The NY Sun’s intrepid Daniela Gerson last week reported on the case of Bronxite Jose Marquez-Almanzar, a native of the Dominican Republic who enlisted in the US Armed Forced “in the 1980s,and is facing deportation because he was convicted of cocaine possession. When Marquez, who immigrated at 12, enlisted, he renounced his Dominican citizenship, since at the time dual citizenship was not available. If deported he could be rendered stateless.... Marquez applied twice for naturalization. The first time was while he was serving at Ft. Hood, in Texas, as a young recruit. Court papers say that because of "a clerical error," the application "was never fully processed." On his second application for citizenship, following his cocaine conviction, the government said he was ineligible because he had been convicted of an aggravated felony and therefore could not establish good moral character. Despite its name, an aggravated felony need not be either aggravated or a felony. Generally the crimes the term refers to are considered serious, but it has been expanded to include lesser crimes, such as turnstile-jumping or theft of a $10 video. If convicted of an aggravated felony, a legal resident can be automatically deported, without a chance to prove good moral character or family ties. The lawyers are asserting the punishment for committing an aggravated felony should not be applied in the same way to legal residents who are veterans.”  You’d think not...

  Click here for ICP's just-filed challenge to Toronto Dominion's $3.8 billion Banknorth proposal...

November 8, 2004

  Death and / of equal justice on 161^st Street:  While the merger of Bronx criminal court with the State Supreme across the Concourse has occurred, a man beaten Oct. 12 in a criminal court holding cell has been taken off life support.  His death has been deemed a homicide, that happened right inside the court.  Expect an upgrade of the pending assault charges against Kenny Taylor, 27, who allegedly attacked Ronald Fesce, 54, in the intake area at Bronx Criminal Court on East 161st Street at 8 a.m. on Oct. 12.  Fesce's widow, Carmen Cerezo, 50, said last week that prosecutors told her Fesce and Taylor began arguing on the Department of Correction bus that was taking them to court. It continued in the court holding pen. Police said that Fesce, who did not initially report the attack, attended the hearing that day and was returned to the Vernon C. Bain Center, a jail barge in Hunts Point. On Oct. 14 a correction officer spotted Fesce passed out in his cell and took him to the jail's clinic. He was then taken to Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center where he lapsed into a coma, from which he never re-emerged. There’s talk of a lawsuit -- it’d be on at least two grounds, lack of protection in the holding cell, and lack of observation while in custody... It would seem to have merit, given for example that the Bronx DA has filed criminal charges against the mother and step-father of Christopher Osbourne, Their 15-year-old son appeared one recent morning looking as if he had been in a bad fight, they put him to bed and went to work. After spending long hours at his bedside, his mother and stepfather, Carlene Francis and Neville Henry, are facing a year in jail. They were charged in State Supreme Court in the Bronx last week -- nearly a month after their son's injury -- with endangering the welfare of a child because they did not take him to the hospital right away. So what, then, of the city’s duty regarding Ronald Fesce?

A court order may somewhat protect the Bronx River from raw sewage from Yonkers, from pipes that were illegally connected to the city's storm-water drainage system. New York State Supreme Court Justice Francis Nicolai ordered the city in a decision made public last week to come up with a plan to stop the discharge. State testing in June 2003 showed fecal coli form bacteria levels at 16 million per 100 milliliters at a flow rate of two gallons per minute. Similar suits against the Bronx Zoo and New York Botanical Garden were settled, including for the canoe portage paths now in place.  But is the water clean yet?  Nope...

November 2-3, 2004

          Election day.  On the radio, reports from Florida and Ohio and even Italy, where a headline reads: “The World Holds Its Breath.”  The image around which election coverage orbits is the flaming World Trade Towers, which melted and collapsed more than three years ago.  Ten miles north of the still-empty Ground Zero, in Bronx County, election day is quiet. Inside the elementary schools, following the white paper “Vote Here - Vote Aqui” signs, there are medieval voting machines wrapped in plastic curtains.  Pull a lever that’s not unlike a train brake, then flip down smaller levers to choose who’ll represent you.  On the top line, the presidential race, there’s Kerry and Bush, and there, as Peace and Justice, Ralph Nader as well.  The other races are virtually uncontested. Senator Chuck Schumer is on the Democrat, Republican and Conservative line, as are slates judges that few have ever heard for. People came to vote for president, even through the moment Kerry wins New York, the extra votes don’t count or have effect.

          Just north of the Zoo, the trees in the Botanical Garden are almost naked.   Halloween was windy and tore most leaves right off.  Exiting on Bedford Park, then south on Decatur. There are kids on bikes, their schools closed for election day.  On the porch of a three story house, there’s a woman in a bright orange Indian sarong.  There’s a masjid with a verse from the Koran, an African restaurant, a string of tenements with a hand-painted sign thanking ex-Mayor Koch and his housing commissioner Gleidman for their funding.  Just north of Fordham Road there’s a glorified pawnshop, the Provident Loan Society.  Outside kids play stickball. Inside, through a narrow vestibule, there are three windows with bulletproof glass, through which jewelry and other small valuables can be exchanged for short terms loans. We’re all living on borrowed time, which the world, Italians say, is holding its collective breath.    [Update November 2-3, 2004, 1:30 a.m. -- At first it appeared there’d be no results on Election Night, with absentee ballots being counted.  Then Florida was called for the incumbent, then the votes in Ohio began running that way as well.  The world exhales, like it or not.]

November 1, 2004

  The scourge of payday and car title lending, and big banks’ funding and enabling of these predators, continues to be our focus.  On November 1, ICP / Fair Finance Watch filed opposition to Wells Fargo’s application to expand in Texas, documenting Wells’ funding of fringe financiers throughout Texas (as well as its targeting of people of color of higher-cost loans from Wells Fargo Financial).  This followed ICP’s timely October 28 filing on Fifth Third’s application to acquire First National Bankshares of Florida, for $1.6 billion.   See, “Consumer Group Challenges Fifth Third Deal,” American Banker, October 29, 2004.   The Federal Reserve has finally started asking PNC questions about its proposal to acquire [toxic] Riggs -- but PNC is trying to keep its answers confidential.  ICP is preparing an appeal, under the Freedom of Information Act. This follows ICP’s FOIA lawsuit against the Fed for withholding Wachovia’s and SouthTrust’s list of payday and car title lenders funded.  Enabling and coddling, these veils must be pierced... Oh and ICP/Fair Finance Watch was just named an "anti-money laundering hero," for casting spotlight on Riggs-PNC, HSBC and Banco Santander...

Sears to leave Fordham Road? The building at the corner of Webster used to be Rodger’s department store, and we’ve never figured out why it has the pharmacy symbol carved next to all the tall windows.  Now this, from last week’s real estate news: “In the Bronx, at the corner of East Fordham Road and Webster Avenue, Acadia has spent $30 million to acquire a six-story, 117,000-square-foot building occupied for the last 40 years by Sears, Roebuck. It will spend $20 million more to redevelop and expand the building by 75,000 square feet. Sears still has 33 months on its lease and may or may not remain there, Mr. Braun said.... In the Bronx, new construction will not take place until the Sears lease expires, he said.”

A police blotter ignoring the Fourth Amendment, from the NY Post of October 29: “A 24-year-old man was arrested on gun charges after cops pulled him over for driving suspiciously in Mott Haven, police sources said yesterday.  Cesar Quinones was heading west on 138th Street at 4 p.m. Wednesday when cops stopped his Nissan Maxima at Brown Place. Cops said they then searched the vehicle and found a loaded 9 mm weapon.”  How does one drive suspiciously on a major thoroughfare at 4 p.m. on a Thursday? Did Mr. Quinones consent to the search?

  On the Cablevision News 12 show “Ask the Borough President,” Mr. Carrion responded to questions about rats and subway token booth closings and high unemployment by saying, “We’re fighting, we’re speaking up.”   One caller asked about Guy Velella; there was nothing about Kleener King.  Mr. Carrion referred people -- so we will -- to www.thebronxatwork.com. 

  It was a particularly weak Sunday for the New York Times’ coverage of The Bronx.  A search of that heavy tome results in 13 hits, most entirely extraneous.  For example, three of the 13 are Wedding / Celebration announcements, involving two doctors with practices in The Bronx, and an instructor at the Zoo. There’s a real estate notice from the North Bronx, a rhetorical questions about the presidential election (“what if Texas and the Bronx counted”), and a reference to Tom Wolfe’s insulting book, in a long profile of the Wolfe-man in the magazine section. The only news reference to The Bronx is to a deathly hit-and-run in Morris Heights.  One point three million people, in the Paper-of-Record’s headquarters city, and it all comes down to one car accident.  Until next Sunday, then... Until next time, for or with more information, contact us.

October 25, 2004

            The La Paz Funeral Home across from Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx is three stories high. The owner, Hector Marquez, has lived on the top floor.  At the back of the second floor, caskets of varying prices are displayed.  There is a parlor-like room for funerals in the front half of the second floor, overlooking 149th Street just east of Morris Avenue.

   La Paz has a history: it has housed caskets and memorials for salsa legend Johnny "La Vaca" Rodriguez in 2000, for victims of the Happy Land Social Club fire in 1990, and of the Freddy's Fashion Mart fire in 1995. A March 27, 1988 Newsday column noted in La Paz that a "handwritten sign on a wall in the funeral home reads: 'All funerals are to be paid the night before the burial.'"  In 2004, that sign (or one identically-worded) is still there. Further back, in 1986, Jimmy Breslin wrote: "One of the walls in the upstairs room in the funeral parlor was mirrored so that when you walked in you thought you saw two bodies, but it was only one, Sal Agron" - the Capeman. And in 2004, the east wall of the second floor is still mirrored...

   There is another parlor on the first floor for the larger memorial services. In a one-room office on the first floor, Hector Marquez works with La Paz' licensed funeral director, Robert Klein. The 60-year old Mr. Klein speaks so softly he can barely be heard.  They haggle with customers about money. They suggest the most affordable caskets and how to get reimbursed eight hundred dollars by the Human Resources Administration. The most stripped-down funeral costs $1,400. Increasingly, people choose direct cremation (for which F. Ruggiero & Sons on Morris Park Avenue charges $1,300; McCalls Bronxwood Funeral Home brags of its "variety of services from online funeral broadcasts to standard funerals to cremations. Specializing in international shipping to the Caribbean, Africa and South America."

  Rest in peace: Bronx historian John McNamara passed away on October 15, in the Throgs Neck Extended Care Nursing Home. He had earlier complained when the second "g" in Throggs was dropped when the Bronx-Queen bridge was named in 1961... We recommend both his "History in Asphalt" and his earlier hobo's journal, "Sand Dune."

   Continuing with McNamara's fact-collecting mission: data just released by the NYS Labor Department show that statewide unemployment dipped to a seasonally adjusted 5.5 percent in September, the lowest rate since 9/11/01. Saratoga County had the lowest jobless rate, at 3 percent. Bronx County again had the highest, at 8.8 percent... In the 43rd precinct, which includes Soundview,  murders are up 133 percent. So far in 2004, murders are up eight, from six last year, according to the most recent statistics released by the NYPD...

Anti-McNamara, fast and loose at the "Paper of Record" -- the New York Times' October 20 article "U.S. Set to Alter Rules for Banks Lending to Poor" reported among its many inaccuracies that the CRA "gained strength in 1995, when the Clinton administration adopted a series of tougher guidelines that banned noncompliant banks from participating in any mergers, acquisitions or expansion projects."  That simply false.  Since 1977, the regulatory agencies have been required to consider an applicant bank's CRA record when it applies to merge or expand.  A negative CRA finding, however, did not preclude approval until the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.  The Times' 1995 reference must be to the CRA regulation promulgated that year, which did not change the law's effect on merger or expansion applications. Plus, quoting bankers, including monomaniacal ex-Chasewoman Carol Parry Fox, as the defenders of the CRA was pretty lame.   Paper of record? We think not. And now not only due to weak coverage of The Bronx, but also of an important Federal law.

  In CRA news,  earlier this month, Federal Reserve Governor Bies denied Inner City Press' Freedom of Information Act appeal for a list of the payday lenders and pawnshops funded by merger partners Wachovia and SouthTrust.  On October 21, Inner City Press filed a FOIA lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, challenging the Fed's systematic withholding of predatory lending-related information.  The case has been filed; we will update its progress on this site.

   Meanwhile, in its second timely filing opposing Citigroup's proposal to buy First American Bank in Texas, ICP has documented the two's funding of pawnshops and check cashiers, including College Station Pawn & Cash Station Jewelry and Loan, Q-Pawn, Inc., Decker Prairie Pawn, Inc., Zerega Check Cashing Corp., Montgomery Check Cashing Corp. of 403 East Third Street, Mount Vernon, NY; Castle Check Cashing Corp., continued in 2002; City Check Cashing of Jersey City, NJ; and Rite Check Cashing Inc. and G&R Check Cashing Corp. of New York.  And what, after delay, will Citigroup say?

  In further media-watch news, the New York Sun of October 20 reported: "The Bronx borough president, Adolfo Carrion, yesterday announced a plan to use Yankee Stadium for Little League games and a Yankee Hall of Fame and Museum. The proposal, first reported by The New York Sun, would depend on the team following through with its plan to build a new $750 million baseball stadium across the street from the current stadium, at Macombs Dam Park."  Well, the Sun wasn't the first to report it -- Inner City Press did, based on a presentation at Bronx Community Board 4 on September 28, 2004 (see Report below; we'll have much more about this plan, and the Bronx Terminal Market, as and if they move forward).

   But as heard at the October 22 anti-police brutality march, "Don't complain about the media -- become your own media."  Including where necessary and possible through Freedom of Information Act litigation!

October 18, 2004

   Suspicious minds: the mother of a premature baby with Downs syndrome who died last week was questioned as... a murder suspect, on the worst day of her life.  This doesn’t happened in most affluent neighborhoods, but welcome to The Bronx.  According to Newsday’s account,

Tasha Harding, the baby's mother, called 911, frantically telling the operator her baby was not breathing. The operator tried to give her instructions to help revive the baby. Paramedics responded, carried away the tiny, limp baby and rushed him to Jacobi Medical Center, the same hospital where Victor's fraternal twin sister died four months before. Victor died before reaching the hospital, officials said. Police were questioning the mother last night, and the Administration of Children's Services placed her surviving 5-year-old daughter with a "close relative." However, neighbors and a woman who lives with Harding said there was nothing criminal in the boy's death... Harding moved in with Bryant and her son two months ago. They had acquired the apartment through the Department of Homeless Services, which places some of its clients in the dilapidated brick building at 1011 Manor Ave. Harding does not have any history with the Administration of Children's Services, officials said.

  And yet on the day her baby dies, the police essentially accuse her of murder.   Only in The Bronx (and places like it) -- ah, equal justice.

Inner City Press has been contacted by disgruntled homeowners who bought in to the NYC Partnership homes in East Harlem, the Madison Park Homes on 119^th Street.  It’s said that the contractor, Andrew Velez, has left leaks in the homes, and other shoddy work.  That’s The Velez Organization -- 2 Park Ave., 4th Fl. (212) 684-1700 -- whose Bronx political contributions we’ve previously identified....

Since it’s baseball playoffs time, we’ll begin with a story involving both the Bronx and a baseball player: Ken Caminiti.  He knew or at least traveled in gritty New York, it must be said.  October 9 at 4 a.m., he was roaming in Bushwick, Brooklyn, calling a friend to meet him on Troutman Street.  They drove around, ending up in Hunts Point.  They went to a fourth-floor apartment in a building on Seneca Avenue; Caminiti grabbed his chest and 911 was called.  He was rushed to Lincoln Hospital, where he died soon after. Rest in peace...

October 11, 2004

The proponents of the give-away of the Bronx Terminal Market to Steven Ross’ Related Companies have issued a Final Scope for an Environmental Impact Statement, purporting to respond to the comments of Inner City Press / Community on the Move and others. The Final Scope was mailed out on October 8; included as Appendix A is the proponents’ “Response to Comments.”  Most responses are dismissive.  In response for calls for transparency, the response is that this “is not a subject for the DEIS.” ICP’s comments concerning affordably housing, for example, are met with a claim that no housing is being lost, not even any “housing resources.”   On the other hand, ICP’s critique of the draft scope as not even mentioning environmental justice has resulted a new Section 22 in the final scope: “an analysis will be performed that considers the potential for disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of the project on minority or low-income populations... If disproportionate impacts are identified, discuss appropriate avoidance measures, mitigation measures and enhancements for the affected population.”   We’ll see...

  We note the beating death on Rikers Island of Tyreece Abney -- can you say, failure to protect, and, human rights abuse? -- as well as the decidedly different Rikers stay of Guy Velella. An interesting footnote is Raul Russi, who though he voted on the Velella probation, apparently recused himself from a prior vote on Manuel Gonzalez, Velella's co-defendant. According to prosecutors, Gonzalez was a self-described "bag man" who'd acted as consultant to social service groups in the Bronx including the Velez’ Hunts Point Multi-Service Center. There’s also the other still-no-followed-up strands of the Gonzalez/Velella case, identified further below on this page...

  On a lighter note, mystery fiction editor Otto Penzler wrote, in the New York Sun of October 6, of a novel “taking readers to Little Italy - no, not the one being swallowed up by Chinatown on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, but the larger one in the East Bronx, where Anthony Avenue still sports some terrific pasta-with-red-sauce restaurants. The result is pure storytelling joy, with some eye-popping surprises along the way.”  Here’s two surprises: it’s ARTHUR Avenue, and it’s not in the East Bronx... Will mysteries never cease?

October 4, 2004

            Parks and politics: on a rainy night in late September, at a meeting of Community Board 4 on Selwyn Avenue, that Board’s chairman said it was imperative to quickly vote on a resolution supporting a “Vision Plan” under which a second Yankee Stadium would be built on top of what’s currently Macombs Dam park.   Despite the lack of public notice, such a resolution would indicate local support for the conversion of park land into a doppelganger ballpark, for use at a press conference slated for mid-October.  Under the plan, the House That Ruth Build (hereinafter, “HTRB”) would remain as a field for Little League baseball.  The Community Board chairman said the plan includes a hotel, a Hall of Fame, and a high school of sports medicine.  There were no drawings, no handouts for the members of the public and press who attended: only this demand for a resolution.  A question was asked about what benefits, if any, there’d be for The Bronx. Another question, by Inner City Press, concerned the legality of this proposed use of parkland, and how much subsidy there’d be. 

            “Great question!” the chairman exclaimed.  “The taxpayers of The Bronx would pay nothing. Steinbrenner pays for it all, through bonds.”

            That doesn’t, however, appear to be the case.  And in any event, giving tax-exempt status to bonds is not dissimilar to subsidy.  Inner City Press was told, by another Board member, that it’d be a project of the Parks Department; meanwhile the chairman said “it’s all Steinbrenner.”  He also said that the Related Companies will be told to cease-and-desist from their hotel-building plans on the Bronx Terminal Market, since the Yankee plan including a hotel and convention center.  But at last month’s public hearing on the Bronx Terminal Market proposal, the hotel there was presented as a sure thing.  There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors, boondoggles for developers with the thinnest veneer of Astro-turf support.  This is a story we’ll be following...

  Meanwhile, from a fluff U-Wire / Washington Sq. News story Sept. 28 about NYU’s Bobst Library: “the fountain in the reading room? The 3-foot tall, engraved fountain made of copper, stone and brass, was originally located at NYU's old Heights Campus in the Bronx and was a gift from a graduated class, Cricco said. ‘For every part of the normal archival collection, there is always something wild that pops up,’ she said. ‘There's no place to put them, but nobody wants to throw them out.’”  So let’s get this straight -- wrenching history stonework from The Bronx, like a cheap building stripper, was the only way to not “throw out” the artifact?

Last week, ICP filed related comments on Citigroup - First American Bank (click here to view), on HSBC (click here to view), and on Riggs’ (and Banco Santanter’s) money laundering, click here to view...

September 27, 2004

            The Department of City Planning is proposing to rezone 11 blocks of the South South Bronx as mixed-use, to allow, they say, new housing or in some cases possibly legalizing unauthorized artists’ housing in what in this Inner City Press report we’ll dub “SOBE” -- South Of the Bruckner Expressway.

            Many SOBE residents say that the first they heard of the proposed rezoning was last week. At a meeting convened by the Bronx Council on the Arts on September 23, two City Planning staffers fields questions about gentrification, tenants’ protection, and a particularly pointed question: have existing land owners lobbied for these changes?

            “No,” the DCP staff relied. “We haven’t been lobbied at all.”

            Later in the meeting it emerged that the plan developed during meeting, going back more than a year, at which among other Harlem River Yards Ventures -- a/k/a/ the Galesi Group -- participated. The Galesi Group is the beneficiary of a cheap $99 lease from the State of the entire Harlem River Yards. After the award, none of the promised beneficial uses were built; rather, it’s waste transfer stations. 

            The DCP staffers were asked to explain the two statement: they weren’t lobbied, but they met repeatedly with the Galesi Group’s HRYV.  The answer was that the Galesi Group was invited to the meeting not by City Planning, but by the Bronx Borough President’s Office.  We report, you decide.  And comment: the plan, it’s said, will be put on the Department’s web site, at www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/home.html. There’s a link for zoning proposals, and also one to send a message to the Chair, Amanda Burden, maximum 150 word and nota bene: “Communications made through this electronic mail and message system shall in no way be deemed to constitute legal notice to the City of New York or any of its agencies, officers, employees, agents, or representatives, with respect to any existing or potential claim or cause of action against the City or any of its agencies, officers, employees, agents, or representatives.” Which is to say, if you’re going to sue, go elsewhere.   And it may come to that...

            While the response to the questions raised at the meeting was, “We’ll take it back to the Department,” the staffers said that the proposal cannot or will not be modified at this stage. They intend to “certify” the proposal by October 4, starting the uniquely New York process known as ULURP.  (For those who don’t like graphic-sound acronyms, that’s the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, click here for a diagram. It’s the same process being started for the proposed development of / on the Bronx Terminal Market by another not-lobbying-but-present Bronx bonanza recipient, Stephen Ross’ Related Companies). The first stop, the one-stop-shop, the staffers emphasized again and again, is Bronx Community Board One, which will have 60 days to hold a public hearing. “Call Community Board One,” the DCP staffer said. “They’ll tell you everything.”

            One attendee disagreed: “When you call their, a nasty lady answers the phone. You’ll never get through to the District Manager.”  There was some knowing laughter; the one SOBE resident -- now relocated north to the Grand Concourse -- who’s a member of Community Board One spoke of piano factory conversion into probation office, about homeless shelters without services, and what she called outrages.  We note that as of this writing the most recent calendar of meetings on CB1’s web site is May 2004, and that the Port Morris medical waste incinerator operator bragged they had CB1 approval.

            Micro-politics aside, the saddest news learned at the meeting was that a year ago, unreported in the local media, longtime SOBE resident Zee Frank passed away.   Her building has, it’s reported, been sold and resold since.  The last public report of her work was her fight with Harlem River Yard Ventures and the Galesi Group.   Zee Frank -- presente!

            Speaking of rituals in Spanish, and staying upbeat as Zee would have like, we’ll finally issue the first report of the fix-up and reopening of the long-abandoned bank branch on Tremont and Park Avenues, as... a restaurant and night club.  The fence has been getting painted; the signs have gone up: “El Rancho Poder del Norte,” grand opening September 30, 2004. Be there or be square...

     Last week, ICP/Fair Finance Watch filed comments based on the Senate’s Riggs Bank report’s findings regarding HSBC and Santander, click here for article in the Glasgow Herald, reporting that “A US-based human rights group has written to Britain's financial regulator urging it to halt Santander's £8bn acquisition of Abbey National until it fully investigates its part in the alleged "violation" of US money laundering laws. Inner City Press and its Fair Finance Watch, based in New York, has drawn the Financial Services Authority's attention to the US Senate's recent report on Riggs Bank's alleged money laundering for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and the dictator of Equatorial Guinea;” click here for more.

September 20, 2004

   There’s been enough coverage of The Bronx’ disfunctional political orbit.  One footnote, however, that we haven’t seen elsewhere.  On September 13, just before the vote, marginal East Tremont assembly candidate Sigfredo Gonzalez appeared on a handbill, in a photograph with Hillary Clinton.  It didn’t claim it was an endorsement. It was just that: a photograph.  Sigfredo with a crew cut and a checkered blue tie; Hillary in a white suit jacket, yellow shirt and necklace.   Did it help?  Benjamin 47%, Siggy 23....

  The Labyrinth of Starvation, HSBC’s tribute to Latinos in The Bronx. This is Hispanic Heritage Month, in The Bronx as beyond it, and one event to which ICP ventured was the “Fiesta de Flores” at the Botanical Garden on September 18.   The much-trumpeted sponsor was HSBC Bank USA, owner of the confessed predatory lender Household Finance (click here for ICP’s reporting on that, including 2000 pages just received under FOIA).  The day was overcast but, by noon, not raining.  The promotions the for event, each featuring HSBC, said “All activities take place at Conservatory Plaza and lawns unless otherwise noted.” But there was no there there, nor any signs, either. A guard inside the Conservatory said the event had been moved to the bottom floor of the library.  But once there, the door to the bottom floor was locked.  One walked up, to talk the elevator down, to a basement-like passageway with signs: Fiesta de Flores. Arrows for food pointed one way, for crafts another.  From behind a crafts table, a visible drunk woman offered sculpted balloon to scared and starving children.  When asked, “Where’s the food?” she staggered around, pointing toward another passageway, then back the way one came, to a now-jammed elevator up to the fourth floor.   There, no food was free -- who knew? Rather, a plate of rice and beans and meat was five dollars; two dollar per pastel, a dollar for water or soda.  The food, prepared and served over Sterno was La Caridad Restaurant of 1436 Williamsbridge Road, was quite good.  That the putative sponsor, HSBC, provided for no free food at all was not La Caridad’s fault. The promotions had promised helados and empañadas; neither, however, was present.  An officious young woman with a walkie-talkie walked in and out of the fourth story lunch room, urging those eating to take the elevator back downstairs of salsa lessons.  No more, the labyrinth of starvation, the bifurcated cultural squeezebox.   A reporter asked the woman with the walkie-talkie what had been HSBC’s role in all this and she professed not to know, or declined to comment.  This was “Fiesta de Flores,” HSBC-style, indicative of that global corporations abiding respect for the Ibero- and African diaspora, the Native soil, The Bronx...

            Editor’s note: while HSBC’s Fiesta was as reported above, the rest of the Garden was, as always, a place of trees and squirrels and spiritual renewal, the Bronx River rushing madly past forming white water, the worms wiggling, the trees just beginning to turn...

   Also, ICP has now submitted its timely written comments on the proposed project in (or on) the Bronx Terminal Market, reported on below.

September 13, 2004: Interim Report on Bronx Terminal Market, the September 9th Hearing

On September 9, across 161^st Street from the Bronx Criminal Court, a public hearing was held on the proposed destruction and redevelopment of the Bronx Terminal Market by The Related Companies, which along with the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle is also getting the vacant lot on 156^th Street and Third Avenue.

  The hearing room was full of professionally-dressed people, with artists’ renditions of Related’s planned mall on easels at the front, next to a stenographer and a panels of Related’s architects, lawyers and environmental consultants.  Yet when the hearing began, and after the obligatory three-minute upbeat presentations of the mall plan, no one in the room stood to testify.  And so Inner City Press / Community on the Move’s representative did, as follows:

 What should be addressed in this now-public process, right from the beginning, is how the sole source selection of Related Co.’s came about.  The current plan is praised, by the City’s EDC, as providing two acres of waterfront park. But how do we Bronxites know if another developer might have offered four acres?  The Environmental Assessment Statement scope of work does not mentioned environmental justice, nor the Bronx’s well-documented epidemic of asthma. While it speaks of indirect displacement, it considers only rising rents for stores, and the effect on residential rents.  There is, for now, no mitigation of any of these effects being proposed.

 The Bronx has a tattered history of its land being given away with little transparency or input. The Harlem River Yards, for example, was leased to the Galesi Group for 99 years; now it is a waste transfer station.  There’s a need for greater disclosure, greater transparency, and substantively, more for The Bronx and Bronx residents.

  After this statement, an EDC official shepherded ICP’s speaker out into the hall.  “Oh this is different than the Harlem River Yards,” he said.  “This will go to the Community Board.”  But the Port Morris medical waste incinerator, for example, “went though” Community Board One; that may not be the full solution.

  Inner City Press spoke with a number of the Market’s tenants, who state that the relocation that has been offered to them has been “you better move fast,” with no attempt made to keep them together.  Related, well prior to any public hearing, was given a 63-month lease, and is already telling all tenants to leave.  While there was talk, at the hearing, of a relocation consultant, this is a term you’ll find in Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, about Robert Moses and the Cross Bronx.  What’s in a word?

  Inside, a representative of Community Board Four’s economic development committee has asked what kind of businesses Related would have in its mall. The chairman of the meeting said it was not for asking questions, that the speaker (and Community Board Four) would be spoken to privately.   The District Manager of CB4, slated to retire after her long service in December of this year, told ICP that the Board has supported the project, in a sense as better than nothing.  A local councilman has been quoted to that effect.  But is this the way less low-income neighborhoods would act?  We shall see.

   Some background: the Bronx Terminal Market was begun in the 1920s with a refrigerated warehouse. In 1935, Mayor LaGuardia expanded it along Exterior Street. Some of the wholesales move to Hunts Point in the mid-70s, after which the Market became known regionally for specialty Hispanic foods.  Now, even at half capacity, it is known nationwide, including for rare African food and other products. 

  Tenants Inner City Press spoke to asked, why couldn’t they remain, perhaps in fixed-up space? They’re widely-known, and Bronx-relevant.  That doesn’t seem to be the plan.

  When the plan -- technically, or publicly, the adoption by Related of Arol Development’s 1972 lease of the property from the City -- was announced in April, various observers questioned why there had been no public bidding. There was talk of an inquiry by the city council’s Contracts Committee; unnamed “development sources” were quoted, calling it a “give away;” some named developers said they would have bid more, presumably not only in money but in benefits to Bronxites. Now, belatedly, a public process about the proposal has begun.  There will be a draft Environmental Impact Statement, and, it is said, the hearings required by the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (the graphic-sounding ULURP).  But how meaningful will the review be, with the land already leased to Related, and the pressure to relocate, now-fast-today, already on?  Who benefits from silence?  Not Bronxites. We’ll close (for now) with Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson’s 1950 dictum -- "It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error."  Developing...

September 6, 2004

  A recent visit to the Bronx Family Court's intake unit, on the seventh floor of the building shared with the Criminal Court, found grandmothers' testimony being mistranslated, the judge demanding to know who these court-observers were and then putting on a show, perhaps to the detriment of the grandmothers at issue.

  The first grandmother's request was straight-forward: to be appointed guardian for her one-year old grandchild. Judge Myrna Martinez-Perez asked, "Are you the maternal grandmother?" Yes. "And where is your daughter -- incarcerated?" Yes. "What for?"

  Thereupon the grandmother, understandably loyal, said that it was all her son-in-law's fault. Judge Myrna was dubious. "They're both in jail?" she asked. Yes. "What for?"

"I don't know," the grandmother said diplomatically. There was talk of finger-printing the grandmother, of home visits, of paperwork to follow.

  Grandmother Number Two had been brought in on a bench warrant. "Do you know why I issued the warrant?" Judge Myrna asked, either to the grandmother or to the court observers. "Because you took your granddaughter out of the country without permission! Your daughter lost custody due to abuse and neglect. The father came to court with a habeus corpus and said that his daughter had been taken to the Dominican Republic to be with the abusive mother--"

  "That's not true!" the grandmother said, in Spanish. The court interpreter tried to keep up. "The girl's father got arrested, and his wife said she wouldn't take care of the girl, she'd be taken to a home--" [This last word was said in English, the reference was to foster home, an institution for which there is no widely known term in Spanish].

  "Stay in one language!" Judge Myrna commanded, and proceeded to ask, "Do you mean his wife? Or his lover?" The interpreter translated this last as "amante," perhaps appropriate on a telenovela, but not here.

"It's not for me to say," the grandmother answered. "They are together."

  "You had no right!" Judge Myrna said, as if vindicating the wider Bronx public. The grandmother pointed out that the girl -- whom the interpreter repeatedly referred to as "la creatura," literally, "the creature," less literally an informal term of endearment, hardly legalese -- was out in the hallway and could be questioned.

  "I don't do that!" Judge Myrna said. "Bring her back here on Tuesday or you will be arrested."

On the elevator back down to Sheridan Avenue, the grandmother comforted the girl, cooing about their upcoming shopping trip to buy school supplies. The long Labor Day weekend began, including for Judge Myrna. Perhaps she will be given a TV show, like Judges Judy and Millan. If not, woe be to the litigants who come before her...

   Also during the visit, the seemingly finishing stages of the unending construction of the new Criminal Court -- the "Superblock"! -- were visible. Sad, it is, that the biggest building project in Bronx history is a criminal courthouse...

   Meanwhile, inveterate Bronx media-watchers that we are, here now a summary, satire and review of Cablevision News 12's most recent call-in show with the Bronx borough president. The called-in complaints ranged from out-of-control drug dealing to rats (including one eating out of a Chef Boyardee can, see below), to broken elevators to too-high gypsy cab fares. For each question, the B.P. had a response, such as "we'll get on that landlord" and "that fare doesn't sound high" to "we'll look into local legislation." One wondered what follow up there is, both by the BP's office, and by News 12. Each caller left their phone number (one, Joseph, even said "I hope you call me soon") -- so it wouldn't be impossible for News 12 to check in with them a month from now and ask what, if anything, has happened. There was for example "Tom from Fordham," who called to say that his building, 2605 Marion Avenue, is overrun by drug dealers. He named the landlord, Jerome Associates, and the BP said he knew them well. The BP added that he'd gone on a ride-along with an NYPD narcotics task force and witnessed three buy-and-busts. Okay, but what's going to happen on Marion?

   Simone from 965 Tinton Avenue recounted being trapped in her building, watching through the window as a rat ate out of a Chef Boyardee can. One expected the BP to promise to crack down on that rogue chef, Boyardee. But what will happen with the rats? Or with the broken elevators at 30-40 Richland Terrace? Or the uncleaned public areas in 2000 Valentine? Regarding this last, the BP said he recognized the address, that he would crack down on disrespectful landlords. He asked the caller who the owner was -- strange, since he claimed to have fought this very landlord. Note to News 12, or the other tip-seekers who call us: why not look into the campaign contributions of this and other landlords in The Bronx? The injunction to "follow the money" can't stop at the Bronx County line...

  Here from the mailbag is a note re Promesa:

Subj: Inside Promesa.

Date: 8/30/2004 10:04:43 AM Eastern Standard Time

From: [Inside Promesa -- name withheld]

To: BronxWatch [at] innercitypress.org

I am a former client of Promesa program and also now an employee. I am very sad to see how this place is changing. Over the last ten to twenty years I have seen how this place becomes a gossiping cut-throat place for the managers and counseling staff. No one can escape this and that more and more GOOD employees leave or are fired because the big people in charge does not like them or just because they have their own friends that they want to hire. They have hired a new person in charge of the financial stuff. He is not very nice and looks like he does not care too much about the people here. He got rid of the nice lady working in the financial office and now there is a younger girl there who he pays 20000 more than the other person. How can he do that without no one knowing? Or do people know. The finance people say she doesn't really do much but look pretty at her desk. Does anyone check to see if these people know what they are doing? She is also getting free parking I am not surprised. He also let go the very nice gentlemen from Panama after many years of service here. Another of the staff members was told that he could not have a chance at that job because it was already taken by one of the bosses' friends. How can people get a chance to get better jobs if when they try to get a better job the boss says, no I have someone already without giving anyone else the chance. The rumor is that he is saying that he is getting rid of everyone because he wants all his people in there so he can do what he wants with Promesa money. There is also a nice gentleman in the department that buys supplies who he said he was going to fire as soon as possible. Why if since he has been here he has helped us so much. There are no more mice in our rooms, the food is better and he painted the third floor of Promesa. What did he do, all he is done is help Promesa and he has to leave. Does someone else have a friend that needs a job. I also heard that the older man in the financial office is also going to be unemployed soon. They only like to keep dummies like the man who is in charge of fixing things or the lady in charge of the nursing home. I hope that you put this in your newspaper so that people can see how it is here.

  We've had a particular interest in Promesa ever since, in the 90s, its bookkeeper was shot in the back of the head and killed, and the case was not fully followed up. So keep that mail coming; one never knows.... Finally, as with last week's grape, another thing we didn't know -- there's a Bronx Avenue in Bridgeport, CT. From the Connecticut Post of Friday, September 3: "A man was arrested Wednesday for reportedly assaulting and threatening to kill a woman in Bridgeport. Angel Perez, 36, of Main Street, Bridgeport, was charged with third-degree assault, violation of a restraining order, assaulting a police officer, interfering with police, threatening and first-degree criminal trespass. Police said Perez entered the victim's Bronx Avenue home at 10:19 p.m. and challenged her boyfriend to a fight. He also claimed he had a gun and threatened to kill her, police added. He allegedly grabbed the woman and threw her against a car before running away, police said. Perez, later spotted leaning against a building, struggled with officers, who pepper sprayed him while he was taken into custody. He was held in lieu of $20,000 bond for an appearance in Bridgeport Superior Court." What jumped out at us? Bronx Avenue! 

September 1-2, 2004: Bronx-view of RNC (March on the Media)

            Who will tell the people?  Some of those whose answer is “Not the mainstream media” held a march on September 1, down the canyon of Sixth Avenue from 52^nd to 48^th Street. It took at least two hours to move those four blocks: the marchers were penned in by blue wooden and gray metal barricades, and phalanxes of police with white plastic handcuffs encircled the pen at all times.  They made it difficult for people wanting to join the demonstration to do so.  A man who looked like a shorter Donald Sutherland was directed to try from 50^th Street, then returned and said he could.  Police Officer Mike Galgano of the Manhattan South Task Force, shield 2671, escorted Donnie Sutherland into the pen, but then continued to misdirect others who asked up to 51^st Street, or among the same fruitless 50^th Street path.   P.O. Galgano’s white-shirted colleague Heaney snuck a smoke -- Salem Light -- while saying he’d have to quit again tomorrow. 

Each day of the RNC another nail in the coffin.

On 52^nd Street, Dick Cheney spoke from a huge television screen by the Hilton Hotel.  [Click here for Inner City Press' report of last week on link between Cheney's Halliburton and Deutsche Bank -- on the boards of directors of both Halliburton and predatory lending-supporter Deutsche Bank is one W.R. Howell, not of Gilligan's Island but J.C. Penney, per www.halliburton.com/about/board_of_dir.jsp ... We sketch these connections, but must still reflect on what they do to stop Bronxites from being sacrificed to both parties' ideologies, in Iraq and elsewhere, see below.]  On 50^th, the marquee advertised a New York Liberty basketball game for the following night.   Whole lanes of Sixth Avenue were coned-off for charter busses, which whizzed through with darkened windows. With the lights of Radio City behind it, one saw there were only three delegates in the bus, peering out at the hand-made signs -- Re-feat Bush, Pink Slip Bush -- and the green-hatted legal observers.  The chants ranged from “Whose media? Our media!” to “We aren’t buying!” Slipping through all obstacles were food delivery men on bikes, leaving a fragrant jet-stream in their wake. Less fragrant was the exhaust of the M7 bus, headed up to Harlem.   At the fringes, fliers were passed out for demonstrations on September 2, along with the come-on or selling-points, “We’ve got a permit.”  Whether a permit should be necessary is another question. Reverend Billy led a recitation of the First Amendment, prayed in his fashion for those locked up on Pier 57, and exhorted, “Free Media-lulya!” 

          More seriously, the marchers were energetic and nearly entirely white. That may be a reflection of the current demographics of the “independent media movement,” or at least this midtown Manhattan wing of the movement. It doesn’t make the argument -- for each Fox lie, people die, for example -- invalid. But it’s worth reflecting on, as is the disconnection between the protests to the RNC and, for example, The Bronx.  Some articles this week have mentioned The Bronx, as a symbol of poverty; some delegates took dark-windowed busses to the Bronx Zoo. But The Bronx is not just a symbol: there are 1,300,000 people living here, most of whom don’t vote.  Those elected by those who do vote seem predisposed to steal. The main nexus between the issues raised at the conventions, both of them, and The Bronx is providing soldiers, including to die.

  And who will tell the people? Until next time, for or with more information, contact us.

August 30, 2004

   Poverty rates in NYC, from 2003 census data released last week: 28.7 percent in the Bronx; 20.4 percent in Brooklyn; 19.6 percent in Manhattan; 13.4 percent in Queens and 9.3 percent on Staten Island... (American Community Survey, examining the 233 counties with populations of 250,000 or more)... As protests grew in Manhattan, Orchard Beach in The Bronx was jammed back on August 28, right up until a downpour at six p.m.. There was barbecuing and Latin music, and three dollars for a plastic clamshell of watermelon that elsewhere costs a single buck. Visible from the beach was Hart Island, where Potter's Field is, as well as jet skis and planes landing at LaGuardia. In the center of The Bronx, a bank branch opening on Fordham Road and Belmont was running smoothly until the sound truck campaigning for Steve Kaufman showed up, and suddenly much of the food was missing... The sound truck wandered through the streets, blaring that "Steve is a man of action, not of talk." Then why talk so much? Further east in Marble Hill, the new Target and Marshall's stores on 225th Street created traffic and buzz.

   Another thing we didn't know, from the San Francisco Chronicle of August 25: "Bronx seedless grapes are to everyday red grapes what a fine Muscat or Sauternes is to Welch's grape juice -- they're rich, silky and flood your mouth with subtle layers of sweetness. You can find them for the next few weeks at San Francisco's Ferry Plaza farmers' market as well as the Berkeley Bowl and Monterey Market. 'Grapes with attitude' is what John Lagier jokingly calls these beauties, because of their unlikely name." Unlikely? Why's that? Until next time, for or with more information, contact us.

August 23, 2004

   First the news from one corner of The Bronx, then wider. The subsidized New Horizons Mall announced with great fanfare that among its tenants-roster is... H&R Block. Beyond tax preparation, this firm makes controversial tax refund anticipation loans, at interest rates over 100%. It’s been sued all over the country, including by the NYC Consumer Affairs department. One might think that, if it’s to be included so unself-consciously in a subsidized mall project, widely characterized as "community development," that perhaps some commitment was obtained that H&R Block won’t charge usurious rates to Crotona Park East residents. (NYS has a usury cap of 25%, which H&R Block gets around by claiming the loans aren’t actually made in New York, but by a federally-chartered institution based elsewhere.) You might think -- but you’d be wrong. And it’s not like the players here weren’t on notice of these issues: when they proposed included Rent-A-Center, Inner City Press’ report led to this follow-up in City Limits. So does this new standardlessness flow from lack of institutional memory, lack of knowledge, or something else?

   As New York City -- or at least Manhattan -- begins getting spruced up for the Republican National Convention, it’s time to examine which banks are paying for all this, and what they’re getting in return. Financial services firms have hit the top-ten in terms of contributing (or bribe-paying) industries, up from 17^th in 2002. Of course, in the we-are-shocked Casablanca (White House) world of McCain-Feingold, it’s supposedly not the corporations which are giving money, but only their employees, through corporate PAC and as bundled by their CEOs.

  Take, for example, the CEO of Wachovia, Ken Thompson. He has bundled more than $200,000 for the Bush campaign, making him like Bank of America’s vice chairman Jim Hance a so-called "ranger." (Those bundling over $50,000 are merely "mavericks;" over $100,000 and you’re a "pioneer"). Wachovia also funds high-cost payday lenders, and is applying to the Federal Reserve for regulatory approval to buy SouthTrust, which counter-factually denies that it funds payday lenders and pawnshops (click here for Inner City Press’ proof).

  While corporations can’t directly fund the campaigns, they’re free to pay for the conventions and the parties. Who’s paying for the RNC? The list includes AIG, BofA, Bank of New York, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, New York Life, State Street and others.

   Several of these, including Citigroup and Bank of America, are also top donors to the Democrats: they are amoral, or meta-political, desiring access whoever wins. BofA, fresh for dissembling about its major Fleet Bank layoffs, will be the principal sponsor of a so-called salsa party on August 31 at Rockefeller Center. There’s talk of a protest of the other sponsor, for supporting policies that undermine Latinos well-being the length of the continent. Another more stealth connection: on the boards of directors of both Halliburton and Deutsche Bank is one W.R. Howell, not of Gilligan’s Island but J.C. Penney, per www.halliburton.com/about/board_of_dir.jsp ... We’ll see. Seen at the DNC in Boston was Citigroup’s Robert Rubin, strategically placed in the quasi-royal box to ensure "chatter" (to use a word that’s that lately been shifted from Al Qaeda to demonstrators, see below) that Rubin might, just might, become the chairman of the Federal Reserve if the Democrats win. So either way, bankers will rule. Surprised? We aren’t. We’re just outraged... In further even-handed news, payday lender Advance America, run by ex-Clinton scheduler Billy Webster, is preparing $340 billion predators’ initial public offering, according to a recent SEC filing. Ah, the Democratization of capital..

    New York-specific, on August 20 two reporters described the NYPD’s show-and-tell of anti-protest toys at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. One was WNYC radio’s reporter, who asked who these toys might be directed at. The other was NY Times reporter Randal C. Archibold, who pontificated about the implications of the show-and-tell, then admitted he hadn’t even been there. "But I’m aware of it," he said, as sort of bush-league Thomas Friedman, as if the elite status of one’s employer conferred veracity even on an ill-informed third-hand account. The Times’ Mr. Archibold then adopted the NYPD’s phrase about Internet "chatter" about anarchists coming to New York. When asked if this isn’t a word these days associated with terrorists, Mr. Archibold said, "That’s not how I meant it." He didn’t say if we was aware of the word’s resonance -- or if he cared. The Times, by the way, has contributed over $1.5 million to the Republic National Convention, while reporting breathlessly that Credit Suisse First Boston’s Richard Holbrooke might, just might, be Secretary of State if the Democrats win. Like we said, bankers inappropriately dominate. This must be addressed...

   Click here for the judge's decision in ICP's August 18 FOIA win over HSBC Household, the admitted predatory lender... On Riggs-PNC, the plot has thickened -- the Washington Post of August 21 reports on the widening criminal investigation of Riggs. CBS MarketWatch, which covered ICP's filing last week, now notes that "a lengthy probe could affect the company's pending acquisition by PNC." Another conflict has been identified, and raised: PNC awarded $50,000 to the Fed chairman's wife in April 2004. With all due respect, click here to view a summary of ICP's second comment, a petition for recusal. And click here, for ICP's outreach to... Santiago, Chile, regarding Riggs' money laundering for Pinochet. It's all connected.. 

August 16, 2004

   From the week in which overzealous principals and custodians at the old James Monroe High School in Soundview painted over an AIDS education mural that cost $25,000, here’s Inner City Press’ medley of stray signs around The Bronx:

--On the fence in front of a three-story house on Webster Avenue, next to El Buen Placer restaurant and a muffler shop, just south of 180^th Street, taped-up signs with photographs of a soldier, all saying "Welcome Home"...

--On Broadway and 230^th Street in Marble Hill, two-count-‘em-two recreational vehicles with signs, "Mobile Law Office of John C. Dearie"...

--At the meeting of Kingsbridge and Fordham Roads, in the storefront with signs for the law office of Roberto Ramirez (with dueling phone numbers, 502 5000 and 220 5700), a new sign: office of Councilmember Maria Baez. (The rolling gates were being pulled shut at seven pm)...

   --Full circle to Webster, north of East Tremont: on a side street, a sign: "Doctor Computer." And below Tremont, a Bronx Lebanon hospital psychiatric center...

Let’s say it: it’s time for more security at the Murphy Houses, specifically 1010 East 178th Street, where residents sense a serial killer. Two similar murders in the past seven months. The NYT (8/11, Alan Feuer) reports that "as of July 18, there have been eight murders this year in the 48th Precinct, where the building is located, compared with five during the same period last year." Meanwhile, not to say we-told-you-so, but on August 13-14 a man was killed, his girlfriend injured, at the Rhumba club on Tremont and Webster, on which we reported a few weeks ago.

   Meanwhile, while a recent visit to the Grand Concourse branch of the N.Y. Public Library, on 173^rd Street, found it full of readers, all computers in use, the branch is closed all day on Tuesday. Does no one want to read that day? Or are the city’s funding priorities elsewhere?

   Inner City Press' Fair Finance Watch has just filed two 28-page challenges to applications by the PNC Financial Services Group to acquire the scandal-plagued Riggs National Corporation, with the Federal Reserve and OCC. ICP's comments include evidence that PNC funds payday lenders such as Check n’ Go of Washington DC, Inc. and elsewhere; ICP contrasts this with PNC’s peer SunTrust’s July 12, 2004 response to ICP’s comments, that SunTrust will no longer fund payday lenders. See, e.g., "SunTrust pledges to drop ties to payday & title lenders," www.investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journalid=22274151&brk=1   and here.

   PNC's funding and enabling payday lenders is hardly indicative of an "ongoing commitment to improving all the communities in which we do business." Also, ICP’s own recent research finds for example that Riggs served -- or serves -- as correspondent for, among others, Bank of Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone Commercial Bank Ltd, Energobank of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Banco de Cabo Verde, Banco Internacional SA, and others - evidence has been submitted. ICP has formally requested hearings. Click here for a summary of ICP's PNC - Riggs comments; click here for an update on Wachovia-SouthTrust, and their, uh, misstatements about SouthTrust not funding fringe financiers... We admit to liking the twangy guitar in Wachovia's television ads - but Wachovia is enabling loan sharks. Maybe the twangy guitar is now in (a SouthTrust-funded) pawnshop? We'll see.

August 9, 2004

  On Thursday, August 5, Tremont Avenue between Webster and Park Avenue was closed by police. Red Con Edison emergency trucks parked around the manholes on both sides of Tremont. A man in the crowd talked about manhole covers flying thirty feet in the air. Traffic was diverted north on Park Avenue; it backed up on Webster, and spilled onto Carter Avenue.

  Meanwhile, now it can be told: the Jet Set Café, previously of 180^th Street and Third Avenue, is now in a glass-fronted building on Webster, just north of the Cross Bronx Expressway. Also on Webster, further north between 182nd and 183^rd, is the Blessing African Restaurant, which the Village Voice’s intrepid reviewer Robert Sietsema missed in his recent three-restaurant tour of Melrose and Webster Avenues. (He only got as far north at the B.B., which is just south of the Cross Bronx). Sietsema, come on back: we hardly knew ye…

  In the scandal surrounding the "Casa Cultural Puertorriqueña," beyond the nepotism -- which is becoming the norm in Bronx politics these days -- the saddest footnote is the argument that the CCP's pipedream of buying and fixing the abandoned Beaux Arts courthouse on 161st Street and Third Avenue explains the waste of money and lack of action. That building'll be fixed up yet...

  Nothing but the trains: The northern leg of the D subway line has some of the most decrepit and dirtiest stations in the city, according to a survey released last week by the New York City Transit Riders Council. "It's like part of the D is forgotten," intoned council Chairman Andrew Albert as he stood in the 205th St.-Norwood station. At the Kingsbridge Road D stop in the Bronx, ranked third-worst, 25-year-old student Kesha Williams of Tremont stared at water dripping from peeling ceiling paint. "Just looking at that bothers me," she was quoted as saying. Farther down the D line, at the 174th-175th Sts. stop, ranked second-worst, water damage was not the problem. "It's smelly down here," said Evelyn Esperanza, 45, a child care provider from Grand Concourse. "It's like a bathroom." Yep... Coverage of the report noted, as a bright spot, that among the five best stations is the 2/5 stop at Intervale Avenue. What was not reported was the reason: the station was entirely rebuilt after a fire in the 1990s. Give it a few years...

   News of the Bronx' renewal apparently hasn't reached England: here's from the Birmingham Evening Mail of August 5, 2004, form an article entitled "Families Protest over 'Bronx' Estate" -- "It's been abandoned, neglected and left to rot - welcome to Birmingham's Bronx. Everywhere you look on the Wyrley Birch estate in Erdington there are smashed windows, boarded up houses, graffiti strewn walls and rubbish piling up on the streets. Home to more than 700 people, this West Midlands estate has become overrun by drug addicts and alcoholics... 'We call it the Birmingham Bronx now. 'The druggies have taken over, gangs come in from different parts of Birmingham and burgle our houses and nobody does anything about it.'" Sounds like...

  While awaiting receipt of HSBC Household's long-shot appeal in Washington State to block release of information, on August 5 oral argument was held in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware on ICP's ongoing request for the Delaware AG's documents about HSBC Household's predatory lending and settlement, and the Constitutionality of Delaware's FOIA. See, "Federal Judge Weighs Delaware Records Law: Residency Requirement Is Unconstitutional, Complainant Asserts," by Mary Allen, Wilmington (Del.) News-Journal, August 6, 2004.

August 2, 2004

  We’ve tried to avoid it, but our topic this week is crime. The murder on which we’ll hang out hat took place in broad daylight on July 26 on Third Avenue and 144^th Street, in the playground of the Patterson Houses. Kevin Freeman, 25, of East 143rd Street in the Bronx, was pronounced dead at Lincoln Hospital after he was shot in the neck at 3:55 p.m.. A 19-year-old man was shot in the head and was taken to Lincoln Hospital, where he was listed in critical condition. A man of unknown age was stabbed in the neck and shot in the leg, and was able to check himself into the hospital. A 20-year old man was treated at the hospital for a split lip and a laceration to his head. Witnesses say that at least 50 teenagers ran from the scene.

  The Daily News, in a next-day, "I’m-leaving-the-Bronx" story, reported that in Police Service Area 7, which serves Patterson and 24 other housing developments in the South Bronx, felony assaults, which include shootings, stabbings and beatings, are up 50% from the same period last year. This was followed two days later by a correction, apparently at the police department’s request: "Felony assaults at PSA 7 are down 14% between Jan. 1 and July 25, compared to the same period last year. They are up, however, by 50% between June 28 and July 25, and up by 57% between July 19 and July 25."

  On July 24 on 150^th Street a priest, Francis Gargani, was beaten during the daytime in front of his church. The priest told reporters, ""I love the neighborhood. I love the people here, and I would not stop because of this." A nice sentiment, but not one that the City should count on...

  The same day, 46-year old Dean Nicholson was shot and killed in the lobby of 424 Morris Avenue; ten months ago, Nicholson’s son was stabbed to death on the Grand Concourse -- at three in the afternoon.

  Despite sunny reports and manipulated statistics, those of us living in The Bronx -- and this is based on ICP’s outreach throughout the borough -- have noticed an increase in violence and the threat of violence throughout this summer. A recent precinct visit to view mug shots was less then useful: they are not searchable by neighborhood, or even borough. The tens of thousands of "hits," viewable in sets of six that download only slowly, makes for few-to-no photo identifications anymore. In this detective squad, they were watching the Yankees on YES network cable, while bemoaning the insolence of their own children, out in the suburbs. As to safety in The Bronx, they opined that the Rhumba Club on Tremont and Webster is the source of many problems, that don’t get resolved because it is on the border between precincts: falling between the cracks, so to speak...

  Bronx, as concept, in the news: from the National Journal of July 27, 2004, reporting on the DNC’s tour of Roxbury in Boston: "’See if New York sends the Republicans through the South Bronx,’ one city official remarked as he approached the entrance of the Franklin Park Zoo, the site of the California reception." From the Czech News Agency wire of July 29: "Trebic, one of the Czech monuments added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites, is not safe... three drunk Romanies rudely threatened a temporary worker in the Trumpetka restaurant and when manager Stanislav Neuman asked them to pay and leave, attacked him and he had to be treated by doctors. Police had to intervene. ‘Seven Romanies came here. They were throwing ash-trays against the walls and broken a glass,’ Neuman, who ironically calls the Jewish quarter Trebic's Bronx, said." Note: we’re troubled by the references to "Romanies" - and to The Bronx...

  Look who connived a spot on the podium at the DNC: Fab Five Freddy, fresh from exposure in the Velella tapes as a wheeler-dealer supporting (or not) the executive directors of public hospitals, in exchange for, well you know, campaign contributions. We agree that the DNC lacked a Latino speaker, but disagree with the one they chose...

  Library beat: the newly fixed-up library on 140^th and Alexander still has only six public-access Internet terminals. But there’s an exhibit on display, about the Piccirilli family of sculptors, who in a workshop at 463 E. 142^nd Street between 1893 and 1944 carved thousands of statues, including Abe of the Lincoln Memorial (from 28 five-ton blocks of Georgia marble). The workshop was demolished in the 1970s; now on the site is a Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Kingdom Hall. Similarly, on the site of the James & Kirkland foundry, where the Capitol Dome was cast, now sits the Horizons youth jail... Similar photos of the Piccirilli family’s sculptures are on display at the Belmont public library, which after being close for a week, re-opened with new (gray metal) furniture, and better air-conditioning (but still not enough computers)....

  Street fair and carnival beat: on July 31, there was a street fair on 187^th Street between Beaumont and Cambrelleng. From the bandstand, a Mexican sextet played. Tacos were for sale, from a grocery that is morphing into a restaurant. (The transition was when they started serving meals to workmen in the back, on the removable back seat of the van they use to get produce from the Hunts Point Market.) There was a Spiderman game and not much else: the event, an annual one, was mis-scheduled to compete with a larger festival out on 189^th and Third...

  On July 26, JPM Chase issued a press release bragging that, in the entire year of 2004, it will open sixteen branches in the tri-state area around New York. Since many banks wouldn’t issue a press release about opened 16 branches in a year, one might assume that these sixteen would be in low and moderate income areas. JPM Chase’s press release admitted that "in the late '90s, banks including Chase closed branches as the result of mergers" -- for Chase, that was more than 100 branch closings, including at least 12 in The Bronx. So where, you ask, are these sixteen new branches of which Chase is bragging so much? Not in The Bronx, and mostly not in low or moderate income neighborhoods at all. The press release listed seven "locations that have recently opened: Englewood, NJ (55 W. Palisade Ave, NE)--  Hoboken, NJ (125 River St.)--  Lake Success/Long Island, NY (2335 New Hyde Park Rd.)--  Garden City/Long Island, NY (106 7th St.)--  Princeton, NJ (16-18 Nassau St.)--   Carnegie Hill, NY (181 East 90th St.)--  East Hampton, NY (35 Main St.)" and nine "that are scheduled to open by the end of the year: Howell, New Jersey--   Tribeca/Manhattan, New York--  Linden, New Jersey--  Manhasset/Long Island, New York--  Red Bank, New Jersey--  Midtown Manhattan, NY (Chrysler Building)--  Elizabeth, New Jersey--  Franklin Square/Long Island, New York--   Elmhurst/Queens, NY." That’s a total of four, of the sixteen, in New York City itself: three in Manhattan, and one in Queens. None, that is, The Bronx. And still they fund payday lenders and pawnshops... From the editorial board of the Orlando Sentinel from their July 30 edition, "SunTrust was Right to End Business with Payday and Car Title Lenders" -- "SunTrust made its decision to cut ties with such lenders after a consumer group filed a complaint with the Federal Reserve opposing the bank's pending merger with National Financial Corp. of Memphis, Tenn. Among other complaints, Inner City Press/Fair Finance Watch said records showed SunTrust had at least 60 customers making payday or car-title loans. Announcing its decision, SunTrust cited the ‘potential reputational risks and consumer harm’ that could come from lending to such companies. How candid, and how refreshing. ICP believes SunTrust's decision could persuade other banks -- especially those seeking government approval for mergers -- to follow suit. Let's hope so." Thanks, Orlando Sentinel. And what does JPM Chase have to say? We’ll see. Here also is an editorial in the Memphis Commercial Appeal of July 31:

"National Commerce Financial Corp. and SunTrust Banks recently decided to stop doing business with companies that provide payday or car title loans. The move, while commendable, appears to have been done to win favor with federal regulators who will decide whether to approve a merger between NCF and SunTrust. Whatever the motives, the decision shows why high interest loans that are frequently made to lower income borrowers deserve careful scrutiny....A protest by the Inner City Press/Community on the Move and Fair Finance Watch apparently helped NCF and SunTrust see the light... Those words should be a wake-up call to local companies that want to deal in those types of loans. Unless they're willing to accept more regulation and greater accountability, maybe more major financial institutions will follow the lead of NCF and SunTrust.
And then car title lenders will know what it feels like to struggle to get a loan."

  That last sentiment, we like how the Commercial Appeal's editorial board put it. (Click here for the full text of these editorial, and more). Still, what's up with JPM Chase and the others? Developing...

July 26, 2004

  The New York Times of Sunday, July 25 refers to The Bronx a total of 14 times. Two are baseball stories, one a "Memo to Elton John;" a death notice, a sale of a home, a wedding / celebration. There's a "New York Up Close" piece which claims that the 212 area code is still "routinely assigned" in The Bronx -- not. Other than Seth Kugel's piece about Target (even that focused on the Marble Hill irony of the Bronx-Manhattan border), no substantive coverage. For shame.

  What then is the best way to see The Bronx? Well here’s one way that’s relatively cheap, either two dollars a ride, or three dollars a day if you get an unlimited MetroCard.

  A recently rainy Friday (okay, it was July 23), an Inner City Press reporter boarded the Bx 41 bus on Webster Avenue, heading north. One could get off at Fordham Road, or at Bedford Park and walk into the Botanical Gardens. But the rain was getting heavier, so the reporter stayed on the bus. This Bx41 route goes to 241^st Street, near the border of The Bronx and Mount Vernon. It takes nearly an hour to get there, but if you have the time it’s worth it.

  Between 205^th Street and Gun Hill Road, Webster Avenue is a green leafy speedway (where, we’re not unaware, some drag-racing youths and their unwitting passengers have lost their lives, RIP). Just south of Gun Hill is an old faded sign, for the Bronx Republican Club, with Italian names rarely heard anymore. Then the Bx 41 turns east on Gun Hill, on an overpass carved "BR PP" that passes the Metro North station called Williamsbridge, and over to White Plains Road, under the elevated train. Here every other storefront refers to Jamaica or the West Indies. There are at least three Golden Krust bakeries; there’s also, in no particularly order, Ali’s Trinidadian Roti Shop, a restaurant specializing in "Guyanese and Chinese" cuisine, Arkansas Fried Chicken and a grocery called Texas Farm, a Chinese take-out called Jackie Chen, presumably after the Rumble in The Bronx actor, and the Act III nightclub up on Nereid Avenue.

  At 216^th Street there’s El Rancho Motel. Then there’s councilman Larry Seabrook’s office, which has windows fifteen feet up from the sidewalk, unbreakable. Next door at 3763 White Plains Road is an education center named for Leon Eastmond, on information and belief the man involved in the tragic boiler death of a workman on Arthur Avenue, covered (much) further below on this page. There’s a storefront office of American Home Mortgage, near a Navy & Marine Recruitment office. There are numerous check cashiers, a Jackson Hewitt and an H&R Block, a Rent-A-Center, and many small (spill-and-fall) law offices. There are a number of nurses’ training schools, in second floor lofts, mysterious.

Or take another route, which we’ll call "From Dreiser to Poe." The Bx26 from Bedford Park and Webster out to Co-op City, via Allerton. After passing the Botanical Garden, the commercial strip of Allerton Avenue has a pawnshop screaming "CA$H KINGDOM," with paintings of diamonds and computers and musical instruments, and the medieval pawnbrokers’ logo of the three golden balls. There’s a branch of Primerica, Citigroup’s multi-level marketing subsidiary which many call a pyramid scheme. The streets turn suburban, and suddenly the cluster of high rises of Co-op City is upon you, reminiscent of Clockwork Orange, the distance between the towers enormous, at the end of the line at Erskine Place some views of a landfill, and weird well-fed geese... There’s Einstein Loop, and Asch Loop, and Dreiser Loop, which we’ll assume is for Theodore Dreiser, author of the not-irrelevant American Tragedy.

  Return on the Bx 28, which shows you Gun Hill east of White Plains Road, full of jerk shacks and jerk centers and even a jerk yard; a foreclosure consultant and a bike store that’s closing; a place offering musical lessons, then Evander Childs High School, Immaculate Conception then the projects. From there the route gets weird: up Gun Hill to Bainbridge, past the illogical (or Greenwich Village-like) intersection of 204^th and 205^th Streets, across the Concourse to Tracey Towers, along Paul Avenue to Lehman College, east on Bedford Park to yet another pawnshop, this one also screaming of Cash Loans; a church, the armory, and east to Poe Park, to which Edgar Allan Poe’s signature has been added, on a plaque on the fence.

  No matter how long you’ve been here, including your whole life, you can view The Bronx anew, it never stops changing, and yet it never really changes...

July 20, 2004

   After 4 p.m. on July 20, the Federal Reserve announced it had approved the application by North Fork Bancorporation to acquire GreenPoint Bank. Inner City Press / Fair Finance Watch challenged the deal beginning in April, based on North Fork's lending disparities and support of pawnshops and check cashiers in the low income areas which it avoids with its branches, and on GreenPoint's subprime lending.

  On the lending disparities, the Fed admits on page 16-17 that

"The 2002 HMDA data indicate that North Fork ’s percentage of total HMDA-reportable loan originations, which include home purchase, refinance, home improvement, and multifamily loans, to borrowers in predominantly minority census tracts generally was comparable with or lagged the percentage for the aggregate lenders in the areas reviewed" and that " North Fork ’s denial disparity ratios for African-American and Hispanic applicants for total HMDA-reportable loans generally were comparable with or higher than those ratios for the aggregate lenders in the areas reviewed."

  These disparities continue despite North Fork hiring a "CRA lawyer" to defend its practices, and despite North Fork hiring an ex-regulator to run its CRA programs (see ICP's Bronx Report of July 19, 2004, below). The Fed argues, as North Fork did, that the CRA doesn't require a bank to do mortgage lending. But when a bank makes homeownership loans available in the more affluent, less minority suburbs, but limits its credit offers in communities of color to non-homeownership (often, slumlord) loans, there's a problem, including under the Fair Housing Act. We will get to the bottom of this. The Fed's order is available here in PDF format.

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