By JOSEPH MODICA
When Independent Bookstore Day kicked off on the last Saturday of April, the shop owners were hoping to ring in large crowds.
Independent Bookstore Day is a yearly event in which indie bookstores around the country are encouraged to celebrate authors, illustrators and publishers in their own ways.
Greenlight Bookstore, located at 686 Fulton St. in Fort Greene, had events slated for the day to celebrate local talent.
In 2007, Rebecca Fitting and Jessica Bagnulo, both veterans of the publishing industry, had the idea to open a bookstore. Coincidentally, at the same time, the Fort Greene Association ran a survey that asked residents what they would want to see the most in their neighborhood. Their number one answer: a bookstore.
The one-day celebration offered an immediate boost. “We would make about 20 percent more than an average Saturday,” Fitting said.
And bookstores need help.
Lexi Beach at Astoria Bookshop. (Joseph Modica Photos)
For the last decade, independent bookstores appeared to have been in a slow decline. Battling major online retailers like Amazon. The market shrank significantly for them. Indie sellers struggled with creating their social media footprint and the prevalence of e-books.
This, along with the 2008 recession, has slashed into their profits. Bookstore sales were $17 billion as recently as 2007 and were at $11 billion in 2015, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
There is no marked improvement this year so far. Sales are estimated to be around $1.4 billion in January, $690 million in February, and $725 million in March this year, a number that has been stagnant since 2013, says another study done by the U.S. Census Bureau.
However, residents have high hopes to turn this trend around, not wanting to see their beloved indie bookstores disappear. Thanks to the downsizing of larger book chains like Barnes & Noble, and emphasis on locally sourced products in cities, there is revitalized interest in indie bookstores.
In 2016, according to the American Booksellers Association, 87 new bookstores opened in the U.S., translating into a 42.6 percent increase from 2015 — defying the lukewarm sales.
Communities have come to love indie bookstore not just for their novelty, but for their contributions back to a community. Local bookstores donate and contribute to local charities and events, and also host their own events for the community.
At the Greenlight Bookstore event, a photo booth off to the side let customers talk and take photos with featured local authors. Near the register, shirts and totes with the shop’s name on it were offered for a price to anyone checking out. At the back of the store, a table was set up for children’s activities.
The yellow finish of the wood floors was scratched and worn to a dull gray in between the narrow aisles of filled bookshelves that reach to the ceiling. Customers placed their umbrellas in a small bucket next to the door, knowing that the would still be there when they return. Parents left their baby strollers by the entrance unattended to browse while their children ran off to a booth set up for arts and crafts.
For Casey O’Rourke, 30, a resident of Fort Greene, this was his first time to a store hosting Independent Bookstore Day. “It’s great to see the predicted death of the physical book is an exaggeration.”
“I think they’re fantastic” said Bedford-Stuyvesant resident Jeremy Sitnick, 40, who loves the idea of an indie bookstore in his area. “It’s great being exposed to new books.”
In Queens, Astoria Bookshop had set up its own plans for the evening. Tucked underneath the overhead train tracks, Astoria Bookshop is a small bookstore located at 31-29 31st St. Launched almost four years ago, Astoria Bookshop has been doing Independent Bookstore Day for the last three years.
This year, the staff set up its own service called “Book Prescription Booth,” a staff recommendation based on a customer’s preference, with a 10 percent discount tacked on. The store also invited a local illustrator to come in to run a drawing table for kids.
In partnership with another bookstore, customers can bring their receipt to Housing Works, a Manhattan-based charity that provides services to people affected by HIV/AIDS, for an additional 10 percent at Astoria Bookshop or a free drink at Housing Works’ line of stores.
Described by the store’s events manager, Kisky Holwerda, as “Astoria’s only general interest bookstore,” the Astoria Bookshop is one of the last vestiges of an industry that has disappeared recently in Queens. Just last year, Barnes & Noble closed both of its stores in Queens , leaving residents fewer options.
Animator and Illustrator Dana Wulfekotte.
Seated at a small children’s table, Dana Wulfekotte, an animator and illustrator living in Astoria, drew colorful cartoon characters on a sheet of paper as part of the children’s event. There “I believe it’s a great day to celebrate books,” said Wulfekotte, “it is important especially as [Astoria Bookshop] is one of the last in Queens.”
Astoria Bookshop’s owner, Lexi Beach, a publishing veteran, hurried around the store assisting customers and manning the register. This event in particular can expect a big turnout for the store. “I would not be surprised if we did twice as good as we do on a typical Saturday,” Beach said.
“It is sort of an all-day extravaganza,” said Holwerda. “Independent Bookstore Day has been one our biggest days of the year. It is really wonderful to see so many people turn out to support independent bookstores and everyone is so excited, it’s just a great mood, it’s a great day, so we expect a lot of people to come in.”
Jackson Heights resident Bill Bruno, a regular customer, is very supportive of the store. “Independent bookstores are responsive to local needs and trends,” he said.
“I think they’re an important business, with one role among many,” said Astoria resident Amanda Writh, yelling as the N train came thundering through.
“I think they’re incredibly important,” said David Kirtley, freelance author, host of the podcast “Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy” for Wired magazine, and occasional shopper at Astoria Bookstore. “There was a period of time where it seemed like independent bookstores were dying out, – but it seems to have basically flattened out.”
“With bookstores I think it is becoming more of a thing,” added Stephanie Grossman, publishing industry veteran and marketing associate at JSTOR, and also Kirtley’s companion. “Especially since people are moving into that local mindset where it is better to get produce that was farmed in a farm right outside the city than in other countries. I think it is the same mindset with bookstores, we want more mom and pop bookstores.”
Photo, top: Rebecca Fitting, co-owner of Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene.
By RADHIKA VISWANATHAN
Brignel Camilien works at the Arthur Ashe Institute of Urban Health, designing projects that help communities increase awareness of health issues. But his path leading to public health research has been unconventional. Before joining the Institute, he had been a barber at the Skills R Us Barbershop in Brentwood, Long Island. In fact, he was asked to work with the institute for that very reason.
“The role of a barber is more than providing grooming services. Barbers are seen as therapists, father figures, brother figures, role models, counselors, a friend and overall trusted figures in the black community,” Camilien said. “They often have all the connections because of their interactions with clients from various walks of life.”
Camilien is part of a community outreach effort that the Arthur Ashe Institute runs from the SUNY Downstate Medical Center campus in Brooklyn. On his desk, one might find a thin spiral book with the words “Barber’s Workbook” emblazoned on the cover. These workbooks are some of the remnants of the Barbershop Talks with Brothers program, which ended its data collection phase earlier this year.
“When a black man sits down in that chair, he’ll say things he wouldn’t say to other people in his community,” said Dr. Michael Joseph, one of the scientists who organized Barbershop Talk with Brothers. The program, which ran from 2012 to this year, was a joint effort by the Arthur Ashe Institute of Urban Health and SUNY Downstate Medical Center to bring HIV awareness to communities of heterosexual black men in New York City.
“Black heterosexual men are considered the ‘forgotten population’ when it comes to HIV research. There’s really nothing out there for them in terms of HIV awareness,” Joseph said. “But we know that black men go to barbershops all the time.”
Hinging on the fact that black heterosexual men are more likely to have a regular barber appointment than to have a regular doctor’s appointment, the researchers developed an intervention based out of barbershops. They began with a steering committee composed of a doctor, barbers, a religious leader, and other community members—a diverse group of people who contributed to the development of the study. Barbers from all over the city were given training sessions at SUNY Downstate’s facilities. This training turned the barbers into health advocates who would be comfortable approaching their clients with advice about sexual health. The barbers then referred their clients to the researchers to attend further classes on HIV/AIDS.
“We teach barbers how to have ‘crucial conversations,’” said Joseph. “And then, when their clients bring up something about health, BAM! [The barbers] tell them about our project.”
Through their connection with the barbers, the researchers were able to recruit over 1,000 participants to attend their classes. In order to measure improvement, the participants were given a baseline exam on sexual health, attended the class, and were given a second exam six months later. Although the results have not yet been analyzed, pilot studies showed that participants felt far more confident in taking their health into their own hands. They began using condoms more and felt more empowered as a community.
This structure of this study—beginning with a steering group composed of local residents and ending with participants taking their knowledge back to others in the community—is quite unique within the field of public health. It’s an example of Community-Based Participatory Research, or CBPR, a method of research that keeps communities involved in every step of the research process. Similar methods of research are prevalent in developing countries, but Community-Based Participatory Research has recently grown more popular in the United States; the Arthur Ashe Institute conducts several such studies, but it’s only one of many similar projects in New York City.
“Research has always been this top-down approach, where people come and ask questions,” said Dr. Carrington Reid, a geriatrician at the Weill Cornell Medical Center. “The people who participate as subjects most of the time don’t get information about the outcome.”
With his expertise in geriatric medicine, Reid focuses his research largely on pain management and palliative care. One example of his work is the Arthritis Self-Help Program, which ended in 2008 and sought to enable senior citizens to manage their own pain. Just as the Barbershop Talk with Brothers project did, Reid began with a steering committee consisting of senior center directors and elderly community members as well as pain management experts and doctors. And rather than going through barbershops, the interventions were carried out through senior centers.
“It’s really senior centers that are vibrant hubs for many groups of older adults over the city,” Reid said. “There are health elements—people come for exercise and classes—but they are really there for the socialization.”
Approximately 250 senior centers were equipped with programs from the Arthritis Foundation, and the participants were given tests before and after taking part in the programs to determine their pain management. Not surprisingly, the program created by senior citizens for senior citizens proved to increase their pain relief while also giving them a sense of empowerment.
Reid has just finished another study looking at educating elderly patients about palliative care, a holistic method of providing physical, emotional, and even spiritual care for people with advanced stages of illness. Via elder service providers such as senior centers, the researchers taught participants about palliative care. One of the most crucial aspects of the project was dispelling the idea that palliative care is simply end-of-life-care—a misconception that often scares people away from taking advantage of it. Rather, they explained that palliative care is specialized type of care that focuses on relieving pain and improving quality of life
“There’s a history of research that is done in community settings where the researcher comes in and collects information and then that’s it. You never hear anything more, because the knowledge is now getting published in some scientific journal,” Reid said. “But one of the values of CBPR is that you have local groups that are part of the process who will vouch for you and say, ‘That guy’s ok, it’s ok to come in and do this,’ as opposed to just using them.”
Reid’s office is on the 14th floor of the medical center’s campus in Lenox Hill. His office is cluttered with papers and textbooks, but he seems to know where everything is located; reaching behind a cardboard box stacked high with even more papers, he pulls out a textbook written by Dr. Barbara Israel from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Israel is one of the most prominent researchers of the community-based research method, and has outlined a set of nine tenets that should be at the base of every CBPR study. These principles were described in a 2005 paper in Environmental Health Perspectives and emphasize the importance of keeping community members at an equal level to researchers.
“There’s this idea of the researcher as an interloper, only coming to get what they want,” Reid said, “and working in these communities, we heard this time and time again: ‘Researchers would come in, collect information, and we’d never hear from them again, so we don’t even know what happened.’ So that process of remaining engaged and developing a partnership is critical to the process.
Although this method of conducting public health research sounds intuitive, there are several reasons it has not become as popular as it should be.
The National Institutes of Health is a government agency responsible for biomedical research and research funding, and it has funded the work of both the Arthur Ashe Institute and Reid. According to the agency’s public database, out of the 71,703 projects it funded over the past year, just 472—fewer than 1 percent—were projects of Community-Based Participatory Research. This ratio is reflected in the dollar amount granted to such projects: $287 million out of a $39 billion budget (that’s about 0.7 percent).
Part of the reason for this may be that the method is relatively “low-tech,” according to Reid, and does not require much money. But that’s not the only explanation. “Money correlates to importance and preference and it does say something about where resources are getting devoted,” Reid said. “Health institutions feel like they have hegemony over healthcare, and the prevailing biomedical model is that patients are passive and have very little input.”
Community-Based Participatory Research seeks to rewrite the answer to the question: Where does healthcare happen?
“Is [healthcare] only in the context of having a conversation with your doctor in the doctors office? Or is there an opportunity to think about the barbershop or the church or the synagogue, as a place where health education and health wellness can take place?” Reid said. “Yes, we have specialized knowledge of this field, but we’re not the only purveyors of health.”
One way to change the current biomedical mindset is to emphasize the importance of patient involvement early in people’s medical careers. “What’s needed in medical school is cultural competency,” said Dr. Marilyn Fraser-White, the deputy executive director of the Arthur Ashe Institute and an assistant professor at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center. Because the Institute is housed on the SUNY Downstate campus, medical students are given a rare opportunity to get involved with CBPR research.
“We’ve done work around cultural competency; students can understand the cultural issues that are behind healthcare,” Fraser-White said. “Understand disparities, understand biases, thinking about health equity, that everyone might not be receiving the best treatment for them, that healthcare is a right as opposed to a benefit.”
Forming these relationships with patients is at the heart of CBPR, and students who are ingrained with CBPR values are likely to become more compassionate, effective physicians.
“Although the project is over, we still get phone calls about the classes. We still visit the barbershops to distribute condoms,” said Camilien, one of the people involved with the Barbershop Talks with Brothers project.
Camilien had been a barber interested in medicine when he was recruited to the project during its early stages. Now, he’s developing a new Community-Based Participatory Research project with the Arthur Ashe Institute. “Most people don’t look into the reasons why preventions don’t work; reasons like lack of health insurance, past experiences with doctors or researchers. But when we go to the community, we meet people where they are,” he said.
The results of such community-based studies speak for themselves. Employing community experts such as Camilien allows public health researchers to fix misconceptions and do work that truly benefits the people who participate. “Generally, people think ‘People in these communities aren’t interested in healthcare and preventative medicine,’” Camilien said. “But that’s not true; it’s a matter of making it accessible.”
Photo, top: Nelson Urraca, the owner of Nelson’s Barbershop on Parkside Avenue in Brooklyn and a barber with Barbershop Talk with Brothers, with a client. Below: Hermione Fraser, owner and stylist at Hermie’s Beauty Salon on Church Avenue, is assisting Barbershop Talk with Brothers. (Photos courtesy of Arthur Ashe Institute of Urban Health.)
Brooklyn News Service reporter Deidra Brisco explores some of the drawbacks in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Excelsior Scholarship program, which provides free tuition at public universities to students with a household income of under $100,000 and, at a later stage, $125,000.
Student Nikki Orozova relies on vending machines at Brooklyn College for afternoon snacks. (Michelle Cummings)
By MICHELLE CUMMINGS
It’s noon and you’ve been on campus for an hour. You didn’t eat lunch because you woke up late and did not have time to stop on the way. Now, you’re trapped in class on an empty stomach until the 2:15 p.m. break. There is a vending machine just down the hall, fully stocked with goodies to tide you over. When the break finally arrives you make your selection and then horror of horrors, it gets stuck. The little spiral holding your item didn’t turn enough for the product to drop.
Alas, another student faces up to the afternoon rush for sugar.
For all the discussion on campus about good health and nutrition, colleges continue to sell snacks to students that are too high in sugar and salt, and don’t seem especially eager to provide healthy alternatives. Larger sizes for soda allow for higher prices, of course, and although bottled water is also offered, its price is similarly high. Options matter.
Researchers at Boston University recently published a study that shows excess sugar, especially from sugary drinks, can cause brain damage. According to the study, titled “Sugary Beverage Intake and Preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease in the Community,” soda is linked to brain shrinkage.
The most recent research from the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) suggests that people who drink sugary beverages frequently are more likely to have poorer memory, smaller overall brain volume and a significantly smaller hippocampus, an area of the brain linked to learning and memory.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average American consumes 39 teaspoons of sugar per day, three pounds per week and up to 13 pounds in one month. That’s 155 pounds per year, much of it in the form of sugar-sweetened beverages such as soda, sports drinks, iced tea and energy drinks. The American Heart Association recommends no more than nine teaspoons of sugar for men and six teaspoons for women per day.
On third floor of Boylan Hall, the Georgian-style building that houses Brooklyn College’s administration and many classrooms, the Pepsi vending machine is filled with 20-ounce bottles of sugary drinks. The Grape Crush has 71 grams of sugar, or about twice what experts say should be the maximum daily intake for men, and three times that for women. The Mountain Dew has 77 grams. Further down in the display, there are iced teas and juices that have less sugar – 33 grams for Brisk – but still well beyond anything that can be called healthy.
Sugar makes life sweeter. However, added sugar provides essentially no nutritional value. So, what is the difference between good and bad sugar? The American Heart Association defines healthy as naturally occurring “good sugar found in fruits and veggies.” When coupled with fiber, phytonutrients, vitamins and minerals, sugar is a great source of energy. Bad sugar is characterized by empty calories.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines healthy:
Empty calories in beverages and highly processed, packaged products is what you’ll find hiding in vending machines on most college campuses. The lack of healthy snacks is cause for concerns for some.
“Sugary snacks are not conducive to a learning environment,” said Maxinee Black-Arias, dean of nursing at the Manhattan-based Swedish Institute College of Health Sciences.
Offering convenient and nutritious options is no small task. Students have very little time between classes to stop by a cafeteria. Since hunger interferes with concentration, vending machines often save the day.
Some students would like more culturally relevant choices. Amber Ferrin, a junior at Brooklyn College, prefers plantain chips to potato chips. Ferrin is also concerned about price. Ferrin said, “75 cents for a tiny bag with like five chips in it versus a $2 larger bag with mostly air. Really? We need a happy medium.”
“There are no real choices in the vending machines, just junk,” said Black-Arias. “As leaders and proponents of health we must model better eating habits. Providing students with convenient, healthier food options shows we value nutrition and student’s overall health.”
But some options are available, said Joe Gallopini, director of food service at Metropolitan Food Services at Brooklyn College. “We offer healthy items like nuts, but they don’t sell nearly as well as candy and chips,” he said. Gallopini says that for some, vending machines often become the go-to snack source and that the choices made are not always the healthiest. “People who rely on vending machines are not the same people concerned about healthy snacks,” he said. “These are two very different consumers.”
Excess sugar consumption is linked to higher risk of heart disease. As national intake has increased, so have obesity levels. The Centers for Disease Control reportsthere are 86 million pre-diabetics in America and 29 million living with Type 2 diabetes. “The biggest problem we face today is overweight people. It is especially true for young adults. Gen X and Gen Y are the unhealthiest generations of young people and will likely tax the healthcare system with future obesity-related illness,” Black-Arias says.
According to the Healthy CUNY 2011 report, the consensus was that all would like to see healthier options in campus vending machines. Improvement such as snacks and chips that had been reformulated to have fewer calories, less saturated and trans fat, and/or salt were made. “In the past we have tried carrying healthier snacks like pop-corn, nuts, Nature Valley granola bars and Wheat Thins after the students complained, but then the product didn’t move,” said Gallopini.
About two years ago, students started a petition calling for healthier options in the vending machines at Brooklyn College. “Students need to know the power they have when they voice their frustrations collectively,” Diedra Brisco, Brooklyn College journalism major and senior, said. “There is strength in numbers.”
Metropolitan Food Service manages 100 standard vending machines on Brooklyn College campus. FastCorp Vending provides ice cream vending machines. What they do not have is a refrigerated machine that stocks healthier alternatives. Nutritious snack options such as fruit cups, hummus, cheese, Greek yogurt, kefir, chocolate covered nuts and organically dried fruit require refrigeration.
Demand for a healthier version of the vending machine may be met with surprising receptivity. Gallopini said that to change the vending machine options to add healthier snacks, “Just ask, we’ll stock it.” He said Metropolitan is open to brand-specific products and suggestions compatible with the current machines on the Brooklyn College campus.
One of the biggest challenges is meeting the needs of everyone. According to Carl Jeff of Vendrite, it is possible to offer students healthier snack choices without sacrificing convenience or taste. “The future of vending may rest in micro markets,” he said. “Reimagine a commissary-type micro market as an opportunity to effect significant change in the daily lives of most on the go students.”
Micro markets are a new food service option. Fair trade snacks, unsweetened beverages and fresh fruit are available 24/7 in a self-service system at Virginia Science and Tech.
Trips to the vending machines are inevitable. Can they be made healthier? In a study, published in the International Journal of Food Safety, Nutrition and Public Health in 2014, researchers conducted an experiment with 200 college students. Scientists replaced high-sugar, salt and fat snacks sold in two campus vending machines with healthier options to find out how students responded. The results suggest students who were aware of the healthier snack choices were excited to have alternatives. Promoting healthier choices did not affect sales.
“Students will consume what is available,” Black-Arias said. “ If we can influence this behavior with better choices, we can consider that winning.”
Brooklyn News Service reporter Lisa Flaugh explores efforts to return New York City to its one-time status as the world’s oyster capital.
Brooklyn News Service reporter Paul Frangipane explores what sanctuary status means to undocumented immigrant students at Brooklyn College. (Photo: Paul Frangipane)
By ALAIN GAILLARD
The soup kitchen starts serving food at 10:30 every morning. A few soup kitchen guests begin gathering outside the main entrance of St. John’s Bread and Life in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, a half-hour before the doors open.
After the doors open, the seats around the tables in the cafeteria start filling with guests who wait for their hot food in an atmosphere of familiarity. Everyone is engaged in a conversation; everyone seems to know one another.
One impact of gentrification in Bedford-Stuyvesant is that rising rent has caused more residents to turn to St. John’s Bread and Life for food, said Anthony Butler, the soup kitchen’s executive director.
The number of participants asking for hot meals has increased by about 5.5 percent over the last year, Butler said, while the number of participants in the food pantry and the grocery section has increased by 11 percent. “Folks are spending more and more money on rent and making choices between rent and food, so they are using our service because they don’t have enough money to make ends meet,” he said. “The cost of living, particularly housing, really squeezes everything, especially with the gentrification going on in Bed-Stuy.”
With a current population of 153,000, Bedford-Stuyvesant was named for Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch director of the colony of New Netherland before it was renamed New York. Before the gentrification process began in the early 2000s, the neighborhood was mostly inhabited by African-American and Caribbean immigrants, groups that moved in from Harlem in the early 1930s.
According to census data, the number of white residents increased from 2.4 percent in 2000 to 15 percent in 2010. Housing prices are also rising: for example, a tenant is paying $3,550 for three bedrooms in Bedford-Stuyvesant compared with $2,850 for three bedrooms in Flatbush.
Kenneth Gould, professor of sociology and earth and environmental sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center, explained that the first big gentrification push in Brooklyn was so-called bridge and tunnel gentrification. “This happened in places such as Williamsburg, which had good transportation access to points of employment or more affluent neighborhoods, but were not valued as much as those neighborhoods,” said Gould, who is also director of the Urban Sustainability Program at Brooklyn College. “From Williamsburg, people could access Manhattan faster than other neighborhoods.”
Sharon Zukin, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and at the CUNY Graduate Center, has conducted studies on the type of restaurants that do business in Bedford-Stuyvesant. She suggested that the neighborhood’s cultural diversity is seen in the offering of restaurants and the changes in the retail corridor of Fulton Street, which is one of the main streets.
Zukin explained that Bedford-Stuyvesant residents are very proud of their neighborhood, which is why low-income residents want to stay there despite rising costs. “The suffering of people who stay in Bed-Stuy is mitigated by their pride that the neighborhood is coming up,” she said. “Some benefits have been brought by gentrification, but these benefits may be outweighed by the economic cost, the psychological cost, and the feeling that their neighborhood is not theirs anymore”
This is an opinion shared by Gould: “Sometimes, homeowners can stay longer and enjoy some of the amenities, too. Although, they have their amenities at the cost of losing their neighborhood, and they start to feel like more of an alien in their own neighborhood,” he said. “This is where I live but I don’t feel like I belong to the neighborhood anymore. This restaurant isn’t for me, this supermarket isn’t for me, the culture of the street isn’t for me.”
Gould said Bedford-Stuyvesant is a popular place “because of its attractive housing stock so that the white affluent population could identify with the neighborhood as a place they wanted to move into. The other thing is that this is a low crime neighborhood,” he said.
To resist gentrification, Gould suggested that communities be more organized. “Well-organized communities with pre-existing social institutions like Uprose in Sunset Park, for example, are able to intervene in the public process and stop the rezoning,” he said. “They are able to modify and fight proposals. A community that is not organized, cannot anticipate and is totally vulnerable.”
Gould also suggested that more public policy intervention should be implemented to retain affordable housing. “We need rent control, stabilized rates. We need more affordable housing built, we need affordable housing maintained, we need more public housing, and we need the minimum wage raised well beyond $15 to meet to average rent in the city,” he said.
One sign of poverty is households in which families are spending half of their income toward housing. The result is that many families rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, to eat. SNAP provides food assistance for nearly 1.8 million low-income New Yorkers.
Anthony Butler
Butler thinks the expansion of programs such as SNAP can be important to tackle poverty. “If they increase the SNAP benefits, they could really reduce the demand in places like this [St. John’s Bread and Life],” he said. “If they increase the SNAP benefits we could get to a point where only the folks who are using places like this would be very disorganized; the kind of classic folks like the homeless, folks with significant mental health problems, significant substance abuse problems. SNAP does work.”
However, a SNAP expansion is not at hand. President Trump’s budget proposal is asking for big cuts in almost everything. According to Butler, the president’s proposal, if passed, will not have a big impact on St. John’s Bread and Life activities because the organization is 90 percent privately funded and receives very little federal money.
The main concern for Butler is the reduction of the money available for food stamps. Unless the hunger problem is really addressed, he sees a bleak future with more large organizations like St. John’s Bread and Life. “The problem is we still don’t have a minimum living wage in this country,” he said. “The minimum needed to live on is creeping up, which is why so many people working for Walmart are on food stamps. A great number of fast food workers are also on food stamps.”
Video: Alain Gaillard reports for Brooklyn News Service on how rising rents in Bedford-Stuyvesant have led more people to soup kitchens.
By JOSEPH DE LA CRUZ
New York City School Chancellor Carmen Fariña visited P.S. 58 in Maspeth this week to assure parents that their children would be safe from immigration agents after two officials were turned away when they attempted to inquire about a student.
“In our schools we protect our students and our families and want to reassure parents that no information is ever given to any federal agent,” Farina said.
The chancellor, who visited the school last Monday, stressed that any immigration official who attempts to obtain information on students would not only be denied but also kept outside the school building while the principal seek counsel from Department of Education’s legal division.
“We are assuring parents that not only were the agents never allowed beyond the front door, that in the future they will actually be kept out on the sidewalks,” she said.
The two agents from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services were stopped at the front door of the Maspeth, Queens school when they tried to enter the building on May 11.
Farina said the education department would be sending more guidelines to city schools so employees, “from the school custodian to the highest level of school administration,” know what to do if immigration agents arrive.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said the two officials who visited the school were not agents but representatives who were only there to determine whether a student was enrolled at P.S. 58 as a follow up for a benefits request.
They are officers who do not have enforcement powers or carry warrants. Only Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can carry out those tasks. At no time did they request to speak with the child, school officials said.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, the officers were able to confirm with the school’s administration that the child did not attend that school.
The Department of Homeland Security noted on Twitter that the its officers “were not barred from the property nor asked to leave.”
“I think it was a protocol that DHS was following that probably wasn’t the best considered in light of all the fear that exists at the community level right now,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on a live appearance of NY1’s “Inside City Hall.” “If an agent had to pursue information for an immigration application, well, that’s fine, but I think there’s better ways to do it than appearing at the door of a school.”
Schools in communities with large immigrant populations have been on edge since President Donald Trump took office and ordered stricter enforcement of immigration laws.
One school that has focused on the issue is P.S. 65 in the Cypress Hills section of Brooklyn.
“It’s a concerning issue because this is an immigrant driven community,” said Daysi Garcia, the school’s principal. “More most of our students come from immigrant families and half of them are immigrants themselves and who knows how many of them are here legally.”
Most of the residents in the community come from the Dominican Republic or other Latin American countries. Nearby neighborhoods such as Bushwick have already experienced federal immigration raids in several local businesses.
“We’ve had some parents that have consulted with us about possibly pulling their kids out of school,” Garcia said. “We had to reassure them that students are safe and don’t necessarily run the risk of being detained by immigration enforcement.”
Teachers have held class discussions about what to do if students go home and find that their parents are not there.
“We try not to worry them but we want them to know that the school is the first place they should go to if they’re parents aren’t home,” Samantha Quinones, an elementary school teacher, said. “We try not to scare them with ICE so we just tell them you know, ‘if you forgot your keys or no one is home yet from work’, we make it a universal issue rather than just ICE.”
Students in communities like Cypress Hills are often English language learners. Worrying about deportation is a distraction teachers argue their students cannot afford, especially during state examination time.
“My students have a hard enough time trying to keep up with the curriculum. They don’t need to worry about men and women in suits with guns coming to take them,” Quinones said. “I mean even the parents, some work two jobs and can’t even be as involved in their child’s academic lives because of time constraints and now they have to deal with the thought of having their family deported back to their country.”
Some students who were not born here have already gotten past the difficulties of assimilation and are now familiar with many of the American customs they have grown to love.
“Could you imagine being taken from a place that you’ve already gotten to know and love most if not all your life,” she said.
The Department of Education is taking steps to educate not just staff and faculties at schools across the city but also parents. Letters were sent to tell parents what the city’s school policies are, counsel was provided to help advise parents who may need a better understanding of how to deal with immigration situations.
“We have some resources like workshops that have been provided to us by the DOE that we can refer to parents who have concerns,” John Galassi, guidance counselor at P.S. 65,, said. “It eases the worries of these parents to know that the school community has their back on this.”
The city had previously ordered school employees not to allow immigration agents or FBI agents into their buildings back in February.
Officials said if Immigration and Customs Enforcement obtain a valid warrant, they’ll be allowed to execute it, but restricted only to the contents of the warrant a judge has signed off on.
New York City is considered a sanctuary city that has refused to cooperate with federal immigration crackdowns. had signed an order to stop federal funding to sanctuary cities if they fail to adhere to those policies but a judge in San Francisco blocked the order in April.
“We don’t expect for ICE to come looking for students at our schools, although with this administration you never know,” Garcia said. “But if they come we’ll be ready to deal with them.”
By ANDREW HUGHES
An American man who conspired with al Qaeda but later cooperated with government investigators was sentenced to 90 days in prison on Thursday.
Bryant Neal Vinas, a Long Island man, appeared in Brooklyn federal court where he was charged with several counts of terrorism. The al Qaeda recruit was accused of trying to convince terrorist leaders to carry out a bombing of the Long Island Railroad as well as a Walmart store.
Vinas pleaded guilty in January 2009 and already has served eight and a half years in prison. He could have faced life in prison but his defense attorneys said his cooperation merited a release from prison.
“We can proudly state that Mr. Vinas took the worst experience of his life and turned himself into one of America’s greatest weapons against al Qaeda,” said defense lawyers Michael Bachrach and Steve Zissou in a joint statement. ”He saved lives and he helped the Untied States government substantially dismantle what had been the greatest threat to our nation and to our Western allies.”
The prosecutors conceded that Vinas provided helpful evidence to use against the terrorist group.
Vinas was originally caught in 2008 on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, his capture kept secret due to the nature of the information he provided to U.S. officials. The terrorist organization welcomed him in 2007.
The son of two South American immigrants expressed sorrow in a statement to the judge.
“I would like to express my deepest apologies to the court,” said Vinas.
He also expressed optimism for the future: “I would like to turn a bad thing into a good thing.”
By JESSICA MARQUEZ
Eighteen is the age where you are officially an adult. You can vote, you can buy a lottery ticket, you can open a bank account and do other seemingly cool things. But, for an eighteen-year-old in foster care, that means they’re going to age out of the system.
Around 11,000 children are in foster care in New York City. Fifteen percent of them wind up homeless after they phase out; they are left to fend for themselves with no money and no idea of how to tackle life.
“That discharge meeting, it is one of the most fearful things,” said Foster Care Unplugged Founder Melody Centeno on the steps of City Hall Thursday morning. “They’re not looking forward to 18.”
A proposed New York State Senate bill can help change that. The bill, sponsored by Brooklyn Senator Kevin Parker, aims to create a program that provides skills to foster care children that will help them adapt to life outside the system. Such skills will include how to use money, how to cook, clean, and take care of yourself.
If the bill is turned into a law, it will help 21,000 foster care children, supporters said.
“We’re really pleading with our governmental leaders to take up this to legislation, to pass it in the Senate, make it law,” said Parker. “So that we can give some hope to our young people.”
“Aging out shouldn’t be an option with no resources for these youth,” said Centeno.
Centeno herself knows the experiences of foster care firsthand. She entered the foster care system at age three and ended up living in ten foster homes. However, Centeno had help from the American Dream Program at HeartShare St. Vincent’s Services. It’s due to this program that Centeno ended up achieving much more in life than homelessness.
“If it wasn’t for that program, I probably would have been aged out and homeless,” Centeno told supporters.
Her colleagues echoed the sentiment.
“These children need support or else everything that they held on to and every dream that they had at night goes out the window,” said Nicole Russell, the Precious Dreams founder. “It leaves because without help…these children are alone and alone is only so far you can go.”
