About Us and Our Demands



This website came from the work of the Friends of the Bowen Branch Library, which was founded in Southwest Detroit in early 2019 when the Bowen Library closed. It was largely due to our squeaky-wheeling (and FOIA requests asking where the money went) that the building received its overdue HVAC upgrades, and reopened—now we are fighting for all libraries city-wide. We are a rogue group of library patrons, library commissioners in exile, and blue collar defenders of literacy. We are old Detroiters, and one new Detroiter. We are black, Latina, and white; female, and male. We are not sanctioned by the Detroit Public Library or the city, nor are we affiliated with the "Friends of the Detroit Public Library" nonprofit. We are NOT a nonprofit and we will never beg you for donations. We are just a loose network of angry taxpayers out to stop the corporate looters By Any Means Necessary.

The Friends of the Bowen Branch Library branded its political arm as the "Save The DPL Coalition" so as to more inclusively represent all library allies city-wide in our efforts at the state level. Subsequently this would later be absorbed into an even greater coalition known as "Detroiters For Tax Justice," called together by ex-Library Commissioner Russ Bellant in the summer of 2023 for the purpose of ending the looting of our millage-funded public institutions.

This website's purpose is to serve as a central location for people to learn more about what is going on politically regarding the Detroit Public Library in order to combat the disinformation that is coming from the Duggan administration and certain members of Council, as well as the deafening silence coming from the local media. There appears to be an effort underway to sabotage the financial resources of the Detroit Public Library by using tax captures, and to use this artificial financial fatigue as a pretense to usurp control of its commission, perhaps for the eventual goal of privatizing the library system. Our aim is to oppose this to whatever extent we can with our extremely limited resources. We are available to come and speak to your block club meeting, church group, book club, or other gathering to talk with you about tax captures and how they impact the well being of our city and neighborhoods.

We demand:

  • State legislators pass SB-243 of 2023, a bill originally introduced by Senator Sylvia Santana in 2022. It was designed to remove the Detroit exception to the tax capture law, by modifying Michigan Public Act 57 of 2018 to make it so that Detroit's libraries are protected from tax captures, just like every other library in the state.
  • Detroit City Council compel the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. (DEGC) and Downtown Development Authority (DDA) to repay to the library the amounts that they have illegally captured since FY2015. The ballot language of the current library millage (as overwhelmingly approved by voters) set a 5% cap on the amount that may be captured from it; the DDA takes three times that much.
  • The eventual abolition of tax captures at the state level.  The wire fraud involving DPL funds in 2021 must be investigated.
  • The school board's selection process for appointing DPL Commissioners be made fully transparent.
  • The services of all our branch libraries be restored to full capacity. We want to see the return of BOOKS to their sparse shelves, especially new books from local authors. We want the branch libraries’ deferred maintenance issues addressed, and the physical structures to see routine maintenance again, done in accordance with historic preservation standards. We want trained staff, who are well paid, to fill all vacant positions.
  • The DEGC / DDA be immediately compelled to use some of its captured funds on the Skillman Branch Library to cover whatever improvements or repairs it may need, since it falls within the DDA’s jurisdiction and has been involuntarily closed for the duration of Dan Gilbert’s DDA-funded construction project.
  • Detroit Public Library must remain public, and its commission remain separate from city government; free from influence, political pressure, or corporate control.

If your group is interested in allying with us, we can be reached at:

Our calling card...coming soon to a porch near you:





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