Detroit Library Branch Closure Protested Again

DETROIT (WJBK) -- Protesters were spending a bitterly cold Tuesday outside trying to save their safe.

Activists with By Any Means Necessary and neighbors of the Lincoln library branch on Seven Mile are not standing idly by while the facility is closed and its contents carried away.

"Kids don't want to go out and roam the streets and get into trouble. They want to come to a library and learn more than what they learn in school," said Djuan Ramsey, who uses the library. "I find that great. Anyone that [wants to take] it away, why?"

"It must stay a safe house, not become an abandoned drug house," said Monica Smith with By Any Means Necessary.

"The library's been a staple in this neighborhood for years," said neighbor LaShawn Dyer.

"I feel it's ridiculous that they want to take something away from the community as important as a library. Take a liquor store," Ramsey remarked.

"Like they said, they're cutting all the wrong things," Dyer said.

They are fighting back by blocking the entrances to the back of the building with a car and a dumpster and the front of the building with their bodies. They are trying to keep moving vans from carting away the contents of the library.

Some of these folks were just arrested recently for refusing to leave the building when it was closed down.

"I would do it again to save the library and every other institution that we deserve in this city," Ramsey said.

Library officials have reportedly said they had no intention of moving any of the books or computers out of the building on Tuesday, but the activists say their sources told them differently, so they came out first thing in the morning. They hadn't left as of 5:00 p.m.