State Senator Gustavo Rivera along with several advocacy organizations are putting on a housing forum today on the first floor of the Lehman College Music Building from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Issues being discussed will include rent regulation, tenant organization, Section 8 issues and foreclosure prevention. For more information, email Josiris Urena at urenas@nysenate.gov.
Travyon Martin Case on BronxTalk
20 AprBronxTalk, the TV news talk show on Cablevsichannel 67 (Cablevision) and Verizon FIOS channel 33 explored the controversial issues in the Trayvon Martin shooting this week with two Bronx academics. Here’s the link.
Is Living Wage Measure a Soviet Plot?
20 AprCommenting on the living wage legislation he vociferously opposes — even the ultra-watered-down kind now making it through the City Council — Mayor Bloomberg said on his radio show recently: “The last time we really had a big managed economy was the USSR, and that didn’t work out so well.”
So, is that a worthy comparison in any way? City Limits wondered about this, talked to some actual Soviet experts, and filed this report.
Kappstatter Nabs New Gig Editing Bronx Times
20 AprFrom the Facebook page of former Daily News Bronx Bureau Chief and must-read political columnist Bob Kappstatter …
Okay, it looks like the cat’s out of the bag before the official press release.
Yes, I am now the editor of the Bronx Times and the Bronx Times-Reporter, two weekly newspapers and their website covering a major swath of the Bronx, and part of Rupert Murdoch’s group of metro area weeklies.
Basically, I’ll be doing what I did for 16 years as Daily News Bronx bureau chief, and working with a great staff to make the papers and their website dazzle and be a prime read.
Founder and Publisher John Collazzi will now focus more on the business side while I have my fun on the editorial side.
And look for the old political/gossip column fairly soon, after I get settled moving in.
Goodbye Mort Zuckerman, hello Rupert Murdoch.
Kappy wrote a couple of terrrific columns for Bronx Matters during the interlude. We’ll miss him here but glad we’ll be reading a lot more of him soon.
-Jordan Moss
Dominican Prez Candidate Resurrects Obama ‘Birther’ Issue at Bronx Hispanic Clergy Confab
18 AprBy Bob Kappstatter
Whoopsie Diaz!
The ever-controversial (and lovin’ it) Bronx state senator and Pentecostal minister Ruben (The Rev) Diaz Sr. —along with a host of city and state Dominican-American politicians — has laughed himself into the President Obama “birther” controversy.
Those electeds may have some ‘splainin’ to do over their lack of protest after the audience at a luncheon meeting of Diaz’ Hispanic clergy organization erupted in loud and long laughter after former Dominican Republic President Hipolito Mejia joked about Obama’s supposed African birthroots.
Mejia, one of two current presidential candidates courting local Dominican voters for the May 20 election , was caught on video in his opening remarks at the April 4 meeting of Diaz’ New York Hispanic Clergy Organization joking that “If Obama who came from Africa and grew up over there can become the President, why can’t any of you reach as high considering you have a more amusing [ethnic] mix than Obama’s?”
While Diaz is shown roaring with laughter along with the rest of the audience, Mejia’s comment has been roundly condemned on the island nation, with 31 of its 32 senators there sending a letter of apology to President Obama.
But as for local city and state electeds at the luncheon, they’ve so far apparently remained silent in condemning the remark – and the response from the politically powerful Diaz and the roomful of conservative Hispanic preachers – whose congregations represent a strong voting bloc.
That includes upper Manhattan state Sen. Adriano Espaillat, who’s challenging Rep. Charlie Rangel in a newly redrawn district taking in Espaillat’s district and a newly-added, heavily Dominican western swath of the Bronx.
Also among fellow elected Dominican-Americans in the audience were northern Manhattan City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez and Assemblyman Guillermo Linares, Bronx Councilmember Fernando Cabrera (who’s half Puerto Rican), Assemblymen Marcos Crespo and Nelson Castro and Castro’s female district leader Yudelka Tapia.
Mejia, who has The Rev’s endorsement, also told the group that as president he would never allow gays to marry or weaken the island’s strict anti-abortion laws. Diaz, a conservative-leaning Democrat, fought bitterly against the state legislature’s approval of same-sex marriage and has led a number of anti-abortion protests.
While the story apparently hasn’t made any ink in the English-language media, it showed up on a local blog with the video.
It also showed up in an email sent out on Monday by Bronx political player and former Obama campaign operative Haile Rivera, who called on Mejia to personally apologize to Obama.
We tried in vain all day Tuesday to connect with Diaz, who was in Albany.
If we had, we’d hoped to also bring up an interesting sidenote.
The Rev has been denying for a number of years a persistent rumor that he was really born in the Dominican Republic and not in Puerto Rico.
But we’re sure he can easily clear the issue up, by producing his birth certificate ….
Bob Kappstatter, the former long-time Bronx Bureau Chief and columnist for the Daily News, is an occasional contributor to Bronx Matters.
Afternoon Matters — 4/17/12
17 AprGood afternoon. Thanks for reading Bronx Matters.
Here are some links we think are important and/or interesting …
Evictions are way up in the city, particularly in the Bronx. Sally Dunford of West Bronx Housing and Neighborhood Resource Center, tells WNYC: “I don’t even advertise our services because I’m too afraid of what would happen if we actually started advertising.”
Some delectable photos of dishes served up at the Khmer New Years Festival on Marion Avenue recently.
A roving foreclosure blockade came to Bronx Supreme Court yesterday, resulting in 14 arrests. It was Organizing for the Occupation’s seventh blockade. They’re headed to Brooklyn on Thursday. An important fact from Daniel Beekman’s coverage of the same action: The Bronx endures fewer foreclosures than Brooklyn and Queens. But no urban county in the state suffers more foreclosures per mortgage than the Boogie Down, said Justin Haines, foreclosure prevention director at Legal Services NYC – Bronx.
Want to learn more about the country’s foreclosure crisis? Read this special report on Pro Publica (a nonprofit investigative news site).
Steve Ritz of the Green Bronx Machine continues to spread the gospel of urban farming and good food to students and the adults in their lives. (Video)
10 very brief Life Lessons of many in the archives of Esquire.
Beyond our borough: Why San Diego is not hopping on the teacher evaluation bandwagon.
2 Years After Completion, Bird-Shaped Visitor Center May Soon Open in Poe Park
16 Apr
The Poe Park Visitors' Center may soon open to the public after being closed since its completion in 2009. (Photo: J. Moss)
The Poe Park Visitor Center, its winged-shape inspired by the Edgar Allan Poe poem “The Raven,” may soon take flight.
The building, on the Grand Concourse, just south of Kingsbridge Road, has been off-limits for more than two years, locked to the visitors and tourists it was designed to attract when it was completed in late 2009. But when Bronx Matters asked the Parks Department for an update last week, a spokesman told us that the agency “will soon be recruiting two seasonal Parks staffers for the Visitor Center. Once we find suitable candidates we hope to have them start as soon as possible.”
Those seasonal staffers will cover nine months of the year, the spokesman said.
Neither the Bronx County Historical Society nor The Parks Department had been able to come up with the money necessary to open the facility, the creation of which was initially envisioned by the nonprofit Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation. As The New York Times reported last fall, a proposal to attract individual donors by putting their names on paving stones was rejected by the city, despite that method being used to support the renovation of Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan.
Poe Park, where Edgar Allan Poe lived the last years of his life (1846 to 1849), is also home to Poe Cottage, a museum that attracts more than 10,000 visitors a year. The vision for the one-story $4.5 million dollar structure was to build on the Poe intrigue and create more space for local groups to host art and cultural activities at the center. The visitors’ center has a giant window on its northern end to look out onto the cottage. Council Member Joel Rivera allocated much of the funding for the building, which also brings much-needed bathrooms to the park.
—Jordan Moss
The Bronx in 1980
16 AprAssemblyman Jose Rivera posted this on his Facebook page yesterday, a video documenting the 1980 South Bronx People’s convention in the rubble of Charlotte Street. There’s footage of President Carter famously visiting the area in 1977 along with south Bronx activists joined by allies from around the country as they met in a makeshift conventional hall on Charlotte Street and marched to the official Democratic Convention site at Madison Square Garden in 1980.
The Bronx faces incredible challenges, struggling with high unemployment, poverty and some of the worst health statistics in the state. But as we address those issues it’s important to remember what Bronxites have already overcome on Charlotte Street and devastated neighborhoods all over the borough.
Anyone out there take part in the South Bronx Peoples’ Convention? Would love to hear from you.
Bronx Matters 