12 JUNE 23 – JUNE 29, 2017 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP
EDITORIAL A LOOK BACK
SUMMER IN THE CITY
With the lazy, hazy days of summer right around the
corner, you could be dreaming of a white sand beach
with the azure waters of the Caribbean washing your
toes.
But, if like most of us, you’re going to be here, in Brooklyn,
and that idyllic beach is just a dream, there’s still
plenty of reason to rejoice.
Arguably, if you can’t take a slow boat or a quick plane
to paradise, there are few better places to be, something
that people around the world have certainly discovered
as Brooklyn has rapidly become synonymous with hip,
and places as far flung as Oakland, California and North
London, in England, are described as the Brooklyns of
their respective locales.
As residents, we often find ourselves taking everything
the borough has to offer for granted. But, we
shouldn’t, and when summer rolls around, we are reminded
precisely what has made so many people move
here over the past few years.
Between the free concerts and the street food, the
festivals and the fireworks, the Cyclones games and the
parks where you can get your sports on, the county of
Kings is truly a princely place.
The culinary scene is lively and getting more exciting
by the day, so that, whether you’re craving Caribbean
food or fancying French, desirous of dolmades or itching
for Italian eats, you can find what you want.
There’s plenty of culture — theaters big and small,
traditional and experimental, plus museums that offer
everything from world-class art to learning experiences
for the very youngest Brooklynites.
The shopping is equally exciting, thanks to the seemingly
14 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP • MARCH 6 - MARCH 12, 2014
editorial A LOOK BACK compiled by
GO BACK TO THE
DRAWING BOARD
endless creativity of the borough’s denizens,
on view at boutiques and markets, with everything from
housewares to foodstuffs to clothing being produced
and sold right here.
And, scenically, we can more than hold our own with
that other borough right across the river. Whether
you’re on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, the Williamsburg
waterfront, in Shore Road Park in Bay Ridge
or down in Coney Island, the views are spectacular, well
worth soaking in.</Content>
Indeed, if you haven’t been a tourist in your own
borough, you are missing out on a lot.
There’s no time like the present, so lace up your sneakers,
grab your camera and get exploring.
HOMEREPORTER AND SUNSET NEWS
Change (Estab. 1953)
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Gary Nilsen and Helen Klein
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Editor in Chief ... Helen Klein
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Periodical postage paid at Brooklyn, N.Y. Published weekly by Brooklyn Media Group, Inc.
Single copies, 50 cents. $35 per year by mail, $40 outside Brooklyn. On June 8, 1962, the Bay
Ridge Home Reporter (founded 1953) and the Brooklyn Sunset News, a continuation of the Bay
Ridge News (founded 1943) were merged into the HOME REPORTER AND SUNSET NEWS.
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Entire contents copyright 2014 by Home Reporter and Sunset News
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Photo by Gardiner Anderson
And the award goes to… Bay Ridge, which
has provided the backdrop for many movies
and television shows over the years, from
“Blue Bloods” and “Saturday Night Fever” to
“Mad Men” and, in 2006, to “Then She
Found Me,” starring Helen Hunt and Bette
Midler, seen above in a September, 2006,
Home Reporter photo taken on location on
Shore Road at 77th Street. Midler performed
at the most recent Oscars, singing “Wind
Beneath My Wings” during the awards
show’s In Memoriam segment. “Then She
Found Me,” which also starred Matthew
Broderick, was also shot inside a historic
home on 88th Street.
Each day, thousands of people depend
on SUNY Downstate Medical Center for
emergency medical care and vital
health care services.
But this state-operated public hospital has been in
danger of being closed or privatized for more than two
years. Hundreds of jobs have been lost, and numerous
health care services have been cut or curtailed due to the
hospital’s ill-prepared “Sustainability Plan.”
Now, there is language in the 2014-15 proposed state
budget that would open the door to as many as five corporations
to operate SUNY’s public hospitals.
United University Professions, the union that represents
nearly 3,000 employees at SUNY Downstate, has been
fighting to keep SUNY Downstate a fully operational staterun
facility. However, UUP isn’t fighting the battle alone.
The SUNY Downstate Coalition of Faith, Labor and
Community Leaders has become an important ally. The
coalition has staged a number of rallies and protests over
the past 18 months to save health care services and jobs
at SUNY Downstate and keep it a public facility.
The latest such effort is a 48-hour interfaith fast. It
will begin Sunday, March 9, at 3 p.m., in front of
Downstate’s 470 Clarkson Avenue entrance. Interfaith
leaders and members of the community will participate
to show their strong support for this beacon in Brooklyn
and call attention to the threats it faces.
You can take part in the fast or find out more about it
by calling 718-270-1519, or sending an email to
Brooklyn@uupmail.org.
We strongly urge you to join our campaign. Take part in
the fast, or come out and show your support. Together, we
can deliver a strong message that SUNY Downstate must
remain a full-service, state-operated public hospital.
The threats facing SUNY Downstate are real. The
SUNY Board of Trustees has openly discussed the possibility
of closing SUNY Downstate. There is also language
in the Executive Budget, which would allow corporations
to control SUNY’s public hospitals; one corporation must
affiliate with an academic medical institution or teaching
hospital. SUNY Downstate has Brooklyn’s only
teaching hospital.
Privatizing or closing SUNY Downstate as a way for
the state to save dollars is shortsighted and unnecessary.
We believe the answer to Brooklyn’s health care shortcomings
lies in the “Brooklyn Hospitals Safety Net Plan,”
a UUP-backed initiative to stabilize and deliver health
care throughout Brooklyn.
This plan would preserve SUNY Downstate and save
several financially unstable hospitals in Brooklyn,
including Interfaith Medical Center, Brookdale, Long
Island College Hospital and Kingsbrook Jewish Medical
Center. You can see the proposal online at
http://www.brooklynhospitalplan.org.
It calls for the creation of a network of satellite ambulatory
care centers, and would be controlled by and affiliated
with 14 other Brooklyn hospitals. Downstate would
be the network’s hub, educating and supplying physicians
and medical staff to the care centers and working
with doctors at the other hospitals.
It’s a simple, effective plan and, if given a chance, it
will work.
New York has a responsibility to provide for the health
care needs of its citizens. The Brooklyn Hospitals Safety
Net Plan—our plan and the community’s plan—is a
viable, workable option for long-term health care in
Brooklyn.
That’s something that Brooklyn residents desperately
need.
Frederick E. Kowal is president of United University
Professions, the union representing 35,000 faculty and professional
staff at SUNY’s 29 state-operated campuses, including
SUNY’s public teaching hospitals and health science centers
in Brooklyn, Buffalo, Long Island and Syracuse.
With the city deciding to move forward on most of the
school co-locations approved late last year, as Mayor
Bloomberg prepared to vacate City Hall, parents in
southwest Brooklyn are not only disappointed but angry.
While the Department of Education under Mayor de
Blasio wisely opted to back out of a planned co-location of
a new high school inside Gravesend’s John Dewey High
School, the DOE decided to move ahead with two others:
the co-location of a charter school inside Seth Low
Intermediate School in Bensonhurst and another inside
Joseph B. Cavallaro Intermediate School in Bath Beach.
These – like others in the borough and the city – are
both fiercely opposed by parents, educators, students
and the local Community Education Councils, all of
whom contend that the co-locations would steal necessary
space from students already attending the schools,
and those who will be going to them in the near future.
While the city has said it only considers under-utilized
schools for co-locations, area education advocates say
that both Cavallaro and Seth Low are well utilized, and
likely to become more crowded as students now in elementary
school in both District 20 and District 21 move
up to middle school.
Indeed, District 20 is one of the most crowded school
districts in the city, so much so that the city built a host
of new schools for it in the past decade, with more being
planned, meaning that public school students in both
District 20 and District 21 are likely to feel the squeeze
should they have to share space with students from a
charter school.
That strikes us as patently unfair. While some of the
charter schools poised to open in September, 2014 may be
worthy additions to the city’s educational offerings, their
needs should not trump the needs of existing schools
with existing students. And, indeed, when a charter
school is put inside a public school, the process must
involve the school communities at both educational institutions,
and parents must also be involved.
The city must go back to the drawing board and come
up with alternative arrangements for the charter schools
planned for Seth Low and Cavallaro as well as other
schools where they are opposed.. The students who
attend those schools deserve no less.
guest op-ed
Keep SUNY Downstate open and public
BY FREDERICK E. KOWAL
Entire contents copyright 2016 by Home Reporter and Sunset News
For years, local umbrella organization the Bay Ridge Community Council
(BRCC) hosted a track meet, giving youngsters from area schools the opportunity
to head out onto the field and compete, as seen in this photo from
the files of this newspaper. While the BRCC is still around, the track meet
is no longer held, though the venerable organization -- which goes back to
the early 1950s -- still sponsors other young-oriented contests such as the
annual Essay Contest and the ever-popular Halloween Art Contest.
Compiled by Helen Klein
LETTERS
LONG JOURNEY HOME
A bamboo pot plant. Plastic fruits in a bowl
topped with a shiny red envelope. Paper cut-outs
of firecrackers with a layer of dust building since
February, thick like the skin of a leftover dumpling.
Scattered golden characters and phrases plastered
on walls now Jackson Pollocks to my eyes.
I had entered the Old Master Q equivalent of
Universal Pre-K centers.
This was my first day at Happy Dragon Children’s
Family Center in Sunset Park. According to
census data, the neighborhood is 50 percent Latino
and 50 percent Asian. From what I could see, this
Universal Pre-K center was 100 percent Chinese.
It was a world apart from where I grew up in
Australia. I witnessed moments I never thought
were possible in a Western public education
environment: kids proudly exclaiming their
tongue-twisting ethnic names, kids speaking
their native tongue when stumped by English, no
hesitation or embarrassment from kids as their
parents meet teachers, and fascination — not
disgust — over what other kids have for lunch.
The irony of teaching yoga and mindfulness
is that I'm tasked to help my students be still
and okay with sitting simply by themselves. My
weekly visits to this site started to feel like House
of Flying Triggers as every face beamed with comfort
inside the classroom, something I struggled
with, being the only Asian kid in my pre-K and
one of two Asian kids in my elementary class.
For my students this stillness can create a stir
of introspection that bubbles up into a glance,
smile, tear or breath as the walls come down.
These iron-clad walls hide shame, family conflict,
identity struggles, bullying wounds–a stained
laundry list of items we've conditioned ourselves
to de-prioritize.
With practice, my true essence has floated to
the surface also, tired of working (too) hard to fit
into places I didn't. Dress, sound and act like an
Aussie. Justify your existence and experience as
a member of the LGBTQ+ community as worthy.
In my Australia growing up in the ‘90s, nationalist
anti-immigration rhetoric was strong well
before the current Trump-era of politics. Even in
2017, if you’re a person of color making a cultural
critique, you could be labelled as un-Australian.
The persisting theme? Not white enough.
On this day, I taught students in each of my five
classes how to give themselves a hug.
We have to learn to hug ourselves.
For my students at Happy Dragon, there will
come a time when they realize or are told their
eyes “slant,” they are picked last for sports teams,
their existence is tolerated not celebrated, their
unique footprint is painted with the same brushstrokes
that splatter across the 48 countries that
make up Asia.
I feel a pull on my shirt. “Nà shì shénme?” Uh oh.
Unlike their lead teachers and teaching assistants,
I don’t speak the dialects of Chinese required to
meet the vast needs of these kids–so diverse in
spite of the sameness in their Chinese heritage.
For the first time, I was being asked to be more
Chinese. It reminded me that the unlayering
needed to get to the core of my self is an ongoing
project.
Fresh off the boat? As I learn to embrace the
journey and not the destination, I don't even plan
on getting off the boat.
Colin Lieu
Colin Lieu is a youth yoga and mindfulness instructor
working with over 10 public schools and
programs across New York City.