An Order to Show Cause with TRO in a Civil Action was filed today.
Petitioners sought emergency relief from the actual and imminent harm stemming from the forced relocations of public housing residents at two public housing developments, Fulton Houses and Elliott-Chelsea.
Before we showed up to file the Order to Show Cause, attorneys for Essence-Related filed a letter with our Judge, threatening to submit a motion of their own to oppose our TRO.
Attorneys for Essence-Related, the front-puppet and the puppet master, respectively, submitted a letter to the Judge in our case, notifying the Court that the RAD/PACT Landlord planned to file a motion to intervene in our updated Article 78 Petition and to oppose our TRO.
For its part, NYCHA filed a letter with the Court in opposition to our Order to Show Cause.
We sought emergency relief from the Courts after NYCHA and Essence-Related began forced relocations of senior citizens to further its plan to empty out and demolish two public housing apartment buildings before the ULURP and RFP questions could be decided in our case.
Democrats will do the bidding of MAGA billionaires before they will answer to NYCHA public housing residents.
To celebrate the REBNY’s successful rezoning of the Midtown South section of Manhattan, Councilmember Erik Bottcher (D-District 3) took a walk alongst 34th Street with Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani (DSA-A.D. 36). Their walk was timed to gamely show for the cameras who would make the trip fastest : The pair of Democrats or the crosstown M34 bus.
The competition between the political pedestrians and the surface mass transit was meant to promote the idea of transforming 34th Street into a busway that would eliminate vehicular traffic in favour of improving the performance of the crosstown bus route. It was a noble gesture of a manufactured, public benefit from the controversial Midtown South rezoning, even though it would likely lead to the death of small businesses in a major retail corridor, much like how 14th Street was transformed into a ghost town after its own busway conversion.
The amount of community-crushing development about to befall Chelsea, Midtown South, and Times Square is unimaginable. Non-stop gentrification was always the goal of REBNY-adjacent Democrats.
These big budget projects are why Democrats have lost their base, because there’s always money for upward transfers of wealth, like from a cash-strapped NYCHA to certain REBNY members in the real estate development industry, but there’s no there there to address the extremes of exploitation in late-stage Capitalism. There’s no help for the Democratic Party’s base, especially not amidst a housing crisis.
And for Councilmember Bottcher and Assemblymember Mamdani to gaslight voters into believing that a busway on 34th Street was the perfect solution to a housing crisis, the inflation in consumer prices, and the MAGA assault on the republic was exemplary of how the Democratic Party has lost touch with reality. The Democrats are united in ending public housing, and their inferior consolation prize is a busway. Only those disassociated from reality would believe this gaslighting.
Mamdani made the revelation to a select group of Chelsea residents, who are closest to the Democratic Party machine. Was the selection of that group made on purpose ?
The Democratic mayoral candidate, Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani (DSA-A.D. 36), reportedly had a discussion about the looming RAD/PACT privatisation and demolition of NYCHA public housing in Chelsea. Participants in the secret conversation included at least one NYCHA resident leader, a nonprofit executive, and Democratic Party insiders, according to information obtained by Fight For NYCHA.
The Assemblymember Mamdani, the sole heir to a Bollywood fortune and the darling of the Socialist Democrats, revealed during the secretive talks that he privately opposed the demolition of Fulton Houses and Elliott-Chelsea. However, he supported aspects of the controversial RAD/PACT privatisation schemes, such as the infill of public housing, even though that represented a form of upward transfers of wealth in the form of strategic, public assets to private sector real estate developers. Infill describes when community gardens, lawns, children’s parks, and open spaces are cleared for construction of high-rise luxury apartment buildings.
Though Assemblymember Mamdani nominally opposes the RAD/PACT demolition of NYCHA, the fact that he’s remaining silent about his opposition means that he’s strategically decided to use silence to effect his coördination with President Donald Trump (R) to end public housing all together.
The hush-hush conversation was an attempt by Mamdani to relate to the plight of Chelsea residents facing the complete demolition of public housing. The attempt at humanisation was meant to thwart accountability, and it worked !
Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani with District Leader Layla Law-Gisiko at a meeting of Manhattan Dems at which Mamdani won the endorsement of the Democratic Party’s New York county committee. Fair Use
Information about the tight-lipped talks emerged today at a protest against the doyenne of Democratic Party LGBTQ progressive activists, Allen Roskoff, who gave an interview to Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, expressing support for an upward transfer of wealth from a cash-strapped NYCHA to MAGA billionaire Stephen Ross.
At our protest, an agent provocateur showed up to incite division, showing us the absolute state of panic amongst Democratic Party insiders, who are invested in the Project 2025 goal of ending public housing.
In response to the Fight For NYCHA lawsuit to challenge the legality of the RAD/PACT, some of the same Democratic Party insiders, who participated in the secretive Mamdani talks, launched an astroturf fundraiser for a non-existent lawsuit against NYCHA.
In a sign of how Assemblymember Mamdani was able to pacify the Democratic Party insiders with whom he met, the astroturf group has yet to file one lawsuit against NYCHA or the City of New York over the RAD/PACT privatisation and demolition of public housing in Chelsea. The Democratic Party machine activists have been silenced—not by President Trump, but by Assemblymember Mamdani and other notable Democrats !
That the Democrats support the ethnic cleansing of Chelsea should come as no surprise. It follows on the heels of Assemblymember Mamdani demonstrating that a Democrat could win a City-wide primary election race without the NYCHA vote. Just like the Republicans, the Democrats have confidently made the political calculation that NYCHA voters are expendable.
A vote of no confidence from NYCHA residents in Zohran Mamdani’s Assembly district
The drumbeats eminating from the largest public housing development in the Nation have turned ominous for Assemblymember Zohran K. Mamdani (DSA-Astoria), the Democratic Party nominee in the November génerale mayoral race in New York City.
Assemblymember Mamdani reportedly lost the vote at Queensbridge Houses, the large public housing development in his Assembly district, according to an Editorial published by the Daily News.
Cuomo beat Mamdani in Ravenswood Houses and Astoria Houses, also in Mamdani’s district, suggesting a voter backlash by NYCHA residents to the DSA/WFP/PSL duplicity.
In the first-round voting in the primary election, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) beat Assemblymember Mamdani amongst Queensbridge Houses voters 59 per cent. to 29 per cent., revealing a 30 per cent. margin in political support. The Editorial revealed that Assemblymember Mamdani’s margin of defeat was similar at Ravenswood Houses and Astoria Houses.
Assemblymember Mamdani’s defeat amongst New York City Housing Authority tenants after over two terms as a State Legislator flew in the face of the Socialist’s brand of politics. Assemblymember Mamdani has walked a fine line between “seizing the means of production” and opulent spending on a globe-trotting lifestyle. He lives like a Ugandan warlord. Voters facing inflation at the grocery stores and disenchantment with the Duopoly may have taken notice at the duplicity.
NYCHA public housing residents are used to being forgotten, getting left behind, and ignored. Are they beginning to fight back ?
An Upstate-Downstate coälition, a front-group of DSA/WFP/PSL functionaires and led by the DSA’s maven of social housing, Cea Weaver, was the reported lobbying coördinator behind the DSA/WFP/PSL’s Plantation Trust (f/k/a the “Blueprint For Change”), which aims to end F.D.R.’s New Deal promise of housing as a human right by replacing NYCHA. Like RAD/PACT, the Plantation Trust seeks to collaborate with the stated Project 2025 goal of President Donald Trump (R) to end Section 9 public housing.
After years of struggle, are public housing residents waking up to how the DSA/WFP/PSL, and their chorus of front-puppets, have sold them out ?
Are Blacks abandoning the Democratic Party in New York because their land use policies favour gentrification and displacement ?
In a rare and insightful probe into the state of Black power in New York, the New York Times revealed that Blacks are engaged in a migration out of New York due to the housing crisis and quality of life issues. The article postulated that, as a result, the Democratic Party faces a reckoning with the loss of, and the loss of confidence by, a key voting bloc, noting, in relevant part, that, “community leaders and residents alike say they have noticed real political and demographic shifts that stand to threaten the endurance of New York’s once-ironclad Democratic coalition . . . .” Indeed, the Rev. Dr. Adolphus Lacey, the senior pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, described the exodus as an erosion. The report highlighted that, even as Blacks are moving, it could be because they are being moved out : “the same trends that disproportionately harm Black Americans are also driving some of them out of New York.”
Setting aside quality of life issues, let’s focus on the housing crisis.
The Democrats’ answer to the housing crisis has been to approve non-stop luxury condominiums ; develop and implement an affordable housing lottery system, which has been called a scam ; and to seemingly collaborate with Republicans in the Project 2025 goal of ending public housing. Because the Democratic Party wants to make New York a playground for the rich, of course races, which have faced centuries of discrimination, are going to get squeezed out.
More luxury apartments have been built in New York City Council District 3 under Councilmembers Corey Johnson (D) and his successor, Erik Bottcher (D), than in any other City Council district. This was largely due to Hudson Yards, which was developed by MAGA billionaire and Trump White nationalism supporter-donor Stephen Ross and gentrification related to the construction of the High Line. The gentrification has ushered in a mega-new, wealthy White neighborhood : the Hudson Yards plantation.
Since the Democratic Party enjoys super-majority control over New York Governments, it raises serious questions, when the private sector cannot construct low-cost housing for New Yorkers earning low-incomes, like, why are Democrats choosing to end Section 9 public housing through schemes known as Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD), Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT), and the Preservation Trust ? Approximately 90 per cent. of public housing residents living in New York are minorities. By shifting such a large bloc of vulnerable people, including senior citizens living on fixed-incomes, to the private sector, these New Yorkers will lose Civil Rights Act protections that treat housing as a human right. In place of those civil rights protections, these minorities will face private sector landlords known for violating anti-discrimination laws.
As a result, the leading candidate in the Democratic Party primary for New York City mayor cobbled his coälition . . . without Blacks !
When State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani (DSA-Astoria) finished ahead in the first-round of ranked choice voting in the Democratic Party’s mayoral primary, he did so without Blacks coälescing behind his mayoral campaign. His presumptive win came without the support of the solidly-Black neighborhoods in New York, according to a report published by the New York Times. The lack of Black support flies in the face of the mayoral primary wins of Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams, the Times found, adding that, nationally, the Black voting bloc carried the recent presidential nominations of Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
What this shows is that the White coälition that is powering Assemblymember Mamdani’s mayoral campaign has been willing to ditch Black power after making the political calculation that Black support was expendable in a City-wide mayor’s race.
Nowhere else can that be seen than in Assemblymember Mamdani’s support for the RAD/PACT and Preservation Trust sell-out of NYCHA public housing in New York. Returning to the Times‘ trend story of Democrats’ failed policies forcing Blacks to move-out of New York, two key issues facing Blacks are the housing crisis and the crisis of public housing. To maintain support amongst Whites and the Big Business community that are the sources of large, campaign donations, the support by Democrats, including Assemblymember Mamdani, to the sell-out of NYCHA could be the leading driver of Blacks being moved-out of New York.
The gentrification that beset Harlem and shattered that historic neighborhood’s focal point of Black power in New York is one example of how Democrats, who enjoy super-majority control over New York City Government and public policy, are complicit in a racist drive to break Black power in New York. They’ve learned to take their racist fight to break DEI to the ballot-box, and win, just like President Donald Trump (R).
The Democrats’ new model of White power politics, which is indifferent to Black issues and Black support, can also be witnessed in the transactional politics of Democratic Party powerbroker Allen Roskoff and in the obfuscation of District Leader Layla Law-Gisiko, who supports the privatisation and demolition of public housing in Chelsea and who uses an almost deliberate misreading of the law to excuse the unlawful disposition of City real property outside of the ULURP Process, respectively. The pattern of racial indifference is more than accidental, and its fingerprints can be seen in more than just the mayor’s race. Ask Councilmember Erik Bottcher (D-Chelsea).
More and more people are seeing Julia Salazar for the shifty, shady politician that she is.
State Sen. Julia Salazar (DSA-Bushwick) was a no-show at her own fundraiser, which was ultimately cancelled due to our scheduled protest. Her supporters knew not to show up, or else their privatisation record on public housing would be exposed.
You can’t negotiate with corrupt politicians. You have to get into the streets !
The DSA are transactional, and they appear not to mind to transact NYCHA into oblivion.
It appears that, yet again, the NYC DSA have their eyes on another scheme that would lead to a wholesale end of Section 9 public housing, the sole bedrock of true housing security in gentrified New York City.
Their latest artifice is the NYCHA Preservation Trust, a plan concocted by NYCHA CEO Gregory Russ with the support of then Mayor Bill de Blasio (WFP-New York City) and current Mayor Eric Adams (D-New York City). We know that the DSA, led by State Sen. Julia Salazar (DSA-Brooklyn) and campaign consultant Cea Weaver have been apparently negotiating with the Real Estate Board of New York for passage of alleged anti-eviction legislation that some portray as a roll-back of landmark rent laws passed in 2018. It’s been reported that Ms. Weaver was complaining that REBNY would not support for the “Good Cause” legislation in exchange for an extension of the corrupt and racist 421-a luxury real estate development tax abatement programme. Because the State Sen. Salazar and other DSA leadership have attacked autonomous organisers of public housing residents, it appears that the DSA may be using passage of the Preservation Trust as an inducement to get REBNY’s support for the Good Cause legislation.
Since his election, Mayor Adams has turned out to be a delusional, neoconservative nightmare, supporting the return of racist Broken Windows policing tactics and an end to all pandemic mitigations. It’s not known why the DSA would negotiate to support Mayor Adams’ real estate agenda, unless, perhaps, there was corruption involved ?
R.S.V.P.
Join us to protest State Sen. Julia Salazar (DSA-Brooklyn) at her apartment on Monday night. Please bring supplies and prepare to spend the night outside. We plan to construct a homeless camp to demonstrate the consequences of displacement for public housing residents.
It appears that Mayor Bill de Blasio should have put RAD/PACT conversions through the ULURP Process. But he didn’t !
Because protests have not worked, the last few members of Fight For NYCHA have sued Mayor Bill de Blasio (WFP-New York City), the City of New York, NYCHA CEO Greg Russ, and NYCHA to stop the RAD/PACT privatisation of public housing !
It’s been almost three years since Fight For NYCHA was formed. In that time, the activism to save public housing in New York City has been beset by division, sectarian politics, ego, obfuscation, and subversion. We had AOC refuse to stand-up to Mayor de Blasio’s use of RAD/PACT and the Blueprint to sell-out NYCHA. We had other Electeds approve of the sell-out of public housing, and they never faced any consequence for having participated in the sell-out of public housing. We had socialists and other sectarian groups promote the use of Section 8 vouchers to the disadvantage of public housing residents, which was shameful and a form of betrayal, because that was certainly no way to show class solidarity. Rather than confront Mayor de Blasio, some activists formed YouTube talk shows to promote themselves. Other groups, like Movement School, sought to use NYCHA activism as a cover for membership drives that was entirely divorced from a commitment to an outcome to saving Section 9 public housing. We also endured selfish political candidates, seeking to use NYCHA issues for their political campaigns, only to turn their backs once their campaigns floundered. Other political candidates, like Marni Halasa, used NYCHA activism for press clips ; it didn’t matter that she was leading/misleading residents in the wrong direction. All that mattered were her media mentions.
The lawsuit we filed was largely based on the lawsuit filed by Beep Gale Bewer (D-Manhattan) to stop the infill development at Holmes Tower, which she won after Mayor de Blasio backtracked from the unlawful plans for the real estate development in the Upper East Side.
We had no choice but to file this lawsuit after activism to mobilise public housing residents failed in New York City due to many “community groups” and nonprofit orgs running interference for Mayor de Blasio and other corrupt Electeds. Remember how one nonprofit hosted Council Speaker Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan) at a Black church in Brooklyn after it came to be known he supported the sell-out of public housing in Chelsea. Even after we exposed the truth of how some Socialist Democrats were collaborating with Mayor de Blasio in his scheme to end all Section 9 public housing, it came to a shock to many that it took direct action in the face of the DSA to put a halt to the Blueprint.
The lawsuit, filed as an Article 78 Petition, revealed that Mayor de Blasio’s implementation of RAD/PACT was illegal, since the way that Mayor de Blasio is rolling-out RAD/PACT conversions violate the City Charter and the New York State Public Housing Law. The City Charter and the Public Housing Law require large-scale projects, like RAD/PACT conversions, to be put through the ULURP Process. But Mayor de Blasio, NYCHA, CEO Russ, and the City of New York did not follow the laws. In respect of the RAD/PACT conversion of Fulton Houses and Elliott-Chelsea, the lawsuit made a showing that the de Blasio administration admitted that they decided to act outside of the ULURP Process.
As time passed, we knew that litigation, like this, would be our last resort, if social movement building failed in the face of sectarian opposition. We ask for support, as we make it clear that all other groups must set aside self-interest and self-promotion for the common good of all. And that means seeing to it that Section 9 public housing is saved from privatisation. This must be made a priority, at long last.
Pack the Court !
Date : Monday, Nov. 15
Time : 9:30 am
Place : Supreme Court, New York County, 60 Centre St., Room 130
Update
Updated 12 Nov 2021 13:55 The Defendants have filed motions to dismiss our Article 78 petition. We need to work together to put a stop to RAD/PACT once and for all !
Cea Weaver played the part of “a dumb blonde” when it came to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s use of Section 8 vouchers to end public housing as we know it.
Over Labour Day week-end, NYCHA tenant leader Melanie Aucello called-out the alleged misrepresentations and gaslighting by the DSA housing policy leader, Cea Weaver, about the use of Section 8 rental assistance vouchers to end Section 9 public housing in New York City, according to a report published by the Real Deal.
In response to Aucello’s entreaties, Weaver asked Aucello to table the NYCHA talk, but Aucello wasn’t having any of it, according to the report.
And then the name-calling began.
As revealed by Fight For NYCHA, Weaver and a group of New York State legislators, which appeared to include State Sen. Julia Salazar (D-Bushwick), State Sen. Jabari Brisport (D-Bed-Stuy), Assemblymember Marcela Mitaynes (D-Red Hook), were on the cusp of agreeing to support passage of the controversial Blueprint for Change for NYCHA last spring that would have convert all non-RAD/PACT public housing apartments into a new entity that would have effectively brought about the end of all Section 9 public housing in New York City. The Blueprint was stopped after Fight For NYCHA, in a coälition with others known as NYCHA Is Not For Sale, exposed the hypocrisy of DSA leaders supporting the end of public housing.
And if Weaver hadn’t insulted Aucello, personally, and all NYCHA residents, generally, Weaver then resorted to obfuscation and gaslighting, cliaming that Weaver never supported the Blueprint but instead was supporting some other policy, leaving Aucello fuming and demanding to know when had Weaver ever denounced Mayor Bill de Blasio (WFP-New York City) over his schemes to sell-out NYCHA public housing with “RAD/PACT/Blueprint.”
It’s time boil your water and to seep your tea. We are gathering by Zoom on Wednesday afternoon to drink some hot tea and share some real talk about NYCHA activism.
We revealed some of the names of activists and groups, which we believe are protecting Mayor Bill de Blasio from criticism, as well as describing general conditions that lead to ineffective activism. The speaker panel included Melanie Aucello and Cynthia Tibbs, with Louis Flores as moderator. Some NYCHA tenants provided input near the end. Please share and comment.
