“The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks” is the new exhibit at The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), and the title makes you wonder what will the elephant say? Because it isn’t just what’s called gentrification that is troubling, after all, communities transition from one ethnic group to another for various reasons.
Whether it’s Irish to Italian or Jewish, the group that was being displaced, left because they didn’t want to be around the newcomers, and went on to form new communities at higher economic levels. What is troubling about the gentrification that is taking place now in the African-American community in Brooklyn, is it’s fitting the pattern of the gentrification of Native American neighborhoods some time ago.
Artist: Gabriel (Specter) Reese at MoCADA
“People are not just moving out, going down South or taking off for the suburbs. They are being stopped and frisked by the police at every opportunity, shipped off to prison warehouse facilities for years of ill-training, killed by whoever has a gun and a reason, killed by AIDS and the malevolent “good health living with AIDS” marketing of the pharmaceutical companies, killed by obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, killed by poor judgment born of poor judgment, killed by unemployment double the Great Depression levels, killed by hundreds of years of miseducation and economic disenfranchisement, both enabled by the original crime, the theft of language and nationhood during slavery. Killed by the constant stress on the masses of Black people just to go about day-to-day survival.
African-American residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant, confronted by the multiplying and organized Hasidim to the north in Williamsburg and priced out east of Classon Avenue, are faced with seeing their community going the way of Harlem with white folks able to pick off the opportunities as they come up. If ever there was a time to come together and follow the example of Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad and our Hasidic brothers, organizing people around common economic goals, it is now.
You can call it gentrification if you’d like, but a slow genocide is what it is, a claiming of territory by victorious people. It’s nothing personal, everyone is quite civil about it, tsk, tsking about the unfortunate, but unchangeable, state of affairs. Just go quietly and don’t make a scene. For further clarification, ask a Native American, if you can find one.
Two weeks ago, the Department of Buildings (DOB)determined that renovation work performed in the cellar of 329 McDonough Street by ANC Construction, a contractor hired by the building owner, undermined the shared party wall between 329 and 331 McDonough Street causing it to partially collapse on Wednesday morning, January 20.
DOB engineers immediately determined that the damage to the party wall compromised the structural stability of both buildings and created a “perilous” public safety hazard. According to DOB spokesperson Ryan Meredith Fitzgibbon, “The contractors dug a ravine next to the party wall causing instability.”
DOB vacated 329 and 331 McDonough Street because they said damage posed a risk to the lives of the tenants and the property owners.
Rumors were rampant that the bookend buildings 327 (with four condo owners) and 333 (vacant and up for sale) might be adversely impacted if 329 and 331 were demolished, as noted in postings.
· Property owners of 327, 329 and 331 joined forces with engineers and lawyers to sue to stop the demolition, and show the properties can be saved. The plaintiffs include: the owner of 329 MacDonough St., Robert Providence; 327 Mac-Donough LLC; and owner of 331, Doreen Prince.
Meanwhile, last week, the plaintiffs’ engineers submitted a plan to pour concrete in the basement for shoring. The DOB reviewed the plan and determined “it was comprehensive and safe,” according to Fitzgibbon. Last Friday 29, DOB allowed the engineers to have the work done.
· On Tuesday, February 2, Supreme Court Justice Bert Bunyan extended a stay on demolition until Monday, February 8 to allow further time for submission for a shoring and bracing plan that would pass DOB approval. Announced Fitzgibbon yesterday, “The buildings are being closely monitored, and there are no signs of movement at this time,” adding, “The owner of 329 McDonough Street is currently working with his engineer to develop a plan to salvage the buildings.”
Joining block residents in the courtroom on February 2 were Borough President Marty Markowitz and City Councilman Al Vann (D-Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights). Both, it was learned, had monitored the MacDonough Street situation and had been in conversations with City Buildings officials – Vann, from out of the country — since reports of the crisis two weeks ago.
The View From There
Krystal Coddett’s window has a view of two of Brooklyn’s loveliest landmarks: the great stained-glass window of St. Philips Church , itself a home to one of the nation’s most precious legacies — a history that embraces the Brownstones, some unchanged in their century of existence, and a section of the village of Bedford Stuyvesant’s ancestral roots.
Exiting historic St. Philips Church on to MacDonough Street, Sunday, January 25, entrepreneur and environmentalist Sherri Hobson-Greene(right sister and her son), a Bedford-Stuyvesant resident, was staggered by the news that two brownstones on the block may be demolished. “If there’s something that can be done to save them, then it should be done – not just because they are brownstones, but because it is a signal to our children that working together, we can own and maintain where we live. This block is a jewel in New York City’s crown.” Photo credit: Barry L. Mason
Before the lofty term gentrification collapsed into a racial pejorative during the late 80’s meaning wealthy people purchasing properties mainly for cheap in poorer areas, there was another wave of gentrification, this involved aristocracies of color from the Caribbean and the South who purchased properties along MacDonough, Macon, Decatur, Bainbridge, Stuyvesant, Lewis and other blocks.
In appreciation and respect for the natural woods, and the artistry and craftsmanship, detailingslargely remained unharmed by most of these property owners.
As Tremaine Wright, owner of Common Ground café on Tompkins Avenue, and heir to a legacy of longtime brownstoners on Jefferson Avenue, “They held on to the real estate, so the next generations would not have to launch from the starting line. They worked hard, maintained and did their business.”
MacDonough Street former resident Mother Singleton, the late Bridge Street Church icon, who owned several properties, created a “museum” in her MacDonough St. home base with artifacts from her lifelong journey. She probably knew the parents of community organizer Sam Pinn who residents, with his wife, Doris, in the same MacDonough brownstone that his ancestors purchased in 1929.
Pinn, in a recent interview with Our Time Press, recalled watching Junior High School 35 going up in stages right across the street from his house, where beautiful brownstones once stood. There’s now a Brownstone School, there, and the nearby Brownstone Books, owned by McDonough resident Crystal Bobb-Semple and her husband Walter, MacDonough Street homeowners.
Before the Pinns, a young Lena Horne walked down MacDonough to get to the Macon Library, one block over. Her father owned a store near there, and she grew up in a house in the Weeksville area, an area coming back to life due to work of the late Joan Maynard and the current executive director of the Weeksville Heritage Center, Pam Greene. The Center, on Bergen, is about to build the first “green” museum devoted exclusively to an African-American village.
Pre-Civil War Weeksville’s ancestral connection to Bedford-Stuyvesant reminds that the community’s roots did not begin with the textbook description of the migration of people of color to the area during the 1920’s or just a few years earlier. In the early 19th century, black stevedore James Weeks purchased land from the Lefferts family, and started a self-contained village from the ground up. In doing so he began the pathway that ambled down a Native American trail into what is now Stuyvesant Heights, where eventually Miles Davis and Max Roach jammed in a forgotten after hours spot; “Native Son” author Richard Wright’s secretary, Mrs. Leach, according to Ms. Maynard, typed his manuscripts; Thomas Russell Jones and Elsie Richardson motivated Robert Kennedy to “restore” the neighborhood; the founder of the first magazine devoted solely to Black business, and Richard D. Parsons, the current CEO of Citigroup, were raised, and so on.
And all who are associated with 329 and 331, and their bookends 327 and 333, are part of the history and the soul of that area. Their stories, too, are about utilizing all of the talents and skills they have to survive, and the strength to prevent two strong village teeth to be yanked from their sockets. If possible.
When the residents of 329 and 331 evacuated their space on Wednesday morning of January 20, they fully expected to soon return home. They were at first told it would be a few hours. Then, later that morning, they were assured it would be a a few days before they would be able to go back. So they went to bed Wednesday night without the benefit of the small luxuries that come from having a place to be and call your own, and the belongings that come with it. There was no reason to believe that they and their things would not be safe and sound, or that the crisis in the cellar discovered by Mrs. Prince early Wednesday morning was over for them. On Thursday morning, they carried on: went to work, shopped for clothes, searched for avenues to access accounts. After all, backpacks, IDs, passports were in “safe places” – at home. Thursday they repeated the routine of Wednesday, with some uncertainty and a great deal of discomfort with their displacement.
By Thursday afternoon, texting, emails and phone calls reached them wherever they were staying, working or trying to make a way. Postings had gone up; 329 and 331 houses would be demolished; rumors flashed that 327 and 333 might be impacted.
Architect Michael McCaw, who has an office in the area, and designed plans for the upper floors — not the cellar — of 329, heard the news, and reacted swiftly placing a call to Henry Butler, chair of Community Board III. CB3 district manager Charlene Phillips dashed off a stunner of an email to various organizations and to Our Time Press; we had just completed the distribution work on the day’s issue. When we arrived on the block people were reeling, as we were, about this life-changing announcement.
329 owner Doreen Prince kept vigil from a van as demolition companies, apparently learning of the news showed up to survey the houses and place bids on the demolition work. One hurt bystander said, “They were like vultures circling a dying corpse!” “It’s all about money,” others opined, after learning later that an out-of-borough contractor erected the wood partition barring the entry to the buildings and protecting pedestrians from any falling debris, earned, “$4,000, more or less” for the job. That partition would be moved closer to the curb, twice over the course of a few days.
“I think if they were in a different neighborhood there’d be a much greater effort (to find an alternative to demolition),” said another. Nobody knew what was really going on, how could they? But all agreed there was an alternative to tearing down, and wondered why they did not have a say in discussing another way. But they said these things in shock, more than anger.
Alan Greaves, Mrs. Prince’s son, who with Krystal Coddett, would lead the effort to find out what was going on and, then, what to do, later said, “We had no time for anger, blaming, criticizing or hysteria. Tearing down the buildings was not an option. But we knew we had very little time to devise a course of action; we had to be clear about what to do.”
But Alan, a fire safety official, also knew something else: while carpenters, contractors, plumbers huddled on MacDonough Street in discussions on how the buildings could be shored, he knew that his and their opinions and solutions didn’t matter unless they could be proved in a courtroom. He silently began to work on a plan and consult with his associates in Downtown Brooklyn at Metro Tech.
By late Thursday night, the shockwave had reached area politicians working in Albany; Councilman Vann who was out of the country; and more community groups. Behind the scenes, they all geared up to have a hand – if not a say – in preserving the buildings. Evelyn Collier, President of the MacDonough Street Block Association, was on the phone with Borough President Marty Markowitz; Vann talked to commissioners and deployed staff members James Crandle, Carl Luciano and other to get on the street; the Brownstoners of Bedford Stuyvesant were mobilizing to have a presence in force at the hearing they were told was to take place the next day, then the day after that; and CB3 was fielding calls and informing its community advocates, who in turn reached to the highest rungs in the city to get the information needed to put wheels in motion carefully and stealthily.
And the people’s movement had only just begun. If Coddett’s home was the nerve center, then area businesses were her satellites, including Brownstone Books, Bread Stuy Café, the CB3 office, Peaches Restaurant. Everyone was aligned – as McDonough Street homeowner Daphne Daniel said, “to work through the system to save legacies.”
In this week’s Community Board 3 meeting, Vann said, “The people on the block should be commended for pulling together and we should recognize, as well, the support from various organizations. And Justice (Bert Bunyan) is being fair; we can never underestimate the total benefit when people come from the community.”
At the hearing on February 2, Vann and Markowitz blended in with the people of McDonough Street and their supporters.
In an e-mail, educator and community leader Brenda Fryson, former chair of the Community Board 3, wrote: “The heart of the story is of a community pulling together around a crisis. Folks took off from work and other things to pack the courtroom to show support; others stood vigil on MacDonough Street, some worked behind the scenes to provide technical assistance. This is the true spirit of Bed-Stuy. The story is not finished.”
With the next hearing set for February 8, Our Time Press, in its February 11 issue, continues this journey.
Community Board 3, Small Businesses, Residents, Block Presidents Take Back Malcolm X Blvd.
A victory took place in Bedford-Stuyvesant this week. Residents, merchants, civic leaders and elected officials joined forces to express their concerns about a rehabilitation center that covertly moved into the area in the beginning of January. Standing in solidarity, the collective succeeded in forcing the Gelzer Foundation, that ran a temporary housing facility for recovering alcohol and drug addicts, at 332 Malcolm X Blvd. out of the neighborhood.
WHOSE STREETS? OUR STREETS! Reverend Jesse Sumbry of King Emannuel Baptist Church; Henry L. Butler, chairperson, Community Board #3; and Eric Smith, President, Bainbridge St. Block Association (Malcolm X & Patchen) are determined to establish Bedford-Stuyvesant as a safe, vibrant neighborhood for young people like Mr. Smith’s daughter, Erica, a student at P.S. 262 where she studies the violin. Along with numerous residents, local business owners, politicians and agencies, these men wrested control of an illegal shelter from the unscrupulous.
After a weeklong battle, neighbors were thrilled to learn that the beat-up van that dropped off the wayward clan returned to reclaim the bed frames and mattresses it left behind. Earlier in the month, members of the community met with two representatives from the Gelzer Foundation. Unfortunately, the meeting only raised more questions and suspicions about how this organization, which apparently receives some city funding and holds no certificate with the state, was able to enter a neighborhood undetected.
After the request for a second meeting and documentation of the agency’s legitimacy was declined, the collective swung into action. True to the time in which we live in, there were no picket signs or bull horns demanding justice. Instead, the fight played out in cyberspace with e-mail campaigns fired off at jet speed to elected officials and civic leaders; and numerous blog postings and text messages soliciting support. New York Daily News, Our Time Press, the Real Deal Newspaper and News 12 covered the action; phone calls were placed to the agency, forcing elected officials to take action. By Friday, the Gelzer Foundation had enough and permanently closed its doors.
Program housing is a major concern in Bedford-Stuyvesant and other low-income communities throughout the city. Although the city and state has placed a “fair share clause” which monitors the number of program agencies committed to one region, developers and venture capitalists are able to exploit the lucrative market by secretly setting up such agencies in privately owned homes.
Community Board 3, which meets regularly with several city agencies during its closed-session meetings, promises to address the issue in a public forum soon. Chairman Henry Butler commended Bainbridge Street & Malcolm X Blvd. , Block Association and the Malcolm X Merchants Association for their unwavering commitment in tackling the issue noting that it was the community’s acting in the early stages that made the difference.
“When we got to the hospital the first thing was to see patients. Some of them were crying and screaming. We were working since then, nonstop,” said Poucheralph Salomon, a member of the 44-person medical delegation of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps that was on the ground Saturday after the Tuesday earthquake. “I’m a Haitian immigrant who came here in 1998, and I’m an American and I was proud to get down there and be able to help my people.” When they slept it was on the floor of a nearby house and then they were back surrounded by the sounds of pain and the smell of blood and death, giving their food to the patients. “I feel like I’m still in Haiti right now.”
Mr. Salomon was speaking in an interview after a press conference welcoming the returning volunteers, and introducing the second wave of volunteers going to Haiti. At the conference Congressman Ed Towns said, “I was watching television and when the Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps marched off the plane I had such a fantastic feeling that Bedford-Stuyvesant was there.” The congressman said he thought back to when he first met with Commander Rocky Robinson when Robinson was working out of the second floor of an abandoned building that was next to the current location. “I remember when I went up to that second floor and it was raining inside the building. When I left I said I’m going to help him but that man must have lost his mind to go into a building like that and talk about starting an ambulance corps.”
Acknowledging the power of a dream, Towns said, “As a result of your involvement here in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bedford-Stuyvesant went to Haiti and saved lives. Within 24 hours, they delivered 23 babies. They were able to relieve pain and suffering. This is what it is all about – people who help people.”
After the press conference Robinson spoke to the congressman of the kind of work they are doing in Haiti, saying of a CNN report, “They showed our dog, we have a dog, Cassius, named after Cassius Clay before he became Muhammad Ali, and he discovered the man in the hole. And that’s our people pulling him out. So we’re not only in the hospital, we have a small rescue team that’s saving lives.”
Dr. Roger St. Louis, one of the second wave of volunteers headed to Haiti as a member of the Ambulance Corps, said that the medical care must continue or more will die. “Here’s the reason why. We need orthopedics, anesthesiologists and surgeons on the first blow, and now it’s infections that are going to spread and kill people.” Dr. St. Louis emphasized the need for ongoing care, and the risk of gangrene setting into untreated wounds.
“They need antibiotics, they need an arrangement where they can heal. We believe that our first need will be healing the wounds and healing the infections.”
Another volunteer is Khadijah Shakur, a registered nurse since 1986. A specialist in obstetrics and orthopedics, Shakur couldn’t sleep well in the aftermath of the quake. “So when I heard that the Ambulance Corps was looking for volunteers, I immediately came. I felt I have to help my people.” Even though she will be leaving soon, Khadijah says she is “restless and anxious because there are things that are needed down there. Infection is running rampant and we need to be there and lay hands on these people. They need doctors, nurses and physical therapists. We have to get on the ground to help our people out.”
Volunteer Dr. Gaston Valcin emphasized the emotional and psychological support that is also needed. “The Haitian people need counseling because so many are in shock right now.” Asked how they could give up practices and go, Dr. Hans Garry Torlan said, “We’re natives of Haiti. Haiti is our heart. We put everything aside.”
Also, said Dr. St. Louis, President Martin of Kings County Hospital is giving “lots of leeway” and providing opportunities, including a department where staff can register to go help in Haiti. “Kings County is helping 110% in this catastrophic problem.”
Looking over where the BSVAC has come in the last twenty-two years, Robinson said, “Before, we were only the EMTs and paramedics, and now doctors and nurses are coming on board because they believe in what we’re doing. I get calls from as far away as Georgia and Florida. We’re galvanizing the Haitian community, the Caribbean community, the African-American community and even the Jewish community is having a dance for us on Monday. People are really getting on board, but we are the leaders. We have to lead the way.” David Mark Greaves
New York City is a mosaic of stories. And one of the most heartrending yet heartwarming can be seen in action on MacDonough Street, between Lewis and Stuyvesant Avenue in historic Stuyvesant.
It began early Wednesday morning, January 20, when Mrs. Doreen Prince, owner of 331 MacDonough, awoke and could not go back to sleep.
She got up to get a glass of water, and when she returned to bed, she smelled gas. She went back to the kitchen and then decided to check the boiler. As she opened the door to the basement, the gas odor was powerful.
She looked down the stairs, and saw the wall her building shared with 329 was now mostly a mountain of rubble and brick. She could see into neighbor Robert Providence’s house through the gaping hole. Even at that point it did not hit her how dangerous the situation was. Stunned, she could only think of alerting her tenants and Mr. Providence next door. But what was to develop into a nightmare unfolded very quickly. Within hours, it was determined that the two buildings were in eminent danger of collapsing under 100 tons of weight, that Mrs. Prince and her tenants, who left the building only with the clothes on their backs and their keys to the house, could not return. Ever. The building would be demolished. There were rumors the adjacent buildings sandwiching 331 and 329 might also be razed.
And the story had only just begun.
The buildings were slated to go down on Thursday in compliance with Buildings Department regulations concerning public safety. And the tenants were restricted from entering the building to retrieve their belongings.
On Thursday, Mr. Providence secured a stay so the buildings would not be torn down. On Friday another stay was granted until Monday. On Monday, a stay until yesterday, January 27 when Justice Bert Bunyan ruled that property owners’ structural engineers could have until Tuesday, February 2 to come up with a viable plan to save the structures.
It’s a story of people working together to find solutions; it is a story of compassion; it is a story where there are no enemies; it is a story about being on the brink; it is a story about “stuff;” keeping legacies alive, heritage intact and the quest to build new foundations; and more than bricks and mortar, it is ultimately the story, said 331 renter, Omalara Reginald Rose Deas, of grace under pressure. “And people.”
Two of those people were Lieselle Pascal, Mr. Rose’s neighbor, and Mr. Tim Lynch, a buildings forensic expert. Mr. Lynch personally brought the tenants’ and Mrs. Prince belongings out of the building. The very first items came from Miss Pascal’s apartment.
The cardboard box Lynch thought Miss Pascal requested contained the bible her grandmother had given her 10 years ago.
Keedra Gibba of the December 12 Movement was seated comfortably in Bread Stuy Caf‚ at about 1pm, Friday (22), when 327 McDonough Street condo owner Suzette Hunte, entered and implored diners to come out to the hearing that was taking place in an hour. Gibbs, without hesitation, responded to Miss Hunte’s “call to action.”
And then there are Krystal Coddett, Crystal Bobb-Semple, Eddie and Bea Atwell, Daniel and Jordana Rosen, Michael Charles, Doris Pinn, Dan Durett, Councilwoman Tish James, Kenny Kweku, Frantz, and Alan Greaves, Mrs. Prince’s son and stalwart protector — all playing a part in the drama.
The Department of Buildings told Our Time Press, “The stay on demolition has been extended to Tuesday, February 2. The buildings are being closely monitored, and there are no signs of movement at this time. The property owner will continue to submit monitoring reports to the Department. Meanwhile, the property owner (Robert Providence) must submit plans to the Department that show how the buildings can be stabilized.” The results of the Tuesday hearing will be reported – and some of the individuals who brought the MacDonough Street story to this point will be introduced — next week in Our Time Press.