The local paper for Downtown wn THE GENIUS NEXT DOOR P. 12
WEEK OF MARCH - APRIL
30-5 2017
COLLEGE REPUBLICANS STAKE CLAIM STUDENTS Conservative students, not all of them pro-Trump, build coalitions and invite dialogue BY CLAIRE WANG AND LILY HAIGHT
At a press conference in Brooklyn last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Vision Zero projects throughout the five boroughs. Photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
SPRING BRINGS NEW VISION ZERO CONSTRUCTION SAFETY With traffic fatalities declining, Mayor de Blasio embarks on new safety projects BY MADELEINE THOMPSON
Compared to this time last year, traffic fatalities have declined by 20 percent, and 2016 saw the fewest such incidents in the city’s history. To continue the apparent success of his Vision Zero safety plan, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last week that construction will begin anew on several road improvement projects now that warmer weather has arrived.
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Lucian Wintrich, White House correspondent for Gateway Pundit, a political blog allied with the alt-right movement, had a surprisingly undramatic visit to New York University earlier this month. Sporting mussed-up hair and Harry Potter frames, Wintrich, 28, addressed a packed house punctuated by red “Make America Great Again” caps, excoriating what he described as the left’s war on free speech while swigging booze from a flask. Like other speakers invited by NYU College Republicans, the conservative firebrand and mastermind behind a pro-Trump art show (“Daddy Will Save Us”) that opened on West 18th Street in October, spoke at the club’s headquarters, a mid-sized conference room at the Kimmel Center for University Life furnished to the brim by anti-Trump cartoons. Unlike guests before him, Wintrich completed his seminar without facing much hostility or defiance — until the end, when a lone dissenter flipped him off as he was preparing to leave. “You support a racist as president, do you not?” the protester confronted Elena Hatib, the club’s president, after several attendees dragged him away from Wintrich. To substantiate his accusation, he cited a 1973 lawsuit against Trump’s real estate business for denying housing to black
Vincent Gangemi, president of the Baruch College Republicans, at the Baruch College Transfer Student Organization’s Club Fair. Photo: Baruch College Republicans into microcosms of a fractured Washington. In February, consecutive protests at University of California, Berkeley, and NYU forced the cancellation and truncation, respectively, of scheduled talks from Milo Yiannopoulos and Gavin McInnes, two prominent Trump supporters infamous for their provocative commentary on race and LGBTQ rights.
would-be tenants. “We are not the NYU Trump Club,” Hatib responded with discernible frustration following Wintrich’s March 23 talk. “That’s what you guys don’t understand: We never endorsed any candidate.” That misperception attests to a growing ideological divide on college campuses, which, in the last few months, have morphed
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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
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
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The two incidents, yielding a dozen arrests and thousands of dollars in property damages, incited a heated school-wide debate on whether incendiary, altright ideology deserves spotlight on a college campus. Amidst increasingly violent resistance from anti-Trump factions, Republican students at New York City universities and colleges feel stifled and alienated for exercising a supposedly inviolable right. In response to the chaos that broke up the McInnes seminar, NYU College Republicans coordinated with school administrators to vet attendees and increase security, said Shiwhan Kim, the club’s press secretary. Extra measures included bringing Wintrich to the conference room through an alternate route, and announcing undisclosed meet-up locations for members to escort attendees into the venue all at once. Although each event now demands heightened vigilance, Kim said, the club will continue to host controversial speakers. “It is the mark of a muzzled organization when or if it refuses to invite popular speakers who have intriguing and innovative ideas simply due to fear of violence from the left,” she said. At City College of New York in Harlem, junior José Pascual has been struggling since September to build a network of conservatives large enough to even become an official school club. Initially called the CUNY Republicans CCNY Chapter, Pascual said the group faced some opposition from college administrators because it was not an
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