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.

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.

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 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:

• Fewer calories (less than 40 for snacks and cereals, less than 150 for candy)
• Limited added sugar (less than 5 grams)
• Lower fat (less than 3 grams per serving)
• Healthier fats
• No trans fats
• No artificial colors or flavors
• Lower sodium (less than 140 milligrams per serving)

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.”

When writer Benjamin Ludwig raised his autistic daughter, he never expected how much he would delve into the lives of children like her. What he learned inspired him to write his debut novel “Ginny Moon.”

Ludwig is a 42-year-old former public school teacher from New Hampshire and father of three who spent many years teaching English in both middle school and high school before moving on to writing. Last year, he signed a book deal with Park Row Books to publish his upcoming young adult novel.

“Ginny Moon is a 14-year-old who is adopted from the foster care system, and as soon she is adopted, she immediately begins plotting her own kidnapping,” said Ludwig. “She wants to get back to her birth mother for a, one would call, a mysterious reason.”

Ludwig’s daughter, who is now 17 years old, was not the basis for his novel, he said, but caring for her exposed Ludwig to the lives of other autistic children. He crafted his protagonist and story around his experiences in meeting and talking to parents who also have special needs children.

“When my wife and I adopted our daughter, that really became our world,” Ludwig said. “We met tons and tons of kids in care and also foster parents, therapists, social workers. So hearing all of their stories really is what inspired the book.”

His publisher, Park Row Books, is a new imprint of Harlequin Books that will specialize in literary fiction. It marks the continued expansion of a New York-based company long known for its romance novels.

The Park Row imprint is named after the lower Manhattan street nicknamed “Newspaper Row” because of a hub of newspaper offices there in the beginning of the 20th century. Aside from “Ginny Moon,” Park Row Books plans to release titles of two unannounced books by New York Times bestselling authors Mary Kubica and Heather Gudenkauf.

For a first-time novelist like Ludwig, it’s a coup to be a major part of such a launch.

While not his first published work, “Ginny Moon” will be his debut novel, which he said does not pressure him.

Ludwig said he was surprised that his book would launch the new imprint, but said the challenge didn’t worry him. He said he felt he had a “good handle” on the publishing industry after dealing with Park Row Books and with the release of his novella “Sourdough,” by Texas Review Press in 2014. Before that, he published in education journals and small literary magazines.

“When I initially signed the contract with my agent, Jeff Kleinman, and the publisher, we were just another title,” Ludwig said. “`Ginny Moon’ was just another book that Park Row had acquired. It took about six months … that’s when they decided to make it the inaugural title.”

The book got off to a good start with Publishers Weekly and Booklist giving it starred reviews. “Ludwig’s excellent debut is both a unique coming-of-age tale and a powerful affirmation of the fragility and strength of families,” Publishers Weekly said.

Ludwig’s advises a would-be author to find an agent, whom you have to pitch your idea to, with some samples and a summary. If the agent likes your idea, you’ll be offered a contract, he said. From there, the agent will take the book and submit it to the publishers.

To amateur writers, he believes that reaching the end of a project is the most important part of writing. To aspiring writers, he stresses that completing the project is the most important step. “You have to see the end of your works, so you can see how you could have improved the beginning … which is unfortunate because novels are so darn long,” he said,

“You have to [write] a whole bunch of books before you become comfortable in that form… but you learn from them, and that’s what is really important.”

“Ginny Moon” is set to release on May 2.

Nassau Coliseum is set to reopen its doors on April 5 with a performance by Long Island native Billie Joel after a renovation that has been in the works since November 2015.

Joel, who performed at the final event at the old coliseum in August 2015, will be followed during the opening week by artists ranging from Stevie Nicks to Marc Anthony. The arena will host the final  show of the fabled Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus on May 21.

After that though?

That is the $89 million question–the amount it cost taxpayers to renovate the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

At the same time, fans no longer have the New York Islanders hockey team to cheer for—they’ve played in Barclays Center since 2015. They are left with the Long Island Nets, the Brooklyn Nets’ development team that plays in the recently re-branded G-League (the “G” coming from the league’s new sponsor, Gatorade).

The Long Island Nets have been playing home games at Barclays Center so far this season and the attendance has been underwhelming. to say the least. The team’s home opener game saw just 1,298 fans, while its Nov. 27  contest against the Grand Rapids Drive saw the most fans ever in attendance–1,377.

The new Nassau Coliseum will hold approximately 13,000 people, raising the prospect of an empty arena. Still, team officials say they believe the Coliseum will draw fans for the Long Island Nets.

“Once word of mouth gets around about how affordable and family friendly Long Island Nets games are people will be filling up the stands,” said Mandy Gutmann, senior director at Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, which controls the two teams and markets Barclays Center and the Coliseum.

Having the inaugural season for the Long Island Nets in Brooklyn may have been a questionable move, but team Vice President Alton Byrd sounded a little more optimistic.

“While we are moving to Long Island, we are delighted to have developed our fan base in Brooklyn and we are grateful to have had the opportunity to play at Barclays Center,” said Byrd.

A general admission ticket to the Long Island Nets games at Barclays Center costs just $15, but even so, the “fan base” appears to be a small one.

Long Island and Queens fans can reach Barclays Center via the he Long Island Rail Road, but the LIRR does not have a stop in Uniondale, where the Coliseum is located. Plans for one were canceled.

That did not stop customers from going to the Coliseum before, generally by car. While the Long Island Nets seem unlikely to draw large crowds, the arena should be able to draw people on the strength of an impressive schedule of musical acts.

Metallica will be playing there despite the fact that the rest of the shows on its tour will be held in large football stadiums.

But without the presence of a major professional sports team, it will be an uphill climb for the new Coliseum to make a profit. In 2015, the Nassau Coliseum’s operator owed $6 million to the county. That was with a professional sports team able to fill up at least half of the arena. The new arena will hold fewer seats for concerts. The Coliseum will be open once again, but the question to be answered is: To whom?

Photo: The new Nassau Coliseum is set to open April 5. (NassauCountyNY.gov)

For the early part of this football season, the NFL and the television networks saw adversity for the first time in a while as ratings took a significant blow.

As recently as 2015, it was common for a regular season National Football League game to get over 20 million viewers.

According to sportsmediawatch.com, the lowest rated NFL game of the season was the Oct. 23 contest the Los Angeles Rams and the New York Giants played in London. The matchup drew just a 2.4 rating with an estimated 3.7 million viewers.  Thirteen weeks into the season, some of the lowest ratings came in primetime including a 3.2 on Oct. 27 (Jacksonville-Tennessee), 3.6 on Nov. 3, (Atlanta-Tampa Bay) and a 3.5 on Nov. 10 (Cleveland-Baltimore).

Jeff Capellini, a columnist for WFAN.com/CBSNewYork, believes that the oversaturation of the sport is a detriment to the ratings.

“How many games do we need a week spread out over how many days?” Capellini asked. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the matchups were better, but let’s be honest, the games on Thursdays and in London are mostly brutal games that don’t pique the interest of the viewing public when there are so many other options to watch on TV, and that’s regardless of the NFL’s popularity.”

He said objections to how the NFL responded to domestic violence allegations against players and reactions to players who kneel during the playing of the national anthem as a protest gesture may be a factor in low ratings.

“The NFL has done themselves no favors with its handling of domestic violence,” Capellini said. “I’m not sure how big of impact it has made, but when you add domestic violence to politicizing the sport and the bad games on non-Sundays, you have a serious baseline for a decrease in viewership.”

Such factors have turned some people off to the NFL, Capellini said.

“I think Americans look at the NFL and sports in general as an escape,” he said. “They don’t want the bad news of the day spoiling their two to three hours a day of viewing. They want to forget about life’s troubles and have some enjoyment. “

The NFL has turned into a sounding board for agendas which Capellini says the average fan wants no part of.

“They simply don’t want their viewing experience infringed upon,” Capellini said.

A network source, who asked not to be identified, says the ratings drops definitely have been noticed.

“We don’t like it when the ratings are down,” he said. “We are in the business of drawing eyeballs and making advertisers happy.”

He added that the network he is affiliated with has only seen a 4 percent ratings drop from 2015, but that his network has been lucky despite that. “We’ve been able to weather the storm better than anybody because we have the benefit on Sundays of broadcasting five to seven games.”

The executive said research showed the presidential election played a huge part in the declining number of viewers watching football. The first presidential debate was held on Sept. 26 when there was a Monday Night Football matchup between the Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints. The game drew just a 4.8 rating with 8 million viewers, the lowest rated Monday night game of the season.

“This is not something new,” he said. “Sports and other programming as a whole see a lot less viewers tuning in. It’s absolutely the number one cause.”

Richard Deitsch, a sports media writer for Sports Illustrated, also said that the election had a significant impact on the number of viewers watching NFL games in primetime. “You have to presume of the NFL’s primetime viewers morphed over to election coverage,” he said.

On Oct. 9, the date of the second presidential debate, the New York Giants faced the Green Bay Packers. They drew a 9.0 rating and 16.6 million viewers, the second worst of any Sunday Night Football game aired all year.

Deitsch also said the drop in ratings stemmed from the low quality of games.

“The league has been hurt by a lack of star quarterbacks,” Deitsch said. “This league is very much star quarterback marketed league.”

Peyton Manning retired after last season and star quarterbacks Tom Brady and Tony Romo were out. That had an impact on the first few weeks of the year. “The only people who have impact on ratings are quarterbacks,” Deitsch said.

Then there is the grind of intense competition, the clashes that the NFL promotes so heavily in its advertising.

“Look at it this way, the NFL’s job is to make money,” he said. “You’re asking these guys to play too much football.”

Some other elements Deitsch said have an impact on ratings are officiating and fantasy football.

“I think officiating impacts how you do and how you don’t enjoy games. If an official is doing a bad job, you turn the game off,” Deitsch said. “Fantasy is a factor because it’s anecdotal.  Two or three years ago it was hot, but now it has slowed down, which has impacted television viewership.”

The fantasy aspect plays to viewers whose favorite teams are out of a playoff hunt but who still tune in to other games to keep up with players on their fantasy teams.

The NFL was also going up against an exciting, seven-game World Series. J.A. Adande, the director of sports journalism at Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and a personality for ESPN, said that didn’t help the league since there are only so many hours in a day people when can be exposed to sports.

Adande said there were not enough compelling games early in the year which, along with lack of personalities, hurt the audience size.

“At a time when personality matters more than ever, the NFL is lacking,” Adande said. “The NFL needs to rethink the way it does things. Personalities shine through everything.”

Football continues to be heavily watched, but Adande says there is an oversaturation with so many games televised on different days and in different time zones. That does more harm than good.

“Monday Night Football for example used to be the premier game,” Adande said. “They [the NFL] have diminished that.”

Adande says that teams with a national following such as the Pittsburgh Steelers, Dallas Cowboys, and Green Bay Packers are relevant when it comes to certain markets around the country.

While the league has seen ratings bump as the final weeks of the season and the playoffs approach, the ratings drop could have an impact on decisions for future seasons.

“I think the NFL will try to look at the primetime schedule and to see how they can put out better games in the future,” said Deitsch. “The NFL could only do so much; there are so many outside factors.”

The NFL is exploring cutting down on commercial breaks, shortening the halftime break, streamlining play-review system as possible ways to hold viewers.

Adande said that ratings don’t call for panic, but that they won’t return to when they were at their peak.

“The NFL will remain a valuable product with all the storylines,” he said.

By ISAAC MONTEROSE

It is March 19^,  1935 and Samuel J. Battle steps onto a Harlem-bound train car, bleary-eyed and hoping for a routine shift when he arrives back at the 28th Precinct station house. It has been 24 years since he broke the NYPD’s color barrier by becoming its first Black police officer and after enduring so much racism and humiliation, things were finally looking up. He was coming home from taking the captain’s exam and was fast becoming a respected police officer. However, when he stepped off the train, things were less than routine: Harlem was in chaos over rumors of the police murdering a young shoplifter named Lino Rivera in the basement of a local department store.

Much like the rioting and protesting of today in the cities of Charlotte, N.C., Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, the 1935 Harlem Riots did not happen over one event. Instead, it was the result of years, if not decades, of police brutality. The 28^th Precinct had a history of abusing and humiliating the Black residents of Harlem, including one instance in which police brutally beat Thomas Aikens, a Black man who refused to move to the back of a bread line. Aikens was beaten so savagely that he was left blind in one eye.

Even though no body had been seen, for Harlem’s Black residents these rumors of Rivera’s death were the breaking point and were the justification for lashing out. This was the level of resentment and anger Battle would have to quell as he, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and Police Commissioner Lewis Valentine moved to calm down the rioters and restore order. However, they were unable to convince the rioters to stop. In fact, the riots didn’t subside until the police were able to prove that Rivera was alive and well. Afterward, the city government commissioned an investigative report to find out why the riots had happened,  much as authorities did in the wake of the 2014 Ferguson riots. Much like the Department of Justice report on Ferguson, this report revealed the same problems: systemic racism, poverty and police brutality.

It is pretty clear that, in many ways, what had happened during these Harlem riots resembles what is still happening today. In many of these instances, there was a growing distrust and resentment between the police and the Black community it serves and in between all this are Black police officers whose perspectives are rarely heard . So when Arthur Browne, a longtime journalist at the New York Daily News, read about a ceremony commemorating Battle’s career he felt compelled to tell his story. And tell it he did in his award-winning biography, “One Righteous Man: Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York.”

“What you always find when you’re a reporter, it’s your last desperate phone call that maybe is the most important one,” Browne remarked as he remembered how he first started working his book. It all began in 2009 after he read a short Daily News story about a ceremony to name a street for Battle. “I asked the Police Department who had shown up at the sign installation ceremony, thinking that anyone who was there would’ve had some interest in him, and his grandson turned out to have been there,”

Browne, who was appointed editor-in-chief of the News on Oct. 18, was the paper’s editorial page editor at the time.  He found that  Battle’s grandson, Tony Cherot, lived in California, and they developed a relationship. Through Cherot, Browne learned that the poet  Langston Hughes had been hired by Battle to write his autobiography in 1949. But  the project ended up failing when Hughes quit out of disinterest and the  manuscript was unfinished. After receiving it from Cherot, Browne began the 5-year process of writing a biography that would do Battle’s life story justice.

Born on December 14, 1950 in Long Island College Hospital and raised in Freeport, Long Island, Browne grew up with two siblings in a middle-class home. His father, Gerald, was a motion picture cameraman and his mother, Adeline, mostly stayed at home and ran a household business that helped the families of the neighborhood get in touch with babysitters. She would also work at a department store whenever Gerald was unemployed.

Freeport was a racially segregated village, Whites on the west side and Blacks on the east side, separated by Main Street. Browne remembered the racism he grew up around: racial slurs and Black people being seen as lesser and the source of fear.

By the time Browne was finishing up high school in 1968, America was experiencing turbulent times. The war in Vietnam had become a meandering stalemate, the civil rights movement had been going on for 13 years, that year’s Democratic National Convention had devolved into mass rioting and there were constant anti-war protests. All this caused a rift between Browne’s generation and the generation that came before.

“There were many factors that led to what they used to call the ‘generation gap’ between people of my age and their parents,” Browne explained. “The racial issues that really came to the fore with the social activism, the marches in the South, Montgomery, Selma. All of those were great awakenings for many White young people. [It] was the first time that many of us saw clearly any form of African-American activism.”

Alongside all these major events, the one that still sticks with Browne was the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Browne had run into an old classmate who was the only Black student in his grammar school. His voice began to crack  as he described the painful memory. “I had not seen him because I didn’t go to the local high school. I ran into him on the street and we looked at each other and I didn’t know what to say to him. I could only say that I was sorry. It was unbearable.”

 After graduating college, Browne didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life and settled on working as a copy boy for the New York Daily News. After all, he had been in the city room of the paper when he was only eight years old. Two relatives were employed in the “women’s department” at the time, and members of his family had worked at the paper for generations.  The job itself was usually done by high school students and Browne’s bosses told him that it couldn’t lead to a career in journalism.  But, needing a job, (and wanting to learn how a big newspaper operated) he stuck with it.

He was promoted to reporter in 1973 while still attending law school and when he first started out, his bosses gave him an ultimatum: to prove he could do the job. “Called me in and they said, ‘Kid, you are a reporter. Sink or swim, you have six months,’” recalled Browne. Forty-three years and one Pulitzer Prize later: needless to say, he swam.

In no specific order: he’s been the paper’s City Hall bureau chief, chief investigative reporter, city editor, the assistant managing editor for politics, senior managing editor, metro editor and managing editor for news. He became the editor of the editorial page in 1993.

“It’s a fantastic position,” Browne said. “It requires a great deal of discipline…it requires an intense focus on the facts …   But, you’ve got to synthesize those facts into an opinion and make an argument about what you believe, speaking for the Daily News, is right for New York, for the country.” Browne would meet with other Daily News journalists on the editorial board and formulate those decisions.

While serving as editorial page editor , Browne said, he was often only generally aware of the big stories the news staff was working on. But when he happened upon the story about the naming of a street for Battle, his interest was piqued. Browne had extensively covered the NYPD throughout his career, including the tenure of the department’s first Black commissioner, Ben Ward. “It just seemed to me that, in the position that I was in, I didn’t have the knowledge that I should’ve had,” he said. “So I thought, ‘Alright, let me try to find out.’”

He started his research by going to libraries and finding old news clips about Battle but what he found is that all these stories followed a similar pattern: Battle would get hired, he’d struggle with racism and he’d persevere, rise through the ranks and eventually retire. That is why Browne saw Hughes’ manuscript as a chance to approach Battle’s remarkable story in a unique way. In fact, the manuscript and a local, long-defunct Black newspaper named The New York Age (that he found in a library) were the two main reasons his biography became possible.

“One,” said Browne, “I could not have done this without the manuscript [and] two, the difficulty was that the general newspapers at the time basically dismissed him as just another guy who came up through the ranks, retired and happened to be Black.”

Samuel J. Battle was born on January 16, 1883 in New Bern, N.C.  He was the 22nd child of his father and the 11th  of his mother  and grew to be a large young man who was known to be a bully. Like many young Black men in the Jim Crow South, Battle had a desire to go to the comparably freer North so, when the opportunity came along, he went to New York City with his mother in 1899. He held a variety of jobs in New York from dye house worker to luggage porter. Eventually, the adventurous and headstrong Battle became interested in becoming a police officer, a job that was unthinkable for a Black man to have in early 20th century New York. However, he was not one to be deterred and after much difficulty (including one instance in which a Police Department physician lied about Battle’s heart condition) he officially became the first Black NYPD officer in 1911.

On his first day on the job, Battle walked towards his stationhouse, the 28th Precinct, and in front of it was a large crowd of Whites who stood there amazed at him as he approached. They were not only amazed at his size (Battle was 6-feet-2-inches and 260 pounds) but also at the fact that a Black man, they despised with racial slurs, was actually wearing a police uniform. It only got worse from there. In the early days of his career, Battle was by and large ignored by his White fellow police officers, often forced to patrol on his own despite being a rookie and was relegated to sleeping in what was essentially the attic of the police precinct because no one wanted to sleep near him.

Nevertheless, Battle pressed on and studied for the sergeant’s exam whenever he could. “He had the fortitude … He knew what was stacked up against him and African-Americans in general,” Browne said. “But he still said that, ‘I am me and I am entitled and they’re going to give it to me because of who I am.’” Battle knew that he had a very thin margin for error at the department and had to be twice as good as his White peers if he was going to stay an officer. With his many struggles, Battle went on to have a storied career in the Police Department that spanned 40 years. He retired in 1951 as the first Black parole commissioner. He died on August 7, 1966.

Browne said that Battle’s story can resonate today especially when it comes to matters of policing and the community. Back in the ’20s and ’30s, Browne explained, there was a pastime called the numbers game that was “very popular but it was illegal so the police would enforce the gambling laws.” In order to do so, they would barge into the homes of Black residents, often without a warrant, in search of numbers slips. “So what you have there is over-enforcement of a law disproportionately targeting African-Americans overzealously and without a constitutional basis,” said Browne. “Take that description, what am I describing? I’m describing stop-and-frisk!”

Stop-and-frisk was an extremely controversial police search tactic that was used disproportionately on young Black and Hispanic males and ruled unconstitutional in 2013 by a U.S. District Court judge. The Daily News editorial page had at one time been a strong supporter of stop-and-frisk, arguing that it helped reduce crime sharply in New York City. But after the tactic was largely dropped, the News editorial board admitted “we were wrong” because, as Browne said, statistics showed that stop-and-frisk had not really reduced crime. That became clearer when crime remained essentially level without widespread stop-and-frisk.

According to NYPD statistics, stop-and-frisk peaked in 2011 at 685,724 stops.

“It’s the same kind of thing and so you can find that kind of pattern through the book,” Browne said. “It’s just a lesson of history repeating itself and maybe if you pay attention you can say, ‘Well maybe it’s time to stop it.’”

Photo: Top, longtime Daily News journalist Arthur Browne was intrigued by the story of New York’s first black police officer, Samuel J. Battle.

This year’s U.S. electorate will be the country’s most “racially and ethnically diverse” ever, according to Pew Research Center.

Yet, Asian American voters are still an afterthought during the presidential election season despite their growing presence.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have been the fastest-growing racial group in the United States for nearly two decades.

But former City Comptroller John Liu said the Asian community is still a relatively small group of the national population. Asian Americans only make up about 5 percent of the overall U.S. population.

“We definitely are to some extent invisible in the last couple of debates,” Liu told Brooklyn News Service. “Candidates often mention African Americans and Latinos and they don’t always remember to mention Asian Americans.”

“But we also have to take some ownership of that and increase our voting rates and speak up more,” he added.

Steve Chung, president of the United Chinese Association of Brooklyn, said Asian American public officials are the voice of the Asian community.

The new National Asian American Survey reported a significant increase in Asian Americans’ political presence. Congressional candidates grew from 10 in 2010, to 30 in 2012 and 40 in 2016.

“We are underrepresented,” Chung said. “When your voice is not loud enough, nobody hears it. But I see change now. It is improving.”

In addition, there is an average increase of 600,000 registered voters per presidential election cycle. The Asian American electorate is growing because of population expansion. Also, more Asian Americans are naturalizing as U.S. citizens and registering to vote.

Still, the U.S. Census Bureau reported the group had the lowest voter turnout rate with 48 percent in the 2012 election.

Nancy Tong, Democratic district leader for the 47th Assembly District in Bath Beach and parts of Bensonhurst became the first Asian American elected political leader in Brooklyn in 2014. She said Asian Americans don’t vote even if they’re encouraged to.

“A lot of people don’t even bother registering to vote,” Tong said. “But what good does registering to vote do if they don’t even come out?”

“What we should really be doing is educate them,” she continued. “I try to but there are only so much people I can reach.”

A host of Asian Americans and non-profit organizations that serve the needs of the Asian American population, such as United Chinese Association, register voters and try to drive the voter turn out.

However, Chung said there is still a language barrier.

At 35 percent, Asian Americans have the highest rates of limited English proficiency, according to a report from The Center for American Progress.

Chung said because a lot of people don’t understand the candidates’ political agenda, they don’t know whom to vote for. As a result, they don’t bother showing up to the polls.

“The first generation of immigrants, quite frankly, they have so many things to work out,” Liu said, “such as, putting food on the table and making sure their kids are well clothed and well educated. It’s often the second generation who realizes what it’s like to be American.”

“The younger generation should take it upon themselves to educate the older generation who sacrificed a great deal for them,” he added.

According to the Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote survey, young Asian American voters, aged 18 to 34, are a rising force in elections. It reported this group would help shape the politics of the United States in the 21st Century.

Yet, only 30 percent of Asian American registered voters say either of the political parties contacted them about the presidential election. The Democrats contacted the vast majority.

“It’s a shocking statistic but not a lot of people vote,” Liu said.

He said candidates are going to prioritize reaching out to prime voters, people who have a history of voting.

Even so, Chung believes Asian Americans are more likely to vote for Hillary Clinton as most of them are registered as Democrats.

Just 20 years ago, less than a third of Asian American voters voted Democrat, NPR reported.

Now, 41 percent of Asian American-Pacific Islander registered voters are not affiliated with any party, while 41 percent identify as Democrats and only 16 percent identify as Republicans, according to the National Asian American Survey.

Liu believes it might have something to do with the interest of younger Asian Americans in civil rights and the history of inclusion.

“While Hillary, herself, has a history of working closely with the Asian American community,” he said, “Trump’s barely trying or barely even recognizing that the Asian community is significant.”

He suggested giving Asian Americans more visible top candidate positions and providing multilingual campaign materials. Liu also wants the candidates to address issues that specifically influence Asian Americans.

“Back then, the [Asian] immigrants were poor,” Chung said. “But now they have money. And when you have money, you look beyond your basic necessities. You look for social recognition and social respect now.”

“The thing is, are they willing to come out and vote?” Tong said. “That’s the question.”

Photo: Former City Comptroller John Liu was the first Asian American to serve as a citywide elected official in New York City. (Baruch College)

In a largely negative presidential race with front-runners who have alienated voters from their Republican and Democratic parties, third-party hopefuls are drawing well among young voters.

But the support for Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green-Party candidate Jill Stein seems to be more a matter of rejecting the two major-party candidates than of approval for their agendas.

According to a mid-September Quinnipiac University poll of 960 likely voters, Johnson barely trailed Democrat Hillary Clinton among voters between the ages of 18 and 34, 31 percent to 29 percent. Trump followed at 26 percent.

Overall, the poll found Johnson was at 13 percent and Stein at 4 percent at that point in the race.

Both candidates have shown progress in the polls since their 2012 runs, in which they did not do so well. Libertarian presidential nominee Johnson was chosen by .99 percent of registered voters and Green Party candidate Stein by .36 percent, according to the official Federal Election Commission report of the 2012 presidential election.

“Although I’m still registered as a Democrat, I do disagree with a lot of what they currently stand for,” said Andrew Ironstone, a 24-year-old Florida State University student who plans to vote for Johnson in the upcoming election. “I like the Libertarians because they seem to focus on real issues while leaving their personal lives out of politics.”

But the success of Johnson and Stein among young voters has more to do with the opposition to major party nominees than with the success of the Libertarian and Green parties.

Ironstone, who said that his choice was highly influenced by his discontent with the Republican and Democratic nominees, also noted that prior to the 2016 election he had only vaguely heard of the Libertarian party. “I never thought I would be voting for their candidate,” he said.

Quinnipiac University’s poll also showed that 66 percent of Trump’s likely voters made their choice based on opposition to Clinton, while only 23 percent will vote for him because they like the Republican candidate.

Likewise, 32 percent of Clinton’s voters support her, while 54 percent are voting for the Democratic nominee just to oppose Trump, the poll showed.

“I’ve considered Stein and Johnson early on in the election season because we live in a non-swing state and I could cast a protest vote without electing Trump,” said 22-year-old Hofstra University graduate Jeff Nalotoff, who identified himself as a Democratic-Socialist. “I would vote for Johnson, mostly for his integrity, but I don’t agree with his views.

“Stein recently made a few statements that made me doubt she has the proper experience to be president,” he added.

The poll also showed that 60 percent of Clinton’s voters would like to see Gary Johnson in nationally televised debates and 83 percent of likely young voters.

In July, Gallup showed in its “Favorable Image of Hillary Clinton by Age” study that Clinton’s favorability rating has spiraled down among voters between 18 and 29, dropping from 47 percent to 31 percent over the year.

“Many Democrats support her decisions, but I feel that she is equally as financially motivated as any republican candidate is,” said Democrat Lisa Borodin, a Brooklyn College senior, who plans to vote for the Clinton in November.

“But I don’t agree that she is a complete liar,” Borodin said. “I think with time her views on gay marriage, income inequality, and women’s rights have changed. The country’s has, why not hers?”

While Borodin noted that she strongly disagrees with Clinton’s foreign policies and that she questions Clinton’s financial motives, she believes that Clinton’s flaws will not be as bad as Trump’s campaign has been so far.

“I considered voting for Jill Stein,” Borodin said, “but I feel like a third-party vote would be a wasted one.”

Erika Shatz, who also attends Brooklyn College, said she stands with Stein in the election.

“She is, in my opinion, the next best thing after Bernie,” Shatz said. “When I found out that our front-running candidates would be Trump and Clinton, I decided immediately that I wasn’t going to choose the lesser of two evils.”

But in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Bernie Sanders urged his young supporters against voting for a third-party candidate on principle.

“Look, I am the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress,” the Vermont senator and former Democratic candidate said. “When I was younger I ran on a third party here in the state of Vermont, so I’m not here to disparage third-party candidates.”

But he said, “I think what the focus has got to be on now is understanding that this moment in history, for a presidential election, is not the time for a protest vote.”

Sima Zhukovski, a 20-year-old Brooklyn College student who said she plans to vote for Hillary Clinton, believes that voting for a third-party candidate is giving Donald Trump a better chance at winning the race.

“I’ll let you know, I’m not a fan of Hillary, but I’m voting for her because the worst thing that can happen with a Clinton presidency is that she can be a bad president or a president who didn’t do much, which this country has had a good number of,” Zhukovski said. “But a Trump presidency just makes me anxious even thinking about all the things that can go wrong.”

Photo: Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson, left, and vice presidential candidate William Weld.

Donald Trump has gone to the churches in an attempt to pick up his dismally low showing of black Protestant support, but interviews with voters in Brooklyn show he’s unlikely to make any progress.

The black Protestant vote played an important role in Barack Obama’s two presidential races, and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is eager to get similar support. But neither candidate this time around is especially popular among African Americans.

“The change Trump is talking about is the change we’ve been fighting to stop,” the Jamaica-born Assemblyman Nick Perry (D-Brooklyn) said. “The economic impact of what he proposes to do will destroy the world.”

But at the same time, he said, Clinton also faces credibility problems in the black community.

According to a mid-September Quinnipiac University poll, Clinton commands two-thirds of black support while Trump has just 8 percent. Trump has declared he’s going to improve on that 8 percent. Clinton strategists, meanwhile, are worried that black voters, especially younger ones, will care enough about the former secretary of state to come out and cast their ballots.

African Americans supported Obama, the nation’s first black president, by far larger margins than Clinton is getting in polls. But many African American Protestant voters say they are highly unlikely to vote for a Republican, according to the Quinnipiac survey.

Dalton Robinson, who manages Perry’s Flatbush district office, said he agrees with Trump’s ideas to create jobs but is against his plan to deport immigrants. “The one thing Donald Trump’s talked about is how he’s going to make America safe again, but he hasn’t spoken about civil rights and liberties,” Robinson said.

Indeed, Trump’s “law and order” pitch is seen as a challenge to African American opposition to aggressive police tactics.

Black Protestants see Trump’s visits to their churches as a desperate attempt to garner support from black voters.

“Political maneuvers reel in ministers, and advocates seeking to risk the future of America just for donations and publicity,” Perry said.

While some black ministers have met with Trump, across the nation pastors from historically black churches have delivered anti-Trump speeches aimed at persuading their congregations to vote against him.

Long Island University junior psychology major Lisa Matthews, 26, said it’s incomprehensible to her why any one would support him. “At this point I don’t think he’s sold himself to the younger generation,” she said.

Matthews said that she’s heard pro-Clinton preaching in her church, Evangelical Crusade, and added that her denomination urges its members to freeze Trump out of the race. Evangelists typically view gay rights as an abomination against the Bible and mentions of same-sex issues are taboo in conversation among church members. This hasn’t stopped Matthews from supporting the LBGTQ community.

“Everybody is entitled to choice,” Matthews said.

She’s thrown her support behind Clinton because the former first lady is relaxed on policies involving immigration, and gay rights, and is adamant on her plans to tackle the plague of gun violence across America.

While Trump doesn’t have many supporters among African Americans, there are some. Jason Wade, 23, a single father and junior mass communications major at Medgar Evers College, is one of them. Wade said he abandons the sermon before it ends at Southern Baptist Church in Crown Heights, Brooklyn to reject the pro-Clinton rhetoric given as a spoken word recital. He barely discusses politics with other members because their political views differ significantly given his support for Trump. Wade is an aspiring police officer and said he supports Trump’s ideas on immigration and agreed on his support for the police, but said Trump needs a concrete plan for law enforcement.

Trump frequently speaks on the importance of honoring the police. “All I can do is, from the top, I would be very, very strong in terms of being a cheerleader for the police. They do a great job and they are not recognized for it,” he told Fox News.

Wade said he wants Trump to win because Clinton’s health is a concern for him; she lacks the business mindset; and won’t back up his community, or create jobs.

“He’ll have my vote, no matter what,” Wade said.

Trump was welcomed in two appearances at predominantly African American churches. He spoke at Great Faith Ministries International in Detroit, Mich. He attended service with Dr. Ben Carson, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination, and former “Apprentice” contestant Omarosa Manigault, who’s now a minister.

His political efforts in the second case were cut short, however. The Rev. Faith Green Thomas, the pastor of Bethel United Methodist Church in Flint, Mich., interrupted Trump to stop him from criticizing Clinton. She said the purpose of his visit to Bethel, which had helped Flint residents respond to contamination of their water, was supposed to be to thank the church for the work it had done.

Photos: Top, Donald Trump is trying to improve his low standing among African Americans by speaking at black Protestant churches. (DonaldJTrump.com)  Below: Assemblyman Nick Perry.

Whenever Katrina Lee is approached by a man on the street, she does anything she can to maneuver herself out of the situation. She believes that as a person who identifies as a black transgender woman, this could save her life.

“As a trans woman you have to be careful who you are dealing with. You can’t control how cis-gender men behave,” said Lee, a 24-year-old Brooklyn resident and biology major Hunter College.

She wants to avoid the fate of Islan Nettles.

In 2013, Nettles, a Harlem resident, and two friends were walking on Frederick Douglass Boulevard when 25-year-old James Dixon approached them with friends. According to a taped confession reviewed in court in April, Dixon began flirting with Nettles, but became enraged when his friends made fun of him for talking to a transgender woman. Before long, Nettles was knocked unconscious by Dixon, battered and sent into a coma. One week later she was removed from life support and died from sustained head injuries. She was 21 years old and a black transgender woman.

“In order to avoid situations like Nettles, who was harassed and murdered for simply replying to a man’s catcall, I have told men that I wasn’t interested, I’ve told them I have a boyfriend, I’ve even told them I’m a lesbian. . . . anything to get them off my heels,” Lee said. “Because of the stigma of being transgender, we aren’t a protected people.”

In 2012 at least 12 transgender women were murdered in the United States. According to the Human Rights Campaign, that number increased to at least 21 in 2015. The vast majority of them were black and younger than 25. Law enforcement agencies believe this number to be underestimated.

According to Advocate.com, the LGBTQ magazine, transgender people, more specifically transgender black women, are “under attack like never before.” It said there were 23 homicides in which transgendered people were the victims last year , and that 17 were black transgender women or black gender non-conforming.

On the evening of Feb. 20, the body of a transgender woman was found in the street of a quiet Philadelphia neighborhood. She had been stabbed. Police officers hurried the victim to the nearby Aria Health Hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. Maya Young was 25 years old.

Less than 24 hours before, police discovered the body of Veronica Banks Cano in a San Antonio, Texas motel bathtub, fully clothed. Both 43-year-old Cano and Young were identified as transgender black women.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation defines the term transgender as “an umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or gender expression differs from what is typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.” It defines gender non-conforming as a term “used to describe some people whose gender expression is different from conventional expectations of masculinity and femininity.”

In 2015 triumphant strides were made towards better transgender representation in television. The critically acclaimed Sundance film “Tangerine” centered entirely on a transgender cast. Caitlyn Jenner transitioned in the public eye with a celebrity status that garnered national attention. And a star of “Orange is The New Black,” Laverne Cox, was nominated for an Emmy for her role as a transgender inmate.

Yet these symbols of progress do not entirely represent underlying issues the community faces at large. Last year, more transgender women were murdered in the United States than ever before. Violence against this particular group of people has risen sharply since 2013.

Over the span of three years, six black transgender women were killed In Detroit. Studies show that transgender people experience higher levels of discrimination than their LGBQ peers. The National Transgender Discrimination Survey conducted a study in 2011 that revealed, “In every area of life (transgender people) have higher levers of poverty, unemployment, homelessness, negative interactions with police, incarceration and violent victimization.” This disparity has contributed to the rise in deaths.

Within the last four years the Human Rights Campaign reported some 44 bills implemented towards putting restrictions on transgender people, one of which has made national headlines across the country. North Carolina has been at the center of controversy after Gov. Pat McCrory introduced and passed the House Bill 2 in one day.

The bill prohibits transgender people from using the bathroom of the sex that they identify with, instead opting for the one recorded on their birth certificate. Representatives for the state have said the bill does not do away any preexisting protections for LGBTQ people. The transgender community and many others have disagreed strongly.

“Being made out to seem like transgendered people have the behavior of pedophiles is dehumanizing,” says Taliyah Robinson, 26, an educational specialist of transgender youth at the Hetrick-Martin Institute. “I feel like we’re in a time where transgender people are gaining more visibility, which is a good thing but people are scared of things they don’t understand. That absence of understanding causes intolerance and a lack of respect. You can’t tell me I’m not the person that I am, because of how you feel about it.”

In the first five months of 2016, 10 transgender women were reported to have been murdered in the United States.

“Protecting people against violence is something our government should be able to do,” said Christian Omneros, a queer activist with the TheColorofChange.com. “The government has to offer incentives on how to combat hate crimes. At the very least they should be able to better track statistics. That way when the numbers show the reality, they will realize that this is a huge issue. North Carolina has gone out of its way to prosecute a vulnerable population of people and we’re going to fight them until they realize it.”

Photo: Memorial for slain transgender black women in a Crown Heights, Brooklyn apartment. Photo by Brendan Logan Smith. Sketches by Micah Bazant.

During his time working at a federal detention center in Manhattan, former correctional officer Rudell Clark Mullings offered to smuggle makeup and Twizzlers candy into the cell of a female inmate. That, court records say, is one of the many ways he accosted her before raping the victim last year on Valentine’s Day in an unmonitored corridor while she waxed the floors.

The 350-pound correction officer from Brooklyn checked to make sure the secluded area was void of surveillance cameras before pinning the prisoner down, ripping off her clothing, and committing the rape, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Hiral Mehta, who prosecuted his case.

The unidentified victim told Judge Edward Korman at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn on May 4 that she suffered flashbacks from being “repeatedly raped” and getting “flak” for the sexual abuse from other inmates at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

“I want to thank the court that I was believed despite my low status as an inmate,” the victim, who is serving a 30-year sentence for murder, said.

The 54-year-old Mullings was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to sexual abuse of an inmate.

As he handed down the sentence, Korman said that  “It’s necessary to send a message to people in positions such as his that the conduct is unacceptable and deserves severe punishment.”

Mullings is one of many correctional officers accused or suspected of sexual misconduct in the federal and state prison systems in New York State and in New York City-run jails.

New York State prisoners self-reported the highest rate of sexual abuse by staff in the nation on sexual victimization, according to a Justice Department review required by The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003.

According to a lawsuit filed at U.S. District Court in Manhattan, sexual abuse in New York women’s prisons is persistent and often unreported.

The class action suit filed against the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in February alleged that the state has allowed a “culture of indifference” that condones the sexual abuse and harassment of women – who according to the department make up 4.7 percent of the inmate population in New York State – by officers monitoring the facilities.

The plaintiffs, six incarcerated women referred to in the suit as Jane Jones 1-Jane Jones 6, did not seek damages but requested an end to the “pattern of sexual misconduct” in jails for the sake of all women after being “involved in forcible sexual intercourse and other forms of sexual misconduct, verbal threats, harassment and voyeurism.”

Some allegations echo the Mullings case. Court papers show that the 24-year-old inmate known as Jane Jones 1 reported to the Department of Corrections commissioner in writing that officers at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility chose areas away from surveillance cameras to commit the rapes and worked together, alerting the guard on duty when a supervisor was on his way.

The case, called Jones v. Annucci, says there are only isolated instances of officers being disciplined “The culture of sexual abuse and harassment persistsThe lawsuit alleges that quote “all women prisoners” are at risk for “sexual assault, abuse, and harassment by correctional staff, including sexual intercourse, anal intercourse, oral sexual acts, sexual touching, voyeurism, invasion of personal privacy, and demeaning sexual comments,” it alleges.

A federal lawsuit in November 2015 accuses a Rikers Island correction officer of raping a female inmate on a bus while his colleague watched the 20-minute attack.

Documents filed in court by New York City Public Advocate Letitia James say the jail reported only two incidents out of the 116 complaints and none of the 28 accusations of rape to the NYPD. They say that the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which oversees health care at the jail, passed the complaints to the city Department of Corrections, which reported only two misdemeanor assaults to police. James’s filing charges that the women’s jail perpetuates a “pervasive culture of rape.”

“Staff sexual abuse is a serious problem in New York’s women’s prisons,” Veronica Vela, staff attorney in The Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project, said in a statement.

Leaders of New York City’s large Latino community are expressing concern that the newspaper El Diario La Prensa, the self-described “champion of Hispanics,” has become a shell of itself because of cutbacks imposed by a new corporate owner.

“Despite the great benefit that ethnic and minority media provide to their respective communities and to New York City as a whole these recent cuts in staff and size, which shifts away from locally generated content, suggest that these invaluable resources are in a period of transition, the result of which is sure to impact immigrant and minority communities,” Council member Carlos Menchaca (D-Brooklyn) said during a hearing on ethnic media in January.

El Diario has held on by a thread for several years as it continues to lose readership and advertisers, which according to its chief executive officer has led to a series of layoffs over the last four years. ImpreMedia, El Diario’s parent company, imposed its most recent rounds of layoffs on Jan. 15.

According to the Newspaper Guild of New York, the editorial employees’ union, just under half of the workers were laid off.

During the Jan. 27 Council hearing, ImpreMedia chief executive officer Gabriel Dantur defended the layoffs, blaming the current media landscape and how readers obtain their information for the newspaper’s recent cutbacks.

“They have developed new habits in terms of accessing information, not only news but services and promotions as well. As a result of this change newspaper circulation has fallen dramatically,” Dantur said. “Our journalistic relevance is at stake.”

However, in spite of his rationalization of the recent cutbacks, Dantur and ImpreMedia – which bought the paper in 2012 — have come under heavy criticism from the Newspaper Guild.

“With these cuts, ImpreMedia will severely degrade the quality news coverage that hundreds of thousands of Spanish-speaking readers depend on nationwide,” the union said in a statement issued in January. “If ImpreMedia cannot maintain its commitment to the communities that it is supposed to serve, it should step aside and make room for ownership that will.”

According to a study done by the Pew Research Center, since 2014, two years after ImpreMedia’s purchase, circulation for El Diario has decreased by 9 percent. Dantur said the circulation drop justifies the cutbacks.

“For the newspaper equation to work there should be earnings. And the truth is that since we took over four years ago, we’ve only been losing money,” Dantur told the City Council. “Any enterprise is at risk and we’re working to keep printing the newspaper. These decisions are the only way we can keep a sustainable El Diario.”

El Diario, which has been around for 103 years, is the city’s oldest ethnic community paper, setting a standard for other publications like it. For many, its longevity puts the onus on Dantur and ImpreMedia to find a way to keep the publication from folding.

However the current state of the publication speaks to a larger issue — what happens when corporations buy up smaller, struggling publications and scale back on vitally needed local news coverage. ImpreMedia also has purchased two other important Spanish-language newspapers, La Opinion in Los Angeles and La Raza in Chicago.

According to Professor Frances Negron Muntaner of the Center For The Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University, this is a trend across all media platforms but it is more detrimental to smaller publications like El Diario.

“These bigger companies look at the smaller companies like El Diario as a way to expand their market and that’s when the disconnect emerges, when these companies don’t know or recognize the cultural dynamics that already exist,” Negron-Muntaner said.

This implication that a corporation like ImpreMedia is focused less on local community coverage and more on financial gains has many concerned in Latino communities.

“Money talks in the mass media, which has resulted in the deterioration of the profession and quality journalism, and its corporatization comes with adverse consequences for those who know the local community best,” says Alan Aja, professor of Puerto Rican and Latino studies at Brooklyn College. “In other words, a phone call from a desk reporter in a faraway state, hired cheaply to save the media company labor costs while it boosts its bottom line and CEO pay, to ask experts for a quote about an important issue affecting Latinos in the Bronx, is a terrible way of writing a story. Well-paid, unionized local journalists who have roots in the city should be writing the stories, equally managing their own production.”

Dantur contests this notion that El Diario has lost its local flavor and says that the newspaper continues to be a staple within the Latino community, maintaining its dedication to local news that directly concerns Latinos throughout the five boroughs.

“In spite of the loss of valuable resources we have succeeded in maintaining the journalistic quality our audience deserves while developing new products and services for the local community,” Dantur said in his statement to the City Council. He referred to El Diario’s Medalla de Oro (Gold Medal) as the best Hispanic publication in the country, an award given by the National Association of Hispanic Publications and the Upstander Prize from Mayor Bill de Blasio for its journalism on domestic violence.

Those successes have not silenced the call to save the publication from dire straits, and the loudest call comes from Council member Ydanis Rodriguez (D-Manhattan), an advocate for supporting ethnic media.

“It is unfortunate that in 2016 we still have to make a case that we deserve the same attention when it comes to investing in the second largest group in New York City,” Rodriguez told Brooklyn News Service. “For many members of that 28 percent of that Latino population in our city El Diario became the only vehicle that they had to be informed and still today is the only vehicle that they have today.”

Staff members of El Diario La Prensa did not respond to requests for comment.

By RENEE HARARI

On a Sunday afternoon in October 2013, 4-year-old Allison Liao was mowed down and killed by a motorist as she crossed a street with the light in Flushing, Queens. She had a sleepover at her grandmother’s house the night before, and her parents and older brother, Preston, were attempting to make gluten-free bread 10 minutes away at their Fresh Meadows home.

“We got a text from my nephew saying, ‘Please hurry back something happened with Allison,'” says her father, Hsi-Pei Liao. “We didn’t know what happened.”

When Allison’s parents arrived at the emergency room at New York Hospital Queens, they saw her grandmother crying and chanting Chinese grief prayers in a private room, and then they spotted Allison’s bloody shoes on the floor. Some 20 hospital workers were trying their hardest to resuscitate his daughter.

That Sunday afternoon, Allison Liao died.

Heartbreaking stories like these happen all of the time in New York City. City records show that vehicles kill or seriously injure someone in New York every two hours, and being struck by a vehicle is the leading cause of injury-related death for children under 14. On average, 4,000 New Yorkers are seriously injured and 250 are killed each year in traffic crashes.

Roughly six weeks into his term, Mayor de Blasio sought to address this problem by launching Vision Zero, an idealistic plan to eliminate traffic fatalities in New York City. Since then he’s encountered opposition on a variety of fronts—especially to the use of cameras that ticket thousands of speeders—but over the past year and a half, Vision Zero has already begun to have a significant impact on the safety of city streets. Although traffic crashes have increased by 1 percent citywide, traffic fatalities decreased approximately 12 percent in January through September 2015 compared to the year before, according to New York City Motor Vehicle Collision data.

In addition, during the first 10 months of this year there was a 2.5 percent drop in the number of people with serious injuries from traffic crashes compared to the same period last year, according to Transportation Alternatives, a group that advocates for safer streets in New York City.

Slowing things down

One of the city’s most important Vision Zero measures so far has been the focus on forcing drivers to slow down. In October 2014, de Blasio signed legislation that reduced the city’s default speed limit from 30 to 25 miles per hour.

“Speed kills,” says Carl Berkowitz, a transportation and traffic-engineering expert who has served as a litigation consultant since 1997. “When something takes places there’s perception reaction time. The slower you go the more time you have to react. That’s why speed counts.”

Besides lowering the citywide default speed limit to 25 miles per hour, de Blasio has been cracking down on speeding drivers with increased enforcement. According to a report by CBS, officers wrote 6,600 tickets in November 2013, but in November 2014, the same month as the citywide speed change, 13,606 tickets were written out. In 2014, vehicle crashes near speed cameras declined 3.9 percent, and crashes with injuries dropped by 13.4 percent where speed cameras were present, according to WNYC.

Despite these numbers, many New Yorkers are furious about the new installations of speed cameras in their neighborhoods. Fed up Brooklyn residents recently started a petition on change.org urging de Blasio to restore the speed limit of a major street, Ocean Parkway, to its original 30 miles per hour. Beyond simply signing the petition, many people left comments expressing their annoyance with the reduced speed limit and increased enforcement. The top-ranked comment, with 17 likes, said that the city needs to “change the speed or change the mayor.” Other people who signed the petition left comments that accused the city of lowering the speed limit to make more money, and some said that the new speed limit causes longer commute times.

“The reduced speed limit is great on some streets, but on others I feel like it leads to greater stress,” said Allison Tawil, 20, a New York City motorist who lives near Ocean Parkway but did not sign the petition. “On the bigger streets drivers want to drive fast and will do so whether there’s a speed limit or not. I don’t think that speed cameras help drivers reduce speed.”

Brooklyn residents who commented on the petition are not the only ones who are skeptical about the lower speed limit and increased presence of speed cameras. The American Automobile Association in New York has questioned whether the city is being transparent enough about its cameras.

“We have skepticism overall about camera enforcement,” says Alec Slatky, a legislative analyst at AAA New York. “We’re supportive, but we recognize ‘Hey, this is something that can work,’ but it certainly has the potential for abuse and we’ve seen that elsewhere. The technology is being used improperly around the country.”

Slatky says that the city hasn’t been releasing enough data about camera enforcement. In the most recent report that the city released, it only released borough-wide data from the last couple of years instead of producing several years’ worth of data for specific intersections. With data on specific intersections, the public would be able to see where cameras are effective and which locations should be changed.

“People want to know that the cameras are being operated transparently,” Slatky says. “These things can work. We just want to make sure that they do work, and if they don’t we want to put them somewhere that they might.”

Addressing traffic patterns

In addition to a lower speed limit, Vision Zero has enabled the city to plan for more traffic calming measures. In some neighborhoods, the city has already created more bike lanes, redesigned dangerous intersections with safer layouts, increased traffic enforcement and starting educating the public about safer driving habits.

Sam Schwartz, a leading transportation expert who is responsible for popularizing the term “gridlock” to describe stalled New York City traffic, speculates that recent changes in traffic patterns have led to less severe crashes.

“Fewer injuries and fewer deaths generally means that the crashes are less severe, and that is often a result of speed,” Schwartz says. “Sometimes with some of the [Vision Zero] designs you do get more rear end collisions if, indeed, the timing was changed to make the intersections safer. You may get more crashes, but they may not be as severe.”

Schwartz says that Vision Zero may not be entirely to blame for the one percent increase in crashes.

“Crashes over time do have spikes that are unexplainable, and they have dips that are also unexplainable,” Schwartz says. “We have lots of blips that occur because crashes are sometimes a function of things beyond our control.”

Atlantic Avenue is one of the four city streets that are part of Vision Zero’s Great Streets program, which will redesign the city’s most dangerous arteries. The mayor recently announced that as part of the Great Streets program, Atlantic Avenue will receive a $60 million makeover from Pennsylvania Avenue to Rockaway Parkway to make it less treacherous for motorists and pedestrians.

“It’s very dangerous,” says Terrel Davis, a utility worker who was ordering lunch from Wendy’s on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Logan Street shortly after noontime on Sunday, October 11. “It’s too many cars too close. It’s busy on both sides, and like a million cars pass a day through here.”

“That’s a terrible intersection,” says Walter Campbell, the district manager at Community Board 5, which includes that stretch of Atlantic Avenue. “We recognize that intersection is very very bad, and we’ve always put in for the Department of Transportation to do some type of study at that intersection.”

The community board’s requests seem to have paid off. They led the Department of Transportation to do a close study of Atlantic Avenue and come up with a plan to combat the high number of deaths and serious injuries from crashes at several different intersections, including the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Logan Street, which was classified as a hotspot location for collisions. The Department of Transportation proposed to install raised center medians, create pedestrian refugees, add left turn bays and left turn bans, create curb extensions, and allow for midblock crossing along Atlantic Avenue.

While these changes still have not yet been made, other changes, like the lower speed limit, increased enforcement, presence of speed cameras, and placement of signs warning motorists to watch out for pedestrians, have already had an impact on crashes at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Logan Street in East New York. The number of crashes at the intersection fell from 54 in the first nine months of 2013 compared with 32 over the same period this year. That is a 40 percent decrease in crashes.

“Normally when I come everything seems like it’s moving pretty clearly,” says Bernice Reuben, who recently started working at the Wendy’s on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Logan Street. The number of people injured from collisions dropped from 26 to 9 from January to September 2013 to the same period this year. There haven’t been any deaths over the past two years.

“Before opening here there were a lot of accidents,” says Jose Tavera, who helps his friend run a new restaurant on Atlantic Avenue and Logan Street called El Cacique Restaurant and Bar. “People learn to be careful.”

The only changes so far have been the reduced 25 miles per hour speed limit, some new signs cautioning turning vehicles to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk and increased enforcement, but local residents have begun to notice that their dangerous intersection has started to change for the better.

“I know the [speed] cameras so I don’t want to get tickets, but it’s not easy, this law with 25 miles per hour,” Davis says about a new speed camera installed three blocks away. “There’s definitely more police presence down there and it makes a difference.”

Dangerous intersections remain

However, not all of the city’s neighborhoods have changed for the better. The intersection where Allison Liao was killed has actually seen an increase in the number of people injured from collisions: from zero in the first nine months of 2014 to four the same period this year. “There seems to be a lot more that needs to be done,” Liao’s father says. “We know the Department of Transportation is making changes and working with the community. For our family we don’t see the changes as fast enough.”

Many others agree with Liao, claiming that the city is doing too little, too slowly to make the city safer. “The faster a street is redesigned so that people are less likely to be hurt while using that street, the more injuries and deaths can be prevented in the long run,” says Ollie Oliver, field organizing coordinator at Transportation Alternatives. “We’ve always been pushing the city to do more.”

Many New Yorkers take the opposite position and believe that Vision Zero should stop lowering speed limits and increasing enforcement because it causes longer commute times. According to Schwartz, there has been slightly more than a one percent increase in traffic over the past year, but he does not attribute that change to Vision Zero.

“From 2014 to 2015 we have been seeing an increase in general traffic, and that’s partially due to lower gas prices, partially due to the economy doing better…and partially due to having more of the taxi type service vehicles on the road,” Schwartz says. “I don’t think we have enough evidence to say Vision Zero has contributed to it.”

The improvement in pedestrian safety over the past year didn’t help Allison Liao, who packed up her toy purse to pretend pay for some watermelon and was killed moments later when she was sucked under the back tire of a two-ton Nissan Murano SUV driven by Ahmad Abu-Zayedeha.

“The important question to ask is what is an acceptable number of deaths every year as a result of transportation?” Oliver says. “What is that number? Because if you say you think more than zero people, you’re basically saying that the speed and ease of getting from place to place is more important than someone’s life.”

Vision Zero still has a long way to go before the city’s traffic fatalities can reach any number close to zero, but seeing a 12 percent decrease in the number of fatalities over the past year is a positive indication that Vision Zero is off to a strong start.

“Those numbers are very encouraging and it helps us continue what were doing,” Liao says. “The goal is still for zero and it might be some times before we get there, but hopefully we’ll see it in our time frame. It’s nice to know that we are making a difference.”

Photo: Top, flowers commemorate Allison Liao at the Queens intersection where she was killed in 2013. Photos by Renee Harari.

Muror pulled a young boy out of the crowd to be a volunteer as he held one end of a seven-foot long row of papers Muror connected together. As Muror held the other end of the line of papers, he explained that the papers were death certificates of young adults who died from a prescription drug overdose on Staten Island in just the previous six months.

“Six months … I don’t want this business,” the funeral director said. “I want 90- year-olds, not 16-,17-, or 18-year-olds with parents crying that their kid died from a drug overdose. SO DON’T DO IT!”

Muror’s passion to stop this epidemic of prescription drug overdose stems from a recent history of tragedies in the borough — a history that is prompting not only stepped up efforts to treat addicts but also attempts to make the larger community more aware of the problem and to teach families how to deal with it.

A study by the New York State Prescription Drug Monitoring Program found that Staten Island has a higher rate of drug overdoses than any other borough, and also leads the city in filing for e high-dose opioid prescriptions. The study, based on 2012 data, found that Staten Island had 10 fatal overdoses per 10,000 people from opioid analgesics, drugs used to moderate severe pain such as oxycodone, methadone and codeine.

“Ladies and gentleman there is a war going on and we are losing it,” former Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro told the crowd in Tottenville.

Staten Island, the smallest borough in population, lost more than 30 young adults to an overdose from May of to October of this year. Molinaro says that this is nothing new. The death toll from drug overdose has been as high as 32 people a month, which happened in July of 2011.

“There’s big money in narcotics,” Molinaro said. Heroin and prescription pills such as Xanax, Vicodin and oxycodone are some of the biggest killers on the island. “This zip code is one of the highest family incomes in the city of New York,” he told the audience in Tottenville, a neighborhood in Staten Island’s southwest corner. “It’s $85,000. There’s too much money given out to kids where in other neighborhoods you won’t get that. It means that there is more health insurance and more prescription drugs in the home as well.”

During the 12 years that Molinaro was borough president, his son died from drug overdose in his twenties while living on the Island. Molinaro said that he was not ashamed of what his son did; he used his experiences to try and make a difference to the young people of Staten Island by spreading awareness.

Johnny Pignatelli, a 22-year-old resident of Staten Island’s Annadale section, says he has seen his share of the negative effects of drugs on his generation. Annadale is a neighborhood on Staten Island’s South Shore, where the prevalence of drugs is highest.

“Some childhood friends have been to rehab for drug use and a few kids I went to school with have died from overdosing on drugs,” Pignatelli said. “It’s really sad.” Pignatelli said that he believes the problem has to do with the easy accessibility young kids have to drugs.

“I think it’s so easily accessible due to how well off people are on the south shore. Parents don’t think twice about giving their kids money and they don’t question it.”

John Donofrio, a 20-year-old Staten Island resident, also noted the easy access to drugs.,“Staten Island has a high density of people within such a small area,” he said. “People will always have access to drugs.”

In the neighborhoods of Staten Island’s South Shore, there are many street posts decorated with flowers and photographs as a memorial for those that have died of a drug overdose. There are even more memorials for those who have died due to accidents caused by those under the influence.

Rocco Deserto, a 40-year-old father of three children from the Bloomingdale section on the South Shore, said he was in a terrible car accident six yeasr ago that was caused by a 21-year-old man high on oxycodone. “I have three kids and thank God they were not in the car at the time of the accident,” he said. “Where I was hit was where my son sits in his car seat. My car was pretty much totaled.”

Alicia Reddy, a nurse at a drug detoxification unit at Staten Island University hospital for the past five years, said families of drug addicts have turned to her for help because of the work she does. She is now a certified interventionist on Staten Island and is known for her work as the “Addiction Angel.”

Every month, Reddy holds seminars to raise awareness of the drug epidemic on the island, as well as seminars for young adolescents for prevention. Reddy says the problem stems from the influx of heroin coming from Brooklyn and New Jersey and the fact that parents on the South Shore are wealthy as compared to the rest of the island. As a result, a lot more money is handed out to kids.

“I get phone calls all day everyday for parents looking for guidance and help for their kid. It’s mostly for heroin,” she said. “It’s going to be a long way before this gets better, because it’s a broken system. Parents aren’t being educated, resources are not available, insurance policies are not providing the right services, and the criminal law system being broken not being educated on what exactly these kids need.”

Reddy says that there are some resources out there for those struggling.

A rehabilitation program called Camelot Counseling Center plays an important role in Staten Island’s fight against the epidemic. The rehabilitation center has been serving male residents of Staten Island for over 45 years, helping an average of 500 men a year. It offers separate programs for two age groups. The first program is a 25-bed program serving males from the age of 17 and under.

“At this age we are looking at boys who are failing out of school who are generally using smoked drugs such as marijuana,” said Camelot’s executive director, Luke Nasta.

The second program is a 45-bed program is for men 18 and above who are hooked on prescription drugs and opioids.

Nasta said drug abusers need to look into programs like Camelot if they are to have any hope of bettering themselves or helping loved ones. “The problem on Staten Island is that people have health insurance, so when someone is addicted to drugs they get sent to a 28-day drug rehab in Florida covered by the health insurance,” Nasta said. “Are you really going to get better in 28 days? No.” Programs at Camelot last six to nine months.

Both Reddy and Nasta say that fixing the problem lies heavily on educating the families of Staten Island as well as the youth.

Photo, top: Staten Island Borough President James Oddo at a showing of a film aimed at stopping the drug tide on Staten Island. (Staten Island Borough President’s Office)