Ugly battle has librarians in Oak Brook turning to Teamsters (This ought to be interesting)

Telling her mother that she wanted to come to the aid of a library under attack, 11-year-old Sydney Sabbagha stood at the podium before the Oak Brook village board.

"I used to go to the library knowing there were people there to help me find a book. Now there is no one to help me," Sydney said solemnly. "It will never be the same without the people you fired."

Sydney nestled back into her seat, but that didn't stop 69-year-old criminal attorney Constantine "Connie" Xinos from boldly putting her in her place.

"Those who come up here with tears in their eyes talking about the library, put your money where your mouth is," Xinos shot back. He told Sydney and others who spoke against the layoffs of the three full-time staffers (including the head librarian and children's librarian) and two part-timers to stop "whining" and raise the money themselves.

"I don't care that you guys miss the librarian, and she was nice, and she helped you find books," Xinos told them.

"Don't cry crocodile tears about people who are making $100,000 a year wiping tables and putting the books back on the shelves," Xinos smirked, apparently referencing the fired head librarian, who has advanced degrees and made $98,676 a year. He said Oak Brook had to "stop indulging people in their hobbies" and "their little, personal, private wants."

Sydney was upset and "her little friend was in tears" after Xinos spoke at the meeting last week, says mom Hope Sabbagha.

"I wanted that kid to lose sleep that night," a grinning Xinos says Wednesday, as he invites me for a nearly two-hour interview in his Mercedes-Benz in the gated Oak Brook community where he lives. "This is the real world and the lesson, you folks who brought your kids here, is if you want something, pay for it."
<snip>
He campaigned, successfully, against a plan to bring subsidized housing for seniors into town by declaring, "I don't want to live next to poor people. I don't want poor people in my town."

A poor kid who grew up in Berwyn and worked in his dad's cafeteria in Chicago, Xinos went to law school and served in the Marines. Xinos says he speaks for Oak Brook's view of the Teamsters when he says, "Nobody here likes those kind of people."

Xinos, who says he never had children in part because he wasn't sure he'd be able to support them, sprinkles the F-word throughout his conversations. He dismisses a recent library event involving dogs with a blunt three-word rant in which he bookends swear words around the word "that."

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=325508

My blood pressure shot up just reading the article. I want to help the librarians. I think I will call or email soon.

I don't want to get in the way of the ALA and the librarians however. Mr.Xinos may have been a Marine, but he is no match for these intellectual heroes. Librarians have been at the front of the fight for our rights.

Mr. Xinos doesn't realize what a can of worms he has opened. They are the last group on earth I would take on. They are smart, organized, and they know their shit.

That noise you hear Mr.Xinos is the sound of the shitstorm headed your way. Cat 10!

Michael Moore:
"I really didn't realize the librarians were, you know, such a dangerous group.
They are subversive. You think they're just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn't mess with them. You know, they've had their budgets cut. They're paid nothing. Books are falling apart. The libraries are just like the ass end of everything, right?

The quote is from an interview Michael Moore gave after librarians fought successfully to save his book Stupid White Men when publisher HarperCollins insisted he rewrite it to be less critical of George Bush. The campaign by librarians came unexpectedly and unasked for, and obviously surprised Mr. Moore, but we like to think he's right and that librarians shouldn't be messed with.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/2/788866/-On-Banned-Books-Week,-Michael-Moore,-Librarians,-Teamsters,-Capitalism-and-more

Xinos is his kinda guy. Like two peas in a pod: heartless, smirking, sneering assholes.

He isn't even on the city council.

Can you imagine him becoming president in 30 years?

Even if he wasn't a nasty, hateful old fart...

fascistic governors; seems to come with the territory.

You've gotta wonder how long he'll survive in that town, now that everyone knows what a dirtbag he is.

I'd have more than a word with that man. The last person who mouthed off at my son and wasn't exactly prepared to square off with me.

Sounds like it!

at the end of his bed very soon.

what kind of miserable, pitiable, pathetic, and small man verbally harangues an 11-year-old girl, and then is proud of it? My god, what an obnoxious jackass!

"want to live next to poor people?" He "doesn't want poor people in my town?" Fine, then, no problem. I think God will take care of that little issue for him when he goes before the big guy, and not in the way he thinks, either.

system that he now gleefully shuts down because he's a fucking selfish prick. It's amazing how these "self made" men are completely incapable of seeing the help they got and gleefully pull up the ladder that they used to get themselves up.

I have a expletive laden sentence for him.

Sir, (and I use the word sir loosely) are a fucking, head up the ass, shithead.

people an education. after all, one cannot control a population that can think.

may he receive everything he deserves.

thinks he's a big fucking deal when all he is is a member of an HOA. Little hitlers.



andrew Carnegie must be spinning in his grave. Librarians are on the front lines of our battle against ignorance and fascism.

:wtf:

I'd go after him for child abuse. Take the kid to a shrink and send him the bills.

Well, here we are.

And I wouldn't like to be him when he gets his karma.

Especially this one:

This is one of the people I meant.

treats a child like that no matter what the reason is.