Vol 7 # 4   January 15, 2023

Notes from our librarians

From Shani Boyd, Children’s Librarian

Thank you to everyone who attended the Noon Year's Eve party! It was packed despite the storm with lots of fun and laughter.

There is still time to participate in Winter Bingo this month! Complete any 5 activities in a row before January 29, 2023 and win a prize book, courtesy of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. To play: visit your library and pick up a Winter Bingo card, OR, go to https://oaklandlibrary.org/news/are-you-ready-for-winter-bingo-2022/ and download a game board and print at home OR, register online using you Beanstack account. Each bingo card suggests 25 engaging activities to enjoy. There are white cards for early learners and blue cards for kids in grades K-8.

Families, be sure to visit the branch and get a special take-home craft from the children’s room this month!

Fun at the library!

Campaign for a permanent home - next steps

With Oakland City Council's approval of the long-term lease agreement for the former Child Development Center site*, the campaign for a permanent home enters a new phase. As described in the December HOOT, the next step is for the City of Oakland to initiate a feasibility study for the conversion of the existing building to a branch library. The City's Library and Public Works Departments are working on how to get the feasibility study done to meet the deadline of November 1, 2024 for submitting a Conceptual Design to Oakland Unified School District. We expect that Friends of PAL will be part of the study's process for public input.

Early in January the Executive Board of Friends of PAL discussed the project with Jamie Turbak, Oakland Library Director, who identified fundraising as a major hurdle regardless of how big or small the cost will be for the conceptual design. The lease allows either party to "opt out" before November 30, 2024--the most likely reason for that to happen would be if the city doesn't have funds committed for construction by that date. Ideally the feasibility study would provide a cost estimate in time for the mid-cycle budget process that will start in spring 2024, but there are no guarantees that the CDC project will get on the priority list for capital project funding. Unless the costs are for a very minimal renovation, the project will probably need to put together multiple sources of funding.

Starting January 17, Friends meetings will discuss these issues and recruit volunteers to help work on possible fundraising options; these may include grants, private fundraising, and a local parcel assessment for just the Piedmont Avenue neighborhood (similar to one that helped fund the Rockridge branch in 1991).  

*The lease is written for 50 years with possible renewals; full text is at https://ousd.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=11467343&GUID=F7F6EBD4-D8A1-455B-B6FA-BCC31256C9BD It provides that no rent will be paid on the CDC until 2026 or a certificate of occupancy is issued for the branch to move to the renovated building. In the meantime, the branch library will continue in the existing portable building.

Former Child Development Center next to the library

Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty [2022]

Patrick Radden Keefe writes in the lineage of great American Muckrakers. Ida Tarbel, Frank Norris, Upton Sinclair, Ida B. Wells, Louis Brandeis, and Carey McWilliams were the progenitor generation. They exposed injustice and the machinations of the malefactors of great wealth and fearlessly detailed the systemic wrongs in our beloved but flawed democracy. With Empire, Keefe now joins the ranks of Woodward and Bernstein, I. F. Stone, Frank Bardacke, David Halberstam and Mike Davis as chroniclers of power and its multiple abuses. Empire of Pain brings new blood to the hallowed muckraking tradition. 

The book operates on interlinking levels: it is an inter-generational history of the Sackler family, a case history of predatory capitalism, a portrayal of undue influences of Big Pharma in general and Purdue Pharma in particular upon the judicial system and the Food and Drug Administration. It details the actions of executives, lawyers, doctors, and PR agents who enabled the promotion and legitimization of opioids and distribution of Oxycontin whose legacy, in turn, led to almost a half a million deaths. The book also shows how the mechanisms of art patronage helped secure legitimacy and obfuscate the Sacklers’ cold and calculating criminal network. The Sackler family -who, it is said, inspired the wildly successful series Succession- are exemplars of perfidy, avarice and greed. But that is not to say that their patronage is much different than the Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, and Mellon and Stanford foundations, legitimating through philanthropy their own corporate skullduggery. These behaviors didn’t start with the Sacklers nor will they end with the demise of Sacklers’ empire. The book is a shocking expose, an indictment of a family and Purdue Pharma that caused great damage to millions. Intertwined in this book Keefe -who dedicates the book to “all those who have lost someone to this crisis”- celebrates the relatives, journalists, artists, lawyers, and ex-addicts who helped to dismantle Purdue Pharma by mobilizing, organizing, litigating, and exposing this criminal enterprise.

Full disclosure: I have more than passing interest in the history of opioids. In my youth I used secobarbital, opium, heroin and dilaudid. These drugs helped dull my anxiety and fear. Their efficacy seemed wonderful at the time and while I consumed these drugs I read DeQuincy, Jean Cocteau, John Rechy, and William Burroughs. Burrough’s Junky had these lines that could be the motto of the Sackler family and, beyond that, the logic of Big Pharma: “Junk is the ultimate product…the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk is necessary. The client will crawl through the sewer and beg to buy….” The Sacklers built their empire on that strategy, they created the market and their sales force which included doctors and pharmacists who became frontline pushers.  By a turn of fate I reached my personal bottom a long time ago and remain in recovery.  I was impressed by Keefe’s passion and solid analysis but, as well, I took the book personally as I mourn many of my friends who died from opiates. 

For more on the book see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HfLEUp9bOU

By Louis Segal. Louis was born in Oakland, raised his family in Oakland, dropped out of school in 1968, worked many jobs over the decades, dropped back into school in the 80s, got a Ph.D. in history, taught as an adjunct professor from 1993 to 2015. Retired but not withdrawn.