For the first time ever, an elected government body in the United States has stated that it is “beyond any doubt” that explosives—and not just plane impacts and fires alone—were responsible for destroying the three World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Fire commissioners from the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District, located just
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“Wild West” Ad Culture on Facebook Targets Youth
IMAGES ON SOCIAL MEDIA POSTED BY THE SAN DIEGO LGBT COMMUNITY CENTER, @mxdavidmx and @darrow81. In a first of its kind, Facebook has been co-opted to advertise a pharmaceutical drug. Like Russian influence on the U.S. election, the use of social media targeted at vulnerable populations raises important questions. By Kambiz Shekdar, Ph.D.
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Why do Prescription Drugs Cost So Much in the U.S.?
By D. Cascardo, MA, MPA, CFP Although many Americans have insurance that covers most of the prescription drugs they take, many more do not have any insurance or have ridiculously high co-payments with the plans they do have. Those who need to take “brand name” drugs rather than generics, may find those drugs are not
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Abolishing the Senate
By James Lincoln Collier It hardly needs to be said that the United States government is today so riven by conflict that it can no longer function. Liberals are at war with conservatives, Republicans are at war with Democrats, the president is at war with everybody. In most parliamentary democracies the voters choose a legislature
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Landmark Preservation Today
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, Architecture Editor The loss of the original NYC Penn Station caused citizens here to focus on the importance of our monumental buildings and special historic homes being lost. But the movement to preserve special places grew. Economic and population pressures continued to threaten our historic fabric, from Plymouth Rock to
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Mt. Sinai/Beth Israel Applies for Drastic Changes
By Penny Mintz Mt. Sinai/Beth Israel filed an application with the State Department of Health on July 22nd, 2019. The application seeks approval for the relocation and construction of a replacement building for the Beth Israel Hospital on 16th Street and First Avenue. If this application is approved, the hospital, with an 800-bed capacity, will
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Polly’s Folly Will Be Adjudged This Month!
Disability Rights Lawsuit Against the MTA to Follow By Arthur Z. Schwartz I spent 24 years on Community Board 2. During those 24 years I interacted with numerous City and State Agencies (mostly the Parks Department and the Hudson River Park Trust), and I experienced the Community Board as a means by which the efforts
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WestView Instagrams the Issues of the Day
By Karen Rempel Last month we reported that WestView News has begun a video interview series in which George Capsis speaks with prominent cognoscenti about newsworthy subjects. We discovered that George is a natural TV maven, delivering compelling stories and coaxing his subjects to tell all. This month, WestView is pleased to announce we continue
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Captain O’Hare: PO Israel Torres Has Got to Leave the 6th Precinct!
By Arthur Z. Schwartz It isn’t often that I write about cases I lose, but this month I just must. During the third week of May I represented a former neighbor (whose privacy I will respect by calling him “J”) in a civil rights trial arising out of his arrest in 2014. The arrest was
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A Celebration of Pride: WorldPride NYC 2019 in the Village
By Karen Rempel Marchers and spectators from around the world brought a rainbow of color and sparkle to New York City on June 30 to celebrate and support each other at the 2019 LGBTQIA+ Pride March. NYC Pride was the official host of WorldPride NYC 2019 and Stonewall 50. These events meant unprecedented millions of people
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The Dignity of Work
By Siggy Raible I am retired now and have been for almost eight years. But when I worked I found what I did to “earn a living” dignified and fruitful—I managed my husband’s small law firm. We did not make a ton of money, but we earned our keep. I was floored by the news
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Climate Change Victories
By Tom O’Keefe New York State has witnessed two major climate victories in recent weeks. First, on May 15th, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation rejected the Williams Company’s proposed Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline which would have carried fracked gas under New York Harbor off the coast of the Rockaways to Long Island.
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Skullduggery
By Roberta Curley Growing older makes me hanker for an anesthetic. At 6 a.m. I spy a chubby crease wend its way from my lower-eyelid to my upper lip. In the past, those ‘sleep lines’ would have vanished by breakfast time. Neither coaxing nor scrubbing erases the propagating interlopers. These intrusive keepsakes operate like indelible
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We’ll See What Happens
By Tom Lamia With the late arrival of spring here in Maine, there are smiles, greetings and courteous conduct among all about me. The world is right again. Snow tires off, door and window screens on, lawn furniture and Weber barbecue laid out in a circle awaiting family and friends. What’s wrong with this picture?
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Request to Albany: Do the Right Thing
By Penny Mintz There was an exciting and promising development in Albany that bears directly on the Lower Manhattan community’s struggle to save Beth Israel Hospital. It may come to nothing this year, because the legislative session ends on June 19th. But as of this writing, there is still a possibility that both the State
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Lawsuit Stops DOT 14th Street Corridor Plan—For Now
By Arthur Z. Schwartz FLASH—Just as Westview was going to press, Supreme Court Justice Eileen Rakower granted a Temporary Restraining Order barring the NYC Department of Transportation from implementing its plan to bar all cars and vans , and most trucks from 14th Street, a move DOT says it wanted to make to “speed up
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Big Victory for All Tenants
By Arthur Z. Schwartz The plight of renters, both rent-regulated and non-regulated ones, has long been part of New York City lore—steep rent hikes, shoddy maintenance, fear of being blacklisted and evicted, and a general sense of powerlessness against a landlord who doesn’t care. The State Senate and Assembly’s landmark deal on New York’s rent
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Jefferson Market Library Gets ADA Rehab
By Brian J Pape, AIA, LEED-AP The venerable Jefferson Market Library, inside the former Third Judicial District Courthouse building (ca. 1874-77), is getting an extensive ADA rehab. Since November 27, 1967 the building has served as the Jefferson Market Library—saved from the demolition ball by community preservation activists, and remodeled by architect Giorgio Cavaglieri. As
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The Shootings in San Diego, the Increase In Anti-Semitic Attacks, and My Soul
By Arthur Z. Schwartz On April 27, just as WestView went to press, there was a shooting/murder in a synagogue near San Diego. It was the second shooting in a synagogue within 6 months; last October there was a shooting/murder at a Pittsburgh synagogue. I am not a religious Jew, and I have learned to
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Pier 40 Public Forum
I’m speaking for Friends of the Earth, an environmental group with a 45 year history of work to stop over-development in the Hudson River from Battery Park City North to West 59th Street, New York water and land now controlled by Hudson River Park Trust authority (HRPT). The authority controls 60 acres of NY land
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Stop Privatization of Pier 40, Says CB2
By Bruce Trigg, MD A new generation of Robert Moses-style power brokers plan to privatize the last major public space in Lower Manhattan—if we let them. That’s right, they will push for last minute legislation in Albany to amend the Hudson River Park Act to permit the building of 700,000 square feet of commercial office
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A Tribute to Ralph David Abernathy and Martin Luther King Jr.
By Michael Duane Johnson Seven months ago, George Capsis, Publisher of the WestView News, in the Village of Manhattan, offered me an opportunity to write a piece for his paper about myself. I could not find the words or spirit until now to do so. I have no idea who I really am. For the
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Note to Mt. Sinai: We Care About Beth Israel
By Penny Mintz It seems that most people are completely unaware that Mt. Sinai intends to close the Beth Israel building on 16th Street and First Avenue. On the afternoon of Tuesday, April 16, 2019, four committed members of the Community Coalition to Save Beth Israel joined me at the corner of 16th Street and
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De Blasio to Village and Chelsea: Drop Dead!
By Arthur Schwartz Just before WestView went to press, Mayor Bill de Blasio dropped a bombshell on us: 14th Street is going to be closed to cars starting in June and they will be directed to go across town on 12th, 13th, 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th Streets. Without a single community leader or elected
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The New School: First Century
By George Capsis On the first sunny Saturday in April we sat down for sandwiches on a bench in front of the Café Panino Mucho Gusto (favored by the older crowd as a place to just sit and talk). A passing stranger looked down at me and asked, “WestView?” I responded, “Yes,” followed by his “Like your paper.” “Are
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New York City: A Tale of Two Cities – Billionaire’s Row and Habitat’s Habitat
By Siggy Raible Last week I spent some time visiting with a good friend; she’s 96 years strong, lives alone in her rent-stabilized apartment in Grammercy Park and loves having company. We got to talking about life in New York City; more specifically Manhattan. (When I was growing up in Brooklyn, Manhattan was The City.)
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Israel-Palestine
By Carol Yost When Israel became a nation in 1948, just a few years after the unspeakable Holocaust was finally over, it seemed to many like a great new beginning. Thousands of Jews and Christians thought it would be a blessing after everything the European Jewish survivors had experienced, though nothing could bring back the
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Frank Romano: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
By J. Taylor Basker Frank Romano, part-time resident of Greenwich Village, peace activist and professor of law in France, was arrested and deported from Israel recently. He is on a team of lawyers preparing a complaint for the ICC (International Criminal Court) accusing Netanyahu and Lieberman of criminal violation of the rights of Bedouins whose
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Should Abner Be Deported?
By Stanley Wlodyka In the waiting area of the offices of Judson Memorial Church by Washington Square Park, a boy of around three or four sits on the floor, diligently creating a work of art with crayons for the wall behind him, which is filled with children’s drawings of houses, animals, families, and other happy
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Youth Is 1,000 Eyes
An attempt at self healing by George Capsis, Publisher of WestView News The paper was an accidental happening—I tried to restart the Charles Street Block Association paper started by my neighbor John McAllister perhaps 40 years ago. John was an old time New England newspaperman. I remember him wearing suspenders but he may not have—he
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DOT Finally Comes to the Table!
By Arthur Z. Schwartz Flash: After nearly a year of refusing to have face to face negotiations with the 14th Street Coalition, which has led the Greenwich Village Community response to plans to shut 14th Street down to all but buses during the now cancelled L Train shutdown, the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) leadership
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Why I Am Supporting Bernie—Again
By Arthur Z. Schwartz On a cold Saturday, the first weekend in March, I trekked out to Brooklyn College to attend Bernie Sanders’ announcement that he was running for President in 2020. I had been Bernie’s NY State Counsel in 2016 and had attended the Democratic Convention as a Sanders’ pledged delegate, but I wondered
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Corey Johnson’s Vision for City May Need Glasses
By J. Taylor Basker Corey Johnson, City Council Leader, delivered his State of the City speech presenting his proposal ‘A Case for Municipal Control and a Comprehensive Transportation Vision for the Five Boroughs’ telling us what every New Yorker already knows. “Smart, well-developed transportation policy can significantly improve economic conditions and enhance public safety and
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Do Not Legalize Sex Work!
By Carol Yost Two op eds about the current state of affairs in the field of sex work appeared recently, a week apart, in the Daily News. The one published March 1, 2019, by Melanie Thompson, a sex trafficking survivor, was given the title “Hell no to legal prostitution.” On March 8, 2019, the op
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Health Notes
By Penny Mintz Beth Israel Members of the Community Coalition to Save Beth Israel met at Assemblyman Harvey Epstein’s office on February 7, 2019, to discuss the newest development in the ongoing Beth Israel saga. As an active member of PALM (Progressive Action of Lower Manhattan), Harvey Epstein had been instrumental in the creation of
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Brooklyn Hero of the Poor Now Speaks for All
By George Capsis Oh wow! Jumaane Williams won as Public Advocate and we interviewed him a few weeks ago as he sat in “my reading the New York Times chair” in our kitchen conference room at 69 Charles Street. We did not exactly endorse him as attorney Arthur Schwartz did, but asked him questions mostly
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Welcome Jumaane Williams!
By Arthur Z. Schwartz As we go to press, Jumaane Williams, of Brooklyn, is being installed as the City’s fourth Public Advocate. Besides chairing City Council meetings, the Public Advocate has rather undefined powers—but largely, it is the position of public ombudsman. Jumaane is an activist, a fighter, and an effective legislator (53 bills passed
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14th Street Busway. No? Maybe?
By Arthur Z. Schwartz Sometimes government drives all of us crazy. Even as someone who plays a role in government, and often finds himself in court suing the government, I find myself scratching my head. Late in 2017, our community was told, as part of the planned L Train shutdown, that 14h Street was going
