3.3.22 — Almost 30 years after first writing about the Kingsbridge Armory’s potential redevelopment, I went at it again thanks to failure of the crew that got city approval to build nine ice-hockey rinks there. That was in 2012. Zilch has happened since. Read more in my City Limits piece below.
8.2.18 – I wrote about Bronx politics and critical local issues for almost 20 years, when I was reporter and editor of the Norwood News (in Community Board 7) and the Bronx News Network. One thing I rarely witnessed were Democratic incumbents (all were Dems except for Guy Velella during my tenure) facing primary challengers with a good shot of winning. During my time on the job, except when corrupt incumbents were defeated or stepped down (State Senator Pedro Espada, Councilman Pedro G. Espada, State Senator Efrain Gonzalez, Councilman Larry Seabrook, Nelso Castro, Eric Stevenson, Israel Ruiz, etc., etc.) few if any vets of the City Council, state Assembly, or state Senate, faced significant challengers.
But times have changed. If there’s one thing to be grateful to Trump and his seemingly corrupt victory for, it is this: excellent and energized freshmen progressive candidates are taking it to the streets along with big teams of dedicated volunteers. They are acting on the fact that state and local elections are as – and even more in many cases – critical to democracy and local issues as presidential elections. What happens – or doesn’t happen – locally has a dramatic impact on national politics as well. Even big-shot former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously said, “All politics is local.”
And it is not just local in terms of issues affecting Bronx residents and neighborhoods, but residents and towns of the entire Empire State.
And that’s because of the IDC, a team of eight “Democrats” who sided with Republicans in the State Senate, handed over all of the real power of Democrats to the GOP. That’s blocked every essential bill on critical issues like voting rights, school funding, a Health Care Act, and the DREAM Act from passing in the State Senate and joining forces with the Assembly, vastly controlled by Democrats.
State Senator Jeff Klein, of the Bronx, formed the IDC in 2011. It wouldn’t have existed without him. (Technically, it no longer exists since Cuomo made them shut it down earlier this year, but Klein and his team are being told to pay $1.4 million they received from the Independence Party. Like almost all other IDC incumbents, Klein faces a strong challenge from Alessandra Biaggi, who already has 400 volunteers on her team taking it to the streets, knocking on doors, phone banking, writing post cards, contributing whatever they can. Here’s her recent video.
Bronx Democrats (including me) have moaned and groaned for years that our votes don’t count for much, particularly in presidential elections. But this is a Democratic primary with epic issues (local, state and national) at stake. Your vote – and participation – matters. Big time.
Hey Bronx (and Beyond) Pals: My art and photo exhibit – at An Beal Bocht (cool, artsy Irish pub/cafe in Riverdale/Bronx) opens on July 6, next Wednesday, beginning at 6 p.m. It’s at 445 W. 238th St. in Riverdale, a short (if somewhat steep) walk from the 238th St. 1-train station. An Beal Bocht will provide some food. They’d just like you to shell out a little dough to buy some booze or whatever else (water, juice, soda, whatever) you’d like to take a swig of. Don’t worry if you come later – even a lot later – than that. I’m figuring it will go on until at least 10 p.m., or probably beyond that when the last one of us heads out the door. Here are a couple of photos of what I’ll be showing.
One of my abstract paintings, collage, whatever you wanna call it:
One of my photos … (Guess where and when? 😉
OK, hope you can make it, but if you can’t the exhibit will continue through the month of July. Thanks! If you have any questions, just email me at bronxmatters@gmail.com.
A bunch of years ago at the Norwood News (and the now-defunct Bronx News Network) I, and James Fergusson, launched Bronx Youth Heard, a free after-school journalism program for Bronx teens that takes place at Hostos Community College. I’m thrilled that David Cruz & Co. at the Norwood News are still making it happen. Bronx Youth Heard is an actual newspaper that’s published along with the Norwood News.
The application for the next session is due on Jan. 22. Click here for all the info. And spread the word to all the Bronx teens, teachers, and parents you know. There’s no other program and newspaper like this in the entire Bronx — and probably the entire city!
Waldman reports how the Police Department keeps all but the current week’s crime statistics a secret. He points out, when the NYPD posts the current precinct-wide weekly data known as CompStat, it removes all prior stats off the site!
Congrats Josh for highlighting this critical issue that virtually no press is paying close attention to, save the Norwood News and City Limits, where I wrote this article almost two years ago.
It focused on the fact that it’s critical to know how current precinct stats compare to past precinct data and, even more importantly, to know where in those precincts specific criminal activity is growing or consistently problematic. That’s called sector stats, more material that the NYPD won’t release. Precincts are the same size as the community districts they are in and many, serving 100,000 residents, are bigger than most American cities. That’s why sector stats are so critical. They keep track of the same crime data — assaults, car thefts, robberies, burglary and murder — as CompStat data. But sector stats provide the data virtually neighborhood by neighborhood.
In the City Limits article, I reported on Bronx councilman Fernando Cabrera’s bill that resulted in law. He was inspired by Norwood News coverage by me and Alex Kratz on the fact that the NYPD refuses to make sector data available. Norwood News did eventually acquire the info through FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) requests but that took more than a year. All media, community boards, community groups, and interested individuals should submit similar FOIL requests to pressure NYPD and city government in general to make the information regularly available.
Cabrera achieved some, but not all, of the change he sought, particularly the provision of sector stats. In maps where you can click on circles indicating some data, the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) website does show generally what block crimes have been committed on but only on a monthly basis. And the site doesn’t indicate sector or neighborhood crime totals. So forget about complete, clear neighborhood sector data. DoITT has kept that hidden as well.
When it became law, Greg Faulkner, Cabrera’s chief of staff, said his office had a similar concern about the map. “It doesn’t have enough details and our vision of it was there was going to be a lot more,” said Greg Faulkner, Cabrera’s chief of staff, in the City Limits article. “We need to hear whether there were specific security concerns about why they were left out.” He added back then that the website was not shared with Council members before it was fully implemented. Had it been, Faulkner says, the city “would have been able to determine whether their implementation matched the Council’s intent.”
It clearly hasn’t.
One more thing:
Waldman, the high school student, even created a NYC Shootings website that holds on to crime stat data that the NYPD removes. (It looks great but it’s not functioning at the moment. Josh, let me know when it’s up an running again.) If students at every high school in the city were keeping an eye on what was going on around them, and acting on it like Waldman, it would have an impact on city policy.
This is news from two months ago in Real Deal, but news to Bronx Matters nonetheless. Two Brooklyn landlords, Yechel Weinberger and Bernard Miller, who are currently on the NYC Landlord Watch List (100 worst landlords in the city) have connected to purchase six apartment buildings in the northwest Bronx (three of them in Norwood), a 364-unit portfolio.
Bronx Matters 