The Long Beach Public Library will stop at nothing in its efforts to kiss up to corporate thugs in order to get some of their booty. The latest outfit is none other than Verizon, honored two days ago for giving some tax-deductable money to the library's reading program in return for free advertising and positive publicity. This is an insult to the residents of this overwhelmingly working class and low income city. Not only has Verizon been sucking them dry with outrageous phone bills and charges for public phones, it has also made a name for itself as an unusually vicious exploiter even in the context of corporate America. Just a few weeks ago it faced a militant strike by its own employees over inhumanly large amounts of forced overtime. (At the same time that the company boasts to its stockholders about profits, it claims that it can't afford to hire enough workers to alleviate this problem.) To add insult to injury, Verizon also successfully pressured the New York Public Services Commission into allowing it to charge customers for services it never delivered because of the 9/11 tragedy. That is bold-faced robbery - robbery that is endorsed by the Long Beach Public Library when it accepts some of the loot.

Relying upon corporate donors to finance public libraries or any other kind of public service is asking for disaster. He who pays the piper calls the tune. When mass social conflict erupts in this country (as it is sure to do in the next few years as the economy sinks lower and deaths in war rise) corporations are going to want a say in what kind of books and other materials places like the Long Beach Library make available to the public. And given their spineless record, the library administrators will let them have a decisive say.