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“This was an active garden, we had visiting schools and day care centers bringing their children by to share the garden.  There was a brick walkway there, a huge fishing pond there, five vegetable boxes, chairs and tables for children and adults.  Plenty of flowers were there.  There was a site dedicated to the victims of 9/11.   There was  a large grape arbor in the back, and a peach tree.  Everybody around here had peach cobbler made from that tree.  Besides the material things, there was years of labor there also.  You can never pay dollarwise for what happened that day.” 
Community leader Anne Thompson was leafing through an album of pictures of happier times at the Leaders of the Future Community Garden on Herzl Street in Brownsville, Brooklyn before the bulldozer came and reduced it all to topsoil and rubble. 
Housing vs Gardens?
The purpose is housing, everybody’s for it, particularly those living doubled up or paying rent that leaves them with nothing at the end of the month.  In this overcrowded city  it is reasonable to say “let there be housing.”  But most people want to live in homes and homes include neighborhoods and neighborhoods should include gardens where children can learn and play.   And if ever an area needed some good news, it is  Zip Code 11212.
Zip Code 11212
According to researchers at the Community Resources Center, it has more People With AIDS (PWAs)  than 12 states including West Virginia and Nebraska.   The CRC says that eighty-one percent of the residents are black and 17.2% are of Hispanic origin, and the median household income is $15,042. 
Not Housing vs Gardens
Councilman Charles Barron, objects to the way some of characterized the issue.  “This is not a housing versus gardens situation.  This is about community development,” said the councilman.  “No one is opposed to developing some gardens for housing.  We are just tired of developers looking at our community and seeing dollar signs.  And go about developing housing that is not even affordable for our people.” 
The council noted that much of the new housing goes for $300-$400,000 and that many times the household incomes have to be $40-$50,000 before anybody can even think about purchasing them. 
Greener Pastures
“Another point is that our children need a community with parks, gardens and housing, the councilman continues.  “When you go into some of those gardens, it’s like stepping into another world.  Even some gardeners said, ‘Take ours, but not these two.’  For seniors and for children in particular, these two gardens provided a whole new world for them.  We live in a concrete asphalt jungle.  When you have gardens and greenery you can have your children able to visit greener pastures right here in Brownsville or East New York.
We Want Our Fair Share
The Fantasy Community Garden on the corner of Legion Street and Blake Avenue looks like a minipark with grass, a duck pond fruit orchard and vegetable planting boxes.    Community leader Helen Mason is the head of the garden and spoke about the deal with the Bloomberg administration which saved 500 gardens last year.  “We did not get an equitable share of the gardens by any means.  There are over 82,000 people in Community Board (CB) 16.   We have 41 housing projects.  They’re going to put up houses priced at $300,000, and the median income here is $18,792.  When they’re finished, we’ll have one garden at a homeless shelter and one other garden, but over 26 gardens were saved in Ocean Hill.
Councilmember Tracy Boyland
Not Doing All She Could
“We met with Councilwoman Tracy Boyland and her father in November.  She promised the garden would not be touched and he said it would not be touched. Ms. Boyland said they would ‘Flip-Flop’ the developer to another site.”  Ms. Mason said that since then, no help has been forthcoming from Councilwoman Boyland. She promised to do something but she (Ms. Boyland) has made no effort to preserve the gardens. 

On Wednesday, April 23, Ms. Mason spoke with Tom Congdon from the attorney general’s office.  Mr. Congdon was one of the parties involved in the litigation to save the gardens.  He informed Ms. Mason “that each council member had input into the settlement.   He said the council member herself chose the gardens to be destroyed. She made the call.  Not HPD.  Not the attorney general’s office.”
Letter Needed From Boyland
According to Ms. Mason, Mr. Congdon said  they were willing to preserve the gardens but “they want a statement from Ms. Boyland that they should take every means to save this garden.  Once they get that statement, then they can do that, but no one wants to step on the toes of the local elected official.  The only person who did it is Charles Barron, ’cause he’s that maverick type and he doesn’t care if it’s about justice for our people.  As a matter of fact, she said something to him to the effect ‘you’re stepping into my space.’  He told her point-blank ‘I don’t care.  If it’s for our people, it doesn’t matter to me what space it is.’
Boyland Disheartening
“What is so disheartening is that through this whole process she (Boyland) continued to insist that she was doing everything to preserve the garden.  It’s very deceitful.  We elected her, not because she was a Boyland, but because we were excited to have a young African-American female work for the community.  Someone who would be for everyone.  Instead, she chose to safeguard the gardens in Ocean Hill, but shows prejudice towards people in Brownsville.”
“Fantasy Garden is still here at 181 Legion Street and we intend to keep it.  Just look around this community, every statistic is negative.  You don’t see anything positive.  And these politicians stand aside while gardens are bulldozed.  It’s insulting. Some of  these politicians are insulting.  We voted for them and they’re in office and they don’t care.” 
Ms. Mason obviously does care.  It was nine-thirty on one of those cold April nights, and she was on a cell phone spending the night in the garden with a group of others staying warm by propane.  “Our lips are chapped and our eyes are blood shot, but we feel that at any moment the bulldozers could come.
I Will Be Unrelenting
“DeCosta Headly purchased the garden for $1  and wants to build five houses at over $300,000 each.  That’s all they care about.  The money.  They don’t care about the children in this community.  Well I care and I intend to keep going.  I’ve been writing since 1999.   I’ve been faxing, E-mailing & calling.  I will be unrelenting and I have no intention of letting up.  They already bulldozed Anne Thompson’s garden.  It was like shock and awe,  immediate destruction. They can leave this garden alone.”
Good Times Gone 
At the now-demolished site of the Future Leader’s Garden, Ms. Thompson showed me the album with pictures of the long brick walk into the garden with fruit trees left and right.  And children laughing, posing and having a good time in lush green surroundings.
“We understood that the garden was in negotiations only to have the bulldozer come in with no notification, and that’s why Charles Barron was so livid.  They not only disrespected me and the community, they disrespected him and his office.  They did not think enough to call him and say, “Listen Charles, I know we were in negotiations, but it fell through.”  But they didn’t do that and it makes Charles look bad in front of his constituents because he promised us that this was in negotiations and the next thing he knows there’s a telephone call with me screaming about they’re demolishing the garden.” 
Lesson For Children?
Ms. Thompson said she could accept that they took the garden “because the property was theirs and there’s only so much fighting you can do over something that belongs to someone else no matter how long you’ve kept it.  My beef is the way it was taken.  I feel it was an act of terrorism and that bulldozer was a weapon of destruction.  If they had just told me, I could have saved some things.  The children in the neighborhood painted that mural just last September.  They’d come and play in the garden.  Now, after all the time and sweat, something decent and beautiful is gone.  What kind of lesson is that to teach children?”

Part Two of Two-Parts
In North Carolina’s Hertford and Perquimans Counties, where Sheila Miller grew up, massive efforts are underway to preserve and restore long-abandoned properties, including cabins, shacks, three-room schools, outbuildings, cotton mill villages, and more.  This region is just one of many in the South where, on unsteady backwoods porches, lives – long forgotten – defied gravity and were as awesome as Miller’s grandmother’s “five-inch-tall” biscuits.
When Sheila moved to Brooklyn, New York, in 1969, she did not forget nor did she leave anything behind. Mostly, she brought with her a valuable survival tool: the memory of that county and its people.  She still owns land in Hertford, N.C., and her children, Troy, Jean and Freda and their children Shatia, Paris, Latema, Raleah, Kai, Jaray, Cameron and Chae, are solidly connected to it.  Then; there’s also the persistent, constant spirit of Sheila’s late grandmother Rosetta Jenkins, the lady from whom Sheila inherited the gift of touching lives, molding, building, weaving and stirring up the ordinary into something extraordinary.
From Grandma’s Hands
 “My grandmother’s hands could do stuff,” Sheila said in a telephone interview. “She had the prettiest knees in the world, and skin like butter and silk, at the same time.  She crocheted. She cooked. She sewed – even made umbrellas to match her dresses.”   It was that gift for sewing inherited from her grandmother that catapulted Miller, some 30 years ago, from billing clerk and a customer service representative to accessories& fashion designer.  Sheila’s hands-on job experience came from Lending Trimming Co., where her deft fingers made rings for scarves and fringe for beach umbrellas.  She also designed original patterns for woven belts and was known around the industry for the nifty accessories she created for herself. Sheila’s gifts and now-famous earthy personality and quick wit attracted industry executives, who approached her about working for them exclusively as a designer. 
During the 1970’s, she worked five years for a midtown-based accessories manufacturing  company designing belts, tops, scarves and more,  as the sole designer.  Her very own special designs for safety-pinned tee shirts sold at national retail stores.   Beaded silk and cotton cloth threads were transformed into head and hip wraps.  She traveled to such states as Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, making presentations and demonstrating how her products should be worn by models and displayed on mannequins at Macy’s, Casual Corner, Lerner’s and other national retailers.  In Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant and Queens’ Richmond Hills, where she lived, Miller would pass her own sassy designs sashaying through the streets. 
Indigenous Genius
   Meanwhile, at the height of the “community empowerment” movement, Sheila brought that concept down to true grassroots levels, putting people to work right in the Classon Avenue apartment building where she lived.
Sheila recalls that the top fashion house Botticello increased its orders for beaded handbags – designed by Miller.  Sheila met the challenge.  She took home beads, fabric, thread, needles.  “After work, all the tenants in the building would meet me in the lobby and they did piecework through the night.”  
Reportedly, the world-class Botticello’s paid approximately $75 for each of the hand-beaded bags, and then sold them for nearly 8 times as much. “They wanted dozens at a time. It was intricate, painstaking, weaving work, but I taught the skill to my friends, neighbors and family members and they got the job done.”
While meeting the company’s performance goals, she was responsible for overseeing the manufacture of huge volumes of product (“sometimes, one thousand dozen items”) while supervising the work of some 32 people.    She finally asked the company owners for a percentage of the business and partnership.  It didn’t work out.  One of the more sensitive owners lent her $50,000.  She set up her own shop in a partitioned loft on 36th St. and Sixth Avenue, and kept it going for three years.  In 1986, the accessories business started changing and the “small guys” were being pushed into the corner by the big manufacturers. “We couldn’t get the work.”   Miller looked around for ideas for another business.  She didn’t have to look far. 
Sheila’s: “Just Waiting for Me”
Recalling the fun times she had back at home in North Carolina and the “ambiance” of her father James “Snooks” Everett’s club  in the back of the family’s Hertford home, Miller decided to open up a place in Brooklyn similar to “Snooks Casino.”

With a close friend, she ventured over to a Century 21 franchise.  The agent casually pointed to a towering brownstone across the street at the corner of DeKalb Avenue, 271 Adelphi.  With that gesture, he set the wheels in motion for another chapter in Brooklyn’s black business history.  “I knew that was it,” said Miller. “When I looked at that property, I felt its big arms go around me.  It was just sitting there waiting for me.  All I had to do was get tablecloths.”
Sheila’s opened as a smash hit on July 5, 1986.  Two Steps Down stalwarts like Brenda Gould, Bobby Johnson, Helen Logan, Gene Pilgrim, Russell Gould, Huey the bartender, Ann Callis, Paul Walden and Rhonda Mayo (a co-owner of Two Steps) helped to launch Sheila’s. With its intimate two levels separated by a spiral staircase in the distinctive brownstone setting, Sheila’s joined the Cellar’s and Two Steps nightspots as THE Brooklyn place to be and be seen.   Dakota Staton, Noel Pointer, Mark Whitfield and Lionel Hampton were just some of the name artists who appeared there. 
Both her father, who passed in 1987, and her grandmother, who transitioned two years later, lived to see Sheila rise to the top of the business world and at the top of her game, while taking care of a family. “When my father saw it, his chest swelled up so big.”
A Door Closes Harshly,
Another Opens Sweetly
In 1993, the roof caved.  The owner wanted to sell the building.  Sheila had first rights to purchase, and she was prepared to move on a good deal.  Unfortunately, the price was astronomical by 1993 market value standards. “Nowadays, it would be miniscule, but then it didn’t make sense for me.”
The subsequent closing of Sheila’s was more than a surprise; it was a blow to some in the community.  Sheila’s had grown into an institution. “I kept a lot of children.  I helped out parents who didn’t have after-school babysitters.  I would feed them, help them with their homework, and put them in a corner of the restaurant so they could read and study.  I kept one child, while his mom went to rehab.”   The mother, a beautician, is now in business for herself on Marcy Avenue, and her son is a college student.
Two months after Sheila closed the doors to her business, she placed a call to Eddie Freeman, the owner and founder of Sugar Hill Restaurant.  By that time, Freeman had grown the dining/dancing and lounge establishment into the largest Black-owned business of its type in Brooklyn. She casually asked, “What are you doing?” He told her, “I’m trying to get this mess straightened out over here. Come on in; the chef just walked out.”  Sheila went directly to the kitchen, “and never sat down.” 
Since February 1994, Sheila has worked closely with Freeman (along with the legendary Ms. Clara Walker of the McDonald’s Dining Room at  McDonough & Stuyvesant) to run Sugar Hill as a business manager, Chief Right Hand, second-in-command and more. “I was never interviewed for the job,” she laughed. “See, I know what it’s like not to have someone at your back in this industry. Good relationships are everything.”
Mother Love
And good relationships take time to build.  Sheila is working on that with her family.  Before walking to work from her Bushwick apartment, Sheila supports her children by helping them raise theirs.  She gets four of them to school every day, and has been tending to a 20-month-old toddler since he was four months old.   Did we mention Sheila’s husband? In April 2002, she married The Rev. James “Jim” Raab, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Alexandria, VA, thus creating another whole dimension to her very active life.
Miller also is building relationships and helping to rebuild lives in Crown Heights. On Mondays and Tuesdays from 12 noon-2pm, she feeds the homeless at the Greater Mount Pleasant Baptist Church Soup Kitchen, 887 St. Marks Avenue, under the spiritual eye and guidance of Pastor Randy L. Ware.
Sundays through Thursdays, 3pm – 11pm, Sheila works as a mental health technician at the Brooklyn Residence Committee (BRC) on Fulton Street. Responding to a call for help in the kitchen in March 2002 last year from BRC Director Warren Wright, Sheila volunteered her services. The residents would not let her go, so she took courses in mental health, and now counsels a caseload of five to six residents.
Back to the Future
 “I live life to the fullest and I am working to strengthen my spiritual being,”  revealed Miller , whose rare private and solitary moments find her sewing or striding down DeKalb Avenue past the old Sheila’s to the Brooklyn Heights promenade.  “We should wake up every day, giving thanks to God, the biggest treasure we have.  Everything else is secondary.  So every day is important to me. I get through that day and do the best that I can in that day.”
Quite frankly, Sheila, the second of 11 children, could use a 30-hour day.  In addition to everything else, she is spearheading the family’s restoration and renovation efforts on “Snooks Casino,” opened in 1951, at the back of 100 Edenton Road, which the family still owns.   She says it will open “in the very near future.”

“I am my grandmother’s daughter.  She helped raise me, steered me to keep my mind straight – to do something with myself, and be strong.”  And, of course, to not forget her her venerable roots in Hertford, NC, pop. 9,000 – “a place with two stoplights at the corners of Edenton Road and Market, and Church and Grove.”

(Writer’s Note: Our Time Press thanks Glenn Frye and Eddie Freeman for bringing Sheila Miller’s story to our attention. Frye tends bar at Sugar Hill Restaurant, owned by Freeman. Sugar Hill is located at Nostrand and Marcy Avenues.)
  ______________
Bernice Elizabeth Green

OTP:The U.S. invasion of Iraq has a down payment cost of about $80 billion.  Here in Brooklyn,  both New York City and state are facing multibillion-deficits and yet President Bush is pushing for a major tax cut which he says will stimulate the economy.  Could you comment on that for us?  Is this true or is it voodoo?
Julianne Malveaux: Okay, let’s step back.  Tax cuts are extraordinarily ill-advised for a number of reasons.  First of all, there is no evidence whatsoever, that a tax cut will “stimulate” the economy.  This is in his daddy’s words, voodoo economics. 
Even more than that, what we see is that the country has economic challenges that translates into every single one of the fifty states experiencing economic difficulties.  Even if you believed that a tax cut would be stimulative, the reason it would be stimulative is because it puts money in people’s pockets for them to spend.  But any money that people get is going to be taken away because states are being forced to raise their taxes, because states don’t have the ability, as the federal government does, to float deficits.  
So there is not a single state, not one of the fifty, that isn’t having problems.  Every state is facing layoffs of teachers, library cuts and closings, cutbacks in the roads they’re repairing.  In fifteen states around the country, state universities are facing double-digit increases.  So if taxes are cut at the federal level and raised at the state level, that’s a wash.  So what many of the governors have asked the president to do is to provide them with some relief.   To do something for the states.  But this president is wholly disinclined to be responsive to the states and I think that’s a problem.  
So no, I don’t see the stimulative effect and so many economists don’t see it that over two hundred and fifty have signed a New York Times ad, including several Nobel Prize winners in economics, saying that this was crazy, that it is not economically sound.   This is before we talk about the war.   I haven’t said a word about the war.  Now let’s add that.
They have asked for $79 billion dollars for the first six months.  I’ve heard estimates from a hundred billion dollars to $1.7 trillion.  Depending on how long we’re going to be over there. 
One of the things I think is so ironic about this war, is that we’re talking about rebuilding Iraq, with schools and clean water, and these are things that I think people in parts of the United States would die for.  There are many ironies here.
OTP: They are dying for them over there.
JM: They’re dying for them here, too.  The president’s economic strategy as far as I’m concerned is totally wrong-headed.   I haven’t seen anything to convince me otherwise.  He has gone about an agenda of empowering the wealthy.  He’s been consistent about it since he’s been in office.  Nothing has changed.  The war has not changed things.  It has simply empowered him to do what he had already been planning to do. 
OTP: I’ve been looking at the Web site of  Project for a New America.  What does this kind of thinking portend?
JM: I think it bodes ill.  I have not seen that Web site, but if it is reflective of a Bush ideology, you certainly have a meaner America.   You have people who don’t believe in a social safety net.  Who believe in individualism and a free market economy.  People should make it on their own.  As if they did.  They didn’t.  Who believes Bush got into Yale because of his SAT scores?  But this is the tone and tenor of where we are.  
OTP: Where are the Democrats?
JM: Silent.  Stupid.  Missing in action. It’s amazing to me that the Democratic party has fielded so little leadership.  Daschle has been decent, I’ll give him credit.  But whenever they start criticizing him really badly, he seems to back off.  They’ve called him everything but a child of God. An obstructionist and this and that.  I would encourage him to stay out there, there are people who support what he’s saying. 
I know that we’ve equated patriotism with support for Bush so there has been almost a silencing that has been going on.  People don’t feel free to say what they think.  Not only what they think, what they know, in terms of the economic policy, people seem totally intimidated by this administration.
OTP: With Mother’s Day coming up, what would you say to folks raising children today, what kinds of qualities do you think they should be giving to their children?

JM: I think parents have a very hard time these days.  There are so many pressures on young people and pressures on parents.  Children should be taught integrity and a series of values.  But secondly to think critically, thirdly to adhere to culture and fourthly to take risks.  To soar.  Their parents and their society should be their safety net.  They should be encouraged to do their best, to excel at all times, and they should also be taught that even as they excel,  to have compassion for those who don’t have the same opportunities or even the same abilities.  We’re in a society right now that’s very hostile to children, we don’t have the social supports that parents should have.  Child care and any number of things, the very infrastructure.
So I think that parents have a very difficult set of challenges but, it’s not just parents, it’s the community.  We all have to respond to parents in need, because the children that are being ill-served are going to be the leaders of the future. 
OTP: We’ve been looking at information about the cutbacks from the state in education, 3,500 school aides…
JM: These are budget issues and they come from what’s happening at the federal level.  In most states you have sales taxes and property taxes.   In recessions, states end up having to cut budgets.  In the past we’ve had what’s called countercyclical aid, which allows the federal government to step in and help the states, this president is disinclined to do that.   
OTP: That’s a pretty bleak picture.
JM: It may be bleak.  Here’s the hope. 
OTP: Yes, what is the hope?
JM: What people are willing to accept and what people are willing to protest.  The extent to which people will go out on a limb and say, “I’m not going to take this.  This is unacceptable.”   The extent to which we find people stepping up to the plate.  I think we’re in a time where we find that difficult to do.  We have too many people who won’t step up to the plate, who are afraid to.  The hope is that we always have the potential for an active and involved citizenry of people who should be willing and able to do the right thing. 
OTP: If the times become bad enough the people will rise up?
JM: We hope so.  And we see it.  When we look at that affirmative-action March on April 1st, what was beautiful about that, these were mainly young people.  Sharpton didn’t call that march.  Jackson didn’t call that march.  Kids called that march.  A group called By Any Means Necessary, young people out of Michigan, energized by the affirmative action issues there.   That’s brilliant.  When you see that kind of energy, you say okay, we’re in decent hands.

Assemblyman Roger Green and State Senator Velmanette Montgomery hosted a town hall meeting of child care advocates and peace activists to blast the governor on eliminating summer youth employment and after-school programs.
Meeting at Brown Memorial Baptist Church,  Assemblyman Green spoke of the need to identify the sources of revenue which will not only solve immediate problems, but which will deal with the long-term structural imbalances in how resources are raised for New York City.   David Kalik of the Fiscal Policy Institute spoke on the impact of the war on the budget.  He started by noting that the state is facing a $12 billion gap and the city has a $4 billion gap.  “These are not minor mistakes.  The governor points to 9/11 and there is an effect there.  But at least half is do the aggressive tax-cutting of the past decade.”
Mr. Kalik finds it odd to hear the governor speak of taxes as “job-killing” .  “It’s hard to understand how it is better for jobs to lay people off,” he questions. 
John Flateau, dean at Medgar Evers College, pointed out that 80% of the students live in the city and the majority are people of color.   Students need support services, tutoring and counseling-$4 billion in city procurement but only between 1-2% go to people of color. 
Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) has 71 thousand students in it. The proposal will take $41 million out of the pockets of the students when they need it most.  “Many of our students are working, going to college and raising a family at the same time, these cuts will be devastating to them”, said Flateau. 
Roger Green’s introduction of Freddie Hamilton, director of Child Development Support Corporation, was particularly informative.  He noted that Ms. Hamilton was, “the lead plaintiff in an historic lawsuit that determined that gun companies can now be sued for irresponsibly pouring these weapons of destruction into urban centers.   But the climate in this country has changed.  Just as for the first time this nation is going into war at the same time as we are cutting taxes,  there are other things happening as well.  The Republicans in the House of Representatives and in the Senate are about to introduce legislation that would prohibit individuals from suing the gun manufacturers based upon Freddie’s case.   As a result of the advocacy of the National Rifle Association (NRA), they want to overturn the case law that Freddie Hamilton brought just a few years ago.  They are doing this at the same time that the NAACP is going to federal court in an attempt to again establish liability clauses against the government.  If they (the government) wins this case, we are going to be in serious straits.”
Ms. Hamilton spoke about the state of child care and child welfare in the city.  “In my opinion, we have had a war waged upon working class and poor citizens for a number of years.  The services have been devastated.  When we look at what we are facing right now, losing eleven thousand child care slots and we still have 30,000 children on the waiting list.  Child care is supposed to undergird the efforts for self-sufficiency for a family.  You all remember some years ago, welfare reform.  Included in that legislation were mandates for families who were going to move from welfare to work to have child care. Child care was supposed to be the support for those parents, along with other services to help them to move to self-sufficiency.   We have never realized that and here in New York City we’ve realized it less….We were fighting for child services before this crisis.  We’re looking at losing basic services.  Child welfare services, preventive services,  families in crisis.  Sometimes good hardworking people find themselves in a family crisis they can’t handle.  Those are people who go to services such as those to help them stabilize their children out of foster care, to keep them from spiraling into a situation that may make them end up homeless or any number of things that may happen to families without support services.  
Finally, children in foster care.  Children are in foster care for any number of reasons.  Some of them have families who are deceased.  Some of them have families with parents who are terminally ill. There is a huge AIDS crisis in the city and in the country.  We have children who have been abused and find themselves in foster care.   It is the children who will suffer if these services are cut.  We need to make sure that the wealthiest pay their fair share.  As long as we are quiet the will move their agenda along.  I think that we have to get loud.  We need to write letters and go to Albany.  We need to get loud with the people who can make a difference.  That’s Bruno, Pataki and Silver.  Our representatives need our help.  We need to have action.”

Congressman Ed Towns spoke about the Bush administration’s search for “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and tax cut policy.  Congressman Towns, an army veteran, said, “I’ve got news for you.  We’ve got Weapons of  Mass Destruction right here.  Any time you’ve got a school system that’s not functioning, that’s a Weapon of Mass Destruction.   Any time you have 41 million people with no health insurance, that’s a Weapon of Mass Destruction.  When you have senior citizens with no prescription drug program, that’s a Weapon of Mass Destruction.  We have an AIDS epidemic in our community, that’s a Weapon of  Mass Destruction.   We have a lot of Weapons of Mass Destruction right here in the United States.  So if the United States is concerned about Weapons of Mass Destruction, then go to Bedford-Stuyvesant, Clinton Hill, Brownsville, Canarsie, let’s go into those areas and deal with Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
Noting that the war budgeted at $78 billion to start, plus occupation and rebuilding, Towns says you cannot do that and have a tax cut.   Instead, Congressman Towns calls for new taxes, but not tolls on bridges, sales tax,  or other regressive-revenue raising methods.  Says the congressman, “Let’s go get it from the folks who got it.”

While mainstream newspapers have virtually ignored the latest efforts of the State Black, Puerto Rican and Hispanic Caucus and the City Council Black, Latino and Asian Caucus, the groups have jointly developed an alternative long-term revenue plan to insure the future of the city and state
For the first time in the history of the State of New York, on March 20, 2003, the New York State Black, Puerto Rican and Hispanic Legislative Caucus, chaired by Assemblyman Roger L. Green, and the New York City Council Black, Latino and Asian Caucus, co-chaired by Councilpersons Hiram Monserrate and Helen D. Foster met in a joint session. Both bodies indicated it was imperative that they come together to address the budget proposed by Governor Pataki, which would devastate New York City, if allowed to pass. As a result of this session and subsequent working sessions, the joint caucuses have developed a revenue package as an alternative to that being proposed by Governor Pataki. The state and city caucuses intend to bring this message to Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg, respectively.
The Joint Caucus Revenue Package, if adopted, would provide $8 billion in additional revenue. Assemblyman Roger L. Green stated, “There is an urgent need for us to come together to stave off the destructive cuts the Governor is planning, which would cripple New York City. The governor’s proposed budget contains the largest school-aid cut in New York history – increasing class sizes, shutting down pre-K programs, and reducing instructional services for our children. The revenue enhancements we are jointly proposing would reverse these cuts.”
Assemblywoman Annette Robinson adamantly insisted that, “We must consider an alternate plan, because Governor Pataki’s proposal is detrimental to both our educational and health care systems, and deprives New York City of the vital services needed to sustain its residents and protect their future.” She further stated, “Because our proposal has maintenance-of-effort prescriptions built into it, the redirection of resources will be avoided and we will be able to ensure dedicated funds, such as those earmarked for education, will be provided to their intended programs.”

“Despite Governor Pataki’s rhetoric about avoiding ‘job-killing taxes,’ the reality is the governor’s budget contains over $6.7 billion in numerous covert taxes that will eliminate jobs and services for the working class and poor families in New York City and statewide,” added Assemblyman Carl Heastie. He went on to state that, “Our plan will help to reduce the structural imbalance in the state budget and protect services to our children and families.”

Assemblyman Adraino Espaillat agreed that, “This joint plan, if implemented, would protect pre-K and the ladder program: Our joint proposal proves that we can resolve our state’s fiscal crises without putting the City’s future at risk.”

Reinstate Commuter Tax       $900 million
Tax commuter income at 1/4 city income tax rate

Personal Income Tax Surcharge – Expected revenue between $2.7 to $3.3 billion per year”
Add a graduated surcharge to New York State Adjusted Gross Incomes above $100,000.

INCOME RANGE RATE  REVENUE GENERATED 
$100 – 149K 0.75%  $ 50,528,700 
$150 – 199K 1.0%  $154,059,105 
$200 – 499K 1.5%  $288,102,160 
$500 – 999K 2.0%  $841,987,885 
$1.0M – 4.9M 2.0%  $682,852,230 
$5.0M – 9.99M 2.0%  $301,954,245 
$10.M-Over 2.0%  $495,804,510 

Dedicate a portion of this revenue to education in the “Big-5” school districts (Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Yonkers and New York City) with a maintenance-of-effort and a sunset provision for 5 years.
.Close Corporate Loopholes      $940 million

. Reform “transfer pricing” rules to prevent corporations from shifting profits offshore
. Reform Alternative Minimum Tax to ensure all large, profitable corporations pay taxes. End exemption for insurance companies.

.Tax Collection on E-Sales – Expected Revenue    $1 billion
It is estimated that three-quarters of the sales tax revenue, that is not being collected, is from businesses making purchases over the Internet.  A University of Tennessee study estimates that New York is currently losing over $1 billion in unrealized e-commerce sales and use-tax revenue, and is projected to lose $3.6 billion in 2006 and $4.3 billion in 2011.
Stock Transfer Tax (“Partial repeal of rebate”)    $2.75 billion
Reinstate a stock transfer rate at 2 cents per share, (1/2 of pre-1981 rate)
Explore amending the stock transfer tax
(i.e., dedicating these revenues to an emergency recovery initiative and building aid)

Total Revenue Raised       $8.2 Billion

Special Notes:
Oppose the Governor’s proposed tax on clothes
This is a regressive tax that will have a negative impact on the working class, the working poor and poor families. This tax will also be injurious to small retail businesses.

Savings