Our Time PressThe Local Paper with the Global View

By Errol T. Louis
Beware of New Predators
      Immoral financial predators are a fact of life in New York, like subway rats. But the thieves who steal people’s homes deserve a special place in hell. For most of us, home is a financial anchor that represents a lifetime of sweat and hard work.
That economic base is getting eroded on a daily basis as a new and pernicious brand of fraud called deed theft sweeps low-income neighborhoods around the state. The scam targets needy, vulnerable homeowners who have fallen behind on tax bills or mortgage payments and are desperate for a way to fend off foreclosure.
The con starts when a friendly investor shows up out of the blue offering financial assistance to the person in trouble – often, an elderly and/or desperate homeowner whose name is on the public database of properties nearing foreclosure. In other cases, people in a pinch make the mistake of calling one of the legitimate-sounding outfits advertised on flyers all over inner-city neighborhoods that offer to “help save your home.”
The “help” consists of convincing the indebted person to sign away title to their property and pay rent to the friendly new owner, who in turn agrees to clear up the back bills – often, only a few thousand dollars – and then sell the house back to its original owner a year later.
The trap is sprung when the unwitting homeowner tries to recover the property she signed away. Suddenly, the buyback price has soared, or the building may have already been sold to a new landlord – who hikes the rent and starts eviction procedures.
It’s usually at this point the victim discovers the paperwork he or she signed doesn’t match the transaction the con man described. In some cases, people trustingly sign a stack of papers believing they are saving their home, and instead, literally give it away.
“We have never seen one of these deals that worked,” says Josh Zinner, who runs the Foreclosure Prevention Project of South Brooklyn Legal Services. “The express purpose is to take the title.”
Cases are popping up all over the state. Zinner says he’s seen 75 cases of deed theft in recent months.
“In the last year, it’s exploded as a problem,” he says. “We get calls from all over New York City, and we’ve gotten quite a few calls from Long Island.”
State lawmakers are scrambling to crack down on deed theft. A bill supported by community organizations would allow homeowners to cancel fraudulent transactions and sue the pants off the crooks who try to steal their property.
Until relief comes from Albany, there are a few guidelines people should follow to avoid deed theft. “If you are on the brink of foreclosure, you should immediately seek assistance. This is no time to be ashamed,” says Sarah Ludwig of the nonprofit Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project.
The agency runs a hotline for victims of deed theft at (212) 680-5100. The hotline number for South Brooklyn Legal Services – open to callers anywhere in New York City – is (718) 246-3279.
Above all, homeowners in a financial fix should take the simplest, safest action when someone comes calling with a too-good-to-be-true offer. Hang up the phone.
* * *
Community’s Health Sold Out
One out of every four children in Harlem has asthma. The numbers are nearly as high in the South Bronx and southeastern Queens where other trash-transfer stations are concentrated. And yet, a group of Black and Latino city council members sold out their constituents in early June by voting to kill a plan by Mayor Bloomberg that would finally end the practice of concentrating waste disposal sites in communities of color.
The mayor’s plan, which has been two years in the making, calls for using barges and railroad cars to get rid of the 50,000 tons of garbage the city produces every day. Right now, nearly all the city’s trash is hauled through the streets on diesel trucks, then off to distant landfills, fouling our air with the smog, airborne particles and chemicals that help give New York the highest asthma mortality rate in America.
The health emergency confronting communities of color was almost entirely ignored by the politicians, who framed the garbage vote as a matter of how best to protect the council’s power to bargain and negotiate with Bloomberg. Even that was a lie: The vote was really about bending to the wish of Council Speaker Gifford Miller and a handful of his council allies to keep the city from reopening a marine transfer station on E. 91st St.
A day before the vote, the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association and American Heart Association issued a joint letter that all but begged the Council to support the mayor’s plan, which the health groups estimated would cut 5.7 million miles of trash-truck traffic inside the city every year. “Every diesel-polluting truck that we can remove from our clogged streets is a step in the right direction,” the groups wrote, noting that our current system “concentrates the polluting activities in the neighborhoods already demonstrating a higher disease burden.”
A majority of the council members had no use for such idle chatter. What mattered was protecting their power and their popularity among well-heeled East Side donors and voters. It came as no surprise that East Side pols like Miller and Eva Moskowitz voted to kill the mayor’s plan, joined by Eric Gioia, who hails from Queens but has been pondering a run for the congressional seat held by Carolyn Maloney, which includes the East Side.
The real scandal was the vote of members of the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus who normally posture as champions of poor people. Council members Al Vann, Erik Dilan, Robert Jackson, Margarita Lopez, Miguel Martinez, Philip Reed, Larry Seabrook, Hiram Monserratte and John Liu all cast votes against the mayor’s plan.
Environmental activists saw some of these votes as betrayals, 100% reversals from what pols had promised them. Time will tell what promises, gifts and goodies Miller and his allies offered these pols but a different vote by any five of them would have set the city on the path to cleaner air and less disease.
The tussle continues in the days ahead. Bloomberg is expected to veto the council’s vote, after which Miller will need 33 votes – two-thirds of the council – to kill the mayor’s waste plan. Stay tuned for news of who sells out next time.

NBA Hall of Famer Lenny Wilkens, Jr.; Community Development Leader Phyllis Rosenblum;
Foodtown-PSK Supermarkets; Playwright Joyce Sylvester; and HSBC Bank USA to Receive Award

On June 13th Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation celebrated 38 years of service to Central Brooklyn with a fundraising gala held at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan. Business leaders, entertainers and politicians, such as Councilwoman Yvette Clark and Senator Carl Andrews, attended the gala, which has generated $1.7 million over the past few years. CBS 2 news anchor Jay Dow served as Master of Ceremonies for the evening.
The gala acknowledged the institute’s accomplishments within the last year as well as honored distinguished members of the Bed-Stuy community. Among the honorees were community developer Phyllis Rosenblum, NBA hall of fame legend Lenny Wilkens Jr., renown playwright Joyce Sylvester, Foodtown Supermarkets and HSBC Bank. Restoration’s President Colvin Grannum said the honorees were selected because of their  “contributions to [Restoration] and to the community.”
Phyllis Rosenblum, the now retired Senior Vice President of HSBC Bank, used her position as t

he head of the bank’s community development services to invest not only in Restoration, but also in numerous housing and homeownership initiatives. She was honored with the Restoration Founders Award for Enlightened Leadership, in recognition of her commitment to community development. Rosenblum believed it was important to invest time and resources into Restoration because she believed Restoration “is the most important community group in the history of community development as it created a model for other groups to follow.” She guided HSBC’s decision to invest in the federal low-income housing tax credit program, and was also a
co-founder of the New York Mortgage Coalition, an effort to address inequities in mortgage lending and promote homeownership.
NBA hall of fame player and coach Lenny Wilkens Jr., born and raised in Bed-Stuy, received the Restoration Founders Award for Excellence in Achievement. Wilkens, a nine time NBA all-star, coached the 1996 gold-medal-winning Olympic “Dream Team. “Growing up in Bedford Stuyvesant certainly afforded me a rich heritage, the culture of the community, the

warmness, the caring were a foundation for me,” said Wilkens. He credits Restoration with being “a wonderful involvement for people giving back to their community,” which makes him proud to support the institution.
Playwright, director and actress Joyce Sylvester, whose plays are a mainstay at The Billie Holiday Theatre at Restoration Plaza, received the Restoration founders Award for Excellence in the Arts. Sylvester won a 2004 Audelco award for directing Freeda Peoples, which was produced at the Billie Holiday Theatre. Born in Harlem and currently living in Queens, Sylvester said
Brooklyn has been a blessing for her. “The Billie Holiday Theatre was the first to produce all of my plays, as well as gave me an opportunity to act there and move on to Broadway,” said Sylvester.
Restoration also honored the plaza’s most recent and notable tenant, Foodtown Supermarkets with the Robert F. Kennedy Humanitarian Award. The family-owned chain hired more than 120 employees from the community and provided a $1.3 million donation in support of Restoration’s community development programming. “We are thrilled to serve the residents of Bedford
Stuyvesant,” said Noah Katz, Vice President of Foodtown Supermarkets. Katz went on to say that his family opened their largest store at Restoration Plaza because of the potential of the institution and the community in which it resides.
The final award recipient was HSBC Bank, honored with the Jacob K. Javits Achievement Award for Excellence in Leadership, for their commitment to community development. The bank has financially backed numerous community development initiatives in low-income areas throughout the country for the purposes of revitalization.

Revitalization and expansion has been the focal point of Restoration for the last year; with the opening of Applebee’s in late September 2005 and the $800,000 donation from the city to modernize the plaza, Restoration hopes to invigorate the commercial strip along Fulton Street and create new jobs. The corporation aspires to create a “first-class center for culture, commerce,
and education.” When asked if Restoration wants to become another Atlantic Terminal president Colvin Grannum said, “No we’re not going to aim for that; we want to keep people in Bed-Stuy, you know Atlantic Terminal’s sort of like a city wide destination.  We would like people from Central Brooklyn to enjoy our services.”
In addition to physical expansion plans, Restoration is presently working with HUD, HPD and private investors to re-capitalize all of their residential housing to insure long-term affordability for low-income residents. The corporation recently hired a career specialist to increase their capacity to place residents in jobs and equip them to enter the workforce, as well as a commercial revitalization manager to further their efforts to assist local merchants and attract new business to the community. “We are right on track and we are working to create change that will benefit all residents,” said Grannum.

By Aminisha Black
Summer Assignments for Parents
A summer bridge activity for parents might be to read a few of those wordy documents from the Department of Education that determines the fate of our children.  While all schools are subject to the same guidelines – the interpretation and implementation of those guidelines vary depending on the administration’s vision and perception of its students.  In order to hold schools responsible for following policy guidelines we need to know what they are.
Student Rights and Responsibilities  – The DOE’s Bill of Student Rights and Responsibilities – K-12 is found on the last five pages of the Discipline Code, following twenty-one pages of infractions and ranges of possible disciplinary responses for the infractions.   Every parent should have received a copy of the Citywide Standards of Discipline and Intervention Measures (The Discipline Code).  If you didn’t, call your child’s school today.  The last five pages should be read first.
 Student Rights include but are not limited to the right to attend school and receive a free public school education from kindergarten to age 21 or receipt of a high school diploma, whichever comes first; English Language Learners are entitled to a bilingual education or English as a Second Language Program; Students with Disabilities who have been determined to be in need of special education are entitled to a free appropriate public education from age 3 until age 21; receive courtesy and respect from others; receive a written copy of the school’s policies and procedures, the Discipline Code and the NYC DOE Bill of Student Rights and Responsibilities early in the school year or upon admission to the school. 
Suspensions – According to Chancellor’s Regulation A-443, suspension is the temporary removal of a child from the regular school program because his/her behavior negatively affects the health, safety, welfare and/or morals of others.   It is to be used as a last resort after other forms of intervention have been tried.   A-443 is required reading necessary to provide a context for the disciplinary responses.  The suspension is not to be used to punish inappropriate behavior nor is it a way to rid the school of students who the staff consider annoyances.  Last year, a high school student who had obviously plucked the last nerve at her school, was suspended.  Having been out of the city for a while, I obtained the Discipline Code, the 69- page A-443, and Advocates for Children’s Guides to Principal and Superintendent’s Suspensions for parents of Elementary to High School Students. The guardian and I reviewed the charges and compared the actual conduct of the staff to the mandates of A-443.  We insisted on a hearing.  We had documented at least six violations to A-443, one of which was that school officials shall not interfere with a suspended student’s efforts to carry out due process rights.  The dean had recommended to her that she enter a plea of no contest in the presence of her guardian and me. I strongly suggested that he withdraw the charges indicating that we had found several violations of A-443 and was adding the one he had just made.
  While the challenge was successful, her guardian realized how biased the staff was.  They registered her at Brooklyn’s Benjamin Banneker Academy where she is completing her junior year (being recognized there for intelligence and potential, not as a discipline problem) and   is entering her second year as a dancer  in an adolescent dance troupe that performs at community centers on a rigorous year round schedule.
Our job is to provide consistent guidelines for the home, review and enforce school policies and always remain vigilant to advocate for the children in a principled manner.
Next time we’ll look at No Child Left Behind and ways of protecting our children’s privacy. 

ALERT!!  If your child is enrolled in a school designated as a School Under Registration Review  (SURR*) or a School In Need of Improvement (SINI*) and would be attending that school next fall, that child is eligible to transfer to another school.  Parents should have received notice with application. Application must be returned by mail postmarked by JULY 8TH.   If you haven’t received the material, call the parent coordinator at your school or 311 for your regional Learning Support Center immediately.
Contact the Parent Notebook by e-mail at parentsnotebook@yahoo.com or P.O. Box 755, Brooklyn, NY11238.

U.S. violations of international law have become so outrageous and widespread that even  mainstream organizations, including Amnesty International, International Committee of the Red Cross and Physicians for Human Rights have issued statements condemning the Bush Administration’s lawlessness.
In addition, representatives of the media worldwide, including CNN, BBC,  the Newspaper Guild and widely respected organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders  have spoken out against the military’s attempt to silence coverage of war crimes by political pressure and by directly targeting journalists.

*The U.S. – A Rogue State*
According to a 308-page report issued last week by Amnesty International, the U.S. is “thumbing its nose at the rule of law” by engaging in torture, abuse and illegal detentions.
More than a year ago, grisly pictures of the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib came to light, sparking justifiable outrage, particularly throughout the Arab world.  The Pentagon responded by banning cell phone cameras which had been used to photograph the abuse.  They then selected a few low-ranking soldiers to punish for executing policies that we now know originated in   Washington, DC.  Alberto Gonzales, who drafted the memo advising the president that he was not bound by international law, was subsequently promoted to attorney general. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved many of the interrogation techniques used in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram Prison.
A year after the Abu Ghraib photographs exposed the real character and intent of U.S. occupation, the conditions and apparatus remain in place for torture, abuse and illegal detentions.  While the Pentagon is engaging in a public relations campaign to convince the public that these crimes are the actions of a few “bad apples,” tens of thousands of detainees in U.S. prison camps in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guant namo Bay and secret locations elsewhere remain in brutal and inhumane conditions.
Evidence of torture and abuse by U.S. forces continues to mount.  According to the May 29 Washington Post, “The latest FBI documents detailing allegations of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay are like previous FBI documents: highly disturbing. They contain prisoners’ descriptions of beatings, strippings and abuse of the Koran. Detainees variously claim the Muslim holy book has been thrown on the floor, thrown against a wall and, yes, flushed in a toilet. There are also references to these kinds of events having led to an “altercation” between detainees and guards.”
The government was forced to release 1,000 pages of transcripts this week.  The testimonies included   a shocking look into the torture chambers of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where about 520 men from 40 countries remain held, some for as long as three years.
A recent report from Physicians for Human Rights examining the use of psychological torture against prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba says that the abuse was a direct result of decisions developed by civilian and military leaders to “take the gloves off” during interrogations and “break” prisoners through the use of techniques such as “sensory deprivation, isolation, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, the use of military working dogs to instill fear, cultural and sexual humiliation, mock executions and the threat of violence or death toward detainees or their loved ones.”
“Although the evidence is far from complete,” the report says, “what is known warrants the inference that psychological torture was central to the interrogation process and reinforced through conditions of confinement.”
Torture and abuse are not the work of a few “bad apples.”  *These inhumane and brutal policies flow directly from the highest levels of government.*
Amnesty International recognized this and suggested that foreign governments investigate senior U.S. officials involved in torture and abuse and arrest and question Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, former CIA Director William Tenet and Vice President Dick Cheney.
The Pentagon’s Response: 
Target the Press
In response to the growing global outrage at U.S. torture, the Bush Administration is taking steps not to halt its criminal actions but to stop media coverage of the abuse.
On May 1, Newsweek magazine revealed that an internal U.S. military investigation had found substantial evidence interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Koran. Newsweek’s story led to outrage against the US in Afghanistan and elsewhere where violent protests led to at least 15 deaths and hundreds of injuries.
Newsweek wasn’t the first media outlet to report on the trashing of the holy Islamic text by U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo.  Reports in  the Independent  of  London,  the Washington Post  the NY Daily News and the Financial Times have all described desecration of the Koran, including throwing it into the toilet.
However, the White House damage control team was able to successfully pressure Newsweek to retract the story amd issue an apology.  The Bush Administration claims Newsweek’s story led to preventable deaths that resulted from the protests. “People lost their lives. People are dead,” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said. “People need to be very careful about what they say, just as they need to be careful about what they do.”  This is the same man who lied to the U.S. public, saying he knew exactly where the Iraqi people were hiding weapons of mass destruction.  His lies helped lead the U.S. into a war costing the lives of more than 100,000 Iraqis and 1600 U.S. soldiers.
*Help Build a Movement to Hold the War Criminals Accountable*

* George W. Bush and his administration have committed numerous war crimes. * They lied in order to lead the U.S. into a war of aggression. 
They have killed more than 100,000 Iraqi pe and assassination.  They have committed crimes against peace and crimes against humanity, and they must be held accountable.
These lawless killers have already demonstrated their absolute contempt for any legal restraint, whether domestic or international.  The only force that can stop their drive to globalize Abu Ghraib is the power of the people.
We must build a massive grass roots movement to end the Bush drive for empire and to demand justice.
PeopleJudgeBush.org <http://www.peoplejudgebush.org> was launched in the summer of 2004 as part of the organizing for a week of protests against the Republican National Convention in New York City.  Organizers sponsored  the August 26 War Crimes Tribunal <http://peoplejudgebush.org/tribunal2.shtml>, where an international panel of witnesses and experts presented conclusive evidence of the crimes committed by the Bush Administration.   Findings from the Tribunal, including documentation and testimony are available online
<http://peoplejudgebush.org/tribunal2.shtml>.
But it is not enough to acknowledge that the Bush Administration is a criminal regime.  *We must also defend the right and obligation to resist.*  The people of Iraq have the right to defend themselves and resist illegal U.S. invasion and colonial occupation.  Members of the
military have the right to refuse to obey orders to fight in an illegal war.  *And the people have the right and the obligation to organize and take to the streets to demand that George W. Bush be held accountable. www.PeopleJudgeBush.org

Mother Daughter Team of Michelle Ballard and her second-grader Asher, were the First Place winners of a one-year family membership at the Bedford YMCA at Madison & Bedford Avenues.
Second place was won by Ija & Noni Fernandez and 3rd place winners were Lenora Sharpe and her granddaughter Lori. 
Both second and third- place winners received tickets from the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration’s Billie Holiday Theater to their current production of “Power Play.”
The Brooklyn Children’s Museum gave a package of passes for all participants and Bud Weiss generously provided refreshments and Legacy PR donated a deluxe Scrabble board to the first place winners and dictionaries to 2nd and 3rd place winners.
Word Power will start up again in the Fall on the first Saturday in October at the Magnolia Tree Earth Center.