Sioux far, so good: It was a major victory for the Standing Rock protesters in North Dakota earlier this month when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced it would not grant the final permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline. Instead, the Army Corps said alternate routes for the project — which the Sioux and “water protectors” warn could befoul the Missouri River — should be explored. Jean-Louis Bourgeois, son of the late famous sculptor Louise Bourgeois, who is Our Man in Standing Rock, put us on the phone with Chief Garry Rowland. The Lakota leader told us that, despite the latest news, the fight is far from over. The 5,000 protesters still out there will not abandon camp, he assured. “They told everyone to go home, but we’re not leaving,” the chief said. “When the pipeline is stopped, that’s when we’ll go home. We just want to stop it completely.” He added that the Oceti Sakowin — the mighty seven-tribe Sioux nation — is now reaching out internationally for help. “I heard Donald Trump say, ‘I can break treaties,’” Rowland noted. “We’re trying to get support from Russia, China and Cuba. We can make treaties. They can pressure the United States to honor their treaties. We are still a nation,” he proudly declared of the Sioux and their 1851 treaty with the U.S. government. “We’re going to reclaim our land and re-establish the original form of government our people had — the tribal council.”
New V.I.D. prez: Eric Coler has been elected the new president of the Village Independent Democrats club. He beat Jennifer Hoppe, who then also ran for vice president and was elected a club V.P., along with Barbara Reuther and Laurie Hardjowirogo. At 25, Coler is the youngest-ever leader of the city’s oldest progressive Democratic club, which launched the careers of Ed Koch and former Councilmember Carol Greitzer, among others. “The Village Independent Democrats has a storied history,” Coler said. “For nearly 60 years, this club has fought for human rights and dignity, for the integrity of our city’s political process, and for the quality of life in our community and our city. It’s a privilege to carry its agenda forward in these challenging times.” Coler’s agenda for the upcoming year will focus on working with like-minded organizations to fight Donald Trump’s threats to the social safety net, the environment and basic civil liberties, including voting rights and marriage equality. “V.I.D. will have to work harder than ever to defeat the president-elect’s radical and destructive agenda,” he said. “We have our work cut out for us, but we’re on the right side of this fight.” On the local level, he said, “I can tell you that we are planning on doing a large rollout of a few large goals in the neighborhood.” Born and raised in the Village, Coler is deputy C.O.O. of Mercer Partners, a tenants-rights advocate and co-founder of the New York State Education Initiative, a foundation that develops after-school programs to enrich students’ lives. In its inaugural program this year, the Initiative helped teach more than 250 South Bronx middle schoolers the basics of financial literacy. Coler currently serves on Community Board 2, on which he is assistant secretary. V.I.D. member Sharon Woolums, for one, is totally bullish on Coler. “He’s young and energetic,” she said, “what the club needs an infusion of!”
Possible kiosks comeback: Last month, as the New York Post reported, Stanley Shor, the assistant commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, told city councilmembers that the agency did not anticipate that porn-crazed creeps would be glued to the Web browsers on the new WiFi sidewalk kiosks. The kiosks “included pornography filters,” Shor assured. But in September, the city had to disable the Web browsers after New Yorkers filed complaints of being grossed out by men masturbating at the ad-plastered monoliths. Yet, the Post reported, “The city may eventually hook up the Web browsers again — but only with an improved porn filter and possible time limits, according to a rep for LinkNYC, the private firm that oversees the project.” Hmm…“improved porn filters?” Yeah, right, like that will really work! (And what about the Russian hackers?) However, Councilmember Corey Johnson, for one, said he does not want to see the Internet sidewalk surfing safari come back to the kiosks. Basically, he said, many people were also using them as “personal entertainment centers,” watching everything from music videos to cartoons, for long stretches of time. “I’m O.K. with the WiFi,” Johnson told us. “But I’m not O.K. with the browser on the screen — because it’s not about just pornography. People turn over a crate for a chair and sit there and use it like an Internet cafe. I don’t support bringing the browser capability back. I do support using it for resources and information, like MTA subway maps – not endless browsing.”
Evil among us: As The Villager reported three weeks ago, state Senator Brad Hoylman and his family were targeted by haters after he called attention to two swastikas that were found carved into the paint on a service-elevator door in his Fifth Ave. apartment building. Some Arizona crackpot then mailed him anti-Semitic fliers and alt-right nutcases barraged him with sickening messages, even threatening his little daughter. Well, we checked in with the state senator last week, and unfortunately there had been yet another incident. “It was a graphic and disturbing e-mail directed at my family and me sent to my district office,” he told us. “I prefer not to go into details so as not to provide whoever sent it to me the publicity they probably crave. It’s been reported to N.Y.P.D. and State Police. The fact is that my experience is just one of nearly 900 cases of hate incidents that have been reported across the country since the election, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center,” Hoylman said. “We must unite as a community to reject hate. Rest assured that I, for one, won’t be intimidated.” Right on! … Asked this week, if he had experienced any new incidents, Hoylman reported, “No, thank goodness!”
Catches Academy’s eye: “The Witness,” Soho director James Solomon’s riveting film on the infamous 1964 Kitty Genovese murder, and the sensationalist, misleading reports about it by The New York Times and others, was shortlisted this week for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Film. The picture follows Kitty’s youngest brother, Bill Genovese, a disabled Vietnam vet, as he tries to get beyond the journalistic spin and hype to uncover the real story of what truly happened on that terrifying night. One hundred forty-five documentaries qualified for Oscar consideration, and the Academy’s documentary branch shortened this down to 15. Five of these will be nominated, and announced Tues., Jan. 24, along with the other Oscar nominations. “The Witness” will be broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens on Mon., Jan. 23.
Green for clean: Councilmember Corey Johnson’s talking point in The Villager earlier this month, “A clean sweep: A new vision for neater streets,” didn’t specify the amount of the funding that he allocated to ACE (Association of Community Employment Programs for the Homeless) for supplemental street cleaning on high-trafficked corridors in his Council District 3. It’s actually a whopping $100,000. “They’ve been out there since October and the reviews have been great,” a Johnson staffer told us.
Super-corrections: A P.R. rep for 260 South St. contacted us after our article on the Two Bridges-area project in last week’s issue to school us on the fact that “supertall” does not just mean a ginormous building. “The proposed towers in our project are not ‘supertalls,’” he insisted. “The official arbiter on these matters, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, defines ‘supertalls’ as buildings more than 984 feet. Our proposed towers are 798 and 728 feet.” Oh, so puny! Dude — they’re yuuge! That’s what community activists who want the area’s zoning changed say. For the record, there are also “megatall” towers, which are even bigger. We don’t even want to think about those… . But these definitions all change over time. Was a time when “skyscraper” meant just 10 to 20 stories. The rep also noted that the Two Bridges area was zoned as a Large-Scale Residential Development area 30 years ago. “That underlying zoning has not changed,” he stated. “This is an area long intended for development.” Uhh, yeah…but exploiting new construction techniques and stronger steel, developers are now building taller and slimmer than ever. That has changed! And, yeah, it’s exactly part of the reason why activists want the area rezoned. … In addition, our article on the St. John’s / Pier 40 deal last week incorrectly stated that the Hudson River Park Trust and local youth leagues are eyeing shifting the pier’s commercial space to its western edge. In fact, the plan is to move it to the pier’s northern and southern sides.
