Parents and teachers are rallying today to save MS 80, the central middle school in Norwood that’s on the Department of Education’s chopping block for June. A “community walk” will start outside the Mosholu Parkway school, which produced Ralph Loren and Calvin Klein, at 3:30 p.m. and lead to Mosholu Montefiore Community Center. The Norwood News has more details.
A Headstone for Jashawn Parker
2 Apr
A memorial poster for Jashawn Parker (Photo: Jacqueline Vergara)
Those of you who read “The Phantom Landord” investigation in City Limits know that Jashawn Parker is the boy who died in an electrical fire in his family’s apartment on DeKalb Avenue in Norwood in 2002. As I wrote in one article for the package, Paul Parker, Jashawn’s dad, took a little while to find the gravesite in the cemetery when we drove him up there, because it is not marked with a headstone. The family couldn’t afford it.
The Bronx Jewish Community Council, which helped advocate for tenants early on in their battle at 3569 DeKalb, has graciously agreed to set up a fund to raise the money for a headstone, which will be about $1,200. To donate, you can make a check out to Bronx Jewish Community Council (just write “Jashawn Parker” in the memo line) and mail to: Sally Dunford, Bronx Jewish Community Council, 3176 Bainbridge Avenue, Bronx, NY 10467. Donations are tax deductible.
If enough money is raised, a headstone can be put in place by the 10th anniversary of Jashawn’s death on Aug. 6. Thanks for whatever you can do.
Here’s a link to a terrific video interview with Paul Parker about his son. It was produced by Jacqueline Vergara, one of the excellent CUNY Graudate School of Journalism students who were involved in the investigation.
—Jordan Moss
Morning Matters 3/30/12
30 MarOK, we’re back with Morning Matters. Sorry to miss the last couple of days.
This photo by Ana Brigida is part of her exhibit on public housing conditions, opening tonight, at the Bronx Documentary Center in Melrose.
The Bronx Documentary Center, also in Melrose, has an opening tonight for an important exhibit called, “How the Other Half (Still) Lives: Bloomberg’s Legacy?” by Ana Brigida about conditions in public housing.
Speaking of Melrose, Legal Services is developing a building on a vacant lot near the subway station in the neighborhood’s southern end on Brook Avenue and East 149th Street.
Have you read the incredibly intelligent conversation taking place on Gregory Lobo Jost’s post on the Times declaring gentrification taking root in south Bronx? I’ve been meaning to mention that this isn’t the first time the Times has weighed in on south Bronx gentrification. This piece by the same reporter, Joseph Berger, focused on the artists and professionals heading to the Clocktower and other buildings in Mott Haven. The appearance of arugula in supermarkets and cafes is also a harbinger of a new scene in that piece. Hey, does arugula mean Kingsbridge is gentrifying? The revamped Foodtown on Broadway and 231st has it as well as a section of specialty beers. Speaking of food and drink, the recent Berger article quotes a resident who found a fantastic Mexican restaurant in the neighborhood, Xochimilco. But that restaurant, which I happened to be at a few days before that article appeared, is in the heart of Melrose, a whole other neighborhood (which has its own incredible story of rebound that I plan to talk more about here) at least a mile and a half away from the Concourse and 160s. (Incidentally, I had the best chicken mole I think I ever had in my lifethere.)
Though teen violence is way up at Riker’s Island, the Bronx DA’s office rarely prosecutes, according to an article in The New York World. The DA’s office says it’s hard to prosecute when victims don’t cooperate but critics say that wouldn’t be case in the world outside of prison.
A popular middle school teacher, Justin Bravo, was killed while riding on his motorcyle in the tunnel on Mosholu Parkway underneath Jerome Avenue and the 4-train. This tragic accident was virtually steps away from where a pedestrian died in December. Norwood News posted the funeral arrangements.
Hunts Point Express documents local efforts to battle the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy, including murals to educate youth on their rights at Rocking the Boat.
How Can Future Palazzolos Be Stopped? City Limits Investigation Subject of Lehrer Show This Morning
30 MarThe City Limits investigation into “Phantom Landlord” Frank Palazzolo is the subject of the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC this morning at 10 a.m. (93.9 FM and 820 AM). As I’ve previously written on Bronx Matters, this investigation began in 2002 when 8-year-old Jashawn Parker died in a building fire on DeKalb Avenue in Norwood. While the Norwood News (where I was editor) covered that and many related stories for almost 2 years back then, we only scratched the surface of Palazzolo’s impact on almost 100 buildings throughout the borough, not to mention his stifling of Bronx housing organizing via a lawsuit. I always kept the files on my shelf hoping that we’d have the time and staff to get back to it. Fast forward to last fall when Tom Robbins, his students at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and I embarked on the City Limits investigation. Tune in if you can. These are critical issues affecting hundreds of thousands of Bronxites who rent apartments, not to mention the rest of the city. If you have thoughts, questions, or concerns about your own building, please comment here. Thanks.
UPDATE: Here’s the link for the segment.
-Jordan Moss
Morning Matters — 3/27/12
27 MarGood morning! It’s cold out there — kind of a more normal March day.
Quite a number of hits (a Bronx Matters record actually) on two of our posts yesterday by Gregory Lobo Jost on The Times’ controversial announcement of south Bronx gentrification and Bob Kappstatter’s take on Governor Cuomo appointing Assemblyman Peter Rivera to be state labor commissioner. If you haven’t read them they are worth a read — and a comment. Keep the conversation going.
Daniel Beekman continues his solid reporting of Bronx housing issues. Today, he tells the tale of a group of West Farms tenants who banded together to make repairs their absentee landlord has avoided. The want to form a co-op.
Sixteen Bronx schools are contaminated with PCBs leaking from light fixtures, NY1 has learned. Citywide 245 schools in 149 buildings are contaminated. To see the list of schools click on link on the left side of the NY1 story (X before a building number in the first column of the PDF indicates the Bronx.)
Speaking of school contamination, parents are still seeking answers on the conditions at PS 51/Bronx New School which drove them from their Bedford Park building to a former Catholic school in Crotona. Norwood News has the story.
An accountant testified in the Pedro Espada trial yesterday. Not a good day for the former senator.
Jeanmarie Evelly, a Norwood News reporter who is also a contributing editor at City Limits, has this important story in the latter about solitary confinement going way up in city jails.
It’s Official: The Times Declares South Bronx Is ‘Gentrifying.’ But Is it True?
26 MarBy Gregory Lobo Jost
This time it’s not even a prediction, but a bold declaration that the south Bronx has been gentrified. Based almost entirely on anecdotal evidence, Joseph Berger of The New York Times Metro section has painted a picture of an area of the south Bronx on the Grand Concourse as a new middle class hub where white folks don’t just go for Yankee games.
While the amazing housing stock along the lower Grand Concourse — mostly built in the 1920s and 30s and chock full of art deco gems — is no secret, the area has been largely working class/working poor with a smattering of middle class black and Latino residents (think public sector workers) for the past few decades. (Tip: Read Constance Rosenblum’s Boulevard of Dreams if you are looking for a great book about the housing on the Concourse and its fascinating history. I appropriately read it while on jury duty on 161st Street a few years ago.) Berger simplifies the complicated reasons behind the decline of the area down to “white flight and urban disenchantment,” though to be fair that’s not the point of the article.
The point, rather, is that “more middle-class professionals, many of them white, are … buying co-ops with sunken living rooms and wraparound windows for under $300,000 in Art Deco buildings that straddle a boulevard designed to emulate the Champs-Élysées.” While this is likely true, the question is whether the numbers are significant enough to declare something so controversial as gentrification having already occurred.
Peter Rivera’s New Job and the Race He Leaves Behind
25 MarBy Bob Kappstatter
The long national nightmare, as they say, for Bronx Assemblyman Peter Rivera finally ended on Saturday when Gov. Cuomo named him new state labor commissioner.
Assemblyman Peter Rivera
The announcement came at the annual Somos El Futuro winter conference of the state Assembly/Senate Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force, where Rivera is an elder statesman whose appointment can’t but help Cuomo solidify his Latino support.
Rivera, according to all reports, has pretty much been searching for a new paycheck outside the state Assembly for a number of years now, while still hedging his bets over running for another term or for a judgeship.
Before his new state gig, Rivera’s last hope was reported to be a run for the plum job of Bronx Surrogate, whose office doles out assignments (and fancy fees) to party-faithful lawyers to handle the estates of persons who die without wills.
Although Rivera was saying as late as Friday that he was weighing a run for Surrogate, that dream pretty much crashed and burned recently when the Bronx Democratic Party’s non-partisan judicial screening panel put the kibosh on it, labeling the attorney and former assistant Bronx D.A. “unqualified.”
Not that he would have received party backing in the judicial primary (Dem Party Boss Carl Heastie reportedly already has a favorite candidate) or might have survived his next Assembly primary race, with the opposing candidate already backed by a powerful local state senator.
Although baseball and politics ain’t over ’til it’s over, a number of Bronx political insiders say attorney and party operative Luis Sepulveda now holds the winning edge to fill Rivera’s 76th Assembly District seat in Parkchester/Castle Hill/West Farms/Van Nest.
His nearest challenger in the Democratic primary is Rivera’s longtime chief of staff, Danny Figueroa, who only recently began to plow the district for votes – and name recognition.
Bronx Matters 