Demonstrators protest Phila. library closings

In a lively bit of guerrilla theater that featured a pink-and-purple jester prosecuting a crowned and clueless "Emperor Nutter," demonstrators protested library closings at City Hall yesterday.

Mayor Nutter and Free Library Director Siobhan Reardon were declared "in contempt of the people's court" by costumed members of the ad hoc Coalition to Save the Libraries.

The two were accused of working to sabotage a judge's ruling to keep open 11 branches that had been scheduled to be shuttered.

As a band known as the West Philadelphia Orchestra played Balkan and gypsy music on trumpets, trombone and drum, each of the approximately 60 protesters was granted access to the second floor, where Nutter's office is located.

The demonstrators - many of them pierced, tattooed and spirited - chanted and danced as the orchestra's music reverberated against the municipal marble.

The group quieted outside the mayor's office door, where Chief of Staff Clarence Armbrister said Nutter was not in the building.

Armbrister nevertheless somberly accepted an oversized, 3-by-4-foot contempt citation, then listened as Eleanor Childs, the director of the Montessori Genesis II School in Mantua, calmly told him that Nutter was "making things so untenable . . . we feel he is in contempt."

Armbrister politely demurred, saying: "The mayor is working very diligently to ensure . . . we are giving equitable [library] services throughout the city."

With that, the group disbanded.

While the tone of the protest was light, the message was not.

"I have come to tell Nutter he's a liar," said Carolyn Morgan, a Southwest Philadelphia resident. "We will not stand him taking from our children, causing a slow death."

Meanwhile, Childs accused Nutter and Reardon of "going on the offensive" and working counter to Common Pleas Court Judge Idee C. Fox's order.

She said the two were ensuring that the libraries did not function as the city awaited its appeal of Fox's ruling.

In particular, Childs and others referenced a new rule from Reardon requiring that four workers, not three, be present in a branch before it can open for the day.

For years, a library could open with a minimum of three workers on hand, union officials have said.

The change, coming at a time when 49 staffers are being laid off, seems like an attempt to make it impossible for libraries to muster enough staff to open, Childs said.

"They're following the letter of the judge's ruling just enough as they work to close branches," Childs said.

She also accused Nutter and Reardon of "dividing and conquering" - that is, making conditions hard for all branch libraries so staff members would be angry at the librarians running the 11 branches that had been set for closure.

Reached last night, Claudia Martinez, acting director of library operations, denied that any policy to alienate the 11 branches was in place.

She said it was "insulting" to assert that the library administration was trying to circumvent the spirit of the judge's order.

"Our only motive is to try to keep as many libraries open as we can. We're stretched," she said.

Also speaking last night, Sandy Horrocks, Reardon's spokeswoman, disputed the notion that the four-worker rule was being used to close libraries.

She said the library had expended 500 man-hours redeploying staff to ensure that as many libraries as possible did not close.

"We are having our staff running ragged keeping branches open," she said.