|
In S. Bronx, Team Bloomberg Evicts Without
Due Process, No Place for the Poor
Byline: Inner City Press in the
South Bronx: News Analysis
SOUTH BRONX,
November 11 -- Mayor Michael
Bloomberg, fresh from buying the chance to buy a third term despite the
public
passage of term limits, now apparently feels free to deploy lawless
gangs to
evict lower income New Yorker, all in the name of redevelopment.
On November
10, Bloomberg's housing and buildings Departments converged on a
four-story
building in Mott Haven in the South Bronx,
intent on removing the residents. They never took them
to court.
Rather, they wrote pretextual vacate orders and called Con Edison to
turn off the lights. They stood cackling in the half-light, ridiculing
those
they were evicting, many of them hard-working immigrants of the type
Bloomberg
pretends to respect.
From the
housing projects across the street, people marveled at the
heartlessness of it
all. "Wow, they're throwing all those families out, with their kids and
grandmothers," said one young woman with dangling earrings.
"Yeah,
it's Bloomberg's New York," said another. "He thinks only the rich
should live here."
"Dictadura
de los ricos," diagnosed a third, a member of La Prensa del
Pueblo /
Community on the Move Homesteaders, noting that even when Rudy Giuliani
was
mayor, this type of eviction did not take place.
Michael Bloomberg speaking high and mightly,
lawless evictions not shown
Under
previous mayors, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development
was
sometimes accused of being controlled by political hacks. These,
however, were
not generally the ones who moved to evict without due process.
Team
Bloomberg, so sure that they are the best and the brightest, appear to
have no
respect for people, much less for the law. HPD Commissioner Shawn
Donovan,
quoted last month about the importance of affordable housing, chats
with
professional advocates at conferences, for example in the basement of
the Ford
Foundation on 42nd Street about the subprime lending crisis, while his
Department throws poor people into the street. Some New Housing
Marketplace.
And what
exactly did Bloomberg and his Team do to stem predatory lending? They
coddled
the institutions who bought and pooled the loans -- after Bloomberg
sold this
his double-screened terminals, of course, to track their usurious
profits --
and now stand ready to offer them tax breaks and incentives.
There will
be pedestrian streets in Bloomberg's city, but they will not be for the
poor.
Calories will be disclosed for food and beverage items, but not the
price. Lower
income people place, if anywhere, is in the TV ads touting Bloomberg's
most
recent pet project, whether congestion pricing or a West Side stadium.
The poor
can stay as extras, but not even in the South Bronx. How long can this
continue?
Click here for Inner City
Press Nov. 7 debate on the war in Congo
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on
UN, bailout, MDGs
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
Other,
earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available
in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
Copyright
2006-08 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
reprint or other permission, e-contact Editorial [at]
innercitypress.com -
|
