A Mayor and the Challenge of Making the City Safer

The community in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, has been a huge supporter of this. They have been pushing for two decades to revitalize maritime industry. They want the community to have industrial jobs, so they’re excited about having these industries come. Uprose, a longstanding community group in Sunset Park, has been at the forefront.

One of the concerns is Sunset Park is what’s known as an environmental-justice community, disproportionately affected by environmental problems over the decades — smokestacks from factories and then the B.Q.E. and all the stuff that gets dumped in a working-class area. Sunset Park wants to see that when the ships come to service the turbines that the ships themselves will be green and not bringing diesel fumes to the area.

Progressives Killed Amazon’s Deal in New York. Is Industry City Next?

Elizabeth Yeampierre, the leader of Uprose, an environmental justice group, said residents of Sunset Park, where many small businesses have been hit hard by the pandemic and might not reopen, were worried that they would not be hired for the new jobs. She questioned the wisdom of building in a storm surge zone, and said the developers had made promises about community engagement, including proposing a public high school, without listening to feedback from residents.

“None of their recommendations came from the community, and they are inconsistent with our community needs,” she said.

Puerto Rican Day Parade Honoree: ‘A Bad Guy.’ ‘Why Not?’

Two weeks before the 60th annual Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City, Andrés Otero was his own grand marshal of the Loisaida Festival, a neighborhood celebration on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Decked head to toe in the colors of the Puerto Rican flag on Sunday, he drove down the middle of Avenue C in a red scooter festooned with stickers of conga drums and roosters. Read More