City Limits articles from March 2004

City Limits archives from March 2004

Safety first.(Editorial)
March 1, 2004... I write this in late January, two days after 19-year-old timothy Stansbury, Jr., was fatally shot by police on the rooftop of his Bedford-Stuyvesant housing project. the shooting, by an officer who was patrolling the roof with his gun drawn,...

Grinchy analysis.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... For an article that examines gift giving among strangers, Debbie Nathan's "Miracle on 33rd Street" [December 2003] lacks a number of seemingly essential concerns. It is both sad and frustrating that Ms. Nathan offers no acknowledgement of...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
March 1, 2004... In "Charity Busters" January 2003], Dan Kurtz was incorrectly identified as working under former Attorney General Dennis Vacco. Kurtz worked as Charities Bureau chief under Robert Abrams.

Selling hip hop ... and wrap.(Frontlines)
March 1, 2004... "When Jimmy releases boy it pleases/ But what do you do about all these diseases?... Now in winter AIDS attacks/ So run out and get your Jimmy Hats" "JIMMY" IS SLANG for the male reproductive organ, and with these 1988...

Blacklisted! After housing court, tenants find themselves unable to rent again.(Frontlines)
March 1, 2004... WHEN ADAM WHITE first moved into his studio on the top floor of an Upper East Side walkup in 1993, he was a newly minted lawyer and thrilled to have found an affordable bachelor pad. It wasn't until the rainy season that White realized his...

Insecure security.(Firsthand)(Interview)
March 1, 2004... JONATHAN SAWYER: Before the mayor's list came out [naming Canarsie High as one of the city's 10 most dangerous schools] I never really felt threatened at all. The students here are more verbal than physical. The new policy started [on January...

A delegate political situation.(Frontlines)
March 1, 2004... The delegate list for New York's March 2 Democratic presidential primary is a lesson in the webs of influence permeating the boroughs. For months, presidential hopefuls have been vying for support from New York party leaders. Councilmember...

Ronnie's real deal: former City Councilmember Ronnie Eldridge discusses her straight-talking public affairs TV show with City Limits editor Alyssa Katz.(Frontlines)(Interview)
March 1, 2004... "I COULDN'T BELIEVE anyone could do that to another human being," former city Human Resources Administration commissioner Lilliam Barrios-Paoli said recently of the notoriously brutal policies of her successor as city welfare chief, Jason...

Ex-execs still profit.(Housing)
March 1, 2004... AS THE MYRIAD federal and state investigations into Praxis Housing's finances approach their first anniversary, the embattled nonprofit that houses hundreds of homeless men and women infected with HIV/AIDS is struggling to stay afloat. ...

Show me the money (and some creative ID): despite government fears about security, financial institutions are welcoming undocumented immigrants.(Inside Track)
March 1, 2004... HE WORKS 12-HOUR DAYS in a Brooklyn factory and fears disclosing his real name. But Juan, a bespectacled Peruvian who came to New York in 2000 and overstayed his visa, will happily talk about how he finally realized a few months ago that he...

The demon seed that wasn't: debunking the "crack baby" myth.
March 1, 2004... When four starving boys aged 19, 14, 10 and 9, were taken from their New Jersey adoptive parents last October, all were severely emaciated. The oldest was so stunted--he weighed 45 pounds and measured four feet tall--that police thought he was...

They called me a crack baby. So why am I in college?
March 1, 2004... I don't know if I was born with drugs in my body or not. But my moms used drugs while she was pregnant with me. So it wasn't long before kids at school were calling me a "crack baby." It started in fourth grade. My teacher asked me to read...

Kicking the habit: drug rehab for moms works when they stay with their kids. But we are still addicted to treatment that splits up families.
March 1, 2004... One evening in 1981, a friend offered Robin Wiley a new drug called cook-up. She didn't know anything about it. All Wiley knew was that cook-up gave her a rush she did not want to stop. Over the next few years, it became the "in" thing in...

On the rocks: once the city's unstoppable scourge, crack is now a dying drug. What happened?
March 1, 2004... When he first began to go get it, Louie Jones found himself in abandoned Harlem buildings, places crowded with shattered glass, broken mirrors, newfound junkies and prostitutes all "geeking and tweaking." They were places where one pull could...

Police line--do cross: crack's not back--but the drug trade has resurged in the Bronx. To rein it in this time around, the NYPD and the community must learn to work as partners.
March 1, 2004... Standing in the half-light from the altar candle, Josefina Edwards, wearing a trim cloth coat, talks about her neighborhood while the members of her Charismatic prayer group file into their empty church. This Friday, as they have for the last...

Making headlines: how a budget group's fuzzy facts became an instant political mantra.(The Big Idea)
March 1, 2004... WHEN THE CITIZENS Budget Commission issued a report in November that said New Yorkers pay the nation's heaviest burden of state and local taxes, it was quickly cemented into the foundation of New York's conventional political wisdom. As Daily...

New reports.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... New York's minimum wage--$5.15 an hour--has less buying power today than it has had since the 1940s, this report argues. Raising the state wage floor to $7 an hour would bring low wages back to where they were in the 1970s. In 1979, only 3.6...

New reports.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... In the world of foundation giving, it's all about the rich getting richer, or so says a study conducted by the Foundation Center for the Boston Globe. Researchers looked at giving patterns of 1,000 foundations, and found that their gifts mainly...

New reports.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Sure, the nation's picking up more jobs these days, but they're not as good as the ones it lost. Between November 2001 and 2003, this report shows, the country lost 1.3 million manufacturing jobs, 272,000 information service gigs and 93,000...

Inside and out: once a prisoner, always a prisoner.(Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett)(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett By Jennifer Gonnerman Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 342 pages, $24 JENNIFER GONNERMAN closes Life on the Outside by recounting her subject's recurring dream. In it, Elaine...

Framed!: Labor and the Corporate Media.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Framed!: Labor and the Corporate Media By Christopher R. Martin Cornell University Press, $45 Today's media monoliths, Martin argues, understand their readers and viewers as consumers rather than as democrats. And the news deemed...

Secret Epidemic: The Story of AIDS and Black America.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Secret Epidemic: The Story of AIDS and Black America By Jacob Levenson Pantheon, $25 Here's what you won't read about in Levenson's breezy history: The leading route of HIV transmission among black men is sex with other men....

Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of Living With a Disability.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of Living With a Disability By Irving Zola Temple University Press, $17.95 Today's college kids take identity politics and area studies for granted, but they only exist because of people like Zola. His...

Ditching class: recruiting qualified teachers for our public schools is only half the battle.(NYC INC.)(New York City)
March 1, 2004... MAYOR BLOOMBERG has put reforming New York's famously dysfunctional schools at the top of his agenda, and he's made great strides toward meeting the state-mandated goal of putting a fully certified teacher in every classroom. But even as the...