Sadam Ali at Prudential Center on March 5

Bay Ridge hot prospect Sadam Ali will be among the exciting group of NY/NJ fighters on the undercard of the IBF 140-lb Zab Judah/Kaizer Mabuza title fight at the Prudential Center's AmeriHealth Pavilion (the NJ Devils practice facility) in Newark on March 5.

Former Junior Olympic National Champion Ali, whose 11-0 record includes 6 KOs, has scored 5 professional wins at Pru Center, where he has developed a loyal fan base.

In his toughest fight to date, Ali will face Juliano Ramos of Sao Paolo, Brazil (16-4, 13 KO's) in an 8-round welterweight bout.

Other Brooklyn fighters on the bill include five-time Golden Glove winner Shemuel Pagan and Joseph Judah.

First fight begins at 8:00 PM.

Tickets are available at the Prudential Center Box Office, through TicketMaster (800) 745-3000, or through the website.

The article from Pro Boxing

Signs of Spring: Chip Returns to the Avenue

State GOP De-Commissions 131-Year-Old Club

Brooklyn GOP Chair Craig ("The Crusher") Eaton, who doesn't like Jonathan Judge, the President of the Brooklyn Young Republicans, has taken Judge's club -- or at least its name --away from him.

Here is an excerpt from the statement Judge released today announcing that his organization was de-commissioned this past weekend by the New York State Association of Young Republican Clubs:

“This weekend, in an unprecedented sneak move, a handful of insider Republican operatives in charge of the Association of New York State Young Republican Clubs, Inc. revoked the Brooklyn Young Republican Club's membership in order to admit Brooklyn Republican Chairman Craig Eaton's Young Republicans into the state organization."

The move leaves the venerable Young Republican Club headed by Judge in the anomalous position of being the "unsanctioned" version.

In the aftermath of the switch, Judge had this to say:

"The Brooklyn Young Republican Club still exists, despite Eaton's club receiving membership in the NYSYR.  Our organization predates the founding of the NYSYR, so the NYSYR does not have the power to decommission anything.  The end result is that our organization is no longer affiliated with the NYSYR, and we are free to make endorsements in Republican primaries, if the membership chooses to."

For more information, visit the BYRC website.

Conservative Bully Newt Gingrich Readies a Presidential Run

Remember this guy?  Republicans have announced that 67-year-old former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who has been campaigning around the country for months, is about to enter the 2012 presidential race.

He will be the first Republican to declare a run against Barack Obama, whose basketball skills Gingrich grudgingly admires.

Gingrich was the 1994 version of John Boehner, and the first Republican speaker of the House. After raising holy hell in Washington for two terms, he was driven out by his own rank-and-file supporters.

But he's never really gone away.

He's been traveling the country, trashing Democratic politics, raising campaign cash, and advising Republican office holders.

Since 2010, he has been working to build an alliance with the rabble-rousing Tea Party wing of the GOP, which delivered important wins to the party in last year's elections.

Gingrich calls the Tea Party conduit a "grassroots movement".

The twice-divorced Gingrich is also courting Christian fundamentalists, who provide key voter support to the GOP.

Gingrich epitomizes the kind of slash-and-burn Conservative politics now roiling the nation, as Republicans go hard in Washington, D.C., in Madison, Wisconsin and in other newly-Republican states.

As an example of Gingrich's brand of extreme politics, he wants to eliminate the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

While he was speaker of the House, the thuggish Gingrich shut down the U.S. government twice, once in 1995 and again in 1996, in order to gain the advantage in budget negotiations with Bill Clinton.

After his ruthless tactics began to lose the Republicans elections, however, Gingrich was deposed.

The article from the New York Post.

What Gingrich's ex-wife thinks about his presidential potential [Esquire.]

EANY's "Fracking To-Do List"

New York is ground zero in the national debate on hydrofracking ("fracking"), a high-risk drilling technique that uses millions of gallons of water laced with toxic chemicals to blast natural gas out of rock formations.

Fracking accidents across the country have contaminated drinking water, created air quality hazards and violations, and polluted streams.

Earlier this year, Governor Cuomo extended an executive order placing a moratorium on fracking until June 1, 2011.

At a press conference in Albany today, watchdog organization Environmental Advocates of New York issued a "Fracking To-Do List" for state leaders and lawmakers that calls on Governor Cuomo and the New York State Legislature to protect the state's drinking water before allowing gas drilling.

EANY is concerned that all phases of hydrofracking, from the millions of gallons of water drawn from the Delaware River, to the toxic chemical brew in fracking fluid and its potential to leach into the water supply, to the state’s ability to treat and dispose of fracking wastewater containing naturally-occurring radioactive materials.

Because fracking has poisoned wells and waterways from Wyoming to Pennsylvania, EANY wants to see New York prioritize clean water over hydrofracking. Everyone -- the governor, the state legislature, the state's Department of Environmental Conservation, has a role to play in creating the "gold standard" for fracking in our state.

Here's the EANY list :

• Pass A. 5318 / S. 3455 to protect water resources and establish a permitting program to oversee large water draws statewide.
• Regulate fracking fluids (A. 2922) by directing the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to draft regulations making the gas industry list the chemical ingredients in fracking fluids and prohibiting the use of chemicals that are toxic to humans. The bill would also require that permits be withheld until such regulations are adopted. 
• Close the hazardous waste loophole in current state law and require that all waste produced by oil or gas facilities that meet the definition of "hazardous" be transported and treated as hazardous. 
• Address New Yorkers’ fracking concerns in the next draft drilling plan, holding the revised draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (dSGEIS) until it has been completed. Once released, the draft should be subject to an extended public comment period, and the DEC should take the time to incorporate public comments prior to completion. 
• Revise the dSGEIS to update the state’s drilling regulations and include a cumulative impact analysis addressing the worst-case scenario of up to 2,500 wells per year. 

At today's briefing, Cornell Professor Susan Christopherson discussed the potential economic impacts of fracking on New York’s cities and towns.  Her research shows that, while individual New Yorkers may benefit from gas drilling on their property, fracking will impose significant costs on local government that need to be weighed. Depending on the pace and the scale of drilling, local governments may lack the capacity to respond to the demands that fracking will put on them.

Christopherson wasn't able to find support for the supposition that fracking is capable of capturing sufficient private investment to enable the state to reap any long-term economic benefits from allowing the practice.

Who You Lookin' At?

Linkage

Move to the "deserted shores of Bay Ridge"? WTF? Has this guy ever been out of Manhattan? [Curbed.]

Another overpriced Bay Ridge "mansion" goes up for sale [Curbed.]

The Beehive Hairdresser discovers STD Wines and Liquors in Kensington.

Surveillance video of the Park Slope rapist [NY 1.]

The deadly Brooklyn fire that killed retired teacher Mary Feagin on one of the windiest days in recent memory was started by a "Voodoo sex ceremony" gone wrong [sify.com.]

A guy named Vincenzo Cumbo paved over the front yard of a house he bought in residential Carroll Gardens and tried to turn it into a sidewalk cafe [New York Post.]

Right-wing demagogues Hannity, O'Reilly and Limbaugh are all union members -- in addition to being arch-hypocrites [Alternet.]

A livery car-slash-cab you can hail on the street arrives [Sheepshead Bites.]

Anonymous takes aim at the Koch brothers [Raw Story.]

One Wyoming Vietnam Veteran's hydrofracking story [Pro Publica.]

Join the 2011 Global Population Speakout.

Rev. Billy brings video back from Madison [Alternet.]

Least Restrictive Alternative

"You Can't Keep Putting People in a Corner"

Saturday's national rally in solidarity with Wisconsin's unionized public workers drew at least 150,000 pro-labor demonstrators to state capitols across the country and sent a message of support to Wisconsin's fugitive Democratic senators, in hiding in Illinois.

Activist organization MoveOn estimated the total number of demonstrators in Madison at 100,000, with another 50,000 people turning out for rallies held in every American state and an additional 40,000 following the live feed. 

The fact that all of this came together within a 4-day period points to the Madison protests having lit a fire.

The Republican assault on the American middle class has energized and mobilized progressives on a massive scale. About a thousand gathered in Philadelphia on Saturday, chanting "Tax the rich, stop the war", following a 1,000-person protest two days earlier. An estimated 3,100 rallied in Trenton, where public workers are fighting for their economic lives. Thousands rallied in Albany and in New York City, where teachers, construction workers, and state employees gathered at City Hall booed the Koch brothers and chanted, "Cut bonuses, not teachers." An estimated 2,000 turned out in Chicago, and a thousand more rallied in Washington, D.C.  Thousands rallied in Portland and Salem in Oregon and in Olympia, Washington. Union members and supporters in the thousands protested in Columbus, Ohio. In Indiana, as demonstrators marched at the state capitol in Indianapolis, Democrats in the Indiana state senate slipped across state lines to block anti-union legislation.

The Wisconsin protests -- now joined by the state's police and firefighters -- have sparked a national movement that activists call long-overdue and critically necessary.  For the first time, American progressives are forcefully pushing back against the Republican/Conservative/Tea Party message, rejecting the "budget cutting" rationale used to cover broad-based attacks on environmental regulation, organized labor, women's health care, and social programs.

For three weeks now, organized labor supporters have been camped out -- many of them 24/7-- in Madison protesting Republican/Tea Party Governor Scott Walker's legislative move to strip Wisconsin public workers of collective bargaining rights -- as a "budget cutting" measure.

The Republican-dominated Wisconsin State Assembly passed the Walker legislation on Friday, but Democratic senators, by fleeing the state, have denied the Republicans a quorum and blocked a full vote.

New Jersey's Chris Christie and other Republican governors are anxiously watching Wisconsin, ready to follow Walker's lead if he succeeds in killing the collective bargaining rights of the state's public workers.

What happens in Wisconsin will impact the future of all American workers. The Republican/Conservative alliance has shown its willingness to destroy the country's unions, regardless of the impact on the American middle class.

Where does this agenda come from? Not us, apparently.  According to a January New York Times poll, 43% of Americans see job creation as our country's most pressing issue, compared to the 14% who ranked the deficit as the biggest problem. But if, like a lot of ordinary Americans, you're jacked into the mainstream media-enabled Republican propaganda machine, you're probably paying more attention to the rhetoric about deficits and cutbacks than the fact that you can't find a job and that, even if you could, you'd be making Walmart wages.

Time to wake up and smell the cheese, Foxheads! 

Progressives have watched in horror as Republicans hijacked the debate about the American economy and cynically narrowed it to a fight about how much they get to cut budgets, how many thousands of workers they get to lay off, and how many crucial services they're going to take away from people who need every bit of social support they can get in this recession -- while the wealthiest 2% of Americans laugh all the way to the bank.

Americans have always been confused about the taxing/spending equation:  they support the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans; they don't want their taxes to go up; but they don't want to see essential government programs like Medicare and Social Security cut. Many Americans don't even seem to know that Social Security, Pell Grants, Medicaid  and food stamps are government-funded programs, making them easy pickings for the Tea Party.

Today's progressives are still fighting off the Reagan-era "starve the beast" rhetoric of 20 years ago.  They've never been able to effectively counter the Republican's "eat the weak" mindset, but at least they've figured out that it's time to show up on the street, before it's too late for all of us, and articulate an alternative progressive vision.

Wisconsin is just the beginning of the fight:  other protests are scheduled in the coming weeks. On March 5 in Tennessee, the Tennessee Education Association will protest a proposal to strip teachers of collective bargaining rights.

AlterNet's collection of photos from the rallies.

More photos from rallies across the U.S. from MoveOn. 

The article from Alternet.

Only the wealthiest Americans -- people like Scott Walker's patrons the Koch brothers -- think that denying American workers the right to collective bargaining is a good idea [Alternet.]

Rich, Free and Miserable at powerHouse Books

The next season of powerHouse Sundays, presented by powerHouse Books and Hartman/Klein Productions, will begin on March 13 at 5 PM with a book launch and signing by John Brueggemann at the powerHouse Arena, 37 Main Street in DUMBO.

Admission is $10.

Writer John Brueggemann, a professor of sociology at Skidmore College, will read from his new book Rich, Free, and Miserable: The Failure of Success in America.

Brueggemann argues, in this book, that, as market thinking has saturated our daily lives, many people in our "wealthy" nation are emotionally and financially bankrupt, and offers ideas about how we might change that.

Brueggemann says of the book:

"I spent about 20 years thinking and writing about people who are marginalized in American society. I still think that work is important. But several years ago it occurred to me that it’s not only the “losers” who are having a hard time in our society:  these are difficult times for the “winners” too. The price of success may be too high. I noticed that my family and friends had a lot of the problems described in my book -- it has an autobiographical element.

I have also been frustrated that social scientists don't speak to a broader audience outside the academy. So I wanted to talk to people, other than my colleagues, who care about our society. I think there are people of good will -- liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat, secular and religious -- who don’t like where our society is headed."

There will be a Q and A period after the reading.

The F is the closest train, but it's a short walk from the A/C/2/3.

MAP IT.

Rally for Women's Health Care, Foley Square

Coverage from NY1.

More from Alternet.

Best signs from the rally [Gothamist.]

Still a Brooklyn Kid

Maxine Schacker's new blog, Still a Brooklyn Kid, is about Brooklyn and Bay Ridge, where Maxine, who now lives elsewhere, came from.

Her first post features a photograph, taken in 1915, of two young girls standing at the corner of 71st Street and Narrows Avenue in Bay Ridge.

The girl on the left was Maxine's mother, who lived a half-a-block away in the house where Maxine later grew up.

Behind the girls, a block away, is Shore Road, and beyond it the Narrows and Staten Island.

Across the street and to the right in the photo is the block where Xaverian High School now stands. By the time Maxine was born, all of the old houses in the photo had been demolished, and the vacant lot was overrun with weeds. In one corner was a tiny Revolutionary-era cemetery.

During the World War II era, when Maxine was growing up in the neighborhood, the local kids called the lot “the jungle”, and made "war" there against the Axis Powers on Saturdays.

Xaverian High School was opened in 1956, the year Maxine went away to college. Xaverian's first graduates, the class of ’61, will soon mark their 50th reunion.

Maxine's mother’s family was among the first Jewish settlers in Bay Ridge. Her father, a civil engineer who helped design the Fourth Avenue subway -- to what was then a semi-rural part of Brooklyn -- liked the area, and moved the family here around 1910.

During Maxine's childhood in the 1940s and ‘50s, the neighborhood was largely Scandinavian-, Irish- and Italian-American.

Check out Maxine's blog here.

Turns out that the blogger at Still a Brooklyn Kid is not Maxine herself, but a friend of hers, who will hopefully provide me with a name, so I can properly attribute the blog.

Linkage

It seems that New York State legislators Jeffrey Klein and Diane Savino ("Klavino") are in love [New York Post.]

The New York Feral Cat Coalition offers a day-long series of workshops on March 26 on working with feral kittens, at the ASPCA in Manhattan  [New York Feral Cat Coalition.]

Attend a March 14 meeting on the proposed Park Slope Historic District Expansion [Park Slope Civic Council.]

Read Public Advocate Bill DiBlasio's 2010 Action Report.

Federal prosecutors indict a 78-year-old chemistry professor for handing out literature on the steps of the federal courthouse at 500 Pearl Street in Manhattan [New York Post.]

New York icon Pete Hamill turns out to help try to save an old house in Cooper Square [The Villager.]

Everything you ever wanted to know about Andrew Cuomo's proposed state budget [Governor Cuomo's website.]

Scott Walker's collective bargaining-killing bill passes the Republican-dominated Wisconsin Assembly [Alternet.]

Bet you didn't know that Wisconsin public workers fund 100% of their own pension and health care costs [Alternet.]

The mainstream media ignores the story about Scott Walker getting punk'd by the Buffalo Beast. [Alternet.]

Libyan protesters are shot down by Gadhafi's militia [AP.]

What -- and Who -- is Brooklyn?

The latest issue of City Limits Magazine will feature Brooklyn, The Borough Behind The Brand, an article that attempts to answer the question:  "What does it mean to be "Brooklyn?"

No borough in New York City, and maybe no other urban place in America, has the kind of name recognition that Brooklyn does. It's an icon of American popular culture.

During the buy-build Bloomberg administration, Brooklyn has become the poster child for the city's gentrification boom -- from boutiques in Hubert Selby Jr's once-gritty Red Hook to luxury high-rises in Spike Lee's Fort Greene.

But does the imagined Brooklyn reflect the lives of the people who actually live here?

City Limits goes looking for the real Brooklyn -- the borough behind the brand.

Christ Church Summer Program Open House

The Christ Church After School Summer Program and Creative Youth Center will host an Open House at Christ Church, 7301 Ridge Boulevard in Bay Ridge, on Saturday, March 5 from 10 AM to 1 PM.

The after school will also be open to visiting parents on Fridays in March from 3:30 – 5:30 PM.

Each week of the summer program will be based on a different theme, will include three field trips, and will feature art, environmental projects, cooking and lacrosse.

There is a beautiful playground on the after-school premises.

The program offers parents flexible scheduling, including early drop-off at 7:30, and alternative transportation arrangements, as needed.

The after school's newest program component is theater arts.  Students can learn and participate in all aspects of the theater experience, including composing music, learning to plan an instrument, learning to sing and dance, make sets, design costumes, and act.

Instruction is provided by qualified professional teachers.

The arts program culminates in a student production. 

Students have the option of taking the theater arts component as a stand-alone or as part of the regular summer program.

The after school and the Creative Youth Center are also available on a drop-in basis.

For further information, email the after school at ccafterschool@yahoo.com or call 718-745-3698.

Rally to Save the American Dream

All people of conscience are invited to stand in solidarity with the Wisconsin public workers at The Rally to Save the American Dream, Saturday, February 26 at 11 AM at City Hall Park, 250 Broadway in Manhattan.

There will be rallies at every state house in the country on Saturday.

The Republican Party is seeking to destroy what ordinary Americans have left of the American Dream. In Wisconsin, the Republican majority in the state assembly has voted to strip public workers of their collective bargaining rights.

The rally organizers seek an end to the Republican attacks on public workers and public services, investment in the American workforce, and fair taxation.

Share this event on Facebook. 

Sign up at the MoveOn website.

More about the rally from Alternet.

DCCC to Robo Call Bay Ridge

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has unveiled a new robo-calling plan targeted at Michael Grimm's congressional district in Staten Island and Bay Ridge, as part of a bigger effort challenging the Republicans' budget cutting proposals.

The message knocks Grimm for siding with the Republican cuts, pointing out -- because, I guess, somebody told the DNC DCCC there are a lot of cops living out this way -- that it will impact public safety.

Here's the text of the call:

Everyone knows we need to cut spending and reduce the deficit in Washington. And we can do that by reforming government, cutting wasteful spending, and getting rid of taxpayer subsidies for the Big Oil companies making record profits.

But instead, Representative Michael Grimm voted for a partisan plan to cut funding for local police by 26%.

 If Michael Grimm has his way, more cops will be out of a job and our streets will be less safe - threatening our communities.

Call Representative Michael Grimm at XXXX and tell him to cut taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil, not the cops that keep our streets safe.

The post from the Observer.

More from the Brooklyn Paper.

Why would anybody think that robo-calls -- regardless of the content or the target -- are a good idea?  That kind of approach is out of sync with the politics of the moment, I think.  And, unfortunately, that's how I feel about the Democratic Party at large right now.  The leadership, the candidates, the ideas all seem to be at least a generation behind the times.  It's hard to tell the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats these days, when both parties seem to be dominated by prehistoric figures.  American politics has become Jurassic Park: dominated by clanking dinosaurs who don't even seem to know we're here -- until they're pissed off or hungry.

We need to change that.

I initially thought that the DNC and the DCCC were essentially the same organization.  Turns out they're not. Woops! My bad.

Rev. Billy, Back from Madison

Rev. Billy, consort Savi, and the Church of Earthalujah are back from the people's protest in Madison, Wisconsin, and will share their stories this Sunday, February 27, at 7:30 PM, at Theatre 80, 80 St. Mark's Place in Manhattan.

Joined by the 35-voice Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, the Rev. and Savi will tell us what it was like to be in Madison, and sing in celebration of The Global Commons.

Saith Rev. Billy:

"This week we honor and thank the brave public servants in Madison, Wisconsin. There is a remarkable bond between Tahrir Square, Madison civic center, and activists everywhere. The Commons, even a half a world away, is the same Commons. When that Cairo citizen ordered pizza for the state workers in Madison -- that's hot democracy!"

Tickets $10, no one turned away.

Further details from the website.

Watch the live stream at Revbilly.com.

Accessing Building Information Using QR Codes

In a move that could make it easier for New Yorkers to check the status of construction projects in their neighborhoods, the Bloomberg administration has pioneered Quick Response (QR) codes on building permits.

In the same way a scanned barcode does, QR codes provide smartphone users with immediate data access when the displayed code is scanned with their device.

Using a free application, downloaded to a smartphone, New Yorkers will now be able to scan the QR code of any construction permit and instantly get details about the project from the city's Department of Buildings, such as approved scope of work, who owns the property, who filed the application, other associated projects, and any related complaints and violations.

Then, by clicking a link on your screen, you can initiate a phone call to 311 to register any complaint.

All permits are expected to have QR codes by 2013, according to the Mayor's Office.

An example of what you might see using a QR code link.

The post from Gotham Gazette.

The press release on NYC.Gov.

Grimm's Favorite President? G.H.W. Bush

In a President's Day interview by conservative blog FrumForum ("frum" is Yiddish for orthodox or observant), Bay Ridge Congressional Representative Michael Grimm named one-term George H.W. Bush as his favorite president -- after Ronald Reagan.

Grimm's was the only vote for Bush The Elder.  He said he chose Bush based on his own military service during the first Bush administration's Operation Desert Storm, praising Bush's combination of military, foreign service, congressional, government, and political experience.

"President George H. W. Bush is the greatest and most dignified American I have ever had the privilege and honor to meet," Grimm said.

Not surprisingly, Bush The Elder was an ally of former Staten Island Congressional Representative Guy Molinari, who funded Grimm's campaign against first-term Democratic Representative Michael McMahon.

Grimm carried Bush's endorsement in that campaign.

Gerrymandering Screening and Discussion Tomorrow

Prospect Heights filmmaker Jeff Reichart's acclaimed documentary Gerrymandering, which premiered last year at the Tribeca Film Festival, will be screened tomorrow, Wednesday, February 23, at the Dweck Center at the Central Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, 10 Grand Army Plaza.

State Assembly Member Hakeem Jeffries and State Senator Daniel Squadron will join the filmmaker for a post-screening conversation about how to reform the redistricting process.

The film will be screened at 6 PM.  The discussion will begin at 8 PM.

The event is hosted by the New Kings Democrats, Prospect Heights Democrats for Reform, Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn, Independent Neighborhood Democrats, the 57th A.D. Democratic Organization, Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats, Progressive Association for Political Action, Brooklyn Latino Democratic Club, and Manhattan Young Democrats.

For more information, visit the NKD website.

Move On at Michael Grimm's New Dorp Office

The organization Move On will host an "Invest in America Speak Out" at Congressional Representative Michael Grimm's Staten Island office, 265 New Dorp Lane in Staten Island, on Thursday, February 24 at 4 PM.

Why is this event being organized? Republicans are proposing billions of dollars in budget cuts that will eliminate family planning, women's health care, WIC, Head Start, public broadcasting, and other basic lifelines for those Americans who are hardest hit by the recession.

The event organizers want to send a message to Michael Grimm and his Republican colleagues that Americans need Congress to invest in us, and in our communities.

Libyan Solidarity Demonstration at the U.N.

As the situation in Yemen and Bahrain deteriorates, and as strongman Muammar al-Gaddafi unleashes armed mercenaries on Libyan demonstrators, the UFPJ New Jersey Mass Mobilization Task Force is calling on all Arabic and non-Arabic people and organizations in New York City to rally in solidarity with the people of Yemen, Bahrain and Libya as they seek their freedom and human rights.

The rally will take place on Wednesday, February 23, from 4:30 to 6:30 PM, in front of Libya's Permanent Mission to the United Nations, 309 East 48th Street (between 1st and 2nd Aves.), in Manhattan.

Visit the group's Facebook page for more information.

Farewell to Salem Church

Linkage

Check out the MTA's new Bus Time, a GPS-based application that tells you when the next bus will arrive. Find the B63 right now.

The skinny on the 2011 Bay Ridge St. Patrick's Day Parade [Brooklyn Irish.]

Actor Holt McCallany, who kindof grew up in Bay Ridge, gets a rave review from the Philadelphia Inquirer for his knockout portrayal of boxer Lights Leary.

Sheepshead Bay is losing its Pathmark supermarket [NY Post.]

FDNY:  the human costs of Bloomberg's budget cuts revealed in deadly Flatbush fire [CBS.]

State Senator Carl Kruger must be feeling the quease as his onetime good buddy Michael Levitis cops a plea [New York Post.]

Sign up for the Historic District Council's 17th Annual Preservation Conference March 4-6, featuring walking tours of Staten Island's Snug Harbor and Brooklyn's Wallabout.

Help shape the city's PlaNYC 2011. 

The strategy behind the Republicans' across-the-board assault on ordinary Americans [Alternet.]

Here's my favorite quote from that article:

Democrats also help conservatives by what a friend has called Democratic Communication Disorder. Republican conservatives have constructed a vast and effective communication system, with think tanks, framing experts, training institutes, a system of trained speakers, vast holdings of media, and booking agents. Eighty percent of the talking heads on TV are conservatives. Talk matters because language heard over and over changes brains. Democrats have not built the communication system they need, and many are relatively clueless about how to frame their deepest values and complex truths.

Another take on the Republicans' "divide and conquer" strategy [Raw Story.]

The latest developments in the middle-class uprising in Wisconsin [Alternet.]

Sign up to host a screening of Citizens' United's revealing docu-cartoon "The Story of Stuff".

Want to support American troops?  Maybe listening to them would be a good place to start [Alternet.]

Qaddafi's Libyan regime begins to totter under relentless waves of protest [AP.].

Sign, Bay Ridge Animal Hospital

Chiara String Quartet at Galapagos

On Thursday, March 31 at 8 PM, the "breathtaking" Ciara String Quartet will premiere Daniel Ott’s String Quartet No. 2, at Galapagos Art Space, 16 Main Street in DUMBO, in a program that includes Lutoslawski’s String Quartet. 

Tickets are $10 in advance at www.galapagosartspace.com or 718.222.8500; and $15 at the door.

This is the fourth installment of the innovative quartet's (Rebecca Fischer and Julie Yoon, violins; Jonah Sirota, viola; and Gregory Beaver, cello) season-long Creator/Curator concert series, for which it has commissioned four rising young composers to write new works and to curate the concert in which the new work is performed, drawing from music that influences and inspires them. 

The Creator/Curator for March 31 is New York composer Daniel Ott. His String Quartet No. 2 will receive its New York premier, paired with Witold Lutoslawski’s rarely performed -- and demanding -- String Quartet.

Ott's String Quartet No. 2 deals with loss. The two Odes within the piece are dedicated to a composer who experienced the loss of a child: Ode 1 to Franz Liszt, whose son Daniel died in 1859 at the age of 20; and Ode 2 to Gustav Mahler, whose daughter Maria died at the age of four.

Ott is garnering national and international recognition, including an ongoing collaboration with New York City Ballet principal dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, with whom he has created four ballets.

Ott teaches at Juilliard, and is an Artist in Residence at Fordham University.

The "vastly talented" and "highly virtuosic" Chiara, celebrating its 10th anniversary season, has commissioned and premiered new music for string quartet since its inception. 

Chiara is an Italian word meaning “clear, pure or light.” 

Find the Chiara Quartet online at www.chiaraquartet.net, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/chiarastringquartet.

Technical Difficulties

Sorry, the laptop died -- and it will take me a while to fire up the spare and update security on that machine.

I'll be back!

Arab Pride, 5th Avenue

Rally for Women's Health Care in Foley Square

A coalition of women's organizations, including

• Choice Matters
• Family Planning Advocates of New York State
• Feminist Majority Foundation
• NARAL Pro-Choice NY
• National Advocates for Pregnant Women
• New York Civil Liberties Union
• NOW-New York City
• NOW-New York State
• Planned Parenthood Federation of America
• Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic
• Planned Parenthood Mid-Hudson Valley
• Planned Parenthood of Nassau County
• Planned Parenthood of New York City
• PRCH, Public Health Association of New York City
• Public Health Solutions
• Raising Women's Voices
• Trust Women
• Women's Media Center
• YWCA of Brooklyn

-- in response to the Republican attack on women's health care, have organized a rally from 1-3 PM on Saturday, February 26 in Foley Square, across from the New York State Supreme Court Building in lower Manhattan.  

Congress is home and listening, say the organizers. It's time to make some noise.

RSVP here.

Tweet the rally: (sample tweet -- “Join me and @ppnycaction on Feb 26 as we stand up for women’s health RSVP today to http://bit.ly/h4ubMk #Feb26 #women.”)

Facebook the rally:  Join the facebook event and invite your friends.

Visit the Tumblr blog for the rally.

The Violent Drug

Like everyone else I know, I've thought a lot about how helpless I would have felt being locked down on that 3 train with Maxsim Gelman and his butcher knife.  

Gelman's in custody now, but the kind of jaw-dropping orgy of murder and mayhem he perpetrated could happen here again. Gelman's drug of choice, Phencyclidine ("PCP" or "Angel Dust"), is believed to be making a comeback on city streets nationwide, and is easy to find in New York City, a regional hub.

Although PCP has always maintained a profile in the ghetto, it was largely overtaken by crack and crystal meth in the 80s and 90s.  The drug is now back again, particularly among disaffected young people on the fringe -- like Maksim Gelman, a known user.

PCP is appealing to young people because it is relatively cheap:  a small bag offering a 6-8 hour high sells for about $20.

Most users smoke the drug by dipping marijuana joints or tobacco cigarettes into liquid PCP.  Some marijuana dealers soak their joints in PCP and market them as high-grade pot.  The PCP enhances the effects of the THC in the marijuana. The user may not know the joint is laced with PCP, thinking it's just really good weed.

PCP users are oblivious to pain and super aggressive. PCP-addled suspects have been known to throw refrigerators at police officers or jump out of windows -- hence the law enforcement nickname "The Superman Drug".

PCP use has long been associated with extreme violence. Last December in Stamford Connecticut, a police officer was shot in the face while serving a search warrant at the home of a suspected PCP dealer.  The month before, a part-time truck driver in Stamford, high on PCP, went on a rampage behind the wheel of a box truck, causing 13 crashes before smashing into a school bus full of high school students.

I'm surprised I haven't been reading more about PCP, given its apparent resurgence on the street -- and the role it likely played in the most spectacular killing spree New York City has seen in decades.

Related article from the Washington Post.

Brooklyn Civic Alliance Meets

UPDATED POST

Following a successful initial meeting last month at Brooklyn College, attended by representatives from 30 neighborhood organizations, the organizers have scheduled a second meeting on Monday, February 28, at 7 PM, at Piramide Restaurant, 499 5th Avenue (near 12th Street) in Park Slope, Brooklyn, to form a borough-wide organization to be known as the "Brooklyn Civic Alliance". ( Take the R train to 9th Street.)

The objective of the Brooklyn Civic Alliance will be to establish a platform from which civic organizations across the borough can exchange skills and information, rally behind common causes, and mobilize their community base, borough-wide.

If your organization is interested in sending a representative, email Raul Rothblatt at rrothblatt@gmail.com, or call him at 646-498-6093 for more information.

As an example of what the Brooklyn Civic Alliance could one day be capable of, the Queens Civic Congress, when it first met more than 12 years ago, had 15 groups in attendance:  it now has over 100 member associations.

The Republican War on Women

Ten recent examples:

• As part of an effort to cut off women's access to abortion, Republicans are trying to redefine rape. Although they promised, after an initial backlash, to stop, they're still at it.
• A Georgia state legislator wants to substitute the word "accuser" for "victim" in the legal description of the crimes of rape, stalking, and domestic violence, while "victim" would still be used for non-gendered crimes, like burglary.
• South Dakota Republicans have proposed a bill that would provide legal justification for the murder of a doctor providing abortions.
• Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars in funding for food aid for poor women and children.
• Congressional Republicans have introduced a bill that would allow a hospital to let a woman die in childbirth rather than perform an abortion to save her life.
• Maryland Republicans de-funded a county program that provided preschool for poor kids -- because they think women should be at home with their children, instead of holding a job. 
• Congressional Republicans want to cut that same program, Head Start, by $1 billion, which could end preschool for 200,000 poor kids. 
• Two-thirds of people who are old and poor are women, because women have been traditionally underpaid for their work.  A Republican spending bill would cut off employment services, meals and housing for seniors. 
• The House just approved a Republican-backed amendment cutting all federal funding to Planned Parenthood, a trusted provider of basic family planning and women's health care, as well as cutting all federal family planning and women's health care funding. 

Here's another one:  a Republican legislator in Georgia wants to create "the uterus police" -- who would investigate miscarriages.

And another one:  the Republican anti-choice bill in the House would bring down in IRS audit on any woman who has an abortion. 

________________________________________________

1. "'Forcible Rape' Language Remains In Bill To Restrict Abortion Funding," The Huffington Post, February 9, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=206084

"Extreme Abortion Coverage Ban Introduced," Center for American Progress, January 20, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205961

2. "Georgia State Lawmaker Seeks To Redefine Rape Victims As 'Accusers,'" The Huffington Post, February 4, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=206007

3. "South Dakota bill would legalize killing abortion doctors," Salon, February 15, 2011
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/02/15/south_dakota_abortion_killing_bill

4. "House GOP Proposes Cuts to Scores of Sacred Cows," National Journal, February 9, 2011
http://nationaljournal.com/house-gop-proposes-cuts-to-scores-of-sacred-cows-20110209

5. "New GOP Bill Would Allow Hospitals To Let Women Die Instead Of Having An Abortion," Talking Points Memo, February 4, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205974

6. "Republican Officials Cut Head Start Funding, Saying Women Should be Married and Home with Kids," Think Progress, February 16, 2011
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/16/gop-women-kids/

7. "Bye Bye, Big Bird. Hello, E. Coli," The New Republic, Feburary 12, 2011
http://www.tnr.com/blog/83387/house-republican-spending-cuts-pell-education-usda-pbs

8. "House GOP spending cuts will devastate women, families and economy," The Hill, February 16, 2011
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-a-budget/144585-house-gop-spending-cuts-will-devastate-women-families-and-economy- 
 
9. "House passes measure stripping Planned Parenthood funding," MSNBC, February 18,2011
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/18/6080756-house-passes-measure-stripping-planned-parenthood-funding

"GOP Spending Plan: X-ing Out Title X Family Planning Funds," Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2011
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/02/09/gop-spending-plan-x-ing-out-title-x-family-planning-funds/

10. Ibid.

"Birth Control for Horses, Not for Women," Blog for Choice, February 17, 2011
http://www.blogforchoice.com/archives/2011/02/birth-control-f.html

Linkage

The last "Bloody Sunday" march in Bay Ridge [Brooklyn Paper.]

No second chances:  Golden wants the sealed records of law enforcement applicants unsealed for the city's criminal record check.  Did you never get a second chance, Marty? [Brooklyn Daily Eagle.]

Bed Stuy's Community Board 3 hosts a meeting on landmarking and invites the LPC [New York Real Estate.]

Governor Cuomo introduces a redistricting reform bill [Brooklyn Young Republicans.]

Register for J Street's 2011 Annual Conference in D.C [J Street.]

Conservative firefighter refused to respond to the scene of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in Tucson because he didn't agree with her politics [AP.]

House Republicans vote to shield greenhouse-gas polluters and privately owned colleges from federal regulators; block a plan to clean up the Chesapeake Bay; and bar the government from shutting down mountaintop removal coal mines [AP.]

More of what the House has been up to this past week [Crooks and Liars.]

The American 911 system, it seems, is a bit of a joke [WNYC.]