TESTIMONY
Rosa Chang, Co-Founder and President of Gotham Park, on the Importance of Public Libraries as Gateways to Imagination and Dreams
4:15:25
·
3 min
Rosa Chang passionately advocates for fully funding public libraries, librarians, artists, and cultural institutions as essential nourishment for growing minds and goals.
- She is the co-founder of Gotham Park, a nonprofit working to open a community-led public space in an underinvested NYC neighborhood
- Chang highlights her personal experience of how libraries opened up her world and inspired her dreams as a child
- She describes libraries as housing the complexity of human thought across generations, serving as the 'DNA of imagination'
- Chang envisions building a new landmark public library inside the Brooklyn Bridge as a hub for connection and ingenuity
Rosa Chang
4:15:25
Thank you so much for your time and the opportunity to speak today.
4:15:30
I also love your shirt.
4:15:33
Oh, okay.
4:15:35
Hi, Better.
4:15:36
Okay.
4:15:37
Awesome.
4:15:38
So my name is Rosa Chang.
4:15:39
I'm the cofounder of Gotham Park, a grassroots 501c3 created in 2021.
4:15:45
To open, operate, and maintain a new community led public space in a neighborhood that has historically been underinvested and overlooked right outside city hall.
4:15:54
We are an environmental justice neighborhood with over 47,000 residents living with racial health and structural inequity, and that's just within a half mile radius.
4:16:06
We are anchored by the mind blownly beautiful landmark Brooklyn Bridge, the vaults of which we are working to open to build a new landmark public library for New Yorkers.
4:16:16
I hope with your help.
4:16:18
It is our goal to become a significant and free arts and culture destination in New York, but there are a few hurdles for us to jump through before we get there.
4:16:26
But I have zero doubt that we will get there, and we are getting closer every single day.
4:16:31
This morning, I was announced as a finalist for the David Prize, which is a prize celebrating visionary New Yorkers.
4:16:38
And this would not be possible, but for my access to libraries as a child.
4:16:43
Every single one of us grows up in a bubble, our family bubble, our financial bubble, our trail and religious bubble.
4:16:50
I grew up in a very traditional Asian American bubble.
4:16:54
When I went and I went to school 7 days a weekend, all I did was study.
4:16:58
I could have ended up a really stunted and one-sided human being, but books and art and music are magic, and they are bubble busters.
4:17:07
They open up your mind and your heart to new worlds, new ways of thinking.
4:17:11
They stretch you and grow you and make you challenge yourself.
4:17:15
And the world I'm sorry.
4:17:17
I'm getting emotional because I believe in this system only.
4:17:20
And the world you are physically anchored in every day.
4:17:23
Without libraries and the essential guardians and guides that are our librarians, you lose those possibilities.
4:17:30
Libraries house the complexity of human thought, dreams, and yearnings, and possibilities through generations, and collectively books are the DNA.
4:17:39
Of your imagination and your future.
4:17:41
So please fight to fully fund our libraries, our librarians, our artists, and our cultural institutions Not because they need us, but because we need them.
4:17:51
They are the essential nourishment that grow our brains and our goals.
4:17:55
Thank you for the opportunity to share my experience in a bit about Gotham Park with you today.
4:17:59
And someday soon, I hope you'll join us in advocating for and building a new new New York public library inside the most beautiful bridge in the world so that we can all nestle into a comfy chair with a book or 20 inside a landmark built for all of us to connect people to each other, a true testament to human ingenuity and collaboration, to dream our own dreams of how we will each contribute to making this incredible city of ours the best home we can ever imagine for ourselves and the generations of New Yorkers who will follow us.
4:18:30
Thank you.
