Occupy Takes Different Turns Going Local in Brooklyn and Bronx

10 Apr

Occupy Sunset Park is reaching out to residents in several languages. Photo: Zach Campbell/City Limits

This spring the Occupy movement is going local and if you need any more evidence that there is no central authority dictating what offshoot groups should do, look no further than the differing missions of efforts in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

As the Brooklyn Bureau (published by City Limits) reported today, a diverse group of community residents in Sunset Park are beginning to gather to strategize on local issues — such as school closures, loss of a Head Start program, etc. Organizers are translating materials into several languages to reach that neighborhood’s incredibly diverse population.

Here in the Bronx, three grassroots organizations have bigger corporate and government targets in mind, a strategy more in tune with demonstrators in Zuccotti Park and those who occupied similar public spaces in cities around the country last fall. Mothers on the Move, the Mary Mitchell Family and Youth Center, and the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition — all of which already focus on local projects — are gearing up for a day-long training session this Saturday, April 14, at St. Simon Stock Church. Below is a letter from event organizers with details.

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Bronx Matters and City Limits Sponsor Housing Forum at Manhattan College April 23

10 Apr

Stemming from the “Phantom Landlord” investigation in City Limits, Bronx Matters is helping to organize a panel discussion at Manhattan College on April 23 to discuss what can be done to make the housing code enforcement system more effective. The flyer below has the details. Hope you can make it. Email me at bronxmatters-at-gmail.com if you have any questions.

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Morning Matters — 4/10/12

10 Apr

The New York World reports: “The state Office of Court Administration will reverse the controversial 2004 merger of the Bronx Criminal and Supreme courts, which attorneys have blamed for lengthy delays that infringe on the rights of criminal defendants.” Read more.

Vince Morgan, a former staffer for Congressman Charlie Rangel who challenged his former boss in the 2010 Democratic primary and planned to do so again, has ended his bid  and endorsed Adriano Espaillat.

Community Board 1 residents voted unanimously late last month to condemn the process that led to the approval of the deal that paved the way for Fresh Direct to create its new factory in the Harlem River Yards. The board’s district manager, Cedric Loftin, disagrees.

“Mama’s Boys of the Bronx,” the new TLC reality show that follows a bunch of 35-year-old Italian men who still live at home with their mamas and apparently aren’t shy about reporting and discussion their sexual exploits under the same roof, premiered last night. (Video)

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was a critic of stop-and-frisk when Giuliani was mayor, Michael Powell reports.

Woodlawn Cemetery now has a tour of gravesites foodies will love.

A sculpture installed in West Farms, called “For Closure” is “meant to represent the fragility of the housing market.” (Video)

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Morning Matters — 4/9/12

9 Apr

Lots of young art enthusiasts were at the Andrew Freedman home over the weekend for a fabulous exhibit on two floors of the reimagined buildings and the mobile unit of the fledgling Bronx Children's Museum. (Photo: J. Moss)

Good morning … well, afternoon (At least I started this in the a.m.:-) Lots to catch up on. Bronx artists and their advocates say the borough is undergoing an unprecedented coalescing of efforts to make an already interesting art scene more robust and visible to a larger audience. The expansive art show at the long-empty upper floors of the Andrew Freedman Home, where I took the picture above yesterday, signals a turning point, say some artists and enthusiasts.

As Bob Kappstatter surmised a couple of weeks ago on Bronx Matters, when Gov. Cuomo appointed Bronx Assemblyman Peter Rivera to be state Labor commissioner he probably was acting on the certainty that an investigation into his dealings with a failing nonprofit no longer had legs:

“Gov. Cuomo’s appointment also apparently quashes once and for all a dark legal cloud Rivera’s been living under involving his pumping major state funding to the just about moribund Neighborhood Enhancement for Training Services (NETS) non-profit.”

But that doesn’t mean the tabloids got the memo. This morning the Daily News highlighted four lawmakers with ethics issues who Cuomo has appointed to important positions, including Rivera. As attorney general, Cuomo began the investigation into Rivera and NETS ,but after he was elected he appointed Rivera to a transition committee on labor and economic development. More background on Rivera and NETS from the Bronx News Network here and here.

Our post on Friday about The New York Times’ coverage of Heritage Field, the new baseball diamonds built on the footprint of the old Yankee Stadium, started a little bit of a chain reaction in the blogsphere. After Neil deMause in Field of Schemes (the pre-eminent source on up-to-date information on stadium projects and financing nationally) and Norman Oder in Atlantic Yards Report linked to Bronx Matters, starting a comment conversation on the latter about the the Times’ overall coverage (or lack thereof) of the entire Yankee Stadium controversy. Later on, Oder posts a letter that Geoffrey Croft of New York City Park Advocates wrote him with a blow-by-blow account of how reporter Winnie Hu went about covering the story and Croft’s critique about what he feels she glaringly left out.

The latest HuntsPoint Express, a terrific print & web monthly produced by former Riverdale Press editor/publisher Buddy Stein with his students at Hunter College, is out with some critical articles, especially on the DOE’s plans to close Banana Kelly High School and the ensuing protests. There’s also a follow-up web-only article about a DOE official meeting with teachers and parents on April 4 in the school’s cafeteria.  The DOE’s Panel for Educational Policy will decide at a meeting on April 26 whether it will go ahead with plans to close 33 schools.

The Norwood News has an update on the city’s process for choosing a developer for the Kingsbridge Armory, including a report on the rally held by the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance late last month. Community and labor activists are calling for “wall-to-wall” living wage jobs at the Armory regardless of who develops the facility. Contenders include a group calling itself the Kingsbridge National Ice Center and the a partnership between the National Cycling Association and the New York Gauchos youth basketball program.

Also in the Norwood News, Gregory Lobo Jost, expands on his recent piece on Bronx Matters picking apart assertions of south Bronx gentrification, explaining why a few hundred white people over a decade, not to mention arugula, yoga studios, and farmers’ markets (which Norwood is home to) do not equal gentrification, and why its reckless to assert that they do.

Capital New York takes a detailed look at the complications for racial coalition building that are brought by Bronx/Manhattan state senator Adriano Espaillat’s challenge to Congressman Charlie Rangel. The latest reality TV show “about oversexed thirtysomething bachelors who still live with their mommies” takes place in the Boogie Down but is probably not an image that will please Bronx boosters.

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Morning Matters — 4/6/12

6 Apr

Good morning. Today’s Morning Matters is dedicated to the Heritage Field opening and the Times’ coverage.

Heritage Field opened yesterday on the site of the old Yankee Stadium. (Photo: J. Moss)

The New York Times is in loooove with Heritage Field, the high-quality three-diamond spread in the footprint of the old Yankee Stadium, so much so that it merited above-the-fold placement on the front page. It is a lovely sight, but it is laden with the recent history of the city prioritizing the Yankee corporation over the kids in Highbridge and other nabes surrounding the stadium. As Juan Gonzalez reported two years ago in the Daily News …

Three and a half years after Mayor Bloomberg closed huge portions of Mullaly and Macombs Dam parks to make way for the Yankees new $1.5 billion stadium, the replacement ballfields the city promised are nowhere to be seen.

It has been nearly 18 months since the last game was played in the old stadium. Yet its concrete hulk still looms like a gray ghost across the street from the Yankees new palace.

I’ll admit, I have a pretty firm point of view on the democracy-ignoring deals regarding the new stadium, its impact on taxpayers and the community around it. I wrote this lengthy editorial in the Norwood News back in 2006. But I think I’m looking at it with fairness and not bias when I say that in a story regarding a land use issue this big for the Bronx an interview or two with one of the prominent local activists or former community board members who opposed the stadium deal (they were ditched from CB4 by then-BP Adolfo Carrion, Jr.) would have been warranted.

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Unbelievable …

5 Apr

And here’s a link to the latest on these Google glasses in development.

Morning Matters — 4/5/12

5 Apr

Good morning! As some of you may have noticed, Morning Matters is not an everyday thing at this point. I do it whenever I have time in the morning. Here, though, are some interesting nuggets you probably won’t find with a routine “Bronx” Google search.

As Bob Kappstatter reported on Bronx Matters in a previous post, Luis Sepulveda is ramping up a campaign to fill Peter Rivera’s Assembly seat when he becomes state Labor commissioner. Sepulveda now has a one-page website up, with a letter that addresses readers as “constituents,” (a little premature since they won’t be actually be his constituents unless his elected to represent them in the state legislature). The rest of the web site appears to be under construction but a tab titled “To NYS Assembly page” inexplicably leads to the website of Queens Assemblyman Fernando Moya.

The Center for Working Families has released a report on the campaign contributions of former State Senator Pedro Espada, who is currently on trial for allegedly stealing money from the Soundview Healthcare Network, which he founded and managed. Among the report’s findings are that Espada’s fundraising increased sixfold when he became chairman of the Housing Committee and that only 3(!) of those contributions came from within his district.

Daniel Beekman drills down a bit into Census data to find that many more Manhattanites have moved to the Bronx in the last decade, but that may not at all signal gentrification, as many of those intra-city migrants were at or near the poverty level. For more on the controversy concerning whether the south Bronx is gentrifying, which was a hot topic on Bronx Matters last week, click here.

The Riverdale Press reports that the top offender on Public Advocate Bill de Blasio’s “worst landlord” list is Riverdale resident Josh Neustein, who owns several violation-plagued buildings. Neustein said his “estranged sister,” Amy Neustein made false reports to the city’s housing agency and its Department of Investigation. But she says she is backed up by tenants complaints and the city’s own work examining those complaints. Earlier this month, Amy Neustein wrote this piece for City Limits explaining why she was shining the light on her brother’s work as a landlord.

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Melrose Magnificence

4 Apr

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I was in Melrose today. At the corner of East 160th Street and Elton Avenue is a glorious community garden, called the Rock Garden. Melrose is famous for its gardens, as so many took root following the arson and abandonment that leveled much of the neighborhood in the 1970s. Many have been replaced by new residential buildings but some stayed put. This garden took root in just the last few years though.

I took a few photos through the fence from the sidewalk. I know community gardens are open to, and for, the public, but I hadn’t been there before and didn’t feel comfortable walking in and snapping photos without checking in with someone. Well that happened when Jose Almodovar approached me and warmly encouraged me to come in. After taking some photos in the glorious sunshine of flowers and chickens and the playful structures built by some, I spoke a bit with Ralph Rivera, who has lived across the street from the garden for a few years. He helped build the shelter-like structures on the site and he told me about all the great activities that go on there: an Easter Egg hunt, a Halloween party, a domino league, trips to Six Flags for kids. He told me that Lillian Reyes and Carmen Martinez oversee the gardening activities. The garden is also home to hens that produce eggs.

Melrose has been undergoing a phenomenal transformation in recent years. There are many new residential buildings that will be followed by many more, but there’s also gorgeous architecture and open space that was protected by community activists who prevented the city’s plans to raze much of the community in the early 1990s. It’s an exciting urban planning experiment, shaped at the grassroots,  that is still under way.

Speaking of Melrose, activist Ed Garcia Conde has a map on his welcome2melrose blog today indicating all the places in Melrose and the south Bronx where there are bike racks.

One of the lesser thought of means of getting to Melrose and the surrounding neighborhoods is via good ole fashioned sweat power – the bike. With its unparalleled access to Manhattan via FIVE bridges (Third, Willis, Madison Avenues, 145th Street and Macomb Dam Bridges) biking is one of the best options available to the community, employees and visitors alike. …

Enjoy the slideshow above, a first on Bronx Matters.

-Jordan Moss

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