City Limits articles from July 2004

City Limits archives from July 2004

Regime change begins at home.(Editorial)(Editorial)
July 1, 2004... YOU'VE ALREADY DECIDED. You'll either be staying in New York City in late August, or you've booked a getaway in Newfoundland. If you stick around, you'll be part of one story or another--throngs demonstrating in favor of peace and domestic...

Global kids stand up for unity.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2004... After reading the article "Race Wars" [May 2004], Global Kids, our staff members and we were stunned by the vast and dramatic differences between what we understand young people from Global Kids told your reporter, Debbie Nathan, and what she...

The power of cross-cultural solidarity.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2004... Your observation of New York City's rising hate crimes is disappointing on two counts. One, it excludes from the discussion the majority of bias and hate incidents, which are committed by non-minority perpetrators. And two, it creates a false...

Manufacturing's ripple effect.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2004... Elizabeth Cady Brown's article examining ways to retain manufacturing in New York City ["Factory Town," May 2004] left out an important point: Manufacturers are critical to whole sectors of the local economy, and their disappearance also...

Clarification.(Correction Notice)
July 1, 2004... An article in the June 2004 issue of City Limits, "Teen Adoption's Hard Sell," described an interaction between a teenaged girl in foster care who made a public presentation about her wish to be adopted and Walter A. Jones III, who is seeking...

A look inside immigrant detention.(Frontlines)(Interview)
July 1, 2004... IT'S HARD TO IMAGINE life for immigrants the U.S. government labels illegal and locks away in facilities closed to the public. Artist Jenny Polak explores these secretive detention spaces in her exhibit, part of the "Tactical Action" group show...

Parenting the dream at a struggling school.(FirstHand)
July 1, 2004... I LIVE DOWN THE BLOCK [from Thomas Jefferson High School--one of the most violent schools in the city, according to recent announcements by the Bloomberg administration]. Twelve years ago two students were shot in this building. That was one...

Homelessness: prevention or PR?(Frontlines)
July 1, 2004... THE NEW YORK CITY Department of Homeless Services (DHS) has redefined its mission over the last two years from merely providing emergency shelter to actively preventing homelessness. Yet the agency's budget plan for next year has advocates...

Division of labor: unions clash over Housing Authority overhaul.(Frontlines)
July 1, 2004... A BATTLE BETWEEN New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) management and civil service employees over the controversial outsourcing of $445 million in reconstruction projects has thrown a spotlight on the unlikely supporters of management's...

How to make a federal case.(Frontlines)
July 1, 2004... In the ad campaign promoting civic support for the Republican National Convention, former mayor Ed Koch implores us to "make nice" with our GOP guests. What better way to do so than to thank them for everything Washington has done for New York...

Zoning: reining in the zoning board.(Frontlines)
July 1, 2004... FOR YEARS, community boards and other civic groups have decried the rampant use of zoning variances to allow for large-scale real estate development projects that would otherwise be illegal. Now they may have too much of a good thing: two very...

Mi Bodega at your bodega.(Frontlines)
July 1, 2004... The Big Apple is getting a new product line: Mi Bodega, which you can find starting later this summer at--where else?--your corner bodega. The Washington Heights-based Bodega Association of the United States, whose 7,200 member stores are...

Block still locked.(Frontlines)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... Parolees and incarcerated felons seeking voting rights suffered a major setback in April, when the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the New York state statute denying them the vote does not violate federal law. The case, known as...

Prescription for trouble: are foster kids too dependent on psychiatric drugs? If only child welfare officials knew.(Child Welfare)
July 1, 2004... BRIAN* CAN HARDLY REMEMBER a time when he wasn't medicated. Diagnosed with depression and attention deficit disorder as a 7-year-old in foster care, he was prescribed Paxil, Ritalin and Clonidine. Now a soft-spoken 15-year-old sporting braces...

Space: the final frontier; Neighborhood groups team up to build affordable housing into Bloomberg's big redevelopment plans.(Housing)
July 1, 2004... THERE WAS A LOT of debate before the NYC Campaign for Inclusionary Zoning settled on a name. Some of the community organizers and policy advocates worried that the wonky term "inclusionary zoning" would alienate the public. Others argued that...

The action diet: the food justice movement looks to change more than just what New York kids eat.
July 1, 2004... "IT HAS A BUTT CRACK!" Vanessa Santiago, 18 years old, giggles as she peers at the object of her glee: a garbanzo bean. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Tight jeans, a bomber jacket and a pink sweatband--Santiago doesn't look like the type...

A clean start: the city's health commissioner wants New York to be a leader in preventing drug users from getting AIDS. So why are so many people who agree with Tom Frieden's goal so alarmed by his methods?
July 1, 2004... Robert Soto is known as "the polar bear" by folks on the block--that's the block, at the intersection of Knickerbocker Avenue and Troutman Street in Bushwick, where the NYPD has been trying and failing for a decade to get rid of the drug trade....

University heights: how CUNY is remaking itself into a job-training powerhouse--and where we can take it from here.(How to Keep New York Working)
July 1, 2004... FORGET ATTENTION-DEFICIT DISORDER--New York is suffering from a skills-deficit disorder. More than any other in the nation, the city is witnessing an increasing gulf between those who have the skills needed in a knowledge-based economy and...

Think poor English skills are what holds immigrants back?(New Reports)
July 1, 2004... Think poor English skills are what holds immigrants back? Not exactly, says this overview of eight training programs nationwide. What's stalling America's newcomers--who are more numerous than at any point since 1930--is that even though there...

This extensive survey of attitudes about the current labor market is chock-full of stats, both useful and curious.(New Reports)
July 1, 2004... This extensive survey of attitudes about the current labor market is chock-full of stats, both useful and curious. Ranging from how long people have been unemployed to which demographic groups are worried about joblessness, some of the most...

A thorough overview of 15 programs that provide extra benefits to hourly and low-wage employees, this report looks at how individual companies are experimenting with supporting their workers.(New Reports)
July 1, 2004... A thorough overview of 15 programs that provide extra benefits to hourly and low-wage employees, this report looks at how individual companies are experimenting with supporting their workers. The authors give interesting descriptions of, say,...

Groupthink: good management makes better nonprofits--but does it make a better world?(City Lit)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... Begging for Change: The Dollars and Sense of Making Nonprofits Responsive, Efficient, and Rewarding for All By Robert Egger with Howard Yoon HarperCollins, 2004, $24.95 IT'S BEEN more than a century since philan-thropists like...

Gates of Injustice: The Crisis in America's Prisons.(Now Read This)(book review)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... Gates of Injustice: The Crisis in America's Prisons. By Alan Elsner Prentice Hall-Financial Times, $24.95 Mississippi's Parchman Farm prison isn't just a fusty blues song. Civil rights inspectors who visited recently almost fainted...

Global Inc.: An Atlas of the Multinational Corporation.(Now Read This)(book review)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... Global Inc.: An Atlas of the Multinational Corporation By Medard Abel and Henry Bruner New Press, $24.95 Internationally, the 100 biggest economies aren't all nations: 53 are MNCs--multinational corporations. Of those, a handful...

Engaged Surrender: African American Women and Islam.(Now Read This)(book review)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... Engaged Surrender: African American Women and Islam By Carolyn Moseley Rouse U. California Press, $19.95 The title sums it up. Moseley Rouse, herself African American, interviewed distaff members of Sunni mosques in segregated,...

Illustrated memos: from the office of the city visionary.
July 1, 2004... O. O. T. C. V. Hundreds of thousands of Republican National Convention protesters would wreak havoc on the Great Lawn in Central Park and would bring traffic to a standstill in Midtown. There must be some way to disperse the crowd without...