Republicans plan to foreclose African American voters

September 14, 2008 By Eartha Jane Melzer
Source: Michigan Messenger

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The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

 

‘We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,’ party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.

 

State election rules allow parties to assign ‘election challengers’ to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they ‘have a good reason to believe’ that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a ‘true resident of the city or township.’

 

The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being ‘true residents.’

 

One expert questioned the legality of the tactic.

 

‘You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,’ said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.- based public-interest law firm. ‘I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.’

 

As for the practice of challenging the right to vote of foreclosed property owners, Hebert called it, ‘mean- spirited.’

 

GOP ties to state’s largest foreclosure law firm

 

The Macomb GOP’s plans are another indication of how John McCain’s campaign stands to benefit from the burgeoning number of foreclosures in the state. McCain’s regional headquarters are housed in the office building of foreclosure specialists Trott & Trott. The firm’s founder, David A. Trott, has raised between $100,000 and $250,000 for the Republican nominee.

 

The Macomb County party’s plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. More than 60 percent of all sub-prime loans – the most likely kind of loan to go into default – were made to African-Americans in Michigan, according to a report issued last year by the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Growth.

 

Challenges to would-be voters

 

Statewide, the Republican Party is gearing up for a comprehensive voter challenge campaign, according to Denise Graves, party chair for Republicans in Genessee County, which encompasses Flint. The party is creating a spreadsheet of election challenger volunteers and expects to coordinate a training with the regional McCain campaign, Graves said in an interview with Michigan Messenger.

 

Whether the Republicans will challenge voters with foreclosed homes elsewhere in the state is not known.

 

Kelly Harrigan, deputy director of the GOP’s voter programs, confirmed that she is coordinating the group’s ‘election integrity’ program. Harrigan said the effort includes putting in place a legal team, as well as training election challengers. She said the challenges to voters were procedural rather than personal. She referred inquiries about the vote challenge program to communications director Bill Knowles who promised information but did not return calls.

 

Party chairman Carabelli said that the Republican Party is training election challengers to ‘make sure that [voters] are who they say who they are.’

 

When asked for further details on how Republicans are compiling challenge lists, he said, ‘I would rather not tell you all the things we are doing.’

 

Vote suppression: Not an isolated effort

 

Carabelli is not the only Republican Party official to suggest the targeting of foreclosed voters. In Ohio, Doug Preisse, director of elections in Franklin County (around the city of Columbus) and the chair of the local GOP, told The Columbus Dispatch that he has not ruled out challenging voters before the election due to foreclosure-related address issues.

 

Hebert, the voting-rights lawyer, sees a connection between Priesse’s remarks and Carabelli’s plans.

 

‘At a minimum what you are seeing is a fairly comprehensive effort by the Republican Party, a systematic broad-based effort to put up obstacles for people to vote,’ he said. ‘Nobody is contending that these people are not legally registered to vote.

 

‘When you are comprehensively challenging people to vote,’ Hebert went on, ‘your goals are two-fold: One is you are trying to knock people out from casting ballots; the other is to create a slowdown that will discourage others,’ who see a long line and realize they can’t afford to stay and wait.

 

Challenging all voters registered to foreclosed homes could disrupt some polling places, especially in the Detroit metropolitan area. According to the real estate Web site RealtyTrac, one in every 176 households in Wayne County, metropolitan Detroit, received a foreclosure filing during the month of July. In Macomb County, the figure was one household in every 285, meaning that 1,834 homeowners received the bad news in just one month. The Macomb County foreclosure rate puts it in the top three percent of all U.S. counties in the number of distressed homeowners.

 

Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Kent and Genessee counties were – in that order – the counties with the most homeowners facing foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac. As of July, there were more than 62,000 foreclosure filings in the entire state.

 

Joe Rozell, director of elections for Oakland County in suburban Detroit, acknowledged that challenges such as those described by Carabelli are allowed by law but said they have the potential to create long lines and disrupt the voting process. With 890,000 potential voters closely divided between Democratic and Republican, Oakland County is a key swing county of this swing state.

 

According to voter challenge directives handed down by Republican Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, voter challenges need only be ‘based on information obtained through a reliable source or means.’

 

‘But poll workers are not allowed to ask the reason’ for the challenges, Rozell said. In other words, Republican vote challengers are free to use foreclosure lists as a basis for disqualifying otherwise eligible voters.

 

David Lagstein, head organizer with the Michigan Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), described the plans of the Macomb GOP as ‘crazy.’

 

‘You would think they would think, `This is going to look too heartless,” said Lagstein, whose group has registered 200,000 new voters statewide this year and also runs a foreclosure avoidance program. ‘The Republican-led state Senate has not moved on the anti- predatory lending bill for over a year and yet [Republicans] have time to prey on those who have fallen victim to foreclosure to suppress the vote.’

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Led by Chabad, Diverse Group of Jews Make Up New Presence in Harlem

 

- Vos Iz Neias – (Yiddish:What’s News?) – http://www.vosizneias.com -

Manhattan, NY – Led by Chabad, Diverse Group of Jews Make Up New Presence in Harlem

09-13-2008 – 11:22 PM

Manhattan, NY – On Friday evening before Sabbath services and dinner, Rabbi Shaya Gansbourg dons his best black fedora and long silk coat and sets out chairs and prayer books.

The rich aroma of his wife’s matzo ball soup drifts through the hall, a tempting, olfactory invitation to pray.

The Gansbourgs know their food has to be good if they want to attract a crowd. Not all their congregants strictly keep the Sabbath or kosher, and on Fridays, just a few blocks away, is Amy Ruth’s soul food restaurant with chicken and waffles.

Gansbourg, a stout man with a silver-streaked beard and a thick Yiddish accent, is the spiritual leader of Chabad of Harlem, a one-room synagogue and community center on the ground floor of 437 Manhattan Ave. at 118th St. that he and his wife, Goldie, opened last year.

The center is the latest and most visible sign of a renewal of Jewish life in the neighborhood.

After nearly a century, Jewish communal life is quietly returning to West Harlem as a diverse group of Jews move back to a neighborhood once rich with synagogues, Yiddish theaters and kosher butchers.

In the past five years, new signs of Jewish life have emerged. Mezuzahs – scroll boxes that mark a Jewish home – have started popping up on door frames. The school bus to Kinneret Day School in Riverdale now makes two stops in Harlem. And on Chanukah, flames from several menorahs flickered merrily over Manhattan Ave.

There are now two options for Sabbath prayer in Harlem. Chabad of Harlem offers a traditional Orthodox service and kosher Sabbath meals.
It was founded on the heels of Techiya – Hebrew for renewal – a traditional egalitarian prayer group that has met monthly since 2005 in local homes for Friday night services and pot luck dinners.
“When we came here, a lot of people were shocked,” said Goldie Gansbourg. “‘There are Jews in Harlem?’ people asked.” But as her husband explained, there are now enough Jews in the neighborhood “to get a good show rolling here.”

Attracted by striking architecture, plummeting crime and relatively affordable rents, middle-class whites are moving back to Harlem, Jews among them.

Harlem was once home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the world. At its peak before World War I, there were about 175,000 Jews living in Harlem, said Jeffrey Gurock, author of “When Harlem Was Jewish, 1870-1930.”
“I think they’re moving there for the same reason Jews moved there almost 100 years ago,” Gurock said. “Imagine it’s about 1900 and you have an apartment with cross ventilation overlooking Central Park. Pretty damn good.”

Affordable housing is not the only draw here. Yoel Borgenicht, a local real estate developer, says he fell in love with “the culture of the place, both African-American and Jewish.”

Shani Offen, a neuroscientist who lives on 118th St. and Manhattan Ave., says Harlem offers a sense of community. “I love the neighborhood,” she said. “People here smile at each other and say hello on the street.”

These days, the Harlem Jewish community is diverse. Members hail from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, France and Great Britain. There is a professional poet, a dermatologist and a public school teacher.

Many say that while renewing Jewish life in Harlem is important, forging relationships with neighbors is equally so.
Some, like Doron Fagelson, say they don’t feel like outsiders, but are returning to a neighborhood as important to American Jewish history as the lower East Side. It’s a place where the Jewish community left a footprint, he said. “I think that’s kind of exciting.”

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92-year-old painter reflects on standing against racism

Originally appeared on News-Journal Online at http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Headlines/frtHEAD01091408.htm

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September 14, 2008

Artist, Activist

92-year-old painter reflects on standing against racism

By KENYA WOODARD
Staff Writer

PALM COAST — Georgette Seabrooke Powell doesn’t paint anymore.

Her hands still weakened by a stroke suffered last fall, the 92-year-old artist can’t practice the craft she began as a young girl growing up in Manhattan.

Powell — a small woman with a bright smile and warm demeanor — was actively sketching and drawing until plagued by illness, her family and friends say. Seated in a wheelchair in the dining room of her Palm Coast home on a recent summer afternoon, Powell seems almost apologetic for not being able to show a guest how she’s created her artwork.

“I haven’t been able to (paint) in years as I should,” she said.

But demonstrations are unnecessary. Powell’s home — an intimate setting decorated with family photos, her artwork and that of others — is testament to a career that spans 60 years, a journey in which she faced great rewards and great disappointments. Today, Powell’s works are renowned for their expressive detail and precise documentation of people and places. Her paintings have been exhibited internationally and in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Smithsonian Institute’s Anacostia Community Museum in Washington, D.C.

Perhaps Powell’s greatest artistic achievement, however, doesn’t hang in an austere room of a famous gallery. For 70 years, Powell’s mural “Recreation in Harlem” hung in what was the nurses’ break room of Harlem Hospital.

The painting of blacks and whites depicted in everyday actions around Harlem seems like a scene taken out of most urban settings across America today.

But 70 years ago, the hospital’s white administrators deemed Powell’s seemingly innocent interpretation of Harlem too radical. That decision sparked a controversy that propelled Powell and other black artists to take a firm stand against racism years ahead of sit-ins and marches.

Powell and her colleagues made a powerful decision to take on the administrators at a time when the majority of the country was out of work and blacks had yet to be wholly accepted into American society, said Michelle Black Smith, an independent curator and educator who is collaborating with Powell on a book about her life and work.

“The artists who decided to protest did so at great sacrifice,” Black Smith said. “They said, ‘We’re not going to be censored’ — and that’s an important battle.”

‘THINGS BEGAN HAPPENING’

From an early age Powell, who was born in Charleston, S.C., was encouraged by her parents to develop her artistic skills. By the time she was 15 in the early 1930s, Powell had graduated from high school and was enrolled in an art program at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

“Then things began happening,” she said.

This was the time of the post-Harlem Renaissance — when the glory days of luminaries like writers Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston had faded and the country was in the midst of the Great Depression.

In 1936, Powell landed a job through the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Arts Project and was assigned, along with other black artists, to the Harlem Hospital mural project, headed up by famed artist Charles Alston.

Finding steady work during the Depression was no small feat and Powell said she knew she “was fortunate enough to be employed in the program.”

Her works, experts came to say, strongly reflect her knack for accurately capturing her subjects in intimate moments — like grooming or nurturing themselves — and conveying complex emotions, like when in the throes of worship.

Powell “has an amazing sense of empathy” that enables viewers to instantly connect with her work because they can “see some of themselves in it,” Black Smith said.

“She does have that ability to reach people,” she said. “Her images are very lifelike and expressive.”

As an artist, Powell is adept at using the stroke of a brush to express her opinion on a variety of issues, like spirituality, said Robert Hall, the associate director of education for the Anacostia Community Museum.

“Her style is representational art and a lot of it has to do with documenting a people or place or time,” he said. “She’s a storyteller and instead of using text, she uses images.”

During this productive period, she created some of her most renowned works such as “Tired Feet,” “Emily” and “Church Scene.”

The latter — a snapshot of a worship service at a black church — so impressed colleagues and faculty at Cooper Union that it earned Powell the Silver Medal, the school’s most prestigious award.

Powell’s life was on an upswing — but it would be short-lived.

‘TOO MUCH NEGRO SUBJECT MATTER’

In the proposal for her mural, Powell wrote that her work featured people in scenes of everyday living such as children playing, women gossiping and vendors selling their wares.

“The subject matter which I find entertaining and human rather than seriously boring,” she said.

The hospital’s administration didn’t agree. According to correspondence on the matter that Powell keeps in her personal files, her mural — along with that of the other black artists — was rejected on the grounds that they “contain too much Negro subject matter.”

The hospital administration’s prejudice was disheartening, Powell said.

“I was very depressed that our work had been rejected by the director,” she said.

Powell’s “first major fight” is “huge in terms of black struggle” and marks the beginning of her using her art as activism — a sort of precursor to the civil rights movement, Black Smith said.

“It’s at a time when black people were doing their very best to fit into America and they do it in the middle of the Great Depression,” she said. “So when it comes to a decision between integrity and money, they choose integrity.”

After two years of battle, the hospital relented and allowed the murals to go up — but the artists’ victory was bittersweet for Powell.

The delay in the project’s approval prompted Cooper Union to deny her an internship credit, which, ultimately, kept her from graduating.

‘WE MADE HISTORY’

Powell would go on to marry and raise three children with Dr. George W. Powell, a New York firefighter who later ran a podiatry practice when the couple moved to Washington, D.C., in the 1960s.

In Washington, Powell opened Tomorrow’s World Art Center, which offered art and music programs for more than 30 years. She hosted public art gatherings dubbed “Art in the Park,” and embarked on a career in art therapy.

After years of neglect, Powell’s mural is faded and chipped but her message of hope and unity still shines through.

Now under restoration, the mural and those of other artists of the Harlem Hospital have been taken down to be restored and will be unveiled in 2011.

At home, Powell’s living room walls bear a collection of paintings that are similar to the mural. “Happiness Is,” which stands on an easel across the room, features a mother wrapped in a swirl of orange, purple and cream holding her child. Surrounded by flowers and covered with a plaid cloth, the smiling pair look as if they will suddenly spring to life.

Today, when Powell reflects on the Harlem Hospital controversy, there’s no hint of bitterness in her voice.

Powell — who earned a bachelor’s degree from Howard University in 1973 — said Cooper Union granted her a degree in the 1980s after she wrote them asking them to reconsider their earlier denial of her internship credit. She said she never regretted her decision to stand up with the other artists in protest against the hospital.

“I had to do it,” she said. “I think we made history in many ways.”

kenya.woodard@news-jrnl.com

Grand Central Apartment

New York Observed

By ANDREW N. SHERMAN

IN New York, anything is possible.

On a good day, you can meet the woman of your dreams in a crowded elevator, or reclaim your long-lost dignity by telling off that bully in the packed subway car during rush hour. You can eat a hot dog every five blocks, or catch a midnight showing of “The Manchurian Candidate.” You can be a college dropout and make millions on Wall Street.

Something else is possible in New York: You can freeze your life at a specific point in time. You can do it without cryogenics, and all while living on the beautiful Upper West Side. I know, because I did it. I froze my life at age 27.

I came to New York from Boston in 1998, with no discernible plan or job, just a friend’s couch to sleep on. I thought I’d figure out a way to earn a paycheck, get an apartment, become a big-time actor or writer, sow my oats a bit and ultimately meet the woman of my dreams, with whom I’d settle down and live happily ever after on the Upper West Side or, if necessary, Brooklyn.

Only one of those plans took hold — the apartment. One night that summer, along with Ted, the aforementioned couch-lending friend, I bumped into Beth, a long-lost childhood crush of ours. She was living near Ted’s place, in a three-bedroom apartment on West 71st Street. As luck would have it, Beth and one of her cute female roommates were moving out of town.

With the promise of a slight but permanent connection to Beth, I persuaded Ted to move in with me. Together we joined Megan, who happily ushered us into life in Apartment No. 4 at 222 West 71st Street, quickly pointing out that yes, there was in fact a brothel on the first floor of the building, featuring nubile and friendly young women.

Life during the next decade in Apartment No. 4 is a blur, but the following things happened:

¶The brothel shut down, courtesy of the city’s vice squad, but not before Ted pounded on its door late one night, demanding and perhaps receiving a “neighbor’s special.”

¶Megan moved to a studio on the Upper East Side. Later, we bumped into her and found out she had gotten engaged.

¶A Bush backer named Jay moved in, along with a portrait of Ronald Reagan. Jill followed Jay and replaced Reagan’s image with Al Gore’s, though that wasn’t enough to help Gore win the election.

¶Ted, who had been working as a high school English teacher, quit his job, citing irreconcilable differences with teenagers, and met a woman who lived two blocks east of us. He moved out and married her, and today they live with their two sons in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

¶A beer-swilling P.R. guy found refuge in the apartment after escaping what turned out to be an ill-fated engagement. Baseball coursed through his veins, and unable to resist the call of Red Sox Nation, he moved to Boston.

¶David, one of my best friends, did two stints at West 71st. During the first stint, he met a woman and fell in love. The second occurred several years later, and it marked his last days in New York, before shipping off to Atlanta to a life of matrimonial bliss with that very same woman.

¶An Australian lawyer paid his New York dues in the apartment. Shortly after moving in, he met his wife while in-line skating in Central Park.

¶Kyle the bookmaker stayed for six months before taking a nearby studio apartment with his girlfriend.

¶Jon the graphic designer set up shop for a year before fleeing to Texas in pursuit of a woman who had broken up with him just days after his arrival.

OTHER things happened. An actor who fancied himself Jude Law stayed for a few months. Betsy, an actress from Minnesota, spent entire shade-drawn days getting into character. Temporary residents included an Irish bartender, a summer intern from Hawaii and a compulsive runner who could walk to the Brooklyn Bridge and back and then run 12 miles in Riverside Park.

The city’s power failed one hot summer night, and all we had to eat was a corned beef sandwich from Fine & Shapiro, served in the dark. Issues of Penthouse suddenly appeared in a living room closet. Some funny cigarettes were smoked. Much Hunan Park Chinese food was eaten. A dog named Bodhi became the apartment’s de facto mascot.

Through it all — the happy unions and failed relationships, the tragedies and brothel closings, the New York arrivals and departures — I remained unscathed, accumulating no significant emotional baggage, major material possessions or children. Sure, I lost a job, two potential long-term girlfriends, my grandmother, some money and from time to time my sense of humor. And yes, I found something like a “career” in public relations.

But nothing happened that altered my life permanently. I still look and feel the way I did on the day I began to call 222 West 71st Street my home. I’m still 27 and carefree, the Yankees are still better than the Red Sox, and I could still meet the woman of my dreams on a subway platform, in Central Park or in Malachy’s on West 72nd Street.

There’s only one problem. A few weeks ago, I was ordered to leave 222 West 71st Street. My lease was up, and the owner wanted to renovate the building and raise the rent. When I learned my fate, via a letter from the owner, I felt like Doc Brown applying the final touches to his time-traveling DeLorean, only to be discovered at the last minute by the dreaded Libyans. Like Doc, I thought: “My God, they found me!”

Who knows what will happen to me when I walk out of this place? Maybe my life will suddenly defrost, and the aging process will accelerate, making me look like the wrinkly-faced baby in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” a forthcoming Brad Pitt movie about a man who ages backward. In fact, it’s entirely possible that a year from now I will be married, with a successful writing career and a beautiful wife named Beth.

If you’re reading this, Beth, maybe it’s time you moved back to New York. The Upper West Side needs us.

The Dying of the Light at Yankee Stadium

Dispatches

Suzy Allman for The New York Times

The old and new Yankee stadiums.               

By JAKE MOONEY

Published: September 12, 2008

WHEN the Yankees are out of town and the old stadium in the Bronx is empty, it is easy to see the signs of wear on the 85-year-old structure. There are dents and streaks on the sheet metal wall along River Avenue and a bird’s nest in a loudspeaker near Gate 6. The blue illuminated Yankee Stadium sign, faded and patched in several different shades, looks on closer inspection as if it might be more at home in front of a deli.

On Wednesday, with the team in California, an affable Virginian named Randy Smith stood on the sidewalk next to the players’ parking lot, not far from the sign, and began sketching. He wanted to make a painting, with the stadium in the foreground and its glossy successor, across the street and nearly finished, rising up on the horizon.

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The new stadium has no illuminated sign; the lettering “Yankee Stadium” behind home plate is gold leaf. Its glass windows, which workers inside were cleaning with squeegees, are shiny and reflective like an office tower’s. Mr. Smith looked back and forth between the buildings as he sketched.

“I’m trying to get the yin and the yang, new versus the old,” he said. “This is the only spot I can get them both.”

With the season winding down and the team far from playoff contention, the groups of fans emerging from the subway in Yankees gear were focused resolutely on the past. Many were there for stadium tours, and some stopped at a souvenir store at 161st Street and River Avenue, where Abdul Abbadi, whose family owns the place, stood working on a crossword puzzle in front of a wall of jerseys with players’ numbers.

“This year, it’s the old-timers,” he said, musing about his best-selling shirts. “Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth. It’s all emotional this year. It’s a year of memories.”

Looking into the store’s glass case a few feet away were Arnie Dowdy, 66, from Grover Beach, Calif., and his brother Glenn, from Paducah, Ky. They are Cardinals fans, but it is Arnie Dowdy’s mission to visit every stadium in Major League Baseball, a quest that can require speed, what with the number of stadiums that are being torn down.

“They keep building them faster than I can get to them,” Mr. Dowdy said.

This was his first trip to see the Yankees, who were to open their final homestand in the stadium on Friday; he never got to see them before the stadium was renovated, extensively, over two years in the 1970s. Did that renovation of the 1923 structure — which changed the seats, the lights, the upper deck, the fences and the dimensions of the field, among other things — make this visit less special?

“No, no, no, no, no, no,” Mr. Dowdy said, before the question was even completed. “Stepping on the same field where you know Babe Ruth walked, you know Yogi Berra walked, you know Mickey Mantle walked, you know DiMaggio walked — these people are bigger than life.”

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Besides, even the renovated stadium is old. Even if the stadium had been built from scratch in 1976, the year it reopened, it would now be the fifth-oldest stadium in the American League. As for recent history, it has hosted 10 World Series with its new look — 6 of which the Yankees won.

By this point, Mr. Smith was coloring in some of the people in his painting — a visiting family, a driver named Fausto — while fans lined up for stadium tours. The family, the Cordascos of Westchester, were there to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of the parents, Louis and Marie, longtime season ticket holders.

In a concession to age and rising ticket prices, they will probably not be making the jump to the new stadium, so this was also a goodbye. But for Mr. Cordasco, 74, the memories are still crisp. He remembers the starting lineup for his first game, in 1946, for which he turned in empty bottles to raise the $1.25 ticket price. And, of course, he remembers his wedding day, Sept. 20, 1958, when the team, fortunately, was on the road.

“That’s the day Hoyt Wilhelm pitched against the Yankees,” he said, “and threw a no-hitter against them.”

More Articles in New York Region » A version of this article appeared in print on September 14, 2008, on page CY1 of the New York edition.

In Mexican Kitchens, a Cry of ‘Not Again’

East Harlem

By SAKI KNAFO

IF a collective grumble of skepticism could be heard rising from the kitchens of East Harlem lately, that’s because some members of the neighborhood’s Mexican-American community have felt gastronomically under siege.

First it was the tomatoes. Then it was the cilantro, the serrano peppers and the jalapeños — all staples of Mexican cuisine. In June and July, as salmonella poisoning claimed one victim after another, the federal government scrutinized the nation’s salsa, certain that a culprit lurked within one of the ingredients.

Eventually, salmonella bacteria were found on fresh jalapeños in a distribution plant in Texas, and that was pretty much the last time anyone heard of possibly contaminated Mexican foods.

Until Sept. 2, that is. That was when New York State agriculture officials announced that a routine sample of a brand of Mexican cheese, La Clarita Queseria Queso Fresco, manufactured by a company on East 117th Street, had tested positive for E. coli bacteria, which cause severe cramping and diarrhea.

Queso fresco, which resembles feta, is as popular among Mexicans as brie is among the French, and the people of East Harlem wondered why yet more worries swirled around Mexico’s cuisine.

“In Mexico, we eat jalapeños, tomatoes, cilantro and cheese,” said Berta Lucero, a butcher at Little Mexico, a grocery on Third Avenue near East 116th Street. “Never any problems.”

Josefina Aguirre, a daughter of the store’s owner, said many customers were dismayed by the bad publicity and wondered if there was a plot against Mexican immigrants. “People were like, ‘Oh my God, they’re trying to get us out of here,’ ” she said, only half in jest.

According to the agriculture officials, the cheese’s manufacturer, Queseria la Poblanita, voluntarily recalled all the products from the batch of cheese that appeared to be contaminated.

A spokeswoman for the company declined a request for an interview, but a shopper at Little Mexico was quick to speak up in the company’s defense. Asked if she planned to switch brands after the recent news, the shopper, Luisa Maosso, firmly shook her head. “I didn’t get sick,” she said.

Ms. Aguirre was not surprised. “Mexicans are very faithful to their products,” she said.

For Justino Abrajan, the manager of El Paso Taqueria restaurant on East 116th Street near Third Avenue, all the talk about contaminated food made him yearn for days when he got milk right from the source on his family’s Mexican farm. “I still like this kind of milk,” he said, “when you pull from the cows right away and straight to my mouth.”

 The New York Times Company

‘No Contract, No Cookies’

Kingsbridge

By KATHERINE BINDLEY

AS it neared 5 o’clock on a recent Friday, the workers from the Stella D’oro cookie factory in the Kingsbridge neighborhood of the Bronx sat in collapsible lounge chairs beneath brightly colored striped umbrellas and a blue tarp. They were settling in for their version of a late summer weekend, which meant trading off shifts on the 24-hour picket line they have been keeping since Aug. 13.

The workers are on strike against the Stella D’oro Biscuit Company, which was acquired by Brynwood Partners in 2006. According to Joyce Alston, the president of Local 50 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers International Union, the proposed contract would reduce the pay for about half of the factory’s nearly 140 workers over the next five years and would weaken certain benefits.

Juan Torres, 51, who has worked for Stella D’oro for 15 years, stood beside his co-workers on the picket line, wearing a Yankees T-shirt and mulling his future finances.

“How I can send my kids to college or send them for a better education if every year I’m going to make less money?” Mr. Torres asked. “The cost of living right now is very high, everything, the gas, the food.”

According to an Aug. 27 letter from Daniel Myers, the chief operating officer of Stella D’oro, to Ms. Alston, the proposed contract would raise some workers’ wages, lower others’ and leave others’ unchanged, and would reduce the number of paid holidays, eliminate paid sick days and keep pension benefits intact.

Neither Mr. Myers nor other Stella D’oro managers responded to several phone calls and e-mail messages for elaboration on the contract or the strike. Robb MacKie, the president of the American Bakers Association, said he was not specifically familiar with the Stella D’oro matter, but he did say that the general economics of the industry are currently challenging.

“All of the industry costs are up,” Mr. MacKie said, citing staple ingredients like flour, sugar and shortening. As a result, he said, baking companies are being forced to raise consumer prices and to reduce their labor, marketing and other costs.

Back on the picket line, the workers have persisted, sticking to their slogan of “No contract, no cookies” and holding a rally on, suitably, Labor Day. Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz was among the officials present; he roused the crowd when he said that the beautiful aroma of cookies in the community had started to stink.

Ms. Alston said that the union and the company have conducted some talks, but that they were no longer meeting. “Honestly, we don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said, adding, “We’re prepared to fight by any legal means.”

Raymond Armerino, 61, has been with Stella D’oro for 36 years and said he would rather be working than on strike. “I love this place,” he said. But he said that if the workers were replaced, cookie quality would suffer.

“The people here,” Mr. Armerino said, referring to those around him, “know how to make a great cookie.”

COURTESY NYTIMES

VOTE FOR CHANGE

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PARK PERK FOR ELITE SCHOOLS

PARK PERK FOR ELITE SCHOOLS By KATHIANNE BONIELLO ord=1221397266; adid=”"; hfpg=”"; drStr = document.referrer.toString(); popup = (drStr.match(“www.yahoo.com”) ? “0″ : “1″); document.write(”); September 14, 2008 — Public school teachers have had most of their golden parking passes pulled – but private schools with city-sanctioned parking spots have been left untouched by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s effort to unclog city streets. At least a dozen swanky private Manhattan schools, from elementary schools to colleges, have “faculty vehicles only” zones designated in front of their buildings, a Post survey found. The perks apply across the board, to religious and secular schools, with eight spots each going to: Regis, one of the top Catholic high schools in the city; the Ramaz School, an Upper East Side Jewish elementary school; and the secular Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School. It’s unclear if the city has any plans to reduce or eliminate such zones for private educators. Their public school counterparts will have their city-issued parking placards slashed 80 percent as of Oct. 1 – with the number reduced from 63,390 to 11,150. The mayor should be applauded for the cuts, said advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, but the private school handouts are unjustified. “We need a full accounting of these parking privileges,” said spokesman Wiley Norvell. “A lot of these are private institutions, it’s not going out on a limb to say they should provide private parking.” Construction on East 70th Street has only made it more frustrating for residents living near Marymount Manhattan College’s four parking spots. “Why can’t their faculty take the subway like everyone else? They don’t even have to work a full day,” one woman said. A Marymount spokesman said if the city contacted the school about the spots, the school “will respond as a responsible New York City neighbor.” Pricey schools without city-designated zones are also getting into the act – by simply issuing their own “permits” to employees. And city cops, despite the lack of legal standing of such permits, seem to be giving the private schoolers a free pass. At the Allen Stevenson School on East 78th Street, three cars with laminated blue permits on their dashboards weren’t ticketed for parking in a no-parking zone. A fourth vehicle – without a makeshift permit – was ticketed. City Hall said it is “looking into the issue” of faculty parking at private schools. “Our first priority was reducing the number of placards given to city employees by at least 20 percent – and in fact we cut the number by 54 percent, or more than half,” said mayoral spokesman Stu Loeser.

U.S. Mint to unveil new Lincoln penny

Bloomberg

Sunday, September 14th 2008, 4:00 AM

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Mint will unveil designs for a series of four pennies commemorating the bicentennial of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln in the first makeover of the 1-cent coin in a half-century.

The coins, which will be released on the 100th anniversary of the first pennies to bear an image of the 16th President, are scheduled to go into circulation next year.

An unveiling ceremony will be held at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Sept. 22. Images of the new coins will also be released on the Internet that day.

The first of the series, a penny marking Lincoln’s birth in Kentucky, will be issued on Feb. 12, the President’s birthday in 1809 at Hodgenville, Ky.

Later versions on the new coins will mark Lincoln’s formative years in Indiana, his years as a lawyer and his presidency, the Mint said.

Olympics Bird’s Nest architects design perch for New Yorkers in Tribecca apartment tower

BY ULA ILNYTZKY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

Saturday, September 13th 2008, 5:48 PM

AP

Fifty-six Leonard Street, as the tower will be known, reinvents the classic American skyscraper ‘as a lacy, pixilated Rubik’s Cube.’

The Swiss architects of the iconic Bird’s Nest stadium at the Beijing Olympics are bringing their innovative style to New York City with a translucent glass skyscraper designed to look like houses stacked in the sky.

Architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron’s $650 million, 57-story condominium featuring dramatic, cantilevered terraces is slated to begin going up in mid-October in the trendy Tribeca district in lower Manhattan.

It will be Herzog & de Meuron’s first high-rise commission anywhere in the world. The design is scheduled to be unveiled tomorrow.

The architects liken their design to “houses stacked in the sky,” with each level staggered progressively with different-sized boxes arranged at varying angles to create sweeping cantilevered terraces and unique floor plans for each of the 145 apartments.

They said 56 Leonard Street, as the tower will be known, reinvents the classic American skyscraper “as a lacy, pixilated Rubik’s Cube.”

Another whimsical feature of the design is a massive stainless steel sculpture by Turner Prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor that will be “playfully squished” into the tower’s base as homage to the city’s culture, said developer Izak Senbahar of Alexico Group.

The building will have an expansive 18-foot high black granite lobby and two floors of amenities that include a 75-foot pool and outdoor sundeck cantilevered 20 feet over the street, a library lounge, screening room and fitness center.

The apartments, each with its own terrace, will range from two to five bedrooms, plus 10 penthouses, and be offered for $3.5 million to $33 million. The tower is slated to open in 2010.

The twisted silver beams of its $450 million Bird’s Nest stadium became one of the most enduring images of the Olympics.