NALIS chair­man Neil Parsan­lal strong­ly de­fend­ed the con­struc­tion of li­braries in so-called “hot spot” ar­eas. He de­scribed those who ques­tion why cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties “de­serve” a li­brary, as be­ing clas­sist, and pos­si­bly racist.

Parsan­lal was speak­ing at the open­ing of the $42 mil­lion La Hor­quet­ta Pub­lic Li­brary yes­ter­day. La Hor­quet­ta, long con­sid­ered a “crime hot spot,” is the lat­est such com­mu­ni­ty to re­ceive a state-of-the-art li­brary fa­cil­i­ty. 

In his ad­dress to the crowd, Parsan­lal re­flect­ed on his speech at the open­ing of the Diego Mar­tin Li­brary ear­li­er this year.  He had called for the “young, black men” who had been drawn to a life of de­vian­cy or found them­selves be­ing pulled in that di­rec­tion to make use of the al­ter­na­tives be­ing pre­sent­ed to them by the Gov­ern­ment. 

But he said the back­lash was swift, and he found him­self the sub­ject of con­dem­na­tion on­line, with some ac­cus­ing him of in­ject­ing the “bo­gey of race”  in­to what was sup­posed to be an “apo­lit­i­cal event.”

“I came to the stark re­al­i­sa­tion that this was not about race. This was about class,” Parsan­lal said. 

“The ma­jor­i­ty of those who are up in arms about the mon­ey spent on the con­struc­tion of the li­brary were per­sons who prob­a­bly grew up with the en­tire col­lec­tion of En­cy­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca in their own hous­es, had re­ceived a ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, ei­ther lo­cal­ly or abroad, held down de­cent pay­ing jobs, were able to af­ford their own lap­tops and post­paid smart­phones and ei­ther own their own homes or did not have to wor­ry about pay­ing a rent.”

He said peo­ple can’t say oth­ers should pull them­selves up by their boot­straps with­out pro­vid­ing the boot­straps in the first place. And though the chair­man felt class played a big­ger role in try­ing to keep the sta­tus quo, he felt there should be a more point­ed con­ver­sa­tion on race. 

“I think the ques­tion of race and race re­la­tions is a dis­cus­sion that we must have,” Parsansal said in an in­ter­view with re­porters af­ter the rib­bon cut­ting. “We need to stop pussy­foot­ing around it. We need to ad­dress it. A lot of the com­ments we’ve seen on so­cial me­dia with re­spect to why are you build­ing a li­brary for those peo­ple. Why are you build­ing a li­brary up there? Will they ever use it?  Do they have books or guns?  It’s re­al­ly about class. It’s about a set of peo­ple who want to keep an­oth­er group of peo­ple where they think they should be.” 

The new fa­cil­i­ty hous­es an au­di­to­ri­um, am­phithe­atre, and adult and child-spe­cif­ic sec­tions. Ac­cord­ing to Parsan­lal, as a pi­lot pro­gramme, the li­brary will be open un­til 10 pm to cater for those who may need it. When asked what se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures would be in place to fa­cil­i­tate the lat­er hours, Parsan­lal said the ques­tion told him that peo­ple look at the com­mu­ni­ty of La Hor­quet­ta in a par­tic­u­lar way and he would have none of it.

Youth De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter and MP for La Hor­quet­ta Fos­ter Cum­mings said the build­ing was ex­pect­ed to serve as a safe space for res­i­dents of the com­mu­ni­ty. He called it a life­line.

“For many fam­i­lies in this com­mu­ni­ty, it is ab­solute­ly dif­fi­cult for a stu­dent to be able to get the en­vi­ron­ment they re­quire to study and pay at­ten­tion to their work in the way that they should,” Cum­mings said. “Apart from the so­cial prob­lems men­tioned by the chair­man of NALIS, the ques­tion of over­crowd­ing and com­mu­ni­ty noise, be­cause a lot of these units are very close to each oth­er, pose a great chal­lenge to our com­mu­ni­ty.”

Mean­while, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Symon de No­bri­ga said the pub­lic li­brary not on­ly works in the fight against crime but in the larg­er fight for democ­ra­cy.