Talk Bronx New York

Ministries for Peach and Justice

When Alexie Torres-Fleming, the director of Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, was growing up in the 1960s, she would sit at the window of her ninth-floor housing project and watch the South Bronx burn.

“There was a period where I was really ashamed of my community,” said Torres-Fleming, 43, who was raised with her three siblings by Catholic Puerto Rican immigrants in public housing during the epidemic of drug abuse and gang violence.

“If you’re black or brown and you grow up poor the way we did, the message you get is that you’re only going to be successful when you can get out of the ghetto.”

After fleeing the Bronx in her 20s to live and work in Manhattan, Torres-Fleming met human rights icon Luis Garden Acosta, who mentored her at his Williamsburg activist group, El Puente. Inspired by the power of grassroots community organizations, she returned to the South Bronx to ignite local activism.

She joined a community action group at Holy Cross parish. In 1992, after the church led a march against crack houses in the area, drug dealers set the church ablaze in retaliation.

But Torres-Fleming was more devastated over the drug epidemic in her neighborhood. Read more..

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James Vacca Coy Over Possible Bronx Borough President Run

East Bronx City Councilman Jimmy Vacca isn’t totally denying he’s thinking about a run for borough president in the 2009 Democratic primary.

Though he’s up for one more Council term, he has yet to declare for any office with the city Campaign Finance Board.

And with three Hispanics - term-limited Council Majority Leader Joel Rivera, Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr. and ex-State Sen. Pedro Espada - likely to dilute the Latino vote, and Councilwoman Helen Foster pulling a heavy black vote, Jimmy just might slide in with the help of the East Bronx/Riverdale white vote.

But we tend to think it could be a bargaining chip with Joel’s dad, Dem Jefe Jose Rivera, to back Jimmy for a council leadership role - from Speaker to chair of a powerful committee, such as land use or finance.

Competing for a Council plum: South Bronx Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo.

East Bronx/Queens Rep. Joe Crowley likes and respects Jimmy, but as Queens Democratic boss, he also has to deal with his homies.

Gettin’ his mojo workin’

Political circles are wondering just when Joel Rivera is gonna get out of the gate in that run for Bronx BP.

While Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr. has been raising bucks and working the boro, Joel’s already spent half his money raised so far and barely been making the rounds.

“It’s like he’s campaigning in his apartment,” said a local political operative - not the only one talking about it.

But Joel’s camp says it’s ready to crank up his political mojo - when the time is right.

One thing for sure - the last thing Daddy Rivera wants is party arch-enemy Pedro Espada having a shot at winning - or being a spoiler. Read more..

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DEP Seeks Rate Hike As Institutions & Co-Ops Owe Millions

Call it Law and Water.

While the city Department of Environmental Protection turned off the water at nearly 100 single-family homes earlier this month, the agency has left the water running at dozens of Bronx institutions and co-op buildings that owe millions in unpaid bills.

To make matters worse, many of those institutions say they struggle to pay the bills because the DEP is charging them for years of misread meters and other billing mistakes.

The chaotic billing situation exists even as the DEP seeks a 14.5% water bill hike.

City Council opponents of the hike fume it would not be necessary if the DEP collected the $600 million owed by 15% of its customers.

The DEP says it did not have the ability to recover the money until last December, when Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council gave it authority to impose property liens on deadbeats.

In early April, the DEP announced it was shutting the water off at 93 homes across the city that owed between $1,342 and $2,330 - a total that amounted to no more than $220,000.

Meanwhile, according to a list of delinquent payers the DEP released after receiving it via a Freedom of Information Act request, the top 10 debtors in the Bronx owe $6 million - most of them exempt from the lien sale.

They include St. Vincent De Paul, a nursing home which owes $844,465; Leland Gardens, a condo building on Leland Ave. which owes $961,642, and a housing development fund co-op building at 2089 Arthur Ave. which is $870,813 in arrears.

Many of the largest unpaid Bronx bills are from nursing homes that say they are strapped for cash and dependent on government funds, including St. Vincent de Paul, Workmen’s Circle MultiCare Center and the Hebrew Home for the Aged.

Soloman Rutenberg, Workmen’s Circle’s executive director, said the home was hit with a $400,000 bill after the DEP found it had been misreading the home’s meter for several years. Read more..

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Yes, Pursue Special Prosecutor. But Why Are Cops’ Victims Almost Always Black?

The script is all too familiar: An unarmed black man who committed no crime is approached by police and ends up shot dead. Sean Bell is just the latest in a string of victims whose final moments fit that pattern. What comes next is also pretty predictable: The officers who fired the fatal shots are indicted and stand trial and are found not guilty.

Acquittals Friday for the officers who fired on Bell and two others outside a Queens strip club in 2006 have sparked calls for a special prosecutor to handle cases in which cops kill unarmed people. It’s a reform worth pursuing. No bureaucratic shuffle can answer the key question in these tragedies, but it would engender more confidence that future cases will be investigated and prosecuted impartially.

When defendants are cops, the cozy working relationship that routinely exists between the police and a district attorney makes at least the appearance of a conflict of interest inescapable.

Make no mistake, it will always be difficult to convict officers who shoot while on duty. Life-and-death decisions made in a heartbeat should not be second-guessed cavalierly. And criminal intent is all but impossible to establish. Still, shifting the cases to a special prosecutor would help to defuse the explosive belief of many that when cops kill blacks, indictments and trials are shams.

But beyond this after-the-fact reform is the real question, and it’s one that urgently needs answering: Why, when police kill, are the victims so often black men? Such as Amadou Diallo, shot clutching his dinner and wallet outside his Bronx apartment. Or teenager Timothy Stansbury, shot on the roof of his Brooklyn building. Or Ousmane Zongo, killed when he happened upon a cop in a ministorage building. Or Patrick Dorismond, shot after voicing his ire at being approached by an undercover cop looking to buy drugs. Or bridegroom Sean Bell.

SOURCE: NewsDay.com Read more..

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The Bronx? No thonx, say residents 

New Yorkers are full of love for their neighborhoods these days - unless they live in the Bronx.

While 75% of city dwellers described their neighborhoods as between “good” and “excellent” in a new survey by the Citizens Committee for New York City, Bronx respondents largely gave their blocks the Bronx cheer.

There, 64% of survey respondents rated their neighborhoods between “poor” and “good.”

A big factor was safety.

City dwellers across the five boroughs agreed in the survey that safety was the most important quality-of-life issue in the city, and Bronx residents were the least likely to call their neighborhoods safe.

“At night, you go to sleep and hear bullets,” said Gloria Taylor, a 56-year-old grandmother and homemaker in Soundview, the Bronx. “If you go out at 6 or 7 in the morning, you never, ever close your eyes.”

Bronx residents said their streets were significantly less safe than those in other parts of the city. Brooklyn residents said theirs were a little less safe, while in Manhattan, Staten Island and Queens, respondents overwhelmingly said they felt safe - and that their streets were above the city average.

“The police are always around here all of the time, said Shirley Russell, 39, of Ozone Park, Queens. “We don’t have a lot of shootings or break-ins or anything like that. It’s quiet.”

New Yorkers in the survey also ranked clean air and streets and access to public transportation as major issues that affect urban quality of life.

SOURCE: NYDailyNews.com Read more..

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