Columbia Students Oppose Columbia University's West Harlem-Manhattanville Construction Project--Part 4

In October 2014, the Columbia Student Coalition Against Gentrification (CAGe) released a report, titled Understanding Columbia University's Expansion into West Harlem: An Activist's Guide, which indicated why many Columbia students, Barnard students and neighborhood residents in Morningside Heights, West Harlem and Manhattanville are apparently still opposed to the Columbia University Administration's Kravis Business School construction/campus expansion project in West Harlem/Manhattanville. As the report's introduction notes:

"(1991) Community Board 9 (CB9), the economic planning agency for the neighborhoods of West Harlem between 110-155th Street, begins to formulate a new development model. CB9 commissions urban planners from the Pratt Center to write a document for submission to the NYC Department of City Planning. The result of their work is Plan 197-a (referring to section 197-a of the New York City Charter), revised in 2001, and approved by the Department of City Planning in 2005. Plan 197-a includes the outlines of a job, housing, and school infrastructure intended to mitigate the growing problem of tenant displacement spreading throughout greater Harlem. The area of Columbia’s proposal for a new campus, already the site of 1,600 jobs in manufacture and retail, is envisioned as a central nexus for the plan as a whole, drawing from 5 public transit and housing facilities in the immediate vicinity to offer expanded employment opportunities.

"(1994-2002) Columbia University, then under the leadership of President George Rupp, begins to pursue their aspirations for a new campus in West Harlem more aggressively.  They start by purchasing properties in Manhattanville from those willing to sell, in the hopes of acquiring most of the land they need for their designs.

"(2002) Lee Bollinger is appointed President of Columbia University, after making a commitment with the Board of Trustees to realize the campus expansion in Manhattanville during his tenure.

"(January 2003) Columbia introduces their ‘General Project Plan’ (GPP) to Community Board 9, which contains two major revisions to Plan 197-a. These revisions, proposed under an alternate Plan 197-c, stipulate the seizure of 17 acres of land through the use of eminent domain, and the rezoning of 18 further acres to make room for campus housing, administrational, and research facilities.... Columbia continues to purchase as many properties as they can within the intended expansion zone 

"(Spring 2003) A group of longstanding residents found the Coalition to Preserve Community (CPC), with the stated purpose of fostering local participation in planning future changes affecting the neighborhood. The CPC holds monthly meetings in St. Mary’s Church (on 125th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam) to write proposals for housing, education, employment, cultural, and environmental policies, curated by tenants living in the community. Their meetings draw an average of 200 participants between 2003 and 2005, and the results of their labor reshape and clarify much of Community Board 9’s 197-a Plan. Although the relationship between CB9 and CPC is communicative and respectful, many members of CB9 remain weary of planning processes so deeply immersed in rank-and-file discussion, and some will eventually be receptive to bargaining with Columbia University at the expense of their constituencies.

"(October 2003) Several student groups at Columbia cohost a panel on `The Ethics of Expansion'. Their initiative produces a new organization called the Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification (SCEG), which continues to operate until 2011....

"(January 2004) The Columbia administration constructs three advisory boards, designed to assess future expansion plans and procedures....

"(June 2004) Columbia’s advisory boards express their support for Community Board 9’s 197-a Plan, rather than the administration’s own 197-c alternative. In response, President Bollinger dismisses the advisory boards....

"(April 2005) The Coalition to Preserve Community and the Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification build a tent city called `Bollingerville' in the middle of ‘College Walk’, to promote dialogue between University affiliates and West Harlem residents...
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"(Spring 2005) The Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification releases an open letter, cosigned by 54 Columbia University professors, demanding that President Bollinger and the Board of Trustees accept the limitations of Plan 197-a in the construction of the Manhattanville campus. Their demands are ignored by the administration.
  
"(June 10, 2006) Hundreds of local tenants march from Central to West Harlem in opposition to Columbia’s scheme. Organized under the umbrella heading, ‘Nos Quedamos’ ('we're staying'), the protestors draw from community groups like the Harlem Tenants’ Council, the Coalition to Preserve Community, the Mirabal Sisters, and the Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification...." 

Columbia Students Oppose Columbia University's West Harlem-Manhattanville Construction Project--Part 3

In October 2014, the Columbia Student Coalition Against Gentrification (CAGe) released a report, titled Understanding Columbia University's Expansion into West Harlem: An Activist's Guide, which indicated why many Columbia students, Barnard students and neighborhood residents in Morningside Heights, West Harlem and Manhattanville are apparently still opposed to the Columbia University Administration's Kravis Business School construction/campus expansion project in West Harlem/Manhattanville. As the report's introduction notes:

“...First, we will trace the basic outlines of Columbia’s expansion process until now, to reveal its actual history. Second, we will emphasize the fact that the struggle for the right to West Harlem is by no means decided.

“The large majority of displacements caused by Columbia’s expansion into of Manhattanville will take place between 2014 and 2030, the estimated time frame for the construction of the new campus. During this period, landlords will continue to raise rent rates for local tenants as they prepare for arrivals of better financial means. Local businesses will close because of untenable ground rents.

“Columbia has said they will fund enterprises run by ‘minorities’. But they have not said when or where, and no one living in the neighborhood has much reason to trust them.

“The police, operating in tandem with the University, will increase the scope and scale of their patrol activity, targeting young tenants of color for drug possession, larceny, and assault – crimes committed at an equal if not higher rate by Columbia students themselves. The incarcerated will struggle for many years with criminal records that restrict them from housing and job opportunities.

“All the while the turbulent changes unfolding in the area will induce feelings of alienation and disillusionment amongst the people who think of it as home. But urban policy can change.

“There is still time and space to campaign against market based housing laws, to fight for tenants’ rights, and lay the groundwork for community welfare relief. There is no reason why Columbia can’t build new classrooms without aggressively reshaping the entire neighborhood. Collaboration and compromise are possible, but only if the voices of local residents are empowered to actualize their own visions for the future…”

Columbia Students Oppose Columbia University's West Harlem-Manhattanville Construction Project--Part 2

In October 2014, the Columbia Student Coalition Against Gentrification (CAGe) released a report, titled Understanding Columbia University's Expansion into West Harlem: An Activist's Guide, which indicated why many Columbia students, Barnard students and neighborhood residents in Morningside Heights, West Harlem and Manhattanville are apparently still opposed to the Columbia University Administration's Kravis Business School construction/campus expansion project in West Harlem/Manhattanville. As the report's introduction notes:

"...The Manhattanville Houses comprise six buildings with approximately 2,756 tenants, while Grant Houses has nine buildings and 4,519 tenants....Since 2009, Columbia University has begun purchasing shares in Manhattanville Houses. It is unclear what their intentions are for the future of the buildings. They sit immediately across the street from the site of Columbia’s new campus. We are unable to scrutinize Columbia’s ownership shares, because around 90% of the University’s investments are kept secret.

"What we do know is that Columbia University’s Public Safety Program intends to escalate their surveillance and patrol activity throughout the housing projects, in collaboration with the New York Police Department. Vice President of Public Safety James McShane’s announcement of the University’s plans arrived in the aftermath of this summer’s police raids targeting Grant and Manhattanville Houses. 103 teenagers and young adults were incarcerated under indictments ranging from conspiracy to murder, assault, gun possession, loitering and larceny. Heralded by the District Attorney and the Mayor’s Office as the city’s largest ‘gang bust’, the raid on public housing in West Harlem has caused anger and resentment amongst local tenants.

"Since 2011, parents living in Grant and Manhattanville Houses have organized community-based solutions to the problems in their neighborhood. These have included petitions for a new playground, a community center, smaller classes in public schools, family lead truces between rival groups, and job councilors to mitigate unemployment rates hovering above 27%. But their efforts were mostly ignored. Instead, the city spent as much as a hundred million dollars conducting a four- year covert surveillance operation, that used thousands of hours of Facebook chats, tweets, text messages, and security reels to formulate criminal indictments. The police raid itself was staged as a public relations stunt for Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton to prove to their donors that they too are ‘tough on crime’.

"...The real crisis, the danger of gradual displacement threatening 32,000 New Yorkers through increases in property value affecting the entire neighborhood, is effectively concealed by the University, and seldom mentioned on Columbia’s campus...Two housing developments...are in fact at risk of losing state protection. The first, 3333 Broadway, has already begun the process of purging working class people of color from the building. The second, Manhattanville Houses, is increasingly coming under Columbia’s purview. The University now owns shares in the projects, and plans to carry out extensive policing and surveillance on its tenants. The key to producing a credible analysis...is to conceive of the long-term effects of Columbia’s expansion into West Harlem from our present point in time, until the project’s scheduled completion in 2030..."

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Columbia Students Oppose Columbia University's West Harlem-Manhattanville Construction Project--Part 1

In October 2014, the Columbia Student Coalition Against Gentrification (CAGe) released a report, titled Understanding Columbia University’s Expansion into West Harlem: An Activist’s Guide, which indicated why many Columbia students, Barnard students and neighborhood residents in Morningside Heights, West Harlem and Manhattanville are apparently still opposed to the Columbia University Administration's Kravis Business School construction/campus expansion project in West Harlem/Manhattanville. As the report's introduction notes:

"...Since 2003, Columbia University has moved to execute their plan to construct a new campus in the area running from 125th to 133rd street, between Broadway and Riverside...35 acres of the neighborhood known as Manhattanville, which spans roughly from 122nd street to 135th, east of St. Nicholas and Edgecombe Avenues (in total Manhattanville comprises approximately 228 acres of land)...Columbia...erected the first scaffoldings of the new campus in spring of 2014....The zoning change replaces small businesses, manufacturers, and residential buildings with a mixed-use academic model that will displace an estimated 298 residents from 135 affordable housing units in the 35-acre area....

"...The introduction of University facilities to the neighborhood...will  encourage significant rent increases in surrounding apartment complexes, as well. Landlords will attempt to attract a new influx of wealthier tenants...,In 2007, Columbia was forced to complete an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in conjunction with the NYC Department of City Planning. Their report admitted `the potential for the indirect residential displacement impact within the primary study area to be significant and adverse' (p. 36). 

"According to statistics recorded by City-Data in 2008, Manhattanville is home to around 32,000 people. 70% of Manhattanville’s residents are Latino, 25% African American, and the remaining 5% Chinese, South East Asian, or White. The median household income for the neighborhood is $32,617. The Federal Poverty line for New York State in 2014-15 is...$36,000 for a household of three...The implication is that most tenants in the area live at or below the poverty level. The changes in property value that Columbia’s expansion will bring to the neighborhood present an imminent threat of  displacement for unprotected tenants.

"Meanwhile...one of the biggest apartment complexes in the area is 3333 Broadway, with close to 1,200 units on 135th street... In 2005, 3333 Broadway...began to remove affordable units in favor of market rate apartments. The University's entrance into Manhattanville has fueled this process further, by channeling an influx of new tenants willing to pay substantially higher rents. Without intervention, 3333 Broadway will be entirely purged of affordable housing by the time Columbia completes their campus in the year 2030. The change will ensue along racial lines, replacing a predominantly African American and Latino demographic with largely white newcomers...".

Columbia University's 2014 U.S. Navy and Permanent War Machine Connection

In 2014, the Columbia University administration is again involved in the training of U.S. naval officers for the U.S. power elite's permanent war machine. As the Columbia Daily Spectator student newspaper noted in an October 1, 2013 article:

"One year after quietly moving back onto campus, the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps [NROTC] celebrated its return to Columbia with fanfare...University President Lee Bollinger and Juan Garcia III, assistant secretary of the Navy, officially welcomed the program back after its 44-year ban...At the event, hosted at the Italian Academy, Bollinger...expressed his support for the program.

"'There is no good reason why our great academic institutions should not offer it,' he said. `Columbia has a historic, very close relationship with the armed forces.'..."

Yet as David Cortright's 1975 book, Soldiers In Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War observed, during the Vietnam War Era "growing anti-militarism...led to trouble in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program, the main source of junior officers. Total college ROTC enrollment dropped from 218,000 in the 1968 academic year, to 87,807 in 1971-72, and 72,500 in 1972-73....From 1969 to 1972, thirty-eight ROTC units were expelled from college campuses, largely because of pressure from radical student activists. The latter years of the war thus produced an immense increase in student resistance to the military..."

Bill de Blasio and New York City's Clintongate Scandal: A Tale of Three Phonies--Conclusiion

(A shorter version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2013 issue of the Lower East Side underground/alternative newspaper, “The Shadow”)

Democratic Party professional politicians like the Clintons have apparently been eager to cash in big when they finally vacate their government offices. Yet most publicly-funded New York City government officials still are paid more annually than what the average individual worker in the Big Apple is allowed to take home each year. As long ago as 2007, for example—despite the alleged budgetary problems of New York City’s government—the following annual salaries were being paid to local city government elected and appointed officials:

1. CUNY Chancellor: $350,000;
2. NYC Dept. of Education Chancellor: $250,000;
3. NYC Mayor: $225,000;
4. NYC Deputy Mayor for Operations: $204,866;
5. Queens College President: $196,000;
6. CUNY Medical School President: $192,000;
7. NYC District Attorneys/Prosecutors: $190,000;
8. CUNY School of Law Dean: $189,740;
9. NYC Comptroller: $185,000;
10. College of Staten Island President: $183,113;
11. NYC Deputy Mayor for Policy: $177,236;
12. NYC Deputy Mayor for Economic Development: $177,236;
13. NYC Deputy Mayor for Administration: $177,236;
14. NYC Deputy Mayor for Legal Affairs: $177,236;
15. NYC Housing Authority Chair: $177,038;
16. Queensborough Community College President: $176,580;
17. Hunter College President: $175,000;
18. NYC Mayor’s Chief of Staff: $171,038;
19. NYC Mayor’s Press Secretary: $171,038;
20. NYC Dept. of Citywide Administration Services Commissioner: $172,038;
21. NYC Office of Emergency Management Commissioner: $171,038;
22. NYC Dept. of Environmental Protection Commissioner: $171,038;
23. NYC Financial Information Services Agency Executive Director: $171,038;
24. NYC Health and Mental Hygiene Commissioner: $171,038;
25. NYC Dept. of Social Services Commissioner: $171,038;
26. NYC Office of Labor Relations Commissioner: $171,038;
27. NYC Corporation Counsel: $171,038;
28. NYC Office of Management and Budget Director: $171,038;
29. NYC Dept. of Parks and Recreation Commissioner: $171,038;
30. NYC Office of Payroll Administration Executive Director: $171,038;
31. NYC Police Commissioner: $171,038;
32. NYC Probation Commissioner: $171,038;
33. NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner: $171,038;
34. NYC Off-Track Betting Corporation President: $171,017;
35. NYC Public Advocate: $165,000;
36. NYC Mayor’s Director of Research: $147,000;
37. NYC Mayor’s Special Advisor for Government: $126,072;
38. NYC Mayor’s Senior Advisor: $125,246; and
39. NYC City Council Members: $112,500.

Yet despite their inflated salaries, New York City government officials have still apparently not been able to reduce the official unemployment rate in the Big Apple to below 4 percent in 2013 or provide many union wage jobs for New Yorkers who still have jobs. In August 2013, for example, the official jobless rate in New York City was 8.6 percent, while wages for most workers in the Big Apple have dropped by about 7 percent after adjusting for inflation, since 2002.

In addition, the median rent in New York City has increased by almost 9 percent since 2007 and the number of rental units affordable to low-income families in the Big Apple has dropped from 40 percent to 25 percent since 2002. So, not surprisingly, the number of homeless families economically compelled to live in city housing shelters has increased by 73 percent since 2002, although “more than one out of four families in shelters, 28 percent, include at least one employed adult…and 16 percent of single adults in shelters hold jobs.,” according to the Sept. 17, 2013 issue of the New York Times.

So substituting an apparent phony from Cambridge, Massachusets (who is a Democratic Party politician backed by special business and real estate economic interests) for a Republican Party plutocrat from Medford, Massachusetts (who was also backed by special Wall Street upper-class economic interests) in City Hall ain’t likely to bring much economic equality, political freedom, apartment rent rollbacks or adequately-paid 30-hour workweek jobs to most New Yorkers and New York City tenants in 2014.

And substituting one phony female Clinton for one phony male Clinton in the White House in 2017 ain’t likely to finally create a radically democratic multi-racial society in either the Big Apple or the United States in 2017.

Neither another Republican administration headed by former Mayor Giuliani’s Deputy Mayor—former Paine Webber and Cablevision Executive Joe Lhota—nor a Democratic de-Blasio-Clintongate administration headed by a Clinton “wanna-be/Clinton clone Democrat" will likely liberate the multi-racial working-class “Slaves of New York” in 2014, given the undemocratic political, economic and mass media manipulation/media censorship System that still exists in the United States in the 21^st-century.

All Mass Media and Wall Street Economic Power To The People!

(end of article)

Bill de Blasio and New York City's Clintongate Scandal: A Tale of Three Phonies--Part 13

(A shorter version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2013 issue of the Lower East Side underground/alternative newspaper, “The Shadow”)

Bill de Blasio’s Clintongate Scandal Connection

In an Aug. 13, 2013 Politico website article, titled “Hillary Clinton’s Next Act: The family foundation,” Maggie Haberman also indicated how Hillary Clinton will apparently also become more directly involved in the New York City-based philanthropies empire of the Clintons (at the same time her 2000 U.S. Senate campaign manager de Blasio will likely be occupying the mayor’s office in New York City):

“Hillary Clinton’s next phase of life — the co-leader of a family foundation — has officially begun.

“She’s coming in to her husband’s signature foundation, which has been renamed for all three Clintons — their daughter has an increased presence…. Hillary Clinton’s new office at the foundation’s Manhattan headquarters is slowly taking shape as the chiefs of staff to all three Clintons hold a standing meeting every Monday to arrange schedules and events — three offices staffed with people who have worked together for years….Clinton is joining the foundation launched by her husband and a coterie of former White House aides and advisers...And the foundation is also the structure that has provided sustenance for the extended Clintonland for over a decade…Hillary Clinton’s staff at the foundation is just under 10 people — seven in her current Washington-based transition office and two recent hires…Teneo and some of its clients are also still involved in supporting the foundation’s work, one official said.”

Not much of the money that Bill Clinton has been collecting since 2001 for his tax-exempt “philanthropic” activities (from the ultra-rich folks and special corporate interests who profited most during the 1990s from his administration’s economic policies) has apparently been redistributed to either the families of the children who died in Iraq as a result of his administration’s economic sanctions policy or of the civilians in Serbia who were killed after he ordered that country bombed.

Yet according to a May 23, 2013 Celebrity Worth website article by Brian Warner, since 2001 the presidential candidate whose 1996 re-election campaign in New York was directed by Bill de Blasio has earned over $106 million in speaking fees—despite the Great Recession of the post-2008 years which the Clinton administration’s late 1990s repeal of FDR’s Glass-Steagall Act (that mandated the separation of commercial banking and investment banking) helped create. As Brian Warner observes in his Celebrity Worth article:

“…As a private citizen, Bill was finally able free to cash in… One of the first big windfalls came when the Knopf Publishing Group paid him $15 million for the rights to his memoir My Life. That $15 million is still the largest book advance of all time…. In the 12 years since Bill Clinton has left office, he has given 544 paid speeches all over the world. His fee has ranged from $28,000 to $750,000. The average fee for a single speaking engagement has been $195,000. In 2012, Bill earned $17 million and in 2011 he earned $13.4 million. In total he has made $106 million off speaking engagements since 2001… Out of all of his earnings, $57 million came from outside the US…. “

The same article also indicated how the U.S. senatorial candidate whose campaign Bill de Blasio managed in 2000 has also apparently cashed-in since the Clintons first vacated the White House in early 2001:


“Before Bill Clinton entered the White House…His wife Hillary was the real breadwinner of family at the time, bringing home a salary of $188,547 as an attorney at the…Rose Law Firm in Little Rock…Hillary Clinton earned $8 million for her 2003 biography Living History…Earlier this year Hillary Clinton re-entered private life after stepping down as Secretary of State. Hillary quickly earned a cool $14 million advance for future book with publishing company Simon & Schuster. She is also starting to hit the privates speech circuit and earning six figures for her time…If Hillary and Bill continue to cash in…it's likely that their combined net worth will pass the $200 million mark in the next 3-5 years….”
(end of part 13)