BQE Admin, Author at Brooklyn Downtown Star

As Baldwin Centennial Comes to a Close, BPL Exhibit Highlights Writer’s Life in Istanbul

BQE Admin on December 18, 2024

Novelist Elif Batuman reads her essay on the links between James Baldwin and Erich Auerbach, both expats in Istanbul. Photo: Jack Delaney

As James Baldwin’s centennial year comes to a close, hundreds gathered in the Grand Lobby of the Brooklyn Public Library’s main branch last week for the opening of an exhibit about his time in Istanbul.

The exhibit, titled Turkey Saved My Life, will run until the end of February 2025, and centers on a collection of rare photographs by Baldwin’s friend and collaborator, the filmmaker Sedat Pakay. The title, drawn verbatim from a quote of Baldwin’s, underscores the importance that this often-overlooked chapter of his life held for the writer — and speakers throughout the evening grappled with just why Istanbul was such a place of creative ferment for him.

After visitors were given an initial half hour to amble around and “encounter Baldwin’s close circle of friends, his observations of Turkish society, and the moments of quiet solitude that fueled his fearless writing,” the event started in earnest with a reading by novelist Elif Batuman of an essay she’d written for the occasion.

Teeing the reading up, Linda Johnson, BPL’s president and CEO, briefly introduced the speakers and set the tone for the exhibit as a whole. “Turkey Saved My Life provides insight into how Baldwin shaped both his writing and his unflinching commitment to civil rights,” she said. “James Baldwin’s work continues to resonate as powerfully today as it did during his lifetime, and we are honored to celebrate his legacy and vision of justice.” 

Batuman foregrounded the fact that Baldwin finished two of his most influential books about America, Another Country (1962) and No Name on the Street (1972), while living in Turkey, and also directed a Turkish production of John Herbert’s Fortune and Men’s Eyes (1970), despite not speaking the language. In this sense, Batuman suggested, he was straddling two continents and hoping each could help explain the other.

Next came an essay by critic Tavia Nyong’o, which put this theme even more succinctly: “Baldwin had to leave America to continue to write about it,” he wrote, “and he had to be an outsider in Istanbul to reveal something essential about that city’s soul.” Whether or not the latter observation is hyperbolic, Baldwin did achieve celebrity in Turkey, and after first visiting in 1961 he returned periodically for over a decade.

On the second floor of the library, earlier in the night, Pamela Fraser had stood over a glass case, peering at a photograph of Baldwin at a dinner party. She had pointed to another figure in the foreground: it was her husband, David Leeming, who had been Baldwin’s assistant in Istanbul.

In speaking with Fraser, I had assumed that Leeming had long passed. In fact, he was not only alive and well but gearing up to speak at the event. Leeming wasn’t the only attendee with a personal connection to the exhibit — Baldwin’s brother Trevor was in the crowd, as was Pakay’s widow, Kathy. Yet he did have a special role to play in the second portion of the program, as part of a three-person panel that discussed the acclaimed author’s ‘Turkish years’ at length.

Leeming, Zoborowska, and Reid-Pharr discussed James Baldwin and his life in Turkey. Photo: Jack Delaney

Leeming was joined on the panel by the scholars Magdalena J. Zaborowska of the University of Michigan, who wrote the monograph “James Baldwin’s Turkish Decade,” which was referenced repeatedly over the course of the conversation, and Robert Reid-Pharr of NYU.

“Why did he come to Turkey? This is a question that people ask me all the time,” Leeming said, and it’s a question I asked him, and which he talked about quite a lot.”

“Basically, he didn’t know — except for the fact that he said, ‘I came for the same reason you did. I needed to get away. I needed to see something different and do something different,’” Leeming quotes Baldwin as saying. “And Jimmy was a born adventurer, so when he came to Turkey, it was not just to find a quiet place to work, although that was it too. It was to insist that he learned something about the culture, to learn something about the people there, and to be excited by them, which he was.”

Reid-Pharr met Baldwin at a book talk at UNC-Chapel Hill when the author was in the last year of his life, after he had stopped traveling to Istanbul. Instead, he recounted the first time he encountered one of Baldwin’s novels, as a 14-year-old boy in North Carolina.

“It was basically a bunch of white kids and me,” Reid-Pharr remembered, explaining that he was attending a statewide junior historians event at a local college, “and there was a group of people that came dressed in rebel gray and red. So I was like, I’ve got to get out of here. I went to my first ever college bookstore, and my mother had given me $5 — this was a long time ago, so that was something. And so I went into the bookstore, and I saw for the first time ever a book with a picture of a black person on it. And I thought, I’m going to buy this book. It was ‘Go Tell It On the Mountain.’”

Zaborowska, who originally read Baldwin while in graduate school, having grown up in Poland, Baldwin’s time in Istanbul illustrated his desire to learn more about the world he inhabited, no matter the dangers that entailed.

“Think about this man as a polymath,” she suggested. “Yes, he was terrible at math, but he was a polymath as a humanist, as an artist, as somebody who was greedy for experience, for doing things, for creativity.”

Leeming agreed with Zoborowska’s sentiment. “The other thing [Baldwin] taught me,” he said, “was that the greatest sin is the sin of safety, the sin of living your life to be safe, to not take the risk that you have to take in order to be fully human. And Turkey provided him, and me too, with the possibility of living a life that maybe wasn’t quite so safe, and that involved pain, that involved difficulties, but led us, I think, both, to a fuller understanding of who we are.”

The exhibit was co-curated by Atesh M. Gundogdu as part of the  BPL Presents series, and supported by the Mellon Foundation.

As BQE Cantilever Deteriorates, Officials at Odds Over Fix

BQE Admin on December 18, 2024

The triple cantilever was built in the 1940s, and experts say it is in dire need of repairs. Photo: Jack Delaney

By Jack Delaney | jdelaney@queensledger.com

“No more kicking the can,” said Mayor Eric Adams in 2023, as he announced two initiatives to fix the BQE Triple Cantilever, a distressed stretch of highway that runs underneath the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights.

Yet in a letter sent to Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi last Monday, five elected officials whose districts encompass the site are alleging that Adams has been doing just that: punting the issue.

At the heart of the matter is the question of whether to act sooner to repair the cantilever in a limited capacity, or to wait until a long-term solution — likely a complete redesign — can be implemented.

Endorsing the latter approach, the mayor’s office and Department of Transportation officials have argued that a short-term remedy would expend the political capital necessary for a lasting overhaul, stalling the project indefinitely.

But the recent letter, signed by Councilmember Lincoln Restler, Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, Senator Andrew Gounardes, and Congress Members Dan Goldman and Nydia Velazquez, argues that the process of determining a permanent fix has already stretched on too long, and a stopgap measure is badly needed to ensure the highway is safe.

“Considering the importance of federal funding for this project and the orientation of the incoming Trump administration toward New York City and the general uncertainty at City Hall,” Restler wrote in an email, “it is not clear that the Adams administration’s plans remain viable.”

“We need an alternative option that protects and preserves the safety of the highway and our community for the foreseeable future, while we work to craft longer term solutions for the whole BQE corridor,” he said. “Implementation of a stabilization plan to extend the lifespan of the Triple Cantilever would create time for city, state and federal governments to achieve new strategies to divert freight and reduce trucks and cars on this highway.”

The cantilever was constructed in the 1940s, and renovations were floated in 2006 during a planning workshop organized by state officials. In 2018, Mayor Bill DeBlasio’s team pitched a temporary six-lane highway that would have run parallel to the Promenade, which would have been closed for up to six years. Needless to say, Brooklyn Heights residents weren’t pleased, and the proposal withered.

Mayor Adams has picked up where DeBlasio left off, but has encountered roadblocks of his own: per amNewYork, in January the Biden administration rejected a request for $800 million to redo the cantilever. The deliberations over the correct design have plodded on regardless, with DOT holding forums to gather community input, the most recent of which occurred last week.

At this month’s Brooklyn Community Board 2 full board meeting, some members who had attended the latest info sessions were just as leery as Restler of DOT’s promises for a long-term solution.

“You heard the councilman mention the BQE — we learned last night that they’re starting the clock again on the two-year study to come up with a plan,” said Sidney Meyer, chairperson of CB2’s Transportation & Public Safety Committee. “Now, most of us have been involved with the same two-year plan, beginning in the year 2000. It’s the same two years, where they’ll study all the alternatives, at the end of which they’ll propose whatever they’re going to propose. I would urge you to be vigilant about what’s going to happen there.”

In 2020, a report by leading transportation experts concluded that the BQE was deteriorating faster than expected, in part due to the presence of overweight trucks. The triple cantilever was especially degraded, it noted, and needed repairs “immediately.”

While the report warned that sections of the road could become “unsafe and unable to carry existing levels of traffic within five years,” it also specifically rejected any proposals for a temporary highway near the Promenade, instead endorsing a refurbished four-lane structure.

Ultimately, almost all the stakeholders involved seem to agree that a major overhaul is needed, and soon. Why then, many residents like Meyer ask, has it taken more than 20 years to arrive at yet another impasse?

The fault for continual setbacks to the BQE project may not belong to DOT and Gracie Mansion alone. As Christopher Bonanos, New York Magazine’s city editor, wrote in June, “digging up half of Brooklyn for the once-in-a-century chance to finally fix the BQE and, in turn, build a better city, would require a level of misery tolerance that has come to seem unimaginable.” He noted that the best choice could be to demolish parts of the BQE and bury others, but the inconvenience to drivers and locals — and what he viewed as an overly cautious attitude on the city’s part — has made it politically infeasible.

As of now, the environmental review is slated to begin in 2025, and bona fide construction on the cantilever would start in 2029 at the earliest.

“Glacial Pace of Change”: Judge Holds City in Contempt for Inaction on Rikers, Paving Way for Fed Takeover

BQE Admin on December 6, 2024

By Jack Delaney | jdelaney@queensledger.com

In 2019, lawmakers gave one of the largest jails on earth until 2026 to shut down completely. Five years later, officials are still dragging their feet on reforms — so the federal government is poised to wrest control of the facility from New York City officials to ensure the closure actually happens.

On November 27, Manhattan federal judge Laura Swain held the city in contempt on 18 counts for its handling of Rikers Island, ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in Nunez v. the City of New York, a case first brought in 2012 that alleges “a pattern and practice of using unnecessary and excessive force against incarcerated individuals.” The decision paves the way for a federal receivership, which would strip local agencies of jurisdiction over Rikers.

The case was settled in 2015, with the stipulation that the Department of Correction (DOC) take concrete steps to fix what critics have described as a culture of impunity for officers within the jail. As part of the deal, a monitoring team was created to track compliance with the plan.

But in a 65-page decision, Swain observed that the monitors had consistently found DOC unwilling or unable to implement changes. “Progress will likely not be achieved,” they wrote in December 2021, “no matter how many remedial orders or other potential sanctions may be imposed,” because of “foundational” problems within the department.

If anything, Swain noted, progress has trended backward. “The use of force rate and other rates of violence, self-harm, and deaths in custody are demonstrably worse than when the Consent Judgment went into effect in 2015,” she wrote, with cases in which corrections officers used force against inmates climbing from around 4,500 incidents in 2016 (or a rate of 4 per 100 people) to nearly 7,000 (more than 9 per 100 people) in 2023.

These issues have been compounded by DOC’s unreliable record-keeping. Last year, the New York Daily News reported that the monitor had “no confidence” in the department’s in-house data on violence at Rikers and cited six attacks made with blades that had not been classified as slashings or stabbings.

At two recent hearings in September and October, City Council members pressed DOC leadership to explain why reforms recommended by watchdogs had not been fully implemented, and why a track record of abuses appeared to be continuing unabated.

At the October hearing, several formerly incarcerated women testified to what they said was a decades-long system that abetted sexual abuse of inmates by corrections officers at Rikers. Over 700 sexual lawsuits have been filed to date against the DOC through the 2022 Adult Survivors Act (ASA), which amended state law to allow sexual assault victims to file civil cases even if the statute of limitations had lapsed, for a one-year window.

Representatives for the corrections officers union argued that the federal judge’s concerns were mislaid.

“Seventy percent of our inmate population is facing violent felony charges,” said Benny Boscio, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association. “That same population is driving the hundreds of assaults on our officers, including sexual assaults, as well as inmate on inmate attacks, which requires necessary, not excessive force, to keep everyone in our jails safe. Outsourcing control of Rikers Island to a federal receiver will not be a silver bullet and will not solve any of these problems. Giving correction officers the manpower and resources to enforce law and order in our jails will.”

Historically, the union has wielded significant power over any changes within city jails. As The CITY reports, it has previously stonewalled reforms that would have introduced stab-resistant vests and reduced cases in which solitary confinement can be used to punish inmates.

Even when fixes are implemented, many do not last long. Federal monitors argued for years that body cameras were necessary to keep corrections officers accountable, and it eventually won out: by 2020, nearly every officer in city jails was required to wear one. But in 2024, the 3,500 devices were recalled by DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie after a camera caught fire. According to Vital City, the review was slated to take at most two weeks; months later, the body cameras are still out of circulation.

While the initial target date for closure was delayed by a year until 2027, the city has maintained it is on track to close Rikers. Yet the federal judge’s decision reinforces broader skepticism that the DOC’s plan to redirect the island’s inmates to four borough-based jails will be feasible.

Per Swain’s order, the next step will now be for the Legal Aid Society, which filed the initial case back in 2012, to negotiate the terms of the receivership—including who will helm the effort—with city and federal officials. The relevant parties have until mid-January to do so.

Malt Drive Park Opens: Once a Sugar Factory and Beer Depot, Now a Waterfront Green Space

BQE Admin on December 6, 2024

Attendees at the Malt Drive Park opening party on Saturday, November 16 / Credit: Nicholas Gordon

By Nicholas Gordon | ng639@georgetown.edu

If the beautiful, new sweeping waterfront space of Malt Drive Park wasn’t enough to entice locals for its grand opening block party on Saturday, November 16, the heaps of free oysters, caprese salad, tiramisu, chocolate fondue, and an endless well of craft beer and Prosecco were thrown in to sweeten the deal. Upwards of 300 attendees mingled over their drinks and snacks, shimmied to the live music, and explored the new park all afternoon.

“Celebrating the ribbon-cutting here at Malt Drive Park shows the power of our community,” said Julie Won, a New York City council member for District 26, which covers the western Queens neighborhoods of Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside, and Woodside. “This is also a celebration of the development of the entire Hunter’s Point South Park where we have new public amenities to enjoy,” Won added.

Located on a brand new block in Hunter’s Point South, Malt Drive Park features spacious sidewalks and winding waterfront paths with seating areas, a playground and a dog park, and an open lawn with picnic spaces and views of the water. Malt Drive Park was created by the real estate development company TF Cornerstone (TFC), which has its two newest luxury residential buildings, 2-20 and 2-21 Malt Drive, flanking the space.

“As someone who was born and raised in Queens, I’m really proud to be here with you today for the opening of Malt Drive Park,” said New York State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, addressing the crowd. “I’ve seen this neighborhood grow and thrive, and I think it represents the best of us in New York City, showing that through public and private partnerships we can have greenspace and public amenities, and a high quality of life.”

Featured Speakers at the Malt Drive Park opening party, from left to right: Edjo Wheeler, Executive Director of CultureLab; Julie Won, New York City council member for District 26; John McMillan, TFC Senior Vice President and Director of Planning; Kristen Gonzalez, New York State Senator; Kate Orff, founder of the landscape architecture firm SCAPE / Credit: Nicholas Gordon

John McMillan, TFC Senior Vice President and Director of Planning, echoed the praise for the public and private partnership, noting that Malt Drive Park is unique for East River waterfront parks in being developed by a private company on private land.

“The park shows what good zoning can inspire a private developer to do,” McMillan said. “We like to think we’ve been part of the growth and evolution of this community and of the astonishing civic and public character that has taken root in this part of Long Island City.”

Also astonishing is the transformation of the real estate along Newtown Creek in Long Island City.

“When we talk about Newtown Creek, on both sides, Brooklyn and Queens, what we’re doing is taking a legacy of barren land and polluted spaces, or inaccessible waterfront, and creating something new and beautiful to give us the better life that we here in Queens deserve,” Senator Gonzalez said.

While there seemed to be little doubt about the beauty and usefulness of the new park, some attendees expressed skepticism about the nature of Long Island City’s rapid growth.

“The so-called affordable apartments being presented here, to me it’s baffling,” said a member of a local community group and a long-time resident of Long Island City who asked to remain anonymous. “If I lost my current living situation, I’d be priced-out of Long Island City, which is unfortunate because we moved here many years ago because it was so affordable.”

On the TFC website, the new Malt Drive studios are listed at $3,760.

Malt Drive’s 1,386 new residences brings TFC’s total in Hunter’s Point South to over 5,000 units across several properties.

Lisa Goren, a member of the Long Island City Coalition and a board member of the Hunter’s Point Community Coalition, questioned whether Long Island City’s unfettered growth has preceded a comprehensive management and services plan.

“All of the things that should come with upzoning where you have a tremendous number of new units built are being dealt with after the fact,” Goren said in a phone interview, acknowledging that she and her coalitions have had some difficult conversations with the developers. “When you build, it needs to be part of a comprehensive resiliency plan in the face of climate risk, so that the neighborhood is sustainable, not just a plan protecting particular buildings.”

Goren said that through community engagement events and ideas-sharing sessions with locals she and her teams have come up with vision plans for equitable development, resiliency, and sustainability. Their vision plan for Hunter’s Point North is available at hunterspoint-north.com.

Malt Drive Park features a dog park, playground, paths with seating and waterfront views, and a lawn with picnic areas / Credit: Nicholas Gordon

Named after the site’s history as a sugar cane processing plant turned beer distribution facility, Malt Drive Park expands park space from Hunter’s Point South Park by over three acres, adding roughly 700 feet of public access along the shoreline.

Kate Orff, the founder of the landscape architecture firm SCAPE which collaborated with TFC for Malt Drive Park, said that the ecology and legacy of the waterfront’s importance as the site where the East River meets the mouth of Newtown Creek was at the forefront of their design.

“With a focus on resilience, we created a sloping grade, sculpting the ground plane in a way that protects the building and brings you down closer to the water,” Orff said. “We wanted the idea of a living shoreline pulling all the way up to the buildings’ edge, and then carving pockets of open space out of that so you could really experience the feeling of being on the edge of the natural creek system.”

In their collaboration with SCAPE, TFC also prioritized the development of a greener waterfront by taking measures to stabilize the shoreline from erosion and protect marine life, as reported by the New York Real Estate Journal.

The Moving Dance Company performing at the Malt Drive Park opening party, from left to right: Payton, Jaylon, and Nika Credit: Nicholas Gordon

Young couples, families with strollers, and people walking their dogs passed through the new park as the last musical act finished up and the sun began to set. Earlier in the day, Council Member Won had made an appeal to them.

“All of this development continues to create an infrastructure and an entire knit community, so what we’re saying to you is that we want you to stay and we want to see your family start here and grow here,” Won said. “We want this to be a place that you call home long-term.”

‘Mother of All D.I.Y. Fairs’ Will Make Winter Stop in Brooklyn This Weekend

BQE Admin on December 6, 2024

By Jack Delaney | jdelaney@queensledger.com

One of the most influential craft markets in the country is returning to Brooklyn this weekend, drawing over 150 creators from the borough and beyond.

The Renegade Craft fair will be setting up shop in ZeroSpace, a venue that straddles Gowanus and downtown Brooklyn, for December 7 and 8. It will run from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on both days.

Renegade was founded in 2003 by Susie Daly, an aspiring therapist who began making jewelry after college and created the event’s initial edition in Chicago as a means to sell her work. The first time the market came to Brooklyn, in 2005, it took place in the drained-out pool at McCarren Park in Williamsburg, where customers descended the sloped sides to peer at handmade offerings.

Now in its twenty-first year, and dozens of installments later, Renegade has grown from its humble roots to become an institution — in 2008, Brooklyn Paper was already dubbing it the “preeminent D.I.Y. fair in the world.” And as of this year, casting a historian’s eye on the now-ubiquitous genre of small creators, SFGate described it as “arguably the mother of all contemporary craft fairs.”

A large banner awaited customers at this year’s previous Brooklyn event. Photo: Renegade Craft

Today, Renegade throws events in Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, along with summer and winter bonanzas in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. The company expanded to London and Portland, Oregon, but the former proved too logistical because of the distance and the latter simply didn’t catch on as fervently as it did elsewhere. Austin, Texas and Boston were cut due to the pandemic.

Part of what makes the fair such a draw no matter the locale is the careful vetting process for vendors. Renegade’s art director, Madelon Juliano, and her team combed over 600 applications for the upcoming winter fair at ZeroSpace. She said they juried based on quality alone, and had no hesitation including early-career artists alongside seasoned veterans, like long-time Etsy darling Wren Handmade.

The backgrounds of organizers like Daly — accomplished artists in their own rights, but ones who may have taken winding paths — speak to the grit of the participating vendors, many of whom seemed to have conjured a creative livelihood for themselves out of sheer force of will.

The Monday before the fair, Kelsie McNair spent the morning making stained-glass martini glasses. “[As Brooklynites,] we live in a place where there aren’t as many windows [being commissioned] as there might be in other parts of the country,” she explained, “because we’re mostly renting apartments.” So as an artist working with glass, she’s had to branch out: other items include languidly colorful forks, frames for mirrors, and even album art for the singer Jake Wesley Rogers.

McNair, originally from Virginia, started a vintage store out of college, at age 22. “I learned so much about small business, and about trying to be creative when you’re also trying to pay the bills. How do I find my joyful experience in the vast landscape of all the minutiae that the processing of owning a store brings?” After four years, she closed the shop and embarked on a range of other creative endeavors — photography, a job at a florist — before a friend recommended a glass residency program.

At first, it was “just something to do.” McNair had just wrapped her time as a shop owner, which she felt was “the best thing I was ever going to do,” and was feeling burnt out. But this residency, and the medium of glass, offered a way forward. “It sharpened my understanding of what kind of work I want to always have in my life,” she reflected.

McNair eventually landed a gig as a social media manager for Renegade, and began vending her own pieces in 2021.

The experience has been “wonderful” so far, she said. But she was sober about the acrobatics that creators must perform to remain marketable without compromising their personal style or message.

“We’re all in our own different challenging bubbles,” she said, “because we’re creating a path for ourselves that are uniquely ours. We are all looking for our own objects that work within the dialogue of the buyer or of the consumer or the customer, and we’re also constantly having to work to stay true to ourselves and to our brand.”

Similar themes resonated with illustrator Daili Shang, though her route to Renegade differed from that of McNair.

Shang left China to study physics in a PhD program at UCLA, specializing in cancer treatment — much of her work centered on CAT scans and MRIs, she said. But she’d never thought of herself as a science person, and “didn’t really feel passion for it.”

Attendees examine patterned tote bags earlier this year, at Renegade’s first of two bi-annual markets in Brooklyn. Photo: Renegade Craft

When the pandemic struck, Shang found herself coding all day from home. It was miserable, yet it also offered a chance to reconsider her career. “I was just wondering about what I liked to do before [science],” she said, “what would bring me joy? And drawing is one of those things.”

The only issue? The last time Shang had picked up art supplies was in elementary school. Undeterred, she began to teach herself to draw — in her 30s, she wryly observed — by taking every online class she could find. Despite the difficulty of finding her own style, the pressure was manageable, because she had taken the leap and left physics for a new job, as a store manager for the high-end biking company Specialized.

Her first Renegade market was in Los Angeles in the spring of 2022, while still working at the bike shop. Initially, she focused on selling small stickers, which often incorporated the motifs of cats, bicycles, and self-help adjacent puns. But the margins were too slim when she decided to switch to art full-time, and she also began to have qualms about the stickers’ environmental footprint.

Serendipitously, Shang stumbled across linocut printing, her current medium of choice, though she is beginning to shift again towards acrylic painting. The cats are still there, but they’ve grown more whimsical, and the colors are bolder. And though cancer research, bikes, and illustration may seem impossibly disparate, Shang was adamant that the twists and turns were part of her work’s appeal.

“What I want to offer the public is not just my art,” she said. “I want to offer them my story. Then they can also prioritize happiness and reflect on what they really want in life, and then live a happy life. Not everyone has to live a life they don’t want to be because they’re supposed to live a certain way.”

A vendor from Renegade’s fair at McCarren Park in 2006, its second year in the borough. Photo: Renegade Craft

Juliano emphasized that the chance to form personal connections with the artists is one reason why Renegade has been so successful, enduring for over two decades.

Yet she was also thoughtful about the unavoidable context for the fair: Black Friday. On the one hand, she noted that many of the vendors were relying on the event to make their yearly budgets even out, and was candid about the imperative to sell items. On the other, she viewed the economy of independent creators that Renegade has fostered as an alternative to a more wasteful commercialism.

“Because of how long I’ve been working at Renegade, buying from small businesses has become a habit,” Juliano explained. “And I think something so cool about continuing to support things like Renegade and artists that participate in them is that once you keep doing it, you really can’t go back to buying stuff that you know is going right to the landfill, or you know isn’t going to last, or is so trendy that you feel like it’s not going to stick around your closet anymore.”

Thin and Thinning Margins: Cap on Delivery App Fees May Be Rolled Back

BQE Admin on November 27, 2024

By Jack Delaney

New York City lawmakers are considering lifting a cap on how much delivery apps can charge restaurants for each order, which was first implemented during the pandemic. Supporters claim the cap was a stopgap measure that no longer makes sense, while detractors say the change would squeeze the margins of small businesses that are already struggling.

Currently, third-party delivery services like Doordash and Grubhub are limited to charging any given restaurant a maximum of 23% per sale — 15% for delivery, 3% for credit card processing, and 5% for other fees. But a new bill, Int 762, would increase this cap to a total of 43% per order, by giving vendors the ability to ‘opt in’ to an additional 20% fee in return for enhanced services such as marketing.

New York has long been a unique market for delivery apps because of its transportation profile. Unlike other major cities such as Los Angeles, NYC is extremely dense and micromobility — encompassing scooters, mopeds, and e-bikes — is far more common than cars, which dominate elsewhere. As a result, the city’s regulatory framework for deliveries has evolved in ways that have diverged from the rest of the country.

While it was the first city to implement a delivery fee cap in March of 2020, it is also now one of the last municipalities — down from a peak total of more than 100 — that has kept the policy in the wake of the pandemic. The bill’s proponents say there is little to justify what they view as a burdensome legal holdover.

Bowing to a Monopoly, or Restoring a ‘Free Market’?

App companies have been proactive in expressing their discontent over local regulations, of which the fee cap is only one component. Last year, Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub sued the city over a law establishing minimum wage for food delivery workers, arguing that it used faulty data to determine how much the contractors should earn. The companies had been beset by claims of wage theft, triggering scrutiny from the City Council. And this September, the apps were handed a favorable ruling when a judge found that a consumer data-sharing requirement, implemented by the city in 2021, was unconstitutional.

Now, the tug-of-war between restaurants, delivery workers, and third-party services is shifting to the fee cap. “The Fair Competition for Restaurants Act is a compromise solution that gives New York’s small, independent restaurants more options on our platform while keeping important safeguards in place,” a representative for GrubHub said. “It allows them flexibility to market themselves, grow their customer base, and compete with the big chains.”

But Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, opposed the bill during a hearing in June, decrying what he called “monopolistic behavior.” He was echoed by Chris Lauber, Director of Operations at LT Hospitality Management, who held that “for an industry with thin profit margins of 5 to 10 percent, increasing these fees could mean the difference between staying open and closing.”

However, at the June hearing, Council Member Rafael Salamanca Jr. pushed Rigie and Lauber on why these price controls are necessary, given that the extra charge would be voluntary on the part of restaurants.

In response, Lauber said that the cap helps to prevent an exponential ‘race to the bottom,’ driven by what he described as the app companies’ high degree of leverage over their clients. Specifically, both he and Rigie highlighted the role of search engines.

At the current 23% rate, Lauber claimed, the ease with which a restaurant is found depends mostly on proximity to the customer or the type of food they’re searching for. By comparison, he worried that the language around search priority in the new bill was vague, allowing apps to bury businesses who don’t opt into higher premiums.

“If our restaurants had been next to each other and they had two different marketing strategies inside,” he said, “we would then have one exponentially higher than the other, which is ultimately what they’re arguing is the point. However, the margins are so thin going into restaurants to begin with that it creates kind of an effective rat race that would be exponentially playing one off of the other to get higher and higher in the fee cap, until eventually it’s exhausted.”

Disputed Protections

Delivery apps have pointed to the fact that many restaurants appear to support the bill as evidence that it will maintain an even playing field.

“Despite claims made by industry lobbyists for large restaurant chains, support for this amendment is led by New York’s small and independent restaurants, including the NY Latino Restaurant & Bar Association and multiple community organizations,” Grubhub’s spokesperson said. They noted that the bill enshrines additional protections for restaurants, which include “the rights to be listed and discoverable, to include their own marketing materials in deliveries, to set their own in-app menu prices, and to prohibit delivery platforms purchasing their restaurant’s name for advertising.” Regular compliance assessments would also be required.

Yet Lauber was skeptical that these protections would be enough to shield smaller vendors. “Recently, I even had to argue with multiple platforms just to abide by the current regulations in place and not overcharge us when onboarding our restaurants,” he said. “So removing the fee cap would disproportionately affect smaller independent restaurants and bring bargaining power to larger restaurants, further creating an uneven playing field that favors larger chains.”

There is no set date for when the bill will be brought before the council again, but advocates on both sides predict it will be a matter of weeks, and are kicking into high gear to persuade council members before a vote.

City of ‘Yes, But’: Landmark Housing Deal Squeezes Through to Full Vote, with Caveats

BQE Admin on November 26, 2024

A map depicting the new plan for parking mandates: red zones will see them rolled back completely, while residents in the yellow and blue areas will experience partial reductions to the requirements. (Credit: New York City Council)

By Jack Delaney

New York City’s most sweeping housing plan in decades cleared a crucial hurdle this week, as the City Council pushed forward changes to zoning laws and other regulations so that 80,000 new units can be built across the city.

Last Thursday, the Council’s Land Use Committee voted 8 to 2 in favor of a revised version of ‘City of Yes,’ a slate of modifications to citywide rules that has been a key part of Mayor Eric Adams’ agenda and that is intended to alleviate the city’s acute housing shortage. The original plan aimed to create 109,000 units in the next 15 years, but it was amended after backlash among some electeds over hot-button issues such as the abolition of parking mandates.

There haven’t been major changes to the city’s zoning laws since 1961, and pressure for reforms has mounted in recent years as the housing crisis has worsened. A particularly dire indicator is that as of 2024, the rental vacancy rate had dropped to an abysmal 1.4%, the lowest on record since 1968 and a marked decrease from a pandemic-era level of 4.5% in 2021. “The data is clear,” said Mayor Adams in February. “The demand to live in our city is far outpacing our ability to build housing.”

Down to the wire

As of the morning of the vote, it remained unclear whether a deal would be struck. If the council had declined to vote, the plan would have passed without amendments. The vote itself was delayed by over five hours, as council members hashed out a workable compromise. In the end, it took an unexpected injection of $1 billion from Governor Kathy Hochul to ensure that the amended proposal would be approved.

Since City of Yes was first announced in June 2022, Mayor Adams and his allies have characterized it as “a little more housing in every neighborhood.” Though the Council’s amendments still pave the way for a substantial amount of housing, they represent a more Balkanized tack, in which some neighborhoods will bear a greater share of development thanks to regulations that vary based on borough and distance from transit hubs.

The two most contentious facets of the original plan — parking mandates and ADUs, or accessory dwelling units — were accordingly the focal points for the compromise deal.

Rather than discarding the minimums completely, the deal creates a three-tiered system based on geography. In almost all of Manhattan, and much of western Queens and Brooklyn — dubbed Tier 1 — Parking mandates would be eliminated entirely. For Tier 2, which covers swaths of Brooklyn and the Bronx, mandates would be lowered substantially, cutting the number of required parking units by three-quarters across the zone. And in Tier 3, largely contained to Queens, minimums for standard projects would remain in place, but would be lifted for ADUs), transit-oriented districts, and town centers as long as new construction contains fewer than 75 units.

The agreement also ratcheted up regulations on ADUs, a key component of the City of Yes plan, as well as small apartments in backyards, garages, and other spaces on existing properties. The compromise would prohibit ground-floor and basement ADUs in coastal and inland flood-prone areas, while disallowing backyard ADUs in historic districts and certain areas designated for single-family homes.

Too Much, Not Enough

Council Member Bob Holden, who has been part of a vocal opposition, called the deal “a terrible plan” and said that his constituents “reject the idea of giving real estate developers a blank check to overdevelop our city.” He and other Republican lawmakers had expressed concerns about potential overcrowding, strain on infrastructure, and the impact of large-scale developments on ‘neighborhood character.’

For their part, progressives like State Senator Zellnor Myrie criticized the proposal for not going far enough. “With today’s carveouts, an already modest step forward has slowed to an even more hesitant pace,” Myrie said. “Every housing unit cut from this proposal represents another family that will have to leave New York City.” He added that he hoped the full Council would approve the changes without further amendments during its stated meeting next month.

Even so, many housing advocates have reacted positively to the amended plan. Some argued that critics who initially focused on concessions were losing the forest for the trees, and praised what they saw as a paradigm shift. “Essentially, this is fantastic,” said one representative, who asked to remain anonymous. “City of Yes was never going to be the fix to our housing crisis. But what this does, which has never been done before in New York City, is to recognize that a zoning change is essential to providing affordable housing.”

The plan will now return to the City Planning Commission for review before proceeding to a final vote by the full City Council in December.

New Grants Seek Local Answers to Brooklyn’s Maternal Health Crisis

BQE Admin on November 7, 2024

Brooklyn Communities Collaborative convenes leaders in Brooklyn maternal health for a roundtable discussion (Credit: Brooklyn Communities Collaborative).

By Jack Delaney

A new influx of grants is looking to empower a range of local Brooklyn nonprofits to address the nationwide maternal health crisis from the ground up.

On October 30, health equity nonprofit Brooklyn Communities Collaborative (BCC) announced that it was doling out just under $1 million in grants to 10 community-based organizations throughout the borough, with a focus on equipping mothers with better care, supplies, and information.

This money comes as alarm bells sound at all levels of government over health data that shows little progress is being made in reducing serious complications and fatalities suffered by women during childbirth, a problem few other affluent nations face.

In Norway, the maternal death rate is a non-issue: statistically, zero women die per 100,000 live births. In Switzerland, that number is one. Sweden, the Netherlands, Japan? All hover around three.

Yet the U.S. clocks in at 22, the most significant maternal death rate of any high-income country. This rate worsens if you live in New York City, rising to 43. In fact, the greatest determinant of health outcomes for mothers isn’t geography, but race: Black women in the city are nine times more likely than white women to die during pregnancy.

This gap can be explained in part by a deep-seated history of sexism and racism in the healthcare industry, tracing back to slavery. James Marion Sims, the so-called “Father of Gynecology,” developed his techniques in the 1840s through horrific experiments which two enslaved Black women, Lucy and Anarcha, as well as many unnamed others, were forced to undergo without anesthesia. Sims’ statue was on prominent display in Central Park until 2018, when public outcry finally led to its removal — though not without backlash.

This history extends to the lack of access to midwives and doulas in the U.S., which persists despite the fact that both figure prominently in most countries with lower maternal death rates. “Gynecologists pushed women out of the field of reproductive health by lobbying state legislatures to ban midwifery and prohibit abortions,” writes Professor Michele Godwin of UC Irvine for the ACLU. “Doing so not only undercut women’s reproductive health, but also drove qualified Black women out of medical services.”

Today, the enormous discrepancy in maternal health outcomes between Black and white mothers is perpetuated not only by ongoing structural racism in the health system, said Shari Suchoff, Executive Director of BCC, but by chronic disinvestment in many areas.

“It isn’t just a healthcare crisis, it’s not just a nutrition crisis, it’s not an access crisis, it’s not an education crisis,” she noted. “It’s all of those things together. And the only way that we can solve complex problems is by working together with people outside of our immediate sector.”

To that end, the grants engage hyperlocal organizations that collectively represent a constellation of approaches.

One of these is Seeds in the Middle, which is getting $50,000 to offer mothers prenatal movement and yoga classes, breathing classes, emotional support services, and a fresh food pantry.

“Your baby can crawl around. You can have a cup of tea or coffee, something that helps mental health,” said Nancie Katz, the organization’s Executive Director, of creating a space where mothers can access healthy food while decompressing. “It’s preventative. What we know to be true in Black and Brown communities is that the rates of diabetes, heart disease, obesity, premature death, infant mortality, and maternal death are two or three times that of any community that’s wealthier, particularly white communities.”

Suchoff also highlighted the importance of prevention. “So much of this crisis really starts many years before women are pregnant,” said Suchoff, referencing the toll that chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension can take during childbirth, if mothers don’t have access to preventative measures or medication. “I think that’s why we took a broad approach with this grant program.”

Other grantees, like the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health, which is receiving approximately $120,000, are tackling the issue through outreach and community-building initiatives.

The Institute was founded by its namesake, the influential tennis pro Arthur Ashe, and “utilizes a model of community health empowerment and engagement to promote health equity and social justice through strategic partnerships, innovative community-based health promotion and research programs, and the preparation of a more diverse and inclusive workforce of health professionals.”

In this case, that model means meeting residents where they are. “We’re going to be collaborating with barbershops and salons to educate folks on the maternal health crisis,” explained Faven Araya, the Institute’s Director of Community Engagement and Health Equity Research. “Oftentimes, pregnant women are dealing with a lot of changes in their body, and some are abnormal. What are the things that should be concerning? What are the things that you should pick up the phone and call your doctor for? What are some of the things that you should go to the emergency room for?”

Aside from information about recognizing warning signs, the barbers and stylists will also be trained to communicate the rights that residents have around getting connected to appropriate care, and the different venues and spaces that are available to them.

BCC is awarding the largest grant is the Brooklyn Perinatal Network, which will receive $250,000 to “invest in studies of upstream and downstream factors impacting the availability and access to community and social services that address health related social needs.” Other big recipients include the Alex House Project, which will “continue providing career opportunities, comprehensive doula services and mental health, case management and psychotherapy/education sessions,” and the Caribbean Women’s Health Association, which has a mandate to “strengthen community outreach, workshops, and counseling services surrounding sexual health, birth control, and chronic disease management.”

This is the third round of grants awarded through BCC’s Strong Communities Fund, which has given nearly $5 million to local public health groups since it launched in 2020 during the pandemic. Funding for this latest slew of grants drew support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which Suchoff pointed to as a significant development.

“Robert Wood Johnson, a very large national foundation, working in this space is really exciting,” Suchoff said, “because it’s giving up their power to the community to put the money where they think it’s most important. So it represents a real shift in the general funder-fundee power dynamics.”

These local intercessions are especially important, given that a recent report by SUNY Downstate found that the ‘epicenter’ of New York’s maternal health crisis was Central Brooklyn. One hospital in particular, Woodhull Medical Center in Bed-Stuy, has been rocked by claims of malpractice.

But the problem is more systemic than a single hospital. A Department of Health report earlier this year found that “Brooklyn’s communities of color and high-poverty neighborhoods have fewer health care professionals and less hospital capacity per capita than the borough’s wealthier and predominantly white ZIP codes.” And it concluded that wealthier residents went to Manhattan for care, while those on Medicaid were stuck with underfunded local facilities.

City and state officials haven’t been sitting idly by. In 2018, DeBlasio launched a $13 million initiative to close maternal health gaps through implicit bias training, better data collection, support for hospitals, and partnership with community organizations. In 2021, the New York City Board of Health declared racism a public health crisis amid a pandemic that exacerbated longtime inequities, laying them bare.

Governor Kathy Hochul has been proactive on the issue, too. In January, she announced a six-part plan to improve barriers to adequate maternal healthcare, then in May passed a bill making New York the first state to mandate paid prenatal care leave. She penned in $1.6 million for maternal mental health initiatives in the 2025 budget. And in August, she earmarked $27.5 million for maternal and pediatric care at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, following $8 million in funds for the Morris Heights Health Center in the Bronx to build a state-of-the-art maternal health center.

Like the BCC, the government is also starting to look beyond the hospital system for answers to the crisis. As of March 1, New York State Medicaid covers doula services — and the Doula Expansion Grant Program will allow the Department to award $250,000 to community-based organizations for the recruitment, training, certification, support, and mentoring of community-based doulas.

Even so, the latest statistics suggest that the maternal health gap may be growing nationwide, even as other countries make strides in closing it.

Ultimately, Suchoff noted that there’s no “silver bullet” for the crisis. But in her view, the local approach may be an increasingly important component of the solution.

“This is a model that’s worked really well,” she said. “We’ve been able to fund really small organizations who have trouble accessing funding from bigger foundations which can be burdensome to work with, and also created a really nice community of community-based organizations who are working together and trying to break down some of the silos that exist inherently in this work.”

Brooklyn Borough Resident Antonio Reynoso agreed. “For too long, Black and Brown mothers in Brooklyn have been disproportionately impacted by the maternal health crisis,” he said, lauding the grant program. “We cannot secure better outcomes for mothers and infants without first addressing this disparity and identifying the parts of our borough that are most vulnerable. By investing in CBOs that work directly with the most impacted communities, Brooklyn Communities Collaborative is empowering smaller organizations to tackle this crisis and improve maternal health in their own neighborhoods.”

Industry City Fashion Show Celebrates Brooklyn’s Multicultural Design Talent

BQE Admin on October 31, 2024

A runway look from Adeleke Sijuwade’s “L Collection” featured in a “A Very Brooklyn Fashion Show.” Credit: Nicholas Gordon.

By NICHOLAS GORDON

Brooklyn’s multiculturalism and visionary styles were on vivid display at the second annual “A Very Brooklyn Fashion Show” at Industry City in Sunset Park on October 15. It was a kaleidoscopic night of bright fabrics and bold patterns, cool silk and tough denim, graffiti, beads, jewelry, ruffles, and fringe worn by an eclectic medley of fashion models strutting their stuff to a musical playlist as diverse as the borough itself. Hosted by the Brooklyn Made Store during Brooklyn Fashion Week, the show featured the work of over ten local designers with heritage from countries across the globe, including Haiti, India, Nigeria, and Ukraine.

“I love seeing all of these different kinds of models and designers in a fashion show,” said Catherine Schuller, founder of Runway the Real Way, and a curator of the show along with Rick Davy, creator of Fashion Week Brooklyn. “We’re thrilled to be part of an event that honors the spirit and diversity of our community,” Schuller added, in an interview after the show.

As a pioneering plus-size model in the 80’s, Schuller said she was “bit by the diversity bug” and has thrived on creating inclusive catwalks ever since. As a designer herself, Schuller marries comic books with fashion, creating upcycled jewelry and accessories that she describes as “power pieces of heroic adornment,” several of which were featured in the show.

Catherine Schuller, founder of Runway the Real Way and a curator of “A Very Brooklyn Fashion Show,” addresses the audience on October 15. Credit: Nicholas Gordon.

Designer Adeleke Sijuwade delivered a bracing streetwear collection set to the throwback track “Jump” by 90’s hip-hop duo Kriss Kross, mixing elements of hip-hop, basketball, westerns, cartoons, and Sijuwade’s Nigerian roots.

“A lot of the things I create for the runway are things I love, and I draw inspiration from things I’m fascinated with,” Sijuwade said, in a phone interview. “It’s natural for me to be attracted to bright colors and patterns with a lot of details, because these are things African people wear everyday.”

Born in Nigeria, Sijuwade moved to the U.S. at age 6. He visits Nigeria a couple of times each year, he said.

While he enjoys being bold and playful with his creative choices, such as by adding Victorian ruffles, wide collar flares, suspenders, sports jerseys, or overalls to his signature baggy looks, Sijuwade said he is always focused on making clothes that are comfortable and accessible for a broad spectrum of humanity.

“It’s about bringing together different design elements in casual structures, clothing that’s wearable for everyone, no matter what shape you’re in,” Sijuwade said.

Several of Sijuwade’s garments featured powerful images of hiphop icons such as Biggie Smalls hand-painted by African artists that he’d collaborated with on trips back to his motherland of Nigeria.

Sijuwade said his goal is to take his painter-designer collaboration to the next level by exhibiting new pieces at a local museum.

Paying homage to heritage through collaboration is a potent approach for designer Renuka Malhi too, whose work was featured in the show under her brand name of “Re’Malhi.”

“Collaborating with other artists really elevates you,” Malhi said, in an interview after the show. “We uplift each other. It’s a different spirit when we work together with other designers because there’s so much to learn.”

Though for her brand she often makes couture gowns for the red carpet, Malhi said she wanted to change it up for this show with a line called “Little Black Secret,” evoking a mysterious autumn vibe.

In addition to collaborating with shoe designers and Schuller who had some pieces from her line “Power Pieces x S Designs” in the collection, Malhi also teamed up with an artist from Kashmir, India, on a handmade black and white jacket that took several months to complete.

Designer Roselyne Shiyenze takes to the runway with one of her models at the conclusion of the show. Credit: Nicholas Gordon.

“The jacket is coming from the land where artists embroider by hand, sew every single flower, using silks and a lot of fusion with different fabrics,” Malhi said, noting that with her Indian background she’s a huge fan of great textiles and brocades. Malhi was born and raised in Punjab, India, and moved to the U.S. at age 20.

Deeply inspired by the work of her fellow designers in the show, Malhi said she has great appreciation for the creative diversity teeming in Brooklyn and on display in the collections.

“I thoroughly believe that every designer is unique in their designs, everyone brings a story that’s attached to their collection, and I enjoy that,” Malhi said. “I’m looking forward to working with more diversity in the future.”

New Brooklyn Festival Highlights Creole Artists

BQE Admin on October 30, 2024

“What’s beautiful about discovering Creole culture is that you have to embrace multiplicity,” says Kréol Fest organizer Natie.

The idea for Kréol Fest, an upcoming arts bash at Cafe Erzulie in Bushwick on November 3 that aims to celebrate the intersections of Creole cultures through music, dance, visual arts, fashion, and food, came to its organizer, who goes by the mononym Natie, in stages.

The first was in 2020, during the Black Lives Matter protests in Brooklyn. “I felt really lost,” Natie, a classically trained violinist who toured with Beyoncé before launching her solo career in 2018, remembered. “I wasn’t marching, I wasn’t posting about it on social media, and I thought, is this me not being a part of the fight?” But an art curator whom she was friends with told her that while it was important to be fighting injustice, there was also a role for those who could “build something to come back to.” Expanding from that kernel, Natie decided to create a weekly jam session called Sunday Art Hang, based out of the Clinton Hill bar Izzy Rose.

“It was right after the lockdown,” she said, “and it was about creating a community so that artists wouldn’t go crazy in their heads by themselves. They would have an afternoon to share what they were doing, where they were at, what they were struggling with. It was for us to hear each other and support each other.” Sunday Art Hang is now in its third year, and recently expanded to a new space at another Brooklyn bar, Umbra.

Yet back during the pandemic, Natie, who is from Réunion, a French department off the coast of Madagascar, found herself for the first time in a bubble with only American friends. “It was a super fun group,” she said. “But when it came to conversations about race, it was really tense.”

“I felt misunderstood, but I realized I also had a lot to learn and understand about the dynamics here: what does ‘Black’ mean, what does ‘white’ mean in this context? That was the awakening of my sense that there is so much to talk about — and without sounding like I’m preaching, I think there’s something to be shared from where I come from, another way to look at how we live together.”

Then, in 2023, Natie connected with a percussion group from Réunion called Rouler Killer that was visiting New York, and convinced them to come to Sunday Art Hang for a night of improvised music. “It was so special,” she said. “That was a preview of what Kréol Fest could be like — that moment really fueled me.”

The third and final component settled into place when Natie’s partner relayed a conversation he’d had with a Haitian artist, whom he was telling about her Creole roots. To the artist, the fact that she came from Réunion seemed disqualifying. “But,” the artist said, “they’re not Creole!”

A recent jazz night at Cafe Erzulie, which will be the venue for Kréol Fest.

It’s in this crucible of questions — about race and belonging, the far-reaching resonances of the term ‘Creole,’ and the role that art has to play — that the festival has taken shape. Running from 6 p.m. until midnight, it will assemble ten artists (including saxophonist Kafele Bandele, visual artist Watson Mere, and fashion curator SA-RA) from a wide range of disciplines, representing five different countries: New Orleans, Réunion, Guyana, Trinidad, and Haiti. The event will kick off with a panel discussion, followed by live performances and an array of vendors.

“What’s beautiful about discovering Creole culture is that you have to embrace multiplicity,” Natie stressed. “Because by nature it is a blend. It’s even more important now, in such a divided climate. Everything is polarizing, a binary choice, and when you engage with Creole culture you have to expand that vision and embrace the fact that it’s this and this and this, and it coexists.”

Ideally, Natie hopes the event will extend beyond this initial installment to become something more. “I want Kréol Fest to exist in ten years,” she said. “I want it to travel. The idea is to uplift each other, and through this shared history see where we can grow stronger as a community.”

Bowing to a Monopoly, or Restoring a ‘Free Market’?

Disputed Protections

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