#BlackLivesMatter protests across Queens

Protesters in Hollis (Screengrab of video by QNS reporter Dean Moses)

Demonstrations in response to the murder of George Floyd by a white cop in Minneapolis as well as other police killings of black Americans such as Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Tony McDade in Tallahassee, Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and others have been reported across Queens in neighborhoods including Astoria, Queensbridge, Sunnyside, Jackson Heights, Flushing, Jamaica, Hollis, Whitestone, Bayside, Fresh Meadows and Far Rockaway.

Protesters on Queens Blvd (Photo credit: Twitter user @lockebox2)

“In #sunnyside queens, we started with a modest crowd—I think it snowballed as we passed so many supportive folks on the street who joined us #BlackLivesMatternyc” one of the activists tweeted yesterday. Photos show activists on 43rd Street, under the 7 Train and on Queens Boulevard where many took a knee.

Queensbridge (Credit: IG user morgan_s)

As this was posted Friday night, a vigil honoring Breonna Taylor’s birthday was held at Queensbridge Park. A crowd filled the park for a vigil on Wednesday. A simultaneous demonstration happened across the water on Roosevelt Island. By Thursday night, someone on Twitter said, cops were arresting people for being outside at Queensbridge. “COVID-19 response is militarized in the hood,” @UpFromTheCracks tweeted.

Photo credit: Twitter user @CRGuarino

Several hundred people rallied and held vigil at Astoria Park on Monday. On Tuesday, protesters also rallied on 30th Avenue and marched down Steinway Street. A simultaneous demonstration was also happening in Bayside.

Photo credit: Twitter user @undercatpro

Last Saturday, hundreds in Jackson Heights rallied at Diversity Plaza, marched down Northern Boulevard and took a knee outside the police station near Junction Boulevard. On Sunday, protesters marched by the Unisphere in Corona Park, as seen in an AP photo. That night back in Jackson Heights, a vigil was held at Travers Park.

On Wednesday, the Queens Post reported, protesters led by Make the Road New York marched to Assembly Member Michael DenDekker’s office in East Elmhurst. The group says DenDekker, who co-sponsored a repeal of a law that keeps police records confidential, can push harder for police reforms, and that he has only donated a portion of the campaign money he had taken from police PACs.

Jamaica (screengrab of vid by Twitter user @NubianPhoenixx)

In Jamaica, protesters said “thank you” to the local precinct commanding officer when he joined them in taking a knee on Jamaica Avenue and Parsons Boulevard where someone read aloud names of various black people killed by police. A few hundred people also rallied in Hollis, where the police disclosure bill was also pushed for, on Wednesday.

Far Rockaway (Screengrab of vid by @TheeeUgly)

“They said Far Rock was gonna riot, loot and violate. Look at this, nothing but unity and peaceful protest in our hood,” Twitter user @TheTruthSerg_ said of the march and rally in Far Rockaway on Tuesday.

Whitestone (Twitter user @sassyveeee)

In Whitestone on Monday, a white man, driving by a BLM protest on the Cross Island Parkway overpass on Clintonville Street, yelled out, “Wrong neighborhood, bitch.” A protester yelled back at him, “Fuck you!” He pulled over, got out of his car and chased one of the protesters with a bizarre-looking object, then threatened the others. He was later arrested, it was reported. A video of the scene was captured on social media.

It was reported more than 100 people protested on the corners of Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue in Flushing Tuesday night. One unexplained video on Twitter shows a whole bunch of cops attacking someone.

Seen in this photo left to right: State Sen. Jessica Ramos, Borough President Melinda Katz, State Sen. John Liu, State Rep. Alicia Hyndman, City Council Member Donovan Richards and U.S. Rep. Grace Meng. (Screengrab of Twitter vid by QNS reporter Angélica M. Acevedo.

Yesterday afternoon, a march took off from Cunningham Park in Fresh Meadows to Borough Hall, where various officials such as City Council Member Donovan Richards spoke out. Richards, chair of the public safety committee, also spoke out at the rallies in Sunnyside and Far Rockaway and possibly others. He is running for borough president. At some point, the march passed by Sean Bell Way.

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Protesters turn BQX meeting in LIC upside down

I don’t usually like to make the protesters – the ones that haunt the Sunnyside Yards and BQX streetcar planning meetings – the whole story. But last night they didn’t just create a scene, they really disrupted, true to the word, the city’s BQX outreach meeting in Long Island City. 

The drama was similar to that which happened at the Sunnyside Yards master plan meeting six months ago, when Queens protesters stood on a table, and created a people’s mic-style forum of sorts, in the middle of the gallery space where info-boards were set-up on easels. At that time, Queens Neighborhoods United dubbed the action a “#SSYshutdown.” But at that meeting, the city planners were still able to hold a separate community meeting in a room down the hall. When the protesters finally tried to get into the meeting, the door was blocked, leaving them to chant in the hall. But not this time. 

Protesters hold press conference at Sunnyside Yards

Screen-grab of photo from @ivanr_contreras Twitter account

The Justice For All Coalition and other activist groups held a weekday noontime press conference at the Sunnyside Yards today, calling for a moratorium on all mega-projects and large-scale rezonings. The protesters also called on the Economic Development Corporation and the Department of City Planning to:

“allocate the tens of billions of dollars intended to develop the yards instead to restore public housing, repair and expand our crumbling infrastructure, save small businesses, and restore habitability for all, not just the wealthy.”

According to a tweet from community organizer Ivan Contreras, more than 100 people participated in the rally. A flyer shows endorsements from 46 organizations, such as obvious ones including Woodside on the Move and Queens Neighborhoods United. There are also endorsements from a few non-local groups such as Coalition to Protect Chinatown & LES and Brooklyn Anti-gentrification Network. Access Queens is not listed.

The EDC is holding a “digital town hall” on December 4. I’m not sure how protesters will be able to crash it. You can sign up here.

 

Community Land Trust Considered for Sunnyside Yards Master Plan

Activists disrupt Sunnyside Yards meeting at Aviation High School.

At a rowdy third* public meeting for the Sunnyside Yards master plan, the new head of the planning team, Adam Grossman Meagher, said the team is considering a public land trust as part of the financing scheme.

“You can imagine part of this that’s created through traditional means,” Grossman Meagher said. “You can also imagine,” he said, part of the site as a community land trust.

A CLT is a community-based non-profit that owns the land, allowing residents to control the use, and are used to maintain affordability. There has been a CLT movement and a push in the city council.

The idea of a public land trust has been on the lists of demands by activists who’ve made their presence felt at the master plan community outreach meetings throughout the year.

EDC’s Adam Grossman Meagher (right), LIC Partnership president, Elizabeth Lusskin (red dress) and a man guarding the door from protesters.

Protesters were a major part of this third general public meeting, holding an Occupy-style mic-check demonstration in the middle of the event. The lead protestor led the disruption from a table in the Aviation High School cafeteria where poster boards were on display around the periphery. The 50 or so participants in the call-and-response eventually targeted a small side-room where Grossman Meagher and lead consultant Vishaan Chakrabarti were leading a presentation on the emerging master plan. The protesters were not allowed inside but after they chanted a demand for entry, Grossman Meagher mentioned the CLT discussions off-handedly.

A look at how the Master Plan is beginning to shape up.

Asked (to confirm) if the Economic Development Corporation was discussing the possibility of a CLT, Grossman Meagher said “yes,” and that the idea was on one of the poster boards. I couldn’t find the idea on the poster boards except for one board of a list of ideas heard by participants at public meetings.

Sunnyside Yards BINGO? (Bottom left corner: CLT)

The team plans to have another meeting later this year and a master plan ready by sometime in winter. At this third general meeting, some ideas of how the plan is shaping up were on display. Check out those images in the slideshow below.

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*This was corrected: the EDC held the third, not fourth general public SSY master plan meeting.

“We don’t need any starchitects” -community lays heat on Sunnyside Yards planners

Vishaan Chakrabarti – whom for some reason was only addressed as “Vishaan” – the head architect involved in the Sunnyside Yards master plan, had the P.S. 166 auditorium lights dimmed to better show his slide show, leaving him a silhouette against abstract layouts of the rail yard. He expressed how given the high rises at the Queens Plaza end of the yards and the near-suburban Sunnyside Gardens district at its opposite end, the team was looking into wider spread mid-rises, and not just high-rises. He said the team was looking for a “sweet spot” of human scale blocks. He said the yards is an opportunity to right wrongs such as trash piles and sludge puddles at curbs. 

But the first question, from a Community Board 2 member, was how this was going to be paid for. Neither Chakrabarti or Cali Williams, who leads the master plan team, wanted to discuss the price tag, which has been projected at $16 to 19 billion. “This is a complicated and challenging site,” and the costs and funding will be figured out along the way, Williams said. 

This was the second public meeting for the Sunnyside Yards, two years after a feasibility report was released. About a year ago, Chakrabarti’s Practice for Architecture and Urbanism, was tapped to join the master plan team, with Williams, an Economic Development Corporation vet, at its head. 

When Williams tried to end the Q&A to get to the breakout sessions, a woman interrupted her to say there were more questions in the room, which filled out with a few hundred people. Many applauded the interruption. Williams caved and said she’d allow two more questions. 

The first questioner then, thanked and praised the planning team. “What I hear is that you guys want to do the right thing,” he said. “Nobody gets shafted in this, generally.” 

That guy set the whole thing off. A younger guy near me stood up and shot back about how his friends have been removed from Astoria, Ravenswood and the nearby neighborhoods. He said when the affordable units come, “good luck trying to win the lottery to get there in the first place!” Many people applauded. 

I attended a breakout session on urban design. Somehow I wound up at the one table, apparently, that didn’t have any activists. First our guide showed us pictures of existing buildings, each from a neighborhood in Western Queens, with a corresponding grid showing how much Floor Area Ratio the building used per block. We were asked to put a sticker on the picture we thought would be most appropriate for the Sunnyside Yards. After examining all the pictures, I pointed out that the pictures were misleading – and I wasn’t trying to be especially clever. The tallest-thinnest looking building somehow took up more space on a block than a smaller and wider-looking building took up of a different block. And the buildings were all totally different styles, including public housing.

A brief note on our representatives after Amazon

There is a narrative that says Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s election victory last year pushed State Senator Michael Gianaris, who endorsed AOC’s opponent before the HQ2 announcement and became the deputy majority leader after he came out against the Amazon deal, to take a more progressive (and possibly more visible) lead when the opportunity arrived. This narrative could extend to Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer, who also endorsed Rep. Joe Crowley — and thus might have to make up for it.

The New York Times put it this way:

“The company’s decision was at least a short-term win for insurgent progressive politicians led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose upset victory last year occurred in the western corner of Queens where Amazon had planned its site...

“Her race galvanized the party’s left flank, which mobilized against the deal, helped swing New York’s Legislature into Democratic hands, and struck fear in the hearts of some local politicians.“

Politico New York more or less told the same story:

“Gianaris had his own reasons for concern. He witnessed self-described Democratic Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) topple Queens Democratic party boss and longtime U.S. House member Joseph Crowley in a congressional primary last year, and no doubt took notice of her unabashedcriticism of the deal.“

After I expressed confusion about this narrative on Twitter yesterday – it seemed like a way of seeing AOC as the center of the political universe – I wondered if it’s possible this whole Amazon debacle actually traces back to AOC, period. I can’t say for sure that’s not how this equation worked, but this whole time, while I’ve mostly not blogged at all and didn’t attend any Amazon hearings or anything, I’ve taken a less linear view. I’ve seen Gianaris and JVB at rallies before, from near or afar, courting the activist community of LIC. Actually, I saw it on 44th Drive, the ragged strip where Amazon planned to build a campus, when the issue was a smaller scale land-use and real estate debate. And I spent four months working on a story learning about how JVB, not only readily separates himself from the mayor, but can be extremely anti-development, an especially sensitive subject in the area.

Are the local politicians, including one who may be running for borough president, being opportunistic? Could be. But the City Council and our local representatives didn’t become progressive, anti-development, anti-ICE, pro-union and populist when AOC showed up — even if they did write a letter supporting Amazon early on.

It’s not important to me to deconstruct what happened. But obviously the sudden lack of an Amazon HQ in Queens leaves us with a certain self-reflection. Queens is still not Brooklyn. Long Island City has a way of not becoming Williamsburg or Downtown Brooklyn — though it is a downtown. What we learned, I think, is that Western Queens is just as much as other places the epitome of what New York is right now, I think. Politico put it this way:

“Some supporters of the deal derided Amazon’s… inability to muster the nerve to move forward in a city that has a reputation for fighting development.“

Bye, Amazon

So, that’s over. The movement against Amazon has had its victory. Long Island City is not going to be the Silicon Alley neighborhood that it was on the verge of being. City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer, State Senator Michael Giannaris and the rest successfully scared the giant away. 

JVB: only 11 ppl called to support Amazon since mailers

Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer says only 11 people have called his office to support Amazon since the company has sent Queens residents mailers instructing to call him to support it. In a tweet, he said yesterday 21 people have called to oppose the Amazon deal in a total of 32 calls. In a December Quinnipiac poll, Queens residents (identified as “voters”) supported the $3 billion incentive package 55 to 39.

Amazon to come to Anable Basin

The Anable Basin was controversial even before Amazon said it would show up. Less than a year ago, City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer, other local pols and various LIC activists were there to protest a plan to turn the strip at 44th Drive at the waterfront into a development that would somehow involve residential and industrial uses altogether. Well — no one cares about that anymore, because Amazon is coming, which is apparently the biggest business story in a while and it’s down the street from my apartment. A memorandum of understanding shows where Amazon plans to set up shop for part of it’s HQ2, and it’s the same area, just south of Con Edison. JVB and Senator Michael Gianaris were initially down with Amazon coming to LIC, but held a protest at the site today saying this was a huge $3 billion giveaway that won’t involve any public review. The mayor says the 25,000 jobs or more promised over a decade is unprecedented and the governor says the return on investment would be nine to one. 

Comptroller comes to LIC to take on City Hall

A great grandfather at the front of the line for the microphone told Comptroller Scott Stringer he’s sick of bridges and streets getting named after politicians. Stringer said he admitted he fantasized of one day telling his son that “Stringerway” was once called “Broadway.” 

Stringer, an almost-2013 candidate for mayor and thought-to-be 2021 mayoral hopeful, had the jokes at his Long Island City town hall at the CUNY School of Law. When one person insisted that City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer has his eyes set on being mayor, Stringer said, don’t you hate people who want to be mayor? 

Stringer wasn’t just here to understand the needs of one region of Queens. He was here to make allies in his fight against City Hall – and probably for it. He knew that many of the complaints would be about housing and development. That’s everywhere, but in LIC, the towers are shooting up around us into the sky and the people are anxious about school space, train space, park space and sewage. Stringer is positioned as a high-level politician with views juxtaposed to the mayor’s housing strategy, setting himself as a more progressive alternative. 

“I don’t believe that this is how we should build our city,” he said in reference to Alicia Glen, deputy mayor for economic development. “We’ve got to change the system. And the way we’re building our city is, we’re doing it backwards.”