D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams testified before the City Council’s Committee on Education, Libraries and Recreation today in favor of his proposal to build a brand new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at the site of the old convention center, a few blocks from its current site. We’ve debated this issue before at DCist. But we thought it might be fun to do a little point/counterpoint with the Post’s Benjamin Forgey, writing today in response to Williams’ plan. First up, Mayor Williams:
“Approval of this bill will enable the District to fulfill the true legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. by providing a new set of modern and effective tools to combat our education crisis … low levels of literacy, the digital divide, the poor high school graduation rate of our children.”
Way to play on our sympathies, Mr. Mayor. Regardless of whether you believe it’s appropriate to just remove the MLK Jr. memorial plaque from the current library and attach it elsewhere, of course no one disagrees that the main D.C. library needs drastic improvement that should be oriented toward educational goals. Forgey’s response?
The idea that the 1972 Mies building cannot be renovated into a first-class 21st-century library is absurd. (It’s also predictable. It was advanced in a consultant’s report for the city that — surprise, surprise — agreed with the wishes of its client.)
