Permits muzzle free speech
To The Editor:
The main purpose of permits is to deny free speech. Anyone who supports permits for free-speech activities is helping destroy free speech, whether they know it or not. When the First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech…” they weren’t indicating that a permit would be O.K. so long as it is given — just the opposite. To have to ask those you are protesting against for permission to protest, for the time in which you can protest, and for the place you will be “allowed” to protest is to be denied the right to protest. It’s not the government’s obligation to give or deny this to us. Free speech is fundamentally about freeing us from the government.
What is happening around this convention is an expression of what is happening with free speech all over New York City and the U.S. It’s being dismantled bit by bit each and every day, from within and without. Whether it’s a single individual holding a sign, a street artist selling a painting or 500,000 angry voters, everyone’s free speech is shrinking. The solution? Resist any attempt to impose a permit, because that’s the point where freedom is lost.
Let the rally be all over Manhattan rather than in pens where no one, including the media, will ever get to see or talk to the protestors. Let all of Central Park be filled with protestors, all there as individuals. Let every street leading to the convention be lined with individuals holding signs, handing out leaflets, displaying protest art and making speeches, pro-Bush as well as anti-Bush. That way the city will really show what we feel about Bush, and real freedom of speech will be taken back from those seeking to destroy it.
For the record, I have won four First Amendment lawsuits about permits and protests in Federal Court.
Robert Lederman
Lederman is president of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists’ Response To Illegal State Tactics)
Mystery shrouds Poe room
To The Editor:
New York University has not kept its promise to open a community reading room dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe on the site of his W. Third St. home (torn down for their new law school). This was one of the small “concessions” they made in return for building yet another high-rise that overshadows Washington Sq. Park and deprives the community of precious space in the sun.
In addition, they have surrounded their old law school building, Vanderbilt Hall, with scaffolding. Does this mean they plan to build over Vanderbilt Hall? Noho residents want no more of N.Y.U.’s construction monstrosities in our neighborhood. They’ve taken away enough appealing old buildings and replaced them with eyesores that block the view and the sun. What they call an institution is actually no more than a mass of penthouses overlooking Washington Sq. Park, all built for their administration and faculty. Let them find apartments for their administration elsewhere; they can certainly afford the outrageous rents they are helping to establish in Greenwich Village.
Don Munde
Trying to dissect N.Y.U.’s agenda
To The Editor:
Re “Strip poker on superblocks; does N.Y.U. hold the cards?” (news article, June 23):
Regarding your article on the strips and their transfer to the Parks Department, I am very confused. You quoted a Parks Department spokesperson as saying the Parks Department “does not” want the transfer. Yet at a Community Board 2 Parks Committee just a few weeks ago, Manhattan Borough Parks Commissioner Bill Castro said openly the Parks Department would be fine with taking control of the strips, agreeing that it is only sensible that the city department in charge of parks actually control them. This is why the Parks Committee is bringing in the Department of Transportation to talk about just that at this month’s meeting. So I have no idea why that spokesperson said that — unless in the short interim, N.Y.U., which had a representative there, jumped into the mix. I frankly think that is very likely.
At the above-mentioned meeting, their former community liaison who is on the committee actually said some very inflammatory things clearly meant to terrorize adjacent business owners away from the idea. He hinted that the liquor store on La Guardia Pl. would have problems being so close to a “park.”
I am really happy you shined a light on how N.Y.U. has been interfering with the transfer process for so many years. If they are not looking to develop the community gardens plot, let them come out publicly and commit to that. That garden is 23 years old! To just throw them out for development is a disgrace to the university and kudos to you for shining a light on their dirty little game.
What I am also confused about is why no one has been writing about the ramifications of what it means that N.Y.U. got the E.P.A. to sign over all responsibility to self-monitor. I worked for another college as a director of emergency medical services and as a fire warden and I can assure you this is a terrible idea. There are biohazardous materials, radioactive materials and all kinds of chemicals in labs. After 9/11 and the concerns about the toxic smoke from just office stuff, what does anyone think would happen with a major fire in a science building? N.Y.U. still has not properly addressed the community’s concerns about what is venting from the stacks in their current science building.
I don’t believe any university should put up a huge science building in a densely populated area. I don’t think it is a coincidence that they got that plum from the E.P.A. on the eve of building a science building. It probably lets them think they can do even more in the labs. Most of the time, a president never knows what is happening in his labs. And N.Y.U. President John Sexton is a lawyer, not a chemist — and the science department will play on that. Accidents can happen.
N.Y.U. has repeatedly said they are looking to be a bigger global player. You don’t do that with just a few test tubes.
By the way, ever wonder why N.Y.U. built Coles Gym down instead of up? Long-range plans — going down does not count against a lot’s maximum allowance.
I moved into 505 LaGuardia Pl. when I was 7. I grew up in the shadow of N.Y.U. My mother and cousin worked for N.Y.U. Several members of my family are alumni. Scholarships were in two of their names. So I wasn’t trained to hate them. I could have gone there for free. Did I? No. Because I didn’t want anything to do with an institution that has for so many years been so deaf to the needs of the community it inhabits. They can do all the community service they want — but that doesn’t change how they have made the Village their campus.
Margot Eisenberg
Zito’s closing hits home
To The Editor:
Re “Rising costs and Atkins Diet spell end for Bleecker bakery” (news article, June 2):
My cousin Frank Nervo sent me a link to the story of Zito’s closing, which I had heard about a few weeks ago, and it definitely feels like the end of an era. My dad and my grandmother both grew up on Cornelia St. and my grandmother worked at Zampieri for many years (oh, the treats she brought home each night were to die for!). One of my grandmother’s uncles owned Nervo Bakery (on MacDougal) and another uncle drove the delivery “truck” (actually a horse-drawn carriage) until he died in ’47 (my dad remembers the rides from Zio Quinto).
Zito’s seemed like one of the few remnants of those days in the neighborhood, and losing it is saddening.
Bobby Tanzilo
Bar owner as chair is last straw
To The Editor:
Re “Bar owner is new chair of Board 3” (news article, June 23):
David H. Ellis’ article recently informed us that a bar owner (David McWater) who has been on the community board for four years and has now been elected as chairperson of Community Board 3 is just now recusing himself from his position as a vice president of the New York Nightlife Association. At least I had assumed that it was a tardy acknowledgement of a conflict when I contacted Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields’ office (the official who originally appointed him to the board) whose representative told me it was not a conflict of interest, only of time.
Mr. McWater may be the greatest community board chairperson since sliced bread. There is nothing wrong with a cross-section of businesses represented on the board. My point in posing this question is it appears that many communities are facing problems with quality of life abuses from bars as a core issue. Some of these bars are given licenses to have unenclosed cafes, making them de facto street-drinking nightclubs. The crowd spillover is now blamed on the smoking laws even though neighborhood spillover and bar owner responsibility didn’t just now materialize.
When the residents go to their local community board, they have the right to feel that they are appealing to a group that is operating on their behalf. Such a group should not be a lobbying lapdog vehicle of special interests.
Are residents aware, for example, in the district of Community Board 5, that they are appealing to David Rabin, the head of the New York Nightlife Association, who is a member of the community board — the same group that one could expect would be exercising their right to lobby for bar owners by protesting the smoking law? The same group who might elicit sympathy for the smoking law’s supposed effect on business and as such champion the use of off-duty police paid by the bars to rein in crowd and noise issues? Of course neighbors who have complained to the police about the bars’ abuses would have no reason to think objectivity would be compromised if the bar owners actually employed the police, would they? A disingenuous agenda, perhaps?
Fields’ office didn’t flinch when I suggested that the residents might be at a disadvantage with this dynamic. I was reminded residents are actually on these boards. I was told that it would be discrimination to exclude someone on the basis of the nature of their business from the board. Is it discrimination not to give a nightclub the same street rights as a simple cafe? No — it is common sense. To compound that with a chairpersonship of a community board entrenches an all around chummy relationship.
A tobacco company executive may not be excluded from the community board either, but I would think the residents would feel queasy if that individual is appointed the liaison for public health. When the equivalent happens on a community board, no one bats an eyelash.
I was accused of having an agenda and I should have better things to do with my time. My agenda? After years of knocking my head against the wall, I would like to get a night’s sleep because I do have better things to do with my time and that is the point. Frankly, every response I received from Fields’ representative appeared deferential to the problematic businesses, consistent with the trivialization residents have grown accustomed to.
My suggestion is that the residents take a closer look at who is on their board, indicate to the various people responsible that this status quo is by far not beyond reproach. Then, we can all do something more productive with our time.
Robert Weitz
Everything changes, but vendors
To The Editor:
It is only about a year since July 2, 2003, that Anthony Dapolito died — our baker and political mentor.
It is only about two years ago I visited him at the Village Nursing Home and he asked about everyone.
It is only about three years ago that the Trade Center was bombed and about 2,700 people left their grieving families behind.
The New York police are now ready with the support of millions of dollars to protect us from any terrorism during the coming political convention.
But walk down W. Broadway and its side streets in Soho any Saturday and see all kinds of illegal peddlers, hanging their goods from trees, shoulder to shoulder, including six blocks from Houston St. down and wonder at the absolute chaos.
The Parks Department is acknowledging Anthony Dapolito with a personal tribute at Carmine St. Recreation Center. But I shall never forget Tony saying, “The biggest change on our streets today seems to be the disregard the vendors have for the people who live and work here.”
Ann Soboloff
