Brooklyn Ron

Prospect Lefferts Gardens Neighborhood Association (PLAGNA) Celebrates 50 Years!

Come one, come all:)

Tuesday, Nov. 19, 7:30 pm

Greenlight Bookstore is honored to host an enlightening panel discussion commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Prospect Lefferts Gardens Neighborhood Association! 

Founding and current members of PLGNA will speak about the organization’s inception and early years

fighting redlining and defending diversity in the 60s and 70s, and the impact various initiatives have had on the community over the years.

Panelists include:

•Dr. Una Clarke, the first Caribbean-born woman elected to the New York City’s legislature, longtime PLG resident and former PLGNA activist

•Ron Howell, Brooklyn College Professor, journalist and author of Boss of Black Brooklyn: The Life and Times of Bertram L. Baker

• Jerome Krase, Brooklyn College Professor, former PLGNA Member and author of Seeing Cities Change and Race, Class and Gentrification in Brooklyn

•Deborah Mutnick, LIU Brooklyn Professor of English, longtime PLG resident, PLGNA Board Member, and project director of The Voices of Lefferts Community Writing and Publishing Project

• and others to be announced!

This event is free and open to the public.

632 Flatbush Avenue

(at Fenimore)

greenlightbookstore.com

(718) 246-0200

NY Times’ Thomas Friedman Declares, ‘I Like Mike’

The Times’ Thomas Friedman says, “I like Mike.” Mike, of course, being NYC ex mayor Michael Bloomberg. Older folks and history lovers know Friedman’s declaration is a flash back to “I like Ike” buttons of two generations ago, referring to the kinda likable Dwight David Eisenhower, who, yes, did win the presidency. (And, yes, like Mike was, Ike was a Republican.)

 

I loved Friedman’s “disclosure,” near the bottom of his column: “Bloomberg Philanthropies has contributed to Planet Word, the museum my wife is building in Washington, to promote reading and literacy.”

 

What matters most to me - and maybe some others? - is that I associate Friedman with the sadly successful campaign to get us to invade Iraq.

 

If you think I’m wrong about this, let me know.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/opinion/michael-bloomberg.html

All The News That’s Fit to Print - and Mark Zuckerberg, Too

I was reading the Times Sunday Review piece by esteemed writer Mark Zuckerberg. It was on Page 3. Newspaper loyalists know it doesn’t get more prominent than that. Zuckerberg wants the world to know he’s trying to do right by American journalists and the American public. He announced the start of “Facebook News”! Just cough up your data - age, race, gender, residence, alma mater, political views, religion, criminal record, etc. (Oh, and your friends’ data, too.) There was (virtual) fine print at the bottom of the page warning that Zuckerberg can take your data and sell it to advertisers and right-wing data collectors. But, hey, what the hell.

 

In The Times Mark was essentially saying: Hey, I get it. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez kicked me in the ass on public tv yesterday and made me look like a lying, thieving d___. And I’m not that! I’m a decent human being! And Facebook is gonna show you. We’re gonna win over the Fourth Estate. We will give them wide FB space and they can take readers to their own paywalls!

 

So, I just thumbed “Facebook News” into the search bar. And I came up with one header after another plugging Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Breitbart News, Fox News and Mark Zuckerberg.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe it’s time to joint the Great Hack reactors - and meet up elsewhere. 😞 

Elizabeth Warren must have seen ‘The Social Network’

God, what a creepy person Mark Zuckerberg seemed to be:( 

 

Maybe he’ll repent someday. Who knows?

 

Meanwhile, Warren is rocking it!

 

 

‘Warren escalates war with Zuckerberg and Facebook’

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/12/warren-facebook-2020-045110

Brooklyn College Journalism Alum Paul Frangipane Shines Light on Hardships of Families of NYS Prisoners

I’ve been teaching English Composition for the first time and have been loving it. They’re fresh out of high school, smart, ambitious, a bit afraid and hungry to learn techniques of strong writing.

 

My journalism students have been older and in many ways wiser. Some of them have felt more like colleagues than students.

 

Speaking of student/colleagues, one is Brooklyn College Journalism alum Paul Frangipane (photo), who this week left me with pride almost beyond articulating. Almost. His piece in the Brooklyn Eagle touches so many tender nerves. I hope that in past years I spoke to him and his classmates about my own time (reporting!) in New York State prisons - and how those experiences affected me in ways so strong and uplifting.

 

What a terrific job Paul did reporting on this family of a New York State prisoner and the hardships that are faced by them and so many other spouses and children of the incarcerated. The photos are Paul’s also. He has become as good a photographer as he is a journalist/writer. Eagle, be as proud as I am. 

 

I’m proud also that Black Brooklyn State Senator Velmanette Montgomery is a sponsor of a bill to ease financial burdens on families struggling to offer emotional support to imprisoned loved ones. (The Assembly sponsor is Carmen De La Rosa of Manhattan.)

 

Peace to all.

 

https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2019/10/11/family-visitation-bus/

Diahann Carroll and Me

The late Diahann Carroll’s husband Robert DeLeon rests in my mind as Bob DeLeon - former Newsday reporter. That was significant to me, especially at the time of DeLeon’s 1977 death, which was widely accepted to have been a suicide.

 

I would go to become a reporter at Newsday. He lived in the spooky subsurface as voice, for me and a number of blacks there.

 

My connection to DeLeon went beyond that. A year after his death I would become editor of the New York bureau of Ebony Magazine, where DeLeon also been a top editor. Amazing.

 

I would have called Les Payne to chat about all this. But Les is there with the other heroes now, laughing at us and waiting. But I am going to reach to former Newsday brother and colleague Sidney McNatt Cassese Sidney Cassese, who’s  among my silent FB friends. Sidney, like Les, was at Newsday back in the ‘70s.

 

What sayest thou, Sidney? Brother, where art thou?

 

Here below is a 1975 Jet Magazine piece on Robert and Diahann’s wedding. It mentions Robert’s background with Newsday. It’s in GoogleBooks, so you have to scroll for it. (In addition to Ebony, DeLeon had been a writer for Jet, sister publication of Ebony, under the extraordinarily popular and influential Johnson Publishing Company. He apparently had written about Diahann before they hooked up in romance. He left his wife for the much older Carroll.)

 

https://books.google.com/books/about/Jet.html?id=H1sDAAAAMBAJ

 

A question might be: Would Carroll have wrapped her glowing arms around ME, given these similarities, if I’d had the opportunity to write about her? 

 

Stop laughing, Damn it! 

 

RIP, Diahann Carroll, and please hug Robert DeLeon for me.

 

Between us, Carroll: Ask him if he’s related to the DeLeons on my mother’s (Baker) side. I’ve wondered from time to time.

Say What You Want About Alicia Boyd - Yes, She Can Be Foul-Mouthed - But She’s One Tough Brooklynite, Taking on Developers and Elected Officials (in This Case Laurie Cumbo)

From The Brooklyn Paper (and in the Park Slope Courier):

 

Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo claimed to have brokered a “miracle” deal to add over 100 additional affordable housing units, but has failed to provide any formal documentation about that supposed deal...

 

...Alicia Boyd, who is representing herself in a suit against the city and developers. “It looks very bad if you have an elected official who made that promise on the record to the public... and then you find out that the affordable housing didn’t exist.”

 

https://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/42/39/dtg-cumbo-missing-affordable-housing-2019-09-27-bk.html

The Great Brooklyn College Human Rights Fighter and Journalist Sandy Mui

It’s a little ironic that this picture of the great Brooklyn College Journalism alumna - Sandy Mui - was taken while we were listening to two major media figures discussing “The Great Hack.” That documentary shines a light on the hacking scandal that revealed the greed and dishonesty of Mark Zuckerberg and his “public” company Facebook. (So, please excuse that I’m now sharing this on Facebook.)

 

The questioner at the post-doc q-and-a was NYC Media Lab Executive Director Justin Hendrix. Hendrix put together yesterday’s extraordinary event, attended by so many progressive lovers of data creating, using and sharing. This group includes old-fashioned journalists, ad specialists, human rights activists, user experience (ux) administrators, embracers of augmented reality, artificial intelligence and vr videos, and so many more. (The interviewee was The New School's Professor David Carroll, who’s featured in the film for having exposed the data thieving of Facebook and others).

 

Funny thing was how - earlier in the day yesterday, right after the opening session - I went to introduce myself to the organizer of all this - Hendrix - and after I said I was teaching at Brooklyn College, he said, “Oh, maybe you know

Sandy Mui.” Then Sandy, who at that point knew I was in attendance, walked over.

😂 😂 😂 😂 

 

 

Later in the day I went to a workshop held by Sandy Mui’s bold human rights organization, Witness, where they shared insights about exposing injustices through videos.

 

Little Background: Last semester Sandy Mui won a Brooklyn College Vanguard Award for commitment to the First Amendment.

 

And, oh, several years ago (as a “kid”) she was a student in my Introduction to Journalism class.

 

😂 😂 😂 😂 Life is great! Love it! 😍 

Ain’t a damn thing funny. It’s all about money🤣 Things heat up in race for mayor!

Comptroller Scott Stringer says, “Speaker (Corey) Johnson is trying to circumvent the will of the voters and change the rules to benefit himself. The Council should reject his brazen power grab.”

Here’s how money is stacking up so far, according to the News story:
—Stringer has $2.3 million.

—Johnson has $88,481.

—Ruben Diaz Jr. has $738,707.

—Eric Adams raised $1.7 million.

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-scott-stringer-corey-johnson-campaign-finance-legislation-20190611-i7vacw6z5jhqtc75fkvzqiekle-story.html

Sent from iPhone. Please excuse autocorrected typos

‘Walt Whitman, Black Brooklyn, Wounded Knee and me’

By Ron Howell, Opinion, The Brooklyn Eagle, May 29, 2019

https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2019/05/28/opinion-walt-whitman-black-brooklyn-wounded-knee-and-me/

Sent from iPhone. Please excuse autocorrected typos