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Tag: New York City

What Doesn’t Belong? Or, that Awkward Vacant Condominium on My Block.

I live on a funny little street corner in Brooklyn.

If you walk in one direction, there is Greenpoint—filled with Polish bakeries and businesses, and perhaps one of my favorite shop signs in all of New York City.

In another direction is Williamsburg—filled with coffee shops, vegan restaurants, bicycles and hipsters in flannel shirts and cut off shorts. In Williamsburg, fancy and expensive high-rise condos overlooking the polluted beauty of the East River (and I suppose the Manhattan skyline) have become as ubiquitous and indicative of the neighborhood as the classic, flat colorful houses or vegan laundromats.

It is not a joke!

In the opposite direction are abandoned factories, some transformed into artists’ lofts, some into crack dens and some probably a lovely combination thereof. To the south, is Grand Street—as you walk south, the predominant language changes from English to Spanish, the businesses are Puerto Rican, the bakeries are Dominican and there is music from every corner—whether it’s the radio outside the shop or cars driving down the avenue with all of the windows down.

On my block itself, there is a motorcycle training school (it comes in handy), several little houses with flat wood paneling on the outside and our bodega. Our building itself has a little bit of graffiti on it and a bicycle out front. It has red trim on the windows, and I can see the Palestinian flag I have in my window from the street. It’s home.

There—amidst the flat wood paneled houses, no more than three stories high, the bodega and the super convenient motorcycle training school and few warehouses that characterize my block—is a chic, glassy condominium.

It is completely empty.

Williamsburg has seen record rates of condominiums popping up over the past five years—and Bushwick (and apparently my little area that happens to be nestled in between) seems to be quickly following suit as the most quickly gentrifying neighborhood. But for now, these condos of the future venture capitalists that find a quaint charm in my local motorcycle training school are empty—while homeless men and women sleep outside the subways and many across New York City face foreclosure evictions from their homes. On a less extreme scale, the types of businesses that the condo-inhabiting corporate types and of course, the notorious young white hipster crowd bring are often out of the price range and immediate needs of those who already live in the neighborhood.

It is easy to feel queasy about this issue of gentrification. It’s multi-faceted—and there are many valid and sometimes contradictory arguments. I know that by all definitions I’m a technically gentrifier in my neighborhood—but as Nona Willis Aronowitz points out in a recent piece
for The Atlantic, the current economic climate leaves few other options. I live in a little room in a building that has quite obviously been there for decades. I try to make my presence small, support the local businesses and avoid the newer, more expensive establishments that are most aggressively transforming the neighborhood’s traditional economic cycle. But what about these fancy condominiums? What about these tall, glassy buildings with elevators that are sold by relators as “East Williamsburg” and boast views of Manhattan from a carefully groomed roof? What about the buildings that were there before and had to be torn down to make room for the newer building? Where are the people that were forced out, who—like me–used to look up at their windows from the street and call that street corner home?

In a recent interview on GRITtv with Laura Flanders, Julia Abumada Grob—co-creator of the (wonderful) web series East Willy B—a show exploring the Latino perspective of the complications of gentrification in Bushwick—presented the idea of productive gentrification: how do you harness the positive effects of gentrification while still preserving the character—and in habitants—of the neighborhood?

What do you think? What is your relationship to your neighborhood? Do you think that if wielded properly, there is a less aggressive form of gentrification can be a positive force that revives a neighborhood, allowing both the families who have lived there for decades and more recent inhabitants to coexist? What is it like for all of you non-New Yorkers in your respective cities?

New York leads in never-married women — but what about the men?

New York state has the highest percentage of never-married women in the country, and in New York City it’s even higher. 34.8 percent of New York state women over the age of 15 have never married; in the city, it’s 41.7 percent. That’s not particularly surprising — culturally, it’s odd to get married before you’re 30 in New York. The only friends of mine who are under 30 and married don’t live in New York — they’re folks who I went to high school with, or college friends who left the city before getting engaged. The only people I know who are under 30 and live in New York and are married are other lawyers — something I suspect ties into an existing risk-aversion, desire for stability and personal (not political) conservatism amongst people who go into law, as well as the fact that the people I know from law school and work have entered into steady careers that make marriage and family more feasible.

But what’s more interesting to me is the reporting on the survey. The headline over at WNYC is “New York Leads in Never-Married Women.” Fascinating, sure, but more men than women in New York have never married — 46.7% of dudes in this city haven’t ever tied the knot. I don’t have time to click through every state in the American Community Survey, but I’m going to wager a guess that we also lead the nation in never-married men. So why are all the headlines focused on single ladies? Folks are saying that New York is a terrible place to move if you’re looking to get hitched, and I suppose that’s true if you’re 22 and want to get married tomorrow. But actually, it’s a pretty great place to find lots of interesting single people who spend their 20s focusing on their own personal development and interests, instead of hunting down a life partner. It’s not for everyone, sure — some people put finding a life partner as Priority Number 1, and that’s ok too — but for those of us who want to delay marriage until we’re in our 30s (hi!), New York is a fantastic place to do it. And hey, almost half of the population is single — that seems like a better chance at finding love than a place like Wyoming, where only 20% of women over the age of 15 have never married.

Also, we have really low divorce rates — I suspect because people who get married later have a more fully-developed sense of themselves and their needs and desires, and because later marriage is correlated with higher education rates, and higher education rates are tied to greater financial stability, and financial stability makes marriage a hell of a lot easier.

So good job, New York. But let’s not take men out of the picture on this one. Amped-up reporting on The State Of Single Ladies is fun because we all enjoy being terrified with weekly threats of our impending cat-ladydom if we don’t find a husband yesterday, but really, lots of women aren’t chomping at the bit for a diamond ring — and about the same number of men as women want to get married someday. The OMG THERE ARE SO MANY SINGLE WOMEN IN THIS TOWN reporting feeds into the idea that we’re single by default, and that the stats on single women are more newsworthy because duh, we all want to be married. Men, well, if a bunch of them are single it’s probably because they wouldn’t have it any other way.

Of course, I personally can’t wait to get wifed and then send my cat straight to the glue factory when I no longer need his companionship. I know I’m getting a little close to my sell-by date, but I’m really only single because no one has bought me this ring yet. Obviously.

Weak and Despicable

someecards.com - This Gay Pride Month, let's dream of a day when New York and California are as progressive as Iowa and Maine

Carl Paladino, the Republican candidate for governor of New York, has come out against the gays. Paladino, notably, is the guy who forwarded emails onto his coworkers which contained racially offensive “jokes” (including jokes characterizing black people as monkeys), images of Barack and Michelle Obama dressed up like a pimp and a ho, and a picture of a woman having sex with a horse (the emails are detailed and depicted here — as a warning, though, my characterization of them as “racially offensive” is… understated, to say the least). Anyway, Paladino is a Tea Party candidate who has all of his morals in the right place, is my point.

And despite being pro-beastiality — or at least pro-women-having-sex-with-horses — he is apparently anti-homosexuality. Because homosexuality is just so unnatural.

The Republican candidate for governor, Carl P. Paladino, told a gathering in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Sunday that children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking that homosexuality was acceptable, and criticized his opponent, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, for marching in a gay pride parade earlier this year.

Addressing Orthodox Jewish leaders, Mr. Paladino described his opposition to same-sex marriage.

“I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don’t want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option — it isn’t,” he said, reading from a prepared address, according to a video of the event.

And then, to applause at Congregation Shaarei Chaim, he said: “I didn’t march in the gay parade this year — the gay pride parade this year. My opponent did, and that’s not the example we should be showing our children.” Newsday.com reported that Mr. Paladino’s prepared text had included the sentence: “There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual.” But Mr. Paladino omitted the sentence in his speech.

Newsflash to New Yorkers: We are not all nearly as progressive and open-minded as we apparently think!

What’s most interesting about this story, though, isn’t the brazen homophobia in a city that has long been a haven for gay people and lefty folks generally; it’s the insistence that disgust with and discrimination against gays doesn’t amount to homophobia at all.

About an hour after Mr. Paladino’s remarks, [Democratic candidate for governor] Mr. Cuomo’s campaign released a statement condemning them.

“Mr. Paladino’s statement displays a stunning homophobia and a glaring disregard for basic equality,” it said. “These comments along with other views he has espoused make it clear that he is way out of the mainstream and is unfit to represent New York.”Mr. Paladino declined a request to be interviewed after his appearance. His campaign manager, Michael R. Caputo, denied assertions that Mr. Paladino was antigay, and noted that he employed a gay man on his campaign staff.

“Carl Paladino is simply expressing the views that he holds in his heart as a Catholic,” Mr. Caputo said in a telephone interview. “Carl Paladino is not homophobic, and neither is the Catholic Church.”

“The majority of New Yorkers agree with him,” Mr. Caputo added. He said the campaign had done its own polling.

During his appearance at the synagogue, with reporters in attendance, Mr. Paladino said: “Don’t misquote me as wanting to hurt homosexual people in any way. That would be a dastardly lie.”

Apparently you’re only homophobic now if you want to physically harm gay people. Just hating them, well… that’s expressing your heartfelt belief.

Paladino defended his remarks this morning, saying that he doesn’t hate gay people but that gay pride parades are no place for children, and I think we could use a morning laugh so here you are:

“Young children should not be exposed to that at a young age. They don’t understand, it’s a very difficult thing,” said Mr. Paladino. “And exposing them to homosexuality, especially at a gay pride parade — and I don’t know if you have ever been to one, but they wear these little Speedos and they grind against each other and it’s just a terrible thing.”

Less funny is the fact that Paladino’s statements come the same weekend three gay men were imprisoned and tortured in the Bronx. In response to those attacks, New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg asked, “How can one human being be so inhuman to another simply on the basis of who they are? What kind of twisted logic spurs a large group of men to show off their toughness by ganging up on helpless individuals? That’s not showing you’re tough, that’s just showing that you’re weak and despicable.”

I’d like to pose the same question to Carl Paladino.

Fears

Wile E. Coyote holding a "HELP" sign

Like many of the folks over at NY Mag (and, I suspect, most New York City residents), I also wildly fear being pushed onto the subway tracks, being murdered in the back of a cab, being doored by a parked car, and finding rats in my cupboards. It has also crossed my mind that I may be smooshed by a falling air conditioner unit, because no one installs those things properly. And, what do you know, that happened:

There were no brackets on the unit that plummeted from the sixth floor of 65 Second Avenue yesterday. It fell from the window of Bruce Fuller’s apartment and, after smashing through the awning of WineBar, landed on the head of 67-year-old Vietnam vet Anthony Franzese. But there is a silver lining to this tale: Franzese did not die, and in fact, was found only to have minor injuries after being taken to Bellevue Hospital. And since he and Fuller, the AC unit’s owner, are friends, Fuller is taking care of Franzese’s Shih Tzu while he is incapacitated.

CHRIST.

I was particularly afraid of the AC-on-the-head thing when I lived in the East Village — my apartment was across the street from Wine Bar, actually — and I knew that half the neighborhood was young kids like me who were generally inept at anything involving tools or physical labor, and lived in tenement buildings owned by absentee landlorders and maintained by generally stoned or otherwise not-the-sharpest supers. My own super (who was both regularly stoned and not the sharpest) installed our showerhead upside down and could not for the life of him figure out a Plan B when I pointed out this mishap (I ended up duct taping a hand-held shower head to the upside-down holder, and showered like that for a year before finally just buying and installing a new fixture myself). Anyway, point being, I suspect that most AC units in those old East Village buildings are installed by total yahoos who stick them in the window and hope that they stay put. I know mine sure was. So I always avoided walking too close to the walls of those buildings in the summer time (also because AC units are drippy, and I’m kind of convinced that the drips are pure freon and are going to burn my skin off or at least give me cancer).

It’s pretty terrifying to realize that my fear of getting Wile E. Coyote’ed by an air conditioner came true for someone. And at a bar that I once went to, even though it’s a terrible bar with terrible over-priced wine and douchey clientele (I was being passive-aggressive towards a then-boyfriend who I knew would hate it. I probably deserved to get smashed by a falling AC unit for that!). And yes, I am aware that I am doing the thing where something bad happens somewhere and some annoying person goes, “Oh my God, I was there once!” as if that puts them in Very Close Proximity To Tragedy — see, e.g., “I once went to the World Trade Center!”

Regardless, I will never walk or sit under an air conditioner again.

My other big-city fears: Falling through those metal doors on the street that lead to restaurant basements (which never seem to be securely closed); falling through the sidewalk grates; being killed by an exploding manhole; being killed by scaffolding; being killed by someone who is hiding out within an elaborate maze of scaffolding and blue-painted wood walls; being killed by a falling window-washer or a window-washer’s supplies; being killed by someone who breaks into my apartment; bedbugs; having a rat run over my feet while I’m waiting for the subway; contracting some sort of horrific disease from touching the subway poles; being attacked by pigeons; and contracting some sort of horrific disease from being attacked by pigeons.

I cannot be the only one. What do you irrationally fear about where you live?

On that “Ground Zero” Mosque

A List of Thoughts:

1. The mosque isn’t just a mosque — it’s a cultural center which contains a prayer room, classrooms, a gym, a pool, a 9/11 memorial, a restaurant, galleries, and an auditorium. So it’s actually more like a YMCA — or, as its name would indicate, a community center — and will be open to all stripes of people. And isn’t at the Ground Zero site. It’s two blocks from the World Trade Center.

2. You know what else is in a two-block radius of Ground Zero (“Ground Zero,” by the way, being a term I loathe)? The same stuff that is on any given two-block radius in New York City. A sex shop. A few bars. Two strip clubs. A bunch of bodegas. Oh and there’s also a mosque already in lower Manhattan. That mosque has been there for a while and the world has not ended. So what’s the cut-off? Two blocks isn’t ok, but three is?

3. “People who were killed on 9/11” and “Muslims” are not mutually exclusive groups. Yes, Muslims worked in the towers, and for the fire department, and for the police, and for emergency services. Yes, Muslims lived and worked (and still live and work) in lower Manhattan. “Muslims vs. People Impacted by 9/11” doesn’t really work when those two categories overlap.

4. When “one America” has embraced immigrants and pluralism, welcomed the poor and in-need, and celebrated religious liberty, and the “other America” has tried to keep immigrants out, passed all sorts of xenophobic and bigoted laws that we mostly now look back on in shame, interned people, persecuted religious minorities and basically stuck their foot out to trip up progress every single time, no, we really don’t have much to learn from that “other America.” Also, if you ever find yourself writing “The post-1920s immigration restrictions were draconian in many ways, but they created time for persistent ethnic divisions to melt into a general unhyphenated Americanism”? It is time to put your writing career out of its misery, and perhaps take some time off to reevaluate your world view. First, if those persistent ethnic divisions really did melt into a general unhyphenated Americanism, we probably wouldn’t be having this mosque debate. Second, giving bigots time to adjust isn’t a great reason to pass anti-Semitic, racist laws premised on “racial hygiene” and eugenics. Kind of how a bigot invoking 9/11 doesn’t make his opposition to a community center in lower Manhattan any less bigoted.

5. Republicans who hate on New York City 364 days of the year, and who use the evils of New York (sex! gays! immigrants! Jews! elitists!) for political gain, don’t get to suddenly claim to care when September 11th is involved. And they definitely don’t get to use New York City and New Yorkers to forward a political agenda that is antithetical to everything this city stands for.

6. Don’t even get me started on the people who now call the World Trade Center site “hallowed ground,” but have had no problem coming to NYC and snapping smiling photos in gym shoes and fanny packs in front of the site, like it’s just another attraction between Century 21 and Times Square. It is hallowed ground. Act like it — and not just when you can score bigotry points. A community center two blocks away with a memorial respects the fact that the site is essentially a mass grave. You tromping up to the viewing deck to pose with the fam does not. But look, we still let you do that, even though a lot of us don’t like it! So please do not march in and start wagging your finger at New Yorkers about “respect.”

7. Other people have written about this more thoroughly than I have have. Check ’em out: Adam Serwer; Jonathan Chait; Barbara O’Brien.

But if you read only one piece about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,” make it this one by Hendrik Hertzberg.

Goodbye Goodbye

My last day as a guest blogger!  I want to thank the Feministe regulars for sharing your corner of the interwebs with me.  Thank you to the readers who read my posts, and especially thank you to those of you who posted thoughtful responses to them.

Like many guest bloggers before me, I leave you with many thoughts un-posted.  I have a half dozen half finished posts on my hard drive, posts on subjects ranging from Arabic hip hop to Zionism, veganism to 9/11.  Etc.  I’m gonna mash a few thoughts into this goodbye post.

First, I really want to talk a little bit about  Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine while I’m here.  I specifically want to talk about being a Jew who does anti-occupation activism and opposes Zionism.

When I say “Zionism” I am referring to a nationalist ideology holding that Jews have a right to a Jewish-majority nation state/”homeland” in historic Palestine.  Although over time there has been much debate about the definition of “Zionism”, I am using the meaning that carries currency currently on the global political stage.  Some Jews have more personal definitions of Zionism that are different; some may have nothing to do with nation states and refer instead to an important religious/spiritual connection to the land; I may not share such sentiments (I feel that Brooklyn and the Lower East side are enough of a homeland for me), but I certainly don’t object to them.  Such definitions are not being referred to when most people across the globe express objections to Zionism.

Along with anti-Zionists in general, I do not question the right of Jews to live in historic Palestine.  Jews have always lived there, often in peace with their neighbors.  There’s no problem there.  The problem is with the belief that Jews have more of a right to be there than anyone else, and that the “right” of a state with an artificially maintained Jewish majority to exist trumps the rights of all the people in the region.   These beliefs are racist, though it’s taboo to say that in most public spheres here in the United States.  Since the ’67 war (when the IDF proved itself to be very useful as military muscle), we’ve had a special relationship with Israel, supplying their military with an unprecedented amount of aid.  The US government also has a long history of supporting Jewish migration to historic Palestine, at least in part as an alternative to a feared massive arrival of Jews on our shores.

The US stands apart from world opinion in our official, unyielding support of Zionism and our active participation in the conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Jewish politics.  I’m old enough to remember being appalled in 2001 when reps from the US and Israel walked out of the UN World Conference against Racism rather than discuss the relationship between Zionism and racism, slandering participants from every other country as anti-Semites.  Similar dynamics played out when the US pulled out of participating  in this years conference because Israel’s crimes were on the table.   This should raise red flags for those of us committed to fighting racism.  It is US and Israeli exceptionalism.

I view anti-Zionism as a logical piece of a broader anti-imperialist, anti-oppressive politic.  Of course I abhor anti-Semitism, but I am also disgusted at Jews (and fundamentalist Christians, and assorted other pro-Zionist factions) who exploit the historic persecution of Jews for their own political ends.  It in no way diminishes the horror of the Nazi Holocaust to suggest that the expulsion and murder of Palestinians in 1948 does nothing to honor its victims.  It is not anti-Jewish to resist Jewish colonialism.  The refugee crisis and ongoing oppression of those living in the Palestinian territories are not going away soon, and no amount of righteous anger at Hamas will shift the balance of power in the situation.  Those of us in the US-Jewish and not–are directly implicated, as our tax dollars fund the ongoing occupation.

The number of Jews who identify as anti- or non-Zionist is growing.  A 2006 study sponsored by The Andrea and Charles Bronfman philanthropies found that among non-Orthodox Jews under 35, only 54% are comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state. (as opposed to 81% of those 65 and older. ) Last year saw the launch of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network as well as an increasing amount of Jewish organizing against the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine within a specifically anti-Zionist framework. In 2008, I participated in the nation-wide No Time to Celebrate: Jews Remember the Nakba campaign, which sought to counter celebrations of Israel’s 60th anniversary with events commemorating and spreading awareness of the correlating “Nakba” (or “Catastrophe”) of 1948 which resulted in the death or displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.   This is a shift-it’s often controversial enough to criticize Israel at all, let alone dispute Zionist ideology.  But this controversy comes not from some kind of Jewish “consensus” on the matter (there never has been any such thing) but from which factions hold institutional power and the lengths they’ll go to silence their opposition.

I also want to plug my new favorite movie, Slingshot Hip Hop, a documentary chronicling the emerging Palestinian hip hop scenes and movement.  It is particularly interesting from a feminist perspective, as the consciousness around the need for women’s voices in Palestinian hip hop displayed by both male and female musicians in the film puts to shame the gender analysis of most music scenes I’ve ever been around. Please, order it and watch it if you haven’t yet.  You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll probably learn things, you’ll be left both angry and inspired.

What else.

It’s a little early, but September 11 is next Friday and I won’t be blogging here then.  This year I hope to get tickets to the big Jay-Z 9/11 benefit concert thing at Madison Square Garden.  That would be nice.  Not that most years I do anything, other than reflect.  It’s still a date on the calendar that provokes a visceral response from me.  On the morning of September 11 2001 I was at work at a phone sex call center in Manhattan.  I was on a call when the first plane hit the tower and yes, caller, you really will always be very special to me.  On 9/11 I thought I was maybe gonna die at various points.  Not to be dramatic, I wasn’t near the towers. There were initially rumors reported on the news that there was a third plane headed towards New York, and I was near other famous NYC stuff that people speculated might be a target.  Obviously the third plane didn’t exist.  No one I knew was hurt or killed.  Some I knew lost friends and family.

It was a really, really fucked up day.

The thing everyone says about the city coming together was true, in my experience.  I was unlike anything I had experienced before or have experienced since.  From the women at my job banding together and helping one another through those early, awful hours to just about everyone I saw after wards.  Strangers talking to strangers, asking each other how we’re doing, offering whatever aid or comforts we could.  I don’t have the words to express the power of experiencing that this is what happened to my city when hit with a crisis of such proportion.  We didn’t know what to do but try to help one another.

And then Bush and Giuliani got on TV and told us we needed to shop and “smoke out” the terrorists.  And suddenly the horror was constant and everywhere.  Attacks on Mosques and random people perceived as being Arab and/or Muslim.  The looming war.  A lot of us started having anti-war strategy meetings, back when opposing the war on Afghanistan was a fringe wingnut thing to do.  Now the majority of the country opposes it.

And yet, we’re still there.  In fact we’re sending 14,000 additional combat troops, on top of the increasing number of contractors from firms like Blackwater (excuse me, I mean the re-branded “Xe Services LLC.”) We’re still in Iraq, too, despite the popularity of Obama’s anti-Iraq war platform.   The horror marches on.  I wish I could see an end.

And on that cheery note…I guess I’m out?  You can follow my pop culture critiques, short videos, vegan recipes and political griping at my blog.  Hope to see you around the internet.

What the DOE doesn’t want you reading

As I mentioned in my introductory post, I will be a senior at a public high school in NYC this fall. (As much as I’d like to forget all about school during these fleeting summer months, it still seems to be on my mind.) As far as public schools go, mine is pretty well furnished. We have a dedicated Parents’ Association that puts on impressive fundraisers, and most of our students come from families privileged enough to donate — though because of massive budget cuts (even worse than last year’s), all of the nifty electives our teachers planned for are simply not happening next year.

So we’re relatively well off, and that means we have quite a few computers: one in each classroom, mostly for teacher use; a few in our small school library; and around forty in a lab that’s available for us students to use during our free periods and afterschool.

The problem is that when you’re using a computer at school, finding what you’re looking for on the internet can be quite a task. You see, the New York City Department of Education uses Websense, a service that “provide[s] hundreds of organizations around the world with the latest security warnings on malicious Internet events including spyware, phishing, spam, crimeware and compromised Web sites.” In our case, the so-called “malicious” and “compromised” sites are identified by categories; if the program picks up on one of its trigger categories, the entire website will be blocked.

So what does the DOE consider “malicious” enough to block?

The category “personal networking” is blocked. This is ostensibly to stop students from logging on to Facebook, though I’m of the opinion that a little downtime on Facebook would make kids more relaxed and productive overall — but this also means that I can’t read Shapely Prose and some other blogs while at school.

The category “pro-choice” is blocked. This means that not only am I unable to use NARAL Pro-Choice New York’s Book of Choices to find a clinic where I can pick up free emergency contraception, I’m also unable to do research on abortion laws for an assigned project.

The categories “sexuality” and “homosexuality” are blocked. This means that not only am I unable to look up counseling resources from the Anti-Violence Project to use in a Gay-Straight Alliance club meeting, I’m also unable to find HIV/AIDS infection statistics in preparation for my school’s AIDS Action Day.

These are just a few categories that have given me trouble recently. I’m sure there’s a wealth of even-more-taboo keywords that are also blocked. Obviously there’s quite a lot of unbiased information that the DOE doesn’t want students worrying our silly little heads about.

Cross-posted at Women’s Glib.

Espada’s defection hurts more than just the Dems

For those not following New York politics, Pedro Espada recently defected from the Democratic party, helping to secure a power coup for the Republicans in Albany. But his decision didn’t just hurt the party; it did harm to tenants (and particularly low-income tenants) across New York:

In the weeks before Mr. Espada bolted, Senate Democrats were poised to vote on the most significant expansion of rent regulation and tenant rights in a quarter-century, including legislation that could have cost the owners of the more than one million rent-stabilized apartments in New York City and its suburbs billions of dollars on their investments.

Mr. Espada, as chairman of the Senate Housing Committee, had assured Democratic leaders he would take up the bill, already passed by the Assembly, but repeatedly blocked it, citing technical objections and scheduling issues. Last Monday, after he defected to the Republicans and ascended to the Senate presidency, he announced he was opposed to the legislation.

His move has all but assured that the bill will die this year.

Landlords and the real estate lobby obviously opposed the bill, and Mr. Espada sided with them over the interests of low-income tenants who are increasingly priced out of living in New York City. It’s a disappointing, though not surprising, move.