| From the Villa ge of Brook ly n |
OUR TIME PRESS THE L OCAL PAPER WITH THE G LOBAL VIEW
| VOL. 23 NO. 33
Since 1996
August 15 – 21, 2019 |
Whose Streets? Our Streets!
OpEd
Where's the Next Eddie Ellis?
Community Victory over Parking issue
Criminal Justice Reform Needs A New Leader ■ By Michael Lambert Between 1890 and 1920, after the passing of the 13th Amendment, African American Reformers including social workers, journalists, educators, and politicians founded the Progressive Movement, based on the belief that great change was needed to protect everyday people. Injustices that impacted African Americans included racism, segregation, political disenfranchisement, lack of access to quality healthcare, education, and affordable housing, and the rampant lynching of black men in the South. This Progressive period gave birth to great African American Reformers and leaders such as Booker T. Washington, W.E.B Du Bois, and Ida B. Wells, and led to the formation of organizations such as National Association of Colored Women, the Niagara Movement, the NAACP, and the National Urban League. Organizations founded by and led by the nation’s original Progressives, African Americans. Fast forward to 2019, and to many blacks, the word “progressive” has taken on very different meanings than in 1890. Today’s Progressive champions for Criminal Justice Reform (CJR), are often not black. When the New Jim Crow, a book written by civil rights litigator and legal scholar, Michelle Alexander, went mainstream, many whites took up the Progressive mantle.
Our Time Press (OTP) and Kings County Politics join Greene Avenue residents in celebrating a victory over the Department of Transportation, which had towed their cars and taken away their parking spaces last month. It was Sharon Holliday who first sounded the alert and Renee Collymore who organized a press conference to get the word out. The DOT determined that Greene Ave between Cambridge Place and Grand Avenue would enter the “Residential Loading Zone Evaluation” program a mere seven days after an initial notice. This meant that cars could no longer park on the street in an area that has experienced a scarcity of parking with the swelling of numbers of residents. When the week was up, the Department placed “boots” on their cars with a $185 ransom to be paid within two hours or their vehicles would be towed. Thanks in part to an early warning by community media and an angry and outspoken community, the DOT backed down, abandoning the program.
Underground Railroad Home in Jeopardy Again
➔ Continued on page 5
Michael Lambert at Rikers Island asks where is the torchbearer for Black and Brown people?
Photo: Margo McKenzie
(Foreground) Rahwa Haile with son, Jude Prosper, 5, at demonstration to preserve 227 Duffield St., an abolitionist home and Underground Railroad site. Page 2