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WEEK OF SEPTEMBER
14-20 2017
DACA: A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE DREAMERS A longtime community leader on his involvement with an East Harlem group devoted to helping Latino immigrants BY STEPHAN RUSSO
In February I retired from a job I loved. I had been the executive director of Goddard Riverside Community Center since 1998, having started my career there in the summer of 1976 as a young and impressionable youth worker. As I rose through the ranks of this venerable West Side agency, I clung to the values of fairness, social justice and the power of offering a helping hand. Today Goddard Riverside serves over 17,000 neighborhood residents and has been a citywide leader in street outreach, supportive housing and access to higher education for young people who are often the first in their families to attend college. Yet it was time for me to move on and pass the torch to the next generation of leadership. Faced with the challenge of transitioning from community leader to community member, I wanted to put my energies elsewhere in the quest to “do good.” The instinct to find community, and be part of something that makes a difference, brought me to a wonderful East Harlem organization called CREA, Centro de Recursos Educativos para Adultos (The Center for Adult Education). I came upon CREA last spring after a conversation with an old friend and colleague. I related to her that I was interested in getting involved with a group working on immigration, particularly an organization deeply
A colorized postcard image from 1941 shows the giant, 17-foot, gold-tinted rotating globe in the lobby of the old Daily News Building at 220 East 42nd Street. One of the world’s largest indoor globes, it was used as a permanent educational science exhibit for schoolkids. Postcard: Published by Lumitone Photoprint, via Wikimedia Commons
CREA founder Maria Guadalupe Martinez (“Lupita”). Photo courtesy of CREA rooted in the Latino community. (I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the early 1970s in Colombia, South America, and the warmth of that community has never left me.) “I know a marvelous woman who leads an education program in the Hispanic community,” my colleague said. “The program works primarily with immigrants of Mexican decent who never had the opportunity to complete their studies in their home countries and are motivated to improve their lives through education.” She put me in touch with Maria Guadalupe
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‘TOO TOUGH TO DIE’ MEDIA A former Daily News reporter ponders the sale of the storied tabloid, reflects on its past glories, marvels that it has once again dodged a bullet – and prays for twin miracles, its continued survival and success BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
A single pointed word, perfectly chosen, speaking volumes. The telltale exclamation point that follows. A haunting photo that, once seen, can never be forgotten. The visceral presentation, in print no less, that can shock, anger, inform and take your breath away, all at the same time.
This was newspapering at its most elemental, and, I would argue, at its finest: On January 12, 1928, murderess Ruth Snyder went to the electric chair at Sing Sing after she and a lover garroted her husband. And the next day, a photo of the execution ran on Page One of the Daily News. There was the one-word headline — “DEAD!” – topping a picture of a woman in a black dress, sitting upright in a chair, an electrode strapped to her leg, her face masked, head helmeted, an autopsy table at her side, at precisely the moment a fatal current coursed through her body. OK, it was lurid. And sensationalistic. Illicit, too. You can’t just snap photos in a death house. So a News lensman (yes, we actually called them that) smuggled in an ankle camera, a long cable release running up a trouDowntowner
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WEEK OF APRIL
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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 on the Over the past 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.” can’t come p.m. and 7 a.m., 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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for dollars in fees ated millions of and left some resithe city agency, that the application dents convinced
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ser leg, and recorded the horrifying scene. Now, why is this a good thing? It was the mission of “New York’s Picture Newspaper” to show, not just tell. Its duty to readers was to present a vivid account by camera, not just pencil and paper. The editors wanted to show you what really happened inside that execution chamber. Did they want to sell newspapers? Of course. Yet look what else they accomplished. Opposition to capital punishment snowballed. A movement to reform American criminology was launched. Debates raged in state legislatures and European parliaments over the power of the state to kill its killers. Suddenly, the death penalty itself was in play.
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