buildings are unacceptable, but “this is not going to be turned around on the inside; it needs external force, from the neighborhoods to the glitterati.”
Posted December 16, 2002.