HBRUARY 1997 $1.

00
r
Fixing Broken Buildings
L
ate last month, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced he had reas-
signed his housing commissioner, Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, to take
over the city agency that runs welfare programs. That evening the
usual pundits appeared on New York One cable news. One of them
described Barrios-Paoli as the city's commissioner of personnel-a post
she hasn't held for nearly a year. Her housing job wasn't noted.
That says it all. These days, housing is such a
I " _ " ' _ ~ - " " " " ' ' ' - fringe issue for the policy elite that City Hall jour-
nalists barely notice what's up at the Department of
Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).
Mayor Giuliani could change this by choosing a
ED ITO R I A l skilled, aggressive and politically savvy new hous-
ing commissioner-and giving him or her authority
to pursue a serious agenda around housing quality
and affordability. It's a good time for such a move: to win reelection,
Giuliani needs support from the neighborhoods where his political cur-
rency is now nearly worthless-low-income and working class black and
Latino districts hit hard by government cutbacks.
So far, the mayor's disinterest in housing has been very clear. Of late,
HPD's overriding concern has been to sell tax liens held by the city on hun-
dreds of privately owned buildings and to tum thousands of city-owned
properties over to private property managers, developers, nonprofits and
tenants. Capital funding for new development has been all but eliminated.
Less than a year ago, high level officials circulated a memo through City
Hall proposing that HPD be dismantled.
Mayor Giuliani espouses a "broken windows" theory of policing that
calls for zero tolerance of such offenses as vandalism and public drink-
ing. If he really cares about the quality of life for all New Yorkers, he
should take that theory to its logical next step-and become intolerant of
the terribly dilapidated and overcrowded housing conditions that prolif-
erate in uptown Manhattan, Central Brooklyn, Jamaica and large sec-
tions of the Bronx.
We need a commissioner who will complete and make public the
much-touted computerized early warning system to identify housing at
risk. More importantly, we need a commissioner who will use govern-
ment power effectively to prevent abandonment and preserve housing
quality, easing the cost-burden for good owners-and cutting the lifeline
for profiteering mortgage holders and incompetent landlords.
And we need a mayor and a commissioner who will lobby for ade-
quate funding for affordable housing from Washington and Albany; who
will take a public stand recognizing the deepening crisis in housing
affordability, and who will support organized tenants in their fights to
secure decent homes.
This is an excellent time to shift to a higher gear.
Andrew White
Editor
Cover illustration by Aaron Meshon

City Limits
Volume XXII Number 2
City Limits is published ten times per year, monthly except
bi-monthly issues in June/ July and AugusVSeptember, by
the City Limits Community Information Service, Inc., a non-
profit organization devoted to disseminating information
concerning neighborhood revitalization.
Editor: Andrew White
Senior Editors: Kierna Mayo, Kim Nauer, Glenn Thrush
Managing Editor: Robin Epstein
Contributing Editors: James Bradley, Rob Polner
Design Directi on: James Conrad, Paul V Leone
Adverti sing Representative: Faith Wiggins
Proofreader: Sandy Socolar
Photographers: Dietmar Liz-Lepiorz, Melissa Cooperman
Associate Director,
Center for an Urban Future: Neil Kleiman
Sponsors:
Association for Neighborhood and
Housing Development, Inc.
Pratt Institute Center for Community
and Environmental Development
Urban Homesteading Assistance Board
Board of Directors:
Eddie Bautista, New York Lawyers for
the Public Interest
Beverly Cheuvront, City Harvest
Shawn Dove, Rheedlen Centers
Celia Irvine, ANHD
Francine Justa, Neighborhood Housing Services
Errol Louis, Central Brooklyn Partnership
Rebecca Reich, Low Income Housing Fund
Andrew Reicher. UHAB
Tom Robbins, Journalist
Doug Turetsky, former City Limits Editor
Pete Williams, National Urban League
'Affiliations for identification only.
Subscription rates are: for individuals and community
groups, $25/Dne Year, $35/Two Years; for businesses,
foundations, banks, government agencies and libraries,
$35/Dne Year, $50/Two Years. Low income, unemployed,
$10/Dne Year.
City Limits welcomes comments and article contributions.
Please include a stamped, self-addressed envelope for
return manuscripts. Material in City Limits does not neces-
sarily reflect the opinion of the sponsoring organizations.
Send correspondence to: City Limits, 40 Prince SI.. New
Yorl<, NY 10012. Postmaster: Send address changes to City
Limits, 40 Prince St, NYC 10012.
Periodical postage paid
New York, NY 10001
City Limits (lSSN 0199-0330)
(212) 925-9820
FAX (212) 966-3407
e-mail : CitLim@aoLcom
Copyright 1997. All Rights Reserved. No
portion or portions of this journal may be reprinted with-
out the express permission of the publishers.
City Limits is indexed in the Alternative Press
Index and the Avery Index to Architectural
Periodicals and is available on microfilm from University
Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, MI 48106.
CITY LIMITS
FEBRUARY 1997
FEATURES
Throne Together
The Latin Kings court unity and redemption at the Three Kings celebration.
Photos by Dietmar Liz-Lepiorz
Ten-PAC
Some pundits say the influence of political action committees is waning.
But in New York, where the perception of power is as important as the real thing, a
player without a PAC is prey. City Limits picks ten power PACs you need to watch.
By James Bradley
Cell's Angels
Politicians would just as soon send teenage felons away ' til they' re old and
frail. Some teens, however, are getting a second chance-and proving that second
chances are a good idea. By Pam Frederick
PIPELINES
Murphy's Flaw
Father Louis Gigante's takeover of the South Bronx's Murphy Consolidated
housing project was the first step in the city's privatization of public housing manage-
ment. But tenants say they're trapped in a game of musical sl umlords.
By Glenn Thrush
New Lords of Flatbush
New York's latest immigrants are reviving the city's economy, no matter
what the neo-Know Nothings say. Say hello to the entrepreneurs and professionals
whose huddled Master Cards are yeaming to breathe free. By Sasha Abramsky
PROFILES
Across the Ages
A Union Settlement program matches kids with community elders, bridging the gap
between New York generations. By Kierna Mayo
COMMENTARY
Cityview [29
NYPD Strategy Number 9 By Yohance Maqubela
Cityview [30
Makeshift Miracle By Harry DeRienzo
Review [31
Boomerpang By Dimitry Leger
Spare Change [34
Bench Warmers By Thomas Kamber
DEPARTMENTS
Briefs &, 7 Editorial 2
All 's Ferrer in Landlord Land
Letters 4
NYCHA's Abusive Policy
Professional
Living Wage Works Directory 32
Housing Funds Dry Up
Job Ads 33,35

LETTERS i
,
Assigning Cullt
Max Block's piece "Justice in Flames"
[December 1996] omitted a central charge
in the case against Edwin Smith for the
murder of a firefighter. The issue was not
that Smith had started the flre, which even
the prosecutor accepted as accidental, but
that he had not told firefighters and police
on the scene that the building was empty.
But such information, when offered by
a homeless drug addict, is not likely to be
believed or even heard. I doubt Smith
could have influenced the firefighters '
course of action and I imagine that he
knew he would be seen as irrelevant, irri-
tating and interfering.
Block concludes that "Smith is respon-
sible." He's not. The mayor, whose poli-
cies force New Yorkers to build fires of
animal fat and trash in the basements of
abandoned buildings in order to avoid
freezing to death, murdered Lieutenant
John Clancy.
Jeanne Bergman
Housing Works
Max Block replies: The central charge in
the Smith case, at least in legal terms,
was recklessness. That is, it wasn't so
much a concern of the judge or the pros-
ecutor whether the fire had been an acci-
dent or whether Smith failed to tell fire-
fighters the building was empty. The crux
of the prosecutor's case was that Smith
acted recklessly when he rigged his
makeshift heater. The guilty verdict on
that charge, in combination with the
death of a firefighter on the scene,
allowed for the murder charge. That's
what sent Smith to prison.
Bergman is partly correct in that
Smith's failure to warn the firefighters
became an issue-but only insofar as it
was bandied about by the district attor-
ney to convince the jury and the press
that Smith belonged behind bars. The DA
used the story to chip away at Smith's
character.
As far as the argument that Giuliani's
policies are to blame for Lt. Clancy's
death, I fear that a charge like that ulti-
mately obscures an important implication
of the verdict: Anyone of us could face the
same charges Smith faced if we are forced
to heat our homes in a makeshift way. Still,
the point is a good one. Hats off to
Bergman and Housing Works.
~ F
For 20Years
We've Been There
ForYou.
of
NEW YORK
INCORPORATED
Your
Neighborhood
Housing
Insurance
Specialist
R&F OF NEW YORK, INC. has a special
department obtaining and servicing insurance for
tenants, low-income co-ops and not-for-profit
community groups. We have developed competitive
insurance programs based on a careful evaluation
of the special needs of our customers. We have
been a leader from the start and are dedicated to
the people of New York City.
For In/ormation call:
Ingrid Kaminski, Executive Vice President
R&F of New York
One Wall Street Court
New York, NY 10005-3302
212 269-8080 800 635-6002 212 269-8112 (fax)
F
Journalists Hay. ethics?
While I enjoyed your 20th anniversary
issue (November 1996), I take issue with
former editor Annette Fuentes' cavalier
recounting of her faked cover photo.
''Donning a rumpled old raincoat I dug out
of my closet... yours truly became a despair-
ing woman seeking shelter at a Red Cross
facility near Times Square," she writes.
She should have dug her ethics out of
the same closet!
What kind of message does that send?
Faked photos undermine the credibility of
your reporting!
AB Klaus
Borough Park
The editor replies: Nope, there's no fakery
going on here. To our knowLedge no one has
"reenacted" anything in our pages since
Fuentes' jlil1ation with the fuzzy edges of
journalism more than 10 years ago. And IW
one will in thefL/ture. Still, we were first, well
ahead of ABC's notorious (fake) secret-cam-
era video of spies trading briefcases-and
before the whoLe genre of television fakery a
la Inside Edition erupted in our living rooms.
Fuentes' comments were just a little self-crit-
icism with a solid sense of humor attached.
Reach 20,000
readers in the
nonprofit sector,
government
and property
management.
ADVERTISE
IN
CITY
LIMITS
Call Faith Wiggins at
(212) 925-9820 or
(91 7)-792-8426
CITY LIMITS
~ ... ..... ............... ............. ........ .
,
t
Dolores (Dee) Solomon in her
newly renovated shop, Dee's Cards N
Wedding Services
CALL: CHASE COMMUNITY
DEVELOPMENT COMMERCIAL
LENDING 212-332-4061
Moving in the right direction
Happy Renovation Dee!
When Dolores (Dee) Solomon went after a much needed
loan to keep her struggling small business competitive she
thought it was a "mission impossible". And it was. Then
Thelma Russell, her longtime branch manager at The
Chase Manhattan Bank branch at 125th Street, connected
her to the right people.
Thelma personally introduced Dolores to the business
lending officers of the Chase Community Development
Group. Working one-on-one as a team, they customized a
loan package for Dolores. They did it with Chase's flexible
"CAN*DO" lending program which makes special
allowances for the credit challenges facing many
community-based businesses.
Dolores got her loan and business has never been better.
Stop by her shop at 480 Lenox Avenue and see for your-
self. It just goes to show you: success is still all about mak-
ing the right relationships.
; ........................... ~ Community Development Group
CHASE. The right relationship is everything.
8M
1996 The Chase Manhattan Bank. Member FDIC.
Protestors from the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project rally in front
of Brooklyn 0 A. Charles Hynes' Kensington home in January. Hynes IS
seeking the death penalty against a gay man accused of killing his lover
LIVING WAGE WORKS
Labor and community campaigns
demanding that cities require munic-
ipal contractors to pay employees a
living wage are gaining momentum
nationwide, Measures are pending
in Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los
Angeles, Minneapolis, and New
Orleans. But they are facing increas-
ingly effective opposition from offi-
cials and business interests.
Opponents recently defeated
ballot initiatives in Missouri and
Montana and quashed a proposal in
Denver. In Albuquerque, the city
clerk's office derailed a living wage
campaign by disqualifying 1,000 of
the signatures on election petitions,
Resour(es
HERE'S WHY THE KIDS ARE NOT
ALL RIGHT: Of 64 inmates surveyed
recently at the Spofford Juvenile
Detention (enter in the Bronx, almost
half know cops personally, but only a
ACORN is challenging this ploy in
court.
But a new study evaluating the
impact of Baltimore's 1994 living
wage ordinance debunks critics'
claims that the living wage would
greatly increase contract costs, lead
to layoffs and alienate business.
Issued by the Preamble Centerfor
Public Policy, a year-old Washington-
based organization, the study says
that Baltimore's contract costs did
increase last year-but by only one-
quarter of one percent The cost of
enforcing the law were minimal-17
cents per taxpayer. There were no
layoffs due to higher labor costs.
third have ever had contact with
coaches or counselors. The survey,
conducted by Youth Force, a Bronx-
based advocacy group, also found
that all 64 say they value education
and most plan to go to college. In
truth, however, only one in 10 stu-
dents in poor neighborhoods goes to
HOUSING FUNDS DRY UP
There's a one-word explanation
for why there are far fewer mental -
ly ill men and women living on the
streets today than there were just
five years ago: Housing. Since the
late 1980s, New York has created
nearly 13,000 new beds in commu-
nity-based residences for home-
less, mentally ill men and women,
the majority of them in the city.
That pace of development is
coming to a halt as funding runs
out. The nonprofit groups that run
the existing housing say their resi -
dences are filled to capacity.
"It's much harder to place peo-
ple now," says Steven Coe, execu-
tive director of Community Access,
an organization that houses hun-
dreds of the mentally disabled on
the Lower East Side. "Our intake is
a trickle because we don't have
space."
In 1990, state and city officials
signed a five-year agreement to
provide permanent housing to more
than 7,000 homeless. But in 1994,
Governor Pataki canceled the final
300 units and the agreement
expired soon afterwards. The last
units in the pipeline are scheduled
for completion this spring and so
far, neither Giuliani nor Pataki
extended the effort.
In fact, contractors told
researchers the living wage require-
ment "levels the playing field" and
"relieves pressure on employers to
squeeze labor costs in order to win
low-bid contracts,"
Finally, the study rebuts the
charge that a mandate to pay
above-poverty-Ievel wages will
cause capital flight, an argument
Mayor Giuliani cited when he
vetoed New York's living wage legis-
lation last year, which was later
overridden by the City Council. In
Baltimore, the value of local busi-
ness assets, which had declined for
the previous four years, increased
4.6 percent since the law's passage,
Philomena Mariani
college. One in four wind up in a juvie
lo(kup. For a copy of the upcoming
report call (718) 665-4268.
PERMANENT HOUSING MAY BE BETTER
THAN A HOMELESS SHELTER,
but the Giuliani bureaucracy often
blocks the path. So says a survey due
Yet in 1993, the state Office of
Mental Health estimated the city
needed housing for at least 14,000
more mentally ill homeless people.
Brooklyn Assemblyman Jim
Brennan and a group of advocates
are pushing Albany for new capital
to develop 2,000 rooms in support-
ed, single room occupancy-style
buildings. The group, which
includes the Coalition for the
Homeless, Community Access and
several other organizations, is also
calling for new rent subsidies to
move thousands of people from
community residences into private
apartments.
Recent research has found that
a majority of the city's shelter beds
are used by a relatively few needy
men and women, many of them
mentally disabled, who could be
housed far more cheaply in sup-
ported housing. This could free up
shelter beds for the thousands of
short-term homeless who need a
place to stay.
Last month, as shelters for sin-
gles reached peak capacity of
7,400, the city prepared to open a
new shelter for 380 men in Central
Brooklyn for $6 million.
Albany, however, is not likely to
move quickly, if at all. "I'd be sur-
prised if we could pull together a
new agreement before June," says
Shelly Nortz of the Coalition for the
Homeless. There's a need to move
fast. ''I'm approaching gridlock,"
says Peter Campanelli, president
of the Institute for Community
Living, the largest provider of
housing for the mentally disabled
in the city, ''I' m down to the last
five or six supported housing
vacancies out of more than 200. I
have to hold people in transitional
beds that are more expensive
because there are no apartments
for them. I've never had to do this
before."
The Governor's office failed to
return calls on the issue. A
spokesman for Mayor Giuliani had
no comment. Andrew White
out this month from the Emergency
Allian(e for Homeless Families and the
Tier-2 (oalition, a group of nonprofit
shelter operators. They report that
families are averaging nine months in
shelters before they move into an
apartment-three months longer than
in past years. Applications for rent
CITY LIMITS
B
ALfS FERRER IN lANDLORD lAND
unpaid rent in an escrow
account as a condition of hav-
ing their cases heard in hous-
ing court. The city's top land-
lord lobbying group, the Rent
Stabilization Association, has
long pushed the measure. The
RSA's chief, Joe Strasburg, is
a close friend of Ferrer's.
Bronx Borough President
Fernando Ferrer is a public
champion of tenants' rights,
but his bid to become New
York's first Puerto Rican mayor
is being bolstered by real
estate money-more than
$160,000 worth.
A City Limits analysis of
Ferrer's campaign finance fil-
ings shows that the BP has
taken $20,000 from PAC's asso-
ciated with the city's top land-
lord lobbying group since 1994.
Other real estate interests-
from individual landlords,
developers, management com-
panies and real estate-related
law firms-chipped in $140,000
to Ferrer in the year ending
January 15, 1997.
In all, Ferrer raised a total of
about $1.1 million in that period.
Bronx Beep Freddie Ferrer has taken $160,000 from
real estate interests in his bid to become mayor.
According to state filings,
PACs associated with RSA
have not given funds to any
other likely Democratic may-
oral challenger.
BRIEFS
Despite taking the contribu-
tions, Ferrer has said he sup-
ports the extension of rent con-
trol and rent stabilization and
has blasted Republicans in the
state senate for threatening to
block renewal of rent regula-
tions in Albany this spring. The
BP's campaign office did not
return phone calls, but in a "irresponsible in the extreme."
The vast majority of
Ferrer's real estate money
came from independent com-
panies, most headquartered
outside of the Bronx, which
has the lowest per capita
income of any city borough.
The largest lump-$17,500--
came from a quartet of man-
agement companies head-
quartered in Great Neck, Long
Island, at the address of
Boulevard Realty Corp. And in
a textbook case of bundling,
nearly $10,000 came from 20
different lawyers and the cor-
porate coffers of the law firm
of Borah Goldstein Altschuler
Schwartz-one of the city's
most prominent real estate law
firms. Glenn Thrush
statement faxed to City Limits, But Ferrer has supported a
Ferrer labeled senate Majority measure opposed by many ten-
Leader Joe Bruno's plan to ant organizations that would
annihilate rent regulations as require tenants to deposit
NYCHA'S ABUSIVE POLICY
A New York City Housing
Authority policy designed to prevent
convicted criminals from moving into
apartments is putting battered
women at risk, according to Legal
Aid lawyers.
In preliminary motions on a new
class action lawsuit, up to 3,500
women who applied for public
housing apartments charge that
NYCHA's excessively stringent
screening process is forcing them
to reveal their wherea bouts to the
abusive men in their lives. The pol-
icy is intended to force prospec-
tive tenants to prove they no
longer live with ex-boyfriends and
husbands who have criminal
subsidies are frequently lost by the
city and welfare cases are dosed for
no reason. The Alliance is based at
The Gtizens Committee for Children,
(212) 673-1800.
FEBRUARY 1997
records.
The suit, filed by the Legal Aid
Society, says the women may have
been illegally denied apartments as
a result of NYCHA's beefed-up
screening process.
"The idea that a woman should
have to get in touch with her abuser
just to satisfy a bureaucrat's idea of
proof is absolutely absurd," said
Dorchen Liebholdt, director of
Sanctuary for Families Center for
Battered Women's Legal Services, a
co-plaintiff on the suit.
A NYCHA spokesperson refused
to comment on the ongoing litigation.
Until last April, women were
required to provide three pieces of
THE 104TH CONGRESS IS HISTORY,
BUT ITS LEGACY LIVES ON,
The balanced budget agreement and
the new welfare law were only the
most visible elements of the 104th's
assault on antipoverty programs,
according to an appraisal just pub-
lished by the Washington-based
identification from their former
husbands or boyfriends to prove
they lived separately. While that
policy has been revised, Legal Aid
charges that the new, more
vaguely worded requirements are
just as bad. Although the agency
allowed some of the women to
move into apartments, attorney
Judith Goldiner of Legal Aid says
the old policy is being quietly
enforced. Many women who were
previously rejected are now hav-
ing their cases put in a bureau-
cratic limbo while the authority
figures out what to do next. "You
have women who are trying to
hide from these abusive guys and
Center for Community Change. And
much of last year's agenda is likely
to be revived soon.
As early as this month, for
example, conservatives are likely to
make an aggressive new push for a
balanced budget. And House
Republicans also have reintroduced
NYCHA was making them track
them down and make contact,"
said Goldiner.
In one case described in court
documents, the authority is mulling
the fate of a Lower East Side
woman initially refused an apart-
ment because her drug-dealer ex-
boyfriend lived with her in NYCHA
housing during the early 1990s. The
man lives in Brooklyn today, and is
so abusive that she has obtained on
an order of protection against him.
While waiting for the city's deci-
sion, the woman has been forced to
double-up with her mother-who,
she says, has begun beating her
and her child.
The lawsuit is not expected to be
resolved until later this year, accord-
ing to Goldiner. Glenn Thrush
their radical plan for the overhaul
of the federal public housing laws.
This time around, the Senate is
more likely to approve it. Be pre-
pared.
for a copy, call (202) 342-0567.
D
CityLimits
Takes the
out of
Wall Street.
By moving there.
Our new address,
as of March 1:
120 Wall Street
20th Floor,
New York, NY
1000
5
Three offices available,
good transportation,
conference rooms,
full facilities.
275 Seventh Avenue
(25th Street),
15th Floor,
New York, NY 10001.
Contact Irma Gonzalez
at (212) 929-7604.
Ext. 3018
I' I I II \ \1 I; I{ () I, I I( \ (, I I" (
When it comes
to insurance ...
We've got
you covered.
"3.'.
we work closely with ow' customers
F
or over 40 years, Pelham Brokerage
Inc. has responded to the needs of
our clients with creative, low-cost
insurance programs. We represent all
major insurance carriers specializing in
coverages for Social Servi ce organ-
izations. Our programs are approved by
City, State and Federal funding agencies.
to insure compliance on insurance
requirements throughout the develop-
ment process. Thereafter, we wiU tailor
a permanent insurance program to meet
the specific needs of your organization.
Let us be part of your management
team. A specialists in the area of
new construction and rehabilitation
of existing multiple unit properties,
Our clients include many of the leading
organizations in the New York City area
providing ocial services.
For information caU:
Steven Potolsky, President
111 Great Neck Road, Great eck, New York 11021 Phone (516) 482-5765 Fa..< (516) i82-5837
I " " I I( \ " ( I
Development Leadership Network
A national network of community development practitioners
National Retreat: March 6 - 8, 1997
Calistoga, CA
Debate and discuss the themes of individual and
neighborhood "selFsufficiency" at this year's DLN retreat.
Network with peers!
Meet and hear stories from development practitioners nationally.
Learn some best (and not so best) practices from around the country.
Relax and enjoy!
Experience Calistoga'S incredible mud baths and hot springs. Calistoga is just
one hour from San Francisco and accessible by public transportation.
Sign up now!
Registration is $125 and includes two lunches and continental breakfasts.
Accommodations range from $40 to $ 8 9 per night.
For immediate information contact: Kim Ball
11148 Harper, Detroit, MI 48213 (313) 571-2800 x121 FAX (313) 571-7307
DLNHQ@aol.com
CITY LIMITS

Across the Ages
A unique program finds common ground between young
New Yorkers and their elders. By Kierna Mayo
A
strange thing is happening
this afternoon at the East
River Senior Center in East
Harlem. Instead of elderly
people walking slowly
through the door, the place is filling up
with lively teens. Gloria Zelaya, coordina-
tor of an intergenerational program run by
the Union Settlement Association Services
for Older Adults, anxiously awaits their
because they take it from there."
Zelaya says the program has been
working well since last October and serves
as a model for intergenerational relation-
ship-building. The program works in col-
laboration with Elders Share the Arts, a
Brooklyn-based group that creates inter-
generational partnerships through expres-
sive arts like drama and dance. ESA pro-
vides "legacy work" workshops for the
Adrianna on the cold walk to Hodge's
apartment building on East I 10th Street.
Adrianna and Charles have been visiting
Hodge regularly for weeks now. The rou-
tine is basic: Get to the Lehman Village
Houses. Wait 10 minutes for the one
working elevator to arrive. Ring Miss
Hodge's bell. Smile, be nice. Walk her to
the local market. Bring her and her stuff
back home.
arrival. "What the kids do,"
he explains, "is serve home-
bound seniors."
If it sounds simple, that 's
because in a lot of ways it is.
Basically, the senior center
serves as an after-school
home-base where the high
In pairs, the teens hit the
streets and ring the doorbells
of community elders.
This simple routine makes
all the difference to Hodge,
who is severely arthritic in her
left hand and who also suffers
from what she calls "infantile
paralysis"-that is, polio. "I
had something of a stroke
when I was two. My hands
shake. I don't baby myself,
though. When you see me
baby myself, you know I don't
feel good," she insists.
schoolers can mix, mingle,
drop off their bags and make
phone calls. Then, in pairs,
usually a boy and a girl, they
hit the streets and ring the
doorbells of community
elders w:th hopes of provid-
ing some company and, more
likely, some help.
III find myself thinking about
how lonely they get, " admits
Alexander, a 76-year-old.
The most surprising ele-
ment of the intergenerational
program is the bonding many
participants experience around
common interests. "Being
with one senior in particular
felt like I was with my grand-
father who passed away," says
Yadira, a 12th grader. He
asked me what I wanted to be.
In many other ways,
though, the work these young
people do is not simple at all.
Although the trips to the
supermarket are easy enough,
III would never want to
be that lonely. "
the mental exercise of bonding with "old
people" can be quite a challenge. "I find
myself thinking about how lonely they
get," admits Alexander. a l6-year-old. "I
would never want to be that lonely."
Feelings of Ambivalence
In fact , many teens find that, through
the program, initial feelings of ambiva-
lence about the plight of the elderly, their
history and current realities are slowly
transformed into more humble feelings of
respect and admiration. "You have to call
them first and give them time," says anoth-
er teen explaining the process of connect-
ing with a senior. "And talking over the
phone is the most difficult thing. They
don't know you, you don't know them.
Basically you don't talk about their past,
you just explain what the program is about
and cover the basic stuff. From there we
start talking about their life, but really we
don' t have to ask that many questions
FEBRUARY 1997
Union Settlement program, says Zelaya,
and they have come in handy breaking the
ice between teens and seniors. One exam-
ple of the legacy work is the family trees
the teens and seniors of the Union
Settlement Intergenerational Program
complete and share. "[Through them]
some people find out fascinating things.
Some do really have intere ling histories,"
says the director.
Seventy-five year old Helen Hodge is
no exception. "I'm a native New Yorker,"
she says. "But my parents were born in St.
Thomas. I graduated [high school] in '37.
I did factory assembly work, work for the
Amalgamated Union. Lets see, that was,
oh, '41." Hodge has a remarkable memo-
ry. She can tell you the dates of birth and
death of all 12 of her siblings, her parents'
anniversary date in 1908, and other signif-
icant events in her life. For her, construct-
jng a family tree was no problem.
"Miss Hodge is, like, real nice," says
When I said a social worker, he said, 'Social
worker? I used to be a social worker for 28
years.' I found that we had a lot in common.
He's a Gemini, me too. It's funny."
It's Natural
At the senior center, Zalaya challenges
the young people to discuss changes they
have made in their lives as a result of their
experiences working with the elderly.
"When you see elderly people in the morn-
ing, like on the train, you have a lot more
patience," says Alexander. "One time
these elderly women were in front of me
and they were moving so slow, they made
me miss the train. I didn't say, 'Oh, man,
would you move? You made me miss the
train.' You just look at it like, they missed
the train also.
"I'd stereotyped old people as slow.
Many of them are slow. But for good rea-
son-it's natural for them to be like that.
Man, I'm gonna be old one day, too." _
PROFILE ~
l

PIPEliNE "

SEBCO's
management has left
a massive hole in
Mattie Roberts '
bathroom ceiling for
nearly six nWllths.
leM
Murphy's Flaw
Since Father Gigante took over the dtys'Murphy Consolidated
housing project, almost everything that could go wrong
for tenants has. By Glenn Thrush
A
hot bath is a cruel thing to
deny an 85-year-old
woman, but Mattie
Roberts is not what you
would call a complainer.
When a pipe in the apartment upstairs
burst and flooded last August, obliterating
most of her bathroom ceiling, she squared
her jaw and watched as the workman
tramped in and out.
"We'll be back soon to fix it," they said.
So Mrs. Roberts settled back in front of
the television and a snack tray crowded
with prescription bottles, Iinaments and
aches-and-cricks sundries and waited.
"The bathtub was nice," she laments in a
whisper that can barely contend with the
TV in her immaculately kept one-bedroom
South Bronx apartment. "I used to use that
tub, but I can't use it now. They still ain't
fixed that ceiling."
Mrs. Roberts' tub
has handicapped
accessible grip bars
and anti-slide
footholds. But it's
useless, constantly
filthy, a collector of
plaster dust, water-
bugs and whatever
else happens to drop
down from the 20-
square foot void
where the ceiling
should be.
It 's also a
metaphor for a priva-
tization scheme gone
awry. Fixing the hole
is the responsibility of
the SEBCO Manage-
ment Company,
which won a $2.75
million contract from
the New York City
Housing Authority
(NYCHA) to manage
its Murphy Consoli-
dated housing project,
an 850-apartment
jumble of townhous-
es, small apartment
buildings and con-
verted brownstones.
In all, Murphy
Consoli-dated's 72
buildings are scat-
tered throughout a 25-
block radius in the
South Bronx neigh-
borhoods of Crotona
Park East, Longwood
and Hunts Point. The
F
Housing Authority has owned them for
more than 15 years; most of the properties
were taken by the federal government from
landlords in foreclosure proceedings two
decades ago.
SEBCO's chief-the man the city
picked three years ago to oversee
Murphy's management-is Father Loui s
Gigante, a former City Councilman who
runs one of the Bronx's most powerful
low-income housing empires. He also hap-
pens to be brother and confidante of reput-
ed Genovese crime family boss Vincent
"The Chin" Gigante.
For most South Bronx residents, the
SEBCO name-short for Southeast Bronx
Development Corporation-refers to a net-
work of nonprofit development and social
service agencies. The SEBCO Management
Company shares the name-but it is actual-
ly a for-profit Gigante set up to manage the
nonprofit's buildings. And the income from
the NYCHA contract is going directly into
the private company's bank account.
According to a 1989 investigation by
Village Voice reporter William Bastone,
the priest, who owns several Manhattan
and upstate New York residences, used
mob-connected contractors in the develop-
ment of the 2,500-plus units SEBCO pro-
duced in the South Bronx. Still, even crit-
ics concede Gigante's management com-
pany keeps most of the buildings he devel-
oped in excellent condition.
The same cannot be said about the
NYCHA properties managed by SEBCO.
In two dozen interviews with City Limits,
many residents say the new maintenance
contract has been a failure. SEBCO-
installed floors have buckled within
months after they were put in; roofs in
many of the Murphy buildings have
chronic leaks; tenants claim that patch-up
repairs in response to their heat and water
complaints have left them cold. And then
there's an assortment of smaller ills that
go months without being repaired:
cracked tiles, busted closet doors,
unpainted walls, crippled oven-ranges
and water damage.
In South Bronx communities awash in
crack and heroin, SEBCO and NYCHA
managers have allowed security doors and
lobby windows to remain broken and
unrepaired for months at a time. The lassi-
tude encourages dealers to continue to
peddle their wares in the buildings, despite
claims that SEBCO management would
clean up the buildings.
"This here is everybody's get-high
building," says Mary Chambliss, who has
lived in her first-floor Murphy
Consolidated apartment on Hunts Point
CITVLlMITS

Avenue for seven years. Chambliss is
especially incensed by the fact that across
the street, in buildings SEBCO developed,
vigilant maintenance and banks of strate-
gically-placed security cameras have cre-
ated a practically drug-free zone.
"Second-class citizens, that's what we
are," she says.
"I'm starting to wonder if things
weren't actually better under the Housing
Authority. And things were bad then,"
adds David Pyatt, a Bryant Avenue tenant
who had to wait months to have the hole in
his bathroom ceiling repaired. He says his
stove has been broken for a year.
On th. Privatization Block
It is hard to tell whether to blame
SEBCO or NYCHA for the Murphy
buildings' flaws. Calls to Father Gigante,
who has reportedly been spending much
of his time counseling The Chin in prepa-
ration for his upcoming trial, were not
returned. And David Post, a SEBCO
manager, referred all calls to the Housing
Authority and hung up when pressed for
answers.
But there is a lot more at stake here
than Father Gigante's reputation. For
years, public housing authorities around
the country have been contracting out
management services to private-sector
companies. The SEBCO contract was the
first of its size in New York City. If the
pilot effort succeeds, NYCHA sources say,
the city will consider farming out the man-
agement of more than 20,000 low-rise
authority units to private managers.
Three years ago, as part of the authori-
ty's recognition that it had long misman-
aged Murphy and other non-conventional
housing projects, NYCHA Chairman
Ruben Franco requested bidders for the
new contract. He chose SEBCO from II
companies that submitted bids. In part, the
authority selected the firm because of its
track record.
Two much smaller, non-conventional
NYCHA holdings also were contracted to
private companies. Neither has had the
problems Murphy has had. Part of the rea-
son is that Murphy has the poorest tenants
of the group and the worst maintenance
history,
So why were so many maintenance
companies eager to take on the Murphy
management contract?
Simple. They wanted to buy in on the
ground floor of what could be one of the
largest privatization gold mines in New
York: the management of NYCHA'S vast
stock of smaller apartment buildings.
"There's a very, very big pot of gold at
FEBRUARY 1997
the end of this," says one real estate execu-
tive who didn't want his name used.
"I think this is the model for the pri va-
tization of the 20 to 25,000 scattered site
buildings NYCHA's been mismanaging for
years," says Phil Thompson, a former high-
ranking authority official who pushed for
NYCHA to privatize management of its
odd-lot buildings. "The idea is the tum all
of these buildings over to community-
based non profits and for-profits that would
be a lot better at managing them."
Shatt.red Window Pan
Things looked sunny when SEBCO
first began taking over Murphy sites two
years ago.
In June 1995, the Daily News reported
that the company's management of the
Murphy building at 875 Irvine Street in
Hunts Point was helping to clear the
building of heroin dealers who had run
the place for years. According to the
paper, the clean-up was bolstered by
"innovative" management techniques,
namely the hiring a live-in super and
security guards.
"It's our showplace," bragged SEBCO's
housing manager, Cono Depaola.
Today, winter gusts blow through the
shattered window panes of the show-
place's front entrance. The lock on the
"security" door rattles around uselessly in
its socket. Anyone who pushes it can get
into the building. On the roof it's the same
story: the emergency-exit fire alarm has
been smashed and the roof door flaps in
the wind.
Tenants and police say drug dealers,
most of whom live in other parts of the
neighborhood, sell and store heroin in the
lobby and in some apartments.
"It's just as bad as it's ever been," says
Esther Benitez, former head of the build-
ing's tenant association. NYCHA says it
replaced the building's front door four
times in December alone and won't do so
again until a contractor installs a new mag-
netic lock in mid-February.
The broken door is a perfect example of
the philosophy-espoused by Mayor
Rudolph Giuliani and former Police Chief
William Bratton-that the slow repair of
vandalized buildings is an invitation to
criminals. On one recent morning a tenant
leaving the building to run a few errands
found herself facing a sight she had never
seen before: a neat queue of 20 customers
impatient for their daily heroin buy.
The SEBCO security patrols haven't
really had much of an effect. "The securi-
ty guys get paid about minimum wage," a
local cop explains. "They don't have guns.
I don't even think they've got nightsticks.
No vests. If you were in their place, would
you be confronting drug dealers? They' re
no deterrent."
Around the corner, on Hunts Point
Avenue--one of the city's most notorious
drug drags-a row of to more Murphy
buildings slouch behind the crack vials
strewn on their stoops. The SEBCO-owned
apartment houses across the street gleam,
sealed behind locked doors and the aegis of
roof-mounted security cameras.
The type of new magnetic doors that
NYCHA says will soon be installed at 875
Irvine Street haven't provided much secu-
rity on the Hunts Point Avenue buildings.
Five of them are broken and tenants say
they have been that way for months. A
sixth door is so bent that it simply needs to
be shoved to get it open. A seventh has a
perfectly functional lock-but the two
panes of security glass above it have been
neatly punched out.
"The crackheads walk right in here, ail
hours," says l6-year-old Roxanne
Rodriguez, who lives with her grandmoth-
er and uncle in a ground-floor flat at 835
Hunts Point Ave. "There are two little girls
who live in the second floor and they got
to walk past this every time they come
home from school."
Mary Chambliss, who lives a few doors
down the avenue, says that crackheads and
junkies treat the hallway outside her front
door like it was their living room. "I open
my door and the crack bottles roll right in.
There are needles in the hallway right out-
side. Sometimes they pee and it comes in
through under my door. It's disgusting."
As with other inquiries, SEBCO would
not officially respond, but maintenance
workers say the problem with the front
door locks was NYCHA's fault.
"We call in the broken doors to
NYCHA every day," says one super who
identified himself as "Smiley." "Housing
knows about them, but they haven't done
anything yet. It's their whole bureaucracy.
They haven't approved all of the
requests."
A Pla.tlc Tarp
Mattie Roberts says she has called the
SEBCO repair office numerous times and
gotten nowhere. "A few weeks ago, a man
came in, looked at [the hole above the
bathtub 1 and said, 'I can't fix this. '"
NYCHA Spokesman Hilly Gross says
SEBCO maintenance crews first reported
the ceiling collapse in November. He
blames the repair delay on the upstairs
tenant who won't open her door to
SEBCO crews.
-,

e-
"How come nobody even bothered to
put plastic over the hole?" Roberts replies.
Leaks are a problem throughout the
project. A woman who lives in one of the
39 apartments at 1317 West Farms Road
says her family unrolls a plastic tarp to lay
on the living room carpet every time it
rains-even though the ceiling has been
repaired twice.
Although Gross and SEBCO mainte-
nance workers say almost all the Murphy
buildings' boilers are in good condition,
there are heat problems in many apart-
ments. During most of the 20 or so unan-
nounced, dead-of-winter visits conducted
by City Limits, ovens were fired up to
supplement apartment radiators, which
were either cold or only slightly warm.
Roxanne Rodriguez's 57-year-old
grandmother needs to sleep in her
clothes-under four blankets-most win-
ter nights. Roxanne's infant nephew gets
Nev# York Lay,yers
for the Public Interest
provides free legal referrals for community-based and non-profit groups
seeking pro bono representation. Projects include corporate, tax and real
estate work, zoning advice, housing and employment discrimination,
environmental justice, disability and civil rights.
For further information,
call NYLPI at (212) 727-2270.
There is no charge for NYLPI's services.
Specializing in
Community Development Groups,
HDFCs and Non ... Profits
Low ... Cost Insurance and Quality Service.
NANCY HARDY
Insurance Broker
Over 20 Years of Experience.
270 North Avenue, New Rochelle, NY 10801
914,654,8667
similar treatment.
And Xanthea Gibbons, who lives in
1002 East 167th Street, a six-story
Murphy building located next door to
SEBCO's office, says she hasn ' t had heat
for over a year. Asked how many times
she's called for help, Gibbons begins
counting, then lets out a tired chuckle.
"Oh, please," she says.
POinting Fingers
If SEBCO and the housing authority
are trying to maintain a unified front in
public, they have been pointing fingers at
each other behind closed doors.
Housing authority officials, speaking
on condition of anonymity, say they ques-
tion SEBCO's will to put maintenance pri-
orities over profit. Father Gigante and his
employees maintain they haven' t been
given enough money to make long-
neglected repairs and charge that
NYCHA's paper-mill bureaucracy has
been impossible to negotiate.
"Look at the Murphy buildings, then
look at our other buildings," says one
SEBCO maintenance man. "We know how
to take care of buildings when we are
given the stuff we need."
A friend of Gigante, also speaking on
condition of anonymity, says the priest is
fed up with NYCHA's requirement that he
pre-clear repairs totaling more than
$1 ,500."They want to do privatization, but
they don' t want to give the contractor the
freedom to run the buildings like he wants
to," the source says.
Publicly, however, NYCHAdenies any
conflict. "With SEBCO we really don't
have any problem with their maintenance.
We' ve had a few complaints on their
paperwork, but that's all," says NYCHA's
Gross. "But bear in mind, this is a pilot ini-
tiative .... And these buildings were a dis-
aster before SEBCO took them over."
If Gross chalks some of the complaints
up to the contract's novelty, he sees a more
nefarious potential source: SEBCO's
aggressi ve rent collection efforts.
"Is it not possible that suddenly there's
a new regime here, a regime that's collect-
ing rent more vigorously than before, that
maybe there's a feeling among the tenants
that, hey, SEBCO's screwing us?" he asks.
Still, lawyers from the Legal Aid
Society are considering filing a c1ass-
action lawsuit against SEBCO, NYCHA-
or both-on behalf of Mattie Roberts and
other tenants.
For the time being, Mrs. Roberts seems
resigned to a bathless future. "I don't com-
plain," she says. "I just keep paying my
rent and hoping. "
CITY LIMITS
YES! Start my subscription to City Limits.
City Limits shows you what is
working in our communities:
where the real successes are
taking place, who is behind them,
why they're working and what we
can all learn from them. And we
expose the bureaucratic garbage,
sloppy supervision and pure
o $25/one year 00 issues)
o $35/two years
Business / Government/Libraries
o $35/one year 0 $50 two years
Name
Address
City State Zip
City Limits, 40 Prince Street, New York
10012
GUTSY.
corruption that's failing our
neighborhoods. City Limits: News.
INCISIVE.
Analysis. Investigative reports.
Isn't it time you subscribed?
FEBRUARY 1997
PBOVOCATIV I;.
mBankers1rust Cotnpany
Community Development Group
A resource for the non-profit
development community

Gary Hattem, Managing Director
Amy Brusiloff, Vice President
280 Park Avenue, 19West
New York, New York 10017
Tel: Fax:
Me

PIPEliNE ~
,
-
New Lords of Flatbush
Immigrants are an economic powerhouse rescuing long-
neglected New York neighborhoods. By Sasha Abramsky
M
un Cha sits in the storage
area beneath his large deli
on Church Avenue in
F1atbush, Brooklyn, talk-
ing about his experiences
in America. Upstairs, dozens of customers
buy a hybrid mix of Caribbean fruits and
vegetables and Korean delicacies. A buck-
etful of blue crabs sits on the floor, not far
from shelves stocking Worcester and soy
sauces. In the surrounding neighborhood
are stores owned by other Koreans, as well
as Arabs, Indians, Mexicans, Caribbeans
and a plethora of other nationals. Flatbush
has become one of the great crossroads of
the world.
In Korea, Mun also worked in a shop,
but says he couldn't earn much money
there. His sister lived in Chicago, and in
1982 he decided to join her. "My brother-
in-law's older brother had a business in
New York. We called him. He said, ' New
York's got many jobs, but it's very hard. '"
Mun and his wife decided they would take
a chance, and moved to Brooklyn to live
with his brother-in-Iaw's relatives. Mun
cleaned fish at a local fish market and his
wife worked in a fruit market. He worked
12 hour days, six days a week for $250,
learning English from the customers.
In five years Mun managed to save
enough capital to open his own store in
Crown Heights: "No babies, no time for
spending money. How to spend money
when you're working twelve hours?!" he
explains, as if justifying himself. He rent-
ed a house on Ocean Avenue, and, in 1991,
bought the deli that he runs today.
Mun and his wife have three young
children now. He's hoping they will one
day go to college. He says he fmally feels
like he may have succeeded, that he may
have actually "made it" in America. But
life still isn't easy. "Still working hard!" he
laughs. "But it's better than before. The
business is bigger, I make more money.
But I'm still working hard. We have to go
to market in the early morning, at four or
five o'clock, five days a week: Hunts Point
Market and Brooklyn Terminal Market.
We're just making money for living."
Mor. than Half a MI llion
As Mun Cha contemplates success, a
new generation of immigrants is once again
defining the character of New York City. In
the I 990s, newcomers have been arriving at
a faster pace than at any time since the
1920s, more than 112,000 a year according
to the Department of City Planning. More
than half a million immigrants made new
homes here between 1990 and 1994, and as
of 1995, fully one-third of the city's popu-
lation had been born in another country.
While the immigrant tide generates
controversy across most of the United
States, it generates economic might in
New York's neighborhoods. Despite all the
misleading rhetoric about immigrants as a
ball and chain dragging down America-
and despite new federal laws making them
ineligible for major social programs
including welfare and food stamps-
immigrants have become the middle class
backbone of long struggling New York
communities.
More than half of the male immigrants to
the city in the early 1990s, and nearly two-
thirds of the female immigrants, were either
white-collar professionals or skilled work-
ers' according to ''The Newest New Yorkers,
1990-1994," a report released by the city
planning department last month. The largest
numbers have come from the Dominican
Republic, China, the former Soviet Union,
Jamaica and the tiny South American coun-
try of Guyana.
After nearly two decades of a steady
influx of such people, neighborhoods like
Brooklyn's Flatbush boast a more highly
educated population and a higher rate of
homeownership than many neighborhoods
populated primarily by native-born
Americans. The trend has become even
more pronounced since the federal
Immigration Act of 1990 created a pool of
140,000 visas per year exclusively reserved
for professionals and skilled laborers.
Professor Emanuel Tobier, a senior
research associate at New York
University'S Taub Urban Research Center
who is studying the role of immigrants in
the labor force, has calculated that as of the
1990 census, 9.8 percent of New York
City'S foreign-born population was self-
employed, compared to 8.4 percent of
those born in America.
And only two percent of non-refugee
immigrants of working age reported
receiving welfare throughout the I 980s,
compared with 3.7 percent of the home-
grown population, according to the Urban
Institute's 1994 report, "Immigration and
Immigrants." Excluding refugees, immi-
grants' use of welfare actually fell in the
1980s. Whatever their reasons for avoid-
ing the dole, the evidence is strong that
immigrants are more likely than native-
born Americans to be economically
mobile, quickly driving up their personal
incomes after moving to the city.
Most Ethnically Dlv.rs.
Nowhere is the impact of the recent
waves of immigration clearer than in
F1atbush, home of the most ethnically
diverse zip code in the country. Flatbush
and Church avenues are a jumble of
Korean, Indian, Middle Eastern, Haitian,
Jamaican, even Mexican businesses. The
customers reflect the same diversity.
The neighborhood' s ethnic composi-
tion has changed drastically over the last
two decades. According to census figures
for Community District 14, more than half
of the area's residents were white in 1980
and about one-third were black, most of
them born in the United States. Fifteen
years ago, long stretches of the neighbor-
hood's commercial strips were vacant.
Most of the middle class whites and
blacks living east of Flatbush Avenue
were departing for the suburbs or other
neighborhoods.
By 1990 30,000 West Indians had
moved into the district, along with thou-
sands of Africans and Haitians-as well as
approximately 1,500 Arabs. In the early
1990s, the trend continued with more than
10,000 new immigrants from Jamaica,
Haiti, Guyana and Trinidad. By 1993, out
of a total population of 153,000, more than
60 percent were foreign-born. That same
year, the neighboring district of East
F1atbush was 71 percent foreign-born.
"Immigration has just really turned
around this area," says Carol Lutger, who
runs the Business Outreach Center of the
Church Avenue Merchants and Block
Association (CAMBA). "The stores are
full, the rents are high, there's so much
street activity, there's a tremendous variety
of stores. Because it's crowded on the
streets, people feel safe."
Like Mun Cha, many immigrants
arrive in America determined to buy their
own businesses and houses as soon as pos-
sible, researchers say. "Neighborhood
rejuvenation requires entrepreneurship,"
CITY LIMITS
2
Tobier explains. "The newcomers rejuve-
nated those communities by starting busi-
nesses, buying up property." To that end,
family members often pool their savings
with other immigrants who have joined
together into informal credit associ a-
tions-"Susus," "Box," or "Partners" in
the Caribbean communities, "Kehs" in the
Korean-which help members make
downpayments on homes and businesses.
In Flatbush, according to the city's
1993 Housing and Vacancy Survey, nearly
one in four households owns
their home. In East Flatbush,
the rate is one in three. Rates
are similar in several other
neighborhoods where immi-
grants are a majority: In
Sunset Park, close to 30 per-
cent are homeowners; in
Flushing, more than 44 per-
cent; in Jamaica, Queens, the
figure is above 40 percent and
in Jackson Heights, it is 35
percent. And trends suggest
these figures are rising.
Although no studies have
determined how much money
circulates through the rotating
credit bodies, at least two
major banks-Chase and
Republic-now consider
"susu" membership a valuable
qualification In deciding
whether to approve mortgage
applications.
The recovery in Flatbush
has been nurtured by a net-
work of business groups,
community centers and immigrant-aid
agencies established over the course of
the past two decades. Organizations such
as CAMBA, the Flatbush Development
Corporation (FDC) and the Caribbean-
American Chamber of Commerce and
Industry (CACCI) offer language cours-
es and legal services to immigrants, pro-
vide health-care information and social
services, and help would-be entrepre-
neurs develop business plans. They also
channel small-scale loans to new
Americans to help them set up their
businesses. Staff members counsel
locals, helping them through business
problems and potential cultural misun-
derstandings. And they arrange meetings
designed to bring together representa-
tives from the various nationalities pre-
sent in the area.
The economic expansion within the
community feeds on itself, explains Dan
Schachter of the FOe. "Part of the cor-
poration's role is to create that transition
FEBRUARY 1997
point so that when immigrants have
saved enough they don't go to New
Jersey, but buy from our existing housing
stock."
The average age of immigrants at the
time they arrive in New York, according
to the new city planning report, is barely
27. "They're in their prime working and
child-bearing years," says Frank Vardy,
one of the authors of the report. "They
patronize family stores that didn't exist in
old neighborhoods" before they arrived.
Immigrant Mlddl. Cia
The 1993 Housing and Vacancy Survey
also found that in Flatbush, 24,039 resi-
dents had sixteen or more years of educa-
tion-making the district one of the most
well-educated communities in Brooklyn.
In many immigrant populations, more than
30 percent of the arrivals have college
degrees, says Tobier. "And when you're
talking about Indians, it's 40 to 45percent.
The [educated immigrants] may not all be
professionals here, but they do all right
economically."
Lesley Jules, a 31-year-old Haitian
artist, uses his education to run a translation
agency out of the second floor of one of the
late-Victorian, colonnaded mansions that
serve as beautiful reminders of a time when
Flatbush was a suburban outpost of the
city. The floors are varnished wood, the
walls adorned with several of Jules' pas-
toral interpretations of Haiti 's countryside.
A dapper man wearing a well-tailored
suit and a flowered tie, Jules has lived in
the United States since his departure from
Port-au-Prince in 1982. Two years ago,
with a partner, he invested $9,000 in
advertising spots and other publicity, and
started up a company, Jins Incorporated.
The firm now has 75 translators and inter-
preters available on call. They charge flat
rates to corporate clients, less to immi-
grants who come seeking help. It is a suc-
cessful enterprise, but after the overhead,
Jules says, he is left with less than $4,000
a month to split with his partner.
Nevertheless, he considers himself part of
the immigrant middle class.
Jules is scornful of the notion that
immigrants come to America to live off the
country's welfare system. In his experi-
ence he has found that immigrants, even
when they are near-penniless, are general-
ly reluctant to apply for public help.
"When someone is an immigrant, the
first thing in your mind is, this country
gives you a lot of opportunity. You always
know what you left, in what situation you
were in." And as hard as New York can be,
he says, it's got more to offer financially
than most immigrants' home towns. "You
have to fight for it," he adds.
Then he remarks on his personal moti-
vation: "I want it. It'll take me time, but
what I want, I'll get. I don't care how long
it takes me to reach my goal. I'm going to
be a success."
Sasha Abramsky is a Manhattan-based
freelance writer.

Immigramsfrom all
over the world shop
along Church
Avenue ill Flatbush.
Brooklyn.
-
'-. ---- here's a new type of Latin King," insists Hector Torres.
"A whole new flavor. But the cops want to insist it's the
same old thing." Among many young people in the
Bronx and Harlem, Torres, 39, has become known as
"the Ambassador." He is a former gang leader-at age 14,
in the I 970s, he was president of the Notorious
Bachelors-but in recent years he has negotiated
between factions in the sub-worlds of New York City youth culture.
"My role is to keep in touch with the different nations in this
city," Torres says, referring to the mostly underground, gang-
structured organizations of the Almighty Latin King and Queen
Nation, the Zulu Nation, the Five Percent Nation, and the Netas.
Hi s current mission is to lead the Latin Kings away from the drugs
and violence their name has come to symbolize.
These photographs were taken at a "Universal ," the monthly
meeting of the Latin Kings held on January 6th, Three Kings Day.
About 1,000 Latin Kings attended the holiday celebration at St.
Mary's Episcopal Church in Harlem, hosted by Father Luis
Barrios.
Six weeks earlier, a federal jury had convicted the Latin Kings'
former leader, Luis Felipe, of arranging the brutal murders of rival
gang leaders. Felipe reportedly founded the New York chapter of
the Latin Kings 10 years ago in an upstate prison.
Yet even as scores of gang members attended Felipe's trial and
CITY LIMITS
religiously protested hi s innocence, they insisted that the Latin
Kings' criminal days were behind them. For more than a year the
group has worked with the National Congress for Puerto Rican
Ri ghts to help on a campaign against police brutality, and at last
year's Puerto Rican Day Parade, the Kings, Netas and Zulus
marched with Housing Works and gave out 10,000 free condoms.
According to Torres, pictured above in the photo on the right
with his hands crossed, the young Latin Kings are largely misun-
derstood. The Kings were once "violent, very violent," he admits,
but he says that today most of the old guard is either dead or in jail.
"Of course, we have elements that are no good and we deal with it
when it comes up," he reasons. "Say you have three sons, one is in
FEBRUARY 1997
trouble a lot, one is in school doing well , and the other is back and
forth between the two. That is [true in] many families. You could
say the same thing about the Boy Scouts or any college fraternity."
The police say the Kings continue to be a criminal street gang, and
have accused them of masterminding the recent sniper shooting of a
Bronx police captain. Torres counters that the charges smack of COIN-
TELPRO-style defamation, blanting the Kings for a range of crimes in
retributi on for the groups's campaign against police brutality.
"When journalists come and see with their owns eyes what we
do, the work with clergy, the leadership seminars the kids have par-
ticipated in, they can't believe it," says Torres. "These kids have
open hearts. This is about love, not gangsterism."-Kiema Mayo
-
-
Name a poweiful special interest in New York that doesn't have a political action committee.
''What are you getting SO pushy forr' snarls the woman behind
the counter of the State Board of Elections office in Albany.
"Excuse mer'
She grabs the stack of papers from my band, SCWTies away to have them photocopied, and then, upon returniDg,
throws them onto my desk, a good five foot toss.
Welcome to the warm, hospitable world of New York's political action committees, better known as PACs. The offense
I bad been a.c:cnsed of-being "pushy"--c:onsisted of driving the three-hour, snowy, rainy trek to the state capital to
peruse the dozen or so file cabinets that contain the financial disclosures of all the state's PACs.
To find out about PACs-fnndraising orpnizations which exert huge inOuence over state and city politics-you have to
travel to AJbany. The state legislature has resisted computerizatiou for more than a decade, ri{fging the regulations so
that supposedly public information is held closely under the watchful gaze of patronage hires from the Republican and
Democratic party orpnizations. The employees in the basement of the capital complex office building, where the files
are stored, are notoriously hostile, not unlike trained glJard d. Earlier in the day, they berated me for not putting the
paper clips back on the reports properly. No wonder the place was empty.
A PAC, for those who don't know, is the political wing of a corporation, union, industry association or advocacy group.
I. RBNT STABILIZATION
ASSOCIATION PAC
t Issa.s. Gutting rent control and rent stabilization.
Pavorlt. poUUclaaa: State Senate
Republicans, Rudy Giuliani, Fernando Ferrer,
the Conservative Party.
With the state legislature preparing to debate
the renewal of rent regulations this spring, the
Rent Stabilization Association (RSA) takes the
mantle of New York City's most powerful
PAC. It has plowed $700,000 into the
campaign treasuries of State Senate
Majority Leader Joe Bruno and his GOP
sidekicks, and helped prime the pump
for hundreds of thousands of added dol-
lars in donations from indi vidual land-
lords. And while RSA can't muster the
foot soldiers that major union-run PACs
usually produce, its leadership has
proven itself to be exceptionally crafty.
As a result, the organization is in a
better position now than at any time
in the last two decades to achieve
its once-unthinkable goal: abolish-
ing New York's rent regulations.
RSA PAC has grown consider-
ably over the past four years; it
barely squeaked into the Top 10 contributors in 1993. But that was
before Joe Strasburg, the current RSA president and strategist,
came along with the extensive political contacts he'd garnered in
his days as Council Speaker Peter Vallone's top aide. As landlords
lobbed $125,000 to elected officials from the city, Strasburg cob-
bled together coalitions not only of Republicans, but of black and
Latino Democrats willing to support landlord legislation (see
"Wedge City," City Limits, January 1997). While many of these
politicians are unwilling to speak publicly in favor of abolishing
rent protections, they have already shown quiet support for
changes such as decontrol of high-priced rentals. And they've
sponsored RSA-backed legislation that would require tenants in
Housing Court to make up-front deposits of unpaid rent.
In 1996, RSA PAC donated almost $250,000 to state politi-
cians, in addition to $284,416 from its sister Neighborhood
Preservation PAC. RSA also poured $50,000 into a new low-key
landlord PAC set up in September (see sidebar).
For the 1996 state elections, RSA PAC's biggest contributions
went to the state Senate GOP and the tiny but influential
Conservative Party ($75,000 over the last year and half). Mayor
Giuliani is a landlord favorite ($7,700, the maximum for a may-
oral candidate), as is Bronx Borough President and mayoral can-
didate Fernando Ferrer ($7,500). But these numbers don't tell
most of the story. Big landlords associated with RSA-Lenny
Litwin and Jeffrey Manocherian, to name two--channel their
money to RSA-friendly candidates, as do major law finns, man-
agement companies and contractors. RSA PAC also works on
Illustrations by Aaron Meshon CITY LIMITS
You can't. As the city's election year gets undefWay, we take a look at the top ten. By James Bradley
PACs can dispense money and help coordinate election campaigns. They make direct contributions to other PACs and
to candidates, up to the limits prescribed by law. But PACs, unlike corporations, can also give an unlimited amount of
money to Democratic or Republican party organizations. The organizations, in turn, can pour the casb-"soft money"-into
the campaigns of their choice. It's a loophole that gives PACs far more punch than they appear to have under the law.
While in some states the power of PACs has begun to be eclipsed by more creative routes around finance laws, in
New York, PACs remain the political battering ram of choice for the rich, powerful and, yes, the truly pushy.
Try to name a single group with a reputation as a political force in New York that doesn't have a PAC. You can't.
Politicians may not want reporters to have easy access to the dollar amounts on the filing forms, but the PACs them-
selves want their power to be well known. A million bucks in the bank is important, but cultivating an image as a mns-
cular player is the key to getting your way in New York politics.
"A PAC sends a message," says Norman Adler, a lobbyist and consultant who has founded some of New York's most
important PACs (two of which are on the following list). "Even though all the check has on it is the name of the PAC, the
amount and the signature, it's as if a thousand words are written on it. And those words say: 'We're an important fon:e.'"
With that in mind, City Limits has compiled an accurate, if largely unscientific, list of the most powerful political
action committees that influence politics and policymaking. Money was an important factor in rankings, but not the only
one. This is a power-rating guide, attuned to an organization's ability to influence decisionma.kers, make or break elect-
ed officials and, of course, project the image of a political titan.
lowering property taxes and water rates, and on weakening hous-
ing code enforcement and lead paint laws.
2. UNITBD PBDBRATION
OP TBACDBR8 PAC
Pet Issuesl Making sure reforms don't weaken teachers'
clout; fighting private-school vouchers; blocking new teacher-
evaluation laws.
l"avorlte poUtIoIenll' Just about everybody.
The media heaped much praise on Mayor Giuliani, Governor
Palaki and Albany lawmakers after the recent revamping of city
school governance. But an equally powerful player in the process
was the United Federation ofTeachers (UFT), thanks in large part
to the power of its political action committee, VOTE-COPE.
Under the new arrangement, the legislature shifted hiring powers
from local school boards to the Schools Chancellor, settling an old
score from the late 1960s when a small band of black activists in
Brooklyn forced then-UFT boss Albert Shanker into negotiating
local control over some school hiring.
Largely as a result of pressure from the UFT, reformers declined
last fall to give parents any significant control over school-based
councils under the new governance plan. Teachers won't have to
contend with pesky parents-just Chancellor Rudy Crew.
School reform activists describe VOTE-COPE as Albany's
"800-pound gorilla," with near-unanimous support in the state
legislature. Small wonder that, in 1996, this was the most active
PAC in Albany, dishing out $2,221 ,875 to state lawmakers' polit-
FEBRUARY 1997
ical organizations. VOTE-COPE donated at least $135,000 to the
city's state legislators last year, in addition to $24,670 to party
organizations in the five boroughs. Of course, that figure does not
include the money given to the statewide party organizations;
VOTE-COPE donated $134,000 to various Republican organiza-
tions and $267,000 to Democratic ones.
The teachers' city-based chapter of the
PAC has dramatical-
ly affected mayoral
campaigns, playing a
pivotal in role in
generating voter
turnout for David
Dinkins in 1989. By
refusing to endorse
Dinkins in 1993
because of stalled
contract negotia-
tions, UFT also
helped secure his
defeat.
The PAC doles
out dollars on the
grassroots level,
funneling $13,807
to neighborhood-
based political clubs in
-
all five boroughs in 1996. (Political clubs, not coincidentally, are
often closely tied to their local school boards and thus had major
influence over non-teacher hiring under the now-defunct gover-
nance system).
Other contributions include $3,000 to Brooklyn Borough
President Howard Golden, who has many allies in the central
board-and whose wife is a prominent community school board
administrator. The local pol to receive the most-
$lO,OOO-from the local UFf PAC was Brooklyn State
Senator and Democratic minority leader Martin
Connor, who is a top-gun election lawyer adept
at knocking insurgent school board candidates
off the ballot.
3. REAL ESTATE
BOARD PAC
Pet ass.es: Tax breaks for developers;
making New York safe for big, shiny sky-
scrapers.
I"avorlte poUticlaas:
Giuliani, Ferrer, Councilman Antonio
Pagan, Councilman Archie Spigner.
Ever wonder how the city always man-
ages to find hundreds of millions dollars for
arcane real estate schemes, no matter how
serious the fiscal crisis? For part of the
answer, look at the poLitical workings of
the Real Estate Board of New York, the
city's premier interest group for the com-
mercial real estate industry. While the
RSA stumps on behalf of residential landlords, the Real Estate
Board PAC handles the city's elite developers-Donald Trump,
Lew Rudin, Leonard Litwin (also an RSA player), Bruce
Ratner--each of whom donated tens of thousands to the PAC last
year. For a developer, it's a worthy investment; many of those
shiny Manhattan high-rises they build pay greatly reduced prop-
erty taxes thanks in part to REBNY work.
The Real Estate Board PAC lobbies politicians and distributed
at least $200,000 last year for a number of causes dear to devel-
opers: taxes, building codes, zoning laws. A 1995 attempt by
insurgent City Council members to link developers' tax breaks to
job growth, rather than property values, failed to even win a com-
mittee hearing; REBNY was a staunch opponent of the plan.
Lately, the Real Estate Board has concentrated its efforts on
ambitious projects such as the Lower Manhattan Revitalization
Plan, which would allow developers to convert overbuilt, large-
ly vacant Wall Street-area office space into profitable residen-
tial units.
The group's PAC was among the most active in the 1993 elec-
tion cycle, donating $45,480 to 32 City Council candidates. In
1996, it gave $27,945 to city and state politicians. Recently,
REBNY donated $7,700 to Mayor Giuliani and $3,500 to Peter
Vallone for the upcoming election. As with RSA, the group's
members contribute copiously as individuals and bundle cash.
4. DISTRICT COUNCIL 3'1 PAC
Pet ass.es: Avoiding layoffs of city workers; holding onto
the union j old image as a kingmaker.
I"avorlte poUticlaas: Vallone, Giuliani, City
Comptroller Alan Hevesi.
-=
Wg peIitieal JBODef .,..atiGas
June .... weD b.owa ,.. J8II'I, bat
PAOlI pep _ of elllii:iuity sad-
-, ... ~ ........ 1IpI'01ltiDg
after ............. .......
SaIb PAOlI an part ... Wg peIitieaI
taWIII: tire ...... of ........... to Ileal
fto are tIaeJf '1'IIeir campaign fiDaace
forms, receatlJ IiIed in AIIJaay, reveal DO
IIIiIIIifIlstatemmt-ud .... is reqaired by
state law. Likewise, attempts to ceatact die
greap qaickIJ tara into 'I'bree Stooges
..... 011 the &JiIIp, the FairDeas treIAnr
is IDe "S.l. AadersGa" whose address is aD
apartmalt .. AmItenIam A'ftIlUe. 1Iewever,
the ~ I'M II1IIBher Jiated am to his
...... is 1"8fi8tereII to a larly Le&ovits, who
Iha .. But '1Odl Street. At that 1I1IIBher,
aD ......mg madIiDe pidrs up aal
___ die ...... of aD iIItenati4maI
Brothers real estate goap. leffrey
IIaaocheriaa, who p.iDeIll"8llOWD. as Ilia
Farmr's fermer Iaa6ri, is prGIIIiDeat
member of tile IS&.
0aJIs to JIautdwiaD aal die lSI. were
DOt .......
'file PAC's ceatribatiaas make perfect
__ 8IlC8 you figure _ where tJieJ came
hi. TWI cbedss werth $30,000 1ftIlt to
CIty Oeandl Speaker Valloae's Coalition for
voter Cbaic:e PAC, which failed in its lid to
ovea tuna the term limits law that will ciect
tile eatire coacil sbortIy after the miDemai-
ma. 188 StrasIIurg, head of lSI., was
VaIIeae'. c:IIief If stall fer III&DJ yars.
0dIer RIFF CGD.triJJatieas 1ftIlt to ISI,-
hadled agNate&: .,. BWge IepUIiaa
state ..ateriaI .... 101m Oaagmni
($'1,000); .. GiaIiaai ($5,000); Brax
~ Steve I'anfmaD ($1,000) aal
new BreokIp State s.ater 101m SamplOll
($500).
wida .... iIBIea, __ ...., __
tIIat _ ... ",11"_ iIlte die city's
,.u h .......... nll .. "." ....
ella ..... -ftiW peIiticaI parpoae, .....
vII1iI8a .... CIlIa ___ particaIar
peIidral ............... iBI1asIry.
....... tire .... tire ..,-to-nerleek
... y ..... _1"IinIaD." IIatdIed ..
S.,' ..... 17, 1M, die ...... UaajliDed
., list .. lelm DIe PAOs tIIat C 111 11M
......., Jet craw 1IlGII,JIIIitJ ..... milt
....... ......., Im'P raiIeII .....
CIlIa ri&'t a-r: $lO'1,"
trUbtg CEpIIIJ.
III tratII, die PAC's deaire4 "fainteIa" is
IIGtIdIg ... dIaD faD npeaI of the state's
reat ..... _ law. A Wg _ appears in
the millie If die greap'. state fiIiIIp.
NYPF's ftnt __ came rr- the Beat
fbhI ...... AaciaUaa, the nsitImatiaI
"-"leIIIIJiIt .......... tIIat is pasb-
iag ,.. the .. If reat CIIltnl aal reDt sta-
llilizatitla law.
What's ....., $14,800 ill ctIdriInIti ..
to 1ftIT came from compa:aies asseciateil
with the ,.... .... w''"'Cheriaa
'ftIe baIaace If tile PAC's JBODef-aboat
$'15,000-is still waitiag to be dispeII8ed to
c:audidates cIariJIg this spriu&"s reDt regula-
_ battIe&-GIeIIJl 'I'brasb
CITY LIMITS
The city's largest municipal union-more than 200,000
strong-also has one of its most powerful PACs. In terms of
affecting elections and passing legislation, DC 37 has a record
few can match, even though 1990s government downsizing has
caused atrophy in its vaunted political muscle. Founded in 1976
by Norman Adler, DC 37 PAC has built a substantial war chest
through its own treasury and payroll check-offs from its 50-odd
locals. Indeed, affiliates such as Local 372, a union of non-ped-
agogical school employees headed by Giuliani supporter Charlie
Hughes, have impressive political operations of their own.
Hughes fields an army for his favorite pols, such as East New
York Councilwoman Priscilla Wooten.
At DC-37's central headquarters downtown on Barclay
didates at a moment's notice.
Street are computers,
hundreds of tele-
phones and com-
puterized phone
banks that are
sometimes
loaned out to
different cam-
paigns. (Last
year, the Coa-
lition for Voters'
Choice used DC
37's offices to
fight term limits.)
The union also has
a volunteer force of
more than 1,200 men
and women ready to
knock on doors and
work the phones for can-
Though it raised $207,000 in 1996 and will raise more for city
elections this year, the union ain't what it used to be. DC 37 has
been weakened, thanks in part to executive director Stanley Hill's
decision to accept Giuliani administration headcount reductions
in exchange for generous severance packages, no layoffs and no
replacement of union workers with welfare-to-work draftees.
Moreover, of late the union has failed to generate the kind of
muscle it exhibited for Mario Cuomo's 1982 run for Governor,
when more than 3,000 volunteers turned out for the effort.
DC 37's lobbying records indicate its hold-the-line stand
against privatization, taxes and budget cuts, and its support for liv-
ing wage legislation that has boosted wages for employees of city
contractors.
The union has not traditionally made endorsements for
mayor; David Dinkins was a rare exception in 1989. The bulk of
the union's political activities has gone into city and state leg-
islative races. In 1993, DC 37 poured some $60,000 into 38 City
Council races, the most of any PAC. DC 37 gave $53,593 to city
and state politicians in 1996, in addition to $16,750 to
Democratic Party committees in the five boroughs. On the state
level, pro-union Democrats can expect money from DC 37 PAC,
particularly those in positions of power, such as Comptroller
Carl McCall ($5,000) and Bronx Democratic leader Roberto
Ramirez ($2,000). But money often flows to Republican pols as
FEBRUARY 1997
well, such as Bronx party leader Guy Velella
($2,250) and Robert DiCarlo ($4,000), the
deposed Bay Ridge senator.
6. COUNCIL P4C
Pet I ae.: Keeping Peter Vallone in
power; shoving the term limits genie back
into the bottle.
l"avorlte poUlIote.e.; Vote with
Vallone, get a check.
If you want to know why the City
Council looks the way it looks (asleep) and
votes the way it votes (rarely challenging the
mayor or passing legislation of citywide sig-
nificance), look no further than Council PAC.
Founded in 1988 by ubiquitous PAC-master
Adler, C-PAC has a narrow agenda: keeping Peter
Vallone in the speaker's chair, advancing his don't-
rock -the-boat agenda and supporting his candidates for
council seats. In other words, not a penny goes to Sal Albanese, Joan
McCabe, and Ronnie Eldridge, renegade council members who fre-
quently vote against the speaker's wishes; in fact, C-PAC dollars
often go to their electoral opponents, even Republicans.
For the upcoming 1997 council elections, C-PAC has raised
$282,000. Vallone will likely hang on to much of it until the sum-
mer, after the city budget vote, when campaigns begin to heat up.
C-PAC collects money from powerful real estate developers
and other prominent lobbyists, unions and PACs.In 1991, when a
new 51-member City Council was formed, C-PAC was the city's
largest campaign contributor, plowing $45,000 into the coffers of
22 council candidates. That year featured a clash between C-PAC
and Dennis Rivera's Local 1199, which was pushing hard for
greater black and Latino representation on the council.
C-PAC and its newly-minted, anti-term limit sibling, the
Coalition for Voters' Choice, are on a major losing streak, howev-
er. Since millionaire Ron Lauder (see No.9) bankrolled the suc-
cessful term limits referendum four years ago, Vallone has used
the coalition to collect contributions from perennial political bene-
factors-including Litwin, REBNY and Time-Warner of New
York-to extend his political career beyond the current drop-
dead date in 2002. Impressively, Vallone raised
nearly $1 million last year. Then Lauder
beat him like an old rug.
8. LOC4L IIDD M4R
TIN LUTDBR BING
ACTION PUND
Pet I ae Stopping Medicaid cuts
and hospital privatization; electing lib-
eral Democrats; pushing the Molinari
clan into non-government jobs.
l"avorlte PoUtlote.p
Democrats with hospitals or health
workers in their districts; David Dinkins
(should he ever run again); Hevesi.
When Local 1199, a union of private
sector hospital workers, feared the state's
recent Health Care Reform Act would
--
mean job losses for its members, Dennis Rivera,
1199's fedora-donned leader, went to an unlike-
ly source for help: Senator Alfonse D'Amato.
The senator promptly secured $50 million in
job training funds for 1199 employees.
For the most liberal of the city's big unions, it
may have been a transforming moment:
sources say Rivera and his union will stay
neutral in the Senator's re-election campaign
next year. In years past, they've been major
supporters of D' Amato's opponents.
1199's more progressive overtures
haven' t been so successful. The Rivera-
backed Majority Coalition, a 1991 effort
to elect more progressive City Council
members, was a major debacle, losing so
badly to Peter Vallone's C-PAC-backed
incumbents that it virtually has ceased to
exist. Furthermore, the coalition's failure was a foretaste of the
1993 defeat of Rivera's friend David Dinkins, which dealt a
major blow to 1199's bid to become the city's premier PAC for
progressive causes.
Despite an illegal contribution scandal in an East Harlem
assembly primary last year, Rivera's on an upswing today, accord-
ing to most political observers. Local 1199's all-out blitz to defeat
Guy Molinari 's 1995 bid for Staten Island District Attorney won
the day. (Rivera and Co. apparently despise Guy and his daughter,
Congresswoman Susan Molinari, thanks in part to her opposition
to President Clinton's health care reform plan.)
In 1996, large sums from 1\99's $270,000 campaign war
chest went in 1996 to state lawmakers representing communi-
ties with numerous health care workers: Brooklyn Assemblyman
AI Vann ($7,400), Bronx Assemblyman Larry Seabrook
($7,000), and Bronx State Senator David Rosado ($7,000) are
some of the leading beneficiaries. Overall, 1199 raised $61,500
from members' dues in 1996-and donated all of it to city and
state politicians.
The PAC has contributed to a variety of would-be Democratic
mayoral candidates, but after Rivera's reputed favorite
Comptroller Alan Hevesi announced he was sitting out 1997,
1199's mayoral plans remain a mystery.
7. MEDICAL SOCI-
ETY OE' THE STATE
OE'NEWYORK
Pet Issaes: Fighting HMOs; making
sure doctors remain well-compensated for
their work.
This is the one PAC on our list not
based in the city, but no matter: the Medical
Society is the doctors' PAC, and it plays an
important role in health care issues. It is the
state chapter of the American Medical
Association, with mini-chapters in every
county. In essence, the Medical Society
is the anti-HMO PAC; its lobbying
efforts and campaign expenditures have
gone into securing the rights of physicians
as more employers move workers into
managed care programs.
The PAC took part in the successful effort to insert doctors
into Governor Pataki's "Patient's Bill of Rights," which
ensured more complete coverage for HMO patients. Under
the new law, doctors obtained new protections that give
them the right to appeal when they are kicked out of an
HMO. Last year, the doctors' lobby also won new state subsi-
dies for medical malpractice insurance, and threw some wieght
around during the Governor's deregulation of hospital rate-setting.
The Medical Society PAC also works with good-government
and consumer groups on HMO issues, lead poisoning and anti-
smoking legislation. In 1996, the Medical Society gave nearly
$821,000 to state lawmakers, fostering broad support in both the
state Senate and the Assembly. Within the city, the PAC was most
generous to (once again) Senate minority leader Martin Connor,
who raked in $4,000, and Bronx Republican boss Guy Velella,
who collected $2,500.
8. PAC OE' THE PATROLMEN'S
BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION
Pet Issaes: Keeping police brutality an internal affair;
guarding pensions and salaries.
Pavorlte polltlolaas: Councilman Noach Dear,
Councilman Sal Albanese, and anybody who's against Rudy
give to.,.... cew1jdetes, ......... ......
""""heed .., tile COIIDCiI .........." hal IiUIe
dIIDce " __ Ilia 1IiIl ...... .................. ....., ......... ttI-
...... ... ......, JIll II II' - A JIIiIIIer Bwa if tile AIIa_ ..... are allayed,
__ "tile .. 1"IIIr-, ....... , tatr.
tbeywm..., ... to ....... tes
..... .., tile ...... 11.111& ", .... fIaaace wIaatarily iDto tile .... .....
:a.nJ. tw8 ,.... ..... faIai to I&traA:t a fiaaace .,... ....... , state tIIu leek
fIiII'e CIty 0DaadI ..... .
... ..... ..., ......... .,tIIe ....
_ """'*r .... .,...a ...... Sal
IiIIltI, wIIidt are virtaaIlJ 11 1iIIIat.
..... isllll'._ .......... 1 rPc ADII cmpeip fiDuce nIIna .., lie tile
....... ldsplaa, .......... ..... ..., .......... .0.., tIIat' ...... ...
.......... , ....... wsPI.., .... till: ---. In ~ , . . . . . .... tile
......... ., .................. ... miIIIIIt eIhrta ........... tile state'
...... 18 to .. $18 WdIAidiIua ...
arcane 8JItaI " .......... fiaaace
at ... 7 ....... to I ..... ...... ......18 ... ~ i a ......
rootB......,-t. Bat ........... is"'" 1Iada s-JB
CITY LIMITS
Giuliani-for the moment.
The PBA's power was never more evident than last year,
when the state legislature overrode the Governor 's veto of a
police union-backed bill allowing New York City contract
arbitration to be settled by the state's Public Employee
, - Review Board. It was one of the very few times
this century that a Governor's veto has been
overridden.
Pataki, who was doing a rare favor for
Mayor Giuliani in opposing the
bill, won in the end: the veto
override was itself over-
ridden by the courts.
Previously, the
mayor and the union
had been strong allies,
joined in their opposition
to Mayor Dinkins and to
the appointment of an
all-civilian complaint
review board to exam-
ine police misconduct.
But the love-in has
turned to loathing over the
contract issue, and what the Cop-PAC
does in '97 could have a big impact on
Giuliani's reelection prospects.
The PAC raised $170,000 in contributions during 1996 and
gave most of it to state lawmakers, coinciding with the campaign
to defeat Pataki and Giuliani 's arbitration efforts. They are likely
to raise more as the mayor's race approaches.
Not surprisingly, the bulk of the donations to city candi-
dates went to state lawmakers who represent white, middle-
class sections of Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, where
a large number of officers live. The Rudy-PBA grudge played
a big part in Cop-PAC's successful campaign to defeat
become the most potent political spoiler by bankrolling the cam-
paign to pass and sustain the city's eight-year term limits law.
Lauder's pet PAC, New Yorkers for Term Limits, invested
$2.8 million last year in defeating Council Speaker Vallone's
anti-limit referendum. Though the PAC promoted term limits as
a populist demand, ail but $12,337 of its money came from one
man-Lauder. Indeed, a bitter Vallone dubbed him the PAC's
"sugar daddy."
10. TRANSPORT WORBBRS
UNION LOCA.L 100
Petlssaes:
Demolishing dollar vans; keeping the city from firing train con-
ductors; upping mass transit aid for New York.
Pavorlte poIItioIan- Noach Dear; Peter Vallone.
What kryptonite is to Superman, van services are to the
Transport Workers Union
(TWU). In both the City
Council and the state legisla-
ture, the union has done
battle with the private van
services that are a cheaper
alternative to mass transit
in many outer-borough
Caribbean-American com-
munities.
Van services
compete with
city buses,
and the union
has worked to limit
licensing and to forbid them
from using city bus stops
to skim off passengers-
which could put bus dri-
vers out of work.
pro-Rudy incumbent Bob DiCarlo, a GOP state
senator from Bay Ridge. Mayoral candi-
date Sal Albanese raked in $3,000 last
____ --1
,---- -- TWU's effort to institute free transfers
year, but the largest donation went to
Borough Park Councilman Noach Dear
($3,500), who is planning on running for
Congress in 1998.
9. MBW YOREBRS
PORTBRM
LIMITS
Pet Issaes:: Name says it all.
Pavorlte poUtioian .. Nobody.
Unless Ron Lauder ever gets elected.
You remember those commercials: Joe
Six pack, sitting on his Brooklyn stoop,
waxing indignant at the prospect of the
term limits law being weakened by "da
politicians."
Perfume heir Ron Lauder, one of the
least popular mayoral candidates in modem
city politics (including Norman Mailer), has
FEBRUARY 1997
between subways and buses could also
be a big blow to the vans, and would
probably boost overall ridership. The
union also lobbies for greater mass
transit aid to New York, as well as
pension issues and other labor matters.
The TWU has had some success in
restoring mass transit cuts, but it failed
to stop the 25-cent fare increase last
year. On the state level , the TWU PAC
donated $45,000 to New York City law-
makers in 1996. Among city politicians,
it has contributed to the campaigns of
Ferrer ($5,000), Hevesi ($2,000),
Messinger ($1,000) and Vallone
($ 1,000). Prominent labor lobbyist
Vincent Montalbano does the group's
bidding in the City Council-he racked
up $26,000 in lobbying costs for the first
three quarters of last year, on top of
$36,000 in 1995 .
--
cheek and talk at the same
it out without drawing his
who can spin five blades
these tricks can be of
sharp, concealed objects
. as possible.
himself among the
skipping school and
weed. By the experimenting with
robbery. That's when he and his friends were arrested for
mugging a man at gunpoint in Central Park. When a judge offered
him a break on the condition that he go back to school and get
counseling, he took it-and then blithely kept the same company,
remaining sullen and truant.
It wasn't until the judge, disgusted, hauled him back into court
to face the robbery charges that Mark learned he wasn't cut out for
prison. Waiting in the holding pen at Manhattan Supreme Court,
another kid forced him to hand over his jacket. Remarking on
Mark's fine, chiseled features, he then pulled out a concealed razor
blade and threatened to cut Mark's face. The next 10 days at
Spofford Juvenile Center, the city's pre-trial detention center in the
South Bronx, were no better. By the time Mark found himself in
front of the judge for sentencing, he considered the possibility that
the one-to-three years he faced upstate could end in his own death.
"I just started tearing," he admits. "Ten days is enough in there.
Two days is enough. I thought, if I stay in here too long, I might
never be able to come out."
Mark would have been sent to one of the state's five Division
for Youth (DFY) secure detention facilities, and probably trans-
ferred later to an adult prison, had he not met Nancy Bradley
while he was at Spofford. Bradley is a court advocate for the
Youth Advocacy Project (YAP), an alternative-to-sentencing pro-
gram run by the Center for Community Alternatives.
After spending some time with the boy, Bradley recommend-
ed that the judge give Mark one more shot. The judge agreed,
sending him back home to live under the daily watch of the pro-
gram's counselors.
YAP targets today's most controversial young lawbreakers-
those who before age 16 are arrested and charged with extremely
serious and usually violent crimes such as armed robbery, assault,
auto theft and even murder. In the last year, some 1,500 of these
13- to 15-year-olds, known in the court system as "juvenile
offenders," were tried in adult court because their crimes were
deemed too severe under state law to warrant the latitude and ser-
vices offered by judges in the Family Court system.
The thought of giving such kids a break runs counter to the
popular current nowadays. Conservative criminologists, armed
with disturbing stories about a new generation of young teens
committing senseless acts of violence, predict that rates of juve-
nile violence, now spiking, will climb again in the near future and
that teen "predators" will eventually shatter the peace that city
n
~ e s
CITY LIMITS
FEBRUARY 1997
-
Picking who gets
to go home is a
crucial decision/or
the Youth Advocacy
Project. Nancy
Bradley interviews
the candidates and
seeks their release
dwellers have enjoyed of late. Federal and state politicians of both
political parties, tapping into this sentiment, are competing to pass
laws that would jail more kids at younger ages for longer periods
of time.
But many people who work with this population-from youth
workers and lawyers to cops and judges-argue the politicians and
criminologists are establishing a dangerous and expensive new
trend. While few dispute that many violent young teens deserve
long periods of incarceration, advocates of alternative approaches
say that many of these kids could remain safely in their communi-
ties, given rigorous oversight, training and support. They say that
this approach is more likely to prevent the youngster from com-
mitting crimes again. And it is also far less expensive to the tax-
payers, at one-eighth the annual cost of incarceration.
"We have an obligation as a society to identify those kids who
can still be salvaged," says Supreme Court Judge Michael
Corriero who, as the sole judge for Manhattan Criminal Court's
busy Youth Part, opted to place Mark with Nancy Bradley's pro-
ill court.
c gram. "We have to ask, what lessons will be learned in a DFY
~ facility? And more importantly, how safe will we be when we free
j this child?"
--
. ~
~
B
radley stands in front of a classroom packed with
Spofford's latest arrivals, sitting at attention in gray plastic
chairs. It is her job to eyeball the "new jacks" arriving at
Spofford each week and to pluck out the one, maybe two, kids
who both fit into her program's tight specifications and show a
genuine interest in her rap.
"This is a program for people who want to help themselves."
She fires off the words quickly, in a stem voice. "If you want to
not go to school, this is not the program for you. If you want to do
the wrong thing, this is not the program for you. If you want to
hang out, this is not the program for you."
The kids she chooses should consider themselves lucky. The
Youth Advocacy Project has room for about 75 teens each year.
Two other programs-the Center for Alternative Sentencing and
Employment Services and the Kings County Juvenile Offender
Program-also provide similar opportunities for very young vio-
lent offenders, but last year, altogether, the three programs com-
bined had the capacity to serve fewer than 220 of New York City's
1,500 juvenile offenders.
Picking who gets to go home is crucial decision for programs
like YAP. The program's credibility depends on choosing kids
who will stay out of trouble under its watch-and, if all goes well ,
long after.
In fact, Bradley does not have the lUXUry of choosing from
among the sweeter candidates. Some of these children are like-
ly to be sentenced to probation anyway, which is relatively
cheap. Alternatives-to-sentencing programs, which cost an aver-
age of $10,000 per-child per-year, must focus on kids who
would otherwise be facing an expensive $86,OOO-a-year stay in
a secure youth correctional facility. Otherwise they wouldn't be
able to prove to lawmakers and funders that they are saving gov-
ernment money.
As a result, YAP requires that participating teens already have
some experience in jail-remember, Mark didn't begin to take
the system seriously until his unfortunate experience in Spofford.
And they should be facing likely sentences of at least one-to-
three years upstate, according to Marsha Weissman, executive
director of the Center for Community Alternatives.
Court advocates conduct long interviews with the children,
looking for candidates likely to respond well to rehabilitation,
she explains. Instead of being the the triggerman-types, they tend
to be criminal accesories--even though they face the same seri-
ous charges. Just as important, the court advocate must be con-
vinced that the child has some kind of stable environment at
home. While YAP's counselors will check on the teenager daily,
his guardians are supposed to be responsible for him all day long.
Unfortunately, Weissman says, this tends to be the hardest
requirement to fulfill.
"We take the cream of the crop from the bottom of the barrel,"
Bradley says. "These kids aren't choir boys. If they could do
everything right, they wouldn't be here in the first place. But if a
kid seems decent, we try to give him a break."
F
rom his mother's 11th-floor apartment on Ogden Avenue
in the Highbridge section of the Bronx, Mark looks out
over one of the more crime-ridden neighborhoods in New
York City. Every empty lot is encircled with razor wire. The few
free-standing homes are barricaded with fences and window bars.
Mark calls the place "Crimealot."
In the two square miles surrounding his apartment building,
54 percent of the population is on public assistance. Police offi-
cers consider the public housing project one block to the west to
be so unsafe that they admit being fearful of going there. This is
the world in which Mark became and admitted felon at age 15.
It was during the last raw days of winter in March 1993 when
Mark and two of his friends began pulling in a steady income
holding people up at gunpoint in Central Park, robbing them in
CITY LIMITS
broad daylight. It was a simple economic decision, Mark says,
fueled by bravado and beer. The three had been sitting around
drinking one day when they discovered a gun in a friend's apart-
ment and decided to put it to use. To their astonishment, it was
an easy gig: point the gun, take the money. Their first day out
they each got $30.
"We thought, ' Let's do this tomorrow, same time, same
place,'" Mark recalls. Altogether, they managed to commit five
muggings before they were caught. Mark tells the story in a rap
he's written.
I used to rock with the stick-up kids,
Coin to Central Park
to rob the whites is what I did.
Straight up, broad daylight
'cause my shit stayed tight
Count up all the dough
and cop the smoke for the late night
The cops, he says, were out of their car with their guns drawn
before the car stopped rolling.
But when we jumped out the park
there go the whole brigade
with their shades on,
and their Clocks out,
my luck just dropped out
1 went the wrong route.
He spent that night in central booking and was released the
next day on his own recognizance. Three months later, he
appeared in front of Judge Corriero. Mark, who had held the gun,
pleaded guilty to second degree armed robbery and was sen-
tenced to one year in a youth program followed by five years of
probation.
But counselors for two different programs-the Dome and the
Door-had little success with the boy. Mark says he liked the
Door and began taking classes there. Still, he decided to drop out
of high school, continued to smoke marijuana and hang out with
the friends with whom he had gotten into trouble. A year and a
half later, after Mark missed a key court appearance, Corriero
sent him to Spofford.
After two years bouncing around the juvenile justice system,
accepting little of the help it offered, Mark had finally got his
wake-up call. He was admitted into the Youth Advocacy Program
in January 1995 at age 17.
T
he top priority for Eddie Gregg, Mark's first counselor,
was to get him into drug rehabilitation. Both agreed
Mark would have to kick his marijuana habit and
somehow break away from the crowd he was tight with in his
first two years of high school. "I got trapped running into
friends, girls," Mark admits. "I just wanted to hang out, get
high and stuff."
YAP's counselors attempt to stay close to their kids like
glue, accounting for each minute of their day on the theory that
a busy teenager stays out of trouble. Participants are required to
attend school or find work. In their free time, they are encour-
aged to visit with their counselors or attend workshops
designed by the staff. At intervals throughout the day, coun-
selors check in by phone, talking frequently with parents,
guardians and school staff.
Counselors also make frequent home visits, giving them a
FEBRUARY 1997
sense of what the teen is up against and what support-from
counseling to art education to sports programs-might be avail-
able in the community. Perhaps most importantly, the counselors
are there to provide therapeutic counseling, a key tool for chil-
dren forced to deal with neighborhood violence, parental abuse
and grinding levels of poverty.
The program enforces a curfew by making random calls to
families each night. Bradley starts spot checking at 9:30 and then
often calls back an hour later, making sure her charges weren't
just waiting for her call before heading out the door. She says
she's had kids transfer incoming calls to other numbers, had fam-
ily members lie for them and had kids take the phone off the hook
so she couldn't get through. Bradley says she will tolerate this
behavior once or twice, but if there is any indication the teenag-
er is taking unfair advantage of the program, she reports the
behavior to the court-and the boy or girl will likely be kicked
out and sent upstate.
Mark credits Gregg and other counselors with inspiring him
to study for his general equivalency diploma, which he obtained
after taking the test last July. He also got a job as messenger in
Manhattan with the help of YAP's job counselors. He says he
liked the work, but after a few months as a foot messenger he was
bringing home only $17 a day, too much work for too little
money, he says. He quit a few months ago and is now working
only sporadicaly.
Bradley says she's not worried about Mark, despite the
fact that he's now 18-years-old and facing daunting econom-
ic prospects. "Mark is a kid that will stay on track," she says
with confidence. "He doesn' t want to go back, and he's deter-
mined. "
Supreme Court
Judge Michael
Carriero believes
that juvenile
offenders must
have alternatives to
detelltion. "We have
an obligation as a
society 10 idelllify
those kids who can
still be salvaged."
-
Dwight Barnhill.
a cOllnsellor at the
Youth Advocacy
Project. checks in
on his charges daily
and tries to help
them find new ways
to overcome old
problems.
-
W
hile Mark may do well, it's inevitable that some
teens "go back"-to crime or to prison-after taking
part in the program. Such unwanted results are a
political danger for YAP and other alternative programs.
Influential critics such as Manhattan Family Court Chief
Prosecutor Peter Reinharz claim there is no proof that alternative
programs reduce crime. Reinharz argues that today's juvenile jus-
tice system has too many such programs, and says that returning
violent kids to their neighborhoods-to the same environment
where they learned their criminal behavior-is not worth the risk.
"It's absurd to me," Reinharz says. "It's suicidal, it's self-
destructive, to keep these violent people in the community."
Under New York State law, notably one of the toughest in the
nation on teenagers, anyone over age 16 is prosecuted in Supreme
Court as an adult, facing the same stiff sentences any adult felon
would face. Teens as young as 14 who are charged with violent
crimes are prosecuted in Supreme Court as well, although they
usually face shorter sentences.
Still, the vast majority of juvenile offenses-ranging from
low-level assault and robbery to vandalism-are handled in the
Family Court, where proceedings are private, records are sealed
and the system's primary goal is rehabilitation. Reinharz charges
that young teens cynically use this system to commit crimes with
impunity, and is aggressively lobbying federal and state lawmak-
ers to mandate incarceration at younger ages. He's also calling for
reduced funding for a1ternative-to-sentencing programs.
New York's highest ranking politicians are listening. Assembly
speaker Sheldon Silver has called for longer minimum sentences
for juvenile offenders and sharp increases in sentences for youths
caught committing a second felony. And Governor George Pataki
is seeking to require the automatic transfer of 16- and 17 -year-
olds currently held in youth facilities to the far cheaper adult
prison system. Even without the latter measure, the state is already
transferring an increasing number of older teens to the adult
prison system. All of these proposals have been promoted by
Reinharz and other conservatives.
As a result, alternative-to-sentencing programs are under
political pressure to produce quantifiable results. It's a tough
order. Most programs for juvenile offenders are only a few years
old and lack the funding for long-term studies tracking kids after
they graduate. The Youth Advocacy Project, for example, has lit-
tie idea what has become of the hundreds of
teens its counselors have worked with over the
last seven years.
YAP's Weissman notes, however, that in last
year's class, only 15 percent of the participating
teens were kicked out of the program and sent
back into the DFY system. In most cases, she
adds, this was not because the teenagers had
committed a new crime, but rather because they
weren't respecting the program's rules.
And there is convincing research that com-
pares the long-term re-arrest and re-incarcera-
tion rates of juveniles tried and sentenced in
adult courts with those prosecuted in the juve-
nile system. A study to be published later this
year by Jeffrey Fagan, director of the Center for
Violence Research and Prevention at Columbia
University'S School of Public Health, looked at
15 and 16 year olds convicted of robbery in New York and New
Jersey. The New Yorkers, tried and sentenced in the adult system,
were twice as likely as their New Jersey peers to be re-arrested
after their release. Harsher treatment, Fagan concludes, turns
teenagers into harsher criminals.
The best New York City can offer in terms of data on the suc-
cess rates of alternative programs comes from the Center for
Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services (CASES), which
runs a program similar to YAP called the Court Employment
Project (CEP). The CEP program works with about 65 juvenile
offenders as well as a much larger number of older teens. According
to their data, only 20 percent of the CEP participants were re-arrest-
ed on felony charges after one year. Looking two years out, the total
was 30 percent. For similar adolescents incarcerated upstate, the
two-year re-arrest rate was above 50 percent.
Brenda Coughlin, a CASES research associate, admits the
sample is skewed since the organization is picky about the teens
it chooses to work with. Like YAP, it avoids working with the
most hardcore defendants, instead looking for kids with readily
apparent motivation and promise.
But alternative programs could hardly have a worse track
record than the Division for Youth. Recent reports, confirmed by
City Limits in off-the-record conversations with state officials,
note that nearly 75 percent of juvenile offenders held in a DFY
facility were re-arrested within 18 months of their release.
For the long-term, Coughlin adds, there is a more important
question to research: Who, she asks, is a good risk for these pro-
grams? As alternatives to incarceration become increasingly
sophisticated, there's a good chance the programs could safely tar-
get higher risk kids, she says. "We don't have to accept the cate-
gories of who's high-risk and who's not."
Mark agrees. As someone who was arrested wielding a gun, he
was on the high end of the Youth Advocacy Project's risk assess-
ment measures. He says without YAP, he would still be robbing
people "or worse."
But his expectations and goals have changed.
"I want to make a decent amount of money, a good salary, and
move out of my apartment, get out of my mother's hair," he says,
smiling. "I want to be happy with myself."
Pam Frederick is a reporter for The Riverdale Press.
CITVLlMITS
Yohance
Maqubela is a
legislative
financial Q/W/YST
for The New York
City Coullcil.
FEBRUARY 1997
HYPD Strategy
Humber 9
transferred to six different
offices, then told I must
submit my request on offi-
CITYVIEW
cialletterhead bearing both my name and position.
Of course, no police officers asked my name
or position last July II when a brawl erupted at
Madison Square Garden during the Riddick Bowe
vs. Andrew Golota fight. That evening, on my
way out of the Garden and hundreds of feet from
By Yohance Maqubela
I
n the year since I moved to New York City from
Washington, D.C. , hardly a day has passed that I have
not witnessed some form of police misconduct.
Throughout the city's five boroughs, blacks and Latinos
are regularly harassed, stopped and illegally searched
without probable cause or reasonable suspicion by arrogant
detectives and uniformed officers. So imagine my surprise
when I saw a subway poster depicting a young black man smil-
the mayhem, I joined a club that has far too many members:
The Victims of Police Brutality. It is not considered courteous
for an officer to curse me when I request his badge number. Nor
is it professional for a sergeant to violently attack me without
provocation. And it is certainly not respectful for eight cops to
beat me, an unarmed and nonresisting citizen, to the point
where my bones and muscles are seriously bruised and I have a
blood clot in my head. Where was my CPR?
ing and shaking hands with a white police
officer under the slogan, "NYC Needs CPR:
Courtesy, Professionalism and Respect. "
Who was the po ter directed toward? The
cops or the community? I was immediately
suspicious.
During the 42 hours I was wrong-
fully jailed on fictitious charges,
After some investigation, I learned that
under the Giuliani administration, the NYPD
has developed strategies to deal with recurring
problems affecting the department, and
"CPR" is Strategy Number 9-a plan to
improve community relations and police con-
duct. According to the CPR outline, the inia-
rive aims for police officers "to see them-
selves as public servants as well as law
enforcement officers."
close to 50 officers hurled profanity
and racial slurs at me or witnessed
such acts without blinking an eye.
A closer look reveals that Strategy Number 9 will do very
little to help create the utopian relationship between
cops and communities implied by the poster. While
crime rates have gone down under Giuliani, reports of
police brutality in black and Latino communities
have climbed by more than 20 percent, according to
Black Cops Against Brutality, a national organiza-
tion. And yet, not one of the 21 "components" of
Strategy Number 9, as they are described in NYPD
documents, directly addresses police brutality. Only
one refers to "familiarizing officers with the city's
diverse population."
CPR also fails to address the racial makeup of
the department. Though whites account for only
about 40 percent of the city's population, they
make up 65 percent of the NYPD as a whole. And
its upper management levels are 85 percent white.
Of the nine uniformed officers who have the rank
of three-star chief or higher, seven are white men. The depart-
ment is clearly self-conscious about its di versity problem and
made this abundantly clear when I attempted to obtain race-
based information. I was able to quickly receive other staffing
data over the phone, yet when I requested the number of high-
ranking black and Latino indi viduals in the department, I was
During the 42 hours I was wrongfully jailed on fictitious
charges that were later completely dismissed, I came into con-
tact with at least 50 officers, the majority of whom either
hurled profanity and racial slurs at me or witnessed such acts
without blinking an eye. Still, when responding to the issue of
police brutality, officials often claim the bad cop is the excep-
tion to the rule.
Strategy Number 9 also neglects to deal with the depart-
ment's failure to extend "CPR" to officers who happen to be
non-white. Many of these officers speak privately of being sub-
jected to racial jokes and harassment from other cops. A lesser
known fact is that in the history of the NYPD, 60 black officers
have been hot by white officers without one single case of the
reverse scenario.
Ultimately, Strategy Number 9 deals with the problem of
police misconduct, which has very serious repercussions, as
though it were simply a matter of teaching cops to be more
polite. Sure, there is a connection between politeness and police
brutality; it has everything to do with the way officers are
trained to view the diverse communities in which they work-
and who does that training. By completely ignoring the racism
that permeates every level of the department and keeping all but
a ridiculous poster out of the public eye, the CPR plan will fail.
Racist and dangerous cops need punishment, not manners .
wp
............ . - ~ .... ".-
CITYVIEW
' -'" ......:.- .
Harold DeRienzo
is president oj
the Parodneck
Foundation.
Second, consider that much of the city's criminal activity
during the past 10 years has centered around drugs, particular-
ly crack-cocaine. Drug trafficking is virtually a free market.
While it's possible that police tactics targeting drug sales have
helped reduce the number of dealers on the streets, it's also nat-
ural that the industry has consolidated and become "rational-
ized" over time. As in any business, the strongest of the drug
lords grow tired of tolerating competition, and opt to take over
disparate operations. For the
A Makeshift Miracle
time being, the result is
fewer turf wars, fewer battles
over money-and less vio-
lent crime.
By Harold DeRienzo
Third, many people
caught up in criminal activi-
ties have died from drug-related violence, overdoses and AIDS.
All of this suggests that the current decline in crime may be
neither permanent nor systemic.
It is beyond dispute that aggressive law enforcement
reduces crime. Trends, like crack abuse, also run their natural
course over time. However, to take two years of tinkering with
criminal justice and call it a miracle is dangerous.
T
here is no downside to the latest crime statistics. All
categories of crime have fallen. Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani has spared no effort taking credit for this
accomplishment. His political challengers have
been left scrambling for alternative explanations,
particularly those that place the origins of the trend in the
Dinkins administration, and place New York within a
Consideration should be given
to the possibility that the fall
national context.
But what if this decline in crime is not systemic, but
rather a temporary pause between cycles? Two years of
Giuliani-style policing is simply not adequate to explain
a decline in crime to levels not seen since the 1960s.
Such a decline is nothing short of a miracle. Some con-
sideration should be given to the possibility that this
"miracle" is a cruel mirage.
For argument's sake, let 's assume that in any given period
of time, within any given population segment, there is a certain
percentage of people who will resort to crime if certain social
conditions-such as poverty, unemployment, poor education
and drugs-are present.
Let's further assume that if these people are suffi-
ciently controlled or imprisoned, they will be pre-
vented at least temporarily from committing crimes
and criminal activity will abate. That is, until the
underlying forces generating criminal behavior
spawn yet another generation of criminals. If these
assumptions are reasonable, we should look at
alternative explanations for the fall in crime-all of
which indicate this is a temporary trend.
First, consider the number of people we are
imprisoning. Take young people as an example:
In New York in the early 1980s, before the onset
of the crack epidemic, 251 out of every 100,000
young people were overseen in some way by
the criminal justice system. By the early 1990s,
this number had risen to 367 per 100,000-a 46
percent increase. Containment is a surefire criminal enforce-
ment mechanism, but a temporary one. There are about
87,000 teenagers and adults currently imprisoned in New
York State. Most will be released over the next 10 years.
in crime is a cruel mirage.
If this decline is, as I believe, only a momentary pause, we
will pay a hell of a price when the next generation grows up.
Without productive employment, education and other outlets, a
new proliferation of criminal behavior seems almost inevitable.
Of particular concern should be the large numbers of
young people growing up institutionalized in homeless shel-
ters and foster care arrangements. In the absence of any sense
of community-and in many cases family-and with little or
no education, this generation will have little to lose from tak-
ing up a life of crime. There is no precedent in terms of what
we have done to these children, and we have no way of antic-
ipating the impact.
Meanwhile, incomes for people at the bottom of the socio-
economic ladder are declining. On top of this, we will have to
contend with a stream of prison releases and a young popula-
tion that is "aging out" of institutions.
The lesson here is not to begin building more walls between
our neighborhoods or more institutions to contain the poor.
Rather, we must recognize that our public discourse is crip-
pled by our own jubilance about the current crime statistics-
and by our tendency to praise a few individuals for the change.
To overcome this, we must begin to view our achievements and
challenges more critically, look more carefully at the underly-
ing causes of crime and re-commit ourselves to working for
genuine, comprehensive and systemic change.
CITY LIMITS
Boomerpang
FEBRUARY 1997
By Dimitry Uger
"The Scapegoat Generation:
America s War on
Adolescents, " by Mike A.
Males, Common Courage
Press, Monroe, Maine, 1996,
329 pages, $17.95.
P
ost-Cold War reactionary pun-
dits and policymakers cast
America's teenagers in a dual
role: they are both rampaging
insurgents and helpless dead-
weight, the incorrigible source of most
social ills. As adherents to this vision would
have it, poverty, violence, drug abuse, and
unwanted childbirths threaten the baby boomers' utopia
because kids-everyone else's, not theirs-don't act properly.
Led by tiber-boomer Bill Clinton's virtuoso example of how
to pass the buck, the new aristocracy's media elite dutifully
stoke the image of today's youth as out of control. Pot smoking,
Time says, is at unprecedented levels among teens. And parents
catching kids getting spliffed should hold a hard line and act
like their hippie days never happened. On the fate of the poor-
one in four adolescents lives below the poverty line, according
to census reports-The New Republic asserts, "poor people are
different, sadly, from you and me. They are isolated from us;
they have different values, and it seems very clear that their
problems were neither entirely loss of work, nor will they be
entirely solved by government action."
The national antipathy toward adolescents culminated in the
welfare reform bill, a singularly regressive act of government
deregulation that will leave millions of children in the lurch.
Mike A. Males wrote "The Scapegoat Generation: America's
War on Adolescents" a year before Clinton signed the welfare
bill. But he saw it coming.
''That the Clinton presidency dispenses the most virulent
anti-adolescent sentiment is no accident," writes Males, who
was born in 1950. "It coincides with a period in which adults are
suffering increasing difficulty in managing our own lives, from
marriage and child raising to personal behavior to government.
It is a time of national detachment, in which Americans over age
40 are rich and becoming steadily more so, while younger
Americans are increasingly poor. These trends magnify existing
effects of race and class into a new dynamic in which age is
rapidly becoming the primary delineator of well-being."
Debunking the conventional wisdom, Males persuasively
points out that many social ills blamed on teenagers involve the
.. -II!II .......... ~ .... ".-
REVIEW
direct or indirect complicity of adults.
For example, he writes, pundits decry soaring
youth crime in an "angry, baffled and frantic
tone devoid of analysis of the environmental
components that amply explain the trend,"
Males says. Yet, he charges, increasing youth
violence is the predictable result of 20 years
worth of government policies-promulgated
by adults-that have mired children in pover-
ty, and two decades of increasing rates of
physical child abuse by adults.
Joe Camel notwithstanding, Males reports
that between 66 and 90 percent of kids who
smoke grew up in households where their
parents smoked. He also emphasizes that, to
a great extent, it is adult men who impreg-
nate unwed girls, not teenage boys constant-
ly moving on to new conquests a la "Kids,"
the resolutely anti-kids movie of two years ago.
In "Scapegoat Generation's" most stunning chapters, Males
marshals reams of government-sponsored research showing
that many teen mothers suffered violent sexual and physical
abuse at home, that fewer than 5 percent of under-18 mothers
live in homes without adults present and that being raped by an
older men was the ftrst sexual experience for most sexually
active girls under age 15.
"If the president really wanted to prevent junior-high sex,"
Males says, "he would lecture grownups. " But Washington is
usually too squeamish to address illicit relations between adult
men and teenage girls. It's easier to capitalize on demeaning
images of pregnant teenagers.
Males indicts baby boomers and their elders in controlled
but passionate prose. "Scapegoat Generation" brims with
graphs, charts, statistics, an index and notes tracing the source
of every assertion. Males, a doctoral student in social ecology
at the University of California, Irvine, is not pleading just for
bigger government, but for responsible policymaking.
Last year 's presidential election results hold Litlle promise
of a shift in the country's anti-adolescent consensus any time
soon. But Males suggests that the current generation of adults
over 40 and under 65 will regret remaining indifferent, intoler-
ant and downright abusive of the younger generation-regard-
less of whether their behavior is the result of some unresolved
beef with their parents for sending them to Vietnam or because
they have become self-obsessive, unrepentant yuppies who
refuse to accept any responsibility for society's problems.
When today's kids grow up and throw around the weight of
their own socioeconomic power (or lack thereof), the boomers
will reap what they have sown .
Dimitry Leger, a writer at M1V News, is 25 years old.
C ommunity D evelopment L egal A ssistance C enter
a praiect of the Lawyers Alliance for New York, a nonprofit organization
Real Estate, Corporate and Tax Legal Representation to Organizations
Tax Syndications Mutual Housing Associations
Homeless Housing Economic Development
HDFC's Not-for-profit corporations
Community Development Credit Unions and Loan Funds
99 Hudson Street, 14th FI , NYC, 10013 (212) 219-1800
519 Sueet
'It'll 11233
(711) 455-1133
"Developing Ideas; Growing Success
ll
Fundraising Special Needs Housing
Strategic Planning Organizational Development
Computer Training
Kathryn Albritton Development Consultant
IRWIN NESOFF ASSOCIATES
management consulting for non-profits
Providing a full-range of management support services for
non-profit organizations
o Strategic and management development plans
o Board and staff development and training
o Program design and implementation 0 Proposal and report writing
o Fund development plans 0 Program evaluation
20 St. Johns Pla(e, Brooklyn, New York 11217 (718) 636-6087
"-
Committed to the development of affordable housing
DELLAPA, LEWIS & PERSEO
150 NASSAU STREET, SUITE 1630
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10038
TEL: 212-732-2700 FAX: 212-732-2773
Low Income housing tax credit syndication. Public and private financing.
HDFCs and not-for-profit corporations. Condos and co-ops. )-51 Tax
abatement/exemptions. Lending for Historic Properties.
George C. Dellapa Roland]. Lewis Mariann G. Perseo
Reach 20,000 readers in the nonprofit sector,
government and property management.
ADVERTISE YOUR BUSINESS
OR SERVICE IN THE CITY LIMITS
PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY!
Call Faith Wiggins at
(212) 925-9820 or (917)-792-8426
-
LAWRENCE H. McGAUGHEY
Attorney at Law
Meeting the challenges of affordable housing for 20 years.
Providing legal services in the areas of General Real Estate,
Business, Trust & Estates, and Elder Law.
217 Broadway, Suite 610
New York, NY 10007
(212) 513-0981
, _,' ,' ,.
to ,ct your , '
Cool Bro .. J.urcs, RCp'0rts. T cstitno ... y (
Rl.hs You'll DIG !!
SOhhChfcld, Prcsidcht
Tel. 1718) Fl.:!' 1718) 956-0901
COMPUTER SERVICES
Hardware Sales:
IBM Compatible Computers
Okidata Printers
Lantastic Networks
Software Sales:
Networks/Database
Accounting
Suites/Applications
Services: NetworklHardware/Software Instal lation,
Training, Custom Software, Hand Holding
Morris Kornbluth 718-857-9157
SPECIALIZING IN REAL ESTATE
J-51 Tax Abatement/Exemption . 421A and 421 B
Applications 501 (c) (3) Federal Tax Exemptions All forms
of government-assisted housing including LISC/Enterprise,
Section 202, State Turnkey, and NYC Partnership Homes
KOURAKOS & KOURAKOS
Bronx, N.Y.
(718) 585-3187
Attorneys at Law
New York, N.Y.
(212) 551-7809
DEBRA BECHTEL - Attorney
Concentrating in Real Estate & Non-Profit Law
Title and loan closings 0 All city housing programs
Mutual housing associations 0 Cooperative conversions
Advice to low income co-op boards of directors
100 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201, (718) 624-6850
CITY LIMITS
NEW JERSEY PROGRAM DIRECTOR. The Corporation for Supportive
Housing, a national nonprofit intermediary organization dedicated to
expanding the supply of service-enriched permanent housing for home-
less individuals with special needs, is seeking a director for its newly
created State of New Jersey Program. Applicants should have multi-
year experience in any, or preferably several of the following areas:
finance, development and management of nonprofit sponsored hous-
ing; technical assistance to nonprofit housing and service providers;
financing and delivery of mental health, substance abuse and related
human services; and program strategies for linking housing and sup-
port services for special needs populations. Salaries highly competi-
tive, commensurate with experience. Excellent benefits package. Send
resume to Director of Operations, CSH, 342 Madison Ave., Suite 505,
New York, NY 10173. Fax (212) 986-6552.
RETAIL ASSISTANT MANAGER. Busy midtown Ben & Jerry's seeks entre-
preneurial person with marketing, business and motivation skills to
assist in our mission to train a diverse special needs population.
Evening and weekend work required. Computer skills a plus. Mid-20's
with bonuses and benefits. EOE. Fax resume to (212) 768-8989.
RESTAURANT TRAINING SUPERVISORS. Two supervisors needed for non-
profit restaurant/ catering operation. Some cooking and management
experience required. Positions are permanent. 30 hr. week, no bene-
fits. Should be interested in working with a diverse needs population.
Fax resumes to (212) 768-8989.
PROGRAM COORDINATOR. Needed for education and outreach. Must be
experienced (5 to 10 years) citywide project administrator. Background
must include fair housing, outreach, networking, public relations, writ-
ing, speaking and computer skills. Work on a yearlong HUD grant. EOE.
Competitive salary. Send resume: Attn. S. Kramer, Open Housing
Center, 594 Broadway, NYC 10012.
COMMUNITY ORGANIZER for the Hispanic Development Corporation.
Assist residents in Newark's Roseville neighborhood to work on grass-
roots issues of community concern. Likely issues include public safe-
ty, deteriorated housing conditions, land use, sanitation and communi-
ty facilities. The successful candidate will demonstrate a strong ability
to support and develop tenant, block and neighborhood association
leaders; to research local issues; to inspire resident involvement; and
to assist groups to develop solutions to neighborhood problems.
Competitive salary and benefits commensurate with experience. Ability
to speak Spanish necessary. Commitment to empowering local leaders
and winning effective solutions, essential. Send resume to Sr.
Guadalupe M. Nieto, Hispanic Development Corporation, 545 Orange
Street, Newark, NJ 07107.
TENANTINEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZER to develop strong neighborhood
organization in southwest Yonkers. Bilingual Spanish/ English preferred;
minimum 2 years experience tenant/community organizing in urban
area; starting salary $25,000-$27,500; Send resume with cover letter
to D. Brian, PO Box 1248, Yonkers, NY 10702 or fax (914) 963-4566.
CONSULTANT-ORGANIZING SUPPORT CENTER. New effort of grassroots
organizations seeks consultant individual or team to coordinate
research, networking and development leading to creation of NYC
Organizing Support Center. The Center will seek to develop infrastruc-
ture for progressive social change through grassroots organizing by pro-
viding organizing training, technical assistance, networking and political
education. Responsibilities: Meetings with grassroots organizing sup-
port centers in other parts of the country. Convene interested groups
to develop plans for the Center's programs. Develop "business plan"
for the Center. Qualifications: Knowledge & experience of grassroots
organizing (community, labor, environment, anti-racist, etc.). Experience
in organization development. NYC knowledge preferred. To receive RFP:
resume (or annual report) and 1-2 page letter outlining qualifications
FEBRUARY 1997
and approach to organizing to: NYC-OSC, 141 5th Ave, Brooklyn, NY
11217, fax (718) 857-4322, phone (718) 857-2990 x16.
PROGRAM ASSISTANT. Public interest law office seeks program
assistant for its legal services program to work with nonprofit orga-
nizations. Salary low 30's, good benefits. Fax resume ASAP to
LANY Search Committee (212) 941-7458. EEO.
ENVlRDNMENTAL PROGRAM COORDINATOR. New full time position at
Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment: coordinate & teach com-
munity environmental injustice & hazards. Experienced professionals
(2 years plus BS, minimum), please call for full announcement with
qualifications, salary, etc. Immediate opening. (718) 788-8500.
FUND DEVELOPMENT AND PUBLIC RELATIONS COORDINATOR. Growing
membership association of New Jersey housing and community devel-
opment organizations seeks energetiC self-starter to head new fund
development and public relations office. Responsible for identifying
new funding sources, grantwriting, corporate outreaCh, coordinating
public relations and special events and helping produce newsletter and
other publications. Prefer experience in community development and
fundraising. Strong writing and communication skills required. Salary
range $35,000-$40,000. Contact Diane Sterner, Affordable Housing
Network of New Jersey, PO Box 1746, Trenton, New Jersey 08607,
(609) 393-3752.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR needed for a jewelry industry development cor-
poration. Will also manage a new business improvement district.
Experience in economic development required. Competitive salary.
Send resume to: Jerry Polner, DJIDC, 580 Fifth Avenue, Suite 323, New
York, NY 10036; or fax (212) 302-7835; or e-mail Djidc@aol.com
PIT ASSISTANT TO DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC POLICY to do advocacy and pub-
lic policy work for services for elderly, 21 hours/ week, salary low 20's.
Experience in advocacy preferably in aging, good writing skills, take ini-
tiative, computer literate. Resume to Council of Senior Centers and
Services, 49 W. 45th St., NY 10036, fax: (212) 398-8398.
PROGRAM OFFICER for Rural Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LlSC),
Western Regional office in Phoenix, Arizona. BA in finance, real estate,
planing or equivalent. Real estate development/ underwriting experi-
ence. Strong verbal , written, and computer communications skills.
Spanish language skills a plus. Job entails considerable travel. Send
cover letter and resume to Sharon Baranofsky, Program Director, Rural
LlSC, 111 West Monroe, Suite 1610, Phoenix, AZ 85003.
ORGANIZER. New organization of public assistance recipients working in
NYC' s "workfare" program, WEP seeks two organizers to build a union-
like organization of workfare workers to fight for decent conditions and
the right for a real job. Responsibilities: Organize workfare workers at
their work sites, build this site-based organizing into a city-wide cam-
paign. Qualifications: Minimum two years community or labor organizing
experience or four years volunteer experience. Experience in leadership
development and organization building. Bilingual (English/ Spanish) a
plus. Salary: 26K-30K, dependent on experience. Full benefits. Equal
opportunity employer. People of color strongly encouraged to apply.
Send resume and cover letter to; WEP Workers Together!, c/ o Fifth
Avenue Committee, 141 5th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217. (718) 857-
2990 x. 18. Fax: (718) 857-4733. Phone inquiries welcomed.
ORGANIZER for Citizen Action's campaign to organize grassroots pressure
on state budget, including support for progressive taxes, funding for
schools, health care, social services. Experience in community organiz-
ing and coalition-building; knowledge of state and city politics; fluency in
Spanish desirable. EOE. Send/fax resume to: Karen Scharff, Citizen
Action, 94 Central Avenue., Albany, NY 12206. Fax: (518) 465-2890.
MORE JOB ADS ON PAGE 35
WE
Kamber
id you ever feel like a player in the farm leagues? That's where the teams have names like the Toledo Mud Hens
and the Hershey Bears, and where young and second-rate athletes, some up-and-coming, others down-and-going,
vie for the attention of the big league scouts. Well, New York City has a farm league, but ours is in politics.
It works like this: the great mass of political power in city
government is concentrated in the hands of a few heavy hit-
ters-the mayor, the City Council speaker and maybe a dozen
commissioners and top aides. These folks exercise near dictato-
rial control over a $32 billion budget and the employment it
generates. The rest of the players-{;ity council members, bor-
ough presidents, advocates, policy wonks-might as well be
bat-boys for all the relative influence they wield.
But farm leaguers have no intention of staying put. These
ambitious souls live in the nonprofit world and the lower eche-
lons of government just waiting for the rare big league shake-
up. They know that maybe once every 10 years a major player
slips and falls from the great heights of power, dragging down
his entourage as well. And the very moment they hurtle down
past the masses huddled below, en route to whatever university
post or radio show awaits, the farm leaguers spring into action,
determined to scramble into the major leagues-even if they
have to spike a few catchers along the way.
Mayoral elections are like the major league draft in sports;
campaigns select the best farm league players in the hopes they
can help their team win. Of course, those who get picked by the
losing campaigns are out of luck. But the ones who sign on to
the winning side are blessed. In sports, at least, the worst teams
get the best draft picks, preventing the winners from dominat-
ing for too long. In politics, however, the team that wins the
mayoral election gets to use corked bats for the next four years.
How can you tell if you have a farm leaguer in your midst?
For starters, they tend to crave attention, even to the point of
allowing their eccentricities a bit of license. They' ll dress like a
rumpled genius, in wrinkled shirts and frayed ties. They' ll suit
up like a Halloween Hell's Angel to score some crack in
Washington Heights. Or maybe kiss a catfish in front of the
cameras. They know how to stand out from a crowd.
Next, they have a cyclical attention span. Most of the year,
they work long hours just like everyone else. But come election
season, especially when there's a close race, their attention is
elsewhere. They show up to work looking like zombies, carry-
ing around clipboards full of crinkled nominating petitions for
their candidates. Their office mates usually put up with this
because the farm leaguers never take vacation in August-too
close to primary day-so they can usually be counted on to
answer the phone for everyone else.
As for ideology, farm leaguers are always radical in their
speech but prudent in their actions. Every farm leaguer is pas-
sionate about some cause and has perfected a good foot-stomp-
ing diatribe to get people riled up. But when it comes time for
old-fashioned, back-room deal making, farm leaguers get down
to business. They are convinced that, at the end of the day, only
real-life results matter-not some purist's idea of how the system
ought to look. Fanatics and farm leaguers don't mix too well.
For the lucky few who make it to the top, success is bitter-
sweet. The former social worker takes over city homeless policy,
the good-government activist gains control of the mayor's budget
office. But their old comrades grow distant, reserved. An unspo-
ken accusation of "sell out" hangs heavy in the air. Book clubs
disband. Bowling teams reorganize. Prime shifts at the Park
Slope Food Co-op suddenly open up. Eventually, though, most of
the old comrades realize that access to power is worth more than
access to self-righteousness, and quiet reconciliations follow.
James Madison once wrote that politics needs a filter to "refine
and enlarge" the views of the masses before they reach the true
seat of power. He would probably be pleased with the farm
leagues. How about you? Somebody has to fill those positions at
the top, preferably someone who cares about justice and decency
instead of some drone-like hack whose friends bundled contribu-
tions on Wall Street. But maybe you're not interested. Maybe you
have a hunch, which you can't quite put into words, that what gets
lost in the refmements is too precious to trade away .
Thomas Kamber is an aspiring farm leaguer who lives in
Brooklyn.
CITY LI MITS
The Hunter College Center on AIDS, Drugs and Community Health seeks to fill the following positions:
PROJECT COORDINATOR for a collaborative venture to trans-
form the former Morrisania Hospital in the South Bronx into
a mUlti-service community economic development center.
Collaborate with other partners to design health promotion
programs focusing on asthma, substance use,
nutrition/physical fitness. Recruit and train community resi-
dents as health promoters. Five years' experience in public
health and/or community organizing and Bachelor's degree
required. Master's degree preferred. Experience with South
Bronx organizations, Black/ Latino communities and cul-
tures, or developing/implementing health promotion pro-
grams desired. Salary $35-40K with comprehensive bene-
fits. Code: UH
PROJECT COORDINATOR for interdepartmental Hunter pro-
ject to assist residents and organizations in the South
Bronx Empowerment Zone in improving job prospects,
well-being and safety of youth aged 12-21. Coordinate
Center's daily activities and work with participating orga-
nizations and individuals. Five years' experience working
with community-based organizations, preferably on
issues concerning public health, youth services, violence
prevention and/ or social service issues, bachelor ' s
degree required. Prior community research and/ or expe-
rience working in the South Bronx, master's degree pre-
ferred. Salary $38-45K with comprehensive benefits.
Code: COPC
AIDS EDUCATOR for South Bronx high school and communi-
ty-based organizations. Recruit and train student peer
educators. Develop outreach activities. Assist with
HIV / AIDS curriculum development and implementation.
Lead youth discussion/focus groups. Assist with develop-
ing workshops on youth issues for teachers and commu-
nity leaders. Write monthly activity reports. Bachelor' s
degree, four years of HIV/AIDS education in youth setting,
and strong writing skills required. Salary to $28K with
comprehensive benefits.
Resumes and cover letter for all three positions (specify) to (no phone calls):
Lynn Roberts, PhD, Director, Training and Community Projects; Hunter College Center on AIDS, Drugs and
Community Health, 425 East 25th Street., New York, NY 10010. AAlEOElADA employer.
FEBRUARY 1997
MORE JOB ADS ON PAGE 33
LET US DO A FREE EVALUATION
OF YOUR INSURANCE NEEDS
We have been providing low-cost insurance programs and
quality service for HDFCs, TENANTS, COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
and other NONPROFIT organizations for over 75 years.
We Offer:
SPECIAL BUILDING PACKAGES
FIRE LIABILITY BONDS
DIRECTOR'S & OFFICERS' LlABILTY
GROUP LIFE & HEALTH
"Tailored Payment Plans"
PSFS, INC.
146 West 29th Street, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10001
(21 2) 279-8300 FAX 714-21 61 Ask for: Bola Ramanathan
ws
..
At The East New York Savings Bank,
we put our moneg
where our neighborhoods are.
We are now accepting applications for our Community
Action Assistance Plan (CAAP) Grants Program.
We believe that the continued success of the East New
York Savings Bank is tied directly to the quality of life in
our neighborhoods. That's why, for the ninth year in a row,
we're renewing our commitment to community organiza-
tions that are striving to make our neighborhoods better
places in which to live and do business.
In 1997, prospective applicants should be aware that the
Bank will be focusing its community financial support
efforts on projects related to housing and economic develop-
ment initiatives. Only CAAP applications featuring such
activities will receive consideration. We' re offering grants
Brooklyn:
East New York (Atlantic and Pennsylvania Avenues)
Park Slope (Flatbush at 8th Avenue)
Bay Ridge (5th Avenue & 78th Street)
Manhattan:
Sutton Place (East 55th Street & 1st Avenue)
Lenox Hill (East 75th Street & 2nd Avenue)
Forty-Second Street (41 West 42nd Street)
Peter Cooper (East 20th Street & 1st Avenue)
of $500 to $5,000 to eligible organizations.
In the past eight years, over 200 organizations throughout
our service area were recipients of CAAP grants.
The East New York Savings Bank's CAAP Grants
Program for 1997 is open to community-based, not-for-
profit tax exempt organizations located in Brooklyn,
Manhattan, Queens and Nassau County.
To obtain an application or further information, stop by
anyone of our branches or mail your request to the address
below. Applications must be submitted by April 14, 1997
for consideration.
Fifth Avenue (West 32nd Street & 5th Avenue)
135th Street (498 Lenox Avenue)
Nassau County:
Great Neck (23-25 North Station Plaza)
Oceanside (12 Atlantic Avenue at Long Beach Road)
Queens:
Forest Hills (101-25 Queens Blvd. & 67th Drive)
THE EAST NEW YORK SAVINGS BANK MEMBER FDIC
THE EAST NEW YORK SAVINGS BANK Community Action Assistance Plan Grants Program
350 Park Avenue, 5th Floor, New York, New York 10022
(212) 350-2584 or e-mail: 103454.3676@compuserve.com