Former investment analyst-turned-artist uses a unique process called hydrographic transfer to transpose photographs onto 3D objects.

Belgian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Marie-Hélène welcomes me to her sunlit studio and jokingly asks if I would like a “warm” Diet Coke.

The last time she kept a fridge in her studio was over 10 years ago, when she rented a space in Dumbo, now one of Brooklyn’s ritziest neighborhoods. With a year-to-year lease on her current studio in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the future “seems rickety,” she says.

As a mathematician by training and investment analyst by trade, Marie-Hélène relishes precision; her artwork predominantly features the Golden Ratio, an irrational number denoting perfect proportions that is said to be found in architecture, geometry and classical art such as works by Leonardo Da Vinci and even the DNA helix. Since founding her own artspace called Gryphon Fabricators in 201o, she’s kept one foot in the banking world as a consultant.

Marie-Hélène’s work has been exhibited around the world, including in the USA, Europe and Asia.

In her art work, Marie-Hélène enlists a chemical process called hydrographic transfer to transpose original photographs onto 3D objects, including sculptures, sheets of metal and copper – and, most recently– hydraulic pipe grips that she recasts in plaster so that they can be mounted on the wall.

“After a while, you think each one has a personality,” she says pensively while fingering one such pipe fitting. “It looks like some sort of a creature. But that’s just after staring at them for a while.”

Marie-Helene’s assistant helps her with the process.

Marie-Hélène starts by printing a photograph onto a sheet of film supported by a piece of paper. The artist then sprays a chemical solution onto the photograph and immerses it in hot water for 10 minutes. Then she introduces the 3D object into the water, at which point the film separates from the paper and merges with the object.

Hydrographic transfer is also used for car and motorcycle decals.

In relying on a chemical reaction to create her art, Marie-Hélène abdicates partial control over the end result. “You get the high, I suppose, a sort of high,” she says of the thrill when a piece of art turns out exactly as she envisions. “You’re surprised and you get a high, until the next time when it doesn’t come out the way you want and then you just want to break everything.”

Through repetition of the chemical process over the years, she has worked her way up to a 75 percent success rate.

Mounted against two adjacent walls are copper sheets awash in earthy primary colors with the dappled liquid quality of tie dye, each one derived from photographs of previous artworks. The rectangles, squares and spirals that enclose them adhere to the Golden Ratio, namely one side divided by the other is equal to the infinite number 1.618, which Marie-Hélène renders to the third decimal place using a compass and a set square.

Just like the Golden Ratio continues ad infinitum, the artist derives subsequent works of art from previous oeuvres as a symbolic manifestation of this endlessness and of “evolution.”

“With art you don’t know who will like what and sometimes people like the thing you don’t like,” says Marie-Hélène. “But you can’t compromise and start doing things you don’t like just to please people.”

As the artist-in-residence at the Conrad, New York, Marie-Hélène’s work is currently on display in the hotel’s first floor lobby amidst rotating art exhibits by prominent local artists, with a collection titled ‘Spring’ that is focused on spring and nature.

The mayoral candidates presented their plans for overhauling affordable housing, mass transit, education and for permanently shutting down Rikers Island

In a mayoral debate hosted at Clarendon Church in East Flatbush on Monday, nine hopefuls running against incumbent Mayor Bill De Blasio laid out their plans to overhaul the city’s affordable housing, mass transit and education systems, as well as make good on the mayor’s unmanifested promises to permanently shutter Rikers Island.

Cracking down on the affordable housing market 

In his fourth mayoral bid, former City Councilman Sal Albanese proposed a “pied-a-terre” tax on foreign property buyers to raise funds for public housing, particularly on uninhabited apartment units that well-heeled investors “flip” for capital gains.

Doing so would coerce homeowners to sell their properties faster or put them on the market for long-term rentals, thereby increasing housing supply. London and Paris have already enacted a similar one-off stamp duty that raises the sticker price on homes – the former by a conservative 3 percent, the latter by 60 percent.

Sal Albanese wants to protect small businesses by passing the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, which would provide 10-year-minimum leases to qualifying businesses.

Other candidates insisted on converting unused city-owned property into affordable housing units instead of relinquishing them to private developers who threaten to leave. The youngest mayoral hopeful, Crown Heights-based entrepreneur Collin J. Slattery, 28, said he would refuse to pander to such threats:

“I’ll call their bluff. Go, leave, get out. And the truth is that they won’t,” said Slattery. “And it’s true of big businesses as well, because if they want to be somewhere they want to be here in New York City.”

Colin J. Slattery’s platform consists of retooling mass transit systems by replacing antiquated signaling systems on MTA subways

But when pressed for alternatives to existing affordable housing models in which short-term leases allow landlords to evict tenants of affordable housing and re-rent the units at market rate, the candidates offered little in the way of a game plan.

Park Slope resident and real estate attorney Richard Bashner said that the city needs to provide ancillary services at affordable housing sites, particularly for the aging population in need of hospice care or assisted living. Bashner cited the WeLive housing model, an offshoot of the multibillion-dollar startup WeWork, which offers shared office space for startups.

Under the WeLive model, tenants live in dormitory-like units and benefit from shared common areas and amenities. “You can provide for people’s needs in a denser situation so you can have add on services for people who can’t take care of themselves,” Bashner posited.

Richard Basher served for 18 years on Brooklyn’s Community Board 6, protecting landmarks, historic districts and public assets.

Ending “broken windows” policing

The candidates unanimously decried broken windows policing as disproportionately targeting black and brown communities, whereby law enforcement aggressively targets low-level crimes in a bid to discourage serious felonies like theft and homicide. Police brutality, emphasized Karmen M. Smith, the sole candidate running on the Independent ticket, is the product of an “us versus them” mentality ingrained from when officers begin training at police academy.

“The people and the police are one, they just tricked us into believing we were separated. But we’re really on the same side being tricked by the same system,” said Smith, who also reiterated his support for the Right to Record Act, which allows civilians to record police activity as long as they do not interfere with or jeopardize it.

Karmen M. Smith is a volunteer team leader with New York Cares who works with abused children and with immigrants to improve their English language skills.

The criminalization of marijuana, added Bashner, is just more arsenal in the “war” against minority communities. “I’d like to point out that after the Civil War, there was amnesty for all the confederate soldiers,” Bashner said. “When do we have amnesty for all the kids who were locked up for weed possession?”

Providing free tuition to part-time students 

In decreeing free tuition for public universities in New York State, governor Andrew Cuomo sought to target the middle class, while alienating low-income families, the candidates said. One example: the Excelsior scholarship, which provides free tuition to full-time students with household incomes of less than $100,000, is not available to part-time students.

Bashner wants to change that. “I don’t see on what basis the governor can discriminate against part-time students,” he said, adding that he would like to see an increase in work-study programs over financial handouts, so that students earn their keep.

Robert Gangi is the founder of the Police Reform Organizing Project, a think tank which monitors unjust NYPD practices

But the program needs more funding in order to scale. That’s where the closing of Rikers Island comes in. The budget ballooned to $1.3 billion in the fiscal year of 2016, money that could be diverted elsewhere, the candidates said, considering that 85 percent of detainees have not been convicted of a crime and are simply awaiting trial – the product of a sluggish justice system.

“Most of the people on Rikers Island could be released to the community tomorrow and it wouldn’t create a risk to public safety in the community,” said community activist Robert Gangi, who is also looking to decriminalize marijuana possession in New York City.

Thus far, 14 candidates have declared that they are running for mayor. The New York City Campaign Finance Board has announced the schedule for upcoming Republican, Democratic, and general election mayoral debates ahead of the November 8 citywide elections.

Correction

Previously BK Reader reported that Mayor De Blasio joined the mayoral candidates for the debate; the mayor was not in attendance nor was he expected to join the debate.

Entrepreneurs Jeffrey and Sade discovered a market niche in Brownsville, where pharmacies like Rite Aid were the neighborhood’s only carriers of haircare and skincare products

Store owners Jeffrey and Sade met through the Brownsville Partnership, a local economic development program.

Despite grossing over $10 billion in sales annually, the beauty industry is fraught with barriers to enter and the constant risk of ever-evolving trends. But entrepreneurs Jeffrey and Sade discovered a market niche in Brownsville, where pharmacies like Rite Aid were few and far in between and the neighborhood’s only carriers of haircare and skincare products.

Their new store, Jeffrey Beauty Supply, opened its doors this past Thursday on the corner of Eastern Parkway and Saint Marks Avenue, supplying weaves, braids, wigs, hair color and other accessories. Sade said the store “caters to the full beauty spectrum,” but that 85 percent of the products target African-American customers.

“There’s a lot of money being spent by African Americans in this industry, especially women, and there’s just not as much representation in ownership,” said Sade. “So we wanted to take that challenge head on and start the tidal wave.”

In its first two days, Jeffrey Beauty Supply hosted in-store events with established beauty brands like Hair Krack and Shea Moisture.

Even as socio-cultural platforms like the annual CurlFest have kick-started powerful movements toward celebrating African-American hair – crimps, curls and all – the majority of beauty supply stores retailing hair weaves, curl creams and other products marketed to black women are owned by Korean-American entrepreneurs, who have dominated the market since the 1970s because of their close ties to Korean wholesalers.

It was after watching a documentary on the 2014 opening of the Flatbush-based Black Girls Divine Beauty Supply and Salon, owned by African-American sisters Judian and Kadeian Brown, that Jeffrey felt inspired to enter the beauty industry.

“I researched them and researched the obstacles that they had to go through,” Jeffrey says. “And it was all very discouraging. But I decided that this was what I wanted to do.”

Wall art on the far end of the store.

In the beauty industry, retailers compete on location, price point and product diversity. And while Jeffrey Beauty Supply serves a hyperlocal clientele that allows it to circumvent competition from big-name retailers, Sade admits to feeling the threat of franchises like Feel Beauty, whose nearest outlet is in Flatbush.

Being newly opened, the store’s inventory is limited and a few shelves were empty pending shipments due to arrive on Monday. “If you walk into a traditional beauty supply it’s ceiling to floor. It’s inundated with products,” she says. “We explained it to our customers and they’ve been very receptive to the fact that we’ll get there one day soon.”

A year ago, Jeffrey and Sade were strangers. The entrepreneurs met through the Brownsville Partnership, a program offered by the nonprofit Community Solutions, which is vested in local economic development through entrepreneurship. They found themselves paired together after responding to the same Facebook ad, and realized they had a common interest: business ownership and the beauty industry. They now run the business together part-time while juggling day jobs.

“I think when something is the scariest, that’s when you should do it,” Sade said. “So I decided to really push and make it happen. We’re getting there.”

Two district attorney positions are currently open (for Brooklyn and Manhattan), with seven candidates running for Brooklyn

Marc Fliedner for Brooklyn District Attorney.

As the citywide elections draw near, the candidates running for Brooklyn District Attorney presented their proposals on how to crack down on police brutality, to end broken window policing and to shrink the prison population pending the closure of Rikers Island at a forum at Clarendon Church in East Flatbush on Monday.

The forum was hosted by the Ernest Skinner Political Association and Councilman Jumaane D. Williams, and joined by current acting District Attorney Eric Gonzales and candidates Marc Fliedner, Ama Dwimoh, Anne Swern and Councilman Vincent Gentile.

Addressing Police Brutality in Court

The candidates discussed the case of Peter Liang, a police officer who shot and killed Akai Gurley, an unarmed black man, in East New York in 2014. Liang was given five years probation and 800 hours of community service, instead of receiving a prison sentence. Gonzalez’s challengers criticized his implication in Thompson’s decision who decided not to sentence Liang.

“I believe jail was appropriate for him,” said Marc Fliedner, a civil rights lawyer and the first openly gay candidate running for D.A. “A person who was convicted of the same offense who wasn’t a police officer would have been subjected to jail.”

Acting DA Eric Gonzalez was handpicked by former DA Ken Thompson to succeed him.

Gonzalez retorted by faulting the standards to which juries are held in cases where a police officer shoots a civilian. Jurors are told to view the situation from the police officer’s perspective and not simply through common sense lenses of right and wrong, if the officer alleges that his life was in danger.

“This is the one area of the law where the jury is told not to look at it in an objective way,” he said. Gonzalez failed to mention how he would rectify the issue if re-elected, simply labeling it “a huge problem.”

The one candidate to float a solution was Ama Dwimoh, who served as executive assistant district attorney under former DA Charles Haynes. “When an officer discharges his weapon and kills or hurts an unarmed person, I believe that those cases should go to a special prosecutor not within the DA’s office,” she said.

Cracking Down on the ‘Prison Industrial Complex’

The candidates enthused over the De Blasio administration’s 10-year plan to shutter Rikers Island and to reduce the daily prison population by 25 percent over the next five years. They unanimously decried the cash bail system, billing it “the criminalization of poverty,” particularly in the case of Rikers where 85 percent of the detainees are simply awaiting trial because they cannot afford bail.

Ama Dwimoh founded the Crimes Against Children Bureau in the Brooklyn DA’s office. Her main concerns are building relationships between the police department and the community and preventing – not prosecuting – crime.

The DA should not even demand bail for so-called “quality of life” offenses such as turnstile jumping or vandalism, said Dwimoh. “If this is a low-level crime, a misdemeanor, the most [jail time] you can do is a year, but you’ve got to wait more than a year in Rikers.”

Fliedner was equally emphatic, stating: “It is not in the sense of a fair criminal justice system to start punishing and warehousing somebody before he has been convicted of a criminal offense.”

Ending Broken Windows Policing

Anne Swern has served for 33 years under four different District Attorneys. She wants to ensure that police officers are fairly prosecuted for crimes against civilians.

Prosecuting minor offenses in criminal court also known as ‘broken windows policing’ is an approach designed to deter heftier crimes such as homicides. But continuing to enforce this will only increase the number of non-convicts awaiting trial, serving to fill jail cells and not to empty them, the candidates agreed.

Offenses like littering and graffiti don’t belong in a criminal court, said Anne Swern, the managing counsel for Brooklyn Defenders Services. “That’s the job of the DA, to make sure that if these cases come to her door, that she stops them and says no, that they never get across the threshold of a courthouse.”

Gonzalez asserted that under the leadership of former Kings County D.A. Ken Thompson, who passed away last October, the DA’s office decided not to prosecute low-level possession of marijuana (under 25 grams) in a bid to defray the 13,000 pending marijuana cases at the time – which disproportionately affected the Black and Hispanic community.

City Councilman Vincent Gentile also jumped at the chance to prove his opposition to broken windows policing. Last year, Gentile helped pass the Community Justice Reform Act, which reconstitutes offenses like drinking alcohol in public or loitering in parks after closing time as civil penalties rather than criminal offenses.

City Councilman Vincent Gentile serves the 443rd District of New York. He wants to decriminalize low-level offenses while getting tougher in the prosecution of gun traffickers.

“The individual still has a penalty to pay and that addresses the quality of life infraction that they committed,” Gentile said. “But that penalty for that infraction does not cause that person to have a criminal record hung around their neck for 10, 20, 30 years down the road.”

The new legislation, he estimated, would result in 50,000 fewer criminal summons and 10,000 fewer bench warrants this year for those who fail to show up in court.

Two district attorney positions currently are open (for Brooklyn and Manhattan), with seven candidates – all of them Democrats – running for Brooklyn, in addition to incumbent Manhattan D.A. Cy Vance, who is running unchallenged.

There will be dozens of races on the ballot for the primaries on September 12, and the general election on November 7.

Councilmember Laurie Cumbo talks frankly about the trials and triumphs of working while pregnant

City Councilmember Laurie Cumbo (35th District) outside of her campaign office at 625 Washington Ave in Clinton Hill Photo: Dante Bowen for BK Reader

New York City is six weeks away from the partisan primaries (September 12), and there’s at least one local candidate in the City Council “on the stump” with a baby bump!

Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo, who represents the 35th District in Brooklyn, is running for reelection and currently, is in her ninth month of pregnancy. As she prepares to welcome her newest constituent into the district– a boy!– she vows she is “more fired up than ever!”

Of course, like any first-time mother, she admits she’s a bit nervous about the typical things like childbirth and whether or not she’s been eating right.

But as an elected official, her career focus is still pointed at positively shaping the political climate her son will be born into– a legislative effort that has been a part of her political record from day-one.

As chair of the Committee on Women’s Issues and co-chair of the Women’s Caucus, Cumbo, throughout her tenure, has been an active proponent of women’s rights. She says that entering motherhood has served to further deepened her compassion for the working mothers she represents in her district, which includes Fort Greene/Clinton Hill, Crown Heights, Prospect Heights and parts of  Bedford-Stuyvesant.

On Sex Education in the Schools

In May, Cumbo sponsored a bill to create a sexual health education task force to standardize sex ed in classrooms and to teach adolescents not only about the birds and the bees, but gender identity and expression, as well as healthy relationships. The bill unanimously passed in City Council and the task force will submit a report with its findings and recommendations to the mayor and the speaker by December 1.

It’s a valiant first step, Cumbo says, but she wants to encourage more discussion about sex education, pregnancy and, in particular, childbirth.

“I think there’s so much more that we can do to […] begin to teach young women about relationships, dynamics around having children and mental health services, because that’s a whole other component to having a child.”

On Educating the Public About Women in the Workplace

Photo: Dante Bowen for BK Reader

Years, before her pregnancy, in 2014, she backed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which requires that employers make reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers to minimize their chances of miscarrying or termination. The law also mandates that the Commission on Human Rights educates the public about pregnancy discrimination and creates a written notice regarding employees’ rights for employers to distribute.

While some may view it as a “women’s problem,” the narrative that pregnant women are incapable of performing up to par is universal, Cumbo says, and that needs to change.

“Every day when I get up and I do the job and I deliver results, I feel like I’m defying the stereotypes of– like Donald [Trump] has said— the ‘inconvenience’ of having women in the workplace that are going to bring life into the world.”

Many working women miscarry or lose their jobs because their employers refuse to grant simple concessions, such as providing a stool to a pregnant cashier who stands for hours on end; or assigning a policewoman to light patrol duty, because she can’t fit into her bulletproof vest. The spillover effect is that some women are instilled with a false sense of their own limitations.

On Running a Political Campaign While Pregnant

Since publicly announcing her pregnancy on Facebook in May, Cumbo has not slowed her efforts for re-election as it regards helping local small businesses and promoting arts and cultural tourism in Brooklyn. Her campaign office, located at 625 Washington Avenue in Clinton Hill, is teaming with volunteers busy knocking and making phone calls to constituents, reminding them to get out and vote.

And on the campaign trail, she has more or less remained a fixture. Most recently, on Sunday, she was out showing support at the 23rd annul Moshood Fashion Show.

“You can’t do everything that you used to do, but you can do things differently,” Cumbo says. “So while I can’t stand at the train station and give out fliers, I can sit at the train station and give out fliers. While I can’t stand at every press conference, I can sit at the press conference. While I can’t always take the train, I can take the bus.”

On addressing the realities of pregnancy and complications

City Councilmember Laurie Cumbo is running for reelection for a second term Photo: Dante Bowen for BK Reader

After miscarrying once, before she took office in 2013, Cumbo wasn’t taking any chances this time around. She dons only soft, flat-heeled shoes and abstains from parties. And she doesn’t shy from talking about the often grisly reality of gestating a human being for nine months.

“We as humans have a tendency to just put out the positive of our experience. And there’s a place for that, too,” she says. “But by me being more human and real, it allows someone else to feel and be more human and real, also.”

It was only after speaking openly about her miscarriage that she discovered “hundreds” of other women who had miscarried, too. “Just by me sharing what I’ve experienced, if you were to experience the same thing, you may feel a little bit more like, I’m not some abnormal, broken down, messed-up-plumbing-inside-of-me woman.”

Still, Cumbo’s pregnancy has had some complications. Doctors discovered Cumbo had scars on her placenta, which meant it could erupt at any time. She needed hormone injections and three weeks of bed rest in her first trimester, because her body wasn’t producing enough hormones to sustain a viable pregnancy.

“I have a weakened cervix. I had to have stitches to stitch up my cervix to strengthen it, so that the baby wouldn’t come out,” she shares. In her last trimester she discovered that she had gestational diabetes. So now keeps a blood sugar test kit on her desk to monitor her blood glucose levels every four hours.

She adds, most women avoid discussing the less-than-peachy aspects of pregnancy, such as the complications often encountered while pregnant, stillborn birth and postpartum depression, because, perhaps, they do not want to appear weak.

“Sure, all the baby bump photos look cute, but there’s such a journey that happens that is kept to oneself,” she says. “I think it would be more ideal if the realities of having a child were more known.”She’s in awe of celebrity super moms like tennis champion Serena Williams, who won the Australian Open while two months pregnant. And while they are inspiring figures, she wants women to know that each of them will experience their own unique journey.

“I’m ultimately doing this for all moms who’ve been told they couldn’t do something because they were pregnant or because they had a child.”

But Cumbo is ready to deliver any day, and with the primaries six weeks away, how does she plan to juggle the responsibilities around taking care of a newborn baby while stumping at the polls? The cold reality is, being a new mother is a full-time job…  with overtime!

Cumbo says she will take the time off she needs but that the work will go on:

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The 35th City Council District race is a crucial one, particularly for the future of affordable housing, considering the district is home to over 6,000 units of NYCHA housing

Vying for one of the most sought-after seats in the citywide elections, four candidates running for the 35th City Council District faced off in a debate at Teunis G. Bergen P.S. 9 in Prospect Heights on Wednesday. The position is currently held by Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo, who presides over the neighborhoods of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights, and parts of Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant, and is running for re-election.

Tensions over affordable housing ran high as the City Council hopefuls deliberated over how to compensate for the Trump administration’s decision to cut NYCHA’s budget by up to $340 million while raising thresholds for so-called “affordable” rents from 30 percent to 35 percent of income.

Green Party candidate Jabari Brisport is a political activist who has performed for the past 7 years with the political comedy theater group Political Subversities

A self-billed “democratic socialist,” Green Party candidate Jabari Brisport asserted that the city needs to raise alternative sources of revenue to shift dependency away from federal funds. “This campaign is proposing two new taxes,” Brisport said. “One is a vacancy tax for empty lots or empty units that are being used as Airbnb motels. The other is a property flipping tax.” The latter tax, he hopes, will stem the tide of displacement caused by developers who buy properties and evict existing tenants to flip the units for a quick profit.

Incumbent Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo, chair of the Women’s Issues Committee, is most concerned with affordable housing

The other candidates offered scant alternatives aside from increasing city funding to ramp up affordable housing supply. Incumbent Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo voiced her support for Mayor DeBlasio’s NYCHA NextGen program, a 10-year plan to build mixed-income housing on vacant NYCHA land, where each new development would contain a 50-50 split of affordable and market-rate housing units. However, Cumbo warned of the potential for private developers to gain the upper hand unless community stakeholders and nonprofit developers like the Fifth Avenue Committee are looped in.

Accused by her challengers throughout the campaign for being “too cozy” with real estate developers, Cumbo fired back by iterating her support for economic development nonprofits who emphasize local hiring so that the community benefits from job creation. “I think it’s critical that we end this cycle of constantly going to the same four or five developers throughout the city of New York who are gaining a massive amount of resources,” Cumbo said.

Ede Fox is a former aide to City Council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito

Plans to revitalize the historic Bedford Union Armory led by private developer BFC partners, is a hot button in the 35th District City Council race and has become a focus of citywide activism against gentrification and displacement. The de Blasio administration has proposed installing a state-of-the-art recreational center in the long-vacant edifice in addition to a mix of below-market and market-rate housing. Cumbo’s most dogged challenger, City Council staffer Ede Fox, who ran against her in 2013, reiterated her opposition to the proposed gutting of the armory.

“I’ve proposed a community land trust as an option to provide the community with control over what happens there,” Fox said. “But first and foremost I’ve been hearing from everyone in the neighborhood that we need to make sure that there is 100 percent affordable housing and that that affordable housing is titrated to the local community income.”

Political novice Scott Hutchins is running on a campaign to reform the homeless shelter system

Green Party candidate Scott Hutchins concurred, saying: “Public land should be for public use.” Hutchins is disabled and has lived in homeless shelters since May 2012. He is advocating for shelters to be converted into low-income housing after discovering that the $3,500 per head expense of keeping one person in a homeless shelter for one month is enough for a below-market or even market-rate apartment.

With the primaries just days away on September 12 and the general election taking place on November 7, the 35th City Council District race is a crucial one particularly for the future of affordable housing, seeing as the district is home to over 6,000 units of NYCHA housing.

Alicka Samuel readies herself to rewrite the narrative of Brownsville and address the housing crisis in East Brooklyn

The campaign office of newly minted City Councilwoman Alicka Samuel is awash with posters touting her campaign slogan, ‘Hope is inside.’ It’s a rallying cry for self-empowerment and self-sufficiency, two calls-to-action she sees as crucial in District 41, in which crime-ridden neighborhoods like Ocean Hill and Brownsville give the district a statistically bad rap.

Samuel, who will also preside over Bedford-Stuyvesant, East Flatbush and Crown Heights when she takes office in January, replaces three-term predecessor Darlene Mealy. The incumbent councilwoman was top-ranked by City & State in this year’s list of ‘Worst New York City Councilmembers’ for showing up to less than 75 percent of hearings and failing to pass a single bill in 2016.

Asked what distinguished her from her eight challengers in the election, Samuel chuckles and says simply, “I’m from here.” Raised in the Marcus Garvey Houses on Chester Street in Brownsville, where she knew her neighbors by name, she admits that the neighborhood has changed from when she was growing up – namely, the erosion of social capital and neighborly camaraderie. “Now you have a lot of transitioning families,” she says, “and they may not feel that same level of pride that we have in the community.”

East Brooklyn saw a rash of foreclosures earlier this year, including East New York and East Flatbush, home to the largest numbers of property owners earning less than $50,000 a year, according to the real estate database PropertyShark.

Samuel is especially concerned about seniors being swindled out of their homes if, for instance, they cannot afford the property taxes. A developer might swoop in and offer to foot the bill for, say, $100,000, only to resell the property for $1.5 million, she offers by way of example.

“It happens all the time in this district,” she explains, “and that’s what causes all of the property values to skyrocket.”

One of her top to-dos upon taking office, she says, is to introduce legislation preventing private developers from “flipping” housing stock for a quick buck. While she is still toying with the specifics, one of her ideas is to cap resale value at a certain percentage of the home’s initial sticker price. Samuel, who unsuccessfully ran for City Council in 2005, is raring to root out home appraisers who overstate the value of a property for personal profit.

“The folks that are certified in being appraisers are all in cahoots with each other,” she says. “Plus there’s not enough people of color in the profession, and so that’s just a way for folks to come in and rob us of our property.”

The former senior advisor for NYCHA wants to ramp up homeownership in the district, which she sees as a means toward desegregated, mixed-income neighborhoods in counterpoint to affordable housing, which clusters people of similar income brackets.

“You’re not going to have a community where everybody makes $20,000,” she says. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

She adds that Brownsville’s reputation for gangs and gun violence as the “murder capital of New York” tends to eclipse its success stories – of which she is one. Samuel began her career as a child protective specialist, surveying homes and families for signs of child abuse and neglect for the NYC Administration for Children’s Services, before earning a law degree at the CUNY School of Law. In February, she resigned from her post as chief of staff for Assemblywoman Latrice Walker, her longtime best friend, to run for office. Uncoincidentally, her campaign office on Rockaway Avenue is right next door to Walkers’ office.

Brownsville born-and-bred, Samuel maintains that her story is “not the exception, it’s just an example.”

“There’s people here that are making money and living in their family homes,” she says. “And we’re starting to come out now and say, ‘Oh no, we’re here.’”

Samuel won the primaries on September 12 and faces no challenger in the general election on November 7, 2017. She will assume office in January 2018. 

Policymakers, artists and activists from around the country gathered on Saturday in Brooklyn for a series of discussions aimed at unpacking pressing socio-political issues

The Brooklyn Museum last weekend became a virtual think tank for creativity and community empowerment, as dozens of leading policymakers, artists and activists from around the country gathered to explore how to best use local art as a platform for grassroots-led social justice.

The ambitious three-day conference kicked off last Thursday, September 19, with a keynote address by NY Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. The next two days were filled with a series of lectures, panel discussions and performances, used to unpack pressing socio-political issues related mostly to those Americans affected by a flawed criminal justice system.

Day 1 opened with a discussion on the role of the artist in creative resistance, led by Colombian-born actress Paola Mendoza, artistic director for the Women’s March in Washington D.C. at the presidential inauguration.

In Mirror/Echo/Tilt, artist Melanie Crean focused on questioning and shifting the American concept of criminality.

Although creative and productive, most of the Saturday lectures and workshops served to poke and prod at the status quo with a critical eye.

In one performance workshop designed to reinterpret stories of criminality, artist and educator Melanie Crean instructed participants to create the image of the word ‘innocence’ using their bodies, followed by the world ‘criminal.’ While most people assumed menacing positions of fist-punching or gun-wielding, one woman stood with both fists in the air, sporting a vacant expression on her face. She told Crean she was assuming the stance of a politician.

“There’s something robotic about them,” she said. “They dehumanize themselves because that’s the only way they can make everybody else suffer.”

With years of experience using art for political protest, artist Laurie Jo Reynolds works to raise awareness about the sex offenders registry

Laurie Jo Reynolds, a self-billed “legislative artist,” spoke about the damaging effects of residential zoning laws for registered sex offenders. Reynolds played an instrumental role in the 2013 closure of the Supermax Tamms Correctional Center in Illinois, which placed inmates in indefinite solitary confinement. She stated that, in Illinois, sex offenders are prohibited from residing within 500 feet of a school, daycare, playground or other place where children congregate and that such restrictions result in extreme housing shortages for former inmates.

“And now because of a new law,” Reynolds said, “they can be stuck in prison for life simply because they can’t find housing.”

Criminal justice reform continued to be the focus for much of day 2, with a panel discussion hosted by Malika Saada Saar, Google’s senior counsel on civil and human rights. Saar spoke on the search engine giant’s ‘Love Letters’ campaign, in which children sent digital love letters to their incarcerated parents.

Also on the panel was Ebony Underwood, founder and CEO of the digital platform We Got Us Now, a non-profit agency led by and for the children of incarcerated parents:

“My father has been fighting this fight ever since he was incarcerated in 1988,” said Underwood, “and it’s been an emotional rollercoaster, because the laws changed. But because of the lack of retroactivity in the law, he’s basically stuck in legal limbo and could not utilize these laws to get out prison.”

Saar said added, that in spite of these enduring setbacks resulting from a piecemeal legislative process, she saw promise in that those directly affected are now being heard: “I would say a decade ago, it was really just lawyers and policymakers in that space, especially in D.C. And what has changed so fundamentally are the voices of those who have the lived experience.”

2017 Bed-Stuy Create Change artist-in-residence Lizania Cruz leads a hands-on workshop from her project We The News, based on the idea of sanctuary

In another hands-on workshop, Lizania Cruz, an artist-in-residence at the organization Bed-Stuy Create Change, invited audience members to ponder the plight of undocumented immigrants facing an uncertain fate in today’s political climate. Cruz distributed sheets of paper bearing the words “All immigrants are___. So am I,” and instructed participants to fill in the blank.

The concluding talk featured New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, U.S. ambassador Patrick Gaspard and Brittany Packnett, vice president of the National Alliances for Teach for America

The discussions also turned to race and identity and its impact on the self-esteem of children of color. Celebrated New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow talked about his daughter writing in her college application essay how proud she was to find the courage to sport her natural afro.

“Part of me wanted to applaud the bravery of it, and part of me wanted to cry,” Blow said. “Because she felt that it was a revolutionary act to allow her hair to grow out of her head the way that it naturally grows out of her head.”

Overall, the conference did a fine job leveraging art and creativity as a beginning discussion for grassroots mobilizing.  And while some conferences of this magnitude could have easily descended into a soapbox for the airing of political, personal or professional woes, the Brooklyn Conference instead went to work.

For three days, it engaged its participants to think past the usual dialogue and generally held perceptions around racial equity and criminal justice reform and– with a little help from some lead influencers– develop a set of blueprints for organizing for change.

Parents complain they were not consulted before the changes; DOE says parents’ concerns around the changes are misguided

Senator Jesse Hamilton convened a sit-in Tuesday on the steps of the New York City Department of Education  in lower Manhattan to protest the DOE’s decision to take control of the admissions process of Medgar Evers College Preparatory School, one of the state’s highest-performing intermediate and high schools.

Sen. Hamilton, Reverend Kevin McCall and about a dozen parents and educators knelt in the lobby of the DOE, brandishing signs and chanting, “We shall not be moved!” and “Whose school? Our school!”

“The parents and educators at MECP deserve to have their voices heard,” Hamilton told the crowd, to raucous cheers. “They deserve a say.”

The protestors claimed that the DOE’s move to centralize MECP’s admissions process would weaken the school’s exemplary academic standards, where student proficiency is more than double the city average.

Already, the DOE has eliminated the entrance exam for P.S. 235 Lenox School, another high-performing school that serves as a feeder school for MECP. Aleah Vaughn, whose son is currently enrolled in the 7th grade at Lenox, does not think this is coincidental: “By removing the exam, they make the school less competitive, less rigorous,” she told BKReader. “The exam is the great equalizer, because an ‘A’ in a failing school is not the same as an ‘A’ in a rigorous school.”

Also, in a statement, Sen. Hamilton’s chief of staff, Jarvis Houston, stated: “Changing the admissions policy will directly and indirectly water down the curriculum and lead to the school’s failure.”

But according to the DOE, some of the brouhaha over the Department’s new admissions policy may be misguided and misplaced. According to DOE Deputy Press Secretary Will Martell, centralizing the admissions process would not override the school’s existing screening process, nor would it warrant a curriculum change.

“Rather than admit students separate from the DOE middle schools admissions process, Medgar Evers would continue to screen students and submit their rankings to the DOE,” Martell explained. “Medgar Evers still has the ability to be selective [around] which students get into the school.”

MECP parents began protesting the new admission policy last month, suggesting that the school would not have become a target it did not serve a predominantly black student body.: “In the 21st century, we should not be talking about taking away schools from the black and brown community,” said Reverend McCall, an MECP alumnus.

However, Martell pointed out that centralizing the admissions process would make applying to the school “fair and accessible to everyone,” while encouraging the school to increase diversity within the student body and recruit more students with disabilities, as the rate of disabled students attending MECP is 1 percent, while the district average is 17 percent.

Additionally, he added, MECP is not the only school being drafted into the centralized admissions process; other schools–13 this year alone– also have adopted the change.“For several years, we have been working to bring schools into the centralized admissions process,” Martell said.

These other schools, some with a much less diverse student body, also have been moved into the centralized admissions process, consequently opening admissions to more students of color from the area into high-performing schools .

Still, MECP’s PTA Executive Board Member Norelda Cotterel, complained the DOE failed to consult with parents or school administrators around the impending changes.  She said the deputy chancellor of strategy and policy at the DOE told her that the Department was acting upon the requests of parents to centralize the MECP admissions process although, said Cotterel, the DOE would not provide any supporting documentation to prove it.

“Where is the evidence to say that parents are requesting this?” she fumed. “Where is the educational forum that you are conducting to let parents know of the advantages and disadvantages that they face if they go through centralized admissions?”

“We are telling DOE hands off! We will not stop, we will not give up on the education of our children! They deserve quality education like any other child,” said Cotterel. “We are a beacon of hope. DOE should be proud of us; DOE should be using us as an example.”

The new policy takes effect fall 2019, beginning with current 4th graders applying to MECP’s 6th grade intake cohort. In the meantime, said Martell, the DOE plans to host a series of meetings with chancellors and school administrators around the changes.

“There is still plenty of time to work with parents and families on this process,” he said.

The town hall was called by Councilwoman Ampry-Samuels to include NYCHA residents and their feedback in the legal process.

Alicka Ampry-Samuel addresses the full room and commences the emergency town hall meeting this past Monday.

Contributing Reporting by Miranda Levinston

Councilwoman Alicka Ampry-Samuels convened an “emergency” town hall meeting Monday at the Seth Low Community Center in Brownsville, following recent legal actions filed against the New York City Housing Authority for masking major health and safety violations. 

Last Monday, the US Attorney’s Office released a damning report, accusing NYCHA of lead-paint violations, insufficient heating during winter, vermin infestations and chronic elevator outages and other complaints, following a three-year investigation by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Environmental Protection Agency. 

In an 80-page consent decree enumerating complaints filed on June 11, the US Attorney’s Office proposed hiring a federal monitor to oversee NYCHA under a 10-year plan designed to rectify years of neglect and subterfuge. The decree requires the city pay $1 billion over the next four years and $200 million each year after to fund reparations for NYCHA’s deteriorating buildings.

The town hall was called by Ampry-Samuels to insure NYCHA residents and their feedback were included in the legal process. But initial talks at the town hall already revealed disparities between what NYCHA residents saw as priorities and what should be litigated on their behalf.

“Try to trickle it down to a regional office when you have an emergency and you call and 24 hours later, no one responds,” said Garnette Gibson. Her mother’s water main broke on Sunday, flooding her first-floor apartment at Seth Low Houses in Brownsville and leaving a gaping hole in her wall.

Comedian, actor and NYCHA Seth Low resident Jermel Wilson raises concerns about his hazardous living situation.

Jermel Wilson, a Seth Low tenant for 30-plus years, claimed his apartment has not had gas since May 28. “When I went down to the housing office and asked when the gas was going to be on, you know what they did? They gave me a hotplate and told me to work it out.”T

Most pressing among the charges against NYCHA is its general unresponsiveness to tenant requests for exterminators, heating and plumbing services, and reliance on “quick-fix” solutions to meet HUD inspection scores, such as plugging holes with wads of newspapers and shutting off the water to conceal leakages during inspections or when elected officials visit the premises. 

Furthermore, it is not uncommon to find one NYCHA maintenance worker assigned for every 250 units, according to HUD Regional Administrator Lynne Patton. Due to funding shortfalls, the agency often fails to backfill vacancies after workers leave, so that one overstretched worker is expected to oversee 500 units.

The Trump-appointed administrator helms HUD’s New York and New Jersey offices, and said one of the first things the monitor will be taksed with is overhauling the agency’s leadership. “We cannot fix the problem without first addressing the head of the beast,” Patton said.

Also sitting on the panel was Dannie Barber, chair of the City-Wide Council of Presidents, the coordinating body for public-housing tenant leaders. A 45-year resident of the Andrew Jackson Houses in the Bronx, Barber said he lost his mother to poisoning from toxic black mold. “I will not give up my apartment to move to another apartment because [the memories with my mother] are what keep me going,” Barber said. “That’s what gives me the initiative to fight.”

Patton announced that HUD secretary Ben Carson plans to tour NYCHA properties to determine the long-term effects of the health and safety violations, which he was barred from doing while the investigation was ongoing.

“We have a neurosurgeon running HUD,” Patton said. “Nobody can pull the wool over his eyes with respect to the health hazards in NYCHA property.” She also announced that the federal monitor would host monthly meetings with residents on the third Thursday of every month at HUD’s regional Manhattan office at 26 Federal Plaza to solicit their feedback.

“I pledge to you right now that if that meeting does not happen every month, I will step down as regional administrator,” she added.

NYCHA resident Tonnisha Galloway files a complaint about the lack of basic amenities in her apartment to the NYCHA committee.

At the back of the room, Samuels had assembled three NYCHA representatives to take complaints from tenants directly, to be included in the consent decree. But just over two hours into the town hall meeting, while a tenant was speaking, the representatives started packing up to leave.

Samuels grabbed a microphone to stall them, as most audience members did not have the chance to approach them while the town hall discussion was ongoing. 

Councilmember Mark Gjonaj, who serves alongside Samuels on the public housing committee, urged tenants to get involved with their local resident associations.

“Let me begin this the right way by apologizing to each and everyone of you for the government failure,” he said, “for the lies and deception and deceit. Act now so we can act for you.”

Equality for Flatbush’s initiative calls on Brooklyn residents to post photos and videos of NYPD presence in their neighborhoods using the hashtag #NoCommunityOccupation

Equality for Flatbush founder Imani Henry. Photo courtesy of Imani Henry.

Brooklyn-based grassroots organization Equality for Flatbush (E4F) recently launched #NoCommunityOccupation, an anti-police brutality social media campaign, to bring awareness to increased police presence in Brooklyn’s most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods. The initiative calls on residents throughout the borough to post photos and videos of NYPD presence in their neighborhoods using the hashtag #NoCommunityOccupation. The goal, explains E4F founder Imani Henry, is to create a community mapping project to visually highlight the neighborhoods exhibiting the heaviest police presence which, he claims, are disproportionately home to people of color.

“Gentrification often talks about rising rents and demographic changes,” adds Tom Knight, a videographer for E4F. “But police violence is an inseparable part of it, because we can see on the ground where these incidents pop up.”

Founded in 2013, E4F is a nonprofit organization dedicated to anti-police repression, affordable housing and anti-gentrification efforts. The newly-launched #NoCommunityOccupation campaign was inspired by intensified police surveillance following the NYPD’s “Neighborhood Policing” initiative, which dispatches police officers as “Neighborhood Coordination Officers” to give them a friendlier face. Henry dubs it a “snitch program.”

“This is a publicity campaign, but the heart of it is that they are trying to put more surveillance in our neighborhoods,” he says. “They want people to come and complain to them.”

#NoCommunityOccupation Campaign on Instagram. Source: Equality for Flatbush/ IG

He finds that police are often summoned even in nonviolent situations where nothing illegal has occurred and shares a few examples. Earlier this month, Henry was standing outside American Star Hardware in Crown Heights, handing out fliers to petition against the store’s closure after the owner, Mohammed Kamara, had been threatened with eviction even after he tried to buy the building where he ran a business for 20 years. Henry filmed two police cruisers that had stationed themselves outside of the store well before E4F arrived.

#NoCommunityOccupation Campaign on Instagram. Source: Equality for Flatbush/ IG

Last Wednesday, Henry arrived at a residence at 699 Ocean Avenue in East Flatbush after hearing that a Haitian family was being illegally ousted a day early and that real estate agency had already begun removing their possessions. Several neighbors gathered in the hallway to observe the proceedings, but no one tried to physically intervene, he says. Shortly after, two police officers arrived after being summoned by the superintendent.

#NoCommunityOccupation Campaign on Instagram. Source: Equality for Flatbush/ IG

“Calling the police on people basically gathering around in a hallway to sit and witness and support their neighbors is ridiculous,” said Henry. “People were so outraged.”

The #NoCommunityOccupation campaign is especially relevant now, Henry said, refering to statistics about increased police violence during the summer months.

“It is true that police violence increases during this time of the year,” he says, citing the upcoming three-year anniversary for the death of Sandra Bland as another example, which E4F will honor at a public event on July 13.

For information and to get involved with the campaign, click here.

Planning to tackle systemic poverty as an antidote to militant policing, Beckford vows to reform police accountability, affordable housing and the state’s budget.

Photo courtesy Anthony Beckford

Ever since scoring his first victory in advocacy at the age of 12, when he prevented his school district from losing funding through a proposed rezoning, Anthony Beckford has been fiercely protective of the East Flatbush community where he grew up.

The 2018 run for State Assembly District 42, which includes Flatbush, East Flatbush, Midwood and Ditmas Park, is not Beckford’s first try for political office. The single father and disabled Marine Corps veteran ran for City Council District 45 in 2017, losing to incumbent Jumaane Williams. In his second campaign, this time running against incumbent Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte, Beckford holds fast to his initial platform: tackling systemic poverty as an antidote to militant policing.

The heart of the problem of “so-called” affordable housing, a key issue in his community, is that rents are not based off the specific median income level of the community, he says.

“The median income that we’re looking at is based on all five boroughs and Nassau County, Suffolk County and Westchester County,” Beckford says. “We need to determine the median income level for each community, whether you base it on census data or zip codes.”

Candidate Anthony Beckford with Rep. Yvette Clarke. Photo courtesy Anthony Beckford

Police accountability is another major focus for Beckford, who heads the Brooklyn sector of Copwatch Patrol Unit, a grassroots police watchdog that documents NYPD misconduct through photography and videos. After the fatal shooting of Dwayne Jeune in East Flatbush last July, he uploaded a cellphone video on YouTube documenting the scene of the murder.

“I actually had footage of the [NYPD] saying, ‘This is what you get for messing with the blue line.’ We get targeted and we get hurt in the process,” he says of his work with Copwatch. “But these are things that you have to do to be a leader to your community.”

Beckford cites the lack of after-school and summer programs for children leading to disconnected youth and higher crime rates, another problem he intends to tackle.

“I used to be told growing up, ‘The busier you are, the less idle you are,’” he says. “The children out here are looking for something to do.”

He plans to use the NYPD budget allocated for equipping all officers with body cameras for community centers, after-school programs and funding the Cure Violence initiative, a program dedicated to treating violence as a public health issue.

Running his campaign on a shoestring budget, — he has raised just $485 from a goal of $20,000 — he prefers a low-cost grassroots approach of weekly public speak-outs and communicating with voters through uncut YouTube videos filmed on his cell phone.

“There are times when I’m in barbershops and laundromats talking to people and educating them on why it is important to vote, why it is important for us to have our voices heard,” says Beckford. “So that corporations no longer have control over our community.”

Green Party candidate Anthony Beckford will be facing incumbent Democratic Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte in the general election on November 6, 2018. 

Richardson retorts, Hamilton caucuses with Republicans for “extra money in his pocket.”

Assemblywoman Diana C. Richardson released a scathing video on Facebook Live Sunday accusing Sen. Jesse Hamilton of smearing her campaign for re-election after a slanderous mass email under the pseudonym ‘Woke Brooklyn,’ which she alleges was traced back to a domain registered under his name.

While Richardson has since launched a one-sided war on Twitter and Facebook, Hamilton has yet to respond.

The email from Woke Brooklyn, a GoDaddy-hosted website that has since been taken down, condemns Richardson for “selling out the black community” by supposedly blocking the Black History Bill, legislation that would require all New York State schools to implement K-12 curriculum incorporating African-American history.

Richardson and Hamilton jointly sponsored the bill when it was first announced in May last year. “Richardson has denied all of our children Black History Education because she is controlled by the white-led Working Families Party,” the email reads.

In her video rebuttal on Facebook, Richardson accuses Hamilton of allying with Republicans through his membership in the Independent Democratic Conference in the Senate. Formed in 2011, the IDC consists of eight NYS senators elected to office as Democrats who caucus separately with Republicans. While the group announced its dissolution on April 4, it has purportedly blocked progressive legislation by restoring Republican control of the Senate in spite of the Democratic majority. According to Richardson, Sen. Hamilton joined the IDC on the eve of President Trump’s election.

Hamilton’s office could not be reached for comment.

“This is the reason why people don’t want to trust the Democratic Party,” Richardson says in the cell phone video, “because you have people who get elected as Democrats and as soon as they get elected they forget who put them in office just so they can get a little extra money in their pocket.”

While it is unproven whether Hamilton has received campaign funds from his involvement with the IDC, Richardson alleged that the IDC has blocked legislation such as the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a 2003 lawsuit requiring the state to pay an additional $4.2 billion to underfunded public schools.

She also mentions the comprehensive criminal justice reform package being held up in the Senate, as well as reforms to protect a district with “the second-highest concentration of evictions in the county.”

Richardson, who is running for re-election, is more concerned that politicians who defect from party lines could undermine the credibility of Democrats at all levels of government. “What I will not tolerate is somebody who does not recognize that the true blue wave is coming,” she said, “This whole Trump thing is out of control. New York State has to really be a real Democratic state.”

After vowing to “vote Sen. Hamilton out of office,” Richardson publicly announced her endorsement of Zellnor Myrie, a progressive candidate running against Sen. Hamilton in the upcoming elections.

The candidates squared off over affordable housing, education and tenants’ rights while also calling on Democrats to unite against Trump

Calls to initiate the next “blue wave” rang loud and clear at a candidate forum hosted by the Flatbush Tenant Coalition on Saturday at P.S. 6 Norma Adams Clemons Academy. Among the eight hopefuls running for various NY state positions were State Senator Jesse Hamilton and his progressive challenger Zellnor Myrie; Councilmember Jumaane Williams and Green Party candidate Jia Lee, both running to unseat incumbent Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul, and Public Advocate Tish James who is in the race for NY attorney general against attorney Zephyr Teachout.

Zellnor Myrie is challenging Sen. Jesse Hamilton for State Senate District 20

Already under fire for his affiliation with the Republican-aligned Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), Sen. Jesse Hamilton fielded accusations from opponent Zellnor Myrie of accepting campaign contributions from real estate lobbyists, including the Real Estate Board of New York.

Myrie also made a gibe at Hamilton for blocking the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which would require the state to fully fund the $4.2 billion owed to public schools, including $36 million owed to schools in his district. “When this was submitted for the State Senate to vote on, we had eight Democrats walk out of the room,” Myrie said, referring to the eight-member IDC which disbanded on April 4.

Hamilton deflected jeers from the audience by recounting past victories for the community – the establishment of The Campus in Brownsville, which provides after-school programming to low-income students, and his fight to protect the historically black Medgar Evers College Prep last November against an admissions overhaul by the Department of Education. It was enough to placate a cluster of his supporters seated in the front row, who erupted into chants of, “Go, Jesse, go!”

Sen Hamilton rebuts his challenger Zellnor Myrie.

Hamilton and Myrie seemed to agree with each other on the affordable housing front. Both want to eliminate preferential rent and vacancy decontrols and make MCIs, an increase in rent after a major capital improvement, temporary. But when asked repeatedly by the audience whether he would decline future contributions from real estate lobbyists, Hamilton again digressed by listing his past accomplishments.

Meanwhile, the two candidates for lieutenant governor, Councilmember Jumaane Williams and public school teacher Jia Lee, have yet to spar with incumbent Lt. Gov Kathy Hochul, who was absent.

Councilmember Jumaane Williams wants to unseat imcumbent Lt. Gov. Hochul.

Williams called upon Democrats to unify. “We don’t have this orange madness because of Republicans,” he said, referencing President Trump. “We have this orange madness because of coward Democrats who are afraid to step up and step forward.”

Lee, who is running on a Green Party ticket to represent the “99 percent,” pointed out that the role of the lieutenant governor, whose main function is to chair Senate meetings, is “shrouded in mystery,” and that this was done on purpose to maintain the status quo of “five men in a suit behind closed doors making decisions.”

Williams concurred, saying he wants to revamp the role into one responsible for holding the governor accountable. “Someone has to be able to step up and say, ‘You are being deceptive to the people of the state of New York,’” he said.

Attorney general candidate Zephyr Teachout

Both candidates want to impose a “billionaire’s tax” to fund public education, in opposition to Governor Cuomo’s 2 percent spending cap on the state budget. If elected, Williams believes his task first and foremost would be rectifying “Cuomo’s MTA” and “Cuomo’s educational crisis.”

Also Public Advocate Tish James is running for NY attorney general.

Also in favor of overturning Republican control is lawyer Zephyr Teachout, who is running for attorney general against Public Advocate Letitia James. Teachout wants to impose criminal rather than civil sentences on wrongful landlords and appoint an ombudsman to arbitrate on tenant’s rights violations.

James, who sued NYCHA in 2015 for keeping tenants in dangerously cold apartments, wants to oust U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson as well as President Trump.

“Democratic AG’s across this nation are the firewall against this illegitimate president,” she said.

The New York State primaries will take place on September 13, 2018, followed by the general elections on November 6, 2018.

Project Homemade not only teaches cooking techniques but focuses on educating the community to make healthier food choices.

Project Homemade founder Sophia Samuda. Photo credit: Kindra Cooper/ BK Reader

While East New York has been labeled as one of the city’s biggest food swamps given its density of fast food chains, one nutritionist-in-training is trying to educate residents about healthy eating through a community service initiative called Project Homemade.

A cooking class at McLeod Community Garden

From May to August, coinciding with farming season, Project Homemade founder Sophia Samuda hosts free cooking classes at McLeod Community Garden on Liberty Avenue, where she schools local residents in the benefits of using fresh ingredients over processed foods and shows them how to grow their own produce. A former advertising executive at Ralph Lauren currently studying for a master’s degree in nutrition at Brooklyn College, Samuda focuses less on imparting cooking techniques than a mindset shift. She wants people to understand that when their cereal contains four-syllable ingredients they can’t pronounce, it’s likely to be harmful to their health.

“I focus on showing them how to prepare heavily processed foods in a healthier way,” she says, “because processed food is something that everybody probably buys all the time.”

In her workshops, she shows the local community how to make jam using strawberries or how to make ketchup using fresh tomatoes and herbs, sourced from East New York Farms (ENYF).

Photo credit: Kindra Cooper/ BK Reader

When Samuda bought a house in East New York in 2013, she realized she had to trek to downtown Brooklyn to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, especially during the winter months. In the summer, she frequented the East New York Farms farmers market at the corner of Livonia Avenue and Schenck Avenue, which operates on Saturdays and Wednesdays. She began volunteering with the market and eventually discovered the ENYF mini-grant, which funds projects that increase access to healthy foods in the neighborhood.

Since its inception, Project Homemade has run for two consecutive summers on the grant, but Samuda is considering turning her community service project into a business.

“Initially I just wanted to share what I know so we could all fight for more access to fruits and vegetables,” she says. “But now [the project] has more legs than I thought it would have.”

While she wants to continue to host workshops free of charge, she knows the project needs a business model to remain sustainable. She cites the shuttering of healthy eating-focused businesses such as The Tea Room at Belmont and Pitkin Avenue as evidence for the need to educate the local community and boost demand for better food choices.

A free cooking class at McLeod Community Garden. Photo courtesy Sophia Samuda.

“At the Tea Room they had almond milk and organic food but no one wanted it,” she says. “But if you’re not familiar with healthy foods, you won’t ask for them.”

Interested in learning more about healthy cooking? Sign up for Project Homemade’s next class on Wednesday, August 22.

A minor political party could make major waves this fall with its push for progressive legislation in support of working people

Photo courtesy of Working Family Party

Championing bread-and-butter causes affecting low and middle-income earners, such as raising the minimum wage and taxing the wealthy, one independent political party headquartered in Brooklyn Heights is intent on a sweeping elimination of Democratic incumbents in the upcoming elections.

Formed in 1998 with a presence in 19 states, the Working Families Party claims to fight for an economy that “works for everyone, not just the wealthy and well-connected.” This election cycle, the party is crusading to vote out the “corporate Democrats” accused of consorting with Republicans in exchange for campaign money from real estate lobbyists.

WFP founder and executive director Bill Lipton consults with organizer Kayla Rivera. Photo credit: BK Reader

Among them are Senator Jesse Hamilton of District 20 in Brooklyn and seven other Democratic state senators who are part of the Republican-aligned Independent Democratic Conference. The IDC purportedly blocked progressive initiatives, such as the Campaign for Fiscal Equity’s effort to give $4.2 billion in IOUs for underfunded public schools and also stalled efforts to pass criminal justice reform that would eliminate bail for misdemeanors. The WFP has endorsed Hamilton’s opponent, progressive lawyer and activist Zellnor Myrie.

Insurgency is an uncharacteristic move for a minor political party, but WFP has laid everything on the line by endorsing Governor Andrew Cuomo’s challenger, Sex and the City actress and activist Cynthia Nixon despite her lagging in recent polls, and launching the “No Trump Democrats” campaign in January this year to educate voters about the eight senators who defected and are running for re-election on the Democratic ticket.

While this radical overture has cost WFP the support of union leaders fearful of angering Cuomo, founder Bill Lipton says the trade-off is worth it:

“Our mission is to ensure that there is a party that represents working people,” he says. “The Democrats have to really change before they can be that party. And if not, they need to get out of the way so we can build a new party in this country that actually represents working people.”

Ava Benezra, a political organizer at WFP, came up with the idea for the ‘No Trump Democrats’ campaign to dispel the mystery of the IDC by sending 300,000 text messages and placing hundreds of thousands of calls to voters.

Ava Benezra, a political organizer at WFP, speaks to a client. Photo credit: BK Reader

“I think before this campaign, the IDC was an intensely convoluted issue to explain; they just lied for years and years,” said Benezra. But those who felt jarred after the 2016 presidential election sprang into action, many as political activists. “When that shifted we really wanted to take advantage of that and we really wanted to put it to use on winning elections,” she said.

The WFP has also endorsed two candidates for attorney general: Constitutional rights lawyer Zephyr Teachout and public advocate Tish James, the first WFP member elected to office when she won a City Council seat in 1997. After the primaries in September, WFP will back the winning candidate for the general election. Meanwhile, Councilmember Jumaane Williams, running for lieutenant governor against incumbent Kathy Hochul, is also on the WFP ballot.

Lipton says the real reason Trump won the 2016 presidential election is that Democratic voters can’t trust their own party when elected officials are in the pocket of corporations. “There was a lot of concern about those Goldman Sachs speeches and the donors to her foundations,” he says of the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The New York State Democratic Party exemplifies this problem at the local level, Lipton says. “Here you have Andrew Cuomo who raises tens of millions of dollars from the same people, the Koch brothers. Donald Trump himself has given this guy money. And so many wealthy real estate industry leaders and hedge fund leaders.”

One of numerous walls papered in handmade posters at the WFP office

The result in New York, he says, is a rift between progressives and liberal Democrats, who seem fiscally and ideologically conservative in contrast. “The Democratic party is like a person without a country. They’re lost and they’re trying to find themselves.”

He cites survey data indicating that the majority of Americans when asked what the Democratic party stands for respond with “I don’t know.”

“That was a big problem for [the Democrats] in 2016 and we want to change that.”

The New York State primaries will take place on September 13, followed by the general elections on November 6. In New York State, to register to vote, go here.

Policymakers, artists and activists from around the country gathered on Saturday in Brooklyn for a series of discussions aimed at unpacking pressing socio-political issues

The Brooklyn Museum last weekend became a virtual think tank for creativity and community empowerment, as dozens of leading policymakers, artists and activists from around the country gathered to explore how to best use local art as a platform for grassroots-led social justice.

The ambitious three-day conference kicked off last Thursday, September 19, with a keynote address by NY Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. The next two days were filled with a series of lectures, panel discussions and performances, used to unpack pressing socio-political issues related mostly to those Americans affected by a flawed criminal justice system.

Day 1 opened with a discussion on the role of the artist in creative resistance, led by Colombian-born actress Paola Mendoza, artistic director for the Women’s March in Washington D.C. at the presidential inauguration.

Although creative and productive, most of the Saturday lectures and workshops served to poke and prod at the status quo with a critical eye.

In one performance workshop designed to reinterpret stories of criminality, artist and educator Melanie Crean instructed participants to create the image of the word ‘innocence’ using their bodies, followed by the world ‘criminal.’ While most people assumed menacing positions of fist-punching or gun-wielding, one woman stood with both fists in the air, sporting a vacant expression on her face. She told Crean she was assuming the stance of a politician.

“There’s something robotic about them,” she said. “They dehumanize themselves because that’s the only way they can make everybody else suffer.”

Laurie Jo Reynolds, a self-billed “legislative artist,” spoke about the damaging effects of residential zoning laws for registered sex offenders. Reynolds played an instrumental role in the 2013 closure of the Supermax Tamms Correctional Center in Illinois, which placed inmates in indefinite solitary confinement. She stated that, in Illinois, sex offenders are prohibited from residing within 500 feet of a school, daycare, playground or other place where children congregate and that such restrictions result in extreme housing shortages for former inmates.

“And now because of a new law,” Reynolds said, “they can be stuck in prison for life simply because they can’t find housing.”

Criminal justice reform continued to be the focus for much of day 2, with a panel discussion hosted by Malika Saada Saar, Google’s senior counsel on civil and human rights. Saar spoke on the search engine giant’s ‘Love Letters’ campaign, in which children sent digital love letters to their incarcerated parents.

Also on the panel was Ebony Underwood, founder and CEO of the digital platform We Got Us Now, a non-profit agency led by and for the children of incarcerated parents:

“My father has been fighting this fight ever since he was incarcerated in 1988,” said Underwood, “and it’s been an emotional rollercoaster, because the laws changed. But because of the lack of retroactivity in the law, he’s basically stuck in legal limbo and could not utilize these laws to get out prison.”

Saar said added, that in spite of these enduring setbacks resulting from a piecemeal legislative process, she saw promise in that those directly affected are now being heard: “I would say a decade ago, it was really just lawyers and policymakers in that space, especially in D.C. And what has changed so fundamentally are the voices of those who have the lived experience.”

In another hands-on workshop, Lizania Cruz, an artist-in-residence at the organization Bed-Stuy Create Change, invited audience members to ponder the plight of undocumented immigrants facing an uncertain fate in today’s political climate. Cruz distributed sheets of paper bearing the words “All immigrants are___. So am I,” and instructed participants to fill in the blank.

The discussions also turned to race and identity and its impact on the self-esteem of children of color. Celebrated New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow talked about his daughter writing in her college application essay how proud she was to find the courage to sport her natural afro.

“Part of me wanted to applaud the bravery of it, and part of me wanted to cry,” Blow said. “Because she felt that it was a revolutionary act to allow her hair to grow out of her head the way that it naturally grows out of her head.”

Overall, the conference did a fine job leveraging art and creativity as a beginning discussion for grassroots mobilizing.  And while some conferences of this magnitude could have easily descended into a soapbox for the airing of political, personal or professional woes, the Brooklyn Conference instead went to work.

For three days, it engaged its participants to think past the usual dialogue and generally held perceptions around racial equity and criminal justice reform and– with a little help from some lead influencers– develop a set of blueprints for organizing for change.

Parents complain they were not consulted before the changes; DOE says parents’ concerns around the changes are misguided

Senator Jesse Hamilton convened a sit-in Tuesday on the steps of the New York City Department of Education  in lower Manhattan to protest the DOE’s decision to take control of the admissions process of Medgar Evers College Preparatory School, one of the state’s highest-performing intermediate and high schools.

Sen. Hamilton, Reverend Kevin McCall and about a dozen parents and educators knelt in the lobby of the DOE, brandishing signs and chanting, “We shall not be moved!” and “Whose school? Our school!”

“The parents and educators at MECP deserve to have their voices heard,” Hamilton told the crowd, to raucous cheers. “They deserve a say.”

The protestors claimed that the DOE’s move to centralize MECP’s admissions process would weaken the school’s exemplary academic standards, where student proficiency is more than double the city average.

Already, the DOE has eliminated the entrance exam for P.S. 235 Lenox School, another high-performing school that serves as a feeder school for MECP. Aleah Vaughn, whose son is currently enrolled in the 7th grade at Lenox, does not think this is coincidental: “By removing the exam, they make the school less competitive, less rigorous,” she told BKReader. “The exam is the great equalizer, because an ‘A’ in a failing school is not the same as an ‘A’ in a rigorous school.”

Also, in a statement, Sen. Hamilton’s chief of staff, Jarvis Houston, stated: “Changing the admissions policy will directly and indirectly water down the curriculum and lead to the school’s failure.”

But according to the DOE, some of the brouhaha over the Department’s new admissions policy may be misguided and misplaced. According to DOE Deputy Press Secretary Will Martell, centralizing the admissions process would not override the school’s existing screening process, nor would it warrant a curriculum change.

“Rather than admit students separate from the DOE middle schools admissions process, Medgar Evers would continue to screen students and submit their rankings to the DOE,” Martell explained. “Medgar Evers still has the ability to be selective [around] which students get into the school.”

MECP parents began protesting the new admission policy last month, suggesting that the school would not have become a target it did not serve a predominantly black student body.: “In the 21st century, we should not be talking about taking away schools from the black and brown community,” said Reverend McCall, an MECP alumnus.

However, Martell pointed out that centralizing the admissions process would make applying to the school “fair and accessible to everyone,” while encouraging the school to increase diversity within the student body and recruit more students with disabilities, as the rate of disabled students attending MECP is 1 percent, while the district average is 17 percent.

Additionally, he added, MECP is not the only school being drafted into the centralized admissions process; other schools–13 this year alone– also have adopted the change.“For several years, we have been working to bring schools into the centralized admissions process,” Martell said.

These other schools, some with a much less diverse student body, also have been moved into the centralized admissions process, consequently opening admissions to more students of color from the area into high-performing schools .

Still, MECP’s PTA Executive Board Member Norelda Cotterel, complained the DOE failed to consult with parents or school administrators around the impending changes.  She said the deputy chancellor of strategy and policy at the DOE told her that the Department was acting upon the requests of parents to centralize the MECP admissions process although, said Cotterel, the DOE would not provide any supporting documentation to prove it.

“Where is the evidence to say that parents are requesting this?” she fumed. “Where is the educational forum that you are conducting to let parents know of the advantages and disadvantages that they face if they go through centralized admissions?”

“We are telling DOE hands off! We will not stop, we will not give up on the education of our children! They deserve quality education like any other child,” said Cotterel. “We are a beacon of hope. DOE should be proud of us; DOE should be using us as an example.”

The new policy takes effect fall 2019, beginning with current 4th graders applying to MECP’s 6th grade intake cohort. In the meantime, said Martell, the DOE plans to host a series of meetings with chancellors and school administrators around the changes.

“There is still plenty of time to work with parents and families on this process,” he said.

The town hall was called by Councilwoman Ampry-Samuels to include NYCHA residents and their feedback in the legal process.

Contributing Reporting by Miranda Levinston

Councilwoman Alicka Ampry-Samuels convened an “emergency” town hall meeting Monday at the Seth Low Community Center in Brownsville, following recent legal actions filed against the New York City Housing Authority for masking major health and safety violations. 

Last Monday, the US Attorney’s Office released a damning report, accusing NYCHA of lead-paint violations, insufficient heating during winter, vermin infestations and chronic elevator outages and other complaints, following a three-year investigation by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Environmental Protection Agency. 

In an 80-page consent decree enumerating complaints filed on June 11, the US Attorney’s Office proposed hiring a federal monitor to oversee NYCHA under a 10-year plan designed to rectify years of neglect and subterfuge. The decree requires the city pay $1 billion over the next four years and $200 million each year after to fund reparations for NYCHA’s deteriorating buildings.

The town hall was called by Ampry-Samuels to insure NYCHA residents and their feedback were included in the legal process. But initial talks at the town hall already revealed disparities between what NYCHA residents saw as priorities and what should be litigated on their behalf.

“Try to trickle it down to a regional office when you have an emergency and you call and 24 hours later, no one responds,” said Garnette Gibson. Her mother’s water main broke on Sunday, flooding her first-floor apartment at Seth Low Houses in Brownsville and leaving a gaping hole in her wall.

Jermel Wilson, a Seth Low tenant for 30-plus years, claimed his apartment has not had gas since May 28. “When I went down to the housing office and asked when the gas was going to be on, you know what they did? They gave me a hotplate and told me to work it out.”T

Most pressing among the charges against NYCHA is its general unresponsiveness to tenant requests for exterminators, heating and plumbing services, and reliance on “quick-fix” solutions to meet HUD inspection scores, such as plugging holes with wads of newspapers and shutting off the water to conceal leakages during inspections or when elected officials visit the premises. 

Furthermore, it is not uncommon to find one NYCHA maintenance worker assigned for every 250 units, according to HUD Regional Administrator Lynne Patton. Due to funding shortfalls, the agency often fails to backfill vacancies after workers leave, so that one overstretched worker is expected to oversee 500 units.

The Trump-appointed administrator helms HUD’s New York and New Jersey offices, and said one of the first things the monitor will be taksed with is overhauling the agency’s leadership. “We cannot fix the problem without first addressing the head of the beast,” Patton said.

Also sitting on the panel was Dannie Barber, chair of the City-Wide Council of Presidents, the coordinating body for public-housing tenant leaders. A 45-year resident of the Andrew Jackson Houses in the Bronx, Barber said he lost his mother to poisoning from toxic black mold. “I will not give up my apartment to move to another apartment because [the memories with my mother] are what keep me going,” Barber said. “That’s what gives me the initiative to fight.”

Patton announced that HUD secretary Ben Carson plans to tour NYCHA properties to determine the long-term effects of the health and safety violations, which he was barred from doing while the investigation was ongoing.

“We have a neurosurgeon running HUD,” Patton said. “Nobody can pull the wool over his eyes with respect to the health hazards in NYCHA property.” She also announced that the federal monitor would host monthly meetings with residents on the third Thursday of every month at HUD’s regional Manhattan office at 26 Federal Plaza to solicit their feedback.

“I pledge to you right now that if that meeting does not happen every month, I will step down as regional administrator,” she added.

At the back of the room, Samuels had assembled three NYCHA representatives to take complaints from tenants directly, to be included in the consent decree. But just over two hours into the town hall meeting, while a tenant was speaking, the representatives started packing up to leave.

Samuels grabbed a microphone to stall them, as most audience members did not have the chance to approach them while the town hall discussion was ongoing. 

Councilmember Mark Gjonaj, who serves alongside Samuels on the public housing committee, urged tenants to get involved with their local resident associations.

“Let me begin this the right way by apologizing to each and everyone of you for the government failure,” he said, “for the lies and deception and deceit. Act now so we can act for you.”

Equality for Flatbush’s initiative calls on Brooklyn residents to post photos and videos of NYPD presence in their neighborhoods using the hashtag #NoCommunityOccupation

Brooklyn-based grassroots organization Equality for Flatbush (E4F) recently launched #NoCommunityOccupation, an anti-police brutality social media campaign, to bring awareness to increased police presence in Brooklyn’s most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods. The initiative calls on residents throughout the borough to post photos and videos of NYPD presence in their neighborhoods using the hashtag #NoCommunityOccupation. The goal, explains E4F founder Imani Henry, is to create a community mapping project to visually highlight the neighborhoods exhibiting the heaviest police presence which, he claims, are disproportionately home to people of color.

“Gentrification often talks about rising rents and demographic changes,” adds Tom Knight, a videographer for E4F. “But police violence is an inseparable part of it, because we can see on the ground where these incidents pop up.”

Founded in 2013, E4F is a nonprofit organization dedicated to anti-police repression, affordable housing and anti-gentrification efforts. The newly-launched #NoCommunityOccupation campaign was inspired by intensified police surveillance following the NYPD’s “Neighborhood Policing” initiative, which dispatches police officers as “Neighborhood Coordination Officers” to give them a friendlier face. Henry dubs it a “snitch program.”

“This is a publicity campaign, but the heart of it is that they are trying to put more surveillance in our neighborhoods,” he says. “They want people to come and complain to them.”

He finds that police are often summoned even in nonviolent situations where nothing illegal has occurred and shares a few examples. Earlier this month, Henry was standing outside American Star Hardware in Crown Heights, handing out fliers to petition against the store’s closure after the owner, Mohammed Kamara, had been threatened with eviction even after he tried to buy the building where he ran a business for 20 years. Henry filmed two police cruisers that had stationed themselves outside of the store well before E4F arrived.

Last Wednesday, Henry arrived at a residence at 699 Ocean Avenue in East Flatbush after hearing that a Haitian family was being illegally ousted a day early and that real estate agency had already begun removing their possessions. Several neighbors gathered in the hallway to observe the proceedings, but no one tried to physically intervene, he says. Shortly after, two police officers arrived after being summoned by the superintendent.

“Calling the police on people basically gathering around in a hallway to sit and witness and support their neighbors is ridiculous,” said Henry. “People were so outraged.”

The #NoCommunityOccupation campaign is especially relevant now, Henry said, refering to statistics about increased police violence during the summer months.

“It is true that police violence increases during this time of the year,” he says, citing the upcoming three-year anniversary for the death of Sandra Bland as another example, which E4F will honor at a public event on July 13.

For information and to get involved with the campaign, click here.