Our Time PressThe Local Paper with the Global View

… Charles Barron still brings the fire. Burning questions in the minds of “critical thinkers” are: what’s he done lately for the community? What legislation has he passed?
Why can’t he step aside and bring in some new blood? Is Barron “for real?”

Many folks in Barron’s 42nd Councilmatic District of Brownsville-East New York hardly find the questions relevant.

Country hangs out on Stanley Avenue.  He happened to have been coming out of the Hair Cutz barbershop when he spotted his two heroes, The Rev. Al Sharpton and Councilman Charles Barron, across the street on Van Siclen Avenue, Friday, July 31.

They had just left the IS166-George Gershwin School tour stop and jumping into their vehicle to head South to another site.  Didn’t matter to Country that they didn’t have time to speak to him.

Standing with his Uncle Leon next to his van in the middle of Van Siclen Avenue in front of George Gershwin High School in East New York, Country hammered his chest with a closed fist, and yelled, as Charles Barron’s vehicle passed by, “You got my heart, man!”

Then he extended the full length of his arm into the air like a spear, slow-rising, “You got my heart.”

And that shout out was echoed by a local pizza owner.  When asked who he considered to be the most powerful leader in Brooklyn. “Just one: Barron.”

Barron wanted to bring attention to his work in the community, and he admittedly got ours when he brought in his long-time friend The Rev. Al to tour his neighborhood.  The objective was more than to network with his fellow hell (and consciousness) -raiser.    He wanted to deliver a message.

“I really want to show the other side of the value of participating in electoral politics.  I have maintained my voice, and I didn’t compromise anything.  You can be progressive; you don’t have to take the establishment line.  You can work from within, not play the game and still get things done for the community.”

“I’m from the old school,” said Country, “Been there; done that.  New people have to learn; some learning through the grapevine; others thought the roots.  Charles has done his time on the ground, and he learned during the 70’s when people were people.  Only a few people doin’ something for the community; everybody else is waitin’ for somebody else to do it for them.  It’s time to wake up. And he’s louder and blacker than ever.”

Two neighborhood mothers basically said the same.  One of them, Edith Jenkins, a 26-year resident of the neighborhood told us:  “Whenever there’s something going on in the community he checks it out, even if it’s just for a second, but he comes by and supports us if we have things out here; it’s a big thing – Fathers Day, and he’s here. My son has a football league called the Warriors; he also donates toys to the kids, he tries to get them out of the streets.”

This does not add up to a whole lot of dollars, and with Charles’ schedule, it does not add up to very much time to “drop by.”  He had just returned from the Middle East, thousands of miles away from the 42nd District, on business that on the surface may have little to do with matters of home.

In fact, Barron says he really has been taking care of business in 42, particularly in the area of housing and parks. Edith Jenkins knows of what she speaks: Big money has gone into parks in his district.  The Venable Park, the Linden/Gershwin Park and Brownsville Recreation Space are receiving a combined $14.5 million dollars worth of upgrades and development.

The Linden Houses neighborhood will be a beneficiary of new senior units, family units, a parking lot, and a new center; George Gershwin middle school’s recording studio will be outfitted with state of the art high technology and new computers.

And another major project, a possible extension of the Gateway Mall, will add 2,000 units of housing, two new parks, a new school and a supermarket.  He’s hoping to secure thousands of jobs, and “instead of having a new mall, we’re going to secure a space for local businesses who will get low rent.”  He also insured a job training program, office space sites and other gains with a Community Benefits Agreement.

He’s partnering with Rev. David Brawley, co-chair of the East Brooklyn Congregations (EBC) that’s bringing in affordable rental apartments designed for low-income families making 50 and 60 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI).

So, while it may be no secret at City Hall, it was a surprise to us that Barron is at the very top of the Council list of members who bringing in Affordable Housing to the community.

Through his tour with Sharpton that balmy day, Barron wanted to get out another message: “to show the other side of the value of participating in electoral politics. You can be progressive; you don’t have to take the establishment line; you can be outspoken; you can work from within. And not the play the game. I have maintained my voice, my blackness and I didn’t compromise anything.”

While housing and the economy are high up on Barron’s list, there are other concerns that keep him up at night, and bear a tremendous weight.  The shootings, the phone calls.
“It’s when I come home. I have to sit down. I wonder if another phone call’s coming.  I’m suddenly at the scene of a killing, or with a family in an emergency,” he said.

“I don’t seek these cases; 99% of the time, people call me.  ‘We want to have a press conference, to put the truth out there about our loved ones.’  I always ask them first: is this something you really want to do?  I go through the entire process of explaining the pros and cons of calling the media.  I’m not trying to get media attention for myself. And most of the time, these families want to just get the media to present a picture of their loved one as someone who is loved and not the person who might be projected. They want me to talk about their humanity, to get the message out that they want justice.

“The media has used the term ambulance-chasing,” he said. “We are not chasing the ambulance; we are the ambulance.”

Andrea Webb, who’s lived all her life since 1970, on Stanley Avenue, said, “If you are for the people and want to help the kids, you got my support and my vote. He has mine.”

For Barron, the questions may boil down to one – is he there for us when we need him, whether near or far. So you’ve got to wonder: if someone like Barron takes an about face on term limits, does it really matter to the people on the ground – like Country, Andrea, Edith and the barbers at Hair Cutz – who are looking for a leader they believe cares for them?

“We lost a lot of people to crack and murder,” says Country, who works in a funeral home. “I’m tired of looking at so many dead people. People need a way out of this hole. Need to get off that daydream and make that dream a reality.  Anybody daydreamin’ ain’t doing nothin’ but sendin’ up air. Charles Barron’s not a daydream leader. ”

(Part II: August 27)

There was wistfulness about the Major Owens endorsement of Councilman John Liu on Monday at his congressional office where he’s been for 24 years.  “We’re moving out in September,” the congressman said. “This is the last event we’ll be having here.” Before getting to the endorsement of Councilman Liu, the former congressman spoke of the issue of how issues of unfairness in the way “member items” or “earmarks”, the monies distributed at the discretion of individual lawmakers, cross federal, state and local levels.  After his Medgar Evers students had researched the City Council, he found that “Speaker Christine Quinn received 10 times more than any council member in Brooklyn.”
Owens and Liu agree clear that they were not against member items, but rather how they are distributed.  Owens contends that these items are a way for local politicians to answer some of the very local needs of the community.  What he has a problem with is that “these items should be distributed equally across the membership.  They all represent the same number of people, the items should be distributed equally.”
Owens spoke of Liu as someone who he trusts as “a professional finance person not connected with what I call the ‘Donocracy’ of New York,” which he described as a pool of people and institutions that funds any candidate that may win in return for access to power.  According to Owens, a prime example of a beneficiary of the Donocracy, a “creature” of it as he says, is David Yassky, apparently a man for whom Owens does not have much respect, calling him “an empty suit, interested only in power.”   Adding “John Liu is not owned by the Donocracy.”
Congressman Owens is adding his name to a long list of Liu supporters including 1199 SEIU, District Council 37 and many other unions and a wide cross section of politicians.
Answering a question on contracting, Liu said that the Bloomberg trend toward large single suppliers in the city purchasing system goes against efforts to include small and minority-owned enterprises.  He wants to go to smaller bids so more small firms can participate.  Liu said that with passage of legislation in Albany, the City Comptroller now has the authority to go into the Department of Education and audit their purchasing procedures.
On the question of whether the Comptroller’s office would play a role in ensuring that minority-worker components were adhered to in stimulus-related construction, Liu said ensuring a fair distribution of jobs was his highest priority.
Reflecting on his work on the council Transportation Committee, he was struck by how much work was contracted out to only two firms.  Liu feels that much of the work could be done by city workers, and that billions of dollars are going outside the city and at the same time, city workers are deprived of opportunities.
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Asked if he would be satisfied and stay in the Comptroller’s office were he to win, Liu said he’d serve his 4-year term and another if he could, but admitted, “Hey, I’m hungry.  I’d like to be president.”    You heard it here first.

“The Brooklyn Supreme Court Guardianship Program has been hijacked by Mafia-style crime”, charges Reverend Samuel Boykin, court-appointed guardian for Judge John Phillips, the “Kung Fu Judge.”   Phillips was a Brooklyn Civil Court Judge for 13 years serving two terms between 1976 and 1994.  Boykin is the first family member in a long line of court-appointed guardians to take charge of Judge Phillips’ estate after he was declared mentally incompetent by District Attorney Charles Hynes’ office in 2001.
His story should serve as a cautionary tale for all.
“Judge John L. Phillips said to me regularly that if all of these illegal activities can be successfully committed against a judge, they can be committed against anyone,” says Reverend Boykin.
That the tale is long and sordid is a matter of record.   Writing in Our Time Press in 2007, reporter Mary Alice Miller has chronicled many of the misdeeds and charges.  The New York Law Journal  has had extensive coverage.  In the hands of judge-appointed guardians, the estate has gone from a value of over $10 million  to $18,000 and three properties, including the famous Slave Theater on Harriet Ross Tubman Avenue, aka Fulton Street.
So far only Maria Leyna Albertina and attorney Emani P. Taylor have paid a price for their roles in the saga.  Ms. Albertina was sentenced in January to 5-15 years for mortgage fraud activity, some of which involved Judge Phillips’ property.  Attorney Taylor, a former interim guardian for Judge Phillips, has been suspended from the practice of law.  As reported in the New York Law Journal, January 2008, a unanimous panel of Justices in the Appellate Division wrote that, “At a minimum, [Taylor] withdrew funds from the guardianship account as legal fees without court permission, at worst, she intentionally converted guardianship funds.”  She was later ordered to repay $403,149 for mishandling the Judge’s affairs.    An application has been made to The Lawyers’ Fund for Client Protection to recoup those monies.  The fund responded on April 23rd of this year that in addition to needing proof of payment and various other conditions met, “The Fund must await the conclusion of the underlying disciplinary matters pending against Ms. Taylor before proceeding further.”
Of larger concern is what has happened to judicial oversight of the court-appointed guardians and of the whole Guardianship program.   As Boykin says in his complaint to Comptroller William Thompson, “There were 12 judges involved in the Judge John L. Phillips Guardianship case, either involved in overseeing the case as presiding judges, issuing decision orders, judicial hearing judges, administrator judges, judges sealing records.   We believe none of these judges are legally able to state they were not aware of the illegal activities going on in the Judge John L. Phillips Guardianship case, we believe the case is a good example” of the need for oversight of the Guardianship program.
Reverend Boykin has also filed a complaint with Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s Public Integrity Bureau.   They, in turn, have referred the matter to Ms. Sherrill Spatz, Inspector General of the New York State Unified Court System, writing, “After careful review of the documents, we have determined that the issues mentioned pertain to your office….for whatever action you deem appropriate.”
In his letter to Assistant District Attorney Robert Renzulli in the Asset Forfeiture Bureau of D.A. Charles Hynes’ office, Boykin outlines how the Phillips estate has been systematically looted by mortgage fraud including “illegal conveyances, illegal sales and forgery of deeds.”  And he asks if anyone is going to pay for these crimes?
We should start to hear other shoes dropping in this case.  If not, then the silence will mark the all clear for business as usual, and the only thing sure other than death and taxes will be mortgage and financial fraud as legal vultures pick over the estates of primarily the weak and sick, but really, anyone at all.