On Tuesday, 33 Extraordinary Women were honored today by Kings County District Attorney Charles J. Hynes as he announced the recipients of his seventh annual Extraordinary Women’s event. They include a woman who works with children and young adults with developmental disabilities while spending many nights and weekends watching over sick children. Another woman directs a support group for sex abuse victims. There is an honoree who runs an organization whose goal is to improve the quality of life in her neighborhood. She also set up a scholarship program and a summer camp program for youth in her community.
“These outstanding women are role models in their communities thanks to their selflessness, dedication and compassion,” said DA Hynes. “They give back to the community, trying to make life better for others. It is an honor for me to recognize these women for their outstanding work, which benefits all the people of Brooklyn.”
In recognition of March Women’s History Month, the honorees were lauded for their career accomplishments and service to communities throughout Brooklyn. A huge calendar was unveiled in the lobby of 350 Jay Street. It will remain in place for the month of March. Each of the 31 days is dedicated to an extraordinary women (with one day dedicated to a mother/daughter team) nominated by Brooklyn residents. The 33rd honoree, Bernice Elizabeth Green, Our Time Press newspaper co-founder and principal, Legacy Ventures, is honored with the 2013 DA’s Choice Award. Her image falls on Thursday, February 28 on the calendar. So we see her award as a dual honor, which includes both March Women’s History and February African-American History Month.
The women will be further acknowledged at a ceremony on March 21 at 6:00 PM at Brooklyn Supreme Court located at 320 Jay Street. For info: http://www.brooklynda.org/
The ships running the Middle Passage stopped at many ports with their human cargo. Each beginning a new journey as a chattel slave, whether it be Brazil, Virginia or New York. It is their descendants that come together at Medgar Evers College, bringing the languages and cultures from a good part of the hemisphere, recognizing the similarities and enjoying the differences and taking pride in an institution that members of the Diaspora had called into being, gotten fully-accredited and was a source of excitement and new ideas.
After three years of tumultuous leadership under President William Pollard, the college has received a negative warning from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and a deferred decision on accreditation from the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) decisions that point to the potential loss of the hard-fought for full accreditation that MEC has enjoyed and been rightfully proud of.
It must be remembered that MEC did not spring from the goodwill of the city. It was birthed by a coalition of civil rights organizations, community residents and elected officials spurred on by activists such as Sonny Abubadika Carson and a young Al Vann, presenting a united front to the city’s Board of Higher Education. And it is only after struggle and agitation was the college born to uplift students of African descent.
Now CUNY has put in place people who certainly mean well, but who derive their authority from the CUNY system rather than the community the college was built to serve, and if there are no community organizers, organizations and united elected officials proactively inserting themselves into the search for permanent effective leadership at Medgar, the vision of its founders, of an institution that is a place of learning and ideas from the best of the African Diaspora, will be lost.
“By any means necessary”, that protest ultimatum of the martyred Malcolm X, acquires an ironic twist in the wake of the recent co`up by CUNY at Medgar Evers College. This disputed action of the CUNY Chancellery comes as Black History Month draws to a grand finale. Shortly after Dr. William L. Pollard had tendered his resignation on January 30, 2012, Chancellor Matthew Goldstein brashly installed his own interim surrogates at the college, without any consultation with faculty, students or staff. A recent local headline boasts that CUNY’s interims run Medgar Evers College.
While the college community rallied for an interim president to be appointed immediately after Pollard’s resignation and begged the elected officials of Brooklyn to advocate on its behalf with the chancellery, CUNY staged a coup of its own. It appointed its own cadre of surrogates to finish colonizing the campus at the chancellery’s bidding—an achievement which Dr. Pollard and ousted Provost Howard C. Johnson had failed to complete. By now, it is unequivocally clear that, by any means necessary, this CUNY Chancellery is set to restructure the civil rights mission and break the activist spirit of this 42-year-old Black institution.
Despite the faculty’s resistance to Pollard remaining a figurehead president at Medgar, Chancellor Goldstein has judged him to be the most capable “interim president”, albeit forced out as a failed president. How Pollard has diminished the academic integrity and reputation of the college is considered collateral damage for a college under occupation. Chancellor Goldstein objects to removing him until his “successor” has been appointed with little promised consultation with all the college stakeholders.
In a recent interview, CUNY Vice-Chancellor Jay Hershenson was found gushing platitudes about the “good” Dr. Pollard had done at Medgar Evers College. Good for whom? Not for the students. Not for Medgar’s accreditation.
Yet, Pollard’s own abysmal failures belie the self-serving spin of the CUNY Vice-Chancellor spokesman. For Pollard and his highly paid cadre of administrators brought the warning wrath of Middle States upon the College’s accreditation because of the incompetence of the people he appointed and had confirmed by the Chancellery. Under Pollard’s leadership, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) withheld its blessing and deferred Medgar Evers’ accreditation of its degree in Education until Spring 2013.This signaled that the program had not met the standards of the Council—a department that had been fully accredited by NCATE in 2006.
With two “Votes of No Confidence as well as multiple grievances brought against Pollard by faculty and staff for EEOC violations against women and racial minorities, as well as out-of-control fiscal mismanagement, which resulted in student unrest and protest—the Chancellor still refuses to admit that he brought in a troubled president, who previously had an embattled history at the University of District of Columbia (UDC), but was nevertheless recruited for a once-thriving Medgar Evers College. Just as at UDC, Medgar’s infrastructure has now been left in shambles.
The appalling fact of the matter is how history repeats itself. Just as the chancellery appointed failed presidential leadership to the College by way of Dr. Pollard, CUNY strikes again. Medgar receives more trial-and-error leadership: an appointed interim provost is appointed who has never held the title as provost, certainly not in the CUNY system, or worked at the local college level as a provost in its system—according to the news put out by CUNY. Likewise, an interim assistant provost has been appointed—one who was once a part-timer at Medgar while in graduate studies, only recently minted with her doctorate. Promotions for all, the short list requirement is loyalty to the chancellery. A college on academic warning—and this is the best CUNY offers.
The penchant for CUNY appointing incompetent leadership at Medgar is not a stroke of happenstance; it is part of CUNY’s systematic takeover of the college to OCCUPY it, while fulfilling its own dubious agenda. “By any means necessary” is the modus operandi of the CUNY chancellery to colonize Medgar Evers College anyway it chooses.
In refusing to negotiate with the college community about the appointment of a qualified interim president who would bring in his or her own experienced cabinet, the chancellery has polarized the college further with its “divide and conquer” interim strategy. But why appoint an interim president at the College of Staten Island—which had its own contentious battle with its president—and not at Medgar? Language that might not honor the politically correct etiquette applies most tellingly here: colonization is still on the prowl, and racism is alive and well at CUNY. Is this Black institution meant to survive in this divisive climate?
How long will the Brooklyn elected officials and community permit CUNY to destroy the soul of this civil rights academic institution by any means at their disposal without accountability? Now is the time for the Brooklyn community to show itself strong and rally around Medgar Evers College to fight for its civil rights legacy. With a promise made over 42 years ago to serve the public trust in providing an equitable education for all the children of Central Brooklyn and beyond—as a human right, the community must heed the emboldened wisdom of ancestor Malcolm X: “We declare our right on this earth…to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.”
Submitted by the Concerned Faculty of Medgar Evers College
Women’s History Month Series: In Celebration of Mothers
My Mother Regina Katherine Drew was a great Mother. I’m certain I share that feeling with virtually all children. But circumstances in my Mother’s life and the way she dealt with adversity marked her as a truly exceptional person. At a time when women were rarely found in the workplace, she was a Licensed Real Estate Broker with almost no female colleagues in the Brooklyn business community. As such she had to learn
how to endure gender bias. But despite this, she built and operated a successful real estate business for more than three decades in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. But if her challenges during the day weren’t daunting enough, she arrived home to our apartment in Brooklyn and had to deal with my Father who, when he had too much to drink, often taunted her about her accomplishments in the business world. When my Mother tried to ignore him he became violent and physically abused her. For many years my Father’s drinking problem eliminated any possibility of regular employment. And so it was left to my Mother to be the sole support of our Family which included my Father, my Mother’s elderly Father and me.
After my Grandfather passed and I grew strong enough to protect my Mother, my Father finally moved out of our home. Not long after, my Mother became acquainted with Sister Jeanne de Lourdes, a young Nun from the Order of the Sisters of St. Joseph. Sister Jeanne, who was the same age as my Mother’s younger Sister who died many years before. She and my Mother became close friends. As their friendship grew and my Mother was relieved of dealing with my Father, and after finally finding acceptance in the world of Real Estate together with the arrival of successive Grandchildren, she began to enjoy life. In fact, I witnessed my Mother finally reach a level of joy than I could ever recall. Nevertheless, the years of stress, unhappiness and domestic violence took a toll on my Mother’s health. She became a heavy cigarette smoker and began to show early signs of emphysema. Suddenly, Sister Jeanne, at 49, was stricken with a deadly form of cancer and within months passed. For all the joy my five children gave my Mother, their visits could not compensate for the tragic loss of Sister Jeanne. For the next five years I made an effort to call my Mother daily. Her smoking habit caused her health to steadily decline and in June of 1975 she was diagnosed with lung cancer. In December of 1975 my Mother passed. She was 64 years of age. I am consoled as I often remember my Mother and what she did for me, and that surely she must feel pride looking down at what I have been able to accomplish in her memory; that her legacy is that because she suffered, so many victims of Domestic Violence and their surviving children have been given the resources to escape from their nightmare. I am sure that she is proud that our Family Justice Center has been dedicated to her memory and the entrance to the FJC has a picture of her and me as a little child over a plague which reads, “To the Memory of Regina Katherine Drew.” By Charles Hynes
New York State Senator Kevin Parker By Mary Alice Miller
As the state budget dealing draws near, State Senator Kevin Parker is adamant about his support for the future of SUNY Downstate Medical Center and University Hospital. “I, myself, have committed to vote ‘no’ on every single part of the budget if, in fact, this issue is not resolved by the time the budget is brought to the floor,” said Parker. “I am going to encourage my colleagues not to vote for it.”
Lost in all the recent public clamor about the future of Long Island College Hospital is the very real risk of SUNY Downstate becoming unrecognizable, or even closing. But, according to Sen. Parker, not without a fight. “Downstate Medical Center is the Harvard of public medical education, literally in the country,” Parker proudly declared. “Downstate is an elite institution, and a vital provoder of quality health care.”
A few weeks ago, the SUNY Board took a vote to close LICH which, two years ago, became entangled with Downstate under former president Dr. LaRosa. LICH, a voluntary (private) hospital, had been hemorrhaging millions annually for more than a decade. It didn’t take long before it became obvious that LICH could take SUNY Downstate Medical Center and University Hospital down with it. Last week, a judicial stay had at least temporarily prevented LICH from closing. Sen. Parker is mindful of the more than 800 1199SEIU workers at LICH and the potential to “essentially unemploy them during the end of the greatest economic contraction in this country’s history”, said Parker.
He is also concerned about SUNY Downstate “hanging on the fringe”.
The SUNY Board, under the leadership of h. Carl McCall, has committed themselves to keeping both the medical center and the hospital open, said Parker, and has come up with $75 million in immediate financing. “We commend them for that money they are lending to make things go right,” said Parker.
The senator has two additional concerns.
For this fiscal year (2013-14), which starts on April 1, Downstate needs about $100 million. They are going to need that money for about two years in order to stabilize the hospital while a new plan is developed.
“In the context of that, the governor has refused to meet with elected officials in the area to have a significant discussion about this,” said Parker. “We have known about this issue for about 8 months. And for this 8 months, we have been making requests to the governor to sit down and have a conversation. Those requests have been denied up until this point. It is disturbing to me that duly elected representatives of the state government cannot get a meeting with the governor about such an important issue.”
Normally, the fiscal year in the State of New York is April 1 to March 31. But, according to Parker, because of holidays and such, they would like to close the budget by March 1 and get the votes all done by March 22. “This is crunchtime for us in terms of dealing with this important issue,” he said.
Downstate’s immediate fiscal problem is the institution is losing somewhere between $7-8 million a month. Sen. Parker commends the leadership of SUNY Chairman McCall and the new president of Downstate, Dr. John Williams, for producing an aggressive plan to restructure the institution. “I think there is a plan to turn the hospital around,” said Parker. “But none of that can happen unless we are able to talk to the governor about the extra money we need.”
Sen. Parker is very concerned about a “pilot program to do some privatization” embedded within the governor’s preliminary budget. Parker said he has not heard from the governor about what that privatization is. “I am not voting to privatize Downstate. There is no circumstance in which I think that Downstate should be privatized,” said Parker. “To turn over the operation or any parts of the operation of Downstate Medical Center or University Hospital to private companies to run it simply does not make any sense, either economically or fiscally.”
Parker explained further: “As the governor talked about economic development and job creation, as he told about New York being open for business, you can’t tell me that upstate New York is open for business and you are willing to let this many jobs go in New York City. I am going to vote ‘no’ on anything that puts either the viability of the hospital and its workers or the quality of care at risk.”
Converting SUNY Downstate into its own autonomous public authority is one idea Sen. Parker is willing to explore with Dr. Williams. “Outside of having a conversation with the governor and getting his short-term support for keeping this institution open as a public institution,” said Parker. “These other proposals frankly don’t mean anything.”
Downstate is the state medical school for all of lower New York. It’s not just about Brooklyn. It’s about NYC, Long Island and the Hudson Valley. This is the downstate facility. It is both a medical school and a teaching hospital. This is the largest producer of Black and Latino medical professionals in the country.
Annually, Downstate produces about 800 medical professionals – doctors, nurses and others. Most stay in the NYC area, many of them in Brooklyn. When they do their residency, most of them do it at Downstate obviously because it is right there.
“If we lost the hospital then we would have to find a place for all of these medical professionals to do their residencies,” said Parker. “Over the past couple of years, first of all you lost a bunch of hospitals – St. Mary’s, Cumberland, Caledonia, just lost LICH… Interfaith is on the verge of closing. There are simply not enough facilities for people to go do their residencies and the training they need to be fully-fledged doctors and nurses. From a teaching perspective, we need the hospital facility.”
“When you look at all the hospitals that are closing, they are all private hospitals,” he said. “If private hospitals cannot keep themselves open across town at LICH, how are they going to take care of downstate? Privatizing, essentially for me, means closing it. I am not going to vote for that.”
Parker continued to press his case, saying: “Downstate is too big to fail.” It’s the fourth-largest employer in the borough of Brooklyn. Kings is the largest county in the country population-wise, and is the fourth-largest city in the entire country after the rest of New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago.
For the past decade, SUNY Downstate Biotech Incubator has been researching robotics, nano-medicine and biomedical technology. “That is going to have a lot of implications. both for the kind of care and the types of advanced procedures that can be done at Downstate, but also for increased economic opportunities for those involved in biomedicine,” said Parker. “A lot of significant medical breakthroughs have happened right here in Brooklyn, such as the use of nanites, which are microscopic robots. That is a vital resource that we cannot afford to lose, particularly now when so much of our economy is based on stem: science, technology, engineering and math.”
