New York

In Harlem and Beyond, N.Y.C. Election Points to Generational Power Shift

Published

2 years ago

June 29, 2023

In Harlem and Beyond, N.Y.C. Election Points to Generational Power Shift

Walking down 125th Street the day after taking a commanding lead in the race for a City Council seat in Central Harlem, Yusef Salaam couldn’t make it half a block without someone congratulating him on his likely victory.

Voter after voter who greeted Mr. Salaam on Wednesday said they recognized him as one of the five Black and Latino men exonerated in 2002 in the rape and assault of a female jogger in Central Park in 1989. They were eager to touch him, shake his hand, take pictures and imagine what his journey — from convicted rapist to exonerated young man to advocate for criminal justice reform to elected official — could also mean for the future of Harlem.

“I think this election is largely about change,” Mr. Salaam, 49, said.

Mr. Salaam won twice the number of votes as his nearest competitor, Inez Dickens, 73, a sitting assemblywoman who formerly held the Council seat for 12 years and was endorsed by the United Federation of Teachers and Mayor Eric Adams. The other candidate in the race was Al Taylor, 65, also an assemblyman serving his sixth year in the State Legislature.

Mr. Salaam’s probable victory and the likely defeat in Brooklyn of Charles Barron, 72, a self-described Black radical socialist who, with his wife Inez Barron, has held city or state elected office in East New York for much of the past two decades, appeared to signal a shift in Black generational political leadership. In both Harlem and East New York, voters went from supporting self-described socialists to backing moderate Democrats.

“This was an opportunity for voters to say, look, we’ve got to move forward,” said Basil Smikle, director of the Public Policy Program at Hunter College. “We can’t keep playing musical chairs.”

With 99 percent of the vote counted, the Harlem race is still too close to call, though Ms. Dickens has conceded. Under the city’s ranked-choice voting system, because there were more than two candidates in the contest, there will be a tabulation process on July 5 before official winners are declared, according to the Board of Elections.

In Brooklyn, Christopher Banks, 39, the founder of an anti-poverty nonprofit, was leading Mr. Barron by just over 400 votes. Mr. Barron has also conceded, but the winner will not be declared until after the ranked-choice tabulation.

East New York faces many of the same problems as Harlem, Mr. Banks said in an interview. The saturation of social services providers, access to affordable housing and balance between protecting public safety while preserving people’s civil rights were issues in both Council races.

Kristin Richardson Jordan, the incumbent in the Harlem seat who decided not to seek re-election, considered herself, like Mr. Barron, a radical socialist. She wanted to abolish the police and redistribute wealth. The three candidates running to replace her were all Black moderates who distanced themselves from her politics.

In Brooklyn, Mr. Banks described Mr. Barron as out of touch with the district. “The sentiment we got from voters was that they wanted change,” he said. “They were frustrated with the state of the district.”

On Wednesday, relishing the good wishes from voters, Mr. Salaam said the residents of Harlem see his story as their story. Standing on 125th Street and Lenox Avenue, T’Pring Scott yelled her support for him, saying she backed him because she wanted someone with a new perspective.

“Inez has been here long enough. Just because her name was familiar, I wasn’t voting for her,” said Ms. Scott, a government worker. “I knew his story because I was in high school when that happened to him, and I felt that if anybody deserves a chance, he did.”

She asked Mr. Salaam not to support an affordable housing development on West 145th Street that became an issue in the election. Ms. Scott said she thought the building would be too tall. If it had to be built, she wanted its height capped. Mr. Salaam, who said he supports development of housing on the site, promised that she and other members of the community would have a voice in the process.

“I hate whenever I come to a meeting and they’ve already decided what’s going on,” Mr. Salaam said.

At Marcus Garvey Park a few blocks away, Mr. Salaam ran into a group of men who were upset about the park bathrooms being closed. Stephen McKoy, 35, a mover, said it was unhygienic and that he had already seen adults and children who were forced to relieve themselves in the shrubbery.

“We need that fixed. There’s people peeing on trees,” Mr. McKoy said. “You go to Westchester and you never see anything like this.”

Mr. Salaam agreed: “Only in our community do we see that,” he said.

Michael A. Walrond Jr., the senior pastor at First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem, said Mr. Salaam’s apparent victory was a sign that the community was open to new leadership.

“Inez was endorsed by the institutions, the names, and it didn’t help,” Mr. Walrond said. “It is definitely a signal that in Harlem, at least right now, the politics is a little bit more open than it may have been 10 or 15 years ago.”

Mr. Salaam was recruited as a candidate by the Manhattan Democratic leader, Keith L.T. Wright. But he ran without the support of most of the city’s political establishment, including Mayor Adams. He did draw endorsements from national progressives such as the professor and presidential candidate Cornel West and Minnesota’s attorney general, Keith Ellison.

Mr. Salaam made at least seven appearance on national television, unusual in a local race. The filmmaker Ken Burns, who directed a documentary called “The Central Park Five,” sent a statement Wednesday with his co-directors congratulating Mr. Salaam, who was headed to Houston to promote the young adult novel he co-wrote about a 16-year-old who is wrongly convicted of a crime.

“He’s the only one that no one had ever voted for before,” said Mr. Wright. “His authenticity came through.”

In Brooklyn, Mr. Banks had strong support from Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of House Democrats. He appeared on a flier with Mr. Banks and said in a church appearance that Mr. Banks had a “head for the job and a heart for the people.”

Mr. Jeffries, who has clashed with Mr. Barron over the years, said the message from Mr. Barron’s loss was clear: “Chris Banks is a hardworking and committed community leader who represents meaningful generational change in Brooklyn.”

New York

Large Blaze Ravages Bronx Apartment Building, Leaving Many Displaced

Published

2 hours ago

January 10, 2025

Press Room

Large Blaze Ravages Bronx Apartment Building, Leaving Many Displaced

Dozens of families were looking for shelter after a large fire broke out at an apartment building in the Bronx early Friday, injuring at least seven people, the Fire Department said. There were no fatalities or life-threatening injuries, according to officials.

About 250 firefighters and emergency medical responders rushed to a six-story residential building on Wallace Avenue near Arnow Avenue after a fire was reported there just before 2 a.m., the Fire Department said. The blaze on the top floor was elevated to a five-alarm fire about an hour later, it said.

Several dozen firefighters were still gathered outside the building at around 10 a.m. Many windows on the top floor were blown out and some had shards of glass hanging in place that resembled jagged teeth. Smoke continued to climb from the building as a firefighter on a ladder hosed the roof.

The fire was brought under control shortly before 2 p.m., according to fire officials.

The seven people who were injured included five firefighters, the department said in an email. One person was treated at the scene but declined to be taken to a hospital.

A spokeswoman for the Police Department said earlier that some people had suffered smoke inhalation injuries.

Robert S. Tucker, the fire commissioner, said during a news conference that it was a miracle that there had been no serious injuries or fatalities. Officials said that all of the apartments on the building’s top floor were destroyed.

Firefighters blasted water at the smoke and flames pouring out of the upper floors and roof, according to videos posted online by the Fire Department and television news outlets. Heavy winds had fueled the blaze, the department said.

The cause of the fire was under investigation, officials said.

The Red Cross was at the scene helping residents that were displaced by the fire, and a temporary shelter had been set up at the Bennington School on Adee Avenue nearby. Doreen Thomann-Howe, the chief executive of the American Red Cross Greater New York Region, said during the news conference that 66 families had already registered to receive assistance, including lodging. She said she expected that number to increase.

Juan Cabrera and his family were among those seeking help at the Bennington School. Mr. Cabrera said that he and his family had not heard a fire alarm but had instead heard glass breaking as residents climbed out of windows. He said he had also heard people race across the hall one flight above him while others screamed “Get out!”

Mr. Cabrera, 47, said he had smelled smoke and woke up his daughter, Rose, 13. He and his wife, Aurora Tavera, grabbed their IDs, passports and cellphones, and the family left the building.

“I felt desperate,” Ms. Taverna, 32, said.

“Thank God we are still alive,” said Mr. Cabrera, who works as a school aide and custodian and has lived in the building for five years. “The material stuff you can get back, but we have our family,” he said.

Louis Montalvo, 55, was also among those seeking help. He said firefighters banged on his door at around 3 a.m. and that he had smelled smoke.

“I am grateful to be around,” Mr. Montalvo said, as he stood outside of the temporary shelter. He was still wearing his felt pajama pants, which had snowmen printed on them.

Vanessa L. Gibson, the Bronx borough president, said she was “so grateful” there had been no fatalities from the fire.

The last major apartment fire in the Bronx occurred in 2022, and resulted in 17 deaths, which experts said were entirely preventable. Self-closing doors in the building did not work properly, allowing smoke to escape the apartment where the fire started and rapidly fill the structure’s 19 stories.

New York

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

Published

10 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

19 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.