City Limits articles from March 2003

City Limits archives from March 2003

Nowhere to look but up. (Editorial).(Editorial)
March 1, 2003... NEW YORK CITY is under siege right now from both levels of government above it. It all makes "Ford to City: Drop Dead" look like an invitation to dance. We have a president who is calculatedly starving cities and states into political and...

Letters.
March 1, 2003... IT'S ALL IN YOUR HEAD The notion that addictions are a brain-based phenomenon, as expressed in "Sick Treatment" [February 2003], is a load of rubbish. Addictions are actions. They are chosen moral behaviors, not a biological process that...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
March 1, 2003... In "Low-Fiber Diet" [December 2002], we erroneously stated that a new initiative to bring wireless internet services to the public libraries originated with Mayor Bloomberg. It was in fact introduced by Councilmember Gale Brewer and Speaker...

City farmer, country farmer. (Front Lines).
March 1, 2003... NESTER TELLO DREAMS OF MAKING CHEESE. Mario Vega wants to leave dishwashing and grow vegetables. Porfirio Rios hopes to farm so his three young girls can leave the crowded city behind. Both Maria Mendoza and Maria Franco plan on raising crops...

Room for homeless families: can experts do what 20 years of court couldn't? (Frontlines).
March 1, 2003... JUDGE HELEN FREEDMAN'S calendar suddenly got emptier on January 17. With Mayor Michael Bloomberg looking on, she gladly relinquished her decades-old role as the unofficial author of the city's policies for homeless families, and signed an...

Baking Inspiration. (Urbanlegend).(Interview)
March 1, 2003... ALBERTO CAPPAS HAS DEVOTED his life to encouraging young Latinos to follow their dreams. This spring, he plans to package that message in the form of a cookie, and market it behind the mask of his own superhero. A city bureaucrat by day,...

Investment in justice. (Finance).
March 1, 2003... THE CITY COMPTROLLER is putting pressure on some of the Fortune 500 companies that the city's pension funds invest in. In January, Comptroller William Thompson called on shareholders in eight of the nation's biggest companies to vote on a...

Passport examination. (Medicine).
March 1, 2003... THE ONLY THING the patient forgot was his passport; then again, who brings a passport to the doctor's office anyway? Last spring, Chaudhry Yousaf a Pakistani-born citizen of the U.S., took his 21-year-old son, Murtaza, who is mentally disabled,...

To market, to market. (Business).(Harlem)
March 1, 2003... OVER THE LAST couple of years, megastores and movie theaters have transformed 125th Street: While it bustles with shoppers, some longtime local merchants have been pushed our. Now, the Bloomberg administration is opening up a big development...

The right moves. (Frontlines).
March 1, 2003... A young dancer showed off his skills during a Martin Luther King, Jr., birthday celebration hosted by the Children's Defense Fund-New York on January 15. In the name of protecting programs for kids amid state and federal budget cuts, the youth...

Beyond the boards: will Bloomberg's plan to overhaul the schools destroy parents' role in education in order to save it? (Inside Track).
March 1, 2003... NEW YORK CITY'S NEW SCHOOL system should look gleaming to parents in Harlem's Community School District 5. For the first time in years, the district's chronically failing schools have an accomplished superintendent who isn't hiding behind a...

Future shock.
March 1, 2003... Governor Pataki promises that New York will soon be a national leader in renewable energy. but so far, green power pioneers are finding it isn't easy to get a famously gritty city to plug in. The first snow of the year is falling, and under...

Why minds matter: The pain of 9/11 reopened a deeper wound; Violent trauma is part of daily life in New York. Now a city in crisis must help its youth survive a hidden epidemic.
March 1, 2003... WHEN SHE WAS 8 YEARS OLD, Princess Carr began to throw herself down the stairs at school. She wanted someone to notice her. Some people did. Classmates called her crazy. Teachers put their arms around her and soothed her. But for years, no one...

Tax evasion: by focusing on tax fairness, are progressives losing sight of government's real job? (The Big Idea).
March 1, 2003... IT'S A FAMILIAR REFRAIN: After every losing election, the Democrats' friends on the left beg them to come home. If the prodigal Sons and daughters will for once offer a progressive program, goes the plea, surely next time they'll win. The...

You wouldn't know it from walking around Greenpoint, but even the most recent New York immigrants are quickly learning English. (New Reports).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... You wouldn't know it from walking around Greenpoint, but even the most recent New York immigrants are quickly learning English. More than two-thirds say they speak English well or even better, while fewer than 10 percent say they don't speak it...

Make a list of businesses that treat their employees like crap, and temp agencies. (New Reports).(FirstSource, at the top of its class)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... Make a list of businesses that treat their employees like crap, and temp agencies top the list--but not if you work for FirstSource staffing, started in 1999 by the Fifth Avenue Committee and profiled in this study of nonprofit business...

Wanna make $125 million? It's easy--just start up a telemarketing company to raise funds for nonprofits in New York State. (New Reports).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... Wanna make $125 million? It's easy--just start up a telemarketing company to raise funds for nonprofits in New York State. According to the state Attorney General, telemarketing campaigns raised $184.7 million in 2001, but passed just 31.9...

Through the mill: how Bronx turf politics killed an environmentally benign recycling plant.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... Bronx Ecology: Blueprint for a New Environmentalism By Allen Hershkowitz Island Press, 281 pages, $25 Tilting at Mills: Green Dreams, Dirty Dealings, and the Corporate Squeeze By Lis Harris Houghton Mifflin Company, 241 pages, $25 WHO...

Beyond the edge: New York's new waterfront. (Now Read This).(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... Gastil, Raymond W. Princeton Architectural Press, $30 This book's real wonder is its cover: a slick collage that unfolds to reveal a huge map of the five boroughs, with color photos of notable waterfront visions, from the shelved...

Detained: immigration laws and the expanding I.N.S. jail complex. (Now Read This).(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... Temple University Press, $18.95 This timely and careful study looks at the 1996 immigration laws, which gave the INS sweeping powers to detain and deport foreign nationals--regardless of their residency status-for any previous criminal...

Harlem: Between Heaven and Hell. (Now Read This).(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... University of Minnesota Press, $18.95 As well-heeled newcomers moved to Harlem over the past decade, housing prices went up sharply--classic gentrification. But it's largely middle-class African-American families who have moved in....

Life stories: do books and stories hold the power to prevent parents from neglecting their children? (Making Change).
March 1, 2003... IN NEW YORK CITY, when a parent is accused of neglecting or abusing her kids, a bewildering array of social service organizations, government agencies and authorities immediately swoop in. After a 60-day, quasi-criminal investigation, an...

Westward, whoa! With virtually no public discussion, the plan for Far West Midtown is going full speed ahead. (NYC Inc.).
March 1, 2003... NEW YORKERS HAVE DEMANDED an open and democratic debate about the future of lower Manhattan, questioning assumptions, holding public officials accountable, and sometimes even convincing those in charge to change course. But in a city that...