The Homeless Hilton
Mayor Bloomberg has announced plans to shut down the city’s largest homeless shelter, the 335 unit Carlton House in South Ozone Park, Queens. The mayor claims that there just aren’t enough homeless people to fill the former luxury hotel. The City’s Department of Homesless Services’ website brags, “This is the first time in DHS history that a facility has been closed solely because the capacity is no longer needed.”
Is the homeless population going down? “Oh certainly not,” protests Jeff Rabinovici, my good friend and comrade who is an outreach worker for Partnership for the Homeless, “According to the DHS’ latest accounting, it’s going up.” The number of families living in long term shelters is on the decline, due to a number of factors, including strong-arm tactics by the city. But the number of families checking into “drop-in” shelters (the nightly, first come, first serve shelters, where many of those who get a roof for the night don’t actually get a bed) is on the rise. And, of course, single homeless men are still the shelter system’s last priority, which is why you still see so many of them sleeping on the streets.
Obviously, Mayor Mike is playing an election year numbers game so that he can brag, “By investing in cost-efficient solutions, and bringing accountability and focused management attention to an issue many believed unmanageable, we have made unprecedented headway in relatively short order.” Yes, our CEO mayor has employed Arthur Anderson-style accounting in order to make the homeless problem go away!
There is an additional wrinkle. The Carlton House is operated by the city through a sub-contract with the Salvation Army. Apparently, the Salvation Army is losing many of its homeless outreach contracts with the city. The Bowery Residents Committee has been picking up many of those contracts and more by submitting low-ball bids to the city. The BRC pays its outreach workers, on average, about $5 an hour less than most other agencies (like the Salvation Army). This is the same Bowery Residents Committee that’s trying to evict CBGB’s. The BRC’s single-minded devotion to serving those who are most needy in our society is commendable. It would disappointing if such good work comes at the cost of further gentrifying the Bowery and denying their devoted, hard-working outreach workers a living wage.
There is no public word on what comes next for the Carlton House. The building began life as the Hilton JFK in the 1970’s. It turned out that people don’t want to pay for a luxury hotel room so near the roaring jets of an international airport, and so the hotel was re-christened a Best Western. The steady decline in business continued unabated, until its owners announced plans to cease operations in early 2002. The Carlton House holds a special place in my heart because the Hotel Employees union was planning to strike it (and a sister hotel) when I joined the staff. It was my first almost strike. At one point, we were going to physically occupy the building to prevent its closing. “Are you ready to get arrested?,” my boss asked me as she cackled with delight at the thought of being dragged out of there herself. Of course, I was, but it was unnecessary. The company settled, and gave the laid-off workers a massive severance package (not unlike the recent Plaza settlement).
Every time I’ve driven past the building, I remember the excitement of that fight, but also the sadness of all those lost jobs and dashed hopes. The construction of a luxury Hilton hotel in southwest Queens was the product of overly ambitious development plans, not unlike the Olympic dreams for Long Island City, or Ratner’s stadium-city of towers. The depressing site of this run-down and near-vacant hotel should serve as a warning to think twice and have a contingency plan before building more towers out yonder.
THe Carlton House should remain a homeless shelter. There is still a pressing need for such long-term housing for our city’s homeless families, and it makes the symbolism of the Homeless Hilton that much more potent. The big building plans at LIC, Atlantic Avenue, Williamsburg and elsewhere must include more affordable housing now, less those towers be relegated to homeless shelters years from now.
The Cycle of Terrorism
What follows are my opening remarks for the Socialist Party’s Free Speech Forum In Defense of Lynne Stewart (which went very well, thanks to those of you who attended):
On behalf of the Socialist Party, I want to welcome you to our Free Speech forum in defense of human rights attorney Lynne Stewart. This forum is cosponsored by the New York City and New Jersey locals of the Socialist Party, and the party’s Direct Action Tendency. We have a really great panel tonight, with a number of crusading legal activists.
Before we begin, I want to address the terrible events of last Thursday. The Socialist Party USA issued a statement, from which I’d like to quote in relevant part:
The recent tragedy in London that resulted in murdering and maiming hundreds of working people, is a deplorable and de-humanzing act…It is our responsibility as brothers and sisters of humanity to condemn these acts of aggression and the imperialism of our governments in waging a war that results in untold victims…The murder of civilian non combatants, whether it be by individuals, groups or States, cannot be supported nor defended in the face of such brutal reality.
You know, when I first heard about Thursday’s bombings, my first thoughts were of the million-plus people who poured into the streets of London in February of 2003 to protest the war plans of their government and ours. That war against the people of Iraq was carried out by our governments, without our consent and without our support.
Why is it that the “blowback” for our governments’ actions is inflicted on those who are least likely to support it? Likewise, why is it that innocent civilians in Iraq – who were not likely to be great supporters of the Saddam Hussein regime – must suffer from the bombings, the loss of basic human services, the curfews and police checkpoints of the United States’ and Britain’s state-sponsored terrorism?
We’re caught in the middle of this cycle of violence that enhances the standing and power of demagogues and terrorists at the expense of our liberty and peace. Tony Blair’s poll numbers have gone up since Thursday, while George Bush lies (follow me here; some time travel may be required) that preventing the terrorism that resulted from his invasion of Iraq is somehow the reason that he invaded in the first place and he uses this to justify the continuation of this stupid war. Meanwhile, every day that goes by where US troops occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, every US dollar that flows into Israelli military spending, every new act of aggression means more recruits for terrorist networks like Osama bin Laden’s.
The collateral damage of this tit for tat is the spilling of innocent blood, the curtailment of our freedoms and the closing of our society. Already, we have teenage national guard troops defending Penn Station and other transportation hubs by machine gun. We have random security checkpoints and invasive searches. We have detainment and internment of “questionable” illegal aliens. We have increased domestic spying. We have criminal charges for those who dare to defend the constitutional rights of suspects. I fear what comes next.
I doubt that any of our three speakers tonight [Lynne Stewart, Shayana Kadidal and Daniel Gross] actually own a car, and if they do, I’d be surprised to see one of those “patriotic” magnetic ribbons on the bumper…but our three speakers tonight are true American patriots, defending our constitutional rights against those who would strip us of them and call out “traitor!,” “security risk!,” “terrorist!”
The Great Blog Circle Jerk
I have updated my Links page to include some lefty blogs that I read.
Tom-A-Thon.com is the website of my comrade in Staten Island, Tommy Miles. It’s all Tom, all the time, with lots of space for socialism and futbol. Former Socialist Party Chairman, and eternal anti-spam crusader, Don Doumakes writes Another Socialist Blog, while New Jersey’s Wayne Rossi presents minitrue, another good source for socialist information and commentary. The Great Plains heretic Jim Hurd (he left the Socialist Party for the Communist Party so that he could run for office as a Democratic Party candidate – yes, the left is funny that way) hosts the Wizard of Laughery Creek, which keeps the tone light and entertaining. Finally, there’s a blog whose author I don’t know in at least some superficial way: former National Writers Union President Jonathan Tasini presents the always-informative Working Life. He gets a lot of Deep Throat action on 16th street…er, which is to say that his blog is a great source of labor movement gossip.
If you’re a reader of my humble budding media empire and have linked to me, please let me know, and I’ll add a link to your website (if it doesn’t suck).
While I was updating my site, I added a few new songs to the Rock! section of the site. Download and enjoy, or crawl into a hole and die.
Giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemy
My Socialist Party is hosting a forum next Monday in defense of Lynne Stewart, the famed civil rights attorney who is being sent up the river for “aiding ‘terrorists’ ” by defending their constitutional rights in our modern witch-hunt times. Tom Good has organized a very interesting panel, and it looks like yours truly will be offering a few opening remarks and introducing the speakers. I strongly encourage you to attend if you are free in New YOrk City this coming Monday night. This will be the party’s biggest event in the city this summer (we have some cool things cooking up for the fall).
July 6, 2005
For Immediate Release
P R E S S R E L E A S EFREE SPEECH FORUM IN DEFENSE OF HUMAN RIGHTS ATTORNEY LYNNE STEWART
New York, NY – The Socialist Party is hosting a Free Speech Forum in defense of Lynne Stewart on July 11th, 2005. It will be held at Judson Church’s Assembly Hall, 239 Thompson Street near Washington Square. Speakers will include human rights attorney Lynne Stewart, Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Shayana Kadidal and labor organizer Daniel Gross – also a law student.
The Socialist Party of New York City is hosting the event which is co-sponsored by the Direct Action Tendency (DAT). DAT secretary and event organizer Thomas Good applauds Stewart’s efforts in seeking justice for political prisoners: “I became aware of Lynne Stewart while reading about her defense of Dave Gilbert. She works tirelessly to protect us all from a corrupt system that’s simply a mechanism for populating the prison industrial complex. The idea that Lynne might be absorbed into this dehumanizing, immoral system, this modern day form of slavery, is unthinkable. We have to fight for her as she has fought for all of us.”
“Putting Lynne Stewart in a cage for her legal defense work would be a major miscarriage of justice,” said Daniel Gross, an organizer with the Starbucks Workers Union of the IWW. “Working people, often the targets of unjust criminal prosecutions, should be gravely concerned when an attorney for unpopular clients is steamrolled by government lawyers virtually screaming ‘War on Terror’ at the jury box.”
Lynne Stewart remarked, after the guilty verdict in her recent trial: “We are going to fight on. This is the beginning of a longer struggle. I think everyone who has a sense that the United States needs to protect the Constitution at this time understands that struggle. And this case could be, I hope it will be, a wakeup call to all of the citizens of this country and all of the people who live here that you can’t lock up the lawyers. You can’t tell the lawyers how to do their job. You’ve got to let them operate. And I will fight on. I’m not giving up. I know I committed no crime.”
Shayana Kadidal, scheduled to speak at the forum, is an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). Kadidal represented Farouk Abdel Muhti, the WBAI producer and Socialist Party member who was wrongfully detained by the immigration service for over two years – without the the government filing charges. Kadidal helped secure Farouk’s release, allowing him to spend the last six months of his life speaking out against political repression in the US. Sharin Chiorazzo, Farouk’s fiance and a member of the Socialist Party of New Jersey, is one of the event organizers.
Judson Church’s Assembly Hall is the site of the forum and the event is free and open to the public. Doors open at 6:30 pm and the forum is scheduled to conclude at 9 pm.
Thanks to the staff and congregation of Judson Memorial Church for the use of this space. Judson continues to be a beacon for free spirits in the arts and politics and a leader among progressive faith communities in the city and nation for over 100 years.
Founded in 1901, the Socialist Party is a multi-tendency democratic socialist organization that strives to establish a radical democracy that places people’s lives under their own control — a non-racist, classless, feminist, socialist society in which people cooperate at work, at home, and in the community. Direct Action (DAT) is a tendency of the Socialist Party, well known for its commitment to activism in service to peace and progress.