The second Golden Probes taped on Saturday. In the words of creator Lizz Winstead, the satirical awards show “honors so many shitbags.”
Social Justice
Protesters Blew Up Henry Kissinger’s Appearance at NYU
A protester disrupted Henry Kissinger’s appearance at an NYU business school event yesterday. Ethan Frankel, an NYU student, took the megaphone and announced he had interrupted the event to several dozen protesters at Gould Plaza.
In a video, Frankel can be seen standing up a few rows from the front and beginning to make a statement about Kissinger’s involvement in the Vietnam War, to groans from the crowd, before he was escorted out. Then another student stood up, yelling “Henry Kissinger, you have blood on your hands”; she also mentioned Kissinger’s involvement in the overthrow of the democratically elected President Allende in Chile, before being escorted out.
He Did 17 Years For a Murder He Didn’t Commit; She Followed Him For 10 Years After He Was Freed
“I’m not into sex. I’m into freedom,” Barry Gibbs tells Zoe Potkin’s camera, turning to look back from the wheel of his car. His partner, Myrna, had interjected while Gibbs explained his several medical conditions to Potkin. Prison, he says, brought him more health problems than most people could understand.
Inside the Proud Boy Event That Sparked Violence Outside of Uptown GOP Club
The grand entrance was an assassination.
Gavin McInnes, the founder of the ultranationalist group the Proud Boys, spoke Friday night at the New York Metropolitan Republican Club on the Upper East Side. He barreled into the stately townhouse hall wielding a (fake?) katana. The event ended in the street brawls that the Proud Boys have come to be known for, and three arrests.
At Cuomo’s ‘Marijuana Listening Session,’ High Hopes For Legalization
When Governor Cuomo’s office announced a series of statewide “marijuana listening sessions” to get community feedback when drafting legislation for legal adult use, many rushed to make jokes; the name conjured images of stoned people jamming to records. But recreational cannabis use was one of the last things on the minds of those at last night’s Manhattan session. Rather, the two-hour event at BMCC’s Tribeca Performing Arts Center was rife with dialogue surrounding the potentials and risks this type of historic legalization could bring, and how New York might be able to get it right. More →
Residents Say City Sold Former LES Nursing Facility ‘Like a Bag of Dope’
Ribbons spanning all the colors of the rainbow hung from the gray walkway and black fences enclosing the trees perched in front of the salmon-pink Rivington House, a former public school that re-opened in the 1990s to assist individuals with HIV and AIDS. Scrawled on the ribbons in black marker were phrases and stories in support of the Rivington House in English, Chinese and Spanish. Each ribbon was dedicated to a specific bed number at Rivington House in honor of the individuals that the center served over the past two decades.
8 Arrested at Governor’s Office as They Demand Cuomo Renounce Fossil Fuel Donations
Eight protestors were arrested after a sit-in at Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Manhattan office this morning during a demonstration that climate change activists held to pressure the governor to sign a pledge to promise not to take campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry.
Bushwick’s Glitzy New Luxury Building on the Rheingold Brewery Site Is Ready For Its Close-Up
The Denizen Bushwick, an eight-story luxury rental building on the site of the former Rheingold Brewery, has finally opened one of its buildings, consisting of 444 units ranging from $2,000 studios to two-bedrooms exceeding $4,000. The inspiration for the controversial project reportedly stemmed from the idea of a European village, but in reality, the Denizen Bushwick resembles more of a glitzy, almost overwhelming megalopolis that is unlike anything else in the neighborhood.
Here’s Why a Judge Mentioned the Marquis de Sade While Dismissing a Lawsuit Against the Pfizer Rezoning
A lawsuit that had temporarily halted the development of the controversial Pfizer Project has been dismissed, clearing the way for developers to build on the southwest corner of the Broadway Triangle in Brooklyn.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of community groups, was an attempt to require the City of New York to study how the residential development might, tangentially, increase racial segregation. Judge Arthur F. Engoron, in his decision, called the suit “well-intentioned, passionately argued, and occasionally produces a glimmer of plausibility.” However, the judge noted that New York City has been experiencing a never-ending “housing crisis” since the end of World War II. To fix this, the priority should be building. “The City needs more housing… a lot more,” he said.
W.O.W. Project Shares Stories of Resilience in Chinatown Open Mic Night
In a dull gray building on Chinatown’s historic Eldridge Street, attendees squeezed into a cramped elevator and made their way to the youth center and activist space Project Reach, where the Chinatown Storytelling Open Mic event was being hosted on this humid Thursday evening. Two of the event’s organizers, Diane Wong—a Cornell doctoral candidate and visiting scholar at NYU who writes on gentrification and race in Chinatowns—and Huiying B. Chan—an Open City Fellow with the Asian American Writers’ Workshop—served as emcees. They opened the night with a sober acknowledgment that “we are on stolen indigenous Lenape land” and asked the audience to silently reflect on what actions they could take to acknowledge their occupation of such a space. That gesture set the tone for last night’s open mic night, which was part of the series “Homeward Bound: Memories, Identity, and Resilience across the Chinese Diaspora.”
Organizers Wong, Chan and Mei Lum are all affiliated with the W.O.W. Project, which hosts the Homeward Bound series. Lum is a fifth-generation store owner of Wing on Wo & Co., which is a nearly century-old porcelain store and one of Chinatown’s oldest landmarks. The longstanding family business was on the brink of being sold in 2016, but out of those troubled times, Lum founded W.O.W. as a way to preserve Chinatown’s creative scene through art and activism, particularly in the wake of rapid gentrification. Wong, who interviewed Lum and her family as part of her dissertation research, has been involved with W.O.W. since its inception.
“I think it’s important to show that Chinatown is very much a thriving, inter-generational community. There is a dominant narrative that portrays the neighborhood as sort of obsolete and dying, and that really isn’t the case,” said Wong.
Other groups, such as the Chinatown Art Brigade, have also used art as a vehicle to mobilize around neighborhood gentrification, but W.O.W.’s focus on the diverse stories of the Chinese-American diaspora seemed to be a way not only to inform outsiders about issues facing the neighborhood, but also a way to fortify their own in the wake of rising xenophobia and to help community members of different generations in Chinatown better understand one another.
“I think it’s really important as people of color and a diaspora to share stories and connect across communities. Especially now with the political moment that we’re in,” said Lum.
Against a backdrop of youth-created art, “Resist Fascism” posters and sparkling Christmas lights, more than a dozen storytellers stepped up to the mic to deliver their stories in the form of spoken word, graphic art, photos and videos. Annie Tan, a teacher and organizer, kicked off the night with funny picture of a stern four-year old Tan in a firefighter costume—a presentation which quickly became more somber when she spoke of cultural trauma. “I cried all the time. I cried because I was a kid of immigrants in Chinatown.” But her story took an uplifting turn when she spoke of how she used her own experience to become an effective educator in a Chicago school with predominantly Hispanic population, such as teaching her pupils about how Jim Crow impacted Mexican-Americans. Although she recently moved back to Chinatown because she missed the tradition and language of her own diaspora community. “Now I get tamales AND milk tea AND pork buns!”
Writer Nancy Huang held up her book, from which she read the poem “Tooth Fairy,” which she recited with gusto, “Ma said ‘smile big/You’ll catch a boy.” She encouraged audience members to consider purchasing the book from vendors other than Amazon, given the recent strikes over the company’s poor working conditions. Married couple Rocky Chin and May Chen, stalwarts of the Chinatown activist community, recited oral histories of their respective stories, including Chin’s valiant but failed bid for City Council and Chen’s work with the Chinatown Garment Workers’ Union in the 1980s, which earned them hearty applause from the audience. Chin also posed his frustration with the simple question,“Where are you from?” which could be read as a coded way to question the American identity of people of color.
Members from other diaspora communities were also welcomed into the fold to share their stories. Mahfuzul Islam of Jhal NYC—a group linked to the Bangladeshi community in Queens that sells T-shirts emblazoned with fierce tiger designs—spoke about his work in bringing older Bengali women or “aunties” into spaces outside of their immediate diaspora community—like bowling alleys—that they might shy away from due to language constraints and other cultural barriers.
Later, first-generation immigrant, writer and translator Lux Chen reckoned with her graduate program’s inability to offer adequate support for her depression and evoked The Great Gatsby in her expectations clashing with the harsh reality of New York’s literary scene. Artist Clara Lu delighted the audience through her exploration of her family and pride in her culture vis-à-vis Lu’s illustrations of her late grandmother’s dishes like braised pork and bean sprouts. Midway through her presentation, Lu exclaimed, “Oh, I forgot to speak Shanghainese!” Lu went on to recite dishes in both English and the Shanghai dialect. And last but not least, Emily Mock played a poignant animated video of paper cut artwork she created depicting an elderly woman preparing vegetables for a soup in her Chinatown apartment.
W.O.W. will be hosting an exhibit in the fall or winter, so stay tuned and check out their website for future updates or to donate to their fundraising campaign, which aims to raise $15,000 by the end of July.