A Case Study of the Over-Policing of Low Income Urban Neighborhoods II: The Brownsville Gang Roundup

On Thursday, 43 people were rounded up from off the streets of Brownsville and indicted with gang related charges in a mega sweep of two gangs the ‘Hood Starz’ & ‘Wave Gang’. A wave of murders hit the high-crime low-income neighborhood of Brooklyn when the rival gangs spun out of control for territory of public housing blocks.

When you look at the mugshots of these 43, your immediately struck by how young these kids are. Residents told the New York Times that these kids were bored with nothing to do, caught up in the street life, and either in gang activity schools or dropped out. Residents also said none of these kids were really big players in organized crime in Brownsville, nor were the gangs highly organized.

Then it hits you when you hear residents talked about how afterschool programs had been cut, and community centers shuttered. Walking around Brownsville and East Brooklyn, it becomes immediately apparent that what little there is to keep the youth off the streets is often overcrowded and cash-strapped. A neighborhood of some of the most highly concentrated public housing in America; residents face racial profiling and harassment on a daily basis as well as a vast amount of backlogged work orders in building that the underfunded housing authority cannot meet. On top of this, Brownsville is not well connected to the rest of the city, and needs more community programs, afterschool program, jobs, and new education facilities (A promise that was broken by the city) to ease the overcrowding of existing schools.

Then there is the problem of the unemployment amongst youth over 50% in the area, and a lack of opportunities to even make ends meet legitimately. In the nearby Spring Creek section of East New York, the Gateway Shopping Mall was praised for providing jobs to unemployed youth, however it soon became apparent that these McJobs were low-paying with few hours and high turnover rates.

The issue is that youth in vast numbers turn to street crime as a result of the exploitation and oppression that youth in the inner city face. As a result of a lack of opportunities, schools, community programs, daycare, jobs, amongst other rights that the capitalist system deprives Brownsville. The issue is not that youth from the projects are bad because youth and projects are bad, as the puppet politicians and real gangsters on wall street would have you believe.

The reality is that the real boss gangs are on Wall Street. They have more than half the wealth, which leaves people in streets all over New York fighting for the crumbs. Its not these youth that are to blame, it’s the system that forgot them. The system that exploited them from birth. The societal problems that exist in the city after hundreds of years of increasing inequality between classes. Hundreds of years of poverty in city slums. In order to prevent this from happening again and again, we must occupy our communities for the community services we need to give our youth a better future and keep them off the streets.

Instead, a underfunded NYCHA uses money that should be used to repair and maintain crumbling infested buildings to fund the coffers of the NYPD; supposedly “paying” the NYPD for patrols. Patrols which result in residents getting harrassed and locked up constantly all over New York for non-crimes or low-level crimes. What we see is that instead of creating preventive social services and after school programs, the City resorts to closing schools all over the city and locking people up in record rates. While the banks get bailed out, our communities are getting desperate from foreclosures and unemployment and over-policing is not the solution. The solution housing, jobs, and education as a right.

Occupy Our Homes! Occupy 702 Vermont St., East New York!

The New York Post and New Yorker magazine along with several other conservative mass media outlets in New York have attempted to demonize Occupy Wall Streets work with community organizations to fight back against the rampant foreclosure of homes across the nation and city. In particular East New York and Jamaica have been ravaged by the housing bubble burst. 

the NYP claims that Azahdi, the original owner of the house who speculated & bought the house at twice its value and lost the mortgage, is “pissed” at Occupy taking over the home and starting $10,000 in renovations. The reality though is quite different. Alfredo and his family, who were homeless, have been accepted to the community and Occupy Vermont St. has been working with Azahdi to make sure he is not homeless and is welcome in the home. 

The reality of the misunderstanding is that the corporate media is over-hyping a internal misunderstanding, and highlighting their own lack of understanding over why 702 Vermont St. has been occupied. 

I’m close with a neighbor of Occupy 702 Vermont St, and familiar with the neighborhood from work. My experience in East New York is that the largely residential neighborhood has been dotted with boarded up foreclosed homes on many blocks, and high unemployment is rampant. In an area where so many people have been kicked out of their homes and ended up homeless, occupying Vermont St. is the culmination of a myriad of community organizations working together to create a liberated space where discussion about the economic warfare being waged on low-income communities lives.

By taking a vacant boarded up home that has been taken through foreclosure by Wall Street banks, and creating a safe space for a homeless family the movement has shown us the logical answer to this eyesore on our neighborhood and one of our greatest social problems. Take out two birds with one stone; stop bankforeclosures on peoples home, and use all the empty housing created by capitalism to give housing to the homeless! Housing is right, and we the people liberating these boarded up homes they have sitting there in order to sustain their broken system of markets is the only way we are going to stop people from getting kicked out of homes by the vultures on Wall Street. 

While in the neighborhood, I stopped by Occupy 702 Vermont St. today and found a house in transformation, a liberated space. We discussed the need for community, the symbolism of a liberated foreclosed home to the people of Brooklyn, and what doing needs to get done to make the space a safe and livable space. 

702 Vermont St. was liberated by a whole community coming out and protecting it. Come out and support the people’s battle for a right to housing, and the battle against the 1% taking away our homes.

4th St. Food Co-Op: An Experiment in People Powered Nutrition

The 4th St. Food Co-Op is the perfect example of a post-capitalism glimpse of the new society; A society where a sustainable, nurtitious, collective ideology is applied towards feeding people. When you walk in you are greeted by a warm staff of co-op members who work 2 and 1/2 hours every week to recieve a 20% discount on already affordable groceries. the Co-Op excepts both EBT benefits and SNAP benefits, and is open to the public (w/o the 20% discount of course). Furthermore, the food is all organic and stocked with hard to find affordable healthy rices, beans, and vegetables from locally sourced farmers. The best part is that the Co-Op supports social justice struggles, and most recently has established support for Occupy Wall Street by donating food to the Kitchen Working Group of OWS, while also having a donation jar for customers next to the register.

This progressive, organic, model of food distribution is essential for the Lower East Side area, where corporate chains are generally in control of food distribution. These chains sell GMO vegetables, injected meat, and other fairly unhealthy groceries at escalating prices.

food is a human right, nobody should go without healthy food. The profit-orientated goals of the food industry have resulted in low-wages for workers that give no incentive to the workers, while decreasing quality of our food at the same time. In order to reverse this trend, it is important to support community control of staple foods. Working families shouldn’t need to worry about the rising costs and decreasing quality of food; We must demand it as a right. In order to accomplish this, we adopt a model where every industry is owned and run collectively by the workers for the masses, and we must ditch the perverted system based on profit. The 4th St. Co-Op is an example of what people-powered organization is capable of. If you live in the New York City area, support OWS and cooperative food, stop in and buy a pound of brown rice.

10 points of Unity of the NYCRevolution Affinity

The 10 Points of Unity of the NYC Revolution Affinity are the founding principles of the theory, practice, and perspective espoused on this blog. They are the goals of a revolution. We draw inspiration from the Arab Spring and American Autumn. The idea of the 10 points comes from the Black Panther Party, and the theory of NYCRevolution is highly influenced by Revolutionary Anarchism and Communism as well as the emergence of the new 21st Century left that is combatting globalization from above.

This Blog is inspired by the Arab Spring and American Autumn (Occupy Movement), and is dedicated to the science and practice of revolution in the 5 boroughs of NYC; Revolution which establishes our 10 Points of Revolutionary Unity

• 1.) Free Speech, Free Press: End of Corporate and Governmental Control and censorship of these rights in our communities here in New York City. In particular an end to the violent suppression of 1st and 14th Amendment Rights by the NYPD in dealing with the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and oppressive eviction of Liberty Plaza (Zuccotti Park)
• 2.) Universal Housing: An end to homelessness and poor housing conditions. Our people deserve clean, livable, and affordable places to call home, and an end to the foreclosures and evictions which drive speculation up, home values and whole neighborhoods down, and which could house people living on the streets without shelter. We demand
• 3.) Universal Healthcare: Healthcare is not for sale no matter how much big pharm pays politicians, you can not privatize healthcare and put a price tag on people’s right to life and health. Privatizing healthcare is destroying working and poor people’s access to necessary healthcare.
• 4.) Free Clothing, Food, and Daycare for the Working People to promote the general welfare of society and create strong, free, nourished people who can fulfill the destiny of the human race
• 5.) A Living Wage; Working People need Jobs that pay living wages and support families that build strong communities, which is hard to do when corporations seek to outsource, union-bust, and pay low wages while making high profits
• 6.) Community Control of Police: radically demilitarize policing in New York and turn it over to communities who understand how to protect of their people. We will end stop and frisk and racial profiling as the first order of business
• 7.) Universal Education: Free and quality education Pre K – Graduate School for students, and free and quality vocational education for the people as the most important tool in creating a productive progressive society where the people can reach their potential
• 8.) Direct Democracy: An end to electoral college, corrupt duopoly, and corporate finance election. We demand General Assemblies, Working Groups, and Spokecouncils to fairly represent people, delegate power, and encourage direct participation from the masses; as opposed to the democracy of 1% we live under right now
• 9.) End the Wars and Imperialism: The wars started for profit and oil by the 1st, and the economic control expressed by western companies on the Third World is criminal and against the interests of the People and must be ended forever, and reparations must be paid to all victims from the Native American and Black People to the Iraqi and Afghani People.
• 10.) Social Justice: We demand an end to the gap between the 1% and 99%, we demand a classless and stateless society where the only power is in the people and community

Declaration of NYCRevolution Blog

In light of the Arab Spring and American Autumn, I was awaken for the second time in my life, and became obsessed with the rampant build up of absolute corruption and greed that runs our society. With the heavy handed crack down on the democratic movements from Egypt to America and Syria; We have seen a catastrophic turn of events in the last Decade. In Case, you have been asleep, forgotten, or just can’t believe the absolute psychotic timeline of the last decade; let’s review capitalism, the 1%, and global corporate attacks on Democracy and human rights

• 2000: American Election results are marred with obvious fraud. Butterfly ballots, disenfranchisement of minority voters, messed up ballot counts, a conservative supreme court, and guy who won had his brother of the governor of the state in question
• 2001: 9/11 is never fully investigated and is used as a tool in the acceleration of the police state in America. America uses 9/11 as a way to justify a racist, illegal, and imperialist war of conquest in Afghanistan. Living under fear; Americans were forced to accept a set of laws known as the Patriot Act that restricted civil liberties, and gave government easy access to wiretap, spy, and watch the public. Actions are similar to Hitler’s use of the burning of the reichstag to pass nuremburg laws
• 2003: Invasion of Iraq is blatantly in the interest of Cheney’s Haliburton, WMD story proven as a lie, over million Iraqis lose their lives thousands and thousands of US soldiers die in a conquest to privatize Iraq’s Oil veiled in some sick story of revenge for 9/11
• 2004: Bush wins re-election to a flip-flop millionaire opponent, Bush soon announces troop escalations
• 2005: Hurricane  Katrina strikes; racist government is days late to victims and ultimately fails. People are moved to Toxic Fema trailers, Public housing cleared and redeveloped, much of New Orleans left destroyed and working people were kicked out of their homes.
• 2006 Sean Bell is murdered by police in New York City on the night of his wedding, a murder echoed the murderous tactics used on Amadou Diallo in the late nineties yet escalated, and this event acted as a real catalyst to my community and anti-police brutality activism and work as a youth in Harlem and Lower Manhattan. What was so evil about it wasn’t the falsified charges, the blatant racist murder, the fact that they got off scott-free (like the Diallo Murderers), not even that it was the night of the man’s wedding, not even that he was innocent. The real evil behind this murder was that it set the precident for the NYPD to act criminally as it pleased and get away with murder literally. It also gave the state the right to take a life and to occupy communities with oppressive forces. As a paper I sold at the time state, ” Less than three weeks later the killers struck again … Timur Person was killed by police in the South Bronx”
• 2008 Barack Obama is Elected by millions of poor, working, minority, youth, and 1st time voters demanding change. Obama began his campaign with lofty ideals, but as the campaign wore on, and the banks and corporations threw more money at him than ever before he capitualated. At the same time he carries out Bush’s $700 billion dollar bailout that did nothing for those who were losing their jobs in the capitalist crisis and housing bust occuring all over the world
• 2008-2010: Obama flip flops on Healthcare and gives up on socialized healthcare in the name of his big checks from pharmaceuticals, Unemployment hits 10%, 1% control 40% of the worlds wealth, offshore drilling and unsustainable gasoline addiction leads to environmental destruction of gulf coast

Then in 2010 a street cart vendor in Tunisia lit himself on fire in protest of his inability to make a meager living in the face of corrupt dictatorship; little did he know that his actions would spark an uprising against the growing wealth disparity between the 1% and the 99%.

This blog is meant to educate and raise awareness the struggle against such injustice as has occurred in past decade. As the world is being destroyed environmentally by capitalists; time is running out.