New York

A Summer Basketball Refuge Thrives in the Bronx’s Largest Housing Complex

Published

2 years ago

July 4, 2023

A Summer Basketball Refuge Thrives in the Bronx’s Largest Housing Complex

Jeremiah Peoples was alone on the fast break with the energy of the crowd fueling him to the rim. “Finish your breakfast!” the announcer boomed into the microphone. Mr. Peoples, a lanky 18-year-old, dunked with authority.

It was opening day of Grenada Built to Win, the summer basketball league at Edenwald Houses in the Bronx, and there was little space to move. Spectators pressed against the fence around the court as music played from a D.J. booth and jerk chicken smoked over a fire.

After painting the asphalt through the night and holding a clinic in the morning, the league’s founder, Rasheem Jenkins, known as “Rah Rah,” announced the games in the afternoon with verve and humor. “In and out like a relationship,” he teased as the ball spun off the rim.

The league, which began its 11th season this June, is the realization of a dream he had nourished since he was one of the neighborhood kids.

Mr. Jenkins, 34, grew up in Edenwald, the largest public housing complex in the Bronx, in an apartment overlooking the court that would eventually host Grenada Built to Win. Back then, weeds sprouted out of cracks in the blacktop and the poles at each baseline did not have backboards or rims.

So Mr. Jenkins and his friend Vance Callahan played basketball on the paths between buildings, using garbage pails as hoops. Later, they crept behind John Philip Sousa Junior High School, a short walk across Baychester Avenue, to play on its courts after dark.

The two were “out there every night, with no lights,” said Mr. Callahan, the league’s program director, who coached and kept score on opening day.

Sometimes, patrolling police officers caught them. But the officers’ demeanor changed once they saw a basketball tucked under their arms, Mr. Jenkins said, and they would sometimes watch them play from the street.

Basketball, Mr. Jenkins added, “gave me an escape from the reality of the projects.”

Mr. Jenkins went on to play in high school and college, scoring 2,146 points at Wings Academy in the Bronx and winning a borough championship before attending Florida A&M, where he played point guard. He completed a master’s degree in educational leadership in 2012 and returned to the metropolitan area, splitting time between Edenwald and New Jersey.

As he coached and trained basketball players in programs across the city, Mr. Jenkins noticed that there were few activities available to the children and teenagers who lived in Edenwald — a problem, he believed, that contributed to the neighborhood’s high crime rate. In 2012, the 47th Police Precinct in the northeast Bronx, which includes Edenwald, recorded 2,127 major felony offenses, the 10th most in the city.

The next year, Mr. Jenkins reconnected with Mr. Callahan, who was also back in the Bronx. “I had seen a lot of the same things I saw before I left for college,” said Mr. Callahan, 32, who works as a paraprofessional at a public school. “The violence. The drugs. It was bad.”

The two men were in agreement, Mr. Jenkins said: “We had to give the kids more opportunities.” They started with basketball.

By that time, backboards and rims had been installed on the derelict courts of their childhood. Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Callahan printed fliers, gave the court the first of many fresh coats of paint and, for the first three weekends that August, held clinics in the morning and games through the evening in a tournament called Grenada Black Top Classic — named after Grenada Place, the street that runs alongside the housing project. It was an immediate hit.

In 2015, he and Mr. Callahan expanded the tournament into a 10-week summer league, and they renamed it Grenada Built to Win. They expect about 300 players this season.

The program is free for players, who are mostly boys ranging in age from elementary school to high school (some years, including this one, have included girls’ divisions). The costs — for basketballs, uniforms, food and D.J.s, athletic trainers from Monsignor Scanlan High School and an insurance plan — fall primarily on Mr. Jenkins, who owns a trucking company. Volunteers raise money and spread the word on social media; this season, 22 workers paid by the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program will come aboard to operate the game clock, keep score and clean up. Discretionary funding from the office of Councilman Kevin C. Riley, whose district includes Edenwald, has also helped.

Even as the league has flourished — Mr. Jenkins registered it as a nonprofit in 2018, and has paired basketball with mentorship programs in local public schools to offer academic, athletic and emotional support to young people — crime rates in Edenwald are about the same as a decade ago, according to data from Police Service Area 8, which patrols public housing facilities in the 43rd, 45th and 47th Police Precincts in the Bronx.

Still, Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Callahan believe the weekend games have made a difference in the lives of the hundreds of kids who have participated in the league over the years.

“For a lot of them, it’s a home,” Mr. Jenkins said.

Shannon Cohen, an eighth grader who lives in Edenwald, was fully with the program. “Basketball can keep you out of trouble,” he said. This is his fourth year playing in Grenada Built to Win. “It made me stronger as a person,” he added. “I didn’t have confidence in my game, but they encouraged me to play.”

The core of Mr. Jenkins’s ambition lies in addressing something often unspoken. “We’ve all got trauma coming from the projects,” he said. The goal of Grenada Built to Win is to “correct some of that trauma.”

“Edenwald has this bad reputation,” said Stacie Clement, an assistant principal at P.S. 112, a nearby elementary school. “I try to teach my children, my boys and girls: Don’t let that stop you from pursuing your dreams.”

Ms. Clement met Mr. Jenkins about a decade ago through Councilman Riley. Mr. Jenkins needed gym space for Grenada Built to Win clinics, and Ms. Clement offered P.S. 112’s on the condition that her students could join in.

“As soon as I find out that any of my boys are interested in basketball, I reach out to Rah,” she said. “If I find that any of my boys need a male figure in their life that I cannot provide, I reach out to Rah and say, ‘Rah, I’ve got this one kid, can you come by and speak to him?’ There has never been a time when Rah has ever told me no.”

Councilman Riley said in an interview that the league offered an alternative path for young people. “We have to make sure our kids aren’t having idle time,” he said. “Instead of feeling like, ‘Hey, I have to join this gang,’” he said, the neighborhood kids can join “something that is positive.”

The court, once neglected, has become a source of life for Edenwald. Old friends connect on the sidelines as residents gather to watch the games over a burger or plate of jerk chicken and coconut rice.

Robin Gomez, 65, who has lived in Edenwald for 45 years, said she enjoys watching the games in the summer. She added that she wished something like Grenada Built to Win had been available to her sons when they were growing up.

Michelle Leggett lived in Edenwald in the 1970s and ’80s and still visits almost every weekend to attend church and visit relatives. She said she had noticed that “the young people help
the older people now,” including with grocery trips.

“I notice everyone gathered together; they have their little cookouts over there, they enjoy the basketball tournaments,” Ms. Leggett, 60, said. “I have seen the community change for the good.”

New York

New York’s Chinese Dissidents Thought He Was an Ally. He Was a Spy.

Published

7 hours ago

January 10, 2025

Press Room

New York’s Chinese Dissidents Thought He Was an Ally. He Was a Spy.

The Chinese government’s paranoia about overseas dissidents can seem strange, considering the enormous differences in power between exiled protesters who organize marches in America and their mighty homeland, a geopolitical and economic superpower whose citizens they have almost no ability to mobilize. But to those familiar with the Chinese Communist Party, the government’s obsession with dissidents, no matter where in the world they are, is unsurprising. “Regardless of how the overseas dissident community is dismissed outside of China, its very existence represents a symbol of hope for many within China,” Wang Dan, a leader of the Tiananmen Square protests who spent years in prison before being exiled to the United States in 1998, told me. “For the Chinese Communist Party, the hope for change among the people is itself a threat. Therefore, they spare no effort in suppressing and discrediting the overseas dissident community — to extinguish this hope in the hearts of people at home.”

To understand the party’s fears about the risks posed by dissidents abroad, it helps to know the history of revolutions in China. “Historically, the groups that have overthrown the incumbent government or regime in China have often spent a lot of time overseas and organized there,” says Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China studies at Johns Hopkins University. The leader Sun Yat-sen, who played an important role in the 1911 revolution that dethroned the Qing dynasty and led eventually to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, spent several periods of his life abroad, during which he engaged in effective fund-raising and political coordination. The Communist Party’s own rise to power in 1949 was partly advanced by contributions from leaders who were living overseas. “They are very sensitive to that potential,” Weiss says.

“What the Chinese government and the circle of elites that are running China right now fear the most is not the United States, with all of its military power, but elements of unrest within their own society that could potentially topple the Chinese Communist Party,” says Adam Kozy, a cybersecurity consultant who worked on Chinese cyberespionage cases when he was at the F.B.I. Specifically, Chinese authorities worry about a list of threats — collectively referred to as the “five poisons” — that pose a risk to the stability of Communist rule: the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, followers of the Falun Gong movement, supporters of Taiwanese independence and those who advocate for democracy in China. As a result, the Chinese government invests great effort in combating these threats, which involves collecting intelligence about overseas dissident groups and dampening their influence both within China and on the international stage.

Controlling dissidents, regardless of where they are, is essential to China’s goal of projecting power to its own citizens and to the world, according to Charles Kable, who served as an assistant director in the F.B.I.’s national security branch before retiring from the bureau at the end of 2022. “If you have a dissident out there who is looking back at China and pointing out problems that make the entire Chinese political apparatus look bad, it will not stand,” Kable says.

The leadership’s worries about such individuals were evident to the F.B.I. right before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Kable told me, describing how the Chinese worked to ensure that the running of the Olympic flame through San Francisco would not be disrupted by protesters. “And so, you had the M.S.S. and its collaborators deployed in San Francisco just to make sure that the five poisons didn’t get in there and disrupt the optic of what was to be the best Olympics in history,” Kable says. During the run, whose route was changed at the last minute to avoid protesters, Chinese authorities “had their proxies in the community line the streets and also stand back from the streets, looking around to see who might be looking to cause trouble.”

New York

Hochul Seeks to Limit Private-Equity Ownership of Homes in New York

Published

15 hours ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

Hochul Seeks to Limit Private-Equity Ownership of Homes in New York

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York on Thursday proposed several measures that would restrict hedge funds and private-equity firms from buying up large numbers of single-family homes, the latest in a string of populist proposals she intends to include in her State of the State address next week.

The governor wants to prevent institutional investors from bidding on properties in the first 75 days that they are on the market. Her plan would also remove certain tax benefits, such as interest deductions, when the homes are purchased.

The proposals reflect a nationwide effort by mostly Democratic lawmakers to discourage large firms from crowding out individuals or families from the housing market by paying far above market rate and in cash, and then leasing the homes or turning them into short-term rentals.

Activists and some politicians have argued that this trend has played a role in soaring prices and low vacancy rates — though low housing production is widely viewed as the main driver of those problems.

If Ms. Hochul was inviting a fight with the real estate interests who have backed her in the past, she did not seem concerned. She even borrowed a line from Jimmy McMillan, who ran long-shot candidacies for governor and mayor as the founder of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party.

“The cost of living is just too damn high — especially when it comes to the sky-high rents and mortgages New Yorkers pay every month,” Ms. Hochul said in a written statement.

James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said his team would review the proposal, but characterized it as “another example of policy that will stifle investment in housing in New York.”

The plan — the specifics of which will be negotiated with the Legislature — is one of several recent proposals the governor has made with the goal of addressing the state’s affordability crisis. Voters have expressed frustration about the high costs of housing and basic goods in the state. This discontent has led to political challenges for Ms. Hochul, who is likely to face rivals in the 2026 Democratic primary and in the general election.

In 2022, five of the largest investors in the United States owned 2 percent of the country’s single-family rental homes, most of them in Sun Belt and Southern states, according to a recent report from the federal Government Accountability Office. The report stated that it was “unclear how these investors affected homeownership opportunities or tenants because many related factors affect homeownership — e.g., market conditions, demographic factors and lending conditions.”

Researchers at Harvard University found that “a growing share of rental properties are owned by business entities and medium- and large-scale rental operators.”

State officials were not able to offer a complete picture of how widespread the practice was in New York. They said local officials in several upstate cities had told them about investors buying up dozens of homes at a time and turning them into rentals.

The New York Times reported in 2023 that investment firms were buying smaller buildings in places like Brooklyn and Queens from families and smaller landlords.

Ms. Hochul’s concern is that these purchases make it harder for first-time home buyers to gain a foothold in the market and can lead to more rental price gouging.

“Shadowy private-equity giants are buying up the housing supply in communities across New York, leaving everyday homeowners with nowhere to turn,” she said in a statement on Thursday. “I’m proposing new laws and policy changes to put the American dream of owning a home within reach for more New Yorkers than ever before.”

Cracking down on corporate landlords became a prominent talking point in last year’s presidential election. On the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris called on Congress to pass previously introduced legislation eliminating tax benefits for large investors that purchase large numbers of homes.

“It can make it impossible then for regular people to be able to buy or even rent a home,” Ms. Harris said last summer.

In August, Representative Pat Ryan, Democrat of New York, called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate price gouging by private-equity firms in the housing market. He cited a study that estimated that private-equity firms “are expected to control 40 percent of the U.S. single-family rental market by 2030.”

Statehouses across the country have recently looked at ways to tackle corporate homeownership. One effort in Nevada, which passed the Legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Joe Lombardo, proposed capping the number of units a corporation could buy in a calendar year. It was opposed by local chambers of commerce and the state’s homebuilders association.

A bill was introduced in the Minnesota State Legislature that would ban the conversion of homes owned by corporations into rentals. It has yet to come up for a vote.

At the federal level, Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, and Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington, introduced joint legislation that would force hedge funds to sell all the single-family homes they own over 10 years.

New York

N.Y. Prosecutors Urge Supreme Court to Let Trump’s Sentencing Proceed

Published

23 hours ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

N.Y. Prosecutors Urge Supreme Court to Let Trump’s Sentencing Proceed

New York prosecutors on Thursday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to deny President-elect Donald J. Trump’s last-ditch effort to halt his criminal sentencing, in a prelude to a much-anticipated ruling that will determine whether he enters the White House as a felon.

In a filing a day before the scheduled sentencing, prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office called Mr. Trump’s emergency application to the Supreme Court premature, saying that he had not yet exhausted his appeals in state court. They noted that the judge overseeing the case plans to spare Mr. Trump jail time, which they argued undermined any need for a stay.

The prosecutors, who had secured Mr. Trump’s conviction last year on charges that he falsified records to cover up a sex scandal that endangered his 2016 presidential campaign, implored the Supreme Court to let Mr. Trump’s sentencing proceed.

“There is a compelling public interest in proceeding to sentencing,” they wrote, and added that “the sanctity of a jury verdict and the deference that must be accorded to it are bedrock principles in our Nation’s jurisprudence.”

The district attorney’s office has so far prevailed in New York’s appellate courts, but Mr. Trump’s fate now rests in the hands of a friendlier audience: a Supreme Court with a 6-to-3 conservative majority that includes three justices Mr. Trump appointed. Five are needed to grant a stay.

Their decision, coming little more than a week before the inauguration, will test the influence Mr. Trump wields over a court that has previously appeared sympathetic to his legal troubles.

In July, the court granted former presidents broad immunity for official acts, stymying a federal criminal case against Mr. Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election. (After Mr. Trump won the 2024 election, prosecutors shut down that case.)

The revelation that Mr. Trump spoke this week by phone with one of the conservative justices, Samuel A. Alito Jr., has fueled concerns that he has undue sway over the court.

Justice Alito said he was delivering a job reference for a former law clerk whom Mr. Trump was considering for a government position. But the disclosure alarmed ethics groups and raised questions about why a president-elect would personally handle such a routine reference check.

It is unclear whether Justice Alito will recuse himself from the decision, which the court could issue promptly.

Mr. Trump’s sentencing is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. Friday in the same Lower Manhattan courtroom where his trial took place last spring, when the jury convicted him on all 34 felony counts.

If the Supreme Court rescues Mr. Trump on Thursday, returning him to the White House on Jan. 20 without the finality of being sentenced, it will confirm to many Americans that he is above the law. Almost any other defendant would have been sentenced by now.

“A sentencing hearing more than seven months after a guilty verdict is aberrational in New York criminal prosecutions for its delay, not its haste,” the prosecutors wrote.

The prosecutors also noted that Mr. Trump would most likely avoid any punishment at sentencing. The trial judge, Juan M. Merchan, has signaled he plans to show Mr. Trump leniency, reflecting the practical impossibility of incarcerating a president.

Still, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that the sentencing could impinge on his presidential duties. It would formalize Mr. Trump’s conviction, cementing his status as the first felon to occupy the Oval Office.

That status, Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote in the filing to the Supreme Court, would raise “the specter of other possible restrictions on liberty, such as travel, reporting requirements, registration, probationary requirements and others.”

The court’s immunity ruling also underpinned Mr. Trump’s request to halt his sentencing. In the application, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that he was entitled to full immunity from prosecution — as well as sentencing — because he won the election.

“This court should enter an immediate stay of further proceedings in the New York trial court,” the application said, “to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the presidency and the operations of the federal government.”

Mr. Trump’s application was filed by two of his picks for top jobs in the Justice Department: Todd Blanche, Mr. Trump’s choice for deputy attorney general, and D. John Sauer, his selection for solicitor general.

“Forcing President Trump to prepare for a criminal sentencing in a felony case while he is preparing to lead the free world as president of the United States in less than two weeks imposes an intolerable, unconstitutional burden on him that undermines these vital national interests,” they wrote.

Whether that argument will prevail is uncertain. Some legal experts have doubted the merits of Mr. Trump’s application, and lower courts have greeted his arguments with skepticism.

Earlier Thursday, a judge on the New York Court of Appeals in Albany, the state’s highest court, declined to grant a separate request from Mr. Trump to freeze the sentencing.

Prosecutors noted that Mr. Trump had yet to have a full appellate panel rule on the matter, and that he had not mounted a formal appeal of his conviction. Consequently, they argued, the Supreme Court “lacks jurisdiction over this non-final state criminal proceeding.”

Also this week, a judge on the First Department of New York’s Appellate Divison in Manhattan rejected the same request to halt the sentencing.

That judge, Ellen Gesmer, grilled Mr. Trump’s lawyer at a hearing about whether he had found “any support for a notion that presidential immunity extends to president-elects?”

With no example to offer, Mr. Blanche conceded, “There has never been a case like this before.”

In their filing Thursday, prosecutors echoed Justice Gesmer’s concerns, noting that “This extraordinary immunity claim is unsupported by any decision from any court.”

They also argued that Mr. Trump’s claims of presidential immunity fell short because their case concerned a personal crisis that predated his first presidential term. The evidence, they said, centered on “unofficial conduct having no connection to any presidential function.”

The state’s case centered on a sex scandal involving the porn star Stormy Daniels, who threatened to go public about an encounter with Mr. Trump, a salacious story that could have derailed his 2016 campaign.

To bury the story, Mr. Trump’s fixer, Michael D. Cohen, negotiated a $130,000 hush-money deal with Ms. Daniels.

Mr. Trump eventually repaid him. But Mr. Cohen, who was the star witness during the trial, said that Mr. Trump orchestrated a scheme to falsify records and hide the true purpose of the reimbursement.

Although Mr. Trump initially faced sentencing in July, his lawyers buried Justice Merchan in a flurry of filings that prompted one delay after another. Last week, Justice Merchan put a stop to the delays and scheduled the sentencing for Friday.

Mr. Trump faced four years in prison, but his election victory ensured that time behind bars was not a viable option. Instead, Justice Merchan indicated that he would impose a so-called unconditional discharge, a rare and lenient alternative to jail or probation.

“The trial court has taken extraordinary steps to minimize any burdens on defendant,” the prosecutors wrote Thursday.