City Limits articles from December 2002

City Limits archives from December 2002

Let it bleed. (Editorial).
December 1, 2002... IT'S COMING. It's going to be ugly, painful, and heartbreaking. And if we're smart--and the mayor holds to his word that his door is open--there's something we all can do about it. New York City's budget shortfall stands at around $5...

Letters.
December 1, 2002... WHERE CREDIT IS DUE Thanks for your article about community development credit unions in New York City "Shaky Credit" [November 2002]. It's very balanced and clearly shows the challenge that we face in having to comply with two very...

Don't know much about HIV. (Frontlines).
December 1, 2002... EDWIN PEGGOTT REMEMBERS with alarm how careless he was with his sex life during high school. "I didn't know anything about AIDS," he says. "I was doing all kinds of things." Now, at 19, he's wised up and "calmed down" but worries that too...

How will the city fill a sudden tech gap? (Low-Fiber Diet).
December 1, 2002... A LITTLE OVER a decade ago, the City of New York realized it was sitting on some pretty hot property. Telecommunications companies began flocking to City Hall asking for the right to dig up streets and lay fiber optic cable beneath them--one of...

A Father's time. (Urbanlegend).
December 1, 2002... MORE THAN 40 YEARS AGO, when Father John Powis was studying to be a priest, he stumbled into an opportunity that would define the rest of his life. "I had never had any contact with a black or Hispanic person before," remembers Powis, who grew...

Do supersized churches and schools have to be a menace? (Know Your Limits).
December 1, 2002... TYLER CASSELL HAS WATCHED his hometown of Flushing change drastically in recent years, and the results, he says, have been devastating. But it's not due to drugs, or crime, or rundown homes, says the president of the North Flushing Civic...

Boxed out. (Sports).
December 1, 2002... THESE DAYS, gyms seem to come and go without much notice. But in East Harlem, the demise of a 30-year-old boxing program has politicians lining up for and against it, as the owners' son and grandson try to avoid jail time for assaulting city...

Stopping the predators. (Banking).
December 1, 2002... ON OCTOBER 3, Governor George Pataki signed into law an anti-predatory lending act, making New York only the third state in the nation to put legislation battling high-cost loans on the books. "It's just incredible," says Sarah Ludwig,...

Stacked cards: for tens of thousands of immigrants, the biggest threat to security is a work permit process that has ground to a halt. (Inside Track).
December 1, 2002... WEARING AN EXPENSIVE SUIT and toting a Coach bag, an attractive Indian woman walks into the fluorescent-lit waiting room of a Lower Manhattan law office on an October afternoon. Somewhere down a long hall, a fax machine whirs and voices echo,...

Home remedies; for once, psychologists and politicians agree: adults who need help taking care of themselves are better off living at home, not in hospitals. But who's going to rescue the agency that's supposed to keep them housed?
December 1, 2002... Miss Leslie is bored. She's waiting outside a brick apartment building just south of Prospect Park for a city marshal to show up and evict a tenant. As a caseworker for the city agency Adult Protective Services (APS), her job is to assist...

Coney Island high: why a bunch of addicts and drug dealers are the best thing that ever happened to the boardwalk.
December 1, 2002... A block beyond the boardwalk, just a bunt away from Coney Island's new minor league stadium, the women are out tricking by 11 in the morning. Just before noon, Jerome Goodwin and Janet Fishman run into Chocolate and Venus working the Surf...

Machine dreams: in a post-partisan political world, will voting be a luxury good? (Intelligence the Big Idea).
December 1, 2002... EVERY TWO YEARS, as November draws near, candidates for political office pull certain words and phrases our of storage like so many Christmas lights and tree decorations. "Leadership" is one hardy example; "issues" is another; "bi-partisan" is...

New reports. (Intelligence the Big Idea).
December 1, 2002... If you work in a field even remotely linked to housing, this city publication based on the 1999 Census Bureau surveys is a must-have. It's full of useful citywide data, like how much rental housing is rent-stabilized (52 percent) and the median...

Whiteness control: who cares more about the working class, white liberals or white supremacists? (Intelligence City Lit).
December 1, 2002... The New White Nationalism In America: Its Challenge to Integration by Carol Swain Cambridge University Press, 526 pages, $30 Colored White: Transcending The Racial Past by David Roediger University of California Press, 323 pages, $29.95 ...

Emma: A Play. (Now Read This).
December 1, 2002... By Howard Zinn South End Press, $9 Esteemed leftist historian Zinn brings famed anarchist Emma Goldman to life in a snappy but educational work that captures her life as labor organizer, orator and outspoken critic. The play strikes an...

Praxis for the Poor. (Now Read This).
December 1, 2002... By Sanford F. Schram NYU Press, $19 This Bryn Mawr professor argues that academic research on welfare and poverty should be deliberately engaged with pressing political issues. He draws inspiration from the tradition of Francis Fox...

Empire City: The Making and Meaning of the New York City Landscape. (Now Read This).
December 1, 2002... By David M. Scobey Temple University Press, $40 This dense and detailed book argues that the creation of an established real estate market beginning in the 1850s and into the 1880s--not the technological and transportation improvements...

Two turntables and a megaphone: hip hop activsts have thrived at the grassroots. Can they grow up and still keep it real? (Intelligence Making Change).
December 1, 2002... IMAGINE KIDS ANXIOUSLY awaiting that last school bell of the day so they can go out and beg for more money for education. As unlikely as it sounds, that's exactly what happened this past June, when tens of thousands of kids and older activists...

Spare some change? If our cash-strapped government wants to help the poor, it had better get serious about reforming its approach. (Intelligence NVC Inc.).
December 1, 2002... MORE NEED AND LESS MONEY. Those may not sound like ideal conditions under which to step up the fight against poverty, but in New York City's case they might offer just the right combination. If there is a silver lining to the...