A call to remove the ban, by Jeremy McCool

A Call to Remove the Ban:

As many of you know, HEVO employs people from all walks of life. We are represented by Jews, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Agnostics, Atheists and other religious belief systems throughout our small 15 person company. As I write this, I am pained to be planning the loss of our CTO (Chief Technology Officer), because his his family lives in Niagara Falls, Canada, and he is of Pakistani origin. He works full-time in our Brooklyn labs and goes back to Canada every couple of weeks to be with his family. Soon, he will be going home to spend Valentine’s Day with his amazing wife of 10 years and two wonderful children. There’s a high likelihood he will not be able to return to our team in Brooklyn, because of the Muslim ban (yes, Pakistan and Canada are not on the list…yet). So, we are having to plan an alternative technology development strategy for him to work solo from Niagara Falls if he cannot return.

We also have Turks and Kurds that need to go see their families. One of our developers has a brother who is terminally ill. He can’t visit his brother in Turkey without risking his ability to return to the U.S. Our team members from India may be banned from going home to visit their families after years from being home, because they might be termed “Muslims.” Then, there’s my Iraqi brothers who battled shoulder to shoulder with me and my platoon against Islamic terrorists and radicals. Some were given asylum in our country and lead promising lives in service to their communities. Now, they may become deportable.

Remove the ban.

Respectfully,

Jeremy R. McCool

CEO, HEVO Inc.

Brooklyn Borough President makes a speech, by Brian Abate

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Local group renames itself, by Nathan Weiser

The Red Hook Civic Association met on March 26 at the Red Hook Recreation Center. The March meeting was the group’s first anniversary. According to Nico Kean, the April meeting will consist of a special celebration with a party and a progress report, and will be held at the Red Hook Coffee Shop on Van Brunt Street. A name change

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Participatory Budgeting Vote Week, by Katherine Rivard

Council Member Shahana Hanif, her staff, several artists from the nonprofit Arts & Democracy Project, and a handful of volunteers all gathered in the Old Stone House in Park Slope on a Monday evening last month. At the start of the meeting, each person introduced themselves and stated their artistic skills, before being assigned a project and getting down to

A call to remove the ban, by Jeremy McCool