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Mayor Adams Keeps Folks Guessing: Will He? Won’t He?

Editor, Our Time Press
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Mayor Adams Keeps Folks Guessing: Will He? Won’t He?

By Nayaba Arinde
Editor-at-Large
The Crown Heights-based Vulcan Society and the Grand Council of Guardians endorsed NYC Mayor Eric Adams last Saturday. The firefighters and law enforcement organizations also pledged their support for the incumbent mayor, even as he said he was still considering pulling out of the race if his independent polling showed that he had no path to success.

Charles Billups, chair of the Grand Council of Guardians, told Our Time Press that this “is the direction they wanted to go, they still believe in him. Personally, I would stick with what we have got. I would want to play it safe with what I have, versus what is coming in.”

Meanwhile, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s New York Times opinion page surprise New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani endorsement on Sunday morning, had some political news hounds calling the race a slam dunk, and perhaps opening the door for the thus so far hesitant and dithering fellow Dems Brooklyn’s House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to finally vocalize their perhaps reluctant support for their party’s nominee.

Charles Billups, chair of the Grand Council of Guardians


A recent Marist poll showed that leading the mayoral candidate pack by 21% is Mamdani at 45%, and former NYS Governor Andrew Cuomo is at 24%, Republican Curtis Sliwa at 17%, with Adams stalling at 9%.
“We have not done one TV ad, not one mailing,” Adams said. “We have just started knocking on doors.”

Mamdani stunned former governor Cuomo in June, when he beat him by landslide in the Democratic primary. Even though he is now running on the Independent line, Cuomo said, “They know that you have a socialist and you have a Democrat, and that’s apples and oranges, and it’s a very clear choice.”

Hochul wrote that even though she and Mamdani have “had our disagreements,” in their conversations, “I heard a leader who shares my commitment to a New York where children can grow up safe in their neighborhoods and where opportunity is within reach for every family.”

As she gears up for her own gubernatorial race next year, facing her current Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, Hochul noted that she differs on several issues with Mamdani, but, “I’ve had frank conversations with him,” she stated. “I heard of a leader who is focused on making New York City affordable – a goal I enthusiastically support.”

However, on Tuesday, Mamdani declined to endorse Hochul in return. He said, “My focus is on November, and I’m excited to have the governor’s support in that fight for November.”
As of press time Adams was still straddling the fence in terms of will he or won’t he stay in the race? This past Sunday, News 12 reported that sources stated that Adams “has made a decision and will likely drop out of the NYC Mayor’s race by the end of this week.”

“Let me be perfectly clear: any rumor or tweet suggesting Mayor Adams is stepping down this week is complete bullsh*t,” said Todd Shapiro, his spokesman. “These lies are being spread by desperate opponents who can’t match the mayor’s record, his campaign energy, or his support across this city…Eric Adams is in this race to win it, and no amount of fake chatter or political spin will change that.”

As he touts his affordable city, and tax-the-rich campaign talking points, Mamdani said he would now apologize privately for his 2020 remarks slamming the NYPD as racist.
Despite noticeable tweaks of previous narrative, Brooklyn student, and Mamdani supporter Olive Uche told Our Time Press, “ I think the real question should be why not Zohran Mamdani? In a time like right now—post-COVID, post [presidential] election, seeing and experiencing the city as it has been –why wouldn’t anyone want change?

New York City has been in a destitute state for some time and the reality is if we do not demand change—vote for change, it will continue to get worse. It is not that New York City is not capable of change. It is simply that we have individuals, entities, and parties committed to preventing it from being the great city it can and should be—affordable and sustainable for everyone.”

Indeed the Marist poll had merely 12% of potential voters stating that NYC is “affordable or very affordable,” versus 88% declaring that the city is “not very affordable or not affordable at all.”

Asked why young people such as herself are choosing such fundamental change, Uche said, “Everything. I don’t think there’s one issue over the other that attracts me more because I think they are all equally good and necessary.

As a person born and raised in New York City, I think it’s extremely important that New York City remains a place that we can all call home, live comfortably without the constant fear of being displaced or out priced by those who see the city as a monetary playground, with the luxury to opt out of the very real experiences and hardships of everyday New Yorkers, who are making the city the alluring, lucrative, vibrant, culturally diverse place that it is.”

Answering why an Adams’ second term is not an option for youth like her, Uche replied, “I mean just look around. Is this a New York City one should be proud of? The current state of the city answers the question precisely. It speaks volumes to the extent of how bad things have become.”


Billups said that Adams the–retired police captain, is part of the Guardians organization, and,
“admitted that he made mistakes, and we talked about those things. We had to hear him out, and weigh it appropriately, and the membership decided to support him.”

Asked if he thought Adams would leave the race soon, Billups told Our Time Press, “Based on my conversations with him, he’s not going anywhere. Based on what we’ve been hearing, the other parties are putting out the information that he’s leaving, and they are putting out false information about the polls and everything else.

We all know polls can’t govern you. Trump proved that twice, and both times we didn’t want him, but we ended up getting him.”
The paper asked if the retired corrections officer was led to believe that the New York Times, Siena College, and Marist polls were all wrong?

“I am not saying if they are fake or not, but it all depends on who they are questioning and asking? I would ask the readers, ‘How many of y’all have gotten the calls about who y’all would wanna see for mayor? ’Are they calling the Black community? Or are they being selective in calling whom they choose? Hilary and Kamala were up in the polls, but Trump won. So, based on those things, it’s not over until it is over.”

Published reports have Adams telling some business community members that he would consider pulling out, if his own commissioned independent poll does not give him the numbers.
“We’re going to do our analysis, we’re going to find out what’s the right message for our voters.”

Tadia Lynch’s Message 2025

Editor, Our Time Press
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Tadia Lynch’s Message 2025

Tadia Lynch’s first-person account of her experiences in New Orleans, Louisiana, after catastrophic Hurricane Katrina struck was shared in Our Time Press, September 2005.

Miss Lynch had travelled there with her mom — and violin — ready to enter Loyola University as a freshman. Her 8,000-word description of those harrowing few days, and how she and Mrs. Lynch arrived back home with the most important things they took with them, evoke great emotion, still. With us and readers.


The young writer-musician-scholar’s disclosure of how, during the rough “storm” swirling within the overcrowded Superdome, she thought of music. It kept her sane and tough; she handed over her last orange and a bottle of water to people she felt needed them more than she did. She held up an elder, weak, lame and treading the dome floor carefully.

Today, 20 years later, Ms. Lynch is deputy director of the Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (J-CAL). She is an arts and culture programs specialist, writer, and curator “working in the ethos of arts democratization in both traditional and unconventional art spaces.”

Through her work, according to the website, Ms. Lynch “explores the relationship between artist, space, and audience, fostering deeper communal connectivity.”
Following is Ms. Lynch’s response to Our Time Press queries:

On the Role of the Arts in Life:
Through the Arts, we have an insurmountable capacity to process, communicate, and regulate our emotions. As a transcendent language between each other and sometimes even more so within ourselves, we can convey what is inexpressible through all common tongues.

On Creativity:
To create is to be in constant negotiation with the self and to give agency to our most vulnerable states of grief, healing, and joy. Every note, brush stroke, step in a dance, phrase and/or word is stitch in the wound of our trials.

On inheritance and investment:
My parents’ purchase of my violin in 2000 was a “conscious investment.”
The Violin shaped my childhood. It was how I learned discipline, patience, confidence, and even love. I am beyond grateful to the confidence my family had in my passion to play. The physical instrument is the embodiment of the unwavering support I have from them and even from those who have transitioned.
On Music: Music lives within us always, as long as we make space for it. Children need only the space and encouragement to explore it.

Did you ever produce the concert you had planned once you and your mom arrived home?
I believe the concert you are referring to was produced by Patricia Robinson, who runs the Patricia F. Robinson Music School, formerly known as the Stuyvesant Music School. It was founded in 1930 by her mother L. Elsie Graham. Along with helping me in a great moment of upheaval over the last three decades, Patricia has consistently offered support to young artists through concerts and scholarship opportunities.

Ms. Lynch is a 2025 DVCAI Curatorial Fellow, an alumnus of the Institute for Nonprofit Practice (INP) Leadership Program and holds an MBA in Arts and Cultural Management from the Paris School of Business.

-Bernice Elizabeth Green

Canarsie Merchants Association Hosts Successful Back-to-School Neighborhood Clean Up Day

Editor, Our Time Press
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Canarsie Merchants Association Hosts Successful Back-to-School Neighborhood Clean Up Day

BROOKLYN, NY – September 15, 2025 – The Canarsie community came together to celebrate the start of the new school year with a “Back to School Clean Up Day,” hosted by the Canarsie Merchants Association (CMA). On Wednesday, September 10, volunteers, residents, and local business owners joined forces to tidy up the neighborhood, and

Participants met at the Canarsie Municipal Parking Field, located at 1389 Rockaway Parkway. From there, they focused on sprucing up the business corridor along Rockaway Parkway, stretching from Farragut Road to Flatlands Avenue.


This community effort was a collaboration with several partners, including PaleFO Cinema, The Flossy Organization, Bink International Charity Organization, New York City Councilwoman Mercedes Narcisse of the 46th District, and Councilman Chris Banks of the 41st District. The event drew a host of volunteers, including students, who all contributed to the afternoon’s success.

The cleanup was led by the Canarsie Cleanup Crew (CCC), an initiative formed earlier this year under the leadership of CMA President Norine Medas. The CCC has already made a significant impact, removing over 3,600 pounds of trash and planting more than 120 plants to beautify the area.

“Canarsie is one of the most fascinating communities in all of Brooklyn,” shared Norine Medas. “The community’s splendor, history and resilience always shine through. CMA looks forward to continuing to uplift this great neighborhood by creating a much cleaner, safe, and beautiful place to shop and do business.”

In a continued effort to enhance the neighborhood, CMA and its partners will also unveil a new streetscape mural at the Canarsie Municipal Parking Field this fall. The mural is funded by a collective grant from the Citizens Committee for New York City. The CMA is committed to working with community stakeholders to promote the needs of Canarsie’s commercial corridors, advocating for a better quality of life and economic growth.

Q&A with Norine Medas, President, Canarsie Merchants Associate
Our Time Press: What’s the community response to their neighbors’ hard work?
Norine Medas: The community appreciates the work that our merchants, community partners and City agencies are doing when it comes to our beautification efforts. During our weekly cleanups community members thank us and we see them using the receptacles. We found that many did not see the garbage around them, they had become so accustomed to the streets not being kept, we pointed it out when they saw us weekly with the pickers, brooms, shovels and bins. They would often take the broom to help us sweep, inquire about workforce opportunities as well as ask about how they can get involved or donate.

Our Time Press: It appears other communities can learn from the CCC example. How did you gain the interests of such dedicated volunteers?

Medas: We started a Clean-and-Green team a few years ago that would assist us because we do not have funding for a daily cleaning crew. We manage over ten commercial blocks but because of the L train, multiple bus lines, two schools near Rockaway Parkway between Flatlands Ave and Farragut Road, it became increasingly difficult to keep it clean. We posted signs along the corridor inviting community members to take the Clean Corridor Challenge with us to keep the streets clean. We decided with community partners to address the issue and now we see a noticeable difference.

One of your objectives is to beauty-up as well as clean-up. Examples?

Medas: In addition to the weekly cleanings, we added 13 new planter pots of cypress trees, flowers and herbs to further beautify. We also have a garden mural in the DOT Municipal Parking Field, a collaborative effort with three other organizations to create a Canarsie Third Space.

From Entrepreneurship to Community Organizing

Editor, Our Time Press
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From Entrepreneurship to Community Organizing

Fern Gillespie

Promoting Sickle Cell Awareness Month every September is personal for Kenesha Traynham-Cooper, the well-known Brooklyn community advocate and business entrepreneur.
Sickle Cell awareness is part of her family mission. In 2015, she founded The Sharon and Stephen Traynham Creative Arts Fund for Sickle Cell Disease. “Sharon Traynham was my mother and Stephen Traynham was my uncle.

They both died from complications of Sickle Cell disease. I lost my mother when I was 18 and was raised by my grandmother,” she told Our Time Press. “The Sharon and Stephen Traynham Creative Arts Fund for Sickle Cell Disease was created as a pain management mechanism to help support patients who living with sickle cell disease to measure pain better. Whether it’s art, massage, yoga, its about managing their pain and making sure that they are relaxed.

It’s about managing their stress level because that’s a major contributor to a lot of our people going into the crisis. I have placed that program under the Sickle Cell Thalassemia Patients Network in Brooklyn.”

Entrepreneurship, civic engagement and community organizing are her passions. Some of her many titles include District Leader for Assembly District 56 in Brooklyn, a Vice Chair for the New York State Democratic Party and the founder of the nonprofit 4 Future Generations, a MWBE certified company with the City of New York and specializes in helping individuals live a better life and teaches youth entrepreneurship.

She serves in several areas such as business development and management, professional development and work readiness, community development, and health and wellness She’s held community leadership roles with Lion’s International, The Chris Owens Foundation, 79th Precinct Community NYCHA Resident Associations and NAACP-NYCHA Branch

Born and raised in Bedford Stuyvesant, she graduated with her Bachelor of Psychology from Medgar Evers College and received her Master of Public Administration from Metropolitan College of New York. Traynham- Cooper is also a minister and chaplain with a Masters of Divinity from Nyack College. She also is a Chaplain instructor with Healing Hearts Chaplaincy under Chief Apostle Dr. Kim Best.

In August, she was appointed as the first Manager of External Affairs for One Brooklyn Health Hospital. It’s her dream job. “I was born at Interfaith Hospital and my grandmother used to be an ICU registered nurse there.

My life has definitely gone full circle,” she said. “I love community and I’m able to do that in this job. It’s also connected to my purpose, which is to educate and to help people, especially in the community. To have a personal relationship with people and connecting them to resources necessary to have better quality of life.”


For many years, she worked as the Mayor’s Action Plan Engagement Coordinator and Program Manager for Neighborhood Safety, working in NYCHA community outreach. The job had originally began as a part of her divinity degree research project and transitioned into a career. “I live in Tompkins Houses in Bed Stuy and I saw the disparities.

I witnessed it as well as I experienced it. If I was poor, I didn’t even know it, because of my mother and my grandmother. I even went to a private school,” she said. “But I have friends that that died when they were young in their teens and 20s. I see pissy elevators and people needing food even though I was able to bring fresh produce every month with a program. My purpose is to help people and save people living in NYCHA.”

At NYCHA, she would mentor on job development, entrepreneurship and civics. “I love community organizing. That’s why I teach that now,” she said. “Because people don’t realize that what they love to do in the community is actually an industry. There’s a place for them.”
“That’s how I live my life now. I go into a place, I analyze and strategize and then I implement,” she said. “I ask people in the neighborhood what they want. It is important for me to understand and learn people around me.”

Politics and community outreach became a part of her life at age nine, when she was introduced to Brooklyn’s Congressman Ed Towns. “I watched elected officials. That’s how I got into politics. I saw my godmother and my mother working with Congressman Ed Towns and his desire for service to his community,” she said. “Because when people put you in position, you don’t just show up when it’s time to run for office. You do things for them that can aid a need. And that’s where I saw I learned that from him when I was nine years old.”

Working with youth is one of her fortes. She’s a former owner of a Brooklyn day care center and was inspired by her daughter Amira-Dior Traynham-Artis to launch a career from a corporate consultant to entrepreneur. When Amira was three years-old, she cut up papers into small pieces and created business cards and started passing them out in daycare.

“When Amira did that, it just clicked in my head that she was a sponge and she was watching everything I was doing. Her brain just clicked on figuring out how to do it. That’s the attitude I had on figuring out how to do it,” she said. “That is what prompted me to start 4 Future Generations Entrepreneurship and Leadership Foundation and teaching entrepreneurship to children as young as three years old.” Amira has created a line of shoes and sneakers that were seen at this year’s New York Fashion Week.


“I believe that everyone has a purpose. My idea was not only to make money, but, also have my passion,” she said. “I believe that everyone has dreams. But the job is executing your passion.”
“That’s how I live my life now. I go into a place, I analyze and strategize and then I implement. I ask people in the neighborhood what they want.” It is important for me to understand and learn people around me.”

In honor of Sickle Cell Awareness Month, Kenesha Traynham-Cooper has organized the One Brooklyn Hospital’s Ballers 4 Sickle Cell Basketball Tournament on September 27 at MS 935 at 76 Dinsmore Place in Brooklyn. For more information contact www.onebrooklynhealth.org

Church Women United’s 5th Anniversary Fundraiser Celebrated Excellence

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Church Women United’s 5th Anniversary Fundraiser Celebrated Excellence

Struggling Community-Based Organizations Continue to Sustain The Now to Empower The Future

The Ophelia Perry Scholarship (OPS) Committee, led by Rev. Dr. Valerie Oliver Durrah and supported by Church Women United (CWU), held a successful fundraising event, Celebrating Ophelia, Celebrating Success on September 6, at The WYNS Mansion, 97 Macdonough Street, Brooklyn, NY.

The event fundraiser bequeathed a generous scholarship to a deserving student from the neighborhood, grew CWU Brooklyn’s membership, and recognized the achievements of former CWU President Ms. Ophelia Perry.

“The event was an outstanding success,” Rev. Valerie Durrah, current CWU President, told Our Time Press, adding, “It brought together members of the community for a memorable afternoon dedicated to a meaningful cause. Attendees gathered with enthusiasm and generosity and appreciated supporting Miss Lavoneia Mayers, the first graduate of OPS at Howard University, who was introduced by New York State Attorney General Letitia James, an alumnus of Howard.

CWU’s 2025 scholarship recipient Lavoneia Mayers was introduced by Attorney General Letitia James at the organization’s recent fundraiser.


Among the special guests were Attorney General Letitia James; Deputy Borough President Kimberly Council; District Leader Henry Butler; Former Congressman Edolphus Towns and his wife, Gwen Towns and more than 12 Brooklyn Judges and Justices.

The array of speakers included Rev. Pamela Ward, pastor of Grace Alive Christian Fellowship, delivering the Invocation with her church’s Praise Team, accompanied by Professor Arne Lomax, performing musical selections throughout the afternoon. CWU President Sheila Davis, Rev. Dr. Susie Elliott, Bishop Dr. Barbara Lucas, Ms. Cathy Yeiser, and Mrs. Marilyn Ramos Holley shared warm stories about Ophelia Perry and highlighted the fundraiser’s purpose, encouraging generous support. Former Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz sent a message.


“The strong community support went beyond expectations,” said Rev. Durrah. The event raised substantial funds for the OPS Committee and CWU, with a special donation from Pushing Forward Real Estate Development Corporation, led by Josua Brown and Ray Addison.

Thank you to our OPS Committee—Rev. Dr. Valerie Oliver Durrah (Founding Chair), Dr. Aprele Elliott, Sharman Blake, Marcia Melendez, Jacqueline Kalokoh, Lena Fernandez-Butler, Sandee Underwood, Julie Glemund, Zenner Bostic, Leslie Granberry, sponsors, volunteers, and attendees—for making this event a success. We appreciate your dedication and look forward to future collaboration.

A special thank you to Rev. Pamela Ward for videoing the event for posterity.

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