HBRUARY 1996 $3.

00
H o w P o l i t i c s P r e s ' e r v e s
P o v e r t q i n E a s t N e w Y o r k -
Running Scared

l" ,Ire Now"",,, 1994 ,1",i,",. a ""mb" ,t """", ""mb", at ,Ire
New York State Assembly saw their constituents vote heavily for a new
governor. For those assembly members who are Democrats, the election
results were chilling.
By now you might think that chill had lifted. After all, most of those
reelected won by healthy margins, even as the voters ousted their old
uncle Mario from his plush Albany digs. Democrat Paul
EDITORIAL
Tokasz won his district outside Buffalo with 73 percent of
the vote even as Republican George Pataki wiped Cuomo
off the slate. And Democrat Mike Bragman of Syracuse
won 70 percent of the vote-alongside Pataki's whopping
65 percent landslide in the same district.
If their Republican opponents couldn't ride to victory
on the coattails of a popular candidate in 1994, why are Democratic
leaders still fearful that any liberal activism on the part of the state
Assembly could damn these upstate representatives to oblivion? Yet they
are. Both Tokasz and Bragman remain on the Democratic Campaign
Committee's running-scared list.
Such political calculations explain why the debate over Governor
Pataki's budget, such as it is, remains quiet in Albany. Nary a peep has
been heard from the Assembly as we go to press in late January, despite
the fact that Pataki's budget proposal offers up the deepest reductions in
social services New York has seen in decades. "The Assembly is to the
right of Bill Clinton in terms of protecting social programs," says Bob
Masters of the Communications Workers of America.
Pataki is adept at splitting his opposition. He has proposed what
some critics are calling a "white man's employment program," with
more than $1 billion in increased prison spending over the next few
years and a massive new multibillion dollar highway repair and expan-
sion effort. Upstate communities will get thousands of new jobs. The city
will lose. The question is whether upstate assembly members-and their
downstate leadership-will recognize their common interest in preserv-
ing the social safety net for everyone.
Cover illustration by David Chelsea
Andrew White
Editor
(ity Limits
Volume XXI Number 2
City Limits is published ten times per year, monthly except
bimonthly issues in June/July and AugusVSeptember, by
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Editor: Andrew White
Senior Editor: Kim Nauer
Speci al Projects Editor: Kierna Mayo Dawsey
Associate Editor: Kevin Heldman
Contributing Editors: James Bradley, Rob Polner,
Glenn Thrush, Robin Epstein
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CITY LIMITS
I
...
FEBRUARY 1996
THE GRID
,

FEATURES
Spiritual Improvement
From the intellect of the children to the power of the people, Harlem
Community Improvement is recreating a neighborhood with more than bricks and mor-
tar. But can one organization be both landlord and activist? By Robin Epstein
Anatomy of a Machine
Under the hood in East New York: a portrait of two poLitical figures who steer the politi-
cal machine in competing directions-and drive the community from crisis to crisis.
By Gumn Thrush
The Landlord's Representative
Whose got the power? In the City Council's Housing and Buildings Committee,
it's the real estate lobby. By James Bradley
PROFILE
Sister My Sister
Korean women in bicultural marriages to American soldiers face racism, cultural difficul-
ties, domestic abuse, and isolation. The Rainbow Center in Queens offers an alternative.
By Kevin Heldman
PIPELINES
The Fear of Wages
Working for a city contractor is not necessarily a ticket out of poverty. Living-wage leg-
islation would raise the scale. By Rob Polner
A Legal Disservice
Legal representation for low income New Yorkers is on a fade, thanks to right-wing
shenanigans in Washington. By Kim Nauer
NOTORIOUS
Azabache
An African symbol of protection and strength inspires urban activism.
By Kierna Mayo Dawsey
COMMENTARY
Cityview 130
School's Out By Cherne Wade
Review
African Renewal By April Tyler
Spare Change 134
Lonely Hearts By Thomas Kamber
DEPARTMENTS
Briefs 4,5 Editorial 2
Frying Pan or Fire?
Professional
Balance Due
Directory
The Pataki Budget
32
Job Ads 33

BRIEFS ~
,
Short Shots
FRYING PAN
OR FIRE?
Lena Sands has had to get
creative about heating her
apartment this winter. A resi-
dent of 408 West 129th Street in
Harlem, she has resorted to
boiling four pots of water non-
stop on her gas stove to keep
her frigid apartment habitable.
Her building's boiler has been
down almost all winter, she
says, estimating she's had heat
perhaps 14 days since October.
Sands lives in a building for-
merly owned by Marcus
"IT WAS, I THINK, A
CLOSE CALL But as
(hunhill remarked, there is
nothing so exhilarating as
to be shot at and
missed."-New York Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
upon learning that
President Clinton had
vetoed Republican welfare
legislation on January 9th.
HERE'S A SUGGESTlON
for that desolate lot next
door: Plant a cash (rop-or
use the space to start a
farmer's market
Abandoned property can be
M
Lehmann and Morris Wolfson,
real-estate speculators who
suddenly found themselves and
their company, Mount Wilson
Realty, in the news last year
after a tenement they owned
on West 140th Street collapsed
and killed four people. Sands'
building has since been bought
by a group led by Steven Green,
another Harlem landlord with a
reputation for milking his prop-
erties (see "Shame ofthe City,"
City Limits, January 1990).
Out of the frying pan and
into the fire, jokes Forest
Timmons, a longtime tenant of
neighboring 412 West 129th
Street, also poorly served by
the crippled boiler. He says he
is not paying rent and, as the
tenant association president,
a boon to neighborhood
development if people look
beyond the litter. (all (215)
625-8280 and order "Urban
Vacant Land: Issues and
Recommendations."
has tried to organize a rent
strike and open a case in
Housing Court. But the effort
has been met with only tepid
support from fellow tenants. So
it is every man for himself,
Timmons says. To stay warm,
he had a friend rewire his
apartment so the sockets could
support space heaters. With
three heaters blazing, his
apartment is toasty-but the
electric bills are crippling. "It's
going to be $300 next month,"
he says.
Green, in a faxed response
to City Limits' questions, says
that he purchased a building
that was in a complete state of
neglect. Only 30 of the two
buildings' 60 units are occupied
and he says he is taking steps
to overhaul the boiler, rehabili-
tate the apartments and rent
them out. He maintains that he
has already done structural
work and is installing new win-
dows. At press time, the boiler
was working only sporadically
and tenants were without hot
water.
Tenants acknowledge that
workmen have been putting in
new windows, but they say
Green, who has owned the
building since late fall, should
have attended to the boiler first.
"These are the things he's
banking on, " Sands says.
"People will see he's put in new
windows, so he's taking care of
things. Meanwhile we're living
here, like this, in sub-zero
weather." Kim Nauer
BAlANCE DUE
Most landlords don't bother
paying their fines for housing
code violations, so Comptroller
Alan Hevesi has recommended
farming out the messy collec-
tions. He argues in a recent
report that private corporations
could do the work more cheap-
ly and effectively than the
Department of Housing
Preservation and Development
(HPD), which he calculates
spends 98 cents for every dol-
lar it collects. Hevesi maintains
private firms could do better
work for less than a quarter of
the cost.
His report also notes that
New York, with an overall col-
lection rate of about seven per-
cent on delinquent housing
judgments, has significantly
lower collection rates than
other cities. By way of compar-
ison, Philadelphia's
rate is 33 percent.
HPD officials respond
angrily to the report,
maintaining that
Hevesi's data was
misleading and inaccurate.
Private collection
agencies base their
fees on the assumption
that much of the debt
can be easily collected,
says HPD Deputy
Commissioner Harold
Shultz. But at HPD it is
the intractable cases,
requiring further litigation,
that drive up the cost of collec-
tion. In these cases, he main-
tains, private agencies would
have to bump the cases back to
HPD lawyers because the pri-
vate companies are not
empowered to enforce the
city's housing code. When HPD
experimented with private col-
lection in 1989-sending out
$10 million in default judg-
ments-the collection rate
was only 1.4 percent, he says.
That said, HPD has agreed
to try out another privatization
pilot this year, Shultz says.
Officials are interested in see-
ing if any private collection firm
can produce a 15 percent col-
lection rate, as promised in
Hevesi's report, he says. "We
figure if they can collect any-
thing ... that will be fine by us."
Kim Nauer
CITVLlMITS
RED ALERT: THE PATAKI BUDGET
WHAT'S IT MEAN FOR NEW YORK?
Governor George Pataki 's
proposed budgetforfiscal1996-
97 seeks to close a revenue gap
of $3.9 billion. According to the
Fiscal Policy Institute, over 90
percent ofthat deficit is attribut-
able to tax cuts, mostly for busi -
ness and the wealthy, put in
place by the state government
during 1994 and 1995. Pataki's
budget dictates that more than
three quarters of this budget
gap be closed through cuts to
social services.
The degree of cutbacks
promises to increase. " Each
year, as the budget gap is
closed (either in the governor's
proposals or the enacted bud-
get) the imbalance is solved for
that year, but the structural
problem may still remain and
the second year's gap will
always be larger than the first
yea r's," reports state
Comptroller H. Carl McCall in
his fiscal review of the gover-
nor's budget.
Legislative observers point
out thatthe Democrat-led state
Assembly is as much to blame
for the tax cuts that generated
the budget gap as the governor
himself. Ever since the 1994
elections, leaders of the state
Democratic Campaign Commit-
tee have argued that at least 20
oftheir upstate assembly mem-
bers are vulnerable to defeat in
upcoming elections because
their district voted heavily for
Pataki in 1994. As a result, the
leadership has resisted mount-
ing a populist resistance to tax
cuts for the rich and service
reductions for low income New
Yorkers.
Union analysts charge that
the campaign committee's
assessment is ludicrous. 'They
are exaggerating the number of
vulnerable seats, " says Bob
Masters, director of special
projects for District One of the
Communications Workers of
America. "No more than five of
them are in any jeopardy of los-
ing their seats." Without a
powerful Assembly counterat-
tack, he adds, much of Pataki 's
budget proposal, as outlined
below, could be enacted.
The unions are likely to pur-
FEBRUARY 1996
sue an aggressive media cam-
paign in opposition to the cuts,
but by all reports, union leaders
have allocated meager
resources for real grassroots
organizing around the budget.
Following is an outline of
Pataki 's proposals in a few key
areas:
Health Care: The Governor
proposes turning the state's
home care, indigent medical
care, alcohol and substance
abuse and mental health pro-
grams over to counties in the
form of block grants. His bud-
get includes a $1.1 billion
reduction in Medicaid spend-
ing. The impact from this
reduction alone is expected to
ripple throughout the entire
health care industry to the tune
of at least $2.9 billion, reports
Assembly Speaker Sheldon
Silver. Health care advocates
say the proposal could result in
the loss of 150,000 jobs in New
York State. Also, according to
the Coalition of Voluntary
Mental Health Agencies, the
governor's budget proposes a
25 percent decrease in com-
munity mental health funding,
representing a total cut of more
than $470 million.
Public Assistance: The pro-
posed cut of $240 million from
the state's welfare budget
would bring the total reduction
of federal. state and city wel-
fare spending to nearly $1 bil-
lion. Every household's benefits
would be cut by at least 26.5
percent. For a typical family of
three, monthly benefits would
drop from $577 to $424, or less
than half the federal poverty
level. lime limits would be
placed on Home Relief and
AFDC recipients. Rent arrears
payments and other emergency
supplemental grants would be
completely eliminated. Pataki
has also proposed an option for
local governments to request
all welfare funds in a block
grant, which would eliminate
the state entitlement to aid.
Housing: The biggest
impact on housing will come
from the new restrictions on
AFDC and Home Relief, says
James Garst of the New York
State Tenants and Neighbors
Coalition. The "Jiggetts Relief"
rent supplements, ordered by
the state Supreme Court in
cases where AFDC families
face eviction, would be elimi-
nated. The cuts would hit both
tenants and landlords hard.
"Hundreds of thousands of
New Yorkers will not be able to
pay their rent," says Garst.
Education: The state comp-
troller projects that Pataki 's
budget would cut $265 million
from post-secondary education
and $190 million from school
aid and special education for
primary and secondary
schools. In higher education,
the cuts represent a $102 mil-
lion reduction to the State
University, a $96 million reduc-
tion to the City University and a
$119 million reduction in the
Tuition Assistance Program for
low income people, according
to the speaker's report. The
Pataki budget proposes elimi-
nating restrictions that prevent
CUNY and SUNY from making
steep tuition increases. To
replace the full value of the
proposed cut at the public uni -
versities, tuition would have to
rise by more than $700 on top of
last year's $750 increase.
Corrections: The governor
is planning a $474 million, four-
year prison construction pro-
gram that will create 8,800 new
cells and hundreds of new jobs
upstate. It would also increase
the annual expense budget for
prison operations by more than
$200 million, says Robert Gangi
ofthe Correctional Association.
Kierna Mayo Dawsey and
Andrew White

B
PROFilE i
,
Volunteer Sang
Soon Baik (left)
with Chong
France.

Sister My Sister
From G.!. bars in Seoul to homeless shelters in New York, the
Rainbow Center reaches out to Korean women caught between
two cultures. By Kevin Heldman
K
young Lee* is a 51-year-old
woman who came to the United
States 25 years ago from Korea,
where she worked as a cocktail
waitress on a U.S. Army post. She's been
married, divorced and beaten by two G.I.
husbands. She's been evicted from her
military housing here in the States,
attempted suicide, slept in her car for three
months, been jailed and placed in a psy-
chiatric hospital. Two years ago, she came
to the Rainbow Center, a drop-in center in
Queens, carrying two audio cassettes and
the addresses for Bill Clinton, her local
congressman, and a Marine commandant.
The cassettes contained the narrati ve of
her life. She asked the Rainbow Center to
mail them when she died because, at the
time, there was no one who would listen to
her story.
*Not her real name
Even now that she has found some
companionship, she still finds herself iso-
lated. "We live around here, we go out
there on Northern Boulevard, an all-
Korean community, and most of the peo-
ple don't want anything to do with us
because we married Americans," Lee
says. "When you marry a man from a for-
eign country, automatically they put the
mark on you as a prostitute. My country
doesn' t want me, this country doesn't
want me. Where am I going to go?"
The Rainbow Center, established in
1993, is the only drop-in center in New
York for Korean women married to or sep-
arated from American soldiers. The center
was founded by the Reverend Henna
Yeogumhyun Hahn, a Yale-educated the-
ologian and social worker who has worked
for more than 27 years with G.I. brides,
sex workers and women involved in bicul-
tural marriages, combining a philosophy
of progressive feminism, political
activism, faith in God and scrappy, grass-
roots, hands-on social work. Hahn and her
colleagues provide counseling, compan-
ionship, referrals to shelter and medical
care, as well as their own form of spiritual
and cultural advocacy.
Lit. of Isolation
The Rainbow Center connects the
world of hostess bars, prostitution houses
and G.I. clubs in places like Tongduchon
and Itaewon, the red light districts outside
the gates of U.S. military bases in Korea,
and the subpopulation of Korean women
who move from that life to a life of isola-
tion, abuse, displacement and a feeling of
disconnection from their culture here in
America.
Located in the basement of a two-fam-
ily house in the Korean community of
Flushing, the center has three bedrooms, a
kitchen and a small office stocked with
material from Korean organizations like
the National Campaign to Eradicate
Crimes by the U.S. Military and My
Sisters' Place, an organization that also
attempts to help sex workers, bar hostesses
and women married to soldiers.
The U.S. military has been a presence
in Korea since 1950 and today approxi-
mately 36,000 American troops are sta-
tioned there, the majority of that popula-
tion turning over each year. In 1992, the
most recent year for which data is avail-
able, the U.S. government issued visas to
3,301 Koreans for marriage to American
citizens, most of them soldiers. The
Rainbow Center estimates there are
200,000 Korean women married to
American men.
According to Hahn, the women the
Rainbow Center sees have a similar pat-
tern in their lives. Typically, they come
from poor families in Korea, get involved
in the bars and sex industry near military
bases, reject and are rejected by the
Korean community, marry a military man
who's usually on his second or third mar-
riage and immigrate to the States. Here
they often become isolated and financially
dependent on their husbands. In many
cases, the women are abused both physi-
cally and psychologically, Hahn says, and
when they have children, their chances for
independence become extremely compli-
cated.
The stories of the women who visit the
Rainbow Center are filled with the details
of rapes in both Korea and the United
States, beatings by husbands, suicide
attempts, adultery, abandonment and evic-
tion from their homes. They speak of the
fear, the language barriers and the cultural
confusion that prevents them from finding
and using traditional social services here in
the United States.
Prejudice
They also speak of American men's
racial attitudes that seem trivial, yet are so
pervasive they accrue into psychological
abuse.
"American soldiers are very prejudiced
toward the Korean people, they think
everything in Korea is inferior," says Faye
Moon, a social worker at the center who
spent seven years in Korea as a drug and
alcohol counselor for the army and was
one of the founders of My Sisters' Place.
"The women would be so upset. They'd
say that a light bulb needs to be changed,
[and the man would say] 'Well, I'll change
it. This is an American bulb, this will be
better. ' It's psychological oppression, cul-
tural oppression. Then we had a lot of guys
who didn't want their wives to eat kimchee
or to speak Korean with their child."
"Most guys, G.l.s, they don't like a
CITY LIMITS
woman to learn," Lee says. ''They like
them to stay stupid. They don't want them
to learn how to drive, to learn bener
English. If they want to go to school, they
say 'No, you don' t need to go to school. '
They just want them to be housekeepers."
It was one such relationship that
sparked the creation of the Rainbow
Center three years ago.
Chong France, a 35-year-old woman
who's lived at the center off an on for three
years, spent six years in a North Carolina
prison. Separated from her second hus-
band, she was living in a hotel room with
her two children and working nights in a
club, leaving the children alone. In 1987,
she came home from work and found her
2-year-old son dead. She said he must
have climbed out of bed to reach for the
television and the dresser it was on fell
over, suffocating him. The police main-
tained that she had killed him before she
left for work. She was convicted of mur-
der, and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Reverend Hahn found out about Chong
France through a network of church affilia-
by the difficulties she's had adjusting to
her new life.
In an interview, she talks of her life in
Korea, where she felt obliged to trade her
body for a place to live, of her life as a 20-
year-old Korean woman on an American
army base, and of her husband's com-
plaints about her.
"He said it's too much just babysining
me when I don't have anything to do. He
didn't like that. Most American girls can
go where they want to, they don't have to
bitch about it, but I stay home and always
bitching," she says, apologizing for her
language.
While on the base, she says, she could-
n't drive, her English wasn't good enough
to even make a phone call and she had no
social network. She says it was like living
in a prison.
Around a Tabl.
The Rainbow Center is organized
around the Korean idea of the bab sang
gong dong ehe (community around a
table) and serves as a place where women
liMy country doesn't want me. This country doesn't
want me. Where am I going to go?"
tions and she, Faye Moon, and three other
women organized an ad hoc campaign to
win her release. They believed there were
significant problems with her legal defense,
including the fact that no Korean interpreter
had been provided. They also believed
Chong France's situation was emblematic
of the difficulties faced by Korean OJ.
brides in America. Less than a year after
Hahn became involved in the case, France
was paroled from prison into the care of the
Rainbow Center. The next month, the group
opened up its first Queens office. (They've
since relocated several times.)
Chong France, who speaks in a halting
combination of broken English and street
and prison slang, is now taking medica-
tion and recently got out of the hospital
for a medical problem. She seems frail
and thoroughly worn down. When she sets
out to run an errand, Reverend Hahn pulls
on her gloves for her, preparing her to
head outdoors with a collection of mater-
nal pats while she stands back a bit list-
lessly. She's been scarred by the prison
experience, by guilt over her lost son and
FEBRUARY 1996
can get whatever help they need even as
they reconnect with their culture-the
food, the language, the people. Recently,
the organization has begun to broaden its
scope beyond working with military wives
to include Korean women in need of all
kinds of social services.
The center has one full-time and two
part-time employees, about 12 people who
regularly volunteer their time and a board
of eight members who also volunteer.
Approximately 20 women use the center
each month.
Currently, the center offers a crisis
hotline, legal advocacy, translation assis-
tance, an open lunch program, housing
assistance, and occasional Korean and
English classes. The group has reunited
family members who haven't spoken with
one another for 25 years, and has run 10
campaigns advocating for imprisoned,
disappeared and murdered Korean
women. They accompany women to city
social service centers and help them
obtain public assistance, housing, med-
ical services and job placement in the
Korean community. They go on prison
visits, testify in deportation hearings,
administer medication, and provide tem-
porary shelter. Because there aren't many
other services for Korean women in New
York, the center finds itself doing every-
thing, taking the place of family, friend,
community and culture.
The Rainbow Center also bridges the
gap between young, educated Korean
women who've lived most of their lives
in America and older women born in
Korea, who grew up with the presence of
the rnili tary.
The center is very much in the tradi-
tion of hands-on, personal advocacy, with
a staff not too proud to ask a reporter for
help in understanding government jargon
on a funding application (the reporter
doesn't know), not too self-conscious to
celebrate in a newsletter the gathering of
their staff and clients on the floor, warm-
ing themselves under one blanket,
singing Korean folk songs, drinking
bowls of kimchee soup and calling each
other "sister" in 1996 .
The Reverend
Henna Yeogum-
hyun Hahn

~ ...
.... ,
CHASE
Community
Development
Corporation
The Chase Community Development
Corporation Finances Housing and
Economic Development Projects,
including:
New Construction
Rehabilitation
Special Needs Housing
Homeless Shelters
Home Mortgages
Small Business Loans
Loan Consortia
For information, call the
Community-Based Development Unit
(212) 552-9737
We Look Forward to Your Call!
CITY LIMITS

The Fear of Wages
The City Council is debating a bill that would obligate city
contractors to pay workers decent salaries. The administration,
however, prefers the Dickensian to the Keynesian.
ing the Central Labor Council, the New
York affiliate of the AFL-CIO-point
out that the city has parceled out govern-
ment work to nonprofit organizations to
reduce costs. Employees at many non-
profit agencies are not paid as well as their
city counterparts and often lack benefits,
the unions say, adding that paying the
working poor a bving wage would save
the city money by reducing their depen-
dence on hospitals, food stamps and other
social services.
P I P E l I ~ E ~
By Robert Poiner
R
ichard Bonamarte, director of
the Mayor's Office of Contracts,
has no particular affection for
cheap labor. But he insists there
is nothing the city government can or
should do about the low wages paid by
many of the private companies and non-
profit groups holding roughly $7 billion in
yearly city contracts.
"There are no legislative shortcuts to
providing a good job at a decent wage,"
Bonamarte explains. Only the private
economy, unfettered by bureaucratic
requirements, can do that. Interfere by
imposing new rules, and businesses will
only flee the city, he warns. Prices for
goods and services will rise. Better to hel p
low income workers get the training and
education they need to scale the employ-
ment ladder, he says, than to raise salaries
at the bottom rungs.
To a formidable citywide coalition of
churches and labor unions, such warnings
are bunk. Led by the Metro Industrial
Areas Foundation, the New York wing of
a national community organizing group
founded in the I 940s, thi s grassroots
movement is championing a living-wage
bill that is before the City Council. The
bill, introduced a year ago by Councilman
Sal Albanese of Brooklyn, would require
city contractors to pay their employees a
package of wages and benefits worth
$12.10 an hour (with benefits accounting
for one-quarter of that amount), or about
$22,000 a year, just above the poverty bne
for a family of four. A similar proposal,
slightly less generous to workers, has been
introduced by Manhattan Councilmember
Kathryn Freed.
In July, Baltimore began to require a
living wage under its newest contracts,
prodded by IAF's affiliate there. The rules
met little opposition from the business
community in that city, and have generat-
ed additional contract costs of less than 3
percent, about half Bonamarte's estimate
of the potential burden to New York.
Bonamarte says that the bill, if enacted,
FEBRUARY 1996
would force the city to spend at least an
additional $500 million a year.
Two Jobs
Supporters of the measure aim to help
workers who toil in the low-skill, poverty-
wage canyons that have replaced New
York's once-rich manufacturing economy.
Surveys show that many breadwinners
hold two or three jobs in order to afford the
city's cost of living. Others tap food
stamps and other forms of public assis-
tance, even as they hold low wage jobs.
Albanese's bill seeks to change the
practices of employers like the Maramount
Housing Construction
The city also spends hundreds of mil-
lions of dollars each year on the rehabilita-
tion and construction of affordable hous-
ing. Much of this work is exempt from
laws requiring that government contrac-
tors in the heavy construction industry pay
prevailing union wages, which run as high
as $40 an hour. The impact of the living
wage bill in this industry is unclear, though
it has excited populist sentiment.
"Most of the work for the Department
One company pays its assembly line workers
$4.25 to $4.75 on hour with no benefits,
delivering meals to homeless shelters. The two
owners pay themselves $1.2 million a year.
Corp., which has racked up $51 mil bon in
city contracts preparing pre-cooked meals
for homeless shelters and other facilities. It
won them, in part, by paying its assembly
bne workers hourly wages of just $4.25 to
$4.75 with no fringe benefits, according to
research by the office of Public Advocate
Mark Green. Companies paying their
workers a higher wage were unable to
match Maramount's contract bid.
Michael Creegh, a Metro IAF repre-
sentative, contends that the li ving wage
requirement would level the playing field
in the bid selection process. Few compa-
nies would be forced to let go employees
to meet the wage requirement, he says;
they could cut other comers instead. The
two owners of Maramount, for instance,
pay themselves a total of about $1.2 mil-
lion a year, the advocate's office found.
Union supporters of the bill-includ-
of Housing Preservation and Development
done through not-for-profits and the
bke .. .is done by people who earn eight and
nine dollars an hour, tops," Francis
McCardle of the General Contractors
Association, a trade group, told the City
Council recently. "Most of them today are
illegals. We' ve driven the American work-
er out of that industry because there are so
many illegals here who will work for those
kinds of wages."
Still, most city-funded housing efforts
overseen by nonprofit community groups
already pay decent wages, says Jay Small
of the Association for Neighborhood
Housing and Development. Others in the
housing sector say the living wage bill
would probably have only a broited effect
on their costs.
Local minority-owned contractors
could suffer, however, says Bill Frey of the
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finance affordable housing development.
He notes that larger, citywide firms are
better able to streamline overhead and thus
absorb the expense of higher wages.
Small nonprofit human services con-
tractors may also have trouble shifting
costs from overhead to wages. But a Living
wage law may help ease competition from
large, for-profit companies that pay very
low wages. In a recent case, a highly rated
20-year-old senior center in 1amaica,
Queens, lost a city home care contract
when a for-profit New 1ersey firm,
Personal Touch, offered the same services
at a lower price.
With the Giuliani administration
opposed to the bill, Council Speaker Peter
Vallone is reportedly tilting toward a com-
promise. One possibility would be legisla-
tion directing the city to favor contractors
who voluntarily pay a living wage to
workers. Companies that employ city resi-
dents would also receive preference.
Eroding Middle Class
At a recent council hearing, Albanese
grew impatient with Bonarnarte's refer-
ences to market principles. He accused the
administration of stonewalling the com-
mittee's requests for data on contractor
payrolls that would help the council assess
the bill's likely impact.
"I'm tired of hearing your ridiculous,
outdated theories," said Albanese. "The
state of the economy right now is that one
percent of the American public controls 40
percent of the wealth. There is an eroding
middle class, and part of the reason is that
at a time when corporate profits are soar-
ing, the wages of regular people are basi-
cally eroding, and that is really the concern
that we have."
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CITY LIMITS
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FEBRUARY 1996
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A Legal Disservice
The conservative movement in Washington is dismantling civil law protections
for poor New Yorkers. By Kim Nauer
Legal Services'
lobbyists Dwi ght
Loi nes (left) and
Scott Sommer are
fighti ng to keep
t heir organizati on
vi able.
fW
F
ree legal representation, never
easy to come by in New York
City, will now be even harder to
find. Legal Services of New
York (LSNY), a leading provider of civil
legal services to the poor, is facing
unprecedented financial problems in the
wake of efforts by conservatives in
Congress to kill the 22-year-old, federal-
ly funded program.
As City Limits went to press, the agency
has already sustained a 30 percent budget
hit in the continuing resolution that was
governing the federal budget while
Congress and President Clinton pursued
negotiations. Two of the city's IS Legal
Services offices had been closed. Other
offices had been forced to tum away scores
of clients who a year ago would have been
served. Even making payroll is touch and
go. After taking out loans totaling $1.4 mil-
lion to cover a series of pay periods, checks
for all LSNY employees were held up for
five days following the mid-January feder-
al government shutdown.
Yet beyond these immediate problems,
the future of Legal Services remains very
much in doubt. Nearly 95 percent of
LSNY' s budget comes from one govern-
ment source or another. Assuming
Congress and the President do not make a
deal killing the program altogether-as
freshman House Republicans would
like-Legal Services executives still
expect a cut amounting to at least 25 per-
cent for the rest of the year. Moreover,
local offices, which depend heavily on
federal, state and city homeless ness pre-
vention dollars, could find this money
drying up, too, when and if welfare and
social services legislation emerge from
the Washington and Albany budget wars.
Finally, Legal Services faces a raft of
new restrictions contained in legislation
that has already passed the House and
Senate. New rules would prevent LSNY
attorneys from participating in welfare
reform advocacy and virtually any form of
class action lawsuit against government
agencies or private businesses-a staple
of Legal Services litigation since the orga-
nization's founding in 1974.
All of this promises to sharply curtail
the number of cases Legal Services han-
Pt PElINE
dIes. A key player in New York City's
Housing Court, Legal Services will have
fewer resources for preventing evictions,
demanding services from recalcitrant
landlords and helping people with welfare
problems. Work in other areas such as
family law, disability advocacy and wel-
fare rights will get even less attention.
LSNY's executive director, Dale Johnson,
conservatively estimates that his attorneys
will close 7,000 fewer cases this year,
down 30 percent from the 23,000 cases
they closed in 1995.
If Clinton signs the congressional plan
into law, attorneys would also have to
transfer or settle dozens of ongoing class
action cases, ranging from those chal-
lenging the city's Home Relief policies to
others that have won greater access to
public housing for disabled people.
Moreover, LSNY would lose thousands
of dollars in settlements and legal fees
already in the pipeline.
Management, says Johnson, is trying
to find ways to preserve services given
the new restrictions. "We're looking at
creative ways to continue services to
clients," he says. "That's our mission.
That's our job-to provide services to eli-
gible people here in New York City."
Mew Organization
For several months, a standing commit-
tee of LSNY project directors has been dis-
cussing how to set up a new organization
to pursue the class action work Legal
Services may lose. So far, the Center for
Litigation, Advocacy and Support, as
they've dubbed it, is only an idea. But
Johnson hopes the new organization would
take over the cases Legal Services would
have to give up. It could also receive a por-
tion of the $2.1 million Legal Services cur-
r e n t y receives each year from a fund
which donates interest earned from
lawyers' escrow accounts.
Ideally, adds Chip Gray, project director
for South Brooklyn Legal Services, the
new organization could hire a number of
Legal Services' current attorneys. Gray's
office leads New York in class action cases
and will be hardest hit if the restrictions are
passed. This year alone, he says, his office
will lose some $800,000 in fees and win-
nings if the congressional bill becomes law,
in addition to the cuts in federal funding.
Gray has already had to layoff several
members of his clerical staff. He could
CITY LIMITS
have to let go as many as a dozen more
people, cutting deeply into his attorney and
paralegal talent. "We counted on that
money as part of our budget and, needless
to say, not being able to collect has put us
into a tough spot." A new corporation, he
notes, might allow him to painlessly trans-
fer two of his own managers, thereby sav-
ing their salary and benefits to preserve less
senior staff. "But," he admits, "that's all
kind of messy."
It's messy because Congress could
easily view the creation of a parallel
organization as an attempt to get around
the intent of its legislation, thus jeopar-
dizing LSNY's funds and the entire
counted until the check is in hand. He has
also emphasized a more bread and butter
approach, concentrating on offering a
core of housing-related services supple-
mented by various other services includ-
ing family law, HIV-related litigation and
disability advocacy work.
Like all LSNY project directors,
Cohen depends almost entirely on govern-
ment funds. While he says he plans to do
more foundation fundraising, his greater
hope lies with finding new government
contracts and creative ways to stretch his
shrinking budget.
His office, for example, runs an advo-
cacy project that helps people with dis-

sources if Legal Services is to survive into
the next decade. By contrast, they note,
the Legal Aid Society has long had the
ability to raise private funds.
Fundraising is particularly important
now, when long-time government fund-
ing sources like the Emergency
Assistance to Families (EAF) program,
are at risk. For the last few years, EAF
funding has been a potentially limitless
pot of money for project directors. The
program pays $\,000 for every case of
"homeless ness" prevented, essentially a
matter of having attorneys wade through
the welfare bureaucracy and the courts to
ensure proper payment to a family's land-

A ra!tofnew restrIctIons would prevent legal
Services from participating in welfare reform advocacy and virtually
any form of class action lawsuit agaInst government agencies.
Legal Services budget, notes Dwight
Loines, president of the National
Organization of Legal Services Lawyers
and a chief Legal Services lobbyist in
Washington.
Loines acknowledges there are ways
to safely build an organization to take
over Legal Services' restricted work.
However, he says, setting up an entity
using the organization's time, money and
former staff is risky. He says project
directors should be spending their time
on strengthening services in their own
offices.
''To be honest, a lot of the project
directors don't even understand the new
restrictions," he adds. "They just have this
broad idea that these things are horrible.
They haven't studied them. They haven't
figured out how to creatively deal with
them. And this has to happen."
BrHd and Butt.r
In Jamaica, Queens, Arnold Cohen
has been quietly trying to figure out what
the budget of the future will look like.
Unlike South Brooklyn, his office,
Queens Legal Services Corporation, has
never depended on funding from class
action and other outside litigation in cal-
culating its budgets. While his attorneys
do this work and generate funds, it isn' t
FEBRUARY 1996
abilities get off city- and state-funded
Home Relief and onto the federal
Supplemental Security Income program.
As a money saver for Albany and City
Hall , it's likely to remain well funded.
His office is also setting up alternative
services for people who can't get repre-
sentation from the overstretched attor-
neys. The staff is creating a community
speakers bureau that will offer classes and
workshops so people can learn to better
represent themselves in Housing Court.
Legal Services could also work with other
community groups, training their organiz-
ers to be lay advocates for their clients.
''There's still a lot to do in the face of
these cuts," he says. "Rather than round-
ing up the wagons, we need to be getting
back out into the community."
These kinds of programs are a sorry
substitute for legal representation, howev-
er, says Scott Sommer, an attorney at
South Brooklyn Legal Services and a
regional vice president of the union.
''When it comes to going up against the
landlord's lawyer in court, you want a
trained, admitted member of the bar.
Judges don't have to listen to lay advo-
cates. And oftentimes they won't."
Sommer and other attorneys have been
arguing that management has got to begin
finding some non-government funding
lord. The program could be gutted if wel-
fare funds are turned over to the states
through block grants.
Rational. for RHuctlon
"The management of Legal Services
has been horrible at fundraising over the
last two decades. They've done nothing,"
Sommer insists. "They basically run [the
corporation] like the tooth fairy is going
to come deliver a check to them," he
says. "Well , now what? The tooth fairy is
out of money."
LSNY's executive director isn't buy-
ing that line. Johnson counters that such
talk is exactly what the conservatives in
Congress want to hear. "This is what the
people who have decided to reduce our
funds have been saying, that contribu-
tions can make up for the shortfall in
income we receive from governmental
sources," he says. "That's part of the
rationale for reducing all types of gov-
ernmental programs."
The best tbat Legal Services can do,
he says, is continue on with its shrinking
budget until voters shift priorities and
elect politicians who will, once again,
support the program. "Hopefully," he
says, "this November election will bring
out people who believe in Legal
Services."
-e
....
I ......
hood practicaIy
cIIrch,..1Ie " -.nI,
sociaI"er aad '-er-
.. at the s. tine?
CITY LIMITS
W
earing a dark blue sweatshirt adorned with gold letters
that read, "Strong Mind, Strong Body, Strong Spirit,"
K yleef Jackson, age II, sits in the basement of a recently
renovated Harlem apartment building on one of the cold-
est nights of the year, learning about the Civil War.
"What was the Civil War about?" asks Arden Als, a teacher at
the four-month-old Bradhurst Academy of Excellence, an after-
school program that requires its 45 students to attend classes five
nights a week, from 3: 15 until 7:30. Depending on their age, the
children divide their time between reading, writing, science,
math, French, video production and karate. On Mondays and
Fridays, the students take a course called "Alternate World View,"
designed to teach black history and critical thinking. That's where
they learn about the Civil War.
Venturing a guess, Joseph Settles, also II , says, "It was when
the British .... "
"I think you're confusing it with the Revolutionary War," Als
interjects gently.
"It was about freedom," pipes in Kyleef.
"It was mainly about slavery, but that's not why it started," Als
explains. Getting up and moving across the room, followed by the
children, he continues: "Come look at the map. There were parts
of the country that had slavery and parts that didn't. Come check
it out."
As the evening progresses, AI and the students discuss the
Fugitive Slave Act, the Dred Scott decision, the Abolitionists, the
Emancipation Proclamation and white Northerners' resistance to
the arming of blacks. Als tells the students to read about Sojourner
Truth at home, and to have their mothers help them if they have
trouble. "We're going to review all this stuff again," he says. "I'll
expect you to know who she is when I ask you."
~
mphasizing the development of the students' intellect and
self-knowledge, African-American cultural literacy and
neighborhood involvement, the academy is a microcosm
of what its sponsoring agency, Harlem Congregations for
Community Improvement (HCCI), aims to accomplish through-
out the Bradhurst section of north central Harlem. Since its cre-
ation by local pastors in 1986, HCCI has promoted a vision of
ministering to the neighborhood's economic, social and spiritual
needs as well as rebuilding its housing stock. As HCCI sees it, the
" We set out to do
holistic redevelop-
ment ... we'd seen the
failure of bricks and
mortar only."
FEBRUARY 1996
revitalization of Bradhurst, a long-devastated community between
West l45th and West 155th streets that has New York's highest
concentration of abandoned city-owned bUildings, means recreat-
ing the community's institutions, services and traditions from
scratch-and empowering its residents in all aspects of their lives.
"We set out to do holistic redevelopment. We understood you
couldn't just reclaim the buildings," explains HCCl's board chair-
man, the Reverend Canon Frederick Williams, rector of the Church
of the Intercession at 155th and Broadway. "We had to rebuild the
spirit and the moral fiber of the community, and we had to add all
of the supportive services people need when they come into a com-
munity--economic development, child care, space for artists, ways
of looking after senior citizens. We'd seen the failure of bricks and
mortar only."
Today, just five years after the city gave a green light to the
first phase of Bradhurst redevelopment, HCCI has (or is slated to
soon have) ownership of close to 1,000 apartments. From a staff of
two and a budget of $100,000 in 1991, HCCI has grown to 32
employees and a budget of more than $2 million. And the area itself
has been substantially rebuilt, with impressive corridors of rehabil-
itated tum-of-the century apartment buildings housing a new mix of
tenants, from the formerly homeless to the solidly working class.
Now, with the political climate altered at every level of gov-
ernment, funding for new apartments has grown scarce. Last June,
the group refocused its attention on strengthening an array of
social services for its low and moderate income tenants and their
neighbors, and on economic development plans for the area. As
hard as it was for HCCI to fmesse Harlem and city hall politics,
secure complex financing deals and learn how to get buildings
built, it's turning out to be even harder for the group to address the
community's complex needs. Having mastered the housing game,
HCCl is now faced with having to navigate the human services
bureaucracy at a time when that arena is bleeding profusely from
budget cutters' blades.
If HCCI succeeds, it will prove that comprehensive communi-
ty development is not the pipe dream cynics often say it is. The
organization highlights the significance of local control, especial-
ly in struggling African-American communities like Harlem that
have had little say in their fate. Bradhurst is already beginning to
show the value of strategic, long-term planning in community
development. It's also a test case of the strengths and weaknesses
Arden Al s
t eaches chi ldren
about thei r
hi story-and
themselves-at
the Bradhurst
Academy of
Excellence.
Mp
"They' re giving
us Park Avenue
in Harlem,"
says Jelain
Henderickson,
who lives in
one of the reha-
bilitated build-
ings on West
145th Street.
(M
of church-based development.
As the Bradhurst project unfolds, it illuminates a road map of
potential hazards. Can socially committed churches, as opposed
to other kinds of community developers, resolve the inevitable
conflict that arises when a single institution sets out to catalyze
resident control over a community on the one hand, and to col-
lect the residents' rent on the other?
In any case, no amount of vision and planning guarantees the
cash needed to make the Bradhurst project complete. With
bravado, some of HCCl's leaders profess to be undaunted by the
task. "It's about being creative," says Greg Watson, HCCl's vice
president for real estate development and property management.
"It's about exploring other avenues, about not expecting every-
thing to be handed to you."
~
n 1986, when 40 religious leaders-Baptist, Pentecostal,
Episcopalian, Catholic, Muslim and others-decided to join
together to work on rebuilding Harlem, they stepped into a
vacuum. "For years there had been nothing of conse-
quence," says HCCl's president, the Reverend Dr. Preston
Washington. For decades, he charges, the state tried and failed
to promote development in the area through
the now-defunct Harlem Urban Development
Corporation (HUDC), a state-chartered
agency founded in 1971 to counter urban
blight. "It was all bureaucrats, politicians and
technocrats, and the community's agenda got
left in the background," Washington says.
"If there are no people in the community,
there are no churches," adds Canon Williams,
"so it's a survival thing for us at a fundamen-
tal level. " The pastors were also interested in
grassroots political organizing, he says, and
long before HCCI had any paid staff they
The IAF, a national network of predominant-
ly church-based citizens' groups founded by
Saul Alinsky in Chicago in 1940, trai ned 60
Harlem pastors in the skills and strategies of
organizing. Ultimately, those interested in IAF-style organizing
and leadership development created Harlem Initiatives Together
(HIT); others stayed with HCCI to concentrate on community
development. Several pastors on HCCl's board also remain
active in HIT.
Before long, HCCI began collaborating with HUDC. By 1987
a crew of HUDC interns was doing intensive surveys in the
immediate areas surrounding HCCl's churches in order to identi-
fy buildings ripe for development. Lionel McIntyre, at the time
one of the student interns and today director of the urban planning
program at Columbia University's School of Architecture and
Planning, recalls that the group quickly decided to focus on one
area where all the churches could collaborate. Bradhurst became
the most obvious target because of its massive number of board-
ed-up buildings and harrowing economic indicators. For nine or
10 months, he and his colleagues conducted their analysis, regti-
larly presenting their findings to the pastors at St. Matthew's
Baptist Church on Macombs Place-even though, as McIntyre
says, HUDC "didn' t have a tradition of doing neighborhood-level
planning within the community."
Eventually, with the blessing of HCCI and HUDC, "we went
forward and developed a comprehensive neighborhood revitaliza-
tion plan, with social services and economic development as well
as housing," he says. The plan-which became McIntyre's doctor-
al dissertation-proposed 2,000 renovated units, half for low and
moderate income families so that current residents would not be
displaced and half for middle income families in order to create
social and economic balance. The plan called for the creation of
home ownership opportunities at every income level. It included
housing for the homeless, full participation in the development by
minority vendors and the creation of 300,000 square feet of com-
mercial space, It called for a community center, the expansion of
health care, senior care, child care, after-school and recreational
programs, as well as adult education and job training programs,
substance abuse treatment, youth employment, new cultural spaces,
better playgrounds, improved access to subways and more police.
At first, the organization failed to win support for the plan
from Mayor Ed Koch. Washington says Koch didn't think the
clergy had the expertise to pull it off, so he offered HCCI fund-
ing for a meager 75-apartment rehabilitation effort. The pastors
turned it down, and, when the mayor threatened to hand funds for
a huge Harlem redevelopment program over to a private con-
tractor based outside Harlem, the churches helped create the
Consortium for Central Harlem Development (CCHD). It includ-
ed the Uptown Chamber of
Commerce, the New York
Coalition of Black Architects and
the Greater Harlem Real Estate
Board, as well as HUDC and the
New York Urban Coalition, a
citywide nonprofit with an estab-
lished record as a developer and
a warmish relationship with
Koch. (The Urban Coalition has
since disbanded. See City Limits,
August/September 1994).
During his last month in
Washington.
attached any money to the agree-
ment, he provided cover for
incoming mayor David Dinkins,
who could go ahead and fund the Bradhurst project without
being accused of simply funneling money to his Harlem allies.
"It was a very fortuitous situation," recalls Joe Center, who
headed up another uptown community group at the time.
"Without the planning process, having Dinkins elected would
have created some new housing in Bradhurst, but it would not
have been as comprehensive, and it would not have been as dri-
ven by the consensus of what people in Harlem wanted. It would
have been driven by what people in City Hall and the Department
of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) wanted."
~
i v e years later, although there are still an estimated 5,000
vacant apartments in Bradhurst, HCCI has definitely
improved the look and feel of the neighborhood. On Eighth
Avenue between West l52nd and 153rd streets, where
HCCl's headquarters are located, "it was nothing but drugs," says
Shirley Greene, owner of Shirley's Soul Food, a restaurant up the
block. "They cleaned up the streets. Since the development came,
a lot of people are moving in. Everybody loves it. "
"Eight years ago, I would not have parked my car on Eighth
Avenue and 153rd Street," says Canon Williams. "Now I go
down there any time of the day or night and feel perfectly safe.
I think the Bradhurst project is the beginning of creating an
CITY LIMITS
oasis out of a desert."
After losing about 20,000 residents between 1970 and 1990,
the neighborhood's population, which was 28,449 in the 1990
census, appears to be slowly increasing, says Steven Williams,
director of the organization's economic development efforts.
Praise comes from funders, financiers and tenants alike. 'The
sense of renewal and the vision of the possible is really quite strik-
ing," says Hildy Simmons, managing director and head of com-
munity relations for J.p. Morgan & Co.
A massive infusion of city funds allowed the consortium to
accomplish a great deal in a short time. The Dinkins administra-
tion funded 100 percent of Bradhurst's first development phase to
the tune of $24.4 million for 301 apartments, according to HPD.
For the second phase, the city put up 70 percent of the $30 mil-
lion total cost; the rest came from bank financing and low income
housing tax credit deals put together by the New York Equity
Fund. For the much smaller third phase, the Giuliani administra-
tion is coughing up $5.1 million of the $13.5 million cost. In the
city's projected capital budget, Bradhurst is to get about $5 mil-
lion a year through 1999, according to HPD.
Unlike projects that have had their allocations completely
eliminated by city cutbacks, Housing Commissioner Deborah
Wright says Bradhurst has "enough in the capital budget to keep
the momentum going."
On West 145th Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues, a
major artery and the first street tackled in the Bradhurst project,
one side of the block is now lined with renovated apartment build-
ings, some faced with green marble and glass bricks, and all with
brightly-lit, welcoming entrance halls. 'They're giving us Park
Avenue in Harlem," says lelain Henderickson, who lives in one
of the buildings and who works full-time as an administrative
assistant at HCCl's academy while going to nursing school-also
full-time-at Lehman College. "I watched a cloud of despair
come over Harlem, especially Bradhurst. I saw buildings burned
down, stores gone. The whole area's been revamped .. .. It's not
like they just threw the buildings up," Hendrickson adds. "Some
people say, 'These are condos.' I tell them, 'No, these are low
income apartments.' When people say nice things about your build-
ing, you get a sense of pride."
In designing their buildings, HCa and CCHD went to bat for the
ideas of their architects, many of whom were from Harlem, insisting
that low income people deserved decorative lobbies, large bedrooms
and closets, and rooms designed to take advantage of air and light.
Washington recalls, 'The city wanted to take the architectural orna-
ments off. We said, 'Why kill the aesthetic beauty?' And the marble?
They went berserk. They really believed we didn't deserve it." But the
groups won over city housing officials.
The tax-credit financing has also allowed the organization to set
aside a 15-year reserve fund for social services and, for some of the
buildings, security. And it provides unrestricted developers' fees of
$2,400 per unit, helping to strengthen the organizations internally.
Even with the fees, however, "none of this is a picnic," says
Washington. "You're not getting rich on low income housing unless
you steal."
lY
hanks to the trajectories of New York politics and urban
economics, HCCl's approach to social services has, of
necessity, been an amalgam of proactive planning and reac-
tive hustling. Well aware that the shortage of day care in
Bradhurst is a major barrier to adults pursuing jobs and job training,
HCCI originally planned to build a new $3.5 million daycare cen-
ter. But the funding fell through, Washington says, and now the
group has decided to go after federal Head Start funding instead.
For five years HCCI has also run a $1 million program caring for
40 Harlem residents living with HIV and AIDS, helping them find
HCCI and the Consortium for Central Harlem Development have
rehabbed and taken over nearlv 1,000 apartments in the Bradhurst
section of Harlem. The impact is obvious when comparing the
abandoned buildings on the north side of West 140th street (top)
with their refurbished counterparts across the street (bottom).
housing, furniture and clothing, and assisting with entitlements,
counseling and medical referrals. That contract currently accounts
for more than one-third of HCCl's budget.
"We keep an eye out for what's available and go after it,"
explains Kevin Alexander, the financial officer. A lot of what HCCI
does is respond to government initiatives, he says. It's the way com-
munity groups survive nowadays.
'That's not necessarily bad," observes Ron Shiffman, director of
the Pratt Center for Community and Environmental Development
and a city planning commissioner. Sticking close to a long term plan
can be important, but the resources are not always available for that.
"As long as they're not compromising the original principles of the
plan, they should be flexible and able to respond to changes in the
economy and take advantage of opportunities," Shiffman says.
Down this road, however, there are potholes better avoided. Some
groups become so project-driven that they compromise their original
mission and go after resources just because they are available, says
Shiffman. 'The really good groups differentiate between what fits
their agenda and what is outside what they think is important."
These pressures are being felt at HCCI. Washington, the organi-
zation's visionary, says he fears the group has gotten a bit trapped
in day-to-day process at the expense of long-term conception. He
says he is frustrated with the group's social services operation.
"There's a lack of clarity in what we're doing with social services,"
Greg Watson (left)
and Kevin
Alexander are
looking for new
funding and better
ways to manage
HCCl's property.
fixed, to no avail. Meanwhile two other buildings-which haven't
organized tenant associations at all-got their broken elevators
fixed, Smith says, leaving the tenants in her building feeling like
their lobbying had provoked retaliation. The organization's man-
agers counter that the elevator in Smith's building needs more
Her bittemess is compounded by the fact that she was so full
of hope when she moved in. "They made you think this is going
to be a new Harlem and it made you want to be part of it," she
says, but now she thinks HCCI is in over its head. "The commit-
ments they made to the community aren't withi n their reach in
such a short time."
Though everyone at HCCI says they want to empower tenants,
Rush says some staff members "don't understand what organizing
is. They think it's a social service." He says he is trying to educate
his colleagues to help them understand that good organizing oper-
ates on two levels. First of all , it saves money in the long run, at
the expense of some short-term agony for the landlord. "In a prag-
matic, day to day sense, it's a pain in the ass. If I'm the manager
and owner, it's not necessarily something I see right away on the
bottom line. But if tenants are happy, if they're empowered, you
have less vandalism, and tenant associations help create a sense of
community." The second boon of tenant organizing can be even
more important. "These are folks who, if organized, can be a vehi-
cle to accomplish an infinite number of changes in a community
that definitely needs some changes," Rush says. "You have to be
"It's a scary thing when you have a vision, and people
don't necessarily think it's going to happen,
and then it happens," says Reverend Washington.
he says. He'd like to see the whole thing centered more closely
around HCCl's purpose and mission, generating a more complete
array of support structures for the Bradhurst community. "If we
have people flying off in different directions, this thing is going to
fall apart."
U
enant organizing, another wheel on the HCCI-mobile, also
needs to be dug out of the snow, Washington says.
Organizing is just "hanging out there," he says. Edward
Rush, who joined HCCI 10 months ago and oversees the
academy and tenant organizing, couldn't agree more. "I spoke to
Dr. Washington before taking the job. I asked, was he clear and
was HCCI really committed to empowering folks? Because it's a
delicate dance to be the owner and landlord and to be the one
fielding an organizing initiative. He said 'Yes, '" Rush recalls.
Yet the conflict between competing interests within the orga-
nization is evident. Some tenants say Prestige, the company HCCI
has hired to manage its buildings, gives them a hard time when
they want to use the community rooms for meetings and parties-
something many organizers say is a key element of resident con-
trol and empowerment. Others say that the property managers are
uncooperative when faced with organized tenant efforts to deal
with problems in the buildings.
Kima Smith, president of the tenant association at 2745
Frederick Douglas Boulevard, says her six-story bui lding has
been without an elevator for a year. Her tenant association has gal-
vanized around the issue and kept the pressure on HCCI to get it
in a visionary mode to see this is a potential power base."
W
ush's thoughts beg the question: Why doesn' t HCCI have
o a formal structure for involving Bradhurst's 1,000 new
families, not to mention its long-time residents, in deter-
mining their neighborhood's fate? Are local people
involved in any way in HCCI's decision-making process?
"They should be, but honestly, they're not." says Watson. "It
should be a priority. It's a matter of resources, staffing and the
need to coordinate that kind of effort." Still, much of HCCl's staff
lives in Harlem, he says, and they believe they know what their
neighbors are concerned about. "The Bradhurst Academy of
Excellence addresses the needs of our children. Did we conduct a
survey? No. Perhaps we need to do an updated comprehensive
survey of community needs at this point."
In fact, there are no tenants on HCCl's board. Washington
acknowledges that this is one of the issues he and his fellow pastors
expect to be addressing in the near future. In the meantime, he says,
he considers the tenant associations to be "subsidiary boards."
From Joe Center's perspective, HCCI has "become more of a
classical community development group where there are some
splits between the would-be constituents and the leadership." He
says it's not "a great split," but the group doesn't, for example,
have large-scale meetings to decide policies. "It's easy to evolve
that way," Center says. "With daily operations you have to make
sure the money flows, you have to understand how to fix up the
buildings, and this creates an organizational essence that makes it
CITY LIMITS
hard to include constituencies on a daily basis."
The ministers, priests and imams can represent the concerns of
their congregation members, many of whom are more middle
class than the residents of HCCI buildings, Center says. But the
pastors can't bring to board meetings the perspectives of tenants.
"It wouldn't be outside their framework of beliefs," however, to
change their direction on this issue, he says. Even so, he adds,
'They really deliver. Getting to the stage where they are one of the
largest community-based groups in terms of units owned and con-
trolled in less than a decade, that is a major story."

itting at his desk in front of a large, exquisitely detailed
drawing of an elderly African-American man, and sur-
rounded by diplomas, family photos and African sculp-
tures, Washington acknowledges it's time for him to catch
his breath. "I was trying to race to get as much done as possible
in case Dinkins lost," he explains. "Sometimes you' re moving so
fast you don't have time to evaluate. It's a scary thing when you
have a vision, and people don't necessarily think it's going to hap-
pen, and then it happens."
While social services are his immediate concern, Washington
is adamant about going forward with the renovation of units that
can be sold to tenants as co-ops. "Harlem was never owned by
black people," he says. "If you can own land and property, that's
a revolution." Washington is staying up late into the night these
days, devising ways to get his board of 22 pastors to think about
the future. It's not necessarily the easiest thing to get religious
leaders from so many sects and faiths to agree on a vision. But to
hear Canon Williams tell it, the internal board is pretty much of
one mind. "As chairman of the board, I refuse to permit discus-
sion about those things that separate us. It's amazing that in an
organization that is predominantly Baptist and Pentecostal, an
Episcopalian is chairman. I'm very liberal theologically and
socially active, and many of my colleagues are very theologically
FEBRUARY 1996
conservative. But we decided to
work together because there is
such a crisis."
There's also a strong feeling
that the churches have put
themselves on the line. The
stakes remain high for HCCI
and the congregations that
formed it, says Steven
Williams, the economic devel-
opment director. 'The churches
have to be responsible to the
community in a more real way
than anyone else. For someone
ii
you have special faith in to put
up a building and let it go to
hell would feed into the stereo-
type that churches are the biggest crooks in the neighborhood. A
lot more is at stake than balance sheets. Their reputation is there."
In 1988, when then-student Lionel McIntyre defended his doc-
toral dissertation-the Bradhurst plan-before a panel at
Columbia University, one of his professors, Peter Marcuse, kept
asking him what the consequences might be of churches becom-
ing landlords. Today, this is still "a haunting question," he says, as
he surmises that anyone else "faced with what Preston is faced
with in Bradhurst" would have walked away. "I think you do have
to have a commitment, a social mission, to do this work. After the
economic devastation that poor people in this country have wit-
nessed, they don't come to us as perfect little people. They come
to us with problems. You're talking about people who basically
have been beaten down."
Robin Epstein is a Manhattan-based freelance writer and a
City Limits contributing editor.

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A Tammany-in-training-wheels political s t r u ~ u r e with
leaders just as likely to drop the curtain on progress as
to help rebuild their Brooklyn neighborhood.
j
.............................. !
CITVLlMITS
!
I
o
ofa

I
n the early 19905. Jeff Stern, then head of the Local
Development Corporation of East New York, started look-
ing into the possibility of rebuilding the Biltmore, a once-
grand, tatterdemalion movie palace on a desolate stretch of Pitkin
Avenue. The idea was simple: take a conspicuous emblem of
urban decay in one of Brooklyn's poorest neighborhoods and tum
it into a business center that would help revitalize a blighted com-
mercial district.
As word of the pending Biltmore project got out, Stem start-
ed getting phone calls from the powerful local Democratic dis-
trict leader, a flamboyant former professional fighter named
DaCosta Hedley. It turned out Hedley wanted the inside track on
the potentially lucrative state and city reconstruction contracts,
Stem recalls.
"DaCosta kept calling me and holding these meetings," he
says. "He would bring in friends and offer them up as contractors
for the project. It was very clear that he wanted a person he knew
to be the developer of this project." Stern resisted because none of
the people Hedley referred to him would answer detailed ques-
tions about how they would do the job. "Then, when we
announced we needed to hire a staff person, he called and sug-
gested somebody for that job, too," Stem says.
Five years later, the Biltmore still rots. Hedley's meddling
alone isn' t to blame-the building itself is an asbestos-laden mess
that will likely have to be tom down. But the theater is a metaphor
for the neighborhood's Tammany-in-training-wheels political
structure, with its cast of local political leaders who are at least as
prone to drop the curtain on progress as they are to help rebuild
East New York. It is a monument to the ruin that visits a place
when short-term political and personal power is placed above the
long-terrn goals of community renaissance. And it illustrates a
problem besetting many low income communities, where politi-
FEBRUARY 1996
B ~ Glenn Thrush
- - - - - - - ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
cal leaders evade public accountability
through the machinations of patronage and
favoritism.
"I think the issue of political leadership
in poor communities is one of the most
important issues confronting the city,"
says David Jones, president of the
Community Service Society, a major char-
ity. In part, he says, the harshness of life in
these neighborhoods has much to do with
their political exploitation. "It's very diffi-
cult to be a poor, single parent who is look-
ing for better-paying work and still have
the time to participate in building associa-
tions, PTAs and politics .... Without that
element, it's hard to create an environment
that keeps politicians honest."
In more than two dozen interviews
with City Limits, East New York activists,
politicians and developers spoke of their
frustration with getting things done in a
community ruled by the backroom deal.
Most spoke only on condition of anonymi-
ty for fear that their criticisms would make
it even more difficult for them to retain
what little government money they cur-
rently get-much of which flows through
local politicians' offices.
"This is a great community with a lot
of incredibly dedicated and talented peo-
ple," says one former community organiz-
er who left the neighborhood, disgusted
with the political situation. "The sad part is
that there are people who are willing to
compromise the good will and the meager
resources of this place for personal inter-
est. It's sad and it's pathetic and East New
York deserves better."
Hunger for
power is
paramount
among the
politi cia ns Of
East New York-
at the expense
of the body
politic a nd the
people.

I
t is hard to sum up East New York in a single sentence of phys-
ical description or a single burp of census data. The land itself
is a fertile, flat plain, an area that used to be home to Dutch,
Jewish and Italian residents who didn't mind living on the edge of
the city and beside the Jamaica Bay swamps. By World War II, the
neighborhood was a patchwork of sturdy, cheaply constructed
two-story houses, many with backyard chicken coops and veg-
etable gardens.
The area began to change in the 1950s as waves of hopeful
the-vote troops for candidates he supports. Wooten's foundation is
more institutional, based on deep connections with the public edu-
cation establishment and the money she can channel to allies in
her position as a council incumbent.
Wooten did not respond to numerous requests for interviews
for this article. Hedley, in conversations with City Limits, argues
that he has been a constructive influence in his neighborhood.
"The two main people I find you have to deal with are
DaCosta and Priscilla, and you've got to be aware when they are
fighting each other, or when
they are in cahoots," says
Charles Barron, a former
Bl ack Panther who recently
led the successful community
fight against Atlas Bioenergy's
plan to build a wood-burning
incinerator in East New York.
''Those two, they are the
whole ball game."
n the late 19605, Priscilla
I
Wooten was working as a
school aide in East New
York when she caught the
eye of the powerful white
Democratic machine in
Brooklyn.
Meade Esposito, the notori-
ous borough Democratic party
chief and a native East New
Yorker, knew his old neighbor-
hood was nearing the end of an
irreversible period of white
flight. Wooten, who had
worked in the school system
- - .: - - - - - - i - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - fi.ow ,Sol!J:iL - - -
blacks migrated from the rural South in search of work. They Carolina in the early I 950s, was one of the ambitious black lead-
East New York's encountered a retreating white population, unemployment, pover- ers he singled out for friendship.
Biltmore the- ty and, eventually, a city urban renewal plan that did little more With Esposito's help, Wooten rose through the educational
ater, once slat-
ed for redevel- than concentrate the poor in clusters of towering housing projects. bureaucracy, eventually becoming an assistant to Board of I
opment as a The history of the last quarter century is familiar enough-fami- Education President Steve Aiello, an old Esposito ally, and to
small business lies scraping by amid riots, fires, drugs, gun violence and an Irene Irnpellizzeri, then as now a powerful board member. Later,
center, contin- extreme shortage of economic opportunity. Wooten won a seat on Community School District 19's nine-
ues to deterio- "Other areas tend to move ahead, if slowly," says Vaughan member board, solidifying her base of support with the unions,
rate. Some say
District Leader Toney, chief of staff to City Council Member Lloyd Henry, who her old friends in local schools and Esposito's machine. That
DaCosta Hedley represents the black sections of Flatbush. "But East New York just coalition proved essential in getting her elected to the City
is partly to seems to always lag behind." Council in 1982.
blame. Over the last decade and a half, community groups and Like many council members, Wooten uses the power of
f
churches have made progress in rebuilding parts of the neighbor- incumbency-and her good-soldier reputation with Speaker Peter
hood. Yet the magnitude of the social and economic crisis here Vallone-to guarantee her political survival. Each year, the coun-
cannot be underestimated. The 1990 census found that one in cilleadership gives each cooperative member about $150,000 in
three East New Yorkers received some sort of government assis- discretionary "member items" to spend on community groups of
tance. Nearly half the children under five years of age lived in their choosing.
households with incomes below the federal poverty line, with that "Member items are a problem because the council makes it
rate climbing to nearly 90 percent in some of the more distressed hard to track how and where the money is spent," says Chris
housing projects. The area has one of the highest rates of violent Meyer, City Hall lobbyist for the New York Public Interest
crime in the city. In short, it is a neighborhood that needs as much Research Group (NYPIRG). ''There's no real accountability.
help as it can get. That's not to say the overwhelming percentage of the money isn't
Drawing a basic political power chart of East New York is going to legitimate, deserving organizations."
easy. On one side is DaCosta Hedley. On the other is his perenni- Clearly, the process offers members a concrete political bene-
aI rival, City Council Member Priscilla Wooten. fit. Much of Wooten's largesse has gone to groups with the power
Together they rule two separate though often overlapping fief- to return favors. Of the nearly $25,000 she spent on senior citizens
doms. Hedley's power base is informal, rooted in his ability to last year-the age group with the highest election turnout rates-
marshal fundraisers, petition gatherers and Election Day get-out- the bulk went to East New York senior centers located in or near
CITY LIMITS
..
I
polling places that have voted reliably and heavily for Wooten.
In 1995, Wooten bestowed a $5,000 member item on the East
New York Development Corporation (no relation to Stem's for-
mer group), which currently receives a $395,OOO-a-year city
Department of Youth Services grant to run an after-school Beacon
program. The development corporation has been a source of sig-
nificant campaign contributions for Wooten. In 1993, its chair-
man, Bernard Waiters-a longtime Wooten ally-gave the coun-
cilrnember $800, and the corporation itself gave her another $300
Services, says Wooten tried to stop a program allowing communi-
ty groups to use school buildings for meetings because she wanted
to have the right to choose which groups got to use the schools.
"She expressed a concern over which __ ____
had control of the school space. She was c about con-
trolling who got in the door," says y. "Ultimately [Finance
Committee chair] Herb Be ade it work, but she really tried
to hold it up."
in apparent violation of federal election law, which forbids tax.- ooten, who is the matriarch of a large family,
exempt, charitable organizations from such blatantly partisan ey is a well-connected but essentially indepen-
political activities. dent political operator with a paternalistic streak.
"Generally speaking, under federal tax. law, this kind of orga- "Each person [in East New York] has had a touch
nization cannot financially contribute to any political campaigns," DaCosta Hedley in terms of helping them and their family,"
says Richard Hobish, deputy director the Lawyers Alliance of says. "I never hurt anybody or threaten them to do anything.
New York, which provides legal counseling to nonprofits. Waiters ut if something is going on in my community I'm going to have
failed to return calls seeking comment. input. If that's wrong then I'm doing wrong. When I disagree
The dollar value of these contributions may seem small, b with something, you' re going to have to fight me, until I die or
Wooten raised only $12,000 inside her district during that c - you kill me."
paign year according to Campaign Finance Board records he In conversation, Hedley is entertaining and candid, beginning
remainder of her $55,000 pot came from donors outside t dis- his sentences with high-minded quotes on community organizing
trict, including unions, trade associations and major M from Saul Alinsky and finishing off with stories about prizefight-
corporations. ers skulling each other in the ring. He started off life as "Bobo"
Last year, when Waiters' group faced several com Hedley, a fast-ta1king Brownsville street kid who became a pro-
renewal of the Beacon grant, Wooten successfully lob fessional boxer in the late 1950s.
services officials to keep the money flowing, acco Like Wooten, Hedley is a hybrid of the black power movement
source at the city agency. and the white clubhouse. In the 1960s, he became involved in
he problem, longtime neighborhood developmen specialists organizations and, eventually, starting up his own contracting
t
community organizing, working for community development
_ _ _ _ :l?,,0I!, _________________________________ _
with stnngs attacheo. "I raIsed money ror her c aign nght
out of the office," says the former director 0 one local "Priscilla Wooten would call and say
development group, detailing a practice that is express prohibit-
ed by federal election law. "And there would be job . Priscilla
would call and say she was going to send so-and-so to e office
and could we get them a job. I produced and she produc d. It was
a good system."
The former director says he would screen each job- eker's
qualifications to see if an appropriate position was availabl at his
agency or in neighborhood businesses. Never, he insists, ere
unqualified applicants forced down his throat. Then again he
rarely failed to fmd a suitable job for these applicants.
Towards the end of his tenure, the director's relationship wi
Wooten had become so cozy he was even given sheets of Wooten's
council stationary so he could personally draft letters of support for
his own organization. "Basically my job was to get jobs for the
community anyway," he adds. "And, anyway, I still truly believe
Priscilla did what she did for the best interests of the community."
Another former director of a neighborhood nonprofit found the
pressure from the councilmember much more problematic. The
director says Wooten's power over the organization's staff extend-
ed to deciding whether the director could fire an employee caught
in flagrant violation of corporate rules.
"She used to call people up all the time and tell us who to
hire," the former director says. "But one time I had to fire a
woman for very just cause and we had to go and explain it to
[Wooten]. We had to get her pennission. We had to go around get-
ting people's statements as to why this woman ought to be fired
and had to present it to Priscilla as if it were a trial and she was
the judge. Eventually, she gave the go-ahead, but it was a real pain
in the neck."
As chair of the council 's education committee, Wooten has also
sought to control the inner workings of citywide projects. Richard
Murphy, former commissioner of the Department of Youth
FEBRUARY 1996
she was going to send
so-and-so to the office and could we
get them a job."
business. From the early days, Hedley was a political junkie,
addicted to the chaotic power play of neighborhood politics. "The
big chess game," he calls it.
In the I 970s, while gaining a seat on School District 19's
oard, Hedley solidified his long personal relationship with then-
ct leader Ed Towns, a neighborhood preacher. Later, after
bec . ng district leader himself, Hedley would play an instru-
ment Ie in running Towns' congressional field campaign, a tal-
ent he wo also share with the congressman's political benefac-
tor, Brooklyn rough President Howard Golden, who needed all
the help he coul t in a borough where more than one-third of
the population is blac .
"At one time I wante run for office," he says. "But if
you've been sitting around the n long as I have, you see them
guys getting beat upside the head. After . ou realize it's not
something you want to do."
His specialty is street work: getting petitions signed, contribu-
tors' checks into the war chest, his people to the polls on Election
Day. But that 's not all Hedley does. When one local development
group received millions in grants to rehabilitate housing in the
early I 990s, the program's director began hearing from Hedley on
a daily basis. "He swooped down on me. He wanted a construc-
tion contract," says the organization's former administrator, who
now works in another neighborhood.
Wi
At first Hedley was channing, but soon the talks turned to t he one person who has always stood in Hedley's way is
the subject of awarding construction contracts. The administra- Wooten. They have battled for years, and neighborhood pols
tor said the serious lobbying began with a somewhat skewed say Hedley has run at least one no-name opponent against her.
history lesson: "DaCosta told me that he created East New "I think anybody who has ever run against Priscilla has gotten
York. He said, ' I created your organization and this is the way some kind of help from DaCosta," says one political insider.
it works.' He said stuff like, 'There's a lot of money out there Hedley has never succeeded in wresting control of Community
and I can work with you because I want to make sure East New School Board 19 from Wooten, who has always regarded the
York gets its fair share.'" school district as her personal power base. Over the past two
In the weeks that followed, Hedley began shuttling a pro- decades, the two have waged a nearly constant battle for board
cession of friends through the director's office, suggesting members and patronage positions, school sources say.
each of them as potential contractors. When the director told "You can walk down the halls of most schools and say, 'That per-
Hedley that none of these people had the requisite experience son is a DaCosta person,' or 'This person is a Wooten person,'" says
or references, the pressure only increased. As the director sat a District 19 teacher active in local politics. In a community like East
one morning in an East New York diner, a local businessman New York, the school board isn't just a mechanism for delivering
came up and whispered that it was not wise to ignore education services. It is the community's City Hall in miniature, as
DaCosta's wishes. well as a major employer-providing a steady base of jobs in a
Then came a call from another business owner-a member neighborhood with official unemployment hovering around the 20
of the corporation's own percent level and real unemployment in the stratosphere.
governing board-who "You see this kind of general corruption in schools all around
laid out the following sce- the city," says Cole Genn, a former principal who has worked as
nario: cooperate with a consultant in the restructuring of several East New York schools.
Hedley or "lose your moth- "When the board's first priority is providing jobs for friends and
erfucking job." Finally, playing politics, its very costly to children."
Hedley, the former boxer, The board has discretionary authority to appoint all 400 non-
took off the gloves himself. teacher employees, ranging from the superintendent down to
"He was shouting at lunchroom workers. Because the qualifications for school aides
me. He said, 'You can be and guards are minimal, control of hiring is hotly contested.
gone tomorrow,'" the for- "The people you hire as aides and paraprofessionals become
mer director recalls. "It your built-in electorate," explains a former high-ranking District
was stated to me that, 'All 19 administrator. "When you hire a person, you get their family's
I have to do is say the votes-aunts, uncles, siblings, voting-age kids, everyone. If you
word and you'll be no one control enough of these people you have a substantial voter base.
in East New York. You'll To a great degree, that's what Priscilla succeeded in doing."
be gone.'" With the support of the workers comes a valuable bonus-the
Hedley denies ever support of their powerful union, District Council 37's Local 372,
, - - , - - - - - - - -m'likiiig sucn tlireatr'''PeOpi'e' are goiiig to say goodihirigsaOouT - wnicn is controiT'eaoy"'tliarres tIughes,rormer cnair' oTttie Voter - - - -
City Council me, people are going to say bad things about me," he says. Assistance Commission under Mayor Dinkins. Hughes's union
Member Pri scilla In the end, the director chose an outside contractor, suf- has been one of Wooten's most consistent supporters, providing
Wooten accumu-
lated power dol - fering, as it turned out, no immediate consequences. Jeff her largest campaign contributions of the 1993 campaign, $4,500.
ing out jobs i n Stern also emerged from his battles apparently unscathed. In addition to hiring low-level employees, the school board
East New York's After he made it clear he wouldn't play ball, the pressure picks principals and administrators, a power that attracts ambitious
schools and non- slowly subsided. Still, following his encounters with Hedley teachers and assistant principals to elected officials like moths to a
profits. and Wooten, Stern found himself fending off an attempt by kIieg light. Wooten's contribution list is studded with the names of
some of his board members to replace him. "I can' t make a dozen teachers and administrators, with a total contribution of
any links about why it happened, but people were trying to $2,500. The teacher's union itself gave an additional $3,000.
get rid of me," he says. After four years of worrying about "It is a common sight to see teachers or assistant principals
his job security, Stern quit in 1992, frustrated by the con- selling tickets to fundraisers in schools," a former District 19
straints placed on his development work by the political hec- administrator says. "You see it with all the candidates-with
toring. "After a while you realize that it 's not worth fighting Wooten, (Assemblyman Edward) Griffith and Towns."
these kinds of battles all the time, so you might as well just "It's sort of funny to see the young, timid white teachers, many
get out." of whom would never have anything to do with the neighborhood,
In 1992, Hedley achieved perhaps the defming coup of his running around school trying to sell tickets," adds a longtime
career, playing an instrumental role in unseating longtime state teacher in the district, who admits to buying his own share of
Assembly Member Tom Catapano, a politician who was highly fundraising tickets.
regarded by the directors of local nonprofits. Catapano had long Five years ago, the WootenlHedley battle made the front page
banked on Ed Towns' support in his overwhelmingly black and of The New York Times, when the board's five-member Hedley-
Latino district. He didn't get it. Instead, Towns helped assure aligned faction voted to unseat superintendent Levander Lilly, a
that the newly redrawn assembly district map would favor a Wooten ally, who had been one of her chief campaign workers.
black candidate, and Hedley worked the community for the Irate, Wooten and Lilly began talking to newly-appointed chan-
congressman's son Darryl, who narrowly defeated Catapano in cell or Joseph Fernandez and the media. Lilly claimed that several
the Democratic primary. of the Hedley-aligned board members had offered to give him a
"He was walking around for a while crowing about that vote of confidence if he agreed to hire their relatives and friends
one," says the administrator of one neighborhood nonprofit. to district jobs. He also alleged that almost half of the district's
"He tells people he's going to be the next Meade Esposito." 189 teachers' aides held unnecessary political patronage slots. In
Ji CITY LIMITS
an unprecedented m
reinstated the depos superintendent,
a decision upheld the courts and the
state education partment.
Despite s vindication, Lilly's
career in district ended on a sour
note. Las summer, the superintendent
took e y retirement after his board
failed convene and pass its summer
scho appropriation-an astounding
ove ight that left 3,000 children
sta ding outside locked school doors
o the first day of summer classes.
Although their enmity has cooled in
organizing operation by working at
the block-association level and gar-
nering foundation funding. The East
New York Urban Youth Corps,
which is rehabilitating and manag-
ing a growing number of low
income housing units, has also
relied heavily on foundations,
though much of its income comes
through the city's housing depart-
ment. Sources say the youth corps'
leadership has intentionally sited
many of its housing projects in the
northern part of the neighborhood,
in Council member Martin Malave-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ID'ITall's -district, "Tn -o;cte;:'" to avoid conflicts -with -Wooten -and - - - - - - - -
Groups who have made the most
lasting contributions toward the
neighborhood's rebirth have worked
utside Of the local political system.
rece months, Hedley has apparently talked openly about unseat-
ing oten, who, it is rumored, has been mulling retirement any-
way. I ny event, she will be required to give up her seat in 2002,
when th city's term limits law takes effect.
"I hav 't made any decisions yet," Hedley responds. "I'm
getting tire. don't think I'll be involved in all this much longer.
I've been inv ed a long, long time."
S
teering ear of these political conflicts has proven to
be a diffic t, but essential, function of running a suc-
cessful co ity development organization in East
New York.
Avoiding political entangle ts is easier said than done. A
number of activists point to the ex of the local development
administrator who got so close to the . ticians that he soon
found himself getting involved in their carnpru The nonprofit
executive, who no longer works in East New Yo, arne
renowned as the "$150-a-plate-man" after one politician applau -
ed his success in selling tickets for political fundraisers. Later he
actually held a fundraiser in the headquarters of his development
organization, according to sources inside his former group.
That incident was only a little more blatant than the standard
mode of operation for community groups, says Jeff Stem. When he
took his job in 1988, several of his board members contacted him
matter-of-factly about ponying up for local political campaigns.
It is no surprise that the groups who have made the most last-
ing and concrete contributions toward the neighborhood's rebirth
have worked outside of the local political system. When they can
raise funds and maneuver without political encumbrances, work
gets done, say many nonprofit leaders. The strategy is well
known: whenever possible, seek funding not from traditional state
and city sources, but from your own membership or large founda-
tions outside the community.
"Rule number one: Don't owe anything to anybody," says one
community organizer who stopped pursuing city grants when he
realized he couldn't win them without Wooten's approval.
ACORN has managed to generate a powerful community
FEBRUARY 1996
Hedley, who are much more influential in East New York's south- Congressman Ed
em neighborhoods. provided
.. crucial support
Perhaps the most successful of the development orgamzallons in a career-
in the neighborhood, East Brooklyn Congregations, has built a making coup for
powerful local movement based in church congregations and DaCosta Hedley
homeowner associations. Led by the Reverend Johnny Ray by helping
Youngblood, EBC was able to demand city support for its massive unseat longtime
Nehemiah housing development in the neighborhood because of
the size of its organized membership-and it got the job complet- Tom Catapano.
ed with funding from the Brooklyn Catholic archdiocese, a source
no local politician could tinker with.
C
harles Barron, the anti-incinerator activist, who has
close ties to activist ministers Herbert Daughtry and Al
Sharpton, says be also avoided the local pols altogeth-
er when he assembled his environmental coalition.
"The key was we made our own organization by going direct-
ly door-to-door and to the block associations. That's the politics in
this neighborhood that really counts," says Barron, who is mulling
a run against Wooten in 1997.
But changing the power structure of East New York won't be
easy. Voter turnout in Brooklyn's black communities is typically
lower than in white neighborhoods. Moreover, the lack of local cash
to finance the campaigns always gives the advantage to candid
with union connections or well-heeled political organizati
"It's very, very hard to run an insurgent rac ' ast New
York," says Norman Adler, a political co t close to current
uncil S er Pe n the late Democratic boss
Meade Esposito. "It's not the fault of the local politicians that they
have reaped the benefit of not having to face real heated contests.
Nor is it their fault that this community suffered the kind of dev-
astation that ravaged East New York."
Adds Adler: "You can hoist up a banner in Greenwich Village
and that's politics in that community. But if you want to get into
politics in East New York, you need to provide jobs. It's sad, but
it's a fact."
Insurgents like Charles Barron disagree.
"People aren't stupid," he explains. "You need to remind peo-
ple what politics should be all about-the environment, the edu-
cation of your kids, paving the streets and sidewalks, the welfare
of a community."
Surprisingly, Hedley also sees the need for fresh blood.
"Yeah, I'd agree that new leadership needs to be created,"
Hedley says. "The problem is that in this city the people in
real power-and I'm not talking about DaCosta Hedley
here-have always relied on people in my neighborhood not
having anything."
By
James Bradley
City Councilman
Archie Spigner and his
Housing and Buildings
Committee have good
reason to be in the
property-owners'
camp: that's where
the power is.
T
he legislation on the docket of the City Council's Housing and Buildings
Committee reveals no hint that there's an affordable housing crisis in New York
City. Most of the would-be laws look like fragments of an obscure plumbers' man-
ual or electrician's esoterica. There are bills amending the plumbing code, requir-
ing licensing for painting contractors, testing backflow prevention devices, installing
garbage grinders.
Few of these bills ever become law. Yet they reveal a great deal about the priorities of the
council's housing committee and its chair, Archie Spigner, of Southeast Queens-home, it
turns out, to several major homebuilders and construction unions. It is also a district of small
homeowners-and relatively few tenants.
"By and large, the council's involvement in housing issues is as diluted as ever," says Vic
Bach of the Community Service Society, an antipoverty research and advocacy organization.
"But our housing problems have deepened. We need a very active council to deal with dis-
tressed housing, and I have not seen that kind of energy taking shape." As Bach and others
point out, the vacancy rate for apartments renting for less than $500 a month is a slim one
percent, and most New Yorkers are paying a steadily increasing percentage of their income
on housing.
The energy that is generated on the committee these days comes from issues championed
by the increasingly effective real estate lobby. Until 1994, Spigner had always supported rent
stabilization laws; he, like most New York politicians, recognized rent control as a third rail
issue-touch it and you die. Times changed, however, and so did his position. That year, with
real estate trade groups pressing hard for the repeal of rent regulations, Spigner proffered a bill
that would have permitted landlords to raise rents on vacant apartments by as much as 25 per-
cent. The bill caused a furor and was shot down by Council Speaker Peter Vallone. But a new,
less drastic piece of legislation emerged, one that sought to end regulation for any apartment
renting for $2,000 or more.
Spigner had used a time-honored strategy. By offering a bill perceived as too extreme, he
paved the way for another that seemed to offer a compromise, effectively achieving his orig-
inal goal of relaxing the regulations.
His reverse underlines where legislative power lies these days in the City Council. On many
issues close to the heart of the landlord lobby-whether it's lead paint removal, housing code
inspections or changes in Housing Court rules to demand pre-trial rent deposits by tenants-
Spigner, a 22-year council veteran, is a willing partner. To understand exactly how deeply root-
ed his positions are, and to make sense of the increasingly pro-landlord committee that he
directs, it is essential to understand his power base.
"Archie Spigner follows Peter Vallone's agenda, which is essentially the real estate
lobby's agenda," charges Michael McKee, director of development for the New York State
Tenants and Neighbors Coalition. "He was appointed [chair of the Housing Committee 1 pre-
cisely because he has very few rent-regulated tenants in his district and would therefore be
seen by the leadership as not susceptible to pressure from organized tenants."
F
or the most part, Spigner's district, encompassing the mostly African-American
neighborhoods of St. Albans, Cambria Heights, Rosedale, Jamaica and Hollis, is
not saddled with the problems of poverty and crime that plague so many other com-
munities of color in New York. These neighborhoods are mostly middle class, with
among the highest median incomes in Queens. The large number of homeowners-the high-
est percentage of any council district-helps explain Spigner's orientation. "People in his
district vote Democratic, but the truth is on city issues they have no reason to be pro-tenant,"
says one Queens political insider. "If American society wasn't racist, a lot of them would be
CITVLlMITS
Republicans."
Southeast Queens is also politically
active. Voter turnout there is among the
highest in the city, and Spigner is a major
political force. He is a district leader and,
significantly, co-chair of the Guy Brewer
United Democratic Club. Every month,
hundreds of area residents meet at the
club's St. Albans headquarters. The club
has also served as the region's campaign
headquarters for Mario Cuomo and Bill
Clinton.
In Queens, machine politics is still a
powerful force. The county's Democratic
party has a reputation for efficiency and
stability. Observers say that when it comes
to mobilizing voters, the political clubs are
less effective nowadays than in the past,
but they are still very good at challenging
candidates' petitions and keeping potential
opponents off the ballot. "If you're a new-
comer," says John Mollenkopf, a political
science professor at the City University of
New York, "you can just be locked out."
"Archie has slowly, quietly accumu- a
lated a fair amount of power," observes I
Jim Chapin, a longtime Queens reformer '"
who is now Public Advocate Mark ~
Green's chief of staff. "Almost all of the '"
elected officials [from Queens] now are
people that he's had some responsibility electing. They owe
him something. When he speaks, people listen."
For many years, Spigner earned a reputation as an able if
unremarkable legislator, bringing home the bacon but hardly
shaking up the establishment. But in 1986, Spigner adroitly orga-
nized Queens' black elected officials behind Congressman Tom
Manton to be the borough's Democratic Party leader. That same
year, he also endorsed Vallone for City Council majority leader.
It was, admittedly, an act of necessity rather than vision. The bat-
tle for the job involved an interborough squabble pitting Vallone
against Canarsie's Herbert Berman. Realistically, Spigner had lit-
tle choice but to endorse his fellow Queens pol. Nevertheless,
when Vallone won the position by one vote, Spigner's support
yielded some nice political dividends. Soon after the election, he
was named majority whip. When charter reform gave the City
Council broad new powers, he became deputy majority leader,
the council's second highest ranking position.
Spigner, 67 years old, makes no bones about his loyalty to
Peter Vallone. "1 work with the Speaker in carrying out the goals
of the leadership, which 1 do have some input in," he says. "Being
part of the leadership, there are burdens and there are benefits. If
you're not ready to [accept the burdens], then you can be a gadfly
and stay out on the periphery."
I
some ways, Spigner maintains a schizophrenic relationship
with the housing movement. His record on homeless ness is
considerable. According to Steve Banks, an attorney with the
Legal Aid Society's Homeless Family Rights Project,
Spigner has enacted legislation that bans barracks-style shelters
and places tougher standards on welfare hotels. Spigner, he says,
has been "extraordinarily supportive of funding for legal services
to prevent evictions and homelessness."
Spigner has also been effective in getting neighborhood pro-
jects funded-yet another reward for his proximity to Vallone.
"Wben we ask for assistance, he's given it to us," says Dan
FEBRUARY 1996
Jennings, executive director of the Queens Overall Economic
Development Corporation. Jennings' organization has been refur-
bishing the area's commercial strips, the Long Island Rail Road
station, and other areas thanks to Spigner's access. Local housing
groups aren't complaining either. "He's been good to us," says
Storm Russell , executive director of Jamaica Housing
Improvement, a nonprofit that organizes tenants and provides
financial assistance to homeowners.
But these same groups note Spigner's acts of financial benefi-
cence are overshadowed by his eagerness to please local real estate
interests. Case in point is his close relationship with Rita Stark.
In 1988, Stark inherited vast amounts of property in southeast
Queens from her father, Fred Stark, a local real estate magnate. To
the dismay of housing activists and civic leaders, Stark has ware-
housed much of it, leaving many affordable, desperately needed
apartments empty. For years, Stark's properties have been a serious
neighborhood blight, with problems ranging from drug dealers and
squatters to vermin infestation. Her neighbors remain befuddled.
"Why does she continue to maintain these vacancies? It can't be
profitable," Russell says. 'There's nothing you can do about it,"
she adds. 'There's no law against warehousing in New York City."
Thanks, in part, to Archie Spigner, who played a major role in
defeating anti-warehousing legislation during the late I 980s. In
1986, Manhattan Council Member Stanley Michels introduced a
bill that would have forced landlords to rent habitable apartments
within 30 days after they became vacant. Over the next three
years, Spigner, at Vallone's request, refused to allow the bill to
come to a vote, even though 24 of the Council's 35 members had
publicly supported it. The bill died in 1989.
Rita Stark donated $2,000 to Spigner's campaign coffers
between 1993 and 1995. The councilman has backed her up by
defeating an effort by the Landmarks Preservation Commission
to landmark one of her buildings, the 1898 Beaux Arts Jamaica
Savings Bank. The Jamaica Arts Center, based next door, must
contend with extensive water damage and rats because of the
Councilman
Archie Spigner
enjoys a spacious
four-room office
with views of
downtown
Manhattan-one
of the perquisites
of power.
Wi
J:I
bank building's decrepit condition. "It is
in complete disrepair, the roof is almost
completely gone," says Veronique
leMelle, executive director of Jamaica
Arts. "It's an eyesore, it's a health hazard.
It's terrible."
T
he composition of the council's
Housing Committee effectively
ensures that legislation opposed
by Vallone has little possibility of
seeing daylight. There are nine members
of the committee and only three-Michels,
Guillermo Linares and Helen Marshall-
regularly support pro-tenant legislation.
The others mostly go along with Spigner,
and Antonio Pagan of Manhattan and
Thomas Ognibene, the Republican leader
from Queens, are particularly aggressive
in advancing the real estate lobby's agen-
da. But it is Spigner who ultimately does
Vallone's bidding on the committee.
Spigner has held the chairmanship
since 1985. Observers maintain that his
relationship with key players in the real
estate lobby has grown tight over the
years. Today Spigner is close to Joe
Strasburg, the president of the Rent
Stabilization Association who was former-
ly Vallone's chief of staff. "Whatever
Archie is, Joe made him," says another
former Vallone aide.
Spigner has also worked closely with
John Doyle, a lobbyist for the Real Estate
Board of New York and a consultant for
the Queens Democratic party. In both 1991
and 1993, Doyle was an advisor in
Spigner's reelection campaigns. He was a
financial supporter as well-Doyle donat-
ed $1,000 to Spigner's 1993 Council run
on top of another $1,000 contributed by
the Real Estate Board. For his part, Doyle
maintains that his relationship with
Spigner's campaigns has been incidental.
"We talked about campaign literature a lit-
tle bit, what kind of pieces he wanted to
send out, that was the extent of it," he says.
The industry's power and influence is
evident, observers say, in a number of bills
currently before the committee. In June
1994, Spigner and Michels introduced
competing lead paint removal bills; so far,
neither one has moved out of the commit-
tee, but the council is steadily moving
away from the strict lead removal guide-
lines Michels has sought, says Chris
Meyer of the New York Public Interest
Research Group. Spigner's bill includes no
protections for schools, child care centers
and public works facilities, and would
change the legal definition of lead poison-
ing, lowering the standard considerably. It
would also allow landlords to certify com-
pliance with the law themselves.
Specializing in
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NANCY HARDY
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Over 20 Years of Experience.
270 North Avenue, New Rochelle, NY 10801
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A compromise is now in the works, but
Meyer, who has lobbied for Michels' bill,
is not optimistic. "If they want to achieve
a compromise that Archie Spigner can
support, it will be a bill that the public
health community will have a hard time
living with," he says.
Last summer, Spigner and Pagan intro-
duced a resolution that would require ten-
ants to provide mandatory pre-trial rent
deposits in disputes before the Housing
Court. Housing activists have blasted the
proposal, charging that it would unduly
burden low income tenants, forcing them
to pay rent up front that they may not owe,
while weakening what limited leverage the
city has to demand that landlords abide by
the housing code.
Spigner is indignant at the criticisms of
this bill. "You have to know that there are a
group of people out there, some would call
them advocates, who have a very narrow
view of what reality is. If they were to look
objectively at mandatory rent deposits,
they would see that it's a pro-tenant mea-
sure." He argues that the plan gives tenants
a mechanism to put their money aside in
escrow, so if they do lose in a trial they will
not end up homeless. "Some of the advo-
cates look at landlords as a criminal class,"
he says. "They may be against private own-
ership of property, I don't know."
W
le for the most part tenants
have little say on important
issues before the housing
committee, activists insist
there isn't really any alternative to trying.
"It's the only game in town," says Kolu
Zigbi, program coordinator for the
Association of Neighborhood Housing
and Development. "It's frustrating, but if
you have a proposal for anything that
requires funding, you have to go through
the council." Zigbi also says that activists
can at least stop some anti-tenant initia-
tives, like the mandatory rent deposit bill,
which has been tabled thanks to well orga-
nized tenant pressure.
Housing advocates could also take a
leaf from the landlords' book and become
more skillful organizers, says Anne
Pasmanick, executive director of the
Community Training and Resource
Center.
Another housing activist agrees.
"What's really absent in the 'progressive'
housing movement, is a movement," she
says. "There's very little galvanizing of
the people and the tenants, and until that
happens, we won't be effective." The
council responds to pressure from orga-
nized constituents, she says. And these
days, it's the landlords who are pulling all
the right levers.
CITY LIMITS
L
umumba Bandele is not quite in keeping with the
unsettling images of young black men mostly kept
alive by the nightly news. While he may look the
part-low-slung jeans and an oversized hoodle-he
knows that at the rate and in the direction he is going, it's
unlikely the type of news he makes will get told on any televi-
sion network.
At 23, the Bedford Stuyvesant-bred Bandele has been com-
munity organizing for close to eight years. As a teenager in
1988, he got his first taste of the power of effective organizing
when he and some high school friends successfully organized
to oust the United States Air Force ROTC program from their
school. "I went to Martin Luther King High," he says. "Isn't it
Azabache
ironic that they wanted to
bring to our school,
named after a man who
was anti-war, a class on
warfare?"
By Kierna Mayo Dawsey
FEBRUARY 1996
NOTORIOUS
Bandele, along with his peers, continued to organize with-
in his school and was soon responsible for bringing in its first
mandated African history course. By 1991, he began work with
The Valley, a Harlem-based youth center where he trained other
young people in leadership development, counseled pregnant
and parenting teens and taught cultural awareness sessions.
And early last year he and a small group of friends founded
the Azabache Coordinating Committee, an azabache being the
amulet that people throughout the African diaspora place on
their babies as a symbol of protection and strength. The collec-
tive has grown to include Alianza Dominicana, the Malcolm X
Grassroots Movement, the Caribbean Cultural Center, the
Black Student Leadership Network, the Student Power
Network and several other groups.
"Azabache is a unique committee because it brings cohesion
to different sectors of organizers who had been traditionally
working in isolation from one another-the college-based
activists, grassroots community organizers and the traditional
community-based organizations that
receive some level of government fund-
ing," he says.
He says the group "came out of a dis-
cussion that three of us had about our
communities' response in times of crisis,
like the Washington Heights uprisings,
the Crown Heights uprisings and things
like that. We wanted to look at what
mediums we had to actually prevent
those things from happening and causing
that kind of destruction to our folks, and
we hoped to put some mechanism in
place where, if anything does happen, we
know how to respond in an effective
way."
Late last June, at a two-day organiz-
ers' training conference organized by
Azabache, former members of a number
of defunct revolutionary groups, includ-
ing the Black Panthers and the Young
Lords, led workshops for the 400-plus
young people in attendance who hoped to
become their political heirs.
"What motivates me is that I have sin-
cere love for my people and my commu-
nity," Bandele says. "Young people often
don't see activism as an option. It's
always somebody else's job. But we have
to change that. We all have a serious
responsibility to our community."
wp
....... - - ,..., . . ..... -
CITYVIEW
l
am one of thousands of New York City single parents who
have graduated from high school, held jobs or tried to get
jobs, and found they did not have enough training to main-
tain employment at a living wage. Many of us are on wel-
fare and have entered the City University system to learn skills
that will help us find secure, well-paid jobs.
It may take a while for us to complete our educations, but
when we do, we expect to be off welfare permanently.
Yet even before Governor George Pataki issued his new
welfare plan last month, New York had begun cutting back on
the number of semesters people on welfare can spend in school
before losing support benefits, such as funding for our chil-
School's Out
By Cherise Wade
Cheri se Wade
l ives i n
Bedford-
Stuyvesant.
Brooklyn.
LaidOH
dren's day care. And tuition fees have
been going up steeply. It is becoming
more and more difficult for people on
welfare to get an education.
If politicians are serious about per-
manently changing welfare, they must
allow for college as well as literacy
training, G.E.D. courses and quality
job training. Otherwise, people will
fall into the revolving door syn-
drome, leaving welfare for poorly
paid jobs only to return to the sys-
tem. The law permitting college
for those on public assistance
should be preserved. It's no
social contract to ask people to
make bricks but not give them
the material with which to make them.
I am a fourth-semester student at the Borough of Manhattan
Community College, majoring in respiratory therapy, with a 3.0
average, scheduled to graduate in May 1997. After leaving high
school and graduating from a business school, I worked for
McGraw HilI for two years as a word processing manager, but
was laid off. I had a similar job with a financial company for
another two years. But the company went bankrupt, and
because I was pregnant and unable to find another job, I had to
tum to welfare. That was in 1991.
I concluded that word processing was a job without stabili-
ty. I needed a career in a field with more job potential. So when
my daughter reached age three, I went back to school and chose
my present major. The college option of the Family Support Act
gave me this opportunity.
Nearly half of all New York City adults on welfare are high
school graduates. The "welfare students" I see in college are
extremely serious about their work. They know they will
never have a decent life for themselves and their children
unless they get higher education. And the state will benefit a
great deal by the higher taxes these students will one day pay.
When I finish my program and get a job in a hospital, I will
pay substantial taxes.
First, I have to get there. The city's Human Resources
Administration will soon put in place regulations limiting peo-
ple on welfare to four semesters of child care and carfare assis-
tance. I may have to leave school just as I am entering my crit-
ical advanced courses and internship time because I have
already had four semesters of assistance.
While we are full-time students, we must also care for our
children and maintain our family life, usually in dangerous
neighborhoods. Little children may not understand why
mommy is not available, and older children may rebel against
additional responsibilities. I still have to cook most of my fam-
ily's meals from scratch and spend a lot of time comparison
shopping because of my limited budget. Studying often has to
wait until the family is settled down.
We are always under the threat of our children having an
emergency that may force us to leave school. My baby daugh-
ter got severe lead poisoning and was in the hospital for two
months while I was taking college preparatory classes. Then, I
had to work through the murder of my 13-year-old son in
September 1994. He was shot while I was in school. I know
many of my fellow students pray their sons are not shot while
they are away from their homes.
Financial Str
Meanwhile, CUNY tuition fees are rising and financial aid
has been reduced. People on welfare have to pay tuition just
like everyone else, with loans and scholarships. I also need to
find $600 to pay for my medical malpractice insurance and
licensing fee as I get close to the hospital internship required for
my degree. This financial stress is severe.
Worst of all, Governor Pataki has proposed limiting families
to five years of welfare and has threatened to cut our welfare
grants by one-quarter. If he makes these cuts, people like me
will have to leave school. I don't know how I will manage. I
don' t think I could find a job. No one is hiring word processors,
and besides, the minimum wage would not pay my bills and
medical costs.
I am not going to have my children go hungry. Governor
Pataki and the welfare policy makers must take a long-range
view of savings and invest in welfare students who are acade-
mically able. The college students of today-including those
receiving public assistance- are the taxpayers of tomorrow.
CITY LIMITS
"Township Politics: Civic Struggles for a
New South Africa" by Mzwanele Mayekiso,
Monthly Review Press, 1996, 288 pages, $15.
W
hen the African National Congress took office in
South Africa in 1994, its leaders set out to trans-
fer power from the white minority to the people
as a whole. Yet, even as many ANC leaders have
begun to solidify their positions in the new government, this
transfer is not so certain. Government officials are struggling
with the reality of their limited ability to deliver on the promise
of power, and with it the services essential to the very people
who fought so hard to elect them.
Mzwane1e Mayekiso's book details his years as an organiz-
er in the Alexandra Township outside of Johannesburg and
highlights some of the growing pains of the country and its
civic organizations after the fall of apartheid. He discusses
some of the critical organizational and development issues that
civic groups have had to deal with, the conditions in the town-
ships that brought about the need for them and his perception of
African Renewal
By April Tyler
FEBRUARY 1996
their role in post-apartheid South Africa.
His story-and his political and eco-
nomic analysis-also lends a sobering
perspective to antipoverty work here in
New York, helping readers to clear
away the fog of American politics and
popular culture to examine honestly
the consequences of the unequal dis-
tribution of wealth.
Accountable to the
PNpie
The South African National
Civic Organization (SANCO)
developed as the national
umbrella for local civic organi-
zations throughout the country.
The civics are democratically run, nonpartisan
organizations controlled by working class and poor people. The
organizing work that built them began in earnest in th.e 1980s,
and SANCO became an official national organization in the
early I 990s. The civics, at least in theory, struggle to make gov-
erning bodies accountable to the people and their communities.
They focus on education and organizing around issues impor-
tant to the membership, with the goal of bringing about broad
social and economic change.
From the start, the civics and their leadership were continu-
ally under attack by the apartheid government. Mayekiso details
the threats, jail terms, assassinations and other attempts to
squash the organizing efforts. These tactics only served to
increase the stature of the civics and their leadership within the
townships. Yet after the ) 993 elections, many of the same peo-
pie who had supported the civics and strug-
REVIEW
gled to defeat apartheid began to see them as
redundant and unnecessary, arguing that gov-
ernment accountability was no longer an
issue because the apartheid regime had van- "..-.... I ' ! ! ! I ! " ! ! ! ! ~ " " " - ~
ished.
Mayekiso sees this attitude as a mistake. He writes that it is
imperative for people to be organized, informed and ready to
act. If and when the government, no matter how progressive,
doesn't deliver, the organized masses can then make their
demands. The ability to deliver, he writes, is paramount to the
success of non-racial rule in South Africa.
As an example of the groups' role in the post-apartheid state,
Mayekiso details how the Alexandra Civic Organization struck
deals with the local government and private industries to pro-
vide basic services to the people. The group was effective
because of its organized base.
Alexandra Civic took the position that housing, electricity
and potable water must be considered rights available to every-
one at affordable prices-the same position taken by some
members of the current national government. Yet this discus-
sion-and the implementation of services-has become
obscured by the growing pressures of capitalism; private indus-
try wants control of businesses once run by the government,
and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are
demanding government austerity measures which threaten to
institutionalize economic apartheid.
Thus, writes Mayekiso, the question of the distribution of the
country's wealth becomes paramount, as do international links
with other mass movements. He sees a need for new internation-
al connections between those laboring on "township politics" with
people working in community development efforts worldwide.
Rights of the Poor
His description of the peanut seller on the street outside an
Alexandra factory struggling each day to earn money to feed
his family brings to mind the Harlem vendors who do the same.
His detailing of the "tracks" taken by young people from pover-
ty stricken areas-becoming either political activists or con-
sumers of drugs and alcohol-sounds like descriptions of urban
centers in Latin America.
When Mayekiso, who is obviously steeped in socialist and
communist ideology, argues that the oppressed throughout the
world-whether in South Africa townships, Brazilian favelas or
Harlem tenements-"have common problems, and logically
common solutions," some might reject his arguments out of
hand. But he brings up the need for greater debate among those
of us who say we are working for the rights of the poor and the
oppressed through community development.
As we in this country, state, and city see the haves getting
more and the have-nots blamed for having too much, this book
brings the focus back to where it should have been all along: the
question of wealth and how it is inequitably distributed. We
must do all we can to support organizing for power and control
in our communities, and we can't cut off our analysis-or our
activities-at the end of the block. We must reach to the other
side of the world and back.
April Tyler is an organizer and housing policy analyst.
C ommunity D evelopment Legal A ssistance C enter
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DEBRA BECHTEL - Attorney
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WANTED: OfFICE SPACE. Not-for-profit working on community economic
development and anti-redlining projects in New York City looking for
office space to accommodate three full-ti me staff people and part-time
volunteers. Use of conference room and access to copier a major plus.
Need space immediately. Call (212) 569-5929
COMMUNITY ORGANIZER burning to organize religious community to fight
hunger and poverty on political level. Minimum one year experience.
Salary mid-20s depending on experience, plus benefits. Equal
Opportunity Employer. Fax resume to (212) 385-4330
The Ms. Foundation for Women is seeking a PROJECT DIRECTOR to
implement a process aimed at enhancing the capacity of community
organizations to design successful economic development initiatives.
Requirements: relevant graduate degree, substantial experience in
both NYC economic development and the design of training and tech-
nical assistance provision. Resumes to Sara Gould, Ms. Foundation,
120 Wall Street, New York, NY 10005
EXECUTlVE DIRECTOR. Organization seeks an executive director to lead
membership in housing development, neighborhood improvement and
cooperative planning for economic revitalization. This position requires
energetic person who appreciates involvement in a culturally diverse
community and who has excellent organizational and administrative
skills. Responsibilities: Administer program; maintain fiscal records;
coordinate housing development and other program objectives; build
and train membership; develop fund raising strategy and write propos-
als; prepare program and financial reports required by grants and con-
tracts. Qualifications: BA plus minimum of two years' experience in non-
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profit program administration; significant experience in housing and low
income community action work; ability to relate well to people in all
racial and ethnic groups; fundraising, proposal writing experience; com-
munication skills; computer literacy. Salary $35,000- 40,000 depend-
ing on experience. plus benefits. Send resume to REAPS, 410 S.
Broadway. Yonkers, NY 10705. Applications will be reviewed as
received; minority and women candidates encouraged to apply.
Growing organization which provides capital improvement loans and
facilities-related advisory services to non profits seeks to fill two posi-
tions. ADMINISTRATIVE ASSOCIATE to perform general office manage-
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son needs to have excellent writing skills and a strong interest in non-
profit organizations and facilities. Resume and letter to: Paul Connolly.
Nonprofit Facilities Fund, 70 West 36th Street, 11th Roor, New York,
NY 10018. People of color encouraged to apply.
FAMILY SUPPORTICOMMUNITY OUTREACH WORKER. Women's Housing/
Economic Development Corporation seeks self-starting, motivated,
outgoing individual to work in South Bronx (Morrisania). Advocate
with residents; network with Bronx organizations; connect partici-
pants to range of services. Organizing/human services experience
required and/or BA. English/Spanish speaking a plus. Salary $23-
26,500. Send cover letter and resume to WHEDCO, 35 Marcy PI.,
Community Rm. #2, Bronx, NY 10452. Attn: Gwen Jones, CSW.
The Jou.rnal of Affordable
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Lon earls
By Thomas Kamber
couple of weeks ago my friend Francesca called up to breathlessly announce she had been asked on a date.
This was major news: she has lots of friends and a fascinating job working for a public official, but she
hasn't had a successful relationship since the days when Ruth Messinger was still a social worker.
"I met this really attractive guy at a fundraiser, and he's an
organizer for some group in Brooklyn and he's tall and makes
really good eye contact. We were talking not five minutes, and
would you believe he says he's really interested in learning
more about me and what I do, and can we get together for cof-
fee sometime!"
Immediately, alarm bells go off in my head. This is not the
fust time I've heard this scenario. "Francesca dear, I'm afraid
this may not be a date."
A hint of worry in her voice: "What do you mean?"
"It's a one-on-one."
"A what?"
"A one-on-one." It's a very common technique for commu-
nity organizers, I said. Organizers build a power base by estab-
lishing relationships with key people in the community. They
assess potential allies by conducting intense interviews, grilling
people about their experiences and social commitment.
"Let me get this straight. You think I'm being assessed?!"
Her voice rose. "I get one request for a date in the last year and
it's some kind of goddarnn political organizing technique??!"
I explained to Francesca that this is acrually a really impor-
tant innovation in organizing. Strategists for the Industrial Areas
Foundation have developed a highly effective set of tools that,
for better or worse, require lots of one-on-ones. They've trained
hundreds in the art of the interview. Now people are running all
over New York arranging intimate meetings where they can
"learn a little more about what you do and why you do it."
They've already had an undeniable impact on a number of
issues-the City Council's living wage debate, the Del Toro
assembly race in Harlem. Hey, I told her, you can't argue with
their record.
"Well, I can sure as hell argue with their record on the sin-
gles scene. How are you supposed to know when you're being
asked for a one-on-one and when you're being picked up?"
"Urn, you might try asking if he's been to lAF's ten-day
training." Bang! She hung up.
This was not my first experience with the blurry distinction
between urban mating rituals and the practices of well-trained
activists. Another friend of mine keeps insisting that meetings
of a certain not-to-be-named IAF chapter are great places to get
dates. In practice, this means that I end up playing some kind of
weird version of Monday-morning quarterback:
"He asked me a lot of good questions. He was picking me
up."
"Don't be so sure. Organizers always ask a lot of questions."
"He asked to see me again and took my phone number. He
was picking me up."
"He asked you to an 'accountability session' with a public
official and a thousand community activists in the room. This is
not a date."
We have yet to figure out a fool-proof way to determine
what's a pick-up and what is, by my friend's standard, a let-
down. IAF people even talk about organizing as "relationship
building." This sruff is a mine field.
The IAF should adopt dramatic measures to avoid alienat-
ing that all-important lonely-hearts constiruency. I even have a
suggestion. Each graduate of IO-day training should, on the day
of their graduation, be presented with an lAF-issue faux wed-
ding band. They will be required to wave this around conspic-
uously when proposing one-on-ones.
Yesterday Francesca fmally called me back. "Well, mister
know-it-all , I went out with my attractive organizer friend over
the weekend."
"How did it go?"
"I was nervous at first, since he did ask me a lot of questions
about my work and all sorts of things."
"See? That's not a date."
"Oh yeah? Well, at the end he kissed me on the lips and
asked me to the movies on Friday!"
''Whoa! That's some one-on-one!"
"And I did ask. He's never been to ten-day training."
There are sti IJ some true romantics out there, after all.
Thomas Kamber is manager of UHAB's Community
Development Partnership Project.
CITY LIMITS
NOVEMBER 1995
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