Real Journalism written by people
At the TWU Local 100 headquarters in Downtown Brooklyn, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery announced her impending retirement from politics on January 11 after a 35-year career in Albany, where she represented neighborhoods such as Red Hook, Gowanus, and Boerum Hill. A former daycare director, Montgomery entered a mostly white, mostly male legislative body – which would remain under continuous Republican […]
Most of the Department of City Planning’s proposed neighborhood rezonings – in Bushwick, in Inwood, on Southern Boulevard in the Bronx – are falling apart. What’s to blame? Bill de Blasio, who’s based his housing plan on upzoning transit-rich corridors to promote the development of market-rate residential units and – through Mandatory Inclusionary Housing – a smaller percentage of affordable […]
Gowanus cleanup The Brooklyn Eagle just published a great essay by Gowanus scholar Joseph Alexiou. He makes clear what many reporters never mention in their Gowanus Canal Superfund coverage: that New York City is doing its best to sabotage the cleanup. Titled “The Gowanus Canal will never be clean,” the article makes the case that it is local corruption and […]
On December 2, in the auditorium of PS 32, Community Board 6 (CB6) got to hear the latest on Gowanus Green, the long-delayed project that’ll convert 247,877 square feet of polluted land into a mixed-use development topping out at 28 stories, with housing, green space, and a public school. For a variety of reasons, a lot of Gowanus residents in […]
This fall, the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) announced the upcoming demolition and reconstruction of the Red Hook Library at 7 Wolcott Street. In October, architects David Leven and Stella Betts of the firm LEVENBETTS visited the branch to showcase their new design, which marks their third job for BPL, following their work on the Brooklyn Heights Interim Library and the […]
The number-one issue that 98 percent of New Yorkers care about is affordable housing. I have been studying the successful affordable housing programs in Singapore. New York City could learn a lot. Let’s look at the work of Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. This guy was loved by the masses. Lee Kuan Yew was originally a union organizer and […]
Last year, customers at the United States Postal Service’s Bush Terminal Station (900 3rd Avenue) – the only USPS location in northern Sunset Park – learned that their post office would soon close. More recently, however, a group of Sunset Park residents discovered that USPS’s plans may have changed. On August 15, 2018, the Postal Service held a meeting at […]
The topic of student debt is often a confusing and uncomfortable one, with no immediate or foreseeable solutions. For most folks, discussing lingering student loan debt can feel pointless. While there is a general understanding that the current system isn’t beneficial or sustainable, there appears to be little to no reformative action, or outrage from legislators – or, to some […]
According to the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), 6,290 individuals live in the Red Hook Houses, Brooklyn’s largest public housing development. This number accounts for every tenant whose name appears on one of the leases tied to the development’s 2,891 units. On the other hand, the most recent census data, which comes from the 2013-2017 American Community Survey (ACS), […]
Well I ain’t broke but I’m badly bent, everybody loves them dead presidents – Willie Dixon* As the Presidential electoral season shifts into full-throttle Aristotle mode, we need to gird ourselves for the incoming bombardment, and I can guarantee it will be vein-bursting. Candidates will glom onto anything that might give them an edge in the popularity stakes. Don’t expect […]
On October 5th, Prospect Heights resident Jabari Brisport launched a campaign for State Senate in District 25, which stretches from Bedford-Stuyvesant to Sunset Park and includes Red Hook. A math teacher at Medgar Evers College Preparatory School, Brisport ran for City Council on the Green Party line in 2017, earning 29 percent of the vote, but will now vie for the Democratic Party’s nomination. Brisport’s anticapitalist platform advocates […]
What do Alex P. Keaton, Carlton Banks, and Patrick Bateman all have in common? They’re all Young Republicans. All of them are also fictional. In the real world, in 2019, conservatives below retirement age are sometimes harder to come by, especially in Brooklyn’s hipper enclaves. I live in gentrifying Bushwick, where everyone I meet is a 27-year-old tattooed graphic designer, […]
Inspired by the Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg, students around the world left school on September 20 to protest for dramatic political action to address the climate crisis – including elementary school kids from all the Red Hook schools and the Brooklyn New School. The PS 676 fourth and fifth grades attended a local rally at Coffey Park, and there […]
