(photo: Cassidy Dawn Graves)
Brooklyn DIY staples Palisades and Silent Barn are just two of many nightlife spaces that have been subject to a Multi-Agency Response to Community Hotspots, or MARCH—a Giuliani-era creation that summons members of the NYPD, FDNY, State Liquor Authority, Department of Buildings, and more to an establishment that’s been deemed problematic, usually at peak weekend hours and usually without warning.
City councilman Stephen Levin speaks during press conference.
“There is a no more senseless or inhumane action than to leave a body in the street,” declared city councilman Ydanis Rodriguez at a news conference earlier today at the Greenpoint intersection where 27-year-old Neftaly Ramirez was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver early Saturday morning.
Would electric buses soften the blow of the approaching L train shutdown? City Council members Rafael Espinal and Stephen Levin think so, and yesterday they called on the MTA to make it happen.
Aside from being an inconvenience for more than 200,000 daily commuters who ride the L train daily, the 15-month shutdown planned for 2019 will also cause an increase in carbon emissions as the subway is replaced with more car and bus traffic. Electric buses would solve the problem of noxious bus fumes while pushing the city closer to a more sustainable and environmentally-friendly public transit system, the council members said during a press conference.
(Flyer via office of CM Stephen Levin)
You might have noticed that since the election, stories of hate crimes and swastika sightings have been everywhere. But the increase isn’t simply due to a greater public interest in issues like police brutality and racially-motivated violence– hate crimes themselves have actually been on the rise. And quantifiably so: in the first 10 days after Trump’s victory, the Southern Poverty Law Center documented 867 “bias-related incidents” across the country. (And yet, the government itself has no reliable way of tracking hate crime. “That’s because reporting of hate crimes is voluntary, not mandatory,” CNN reported yesterday.)
As New Yorkers, we live in one of the most progressive and diverse cities in the nation, so we might think that hate crimes only happen in rural America, and are therefore not our problem. Unfortunately, that’s just patently false. Back in November, Governor Cuomo said that the “ugly political discourse” of the campaign trail has only gotten worse, having transformed into an all-out “social crisis” of hate crime and intolerance. “This fear and this anger, misdirected, seeks an enemy,” he said. “It seeks a target and that target has become people who we see as different than ourselves.” Recently, Cuomo launched a Statewide hotline for reporting “incidents of bias and discrimination.” According to the NYPD, hate crimes have been on the rise in the last year right here in New York City– as of November 13, 328 had been reported since the start of 2016. (As Gothamist noted, that’s a 31.5 percent increase since 2015.)
Ok, that’s a little overwhelming. So how can we even begin to respond to awful garbage like this?
(Photo: C Ceres Merry)
(Photo: John Ambrosio)
After over a decade of uncertainty, the city has struck a deal to acquire the final 11 acres needed to complete Bushwick Inlet Park. The parcel of land on the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront, a subject of controversy for years, will be purchased for $160 million, according to announcement from the mayor’s office.
Shoot for Girls at Cafe Grumpy (Photo by Kavitha Surana)
Who needs a Girls tour bus? Finally, the diehard couch potatoes among us will be able to check out every haunt Ilana, Aziz or Lena have graced on their shows. And New Yorkers fed up with getting the hand from power-tripping PAs have some data-driven ammo when they complain there are too many film shoots in their neighborhood.
(photo by Kavitha Surana)
City Council members pushed Mayor de Blasio’s new rezoning plan to prioritize deeper affordability during a hearing yesterday on a key pillar of his effort to add 200,000 new affordable units over 10 years. If passed, Mandatory Inclusionary Housing would require new constructions in certain neighborhoods to set aside 25-30 percent of the units as permanently affordable.
The NuHart Plastics Building (Photo: Nicole Disser)
(Photo: McGolrick Park Neighborhood Alliance Facebook)
As the Mayor’s office allocates $130 million to improving neglected parks, one Greenpoint mother on a mission is celebrating the $1.3 million that will go toward a playground that has long made her worry about her daughter’s safety.
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