Our Time PressThe Local Paper with the Global View

The demonstration outside of  1786 Prospect Plaza held on November 13, was to bring attention to promises the New York City Housing Authority had made but not fulfilled as part of the HUD-funded $100 million HOPE VI Community Revitalization Project Ocean/Hill Brownsville. 

Milton Bolton, president of the Prospect Plaza Tenants Association, said, “There’s been no training and nothing done to allow the Tenants  Association to contact the relocated tenants.   When we speak with the NYCHA we keep hearing that they’re ‘working on it,’ but they don’t give us a timetable.”
We spoke with Mr. Bolton a week later in the offices of the Committee to Honor Black Heroes.  He reported that NYCHA reached out to him on Monday, November 17.  “We received twelve vouchers for computer training.”   He showed us the vouchers.  They had been issued by New Horizons Computer Learning Centers on March 11, 2003, and expire March 11, 2004.   “We’re just getting them now.”
The organization chart for the original application shows that the responsibility for “Resident Education, Initiatives and Training” falls directly to the HOPE VI unit at the New York City Housing Authority and, according to Mr. Bolton, the issuance of the vouchers is the first evidence of that mission. 
” NYCHA is not supplying  money for the Tenants  Association to make contact with our members,” Mr. Bolton says.    “The training program is supposed to include money for transportation and child care but there’s been no mention of that.  This kind of disrespect has been going on for five years now.”
Support for the tenants came from Frank Pitt, formerly of the Jive Five singing group, who is in charge of the tenant patrol for 85 Navy Walk at Ingersoll Houses.  He and other tenants work in concert with the housing police and from 7pm-9pm sit at a lobby table where visitors have to sign in.  “We keep people from selling drugs in the hallway and it gives people in the building a sense of security.”   He  said that residents were concerned about the renovation going on at their complex. “People want to know they will  have a guarantee of being returned.”
As a next step, Bolton wants to speak to decision-makers who can turn this situation around.  “We want to meet with Tina Hernandez, director of NYCHA, and Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott.  We believe the Deputy Mayor understands the HOPE VI project and what should be done for the tenants at Prospect Plaza.  We think the problem can be solved at their level.”

When facing challenges they say that attitude is everything and we saw an example of that in two meetings in Brownsville that dealt with those points where city and population meet: crime, garbage pickups and housing.

We first attended a tenant association meeting at Seth Lowe Housing at Belmont and Christopher.  Chaired by Jenny Ortiz-Bowman, Council of Presidents administrator, it was a small group, including Lisa Kenner, president of the Van Dyke Houses Resident Association.   The New York City Police Department was well-represented by Captain Michael  Kemper and Lieutenant Joseph Donachie of the 75th.  Precinct officers from  the 73rd  as well as transit and housing police.   
They had come prepared with the letters that had been sent to their commanders and they spoke to the changes they had made in their policing based on the information received.  The residents spoke about specific problems of safety with people leaving for work at 3AM-4AM when most folks are just turning over. 
Mrs. Bowman was good- humored and relentless as she explained that the people in the community wanted to partner with the police to rid the community of crime. As the residents told about several unreported robberies, Captain Kemper was listening and flexible, and spoke of the necessity of reporting all robberies while taking personal responsibility that what they were saying would not be sitting on someone’s desk.  This  intelligence would be directly transmitted to the people shaping the morning shift.   
The task force meeting of the Council of Presidents was a standing-room-only affair in the Community Room at Seth Low Houses.  Present were residents and  tenant presidents,as well as building superintendents and managers. Gloria Finkelman, borough director of  NYCHA was there with many of her staff.
Council President Reginald Bowman says he believes that when the community and NYCHA work together, common problems can be solved, in fact it’s somewhat of a mantra with him.  “I don’t see constructive use in being adversarial.  We can agree to disagree as long as we’re working toward the same goal.”
Mr. Bowman maintains that by coming together and solving a problem at one development, it can help solve a problem at another. 
One problem that a tenant wanted to see addressed was what was happening at 296 Sutter Avenue.  She reported that “Life is being made a living hell by other residents.”   There was a concern voiced about the need for computer technology centers.  “There are terminals in the complexes for the managers, we need this technology for the residents,”  said a tenant president.
Several of the superintendents spoke about the work they do around the complexes and the particular challenges of being in charge of a physical plant of very small city.   Tenants commenting said that the superintendents and the building staff were hardworking and dedicated people, with many working beyond what is called for.  One tenant president said “One of the residents came to me and said the Super was out there working, and it was Veteran’s Day.  I went and looked and sure enough he was working, and I know he didn’t have to do that.” 
Bowman says he approaches situations with an attitude of partnership with the agencies, saying it was this approach and active participation from a coalition that has recently won a shuttle bus to make up for the closing of the “L” train station at .  “We woke up with no L train.  People had to walk 5-8 blocks”.
“Working together, we have a brand new shuttle serving the community today.”

A new Brooklyn resident remarked that Brooklyn does have a thriving black business community.  He says his previous home, The Bronx, does not have much in the way of “blacks going for themselves.”  That’s true: Brooklyn has black shop owners.  Considering the holidays are upon us, it behooves us to patronize our black businesses. 
Though small, these shops burst with great merchandise.  Zawadi Gift Shop is one example.  Located at 519 Atlantic Avenue, Zawadi calls to mind a well-laid out Grandma’s attic.  To the right at entry is a glass display case of Afrocentric jewelry featuring much silver and amber.  Walking farther along the clear narrow path one sees black dolls of all makes.  If black dolls are what you crave, then Zawadi has some dolls that will satisfy you.  In the far back are the quintessential goods for an Afrocentric wedding: crystal glasses and vases that are engraved with Adrinkra symbols, blankets, albums, and invitations.  Zawadi’s merchandise line also includes gift cards, fancy pens, health & beauty items and statues.  Zawadi Gift Shop is owned by Lora, Lois, and Leonette.  No, they aren’t blood sisters but they are sisters in sync.  Last words on Zawadi: it’s the Africana collector’s paradise.
Just a few doors away from Zawadi sits Lewis Gallery (525 Atlantic Avenue).  This lithograph and framing enterprise entreats pedestrians to have a look inside with stuffed teen girl dolls literally hanging around the door.  Business is conducted on three levels.  The ground floor has lithographs mounted on the wall, display racks for greeting cards and books.  A large table is used to rest framed lithographs while customers look at other items in the shop.  The lower level is a smaller room where large and small stuffed dolls are found.  This room also contains a selection of lithographs and photographs.  They are Afrocentric themes, whether abstract or still shots.  The upper room above the cash register is the workshop where the framing occurs.  While the shopkeepers didn’t reveal their names they did offer me some of the food that they munched.
One block away from Zawadi Gift Shop and Lewis Gallery is Southern Comforts Holistic Boutique and Wellness Center (483 Atlantic Avenue).  The owner, Nettie Paisley, was arranging the spacious back room for a singing engagement but stopped to explain the business model.  Southern Comforts is laid out with air, light, and walking space in mind.  The place is quiet and lightly scented by the essential oils, perfumes and cosmetics that are on sale.  Ms. Paisley explains that the makeup bolsters women’s self-esteem.  To relax and distress customers, Tierra Paisley, licensed cosmetologist, does herbal facials, eyebrows, and applies makeup.  Nettie Paisley is a Reiki practitioner.  She explained that the back-room is also used for reflexology, massage, Reiki therapy and belly-dancing classes.  Other items for sale include candles, handcrafted soap and crystals.
Fulton Street is another place to shop black.  If this is the season of giving, then 4W Circle of Art and Enterprise (704 Fulton Street) is the store to visit.  4W Circle’s motto is “¼more than just a store, an experience in Ujamaa.”  By this statement, Selma Jackson established the store to be an incubator of African entrepreneurs.  The space actually holds at least four businesses at any given season.  The merchandise complements the other businesses’, giving off a seamless offering of exotic must-have goods.  4W Circle features home décor and gift items, artistic hair accessories, jewelry, clothes and footwear.

The current scientific project constitutes yet another dimension of the struggle for control of the ABG. We seek to illuminate the impact of African captivity upon the lives of our ancestors and their living descendants, and to reconstruct knowledge of their origins and identities that were deliberately distorted in the effort to bolster the identity of Euro-Americans at the expense of African- Americans (Blakey 1997). As scientific director of the African Burial Ground Project, Mi chael Blakey has brought together a national and international research team of scholars from Africa and the US who are concerned with creating alternative histories. The ABG Project has evolved into a multi-disciplinary scientific effort comprised of complementary natural and social science teams with expertise in the African diaspora. These include: molecular genetics, bone chemistry, skeletal biology, history and archaeology (African and African- American), ethnology, conservation and African art history. This collaborative effort has global and universal implications, transcending any particular discipline or the interests of any one segment of the descendant community. These organizational changes have resulted in the selection of four basic research questions to guide our scientific analyses. They are relevant both for activist scholars and the descendant community:
1) What are the cultural and geographical roots of the individuals interred in the African Burial Ground?
2) What was the physical quality of life for Africans enslaved in New York City during the colonial period and how was it different from the quality of life in their African homeland?
3) What biological characteristics and cultural traditions remained unchanged and which were transformed during the creation of African-American society and culture?         4)    What were the modes of resistance and how were they creatively reconfigured and used to resist oppression and to forge a new African- American culture?
In addition to the scientific teams, the ABG has an Office of Public Education and Interpretation of the African Burial Ground Project (OPEI), directed by Dr. Sherrill Wilson. OPEI’s primary roles are to educate and inform the public of ABG project events, to assure public access to the site, the skeletal and artifactual remains, and to allow appropriate cultural ceremonies to commemorate the ancestors. It also provides community involvement/education activities such as educators’ symposia, laboratory tours and two newsletters that updates the public on the research and introduce archaeology, anthropology and conservation to children and adults.
Conclusion
New York City’s ABG Project is a case of archaeology as community service. It emerged from a protracted struggle over control of the ABG and its products between an organized descendant community and its allies, and the GSA and archaeology consultant firms. This struggle has resulted in an increased awareness of the disciplines of anthropology and archaeology within the African descendant community. It has produced a public education program that facilitates a reciprocal dialogue between researchers and the general public, maximizing the interpretive potential of the archaeological record and creating an historical consciousness that challenges the distortions of Eurocentric history (Singleton 1995).
Through this struggle, the descendant community and its allies have successfully achieved the incorporation of African- American scholars in the creation and maintenance of a research design and agenda that establishes a prominent role for historically under-represented African- Americans in the analysis and interpretation of an internationally renowned archaeological site (Mathis 1997
By taking moral responsibility for the spiritual and physical control of the site, the descendant community seized intellectual power-forcing changes in the composition and direction of the professional leadership of the project (La Roche and Blakey 1996). The original, ancestral ABG community and the modern descendant community have used this sacred social space to resist and to honor their African heritage in spite of institutionalized racist disrespect. The struggle for the proper treatment of the ABG reaffirms its significance in the past and gives the site continued significance in the present; it is an important part in the legacy of struggle to control and interpret the African past.
 (Entire article with references available at: http://www.stpt.usf.edu/~jsokolov/burialgr.htm)

Activists Rename Federal Building
By Herb Boyd
(Special to Our Time Press)
The remains of African ancestors were hardly back in the ground from where they had been unearthed in 1991 before the nearby federal building at 290 Broadway was named to honor Ted Weiss, a New York Congressman who died in 1992.
For more than 12 years community activists had waged a campaign to get the remains of African ancestors re-interred. Now, there was yet another obstacle to peace and tranquility, the naming of a 34-story building hovering over the sacred African Burial Ground.

Dozens of those who had participated in the re-interment, including Councilman Charles Barron (D-East New York) and the Reverend Herb Daughtry, pastor of the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn, were once again at the site on November 3, African Solidarity Day, protesting what they viewed as sacrilege.
“We believe it was totally insensitive for them to do this and it’s reminiscent of the disrespect we endured from the General Services Administration over the many years of trying to get our ancestors back where they belong,” said Rev. Daughtry, in a later interview. “This is outrageous, and we don’t mean to cast any aspersions on Mr. Weiss’ name.”
Back in March, 2003, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who represents the 8
th
 District, which used to be Weiss’s Congressional District 17, sponsored a bill to name the building after his predecessor. Weiss was born in Hungary. He was 10 when he and his family fled Nazi tyranny and left for the United States on the last passenger ship out of Hamburg, Germany before WorldWar II, arriving in the US in March, 1938. In 1961, he was elected to the New York City Council, and was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1976 where he served until his death.
The bill was passed in October, though there was little fanfare. Even so, it didn’t escape the attention of a cadre of community activists and Councilman Barron. To counter the government’s initiative, Barron and his cohorts decided to rename the building in honor of the great statesman Frederick Douglass, who escaped from bondage in the 1840s.
“We have told people that each time they go by the building to remember that it’s the Frederick Douglass Building,” said Barron, who is also a member of the Committee of Descendants of the African Burial Ground. “No matter what they may choose to call it, for us it will always be the Frederick Douglass Building.”
“And Frederick Douglass is a far more fitting name, given the site contains the bones of our ancestors,” Daughtry added. “This is a disgrace and we don’t plan to give in until something is done about it.”

WHO WILL TEACH OUR STORY
 TO OUR CHILDREN?
THE GRIOT: Historian-Writer   Christopher Moore, the author of the Teacher’s Guide for the “Rites of Ancestral Return” project, responds to questions from Baltimore, MD schoolchildren and their teachers on October 1, 2003, just minutes before the start of the city’s ancestral observances. Moore is the chief researcher for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and research coordinator for the African Burial Ground Project. He oversaw the dignified transfer of 4 coffins, containing the remains of 18th century Africans, from a white unmarked truck to hearses in each procession city. He also walked as the procession’s chief sentinel behind the horse-drawn carriages in the cities. Moore co-wrote, with Howard Dodson and Roberta Yancey, The Black New Yorkers: The Schomburg Illustrated Chronology, and traces his New York family roots to 1649.

By Linda Armstrong
Imagine working at a failing floral shop, not having a chance with a cute co-worker you are crazy about and being an orphan. That was the story of Seymour’s (played by Hunter Foster) life. It seemed bleak, that is until he discovered a rare plant. This plant brought business to the shop because everyone wanted to see it. Seymour becomes famous and eventually gets together with Audrey (played by Kerry Butler), his co-worker and the girl of his dreams.
So what you may wonder is wrong. It sounds like everything is great, right? Wrong. Seymour soon learns that the plant can only grow from consuming human blood.  Seymour has to deal with the fact that the plant controls his success or failure and gives it whatever it wants.
Throughout the show, the woes of Seymour and his encounters with this evil plant, which grows to six feet tall, are told by three lovely young ladies-Chiffon, Crystal and Ronnette. These characters are played by African-American actresses-DeQuina Moore (Chiffon), Trisha Jeffrey (Crystal) and Carla J. Hargrove (Ronnette). All making their Broadway debuts with this show, the women serve in some cases as the singing narrators, chorus to some songs and generally pop up throughout the show singing in a majority of the scenes. Moore, Jeffrey and Hargrove have phenomenal voices and deliver some wonderful harmonies. They each have a natural stage presence which results in very funny, memorable performances.
Although not seen through a lot of the play, African-American Michael-Leon Wooley  performs a major role. He is the chilling voice of the rare plant which Seymour named Audrey II. Yes, this plants talks, it demands to be fed and it goes further than that, it also sings. Wooley has a deep, engaging voice as he delivers a marvelous performance of the diabolical plant.
The puppet of this monstrous plant is brilliantly manipulated by Martin P. Robinson, Anthony Asbury, Bill Remington and Matt Vogel.

Douglas Sills shows his versatility as he amusingly pops up in at least five different roles playing both men and women. He is absolutely wild as the controlling, abusive boyfriend to Audrey.
In addition to the well-known title song, “Little Shop of Horrors”, amusingly sung by Moore, Jeffrey and Hargrove, the show features other great numbers like “Downtown,” sung by the company; “Da-Doo” performed by Seymour, Chiffon, Crystal and Ronnette; romantic numbers like “Suddenly Seymour,” sung by Seymour and Audrey; and hilarious numbers such as “Dentist!” sung by Orin-a sadistic dentist, who is dating Audrey at the beginning of the play-and Chiffon, Crystal and Ronnette.
“Little Shop of Horrors” is a fantastic show for the entire family. It is filled with laughs from the beginning to the end. The set by Scott Pask, costumes by William Ivey Long and the puppet design of Audrey II by the Jim Henson Company and Martin P. Robinson are perfect. The play features a book and lyrics by Howard Ashman, music by Alan Menken, choreography by Kathleen Marshall and brilliant direction by Jerry Zaks. The comical timing is priceless.
This play will grow on you very quickly. From the opening scene, you’ll know you are in for a good time. This entertaining evening is waiting for you at the Virginia Theatre. “Little Shop of Horrors” enjoyed a successful off-Broadway run, after seeing it you’ll know why. I’m sure it will also enjoy a successful Broadway run.

African Playwright John Kani Brings A New Work To The Stage
John Kani has written a play exploring the dynamics between Black South Africans who remained in their homeland and risked their lives to lead the struggle against Apartheid and those who returned victoriously to their country after living in exile. Besides penning the work, Kani will star in it along with Esmeralda Bihl and Warona Seane. The play is directed by Janice Honeyman. Performances will begin November 15 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre.

Ralph Carter serves up a Dramatic Feast with “Grandma’s Hands”
The multi-faceted actor Ralph Carter, perhaps best known as “Michael” on the television show “Good Times” and the village’s artist activist, is also a talented, emerging playwright.
At the National Black Theater Festival held this past August in Winston Salem, North Carolina, audiences had the pleasure of listening to, laughing with and enjoying his first play, “Grandma’s Hands.” The play debuted as part of the Readers’ Theatre Series hosted by Garland Lee Thompson of the Frank Silvera Writers’ Workshop.
During the production, Carter wore two hats. He not only wrote the piece, but also starred in the production as Timothy, a young man who is chronicling five generations of women in his family. Carter’s play tenderly and lovingly explores the bond  shared by these women.

“Grandma’s Hands” is a down home-style story complete with “saucy” women cooking up a batch of collard greens while they discuss the family’s problems. It gives a clear example of the power, care, concern and love, which are all part of the proverbial “female intuition.”
Late last month, Carter staged a reading at BRIC Studios in downtown Brooklyn for venture capitalists and he says he’s looking forward to a New York premier of the play.
“Mama I Want To Sing Is Back”
“Mama I Want To Sing,” the story of singer Doris Troy, lovingly penned by her sister Vy Higginsen, is back on stage at the Williams CME Church, located at 7th Avenue between 131st and 132nd Streets in Harlem. The production is celebrating its 20th Anniversary and is playing on Saturdays only with 4:30 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. shows.
Vy Higginsen tells her family’s story with this production. The audiences meets her father, a devout minister, who taught Doris that she had a vocal gift. Doris struggles with her feelings of wanting to use her voice to perform worldly music, instead of gospel. It’s a touching story with beautiful gospel singing. To get tickets to the show call the MAMA Foundation at 212-280-1045.
The tickets that you purchase will also help the MAMA Foundation to raise $2 million to build a professional theater in Harlem. And, you can be a part of it. The foundation, a 501 C3 is having a Brick by Brick campaign, for $20 you can buy a brick which will display your name engraved on a gold plate, six bricks are $100. You can also buy a seat in the new 300 seat theater, which will be housed at a combined address of 149 W 126th Street, the present home of the foundation and its neighboring Brownstone at 151 W 126th Street. The seats range in price from $1,000 to $2,500 each. To find out more call 212-280-1045.