The local paper for Downtown wn
CAMP GUIDE
WEEK OF JANUARY-FEBRUARY
pg 12
2017
26-1
2017
U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler at Goddard Riverside Community Center on Jan. 18, where he addressed questions about President Trump’s potential impact on issues of concern to constituents. Photo: Michael Garofalo
NADLER’S TRUMP DIAGNOSIS The congressman meets with consituents to discuss how to block the Republicans’ agenda
“Tiny hands Tiny feet, all you do is tweet, tweet, tweet.” Photo: Charmaine P. Rice
ONWARD: 400,000 TAKE TO THE STREETS
BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
Donald Trump was in Washington, D.C., on the Wednesday evening before his inauguration, but his specter loomed large in New York City, particularly on the Upper West Side, where U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler gathered with constituents to discuss Democrats’ plans for blocking the agenda of the Republican Party, which now controls the executive branch and both houses of Congress. “We cannot stop fighting for our values and raising our voices in protest,” Nadler said to a packed room at Goddard Riverside Community Center, where he spent more than an hour with constituents answering questions about Trump’s potential impact on issues including health care, education, social security, affordable housing, and foreign policy. The variety of questions asked reflected no single overriding topic of concern, but a broad-based anxiety among those in attendance about all facets of the incoming administration. More than any one issue, attendee Margie Staker explained, “I would say: what am I not worried about?”
Huge turnout at the NYC Women’s March BY CHARMAINE P. RICE
The anti-Trump sentiment was strong, the signs spirited, and the chants, loud. By all accounts, the crowds attending the New York City Women’s March exceeded expectations. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s press secretary said the official count topped 400,000. Organizers had expected 100,000 to show up. Regardless of the exact turnout figure, women and men of all ages, families, millennials and teens turned out in full force the day following President Don-
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lady of New York City, attended, as did actors Helen Mirren and Cynthia Nixon. Star power aside, marchers came from all walks of life to support a variety of causes, the vast majority of them progressive. “I came down here from New Hampshire. I fear for the future of the country and the future of my kids and grandkids,” said Violet Simpson. Simpson’s friend, teacher Christine McGregor, held up a sign listing issues and institutions she supports, among them unions, public education, refugees and LGBTQ rights. “My sign says it all,” she said. Indeed, many signs said it all,
ald Trump’s inauguration to rally around the issues they care about. Vaughn Bobb Willis, a law student who walked with his two sisters, held up a sign that read “Quality men do not fear equality.” “It’s important for men to do their part,” Willis said on East 55th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, near the march’s finish line. “If women aren’t equal, then none of us are. Women’s rights are human rights.” Whoopi Goldberg and actors Rosie Perez and Taylor Schilling kicked off the event at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza just before 11 a.m. Chirlane McCray, the first
FOR HIM, SETTLING SMALL CLAIMS IS A BIG DEAL presided over Arbitration Man has three decades. for informal hearings about it He’s now blogging BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
Hosts Margaret & Geoffrey Zakarian
is the common Arbitration Man their jurist. least folks’ hero. Or at Man has For 30 years, Arbitration court office of the civil few sat in a satellite Centre St. every building at 111 New Yorkers’ weeks and absorbed dry cleaning, burned lost accountings of fender benders, lousy paint jobs, and the like. And security deposits then he’s decided. Arbitration Man, About a year ago, so to not afwho requested anonymity started docuhe fect future proceedings, two dozen of what menting about compelling cases considers his most blog. in an eponymous about it because “I decided to write the stories but in a I was interested about it not from wanted to write from view but rather lawyer’s point of said Arbitration view,” of a lay point lawyer since 1961. Man, a practicing what’s at issue He first writes about post, renders and then, in a separatehow he arrived his decision, detailing blog the to Visitors at his conclusion. their opinions. often weigh in with get a rap going. I to “I really want whether they unreally want to know and why I did it,” I did derstood what don’t know how to he said. “Most people ... I’d like my cases the judge thinks. and also my trereflect my personalitythe law.” for mendous respect 80, went into indiMan, Arbitration suc in 1985, settling vidual practice
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MANHATTAN'S APARTMENT BOOM, > PROPERTY, P.20
2015
In Brief MORE HELP FOR SMALL BUSINESS
The effort to help small seems to businesses in the city be gathering steam. Two city councilmembers, Robert Margaret Chin and Cornegy, have introduced create legislation that wouldSmall a new “Office of the within Business Advocate” of Small the city’s Department Business Services. Chin The new post, which have up told us she’d like to would and running this year, for serve as an ombudsman city small businesses within them clear government, helping to get through the bureaucracy things done. Perhaps even more also importantly, the ombudsman and number will tally the type small business of complaints by taken in owners, the actions policy response, and somefor ways to recommendations If done well, begin to fix things. report would the ombudsman’s give us the first quantitative with taste of what’s wrong the city, an small businesses in towards important first step fixing the problem. of for deTo really make a difference, is a mere formality will have to the work process looking to complete their advocate are the chances course, velopers precinct, but rising rents, -- thanks to a find a way to tackle business’ is being done legally of after-hours projects quickly. their own hours,” which remain many While Chin “They pick out boom in the number throughout who lives on most vexing problem. said Mildred Angelo,of the Ruppert construction permits gauge what Buildings one said it’s too early tocould have the 19th floor in The Department of the city. number three years, the Houses on 92nd Street between role the advocate She Over the past on the is handing out a record work perThird avenues. permits, there, more information of Second and an ongoing all-hours number of after-hours bad thing. of after-hours work the city’s Dept. problem can’t be a said there’s with the mits granted by nearby where according to new data jumped 30 percent, This step, combinedBorough construction project noise Buildings has data provided in workers constantly make efforts by Manhattan to mediate BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS according to DOB of Informacement from trucks. President Gale Brewer offer response to a Freedom classifies transferring they want. They knows the the rent renewal process, request. The city They 6 “They do whatever signs Every New Yorker clang, tion Act go as they please. work between some early, tangible small any construction on the weekend, can come and sound: the metal-on-metal or the piercing of progress. For many have no respect.” p.m. and 7 a.m., can’t come of these that the hollow boom, issuance reverse. owners, in business moving The increased beeps of a truck has generto a correspond and you as after-hours. soon enough. variances has led at the alarm clock The surge in permits
SLEEPS, THANKS TO THE CITY THAT NEVER UCTION A BOOM IN LATE-NIGHT CONSTR NEWS
A glance it: it’s the middle can hardly believe yet construction of the night, and carries on full-tilt. your local police or You can call 311
n OurTownDowntow
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Newscheck Crime Watch Voices
for dollars in fees ated millions of and left some resithe city agency, that the application dents convinced
2 City Arts 3 Top 5 8 Real Estate 10 15 Minutes
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with some depicting caricatures of Trump, catchy slogans and images of cats as a cheeky nod to Trump’s “locker room banter.” One sign gleefully proclaimed “Tiny hands, tiny feet. All you do is tweet, tweet, tweet!” Another stated “Make America tolerant again.” One was a riff on the Serenity Prayer: “I am no longer accepting things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.” Inside the 57th Street subway station on Seventh Avenue, discarded signs were arranged into a display. “I’m here because I am appalled at his [Trump’s] attitudes toward
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