Due to the inclement weather, the Brooklyn Mocha Moms "Families for Haiti" Fundraiser (originally scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 27) has been rescheduled to Saturday, March 20, 2010.
Due to the inclement weather, the Brooklyn Mocha Moms "Families for Haiti" Fundraiser (originally scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 27) has been rescheduled to Saturday, March 20, 2010.
What they collect will go to one of our favorite organizations, Partners in Health, as well as to a Brooklyn-based women's group called Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees.
The place will be the popular Madiba Restaurant on DeKalb Ave. in Fort Greene. The time: 2 p.m.
Cost is $10 per family (which means "unlimited children").
Be there, moms, dads, kids -- and all others wanting to help Haitian brothers and sisters coping with an unspeakable crisis.
See BrooklynRon's previous slideshow promoting Partners in Health and the work it is doing in Haiti.
See also our post on how Brooklynites are organizing to help Haiti, whose extraordinary revolution two centuries ago inspired people of African descent around the hemisphere.
(Note: This is an edited version of a post I did about a year ago. It has relevance now in light of the acquittal of 71st precinct officers in the Michael Mineo case.)
I told the officer and his partner that I did not see or know that there ever were yellow lines there. I got a ticket. Not only that, the cop, freaked out by my attitude and unerring syntax in speaking, actually followed me home, driving off after he and his partner saw me turning into the driveway of my home indicated on my driver's license.
Fast Forward. I took pictures showing that there were no yellow lines. I got the state senator (Eric Adams, whose office is on the block) to sign a letter saying there were no yellow lines, and the local Community Board district manager to sign one as well.
In traffic court, the officer stands up and boldly states the alleged infraction and at least twice describes the "clear yellow lines" that I had crossed. He was stunned and hung his head low as I presented page after page of evidence, including blow-ups of photos showing there were no such lines, which led the judge to find me not guilty.
But what would have happened to a citizen without a camera or unable to easily contact officials who would back him up? And how often are police just making up charges, just to have an extra ticket on the books or to harrass someone?
I recall my frustration also, right after the encounter with the police officers, as I tried to complain to community affairs officers at the precinct.
This is not to say that the tatoo man, Mineo, was a victim or not. He surely seemed to have butt wounds that, I suspect, he did not inflict upon himself.
But this post is to say that I had my own street encounter with an officer from the 71st, and he, excuse the expression, lied his butt off.
The first thought is always, I hate snow. Why do we have to go through this?
And then as the day goes by you give in to the inner urge to see young ones of the town sledding in Prospect Park and enjoying the freedom of a day when schools are closed.
Taking in hand the phone that serves as music player, date keeper and picture taker on snowy days, you record the joy that slides down hills.
And you realize that you don't have to be chronologically young to partake of these gravity daring and defying pleasures on display.
Just young at heart; and from Brooklyn.
Herewith a slide show from Yours Truly.
Tina Chang was named Wednesday Brooklyn's new Poet Laureate.
Call it another well placed stroke by Borough President Marty Markowitz.
Chang is a bridge between Asian-American and African-American poets.
Says Broadway World: "She co-founded an annual collaborative reading series between the Asian American Writers' Workshop and Cave Canem, to bring together writers of Asian American and African American descent."
Among the members of the Recommending Committe whose recommendation Markowitz aptly followed were: Julie Agoos, coordinator of the MFA Program in Poetry at Brooklyn College, where she is Tow Professor of English; and Linda Susan Jackson, poet and associate professor of English at Medgar Evers College.
Chang teaches at Hunter College and Sarah Lawrence College. [The photo of Chang here is from her Web site.]
Read her poem, "Praise," with it's haunting phrase, "after the quake . . . " (click here.)
Good thing for Wall Street that Eliot Spitzer was taken down.
It all makes you wonder who was behind the undoing of the ex-gov.
Oh, yes, there clearly were character issues that Spitzer should have dealt with long ago. And those were, at root, the cause of the fall.
But it must have been given an aiding push by those powerful forces on "the Street" who loathed him.
As this clip shows, there's hardly anyone out there now, on the scene of elected officials, who's as tough on the financial sector and its wrong-doers as Spitzer was.
BrooklynRon received the following e-mail:
"Hi, I am looking for Nathalie Jean -Louis and her family. I am searching for them and hoping they are doing well? could you help me out?"
Please contact BrooklynRon at brooklynron@optonline.net if you have heard anything.
Andrew Cuomo [photo, left] has been receiving tons of campaign money from real estate interests, according to today's New York Times.
This is quite scary, really.
When Eliot Spitzer [photo, right] was New York State Attorney General, he made a point of going after corrupt people in the real estate industry, just as he went after alleged wrong-doers on Wall Street.
Remember his moniker, "The Sheriff of Wall Street"?
We sincerely hope that the real estate money is not buying Cuomo, luring him to their side, though some renter advocates say that is precisely what is happening.
This is something we hope is openly and deeply debated in the Democratic Party as they consider his candidacy for governor.
(New York Times: Real Estate Interests Help Cuomo Gain a Big Edge in Cash.)
Howard Zinn [photo here was taken by Robin Holland] has died, diminishing by one (a very significant one) the number of populist historians on the American scene.
Zinn, a professor of history, was the author of "A People's History of the United States."
In 1922 he graced Brooklyn with his birth (check out HowardZinn.org and follow links for bio details), and in the year 2000 he graced yours truly, BrooklynRon, by writing the lead back-page blurb for BrooklynRon's book, "One Hundred Jobs: A Panorama of Work in the American City," published by The New Press.
"One Hundred Jobs is a valuable glimpse of Americana -- here are poignant vignettes of ordinary people doing the jobs that keep our society going," he wrote. "For our star-struck society, this book adds a refreshing dose of reality to the endless stories of the rich and famous."
Zinn took his accumulated wisdom and spread it across the land, offering perspectives full of truths big and small about America past and present.
Zinn was better known for his time as a professor at Boston University, but for a time mid-century he was a tenured professor at Spelman College, the black women's institution of higher ed.
He was fired from there in 1963 after he teamed up with students who wanted to end Spelman's self-identification as a place that turned out "young ladies" as opposed to scholars and women of power.
Zinn would later write of his time at Spelman, "I learned more from my students than my students learned from me."