NOT HAVING IT: Dozens of protesters packed Community Board 2’s general meeting demanding members vote
against Mayor Bill de Blasio’s borough jail plan. Photo by Kevin Duggan
the amount of people awaiting
trial in jail because they can’t afford
bail.
The legislation will not come
into effect until Jan. 1, 2020, but
a recent study by the criminal
justice reform advocacy group
the Center for Court Innovation
found that more than two out fi ve
people detained pretrial in the
fi ve boroughs would have been
released under the new laws.
On May 6, the mayor’s offi ce
promised to shrink the jails due
to the drop in inmate population
and criminal justice reforms, reported
The City .
Citing that report, one board
member said that it was diffi cult
to decide on the city’s plan if it
kept changing and due to the fact
that bureaucrats were not forthcoming
with precise fi gures.
“This shows that the plan actually
keeps changing, which is
really unfortunate, because we
very much want to do the right
thing and we’re constantly given
different information and misinformation,”
said Sandra Rothbard.
A spokesman for Council
Speaker Corey Johnson said that
communities around the four jail
sites were concerned about their
height and density, but stopped
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
Call it a jailhouse knock.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to
raze Atlantic Avenue’s House of
Detention and rebuild a larger
incarceration complex in its
stead stumbled when it failed to
get the approval from Community
Board 2 members by a hairthin
margin at a raucous meeting
on May 8.
Members issued their purely
advisory vote with 17 to 16 voting
against their land use committee’s
previous conditional
recommendation to accept Hizzoner’s
plan to raze the Boerum
Hill lockup and replace it with a
larger jail as part of the city’s borough
based jails plan.
One member scolded the
city’s criminal justice record toward
people of color and abuse
“If an institution is built 80
years ago or whatever and they
can’t get it right then, they’re not
going to get it right now,” Samantha
Johnson said at the board’s
May 8 meeting inside a packed
auditorium at New York City
College of Technology in America’s
Downtown. “Melees and assaults
and rape have happened
in these institutions. We cannot
trust that the culture is going to
change .”
The land use committee at
its meeting last month voted in
favor of de Blasio’s plan to close
the beleaguered jail complex by
2027 and move its incarcerated
people to four borough-based
jails with several conditions, including
lowering the jail’s target
population from 1,437 to 875, cutting
the building’s proposed size
by almost half and adding a new
jail to Staten Island, the only borough
spared from the plan.
State legislators passed a
sweeping package of reforms on
April 1, which will end cash bail
and pretrial detention for almost
all misdemeanor and nonviolent
felony defendants, among other
reforms, and which will reduce
short of confi rming whether the
speaker himself shared these
concerns with regard to the
Boerum Hill jail.
“Communities around the
four proposed new jail sites have
expressed concerns about the
height and density of the buildings,”
said Juan Soto in a statement.
“Now that the scaled back
proposal is going through our
public review process, we expect
to hear substantive feedback
from stakeholders.”
Reps for the mayor’s Offi ce
of Criminal Justice handed out
guidelines for the proposed jail
by the borough’s Neighborhood
Advisory Committee exclusively
to board members at the beginning
of the meeting, which one
member criticized as being too
short notice.
“The mayor’s offi ce handed
us this now today, which didn’t
give us enough chance,” the
member said.
Protesters — some of whom
said they were from No New
Jails NYC, the activist group opposed
to any new jails — packed
the room and shouted their opposition
to the mayor’s plan, demanding
the board reject the
proposal.
Soon after land use committee
by jail guards.
explaining his group’s proposal
and answering board members’
questions, activists drowned
them out with chants, saying
that the board wasn’t representative
the meeting descended into disarray.
board does not represent the
community,” protested one audience
to fi x NYCHA, but you’re using
jails,” said another.
yelled “shame” and “no new
jails” at each member voting
in favor of the plan’s approval,
while applauding and cheering
at those voting it down.
vote marks an initial step in
the city’s Uniform Land Use Review
must pass before it can break
ground.
now move on to Borough President
a public hearing on it at Borough
INSIDE
Rock of
ages
Teen characters
take the stage in
‘Spring Awakening’
at Gallery Players
By Julianne McShane Parents just don’t understand.
A rock musical coming to Park Slope this week will dramatize
what kids know across the land, showing the generation
gap as a village where adults are stuck in the 1890s, but their
rock music-loving spawn live in the present day. This version of
“Spring Awakening,” opening at Gallery Players on May 18, highlights
the eternal chasm between parents and their offspring through
live music, according to its director.
“The rock music is a metaphor for the way that parents just don’t
understand their kids,” said Nick Brennan. “The music represents
the way the kids are trying to communicate to themselves and their
parents about what’s happening to them, because the parents aren’t
on their level — it’s a generational difference.”
The musical, based on an 1891 play by Frank Wedekind and
given a rock score by Duncan Sheik in 2006, follows a pack of
teenagers in a religious rural village who take matters into their own
hands (sometimes literally) when their parents refuse to discuss the
birds and the bees, the director said.
“As these kids are hitting puberty and going through their sexual
awakening, they’re in 1890s Christian Germany, which in terms of
sexual thought was a very oppressive place,” he said. “Some of these
parents have told their children that the stork brings the baby.”
In the Gallery Players production, the kids form a band, and
some of the characters — who are almost all played by actors in their
late teens or early 20s — play live music on stage, giving the show
the feel of a rock concert, Brennan said. The young thespians play
acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, piano, drums, and the violin, all
while dressed in modern-day threads.
“We’re using all kinds of rock sounds, so it’s going to have a little
touch of the 1890s, but it’s going to feel very modern,” he said.
The songs are only performed by the youngsters, the director
said. The parents — all of them played by just two actors — are
stuck with regular speech, because the music symbolizes the conversations
about sexuality they are trying to avoid. The adult actors
also dress in 19th century garb.
The coming-of-age show will have the feel of a concert, but
the play has plenty of drama — the young characters deal with
gun violence, sexual harassment, and abortion, issues that keep
the more than century-old story relevant to today’s audiences, the
director said.
“We all go through this, everybody goes through the same
thing, everybody goes through that body change,” he said. “Even
though it takes place in the 1890s, it’s very 2019.”
“Spring Awakening” at Gallery Players (199 14th St. between
Fourth and Fifth avenues in Park Slope, (718) 595–0547, www.galleryplayers.
com). May 18–June 9; Thu–Fri at 8 p.m.; Sat, 2 p.m. and
8 p.m.; Sun at 3 p.m. $30 ($20 seniors and kids under 12).
Kids bop: The young characters
in “Spring Awakening,”
opening at Gallery Players
on May 18, wear modernday
outfits and sing rock
ballads, while their parents
wear 19th century garb and
speak in prose.
Photo by Julianne McShane
Your entertainment
guide Page 87
Police Blotter ..........................8
Standing O ............................ 32
Bayfest ................................... 35
Wellness ................................. 73
Letters ....................................80
Editorial .................................. 81
HOW TO REACH US
COURIER L 2 IFE, MAY 17–23, 2019 M BR B G
Chair Carlton Gordon began
and that the city should invest
in its community instead, as
“This so-called community
member.
“You all don’t have the money
capital funding to build new
When Singletary eventually
called the vote, the audience
The community board’s
Procedure, which the city
The mayor’s proposal will
Eric Adams, who will host
Hall on June 6 at 6 p.m.
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CB2 VOTES NO Community Board 2 shoots down mayor’s House of D expansion
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