I'll be doing a presentation at George Haikalis' monthly Auto-Free New York meeting on Tuesday, September 25, 6:00 to 8:00 pm. The talk is being called, "The End of Cheap Oil -- How Will NYC Cope?" It will mostly be focused on transportation and urban design ideas that can help New York City deal with our nation's growing, long-term energy crisis. The meeting will be held in the police station at 104 Washington Street in Lower Manhattan. Come if you can. George and his partner Roxanne Warren are doing some great projects and these meetings are usually pretty interesting.

10:57 AM | Link | (10) comments   

Like most of the New Yorkers who vote, I often -- check that -- I pretty much always find myself standing in the voting booth on election day with absolutely no idea who the judicial candidates are at the bottom of the ballot. I either end up picking a couple of names that sound honest or I just don’t vote for anyone. This is particularly lame because I follow local politics and am well-aware that we’ve got a major judicial corruption and patronage racket going on here in Brooklyn.

Kings County judges are, for the most part, hand-picked by the Democratic Party machine run by State Assemblyman Clarence Norman (Fun fact: Back in the 50's and 60's Brooklyn's Democratic machine was run out of the house where I now live!). I don’t totally understand how the patronage system works these days but when wire-taps, indictments and journalistic stories emerge from the machine-controlled courthouse what you see these judges doing and hear them saying bears little relation to what anyone would call "justice." The fact that the typical voter doesn’t pay any attention whatsoever to judicial elections allows the political clubhouse to continue to control the courthouse and the corruption goes on and on.

This year, in anticipation of that dreaded moment in the voting booth, I’ve done a little research to figure out who the honest, reform-minded judges are in Brooklyn. Here, along with some other picks and comments, are the long-awaited and much-coveted 2005 Naparstek.com endorsements:

Mayor, Democratic Primary: Gifford Miller
New York's City Council was a tired and lame institution before Gifford Miller took over as Council Speaker in 2001. By comparison, Miller's Council has been energetic, activist and progressive. The speaker deserves a great deal of credit for transforming the institution. He has done an impressive job of building coalitions and keeping the diverse and fractious group of fifty-one politicians working together. By doing this, he has ensured that the Council has, when necessary, functioned as a counterweight to New York City's powerful mayor. While all three of Miller's Democratic opponents are staking out political territory along racial and ethnic lines, Miller is keeping away from that decrepit version of New York City Liberalism. Granted, he's a white boy from Princeton so he probably doesn't have much choice. But in Council he has shown himself to be highly effective at bringing together and working with all of the city's diverse communities and ethnic interests. That's no small feat and he gets my vote because of it. The New York Observer carries a strong endorsement of Miller that is worth reading as well.

Public Advocate: Norman Siegel
Four years ago I voted for Betsy Gotbaum for public advocate. I will not make the same mistake twice. The public advocate's office, with its somewhat nebulous official definition, has the potential to be an incredibly powerful bully pulpit and a great source of reform and creativity in city government. Mark Green, the first person to hold the office, used the job well, often sending Rudy Giuliani conniption fits. Gotbaum, meanwhile, has been almost completely invisible the last four years. She is the consummate insider, ill-equipped to take on the city's most powerful interests when that is necessary. To the contrary, civil liberties lawyer Norman Siegel is the consummate outsider. In his day job he already functions as a kind of freelance public advocate. When citizens are being treated unfairly by big government and corporate interests, Norman is on the scene, drumming up press, filing law suits, and arguing court cases pro bono. His work on behalf of cyclists, demonstrators, and random bystanders illegally arrested during last year's Republican Convention has been incredible. He has represented September 11 victims' families and Brooklyn citizens facing eminent domain because of the Atlantic Yards development project. I've met Norman a couple of times and he is a sincere and menschy guy. Betsy and the New York Times try to paint him as being abrasive and "negative." It's simply not an accurate description.

As for businessman Andrew Rasiej, I worked with him and know him personally. I like his idea of promoting free wireless Internet access in New York City. But I can't get behind turning the public advocate's office into a single-issue advocacy organization. Nor can you reasonably argue that a lack of wireless access the most pressing issue facing the majority of New Yorkers. But most of all, the techno-utopianism of Rasiej's campaign is tired. It went out the door with the last print run of Mondo 2000. Free, universal wireless access would be a fine thing for New York but it will not by itself magically solve the city's big socio-economic problems or make city government run more effectively. Let the next mayor appoint Andrew as a technology czar. Or let Andrew start a non-profit organization to push the issue. With his run for public office he has innovated a great new way to use public, campaign finance money to run a big, single-issue advocacy campaign. Progressive transportation and urban environmental advocates should think about putting up a candidate to do the same in 2009. In the meantime, vote Norman Siegel for public advocate.

City Council, District 35: Letitia James
Tish James is the only northern Brooklyn Council member who, from the beginning, stood up for the neighborhoods being bullied by powerful interests lined up in favor of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. She has been creative and energetic in developing a community-based design for the railyards called the Unity Plan. She has been courageous in standing up against Bertha Lewis, the co-chair of the Working Families Party, the party that Tish currently represents in City Council. She is smart, energetic and powerful. Her opponent, Eric Blackwell, is a creature of the Clarence Norman machine and will allow Forest City Ratner to do whatever they want without a even a single ounce of pushback.

City Council, District 38: David Galarza
Sara Gonzalez is a nice woman but she has been a somewhat non-existent Council Member and she too is an old cog in the creaky Brooklyn Democratic machine. Gonzalez handled Ikea's aggressive move into Red Hook poorly, allowing the Swedish furniture giant to divide and conquer the community along race and class lines and get pretty much everything it wanted while giving back the absolute bare minimum. It was a shameful episode. David Galarza is my pick. He is the real deal. He grew up in Sunset Park and is a lifelong resident. He has worked as a journalist and labor activist for years and has done all kinds of volunteer work in his community. He really seems to care deeply about his neighborhood. The third candidate for the job, Eddie Rodriguez comes across as young and ambitious.

Manhattan Borough President: Brian Ellner
The only candidate for any office that I have heard come out firmly in favor of congestion pricing to limit traffic in Manhattan and raise money for transit, cycling and pedestrian improvements. For that bold, progressive, sensible stance alone, I'd vote for him. But he is also using his campaign to take swipes at George W. Bush and the national Republican agenda and, hey, why not? What else is the Borough President's office good for other than promoting ideas? Brian Ellner is my pick for Manhattan Borough President.

District Attorney, Brooklyn: Mark Peters
If you believe journalist Chris Ketcham's Harper's magazine story, then Brooklyn's district attorney, Charles "Joe" Hynes, shouldn't be sending people to jail, he should be going there himself. Sadly, the account is totally believable as Hynes has played a key role in allowing Brooklyn's corrupt judicial system to deteriorate during his five terms in office. Mark Peters worked for State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, a great role model for the job. He is an anti-corruption reformer who has shown a willingness to defend the little guy and go after big corporate interests. Mark Peters should be Brooklyn's next Attorney General. Whatever you do, don't vote for John Sampson. He is owned and operated by the machine.

And here, drum roll please, are your honest, competent, non-machine Brooklyn judges. Print these off and take them with you on election day, OK!

Surrogate Court, Brooklyn: Margarita Lopez Torres
The Daily News recently called her "a kind of Joan of Arc of reform in the borough." Her combination of legal, managerial and judicial experience, which includes her reputation for independence and integrity, make her the best candidate. She has been the impetus for reforms of the Kings County judicial screening process and is the lead plaintiff in the Brennan Center's federal lawsuit challenging the manner in which Supreme Court judges are selected. She has taken on the party insiders who the Citizens' Union refers to as having used the Surrogate's Court as their "ATM machine." Vote MLT on Tuesday.

Countywide Civil Court, Brooklyn: Norma Jennings

Civil Court Judge, District 3, Brooklyn: Martin S. Needelman

Civil Court Judge, District 6, Brooklyn: Ingrid Joseph

2:05 PM | Link | (1) comments   

I just had a nice meeting with Harry Siegel, the new editor-in-chief at the New York Press. Contrary to what I was told previously, Harry wants me to continue to cover urban environmental issues for the paper. He mentioned that he has received a lot of mail from readers commenting on my absence and asking that he reinstate my weekly column. If you wrote a letter, thanks.

I'm not going to continue to do a regular weekly gig at the Press but I will likely continue to do articles for them from time to time. Though Harry has been portrayed in New York City gossip media as some sort of arch-conservative, in talking with him, it sounded to me like we have similar politics that don't always fit easily into the left-right, liberal-conservative, Coke-Pepsi mode of today's public discourse. Harry seems really committed to improving the newspaper, when I saw him he hadn't even left the office in 48 hours, and I think good results are already starting to show. Hopefully the paper's management will give him the resources he needs to make the Press into a valuable alternative voice in the New York City mediascape.

I am also stretching out into some other publications. This week I have a shorter version of my New York City hurricane story in New York magazine. I also wrote the cover story for the next issue of Transportation Alternatives magazine and a piece about traffic calming for a local, Park Slope newsletter.

The director of public relations at the New York City Office of Emergency Management said that after Katrina "everyone" was reading my hurricane story. He says that he got calls from most of the city's major editorial boards asking if the information in my story was correct. My story does lean towards the dramatic, worst-case scenario side of things, but yeah, all of the facts and figures are correct and come from readily-available official sources. A category 2 or 3 storm hitting the New York City region is not at all unrealistic and has happened many times in the past. And if a big hurricane does make a direct hit on NYC, southern Brooklyn and Queens and large swaths of Manhattan are very likely fzucked. On the bright side, having spent some time withNew York City's emergency managers, I feel confident that a New York City hurricane aftermath wouldn't be anywhere near as ugly as what we saw in New Orleans, regardless of what the federal government does or doesn't do. NYC has great disaster relief resources and expertise at its disposal and far more competent managers than anything New Orleans, Louisiana or the federal government seem to have.

4:04 PM | Link | (0) comments