Olga Méndez, Bronx Senator, Is Dead at 84

By Sewell Chan

Ruby Washington/The New York Times Olga A. Méndez in 2004.

Olga A. Méndez, who was the first Puerto Rican woman elected to a state legislature in the continental United States, and represented East Harlem and parts of the Bronx in the New York State Senate from 1979 to 2004, died at her home in East Harlem on Wednesday morning. She was 84.

Her death was announced by her nephew, Erick Vazquez, who said the cause was cancer, which was first diagnosed in the early 1990s.

Olga Aran was born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, on Feb. 5, 1929, and moved to New York City in the 1950s, earning a doctorate in educational psychology from Yeshiva University. She married Anthony Mendez, a politically active lawyer who was the son of Antonio Mendez, who in 1954 became the first native-born Puerto Rican to become a district leader of a major political party in New York City.

Mrs. Méndez’s husband died in 1970; his father died in 1982.

In March 1978, Mrs. Méndez, who had served as a deputy commissioner of what was then the city’s Agency for Childhood Development, won the Democratic nomination for the State Senate in the district covering East Harlem and the South Bronx. The following month, she won a special election to succeed Robert Garcia, who vacated the Senate seat after he was elected to the House of Representatives in a special election that February.

Mrs. Méndez was defined as much by her political pragmatism — some critics said opportunism — as by her ethnicity. (She did, however, proudly insist on being known as Puerto Rican, and vehemently rejected the terms Hispanic and Latino.)

In the closely watched 1989 Democratic primary battle between Mayor Edward I. Koch, who was seeking a third term, and his challenger, David N. Dinkins, the Manhattan borough president, Mrs. Méndez backed the incumbent. (Mr. Dinkins won the primary and went on to win the general election.)

And in a hard-fought 1991 Democratic primary battle for a City Council seat, Mrs. Méndez backed Adam Clayton Powell IV, son of a legendary African-American Harlem congressman, over William Del Toro, a Puerto Rican candidate.

In recent years, Mrs. Méndez became best known for bucking the Democratic establishment, which she had been a part of for decades, to join the Republicans, who had been in charge of the State Senate since the 1970s.

In December 2002, Mrs. Méndez switched her party registration to Republican from Democrat, complaining that the Democratic Party had done too little to benefit her constituents. The switch prompted several Democrats to challenge her, and one of them, José M. Serrano, defeated Mrs. Méndez in the November 2004 general election.

Mr. Serrano, whose father is a longtime Bronx congressman, was helped by the fact that the Senate district was radically redrawn after the 2000 Census. The district was no longer largely East Harlem and northern Manhattan, but now included a large swath of the south and west Bronx, accounting for more than 60 percent of the voters in the district.

David Gonzalez contributed reporting.

HEATER REVIEW | ‘BLACK MAN RISING’

clipped from www.nytimes.com THEATER REVIEW | ‘BLACK MAN RISING’ 5 Men Integrating Their Message and Their Moves By CLAUDIA LA ROCCO Patricia R. Floyd begins her program notes for “Black Man Rising” by saying that “many of you may wonder how a woman ended up directing” such a play. Some people might wonder, but probably not those enthusiastic members of the female sex in the audience on a recent night. And certainly not those who got a load of James Chapman’s lugubrious, plodding, feel-good script. Many of the lines, with references to “the sweet smell of the Nile” and Nubian queens, read as if tailor-made for women, particularly black women who are hungry for male respect and adoration. (The best part of a squirm-inducing section in which the cast detailed how to love all of a woman was imagining the response of, say, an incisive comedian like Chris Rock.)

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/theater/reviews/29black.html

Black Men and Crime What’s The Story?

clipped from www.topix.com Black Men and Crime What’s The Story? If we believe these statistics to be true, in the majority of the crime committed in New York City the perpetrator is of color. It is by now common knowledge that POC are for over represented in the prison population relative to the percentage of the population that they make up. Whites are quick to point to statistics like above to justify racial profiling in police work; to them it only seems common sense to target POC because statistically they/we are the criminals. Read full story from www.womanist-musings.com

Facebook Postings Prompt Quick Exit of a City Politician’s Aide

By SEWELL CHAN

The arrest of the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. on a disorderly conduct charge — later dropped — has prompted discussion about race and policing in America, particularly after President Obama weighed in (and later backed away from initial remarks) on the episode.

The ramifications have reached far beyond Cambridge, Mass., and Washington. On Monday, a young aide to a New York City politician resigned after posting comments on her Facebook page about the controversy.

The aide, Lee Landor, who had been the deputy press secretary to the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, since May, posted comments on her Facebook page criticizing Mr. Gates and the president, whom she referred to at one point as “O-dumb-a.”

The reaction was swift after word of Ms. Landor’s online comments spread in city government circles on Monday.

“Ms. Landor’s comments were totally inappropriate and in direct contradiction to the views of the borough president and his office,” Dick Riley, Mr. Stringer’s communications director, said in a statement on Monday evening. “The borough president has accepted Ms. Landor’s resignation, effective immediately.”

Ms. Landor, a graduate of the State University of New York at New Paltz, had worked as a reporter for The Queens Tribune, as a spokeswoman for Councilman James F. Gennaro of Queens, and as an editor for The Queens Chronicle before joining Mr. Stringer’s staff. She did not respond to a request for comment on Monday evening, and as of Monday night her Facebook page had been deactivated. The Web site City Hall News reported on Ms. Landor’s dismissal on Monday night.

Images of the Facebook posts — which were captured before the page was deactivated and provided to The New York Times on Monday afternoon — showed that Ms. Landor engaged in a spirited discussion of the Gates case with other users of the social networking site.

Ms. Landor wrote in one post, “O-dumb-a, the situation got ‘out of hand’ because Gates is a racist, not because the officer was DOING HIS JOB!”

In response to one Facebook user who voiced disagreement, Ms. Landor referred to Professor Gates using a vulgarity and added: “And racial profiling does exist, but for good reason. Take a look at this country’s jails: who makes up the majority of inmates? Exactly.”

In another Facebook post, Ms. Landor wrote, “You know what, I am really getting SICK of hearing about how white people are evil racists.” She added: “I get it — white men have dominated for hundreds of years and there’s a lot of anger there. But HOW MUCH MORE can the white people do to correct past injustices of their ancestors?”

Even as politicians use social media to get their message out — Mr. Stringer, for example, maintains a blog, a Facebook page and a Twitter feed — the potential perils of the new online tools stand out.