On Monday, Bluestockings Bookstore Cooperative on the Lower East Side in New York City abruptly announced on its website and social media that it would be shuttering after 26 years in business. The closure soon drew controversy, with two of the store’s worker-stewards, Jay Gandhi and Dheivanai Moorthy, alleging on social media that the decision to shut down the business was made without any advance notice or input from them by the store's two co-owners, Merlin Sabal and Raquel Espasande. Meanwhile, Espasande says that previous attempts to meet with the worker-stewards were rebuffed.
Bluestockings is a “legal c-corp,” wrote Gandhi on Instagram, and “has two owners who have not been part of it for about a year. The process to add folx (sic) on the legal papers is involved and takes money so we just operated as a worker/cooperative in good faith, not thinking this would happen.”
In a telephone interview, Gandhi told PW that they and Moorthy received written notification Monday morning that the store was closed permanently, and their access to their work emails and store’s social media accounts, as well as its website, were revoked. They also said that they are locked out of the physical space on Suffolk Street.
Espasande acknowledged in an interview that the worker-stewards were not informed beforehand of the decision to close the store, but explained that "finances were really bad and the people who were making the decisions in the bookstore were not taking it seriously." For instance, they said, members of the store's book subscription service, "which brings in $10,000 each month and is a key part of keeping the store going," have not received their books for the past two months. "Even though they took on that responsibility, they did not fulfill it," Espasande said.
The two co-owners offered to meet with the worker-stewards to discuss how to pay rent and make payroll, but were rebuffed, according to Espasande. The situation had become "so dire," with the prospect of defaulting on next month's rent and having to scrape together the funds to make payroll, that the two co-owners decided that they had to close the store. "It's true, they were not part of that final decision, which is not in keeping with the values of the worker cooperative," Espasande acknowledged, "but it was, like we said in the post on the website, the absolute last resort."
Sabal stopped working at Bluestockings a year ago due to disability, and Espasande stopped working shifts in December due to stress, Espasande told PW, but both remained deeply involved in the store's operations. According to the store's bylaws, worker-stewards "have to become owners" after three months (which could be extended to six months) but Espasande said that the bylaws often were not followed, and worker-stewards were allowed to "extend and delay and not take ownership because they didn't want to take legal or financial liability."
Sabal and Espasande are currently the only two worker-owners, as their names are on the lease and other legal documents. The current worker-stewards were offered full ownership this past summer, Espasande said, but were unable to find a financial guarantor to release Sabal and Epasande from liability.
"They are just not privy to all the work that we've been doing,” Gandhi told PW, including a GoFundMe campaign launched in January, to raise $150,000; $100,000 of that sum is earmarked to pay publishers and distributors. As of Tuesday morning, $65,000 had been raised.
Activist and author Mariame Kaba also partnered with the store this past summer, collecting books that Bluestockings could then display and sell, as publishers and distributors have stopped shipping books to the store.
“We were able to pull on our community resources, because this space means so much to everyone,” Gandhi said, “people were falling over themselves to do whatever they can to keep it going. We were able to still stock our shelves without buying any books. We were able to sell books. We were able put down the debt. All this happened, and then we found out about the business closure the same time the world did.”
Gandhi noted that multiple attempts to contact Sabal and Espasande have been so far unsuccessful, and Gandhi and Moorthy are now investigating what rights they have as employees working for a legal cooperative in the State of New York. Gandhi asked, “What are our rights? Can they really just do this, close a business that’s a cooperative, but the workers had no say in any of this?”
Gandhi and Moorthy want to “have an immediate conversation” with Sabal and Espasande to discuss moving forward in a way that will respect everyone's wishes. “I want them to come to the table and talk to us,” Gandhi said, “Why aren’t they talking to these three people who want to keep the store open? Because there are people who do believe it can.”
As for Espasande, they say that neither they nor Sabal have any intention "at the moment" to meet with Gandhi and Moorthy. "I don't believe they're serious about taking on financial responsibilities, and I'm not interested in dragging it out," they said, adding, "Every month that goes by, we incur a lot of debt."
Raquel Espasande's surname was misspelled in an earlier version of this story and has been corrected.
