Harlem River Rezoning Hearing

Harlem River Rezoning Hearing | Room Eight

Harlem River Rezoning Hearing
posted by gov_wire
Mon, 06/15/2009 – 2:27pm

Webinar

Harlem River Lower Concourse Rezoning Hearing

You can speak up! Achieving access to the Harlem River, today!

Tuesday, June 23, 9:30 AM

9:30 AM

City Council Zoning & Franchises COMMITTEE

Committee Room – City Hall All are welcome to testify!

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

Click here to learn more.

Issues you might raise at the hearing:

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High-rises and higher rents on the Harlem River?

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Manufacturing jobs lost to lofts?

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Or real affordable housing and public amenities for us, today?

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Or a public park mapped at Park Avenue with monies to implement if for our existing communities?

See our testimony from the April 1st hearing of the City Planning Commission. We have been advocating for public access to the Harlem River for many years, and the rezoning proposal for the Lower Concourse is an ideal opportunity! Request that the park at Park Avenue be created with resources to implement it today, instead of vague descriptions and studies. Future parkland restricted by the garbage tracks away from the river to be created in 20 years, if at all, is not acceptable. Why does the Highline get $100’s of millions of dollars, and we have zero official access here? There must be money in the budget for this site! Send a note to your elected officials about this today.

Friends of Brook Park

PO Box 801

646.648.4362

information@friendsofbrookpark.org

You received this message because you may be interested in this information and ways to get involved.

Thanks

for all you do!

Up and Out of New York’s Projects

Up and Out of New York’s Projects
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
RACE YOU Bronxdale Houses became Sonia Sotomayor’s home in 1957, a time of promise in the projects.

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ and MICHAEL WILSON

WHEN Sonia Sotomayor first set foot in the Bronxdale Houses along Bruckner Boulevard in 1957, they encapsulated New York’s promise. The towers beckoned to the working class as a coveted antidote to some of the city’s unlivable residential spaces and, later on, its unfathomable rents. These were not the projects of idle, stinky elevators, of gang-controlled stairwells where drug deals go down. In the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, when most of the city’s public housing was built, a sense of pride and community permeated well-kept corridors, apartments and grounds. Far from dangerous, the projects were viewed as nurturing.

There are more than 400,000 residents in the New York City Housing Authority’s 2,611 buildings at any given time. Judge Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee for the United States Supreme Court, is just one of more than 100 marquee names on a city list of alumni.

Many are athletes or entertainers. Jay-Z, the rapper, grew up in the Marcy Houses in Brooklyn. Wesley Snipes, the actor, in the Monroe Houses in the Bronx. Marc Anthony, the salsa singer, in the Metro North Houses in East Harlem. Mike Tyson and Hector Camacho, the boxers, and a deep bench of basketball players all came up through the projects.

There are congressmen (Gary Ackerman, Eliot L. Engel, Gregory W. Meeks) and chief executives: Lloyd C. Blankfein runs Goldman Sachs, Howard Schultz heads up Starbucks, and Ursula M. Burns, who was named chief executive of Xerox this month, will become the first black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company.

Today, the average income of residents is $22,728, the average rent $324. An estimated 46 percent of families work, 12 percent are on public assistance. Some buildings suffer from neglect, but there are waiting lists to get in.

In a 1999 article in a housing authority publication, Judge Sotomayor recalled celebrating the move by pedaling her tricycle around the “spacious, pristine, white” apartment — right into a wall, leaving an unmistakable black mark. Petrified, 3-year-old Sonia hid under the bed for two hours. “Marring that wall was the single most traumatic event of my childhood,” she was quoted as saying. LIZETTE ALVAREZ

The Projects Were a Launching Pad for Many Successful New Yorkers – NYTimes.com

Victims’ Families Sue New York City in Fatal 1995 Police Shooting

Victims’ Families Sue New York City in Fatal 1995 Police
 Shooting

By JOHN ELIGON

The fatal police shooting of the two young men occurred away from the public eye, in a Bronx apartment 14 years ago. But the outrage and the various investigations that followed all took place very much in the open.

No criminal charges were ever filed, but in a civil case on Friday, the two detectives involved and the city were under scrutiny again in what might be the final public chapter in this drama.

The detectives, Patrick J. Brosnan and James Crowe, were investigating a robbery when they shot and killed two cousins, Anthony Rosario and Hilton Vega, in a barrage of 28 bullets. Most of the shots were fired into the victims’ backs.

to read more, click here

10 years after Diallo shooting, controversy lingers — Newsday.com

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Newsday.com

10 years after Diallo shooting, controversy lingers

BY DANIEL EDWARD ROSEN

Special to Newsday; Staff writer Rocco Parascandola contributed to this story.

February 5, 2009

Much has changed on Wheeler Avenue. Children have grown up and moved on. Others, immigrants mostly, have moved in.

But Mamadou Diallo has stayed, and as he steps into his building vestibule each day, it’s Feb. 4, 1999, all over again. It’s the day his cousin, Amadou Diallo, was gunned down in a hail of 41 bullets by four officers from the NYPD’s Street Crime Unit – a case that would forever change city policing.

“I always see his body laying there,” said Mamadou, now 40.

via 10 years after Diallo shooting, controversy lingers — Newsday.com.

Luxe Affordability Marks Green Renewal In the Bronx- City Limits: News for NYC’s Nonprofit, Policy and Activist World

Luxe Affordability Marks Green Renewal In the Bronx- City Limits: News for NYC’s Nonprofit, Policy and Activist World.

IN THE NEWS

Giant Manhattan School to Be Broken Up to Further Smaller-Is-Better Policy

By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ

Louis D. Brandeis High School, an Upper West Side behemoth that takes in some of the city’s most disadvantaged students and has struggled year after year to bump up test scores and graduation rates, will be closed and replaced by three new small schools, the Department of Education announced on Tuesday. CLICK TO READ MORE…[NYT]

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Report Recommends Revising New York’s Drug Laws

By JEREMY W. PETERS

ALBANY — In a step that Democrats hope will lay the groundwork for the most significant overhaul of the state’s drug penalties in a generation, a state commission on Tuesday recommended creating more uniform sentencing guidelines and allowing judges to send more drug offenders to treatment centers instead of prison.CLICK HERE TO READ MORE…[NYT]

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Qaddafi, as New African Union Head, Will Seek Single State

By LYDIA POLGREEN

DAKAR, Senegal — President Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya was named chairman of the African Union on Monday, wresting control of a body he helped found and has long wanted to remake in his pan-African image.

His installation as the new head of the 53-member body resembled more of a coronation than a democratic transfer of power. Colonel Qaddafi was dressed in flowing gold robes and surrounded by traditional African leaders who hailed him as the “king of kings.” CLICK HERE TO READ MORE…[NYT]

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http://tinyurl.com/tc53j

WKCR-FM New York Presents Radio Festival: Devoted to jazz drummer Roy Haynes

WKCR-FM New York Presents Radio Festival: Devoted to jazz drummer Roy Haynes

By jazzman • Jan 17th, 2009

WKCR-FM New York is presentong a radio festival devoted to jazz drummer and NEA Jazz Master Roy Haynes. WKCR will be airing his music continuously from Sunday, January 11th at 8:00 am until Friday, January 23rd at 9:00 pm, a total of 301 hours.

To listen to the festival online visit www.columbia.edu/cu/wkcr and click on “Live Broadcast”.

Seemingly ageless, Roy Haynes has played the drums from the bebop days of the 1940s to the present day with the same restless energy. Haynes has remained fresh in his outlook and in his thirst for collaborating with younger artists and those who play in challenging styles, as is shown in his work with such disparate artists as Roland Kirk, Danilo Pérez, and Pat Metheny. He also has been a favorite sideman for any number of artists because of his crisply distinctive drumming style. Thelonious Monk once described Haynes’ drumming as “an eight ball right in the side pocket.” READ MORE…

COURTESY OF ALLYOURJAZZ.COM

RUN-DMC HIP-HOPS INTO HALL

RUN-DMC HIP-HOPS INTO HALL

By IRENE PLAGIANOS and LARRY SUTTON

January 15, 2009 –

Run-DMC – the rapping pride of Hollis, Queens – and Brooklyn’s Little Anthony and the Imperials joined the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame yesterday.

The new inductees also include the heavy-metal band Metallica, guitar wizard Jeff Beck, and R&B great Bobby Womack, who wrote “It’s All Over Now,” the first No. 1 hit for the Rolling Stones.

“It’s unbelievable,” Darryl “DMC” McDaniels told The Post. “This is great news.”

Although the hall is named for rockers, rap stars are now taking their place alongside them. “It’s all coming from the same place, the music, the energy,” said McDaniels, whose band dominated the hip-hop scene in the 1980s. “It’s all rock and roll, dude!”

The induction dinner, which for years was held at The Waldorf, will take place April 24 in Cleveland, home of the hall.

McDaniels gave props to Little Anthony and the Imperials, who began as a doo-wop group on the stoops of New York City in the 1950s and went on to record such hits as “Tears On My Pillow,” “Going Out of My Head” and “Hurt So Bad.”

“They were the hip-hop of their generation,” McDaniels said. “The same way we got together in an alleyway and worked out our songs, they’d do it on a street corner. They definitely belong in the Hall of Fame.”

COURTESY OF [THE NYPOST]

Poncho Sánchez & Gato Barbieri together at Lehman

Poncho Sánchez & Gato Barbieri together at Lehman

By Graciela Berger Wegsman

Wednesday, January 14th 2009, 4:00 AM

Jazz fans will get an unusual treat in the Bronx this Saturday, when two Grammy-winning legends will share the spotlight for the first time. READ MORE

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Theater Review | ‘The Shipment’

Theater Review | ‘The Shipment’

Off-Center Refractions of African-American Worlds

By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Published: January 13, 2009

Cultural images of black America are tweaked, pulled and twisted like Silly Putty in “The Shipment,” a subversive, seriously funny new theater piece by Young Jean Lee.
[NYT] FOR MORE