BQE Admin, Author at Brooklyn Downtown Star

Spotlight: Melissa Dimas, Basketball Coach Extraordinaire

BQE Admin on April 4, 2025

By ELEANOR TRAUBMAN | etraubman@gmail.com

Melissa Dimas, SFX Youth Sports – Brooklyn Girls Basketball Coach and Finalist in the Brooklyn Basketball Jr. NBA/WNBA Coach of the Year Program, started the first official all-girls basketball league in Central Brooklyn. She initially created the league for her daughters: Her younger daughter wanted to play basketball when she was in the 1st grade at a time when there were not many structured opportunities for girls to play. That same daughter joined a co-ed team where she was one of the team’s best players and yet the male players would not pass the ball to her. As Melissa shared, “There are plenty of co-ed programs, but some girls, as they get older, drop out of coed programs for various reasons.” The program is for girls ages 7-14.Dimas has been nominated for Brooklyn Basketball Coach of the Year via The Jr NBA/WNBA Coach of the Year program. This program “celebrates coaches that honor the game and create a lasting impact on young people both on and off the court.”

Shared a neighbor of Melissa’s: “Melissa started the SFX Girls Basketball League and in just a few short seasons, she has grown it to 400 girls! | have seen the way the girls grow and learn and gain confidence being in this safe sports space; we are so lucky for her leadership. She’s also a generous member of the community and is the first to lend a hand when anyone needs her.” Melissa conveys that having community organizing skills as a former Peace Corps volunteer came in handy when putting together the league. She was excited to add that there are even paid opportunities for teens to help out with jobs such as running the score boards.“The skills learned in team sports translate to other areas of life,” she added. “And being part of a team is a great way to build community and a sense of belonging in a neighborhood. It’s important that you belong to something outside of school, whether it’s basketball, soccer, or a musical production. It’s important to feel like you’re part of something that ultimately connects you to your neighbors.”

Eleanor Traubman is the Founder of My Local Heroes, which lives on both Facebook and Instagram. MLH is a celebration of activists, artists, athletes and entrepreneurs from Brooklyn and beyond who are working to make their communities better places to live. Launched during the pandemic, The project was featured in News12 and The Patch, and received a Covid-19 Heroes Award from the former Brooklyn Borough President. This article is part of a series of posts Eleanor is writing about community leaders and their take on local community involvement.

Haiti Cultural Exchange Hosts Flag Making Masterclass in Crown Heights

BQE Admin on March 15, 2025

Mireille Delice (center right, wearing grey and blue) runs through her method for creating flags as attendees watch. Photo by Jack Delaney

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

Mireille Delice had taken a winding path to arrive here, in this gallery in Crown Heights, with a crowd of people peering over her shoulder as she sewed a brand new flag.

Delice studied the techniques of flag making in the 1980s alongside her cousin, with whom she worked at a wedding dress factory in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. When the factory closed, however, she experienced a series of dreams, which culminated in a message: “I did not have to work in the factory,” she told HAND/EYE Magazine, “but I could learn to work for myself and earn for my family.” At age 25, she officially began her life as an independent artist — and would go on to build the corpus of colorfully sequined flags that now brought her to Brooklyn.

After a successful run, the recent exhibit “Sacred Banners of Haitian Vodou,” organized by nonprofit Haiti Cultural Exchange and curated by Axelle Liautaud, closed on March 9 with a tutorial by Delice, drawing dozens of community members who were curious to witness her process. The show featured more than 15 artists, such as Rudy Azor and Maxon Scylla, with work spanning over 40 years; red dots — meaning “SOLD” — sat under most of the pieces.

But the walls, though full, were marked by absence: two years ago, Liautaud lost almost all of her lifelong collection of Haitian artwork, after a fire claimed the building in which most of the pieces were held. And local residents and gallery staff alike repeatedly referenced the political violence currently occurring in Haiti, which prevented several artists from attending.

“Grand Bois,” by Rudy Azor. Photo by Jack Delaney

Despite those grim asterisks, the breadth of work in HCX’s gallery stood as proof that Haitian artists — many like Delice exiled from their home country, or trapped inside it amid conflict — are carrying on a centuries-old tradition of Vodou flag making, stitch by stitch.

After an opening speech by Régine Roumain, HCX’s founder and executive director, Liautaud translated as Delice answered questions about her practice, flanked by her daughter. Delice was part of a second wave of Vodou flag makers, Liautaud said, who because of an embargo in the 1990s often designed beads and sequins from scratch.

Vodou has a multivalent history in Haiti. It’s a “people’s religion,” write anthropologists Sidney Mintz and Michel-Rolph Trouillot — an umbrella term for practices and beliefs created over the course of centuries by people of disparate backgrounds, including enslaved Africans and the indigenous Taino, with strong ties to the revolution in 1771 that expelled the French and inaugurated a republic. But since the 20th century, it’s also become “two other things beside: a [tool] for Haitian political leaders, and a side show for tourist hotels.”

“Marassa 3,” by Mireille Delice. Photo by Jack Delaney

Ritual flags, known as drapo, are central to Vodou. Typically made with anywhere between 2,000 and 20,000 sequins and beads, they’ve been crafted since at least the mid-1800s, per historian Patrick Polk, though “anti-superstition” crackdowns and dismissal by the art industry have meant that few early flags survive today.

Even so, the drapo tend to be more durable than other bead-based craftsmanship from elsewhere in the world, Liautaud said. And as Delice described, the fabrication process is often a joint effort by family members or the neighborhood, with one artist drawing the piece and their collaborators helping to realize it.

“I knew them all,” said Liautaud, of Haiti’s prominent Vodou flag makers. Liautaud was a consultant on the major exhibition “Sacred Art of Haitian Vodou,” which made a stop at the New York’s own Museum of Natural History in 1998 as it traversed the country. “I was interested in promoting and selling things that were not already in galleries,” she recalled. “So I started doing flags, mostly, and iron work.”

The current instability in Haiti — the roots of which trace back not only to the recent earthquakes, but to the US occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934, the aftershocks of that economic exploitation, and later the brutal dictatorship of President Francois Duvalier — has fractured many of the island nation’s communities, including those of its artists. Liautaud shared that several of her contacts have been on the run, moving every few months, with limited materials or opportunities to create their work.

Fashion designer Michel Chataigne is headling HCX’s next show. Photo by Jack Delaney

Yet as neighborhood characters, friends and family, and art collectors wandered around the gallery, the mood was not only somber but appreciative. Anecdotally, fan favorites included Delice’s “Marassa 3,” a drapo depicting divine triplets who play a role as guardians of crossroads and thresholds.

“We’ve had a great community of folks coming out to experience this very unique exhibition,” said Roumain. “Sometimes you’ll see Vodou flag makers having a solo show in a major museum. But to be in our own community space, in the context of what is happening internationally in Haiti — and also in the United States — is really important, and has been powerful.”

“Sacred Banners” is over, unfortunately, but not to worry! After Delice’s tutorial, the Star caught up with the artist behind HCX’s next show, “Michel Chataigne, La Mode et Haïti,” an immersive tour through the titular fashion designer’s illustrious career. Chataigne, a trailblazer whose achievements encompass everything from establishing Haiti’s first school of cosmetology to organizing the Miss Haiti pageant in both Haiti and New York, said he was excited to show off how much his work has changed over the years. You can see his exhibit at the HCX gallery (558 St Johns Place) until April 13.

HCX’s upcoming event is a fashion and cultural identity workshop with Chataigne on Saturday, March 29, from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at its Crown Heights location.

G Train Fleet Gets Younger and Older, Simultaneously

BQE Admin on March 14, 2025

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

The gods of transportation taketh, but they giveth too.

Last December, the MTA was facing a strange problem: the wheels of one model of subway car, R160s, were wearing out over the course of a few weeks, rather than months, and had to be rapidly replaced.

These R160 cars run on the E, F, and R lines, so theoretically the G should have been unaffected. But when the defective cars were pulled from service, substitutes from the G took their place — and vintage models from the 1980s were dusted off to fill any vacancies. Those cars, R68s, are slated to be phased out this year (prompting passengers to preemptively eulogize their unique yellow-and-orange “lover’s seats,” which are arranged in a cramped L-shape.) The end result, at least for the moment, is that G riders have been left with mostly musty, outmoded trains.

Yet efforts to modernize the G line, the sole subway that doesn’t enter Manhattan, are also underway. After a “summer of pain” — not the citywide transit Tartarus of 2017, but the G-specific woes of 2024, when the line was shut down for repairs — the route started up again in September with a new signal system installed, which will come online in 2027.

A more palpable change has been the introduction this month of open gangway trains, R211Ts, to the G line. The MTA initially rolled out two R211Ts, which have no doors between cars, on the C line, before announcing that it would be repurposing half of those 20 cars for the shorter G, where the 10 compartments could, like mitosis, form two additional trains with 5 apiece.

The transit authority is bullish on the revamped models: last year it approved a plan to buy 80 more open gangway R211Ts, ostensibly funded by congestion pricing. And at a press conference on March 4, Brooklyn lawmakers were similarly ebullient, praising the rollout.

Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon called the open gangway trains “more comfortable;” state Senator Andrew Gounardes and AM Emily Gallagher both argued they would relieve crowding, while making it more accessible for riders using wheelchairs or strollers. Council Member Lincoln Restler simply said the update was “awesome.”

New York isn’t the first transit system to adopt the open gangway. From Paris to Delhi, “cities around the world have benefitted from this same design,” said Gounardes. In fact, until now it’s been a glaring gap between America and its peers — 6sqft writes that “75 percent of non-U.S. metros have adopted open gangway trains, whereas zero percent of U.S. metros have.”

But many Brooklynites are split on the design, largely over public safety concerns. Online, the chatter has fallen into two broad buckets: the people who think the open gangway is indeed safer, because you can move away from someone who’s bothering you more easily, and those who maintain it’s the opposite, since you can’t switch cars. Anecdotally, the divide seems gendered, with men largely feeling safer on the R211Ts and women expressing reservations.

Sophie, from Windsor Terrace, fell into the latter camp — she had the sense that the long corridor would make it harder to escape, and she also worried that the trains were becoming too “screen-oriented,” with little to gain practically. “They play TikToks and moving ads on the new trains,” she said. “I don’t think we need that.”

That aside, she acknowledged that the trains have been in dire need of improvements, and that the system has lagged behind international analogs. If the open gangway moves the needle on repairs, she noted, that would be a win.

A fresh wave of open gangway trains are on their way, so they may eventually become the norm in New York City rather than a shiny toy. But for the time being, commuters on the G line roll the dice each day — will I ride a holdover from the 80s, or the digitalized train of the future?

The Lunar New Year Parade: A Photo Essay

BQE Admin on March 13, 2025

By ALICE MORENO | news@queensledger.com

The Year of the Snake celebration kicked off in Chinatown on February 16. Though the rain poured through most of the parade, hundreds of guests still attended to bring in the New Year joyfully.

The annual parade began at 1:00 p.m. on Mott Street, between Broome and Canal St., and continued further into Chinatown, going through Little Italy and SoHo. Giant puppet dragons were covered in plastic bags to ward off the rain and a sea of ponchos were scattered throughout Chinatown. Confetti flew through the skies, easily sticking to those who were drenched, and various goodies, such as a light-up, “2025” glasses, and red envelopes — which symbolize good luck — were passed around to guests.

Various communities, organizations, and public figures were in attendance, such as the Chinese Counsel General of NY Chen Li and Senator Chuck Schumer.

The parade was first held in 1998 and each year, the turnout becomes grander, becoming a cultural staple in the community. Each year, the Chinese Zodiac has a rotation of animals that represent a year. Folklore states that the Jade Emperor held a race, and the animals who ran the quickest through a river current were selected. It is even said that cats and rats have a longtime rivalry due to this race!

Though the year of the snake comes every 12 years, every 60 years, one of five elements — known as Wuxing in the realm of traditional Chinese philosophy — is paired with the year, symbolizing certain phenomenons that occur and affect the world we live in, according to The Collector. This year is the Wood Snake, which is marked by a rise in personal growth, transformation, and change. Many guests wear red, which is said to bring good luck and prosperity for the Lunar New Year.

A parade-goer holds a sign from the District Attorney of New York County, celebrating the Year of the Snake.

Chen Li, the Chinese Consul General (second from left) joins other members of the consulate in the Lunar New Year Parade.

A parade-goer bangs the cymbals as she passes through Mott St.

Parade members carried a plethora of props filled with Lunar New Year symbolism.

Representatives of Panda Mobile walk through the parade.

A volunteer at the parade gave out a variety of goodies, including the “2025” glasses and red envelopes with stickers inside.

A red lion puppet flows through the parade with grace.

A vibrant, neon-colored dragon was the first to go through, signaling the start of the parade.

A flag for the “New York Choy Lay Fut, ” which is known as “New York’s Premier Lion Dance Team,” according to their Instagram.

Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani Makes His Pitch

BQE Admin on March 7, 2025

Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani is surging in the mayoral race, fueled by a savvy social media campaign. Can he make his viral ideas reality?

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

If state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani becomes mayor this November, the decisive moment may have come years earlier, over a meal at King of Falafel in 2021.

But first, some context. Growing up, Mamdani had friends whose dads were living through a “crisis that everyone seemed to understand, but no one did anything about.” They were New York taxi drivers, and by the mid-2000s three forces had conspired to burden them with enormous debts: first, the Bloomberg administration inflated the price of medallions, from $200,000 in 2002 to upwards of $1,000,000 in 2014, to generate more revenue.

Soon after, a flood of competition from Uber and Lyft diluted the medallions’ value even as their cost rose. To cap it all off, predatory lenders who had been barred from the housing market swooped in to offer cabbies, 94% of whom are immigrants, loans that would entrap them even further. By 2021, the average driver was $550,000 in the red, and suicide rates had skyrocketed. “I’m going to be enslaved for the rest of my life,” NBC quoted one medallion owner as saying. “[It’s] not only that I will never be able to pay it off — my kids will never be able to pay it off.”

If you lived in Astoria or Long Island City in 2020, you probably received a mailer from Mamdani with a bold promise: if elected to the state assembly, he would cancel excessive taxi medallion debt. It was the sort of splashy proposal that politicians often bandy about, and it worked — his campaign was successful. So a year later, when Mayor Bill de Blasio put forward a plan to earmark $500 million for debt relief, it could have been a victory lap, a box checked.

Instead, Mamdani pressed de Blasio on the details, and began meeting with the taxi drivers’ union, NYTWA, which said the mayor’s proposal was mostly cosmetic. These conversations culminated in 45 days of consecutive protests outside City Hall, at which Mamdani was arrested for civil disobedience, followed by a joint 15-day hunger strike with five other lawmakers that forced the city, against all odds, to accept the taxi drivers’ demands. Though problems with lenders remain, some 2,000 drivers have seen their debts reduced to $200,000 through the resulting deal.

During the Star’s recent roundtable with Mamdani, he was quick to critique former Governor Andrew Cuomo, the current mayoral frontrunner, saying that “[his] early strength in polls is more a reflection of the mythology of [Cuomo], of nostalgia for his press conferences, than of an actual inspection of his record.” But politics is as much about myths as it is policy, and Mamdani’s fight against medallion debt is one such myth — a story that he will likely tell and retell in the lead-up to the election. The drama of the hunger strike captures his broad pitch to voters, which is that he, unlike both Cuomo and Mayor Eric Adams, is in tune with the struggles of working class New Yorkers and willing to put himself on the line for them.

But just as instructive as the dramatic finale is a quieter episode — after Mamdani questioned de Blasio and before the protests began — when he met Senator Chuck Schumer for lunch at Astoria’s King of Falafel. Once they’d finished eating, Mamdani asked Schumer if he’d take a ride with a cabbie named Richard Chow whose brother, a driver laden with debt, had died of suicide, and who himself had hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay off from loans he took to buy his medallion. Schumer agreed. Based on that experience, Mamdani said, the senator joined the push for debt relief and bartered with the mayor’s office, a major factor in the eventual deal.

Four years later, much has changed. Mamdani, whose association with the smaller Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) party has isolated him in Albany, has ridden similarly attention-grabbing promises on social media — free buses, frozen rents, city-owned grocery stores — to go from an upset candidate for mayor to second in the polls, chasing only Cuomo. Last fall, fellow socialists including Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher were saying that his campaign “could be ruinous,” playing spoiler to other progressives with a more realistic shot; now even the New York Post, leery of the DSA, considers him “a serious contender.”

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A post shared by Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@zohrankmamdani)

Mamdani, 33, grew up in both Uganda and South Africa before moving to New York at age seven, when his father accepted a teaching job at Columbia University. He went to middle school in Morningside Heights, right by the university, and went to Bronx High School of Science, where he fell in love with journalism. He was also passionate about sports: he captained the soccer team, and co-founded Bronx Science’s cricket team. (To this day, Mamdani is an ardent fan of the soccer team Arsenal — his uncle inducted him into the ranks when he was eight, and he’s been a supporter ever since. His current favorite player is Martin Odegaard, whom he calls the “conductor of the team,” while his childhood pick was Thierry Henry.)

After majoring in Africana Studies at Bowdoin College, Mamdani cut his teeth as an organizer for Change Corps, a precursor to NYPIRG that billed itself as a “training ground for activists.” He ran phone banks for vulnerable senate Democrats out of Seattle, Houston, and lastly Denver, where he tried to unionize with fellow organizers before leaving amid mass firings that ensued. Following a stint in the music and film industries — including a single called “Nani,” released under the pseudonym “Mr. Cardamom,” that received a New York Times write-up— Mamdani knocked on doors for city council candidate Ali Najmi in 2015, and started to “to get a sense of [his] place in the world of local politics.” Yet it was the next race he worked on, a 2017 city council bid by Lutheran minister Khader El-Yateem in South Brooklyn, that set him on his current path.

“That was the campaign that changed my life,” said Mamdani. “I always knew I was a New Yorker. [But] I didn’t know how my politics fit into New York City, and here was this Palestinian man who was vocal in his support for universal human rights, and tying it also to the fight for a more affordable city for working class people, fighting back against corporate interests.”

Mamdani briefly left politics in 2018, to work as a foreclosure- prevention counselor in Jackson Heights and Richmond Hill. The ever-present issue while canvassing had been housing, and this job seemed like a way to tackle those problems directly. “There’s a sadness in knowing that every time you finish a case, there will be another case and there will be a different name, a different person, different specifics,” recalled Mamdani. Still, he was proud that as the only counselor at his organization who spoke Hindi and Urdu, he was able to reach people who weren’t aware that a lien was about to be placed on their home, and help them negotiate with lenders.

At the roundtable, Mamdani repeatedly said that “politics shouldn’t require translation,” a soundbite he’s returned to throughout the nascent mayoral race. The assemblyman’s experience as a housing counselor helps explain why that principle is meaningful to him — and his current campaign’s heavy focus on social media, racking up about 7 million views to date across all platforms, can be seen as an extension of that ethic.

“No matter your age, everyone lives on their phone. And it’s an opportunity to tell your story as to what it is you’re fighting for,” said Mamdani, “[even] if that means jumping into ice cold water in a suit bought from Steinway Thrift — $30, incredible deal, I recommend it to all — to speak about a rent freeze.”

Roughly seven months out from the elections, the strategy is already paying off. Mamdani has raised $3.8 million in the last filing period, more than any other campaign, through contributions from more donors than every other candidate combined. His nearly 5000 volunteers have knocked on 60,000 doors, and the barrage of short-form videos about his proposed policies has pulled him neck-and-neck with other, more established contenders like Comptroller Brad Lander.

The several-hundred-million dollar question — in some cases billion — is how Mamdani would pay for these blockbuster initiatives if elected. One of his trademark proposals is to abolish the fare for MTA buses, which he said will not only relieve financial pressure from low-income commuters, but also reduce crime and speed up routes by allowing for all-door boarding. Data from a multi-borough pilot program last year largely buttressed these claims. The only catch? He estimates that it would cost the city about $650 million per year to forego bus fares.

Mamdani’s critics say that, as with other socialists, his ideas require spending that’s not feasible. In an interview on The Point in December, Marcia Kramer appeared skeptical that his schemes for drumming up funds, which could include collecting back payments from landlords, would be enough to foot the bill. But the medallion debt deal was a tough sell, costing the city $100 million. And though easy to gloss over, Mamdani’s well-timed alliance with Schumer suggests that the Queens assemblyman may have a more pragmatic bent than his catchy, rapid-fire TikToks might convey.

Every candidate, from the progressive state Senator Zellnor Myrie to the centrist Cuomo, has promised to take drastic measures to make New York less expensive to live in. Mamdani’s proposals may be the most eye-catching, but the elephant in the room is President Donald Trump — whichever politician wins will have to negotiate with a federal government that is loath to offer any funding, let alone for a line item like city-owned grocery stores.

Mamdani has avoided buzzwords on the campaign trail, pitching a larger tent as he courts a wide range of supporters. “As the mayor, you represent all New Yorkers,” he told the Star. “Ultimately, your responsibility is to deliver for those New Yorkers, and what I’ve said does not mean a reflexive position of opposition to a federal administration. It means a willingness to be critical, to be oppositional, to fight, when that administration places your constituents in their crosshairs.”

There’s more to the Queens assemblyman than his brand as the “extremely online” mayoral candidate who has “embraced the cringe,” as The CITY put it. While it remains to be seen whether he can convince voters that he has the managerial and budgeting chops to see his viral ideas realized, Mamdani’s parting pitch is fairly universal: “What the city deserves,” he said, “is someone who continues to believe that it could be better than it is.”

Mohamed Farghaly contributed reporting.

Architects Reimagine SUNY Downstate

BQE Admin on February 26, 2025

The architecture firm NBBJ partnered with local leaders to envision a modernized SUNY Downstate, only a year after the hospital was slated for closure.

Graphics courtesy of Brooklyn for Downstate

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

This past year has been a rollercoaster ride for SUNY Downstate, the only state-run hospital in New York City.

In January 2024, Governor Kathy Hochul announced plans to either shrink or fully close the teaching hospital, relocating its outpatient and urgent care units to a new building in a nearby parking lot. The mood at the time was grim, with SUNY Chancellor John King rattling off a laundry list of problems: “We do have a $100 million deficit at [Downstate],” he said, “and we will run out of cash this summer, and the building is in disrepair and at risk of catastrophic failure.”

But community advocates pushed back, calling the move rushed and arguing that it lacked buy-in from residents. “If everything is dire, if everything is falling apart, come to us and show it,” said State Senator Zellnor Myrie, in whose district Downstate falls.

The response was overwhelming. Most tellingly, a poll released in March showed that approximately 70% of those in the neighborhood opposed a closure. And local politicians and hospital employees alike rebuked the state for only allocating $300 million in capital funding for the smaller facility across the street, claiming that a sustainable solution to the issues plaguing Downstate — which had suffered from decades of shortfalls — would require an injection on the order of $1 billion.

By April 2024, officials had clarified that they would not be closing Downstate in the “near-term,” a win for activists. Yet another twist came in December, when the hospital’s CEO since 2020, Dr. David Berger, resigned amid allegations of financial misconduct. But the tides shifted decisively in January 2025, with Hochul pivoting to allocate an additional $550 million to address Downstate’s woes, for a total of $950 million (the previous funding had included $100 million for operations). The governor then passed the baton, for now at least, to a community advisory board (CAB) she had formed last November, whose recommendations will be due this upcoming April. Karl-Henry Cesar, chair of Brooklyn Community Board 14, said he hoped the board would be “fully empowered and supported to take as much time as needed to talk with the community and faithfully execute its mission” — the group held its first hearing in January, after months of inactivity, and the next is scheduled for February 27 at Medgar Evers College.

It was in this context, of an averted closure and stalled conversations in the aftermath, that the local coalition Brooklyn for Downstate (BfD) partnered with an architecture firm to envision a next-generation hospital. Last week, they unveiled the fruits of that collaboration: glitzy renderings of what SUNY Downstate could look like if lawmakers deliver enough funding for a full revamp. During an online presentation, members of BfD criticized the state’s approach to gathering community input, with many singling out delays around the CAB as particularly frustrating. “From our position, 8 months were wasted,” said Redetha Abraham-Nichols, DNP, MRA, RN. “We think it’s unfair for the commission to take the work of 12 months and have to do it in 3 months.” Yet they were taking matters into their own hands, the coalition’s leaders stated, and the renderings were an attempt to chart a course for the hospital that would have broad appeal.

In drawing up a modern iteration of SUNY Downstate, architects from the firm NBBJ pulled heavily from a report BfD commissioned in December that brainstormed practical alternatives to closing the hospital. Such a tack could prove disastrous, “deepening disparities and straining neighboring hospitals” the report concluded, offering a counterproposal. “Retaining core services, while optimizing capacity and modernizing infrastructure, is the most effective path forward to sustain equitable healthcare access for Brooklyn’s most vulnerable residents.” Specifically, the report laid out four demands: first, to streamline service by reducing the number of beds from 342 to 250. Second, to upgrade technology and facilities for departments like emergency care, while adding rooms for maternal and OBGYN treatment. Third, to create urgent care and ambulatory surgery centers, with the goal of reducing ER visits. And fourth, to funnel resources into outpatient preventative care centers, heading off major health issues before they occur.

During the presentation, the architects placed special emphasis on transplants, noting that SUNY Downstate is the only licensed organ transplant provider in the county. “Patients may be waiting on a transplant list for an extended period of time,” said Christina Grimes, who leads NBBJ’s global healthcare practice, “and it can be a very multi-disciplinary team.” With that in mind, the renderings leaned into a biophilic approach to make long waits more tolerable

Joan Rosegreen, who represents the nurses at SUNY Downstate, asked how the new design would deal with patient overflow, to which the architects responded that they were still working out the details, and that this was just a starting point. Rosegreen also outlined a brief wish list for future schematics: “We have a small oncology unit,” she commented, “so it would be great if we could expand that.”

Downstate has a storied history that can be traced back to 1856, when a handful of physicians opened a free clinic to care for poor German immigrants. The next year, its name changed from the German General Dispensary to The St. John’s Hospital; it was renamed again in 1858, with administrators settling on the Long Island College Hospital. As of 1860, it was one of only 11 medical schools nationwide to admit Black students, and it was among the earliest to admit women, too, in the early 20th century. Today, Central Brooklyn has one of the greatest concentrations of Caribbean people in the country, which is why some critics of the governor’s initial plan cast it as another case of chronic disinvestment in Black communities.

As the MC of the BfD presentation, Abraham-Nichols was adamant that the state support a grander vision for the hospital. “We cannot, and we will not, go backward,” she said. “Only forward.”

In the Studio with George Boorujy

BQE Admin on February 26, 2025

Artist George Boorujy invited the Star to his studio at The Old American Can Factory in Gowanus. Photo: Jack Delaney

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

As George Boorujy was painting his mural in the summer heat, groups of passersby would call out to him on their way to the soccer fields. Boorujy was covering the block-spanning wall across from a public pool in Red Hook with migratory birds, accompanied by tags for the countries they winter in, and the common complaint was that he was missing a name: “What about Jamaica?” someone would tease, while another pedestrian shouted “You don’t have Peru!”

It was hard work. In the end, it only took Boorujy fifteen days to finish the installation on Bay Street: six for the birds and plants, and nine for the solid colors of the background. “I banged those things out,” he’d say proudly, months later. But that sprint belied years of studying the subject matter and many hours spent scoping out the site, which the veteran artist described as “really weird,” and “a very difficult spot to conceptualize” because the retaining wall was low yet long — a daunting 963 feet.

The mural, sponsored by the Red Hook Conservancy as an addition to the Audubon Mural Project, took shape last June. But Boorujy still has fond memories of the commission, in part because of those exchanges with onlookers. If the piece was an homage to the eight bird species it depicts, it was also a statement about migration in general, or the “dichotomy of when you call more than one place home,” as Boorujy put it. “The birds that we think of as ‘our’ birds are not our birds. They’re also Panama’s birds, they’re Venezuela’s birds.” Many of the regulars who play soccer in the adjacent park are from Central and South America, he noted, and amid rising xenophobia, he wanted to acknowledge that parallel. “We welcome our birds every spring as they come in,” he said. “Yet we aren’t necessarily welcoming certain people.”

In a sense, the Red Hook mural expresses a dual interest — nature and migration—that has long been embedded in Boorujy’s art, and has just started to find a new form. Boorujy, who is based out of a studio in the Old American Can Factory in Gowanus, began drawing at an early age. And what he drew, growing up in a small New Jersey town, was animals. Everywhere he looked, he’d “always see the compromise with mankind,” like roadkill littering the highway, yet he initially shied away from portraying humans, even any evidence of them. “Sometimes an animal can function as a mirror better than a person,” he mused. He followed his love of wildlife by majoring in biology at the University of Miami, and eventually swung back towards painting.

Boorujy said the three stone figures in the center of this piece reminded him of himself, with his two sons. Photo: Jack Delaney

Now in his forties, Boorujy has covered a lot of ground. “I’ve been making work about the environment forever, around 20 years,” he explained. “About climate change, and wildlife, and our relationship to [them].” For a spell, his trademark was rendering an animal, or several, in high fidelity against a massive white canvas, like a god emerging from the blank before the Big Bang. These paintings are extremely detailed — in one 44” by 88” portrait from 2019 of a panther suckling two cubs, it would be easy to miss a tiny mosquito clinging to her paw. Still, they’re not quite hyperrealism, because they’re too laden with symbolic weight. That is Boorujy’s magic: his creatures are otherworldly, but they’re presented with such attention to detail that viewers are compelled to believe that this other world has weather like ours, and inhabitants that live and die within it.

During a visit to Boorujy’s studio this month, he showed off his latest paintings, which maintain that uncanny quality with a notable difference: the tabula rasa backgrounds are gone. Sweeping landscapes have rushed into the vacuums, articulating them with high-contrast rocks, trees, and lakes. In short, there’s a newfound emphasis on worldbuilding, a shift which Boorujy said was intentional. “If we cut carbon tomorrow, we’re still going to be living on a very changed planet,” he said. “And so I was like, Okay, what will it be?”

Though Boorujy’s recent work doesn’t offer definitive answers, each painting reveals a fresh and memorable corner of this hypothetical future. The landscapes are by turns bleak and serene. When his familiar animals show up, they’re altered: one image shows a zebra on its side at either dusk or dawn, its head out of sight — so that it reads more like terrain than a living being —with a host of stone figurines sitting on its haunches. These statuettes, halfway between animate and inanimate, are everywhere in the studio. Boorujy sculpts them by hand, then uses them as models when he paints; the two-dimensional result still feels like it was fashioned physically. As a viewer, one gets the sense that people were once here, in the frame, but they’ve since traveled elsewhere. What’s left behind is this makeshift collection of humanoid cairns and religious implements, personified and clamoring, to gesture at what lies ahead.

The Kaleidoscopic Stories Behind the Brooklyn Artists Exhibition

BQE Admin on February 21, 2025

Detail of Shosh Goller’s “Monument to the NRA,” one of many pieces included in the Brooklyn Artists Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.

By ALICE MORENO | news@queensledger.com

New York City is easily known as one of the most diverse cities in the country. Thousands of cultures worldwide come together in this one place to live, breathe, and love. Not one story is alike — many come from all walks of life, and it is important to celebrate that aspect.

At the Brooklyn Arts Exhibition, located at the Brooklyn Museum on 200 Eastern Parkway, hundreds of local artists were exhibited. There wasn’t a main idea that followed, instead, many showcased art that described themselves and their experiences, as well as the world around them. Artists used their tools to focus on situations such as queer issues, body image, boyhood, and current events, using their ways to express their thoughts and spark a conversation.

Nevertheless, there is one similarity each artist holds: their connection to the borough of Brooklyn. Whether living there currently or having a long line of ancestry settling in the pre-American Dutch colony, each artist holds the badge of being a Brooklynite high and proud.

I interviewed five local Brooklyn artists who were displayed at the Brooklyn Arts Exhibition. Each artist displayed their work in a thought-provoking manner, leading the audience to dig deep inside to understand themselves and the world they currently live in. These are their stories.

* * *

Erin M. Riley, Violations

The complexities of womanhood can oftentimes be a struggle to face. Erin M. Riley, like most women, struggled with being comfortable in her own body. Now, she embraces it, recognizing her body as well as her history as a form of art, in which to be spoken about.

“In college, I wasn’t using my own body. I was using found imagery and stand-ins for me,” said Riley. “But now, as I’ve made [more of] my work and sort of become more comfortable, I’ve been trying to add my body into the pieces, because the work has always been about me.”

The East Williamsburg-based artist created Violations in 2022 as a woven tapestry made out of hand-dyed wool on a cotton wrap. The piece serves as fragments of her memory, discussing personal experiences stemming from the trauma she had faced throughout her childhood.

The tapestry contains a variety of images all connected to the idea of womanhood. With Riley’s body in the middle, it is mirrored by two images depicting her and her sister. Behind her body to the left sits a Barbie doll – known by many as an “idealistic representation” of a woman’s body – and to her right repeats the words “violations” in bright orange, imitating that of a New York City parking ticket. Pink splatter is spread by her body, covering up an apology below it.

For Riley, the most important thing for her is to continue discussing her experiences rather than shunning them.

“Part of me never wants to get tired. I want to sort of keep the conversation [of sexual violence] going,” said Riley. “I like to have these conversations about violations [and] whatever that implies.”

* * *

Shosh Goller’s “Monument to the NRA.” Photo by Alice Moreno

Shosh Goller, Monument to the NRA

Turning on the news to see another mass shooting has become more of a normalization than it should be. Many Americans are desensitized by the news, giving their “thoughts and prayers,” and moving on with their lives. Though many have pleaded to not forget what happened, the commonality of it has led the people to forget anyway.

Shosh Goller, however, does not forget and doesn’t intend to do so for as long as she lives.

The Prospect Heights-based artist created “Monument to the NRA” in 2012 during the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, and over a decade later, she is still updating the piece. Modeled after the Washington Monument in Washington D.C., the sculpture’s base is made out of chipboard, and it is filled with thousands of headlines ranging from mass shootings to lawmakers’ decisions on gun control.

“I just remember this one story, […] it had nothing to do with gun violence, but it was a story of a woman who was in a fountain in Forest Park [in St. Louis, MI], who was raped, and it was in front of a crowd of people standing around, and no one did anything,” said Goller. “And it just really affected me. And I can’t say that I have any personal connection to gun violence – because I don’t – but it kills me […] day after day of all these incidents that happen.”

When she began the piece, every headline of a shooting – even if there was one casualty – was added to the monument. As the years went on, it became overwhelming to constantly add, therefore Goller currently adds stories with mass headlines. The latest headline added was that of Trump’s assassination attempt in July 2024.

As the years went on, each headline began to yellow, serving as a testimony of a long-running issue in this country. Goller has also created similar pieces using headlines, such as one designed as the Twitter logo, sporting Trump’s haircut and a mask, surrounded by headlines discussing the issues of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Another features a women’s upper body, with headlines about sexual assault allegations all from the #MeToo movement.

“I keep offering [the piece] to politicians, thinking they can put it in their office for people who come in to show how awful this situation is,” said Goller “But so far, I don’t have any takers.”

* * *

Avram Finklestein’s “Golem 11/71 (BRAF V600E selfie).” Photo by Alice Moreno

Avram Finklestein, Golem 11/71 (BRAF V600E selfie)

Avram Finklestein’s story is that of resilience. His disability does not stop him from creating art – instead, he embraces it, being a frequent theme in his work.

Golem 11/71 serves as a testament to that. As his disability – degenerative neuromuscular disease, which leads his muscle to atrophy – worsened his ability to do art in the long run, Finklestein operated a wheeled metal structure that doubled as a mobility device to be able to roam around his studio. After he finished and took the work of the wall, he realized the translucency of the matte acetate could lead to creating two pieces in one – birthing his self-portrait. One side reflected himself at age 11 and age 71 on the other.

Between the portraits surround a plethora of live-cell imagery of cancer and plasma cells. Battling cancer, Finklestein notes the importance of recognizing disabilities – even if it isn’t clearly visible.

‘And then it started me thinking about the invisibility of [disabilities] and the ways in which […] the person next to us on the subway train could be in pain, but we would have no way of knowing that,” said Finklestein. “What we can see about the world has nothing to do with how the world actually functions.”

As the years pass, Finklestein’s work has moved from social issues to more personal ones. He hopes to use his skills to help people understand him on a deeper level, especially by focusing on the issues he faces with his health.

Rather than making precise, realistic work, Finklestein opts for a more abstract look, feeling as it makes it more honest – not only with himself but with others. His emotions are evident in the piece, whether he is an 11-year-old child in a Xerox photograph using his coat to mask his face or using technology in an advanced world, with 70 years of experience behind him.

“My hands don’t obey me. My body just doesn’t obey me. But I refuse to stop,” said Finklestein. “I can’t see, but I refuse to stop making work.”

* * *

Qualeasha Wood’s “Brooklyn Baby.” Photo by Alice Moreno

Qualeasha Wood, Brooklyn Baby

Qualeasha Wood has a deep connection to Brooklyn. Her ancestor, Charlie Hueston, escaped slavery by fleeing from Tennessee to Canada and eventually settled in Brooklyn. Brooklyn became the home for her family throughout the 20th century, as her parents and grandparents grew up and met in the borough.

In Brooklyn Baby, Wood’s love for the borough — despite not living there, as she is based in New Jersey — family and loved ones shine through, with her descendants’ names being displayed on the piece. The machine-embroidered tapestry featured the subway signage for “Winthrop Avenue,” the block her family grew up in, and the symbol for the 2 train, which she depended on during her time in Brooklyn. The background for the piece is an image of the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, where she had her first date with her fiancée. The title of the piece derives from the Lana Del Rey song “Brooklyn Baby,” a satirical piece focusing on out-of-towners who live and breathe Brooklyn.

The piece is intermingled with the theming of identity. As a queer, black woman, Wood is finding her role in a society that caters to the cis, white man. A Photobooth app selfie of Wood takes up most of the tapestry, dating from the years she lived in Brooklyn.

“I think right now, as we were all on our phones and just absorbed with the world, it’s so important to kind of just dial it in and just be a little more in our direct sphere, and within our own communities,” said Wood.

Wood hopes for people to enjoy the now with the people they love the most. She is close to her family, inviting them to many of her exhibitions and art events and even helping her with embroidering her pieces. Despite making a last-minute decision to change her career from joining the Air Force — the route her parents chose for her life — to attending art school, her family is still her biggest supporter.

* * *

Melissa Joseph’s “Olive’s Hair Salon.” Photo by Alice Moreno

Melissa Joseph, Olive’s Hair Salon

As a biracial, Indian, and white woman, Melissa Joseph strives for others to see themselves in her work. Each moment with her family is special and unique, meshing together to create a melting pot of culture. To her, these moments feel special – even if it was a small event, Joseph strives to recognize her culture in her work.

Olive’s Hair Salon is a special moment for her. During the COVID-19 Pandemic, many were left to DIY certain services that they would otherwise pay for, including haircuts. During a Zoom call with Joseph’s family, her brother planned to buzz his hair off completely in his backyard. His daughter offered to help and held the clippers upside down. Finding it humorous, Joseph snapped a photo.

“I try to like represent moments, sometimes everyday things that people can recognize themselves in,” said Joseph. “But also, it’s important to me to show kind of like imagery of South Asian culture and biracial culture, mixed families […] the funny things that happen when multiple cultures come together.”

Joseph notes that after seeing artist Henry Taylor’s work at the Whitney Museum in Manhattan – specifically the piece “Gettin it Done,” in which he had painted his neighbors getting a haircut in the vibrant community of Downtown L.A. – she realized that there was a sort of intimacy with getting a haircut. There is a high level of trust given to barbers, as many want their hair to be cut in a specific way. She compared the level of intimacy between a barber with their client and her brother and his young daughter, interested in the amount of trust her brother gave to his daughter, even if she held the clippers incorrectly.

Using wool and felt, Joseph noticed that there was a sort of contradiction. She uses a process called needle felting, in which she pokes the fibers through the surface. Though it is a meditative process, there is an underlying sense of violence: since she uses her images as a base, she “stabs” each image over and over. It took Joseph a while to understand that poking the piece over and over is a part of the narrative, noting that at the end of the process, the fibers are softly woven through the piece, feeling like a fluffy cloud.

The human experience can be simple to others but truly has some artistic measure to it. Joseph proves this with her work, letting the audience know that they too can familiarize themselves with other people’s stories, seeing themselves and their lives in her work.

Joseph was awarded the UOVO Prize, given by the Brooklyn Museum to honor emerging artists in Brooklyn. She was awarded a cash prize of $25,000, an outdoor installation at the museum, and a mural displayed outside of UOVO Brooklyn in Bushwick. UOVO serves as a storage facility and logistics provider for fine arts, fashion, and wine.

CHPE and Rod Strickland Host Hoops Event at Variety B&G Club

BQE Admin on February 21, 2025

By WALTER SANCHEZ | news@queensledger.com

The Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) launched a new NIL (name, image, and likeness) partnership with the Long Island University-Brooklyn (LIU) men’s basketball team that included a visit to a CHPE construction site in Astoria, Queens, and a basketball clinic at the Variety Boys & Girls Club of Queens (VBGCQ).

More than 50 youth were at the clinic at the club, which included hands-on instruction from the LIU men’s basketball starting lineup and the team’s head coach, NBA legend Rod Strickland. Participants split up into teams, learned key basketball skills, and gained an understanding of the life of a student-athlete, something quite important to kids at the club, as many aspire to play sports in school. The children then competed against each other while LIU players served as coaches.

Before the two-hour clinic, members of the LIU men’s team toured a local CHPE construction site near the Rainey substation in Astoria. They learned about the benefits of CHPE, a 339-mile-long clean-energy transmission project that will deliver clean, renewable hydropower to NYC, providing enough clean energy annually to power 1 million New York City homes, and alleviating pollution in disadvantaged communities. CHPE leaders taught players about the direct impact of union labor and grid reliability on the greater New York community.

“Through this community-first partnership, we were able to provide an unforgettable and impactful experience for these kids,” said Hydro-Québec Senior Director of Stakeholder Relations Pete Rose.

“We appreciate members of the LIU men’s basketball team learning about CHPE, and its commitment to uplifting the local community, whether it’s through the benefits of clean energy or reinforcing the value of teamwork by playing basketball with local youth.”

“Paying it forward and giving back is always important, and it was special to share our love of basketball with these local kids,” said Long Island University head men’s basketball coach Rod Strickland.

“Through our tour of the Rainey converter site and our time playing basketball, it was great to hear and see CHPE’s positive relationship with this community.” “This basketball clinic with CHPE and the LIU men’s basketball team created a special opportunity to share our diverse, unique, and robust “give back” ecosystem with kids in the Astoria community,” said WVI DF Founder Jeremiah Schnee. “This shows all the ways that we can give back and provide a positive impact on local youth. Basketball is a far-reaching pastime that can teach kids about the important lessons of teamwork and sportsmanship, and CHPE and the LIU basketball team are wonderful ambassadors for the community.” This Basketball clinic provided a once-in-a-lifetime experience to our kids; we thank CHPE for their continued partnership and commitment to Astoria,” said Costa Constantinides, CEO of Variety Boys and Girls Club of Queens.

Community Spotlight: Uzo Okoye, the Bed-Stuy Rez Leading JFK’s Big Expansion

BQE Admin on February 20, 2025

Renderings of JFK’s gargantuan new terminal. Photo courtesy of Ghim-Lay Yeo

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

Uzoamaka Okoye is used to managing impossibly large projects. Previously a construction lawyer with over two decades of experience, she now serves as the Chief of Staff for the New Terminal One at JFK, a mammoth undertaking that will leverage $9.5 billion to build 23 gates covering upwards of 2.4 million square feet.

Okoye, a Bed-Stuy resident whose offices are in Jamaica, began her career as an engineer working on water and wastewater infrastructure projects. She said she studied engineering at NYU because she “loved the concept of building something that hasn’t been built, something beautiful. If you’re lucky,” she expanded, “you get to build projects that really change the landscape and have meaning.” That, for her, is what makes Terminal One — which will not only dazzle the eyes, but generate over 10,000 jobs by the time it’s finished — so exciting.

On top of her stellar legal and project management bona fides, Okoye has served on the board of African Services Committee, a nonprofit dedicated to providing services for recent migrants, for 15 years. Having come to the U.S. from Liberia at age 13, and now the board’s chair, Okoye notes that the work has been “really rewarding for me, even through the difficult times.”

Okoye is also inspired by the work of the Queens Center for Progress, saying that she had the pleasure to visit their site and witness an array of vital programs that span from kids in Pre-K to 80-year-olds. In fact, she sees overlap between QCP’s efforts to empower those with disabilities and her team’s mission at Terminal One. “As we look at the people who will be coming in,” she said, “it’s every type of traveler.” Informed by an ethic of accessibility, the new structure will have a range of facilities — including an arrivals lounge, a sensory room, and automated wheelchairs — so that everyone “can be treated with dignity and have a great experience from the minute they arrive at the curb.” Okoye is looking forward to a “long partnership” with QCP over how best to accommodate travelers of all backgrounds.

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