Heated Campaign Ends as Votes Are Cast – NYTimes.com.
With polls showing the public disquieted over a weak economy and generally disapproving of how President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress are leading the country, Republicans seemed well within reach of capturing the 39 seats that they need to win a majority in the House, which Democrats now hold by a margin of 255 to 178, with two vacancies.
Building on Crow Hill Community Association’s (CHCA) annual tradition of planting flowers along Franklin Avenue, Nostrand Park is coordinating with CHCA to do a planting along Nostrand Avenue as well!
Nostrand Park » Blog Archive » Save the Date – Crown Heights Clean Up – November 6th at 10 a.m.!.
Join Haiti Cultural Exchange once a month for a conversation with a person of interest in our community. These discussions are designed to provide a glimpse into the person’s life, interests, inspirations, and work.
Please join us at SHOP TALK ART in Fort Greene on Friday, October 29 at 6pm for the third of our An n’ Pale | Café Conversations series.
Friday’s special guest will be Haitian-American writer Ibi Zoboi, whose work will be published in Haiti Noir, an anthology edited by Edwidge Danticat in January.
An excerpt of my recent review of Samuel Zipp’s Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York
Those familiar with Zipp’s work will recognize him as an expert on Stuyvesant Town. Writing in the New York Times in 2006 on the occasion of Stuyvesant Town’s upcoming sale Zipp declared: “Having begun its life as the state-of-the-art method for supplanting working-class neighborhoods with middle-class apartment towers and white-collar institutions, Stuyvesant Town will end up as a victim of a newer, less abrupt and violent version of the very forces of urban change it helped unleash more than 50 years ago.” In Manhattan Projects Zipp expands on this thesis to show how Met Life’s “suburb in the city” was never intended as a rent-controlled utopia, but rather that it was a unique marriage of corporate and government interests. It was not altruism that inspired Met Life to create Stuyvesant Town, but rather the firm’s belief that it could shore up its bottom line by creating a space where “white, middle class family life” could flourish within the city. Zipp contends that Met Life succeeded in bringing its “suburb in the city to life” because its vision for its personal Manhattan cul-de-sac was in line with the city’s own desires to become a white-collar hamlet.
There was a time not too long ago when this blog focused on music, something about keys to my life or some such. Anyway those days are long gone, but we all know that in reality there’s no stoppin’ the music. I’ve recently noticed that my fellow Harlem Moon alum Scott Poulson Bryant started keeping a list of his top 100 songs. Since he’s promised an Abba mention somewhere in the mid 60s, I thought it’s worth repaying the favor by plugging his site. So without further ado, Scott’s Top 100
I know this is mad late, but earlier this month Next American City allowed me to share my thoughts on the Lebron saga. Here’s a snippet:
But unlike a new stadium deal, for example, James is at least guaranteed to bring a initial boost in revenue without taxpayers taking on greater liabilities as they would with a much larger venture like a new stadium. However, as another ballyhooed free-agent signing in this decade—the Orlando Magic’s 2001 enlistment of Tracey McGrady and Grant Hill—revealed, things don’t work out as planned. Neither Hill nor McGrady finished their contracts with Orlando, and the Magic never advanced past the first round in the three years these two played together. Moreover as William Rhoden, author of Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise Fall and Redemption of the Black Athlete, might attest: given this nation’s history with slavery, there’s something disconcerting about a “bidding war” for a black male athlete.
In his epic poem, “Cahier d’un retour au pays natal” (“Notebook of a Return to My Native Land”), the Martinican poet and freedom fighter Aimé Césaire, refers to Haiti as the place “where négritude stood up for the first time.”
Come to The Shrine in Harlem Thursday, July 15th to experience this masterpiece performed in French and English as a liberatory literary gathering to benefit two grassroots Haitian organizations working to rebuild the first black republic.
what: literature + liberation: a Haiti fundraiser at The Shrine
when: Thursday July 15th, 2010, 7pm
where: The Shrine, 2271 Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard (7th Avenue between 133rd and 134th Streets)
Suggested Donation $10-$25
Spread the word! If you’re out of town or otherwise occupied, please tell your friends! Stay tuned for Facebook updates at The Freedwomen’s Bureau www.facebook.com/TheFreedwomensBureau
The beneficiary organizations are: SOIL Haiti ( http://www.oursoil.org ) focuses on ecological sanitation, working alongside communities to create composting toilets that remove dangerous pathogens from the water supply and provide nutrient rich compost to farmers. Since the earthquake, SOIL Haiti has been working in Port-au-Prince along with OXFAM and the Haitian government to implement environmentally sound sanitation strategies urgently needed to serve the 1 million+ people living in tent cities since the disaster.
Seeds for Haiti ( http://www.seedsforhaiti.org ) works in concert with Mouvman Peyizan Papay (Peasant Movement of Papay), to support farmers in Haiti’s Central Plateau in achieving social justice and assertingfood sovereignty. With the reverse migration from the city back to the countryside since the earthquake, their work is even more urgent. Recently farmers of MPP made headlines when they promised to burn anyseeds donated by Monsanto, a gift-horse of seeds that will not reproduce and are laced with pesticides, thus subjecting farmers already facing a state of emergency to the vicious cycle of industrial agriculture.
[with thanks to Yego $. V. Moravia / 21Trillion Design Collaboration Studio for art direction]
Join Poets for Ayiti this Wednesday, April 28, at the Bowery Poetry Club for an outstanding reading from their For The Crowns of Your Heads.
By purchasing a copy of The Crowns of Your Heads, you are contributing to the rebuilding of Bibliotheque du Soleil, the Port-au-Prince library destroyed during the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti. As a thank-you for your donation of $20 or more, you will receive a copy of the limited edition chapbook For the Crowns of Your Heads, published by Poets for Ayiti, a collective of poets from diverse backgrounds committed to the power of poetry to transform and educate.
All but $5 of your total donation is tax-deductible.
Please go to www.poetsforayiti.org to donate online or make your check payable to Poets for Ayiti’s fiscal sponsor, Cave Canem Foundation, and mail to:
Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.
20 Jay Street, Suite 310-A
Brooklyn, New York 11201
Att: Poets for Ayiti
Bibliotheque du Soleil is a project of Haiti Soleil (www.haitisoleil.org), a 501c3 nonprofit organization based in Berkeley, California.