Dear Editors: America killed Philando Castile, who had his seat belt on while his girlfriend and child were in the car, and while it was streamed live. It’s the same country that allowed racist Jeff Sessions to become the head national law enforcement officer. It’s the same country that allows a billionaire with zero experience,
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VID—Democracy or Cronyism?
By Arthur Schwartz WestView has often featured reports on the most recent meetings of the Village Independent Democrats (VID), one of the City’s oldest “reform” clubs. This past May, the VID voted to endorse an array of candidates, including Bill de Blasio, Corey Johnson, and City Council hopeful Carlina Rivera in the district east of
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Local Residents Challenge Democratic Candidates at Village Forum
Oh wow! The election for Mayor and other sundry City offices is coming up fast—on September 12th. And, although there has been some disenchantment with Bill de Blasio, no for-real opposition candidate has emerged. At a recent meet-the-candidate rally at the LGBT Center on 13th Street, the only sparks were over the Mayor’s insistence to
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Trump and the Saudi Connection
By Gary Tomei Trump recently traveled to Saudi Arabia and told the Saudis that they are our friends, even though they espouse a type of Islam, known as Wahhabism, which essentially preaches hatred of America and promotes Jihadism. Trump made this connection even though the Saudis are, in fact, the leading promoters of terrorism in
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West Village Houses: The Saga Continues
By Brian J. Pape, AIA In the April and May issues of WestView News, I reviewed the history of West Village Houses (WVH), beginning with their 1960s inception as residences to replace dilapidated industrial buildings along the elevated railroad on Washington Street. The railroad had erected the elevated tracks, starting slowly in 1929, due to
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A Restoration Without Shortcuts
By Anne Olshansky In 2015, Joe Ienco purchased the West Village landmark building at 35 Perry Street. As an experienced property owner and landlord, he had plans to renovate and restore its original beauty and character. Being a West Village resident for the past 30 years and a Village history aficionado, Joe dove enthusiastically into
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The Landlords Wrote the Laws. Schneiderman Wants to Change Them.
By George Capsis “Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is giving a press conference on tenant harassment and you gotta go,” demanded Nelly Godfrey who lost her Christopher Street restaurant to Steve Croman—the West Village landlord who is now facing prison time and is easily vying for the number one spot as “The Worst Landlord in New
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Keep WestView in the Village
Please, George, keep WestView in the West Village. If I want to know what’s going on with Trump, there are 24/7 news channels. Stay focused on the people and businesses in OUR neighborhood. —Doug Douglass Doug, You have just echoed a phrase I use very often in production meetings: “Keep WestView focused on the West
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Countering Trump Support
Dear George: You were saintly in your patient response to poor, lonely, lashing out Mr. Gianfalla. He writes that he “survived four years of a university” but obviously never learned research skills or he would know that his claim that “[h]alf of America disagrees” with your views regarding Trump is false; the latest poll shows
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The Freedom to Criticize
Dear Editors: I have been trying to avoid responding to every letter written by ignoramus Trump supporters, but the incredible stupidity and audacity of Mark Gianfalla, who wrote to WestView excoriating the paper for its opposition to the incompetent, lying, so-called President Trump, set my blood boiling. His bold assertion that Trump is the President
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West Village Houses: What’s Next?
By Brian J. Pape, AIA In the April 2017 issue of WestView News, I introduced West Village Houses (WVH) as a local example of affordable housing under the Mitchell-Lama Housing Program. This month, I explore the plans and policies, which impacted WVH under the Bloomberg administration as well as the future of this housing development.
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Trump Hair Salon Cartoon
Pardon, Mr. President, but a group of billionaires want to thank you for cancelling the inheritance tax.
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CELEBRATING THE VILLAGE INDEPENDENT DEMOCRATS (VID) AWARDS
WestView Publisher George Capsis (second from left) is pictured at the festivities with New York City Public Advocate Letitia James; VID President Erik Coler; and New York State Senator Brad Hoylman (left to right).
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Traumatized by Trump Trauma
Below, we feature an exchange between WestView reader Mark Gianfalla and Publisher George Capsis concerning the paper’s treatment of the Trump presidency. Dear Editors: I am writing as an active resident of the West Village and one (of the few) who reads WestView News when it is left in my building. I am often disturbed
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Mom Knows Best
I’ve been writing about politics to my son, about this and that issue, and thought a recent letter may interest WestView News. —Marilyn Schwartz Hi Son, I didn’t know who Paul Rino was so, from Wikipedia, I discovered that ‘Rino’ is a stand-in for ‘Rhinoceros’ which means, in Republican lingo, a bad, no-good Republican.
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Co-Dependent Nation
Dear Editors: The United States, and increasingly, the world, is being kept in thrall by the new president, Donald J. Trump. His lack of experience, combined with narcissistic demands, keep everyone on edge, trying to second-guess what he will say and do with uncalculated and, perhaps, irreversible consequences. He claimed that he’d follow campaign promises
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Hate in West Village
We received a call from Dr. Steven Schwartz, PhD who asked that we print this anti-Semitic scrawl with his name defiantly displayed. Trump hate has made it to the Village.
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Trump Trauma
A New Monthly Feature in WestView News Nothing in recent history has shattered the traditional acceptance that our national government, right or left, would somehow sustain a safe middle road between the financial and political perils of a planet now totally connected by smartphones. That is, until Trump. A psychotherapist called me to offer, with
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Trumphobia
By Christina Raccuia After Trump was elected, and even during his campaign, teachers noticed an uptick in bullying and distress in classrooms, as their students were, and continue to be, exposed to a president who regularly attacks his opponents in bombastic, even threatening terms. Trump’s crude boasts in 2005 about being able to kiss and
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Potters’ Protest
By Miriam Patterson Since January 20th, we have all witnessed the President’s need to assert his newfound power in a rapid-fire barrage of sweeping executive orders. With each passing day, we are confounded, and presented with a new conundrum. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) are
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Scattered Rage Forms a Collective Fist
By Benjamin Yee The ascension of Donald Trump changed America in a political instant, upending everything we knew about politics and elections, and ushering in new societal norms that overtook the American psyche. Anyone outside of Trump’s vision of a “Great” America stood demoralized, paralyzed, and anxious for what lay ahead. I’ve been a grassroots
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Village’s Political Activism Lives on with Young Voices
By Andrew Buemi As the reality of the next four years under the most un-presidential and autocratic leader our nation has ever seen sets in, one can empathize with those who wish to bury their heads in the sand and presume that the worst of what’s to come won’t or can’t impact them directly. But
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You Cannot Change History Unless You Understand It
By Clive Morrick President Abraham Lincoln’s First Inauguration: March 4, 1861. Lincoln took office as the 16th U.S. President at a critical time. Following his election, the seven most southerly states had seceded from the Union. Four others soon followed. The central issue was whether the Union could prohibit slavery in the territories. From humble
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Don’t Mourn, Satirize
By Dr. Alec Pruchnicki, MD “Fred Trump was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.” My response to Trump’s recent election win started with these lines, which turned into a book I recently published. It’s not just any book, but a political satire with Trump at the center. Like many others
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Trump and the West Village
Dear Editors: I have a question for you: Will Trump’s Presidency make a difference in the West Village? That’s the question that has been on my mind for the past few days. Last month, I was elected President of the Village Independent Democrats (VID), a forerunner in the reform movement of New York. As President,
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Response to “The Trump Win and Our Lives”
Dear Editors: I absolutely agree with Arthur Schwartz in his article headlined “The Trump Win and Our Lives” that New York’s Democratic Party needs reform. But I think Schwartz neglects a couple of important points: First, Hillary Clinton didn’t lose. She won by more than 2.8 million votes. This is the fifth time in the
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Trump, Democrats, and the White Working Class
I am very disturbed by Arthur Schwartz’s demonization of Hillary Clinton because we “lost” the election for the alleged sin of failing to reach out to the “white working class” of Middle America. Let me remind him that WE WON THE POPULAR VOTE by almost three million votes. Also, how do we explain the losses
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Trump: A Survival Guide
I am sending this to as many friends, family, etc. that I can think of and ask that you pass it along to as many people as possible. It has been a sad and, quite honestly, terrifying few weeks. My initial reaction was to stop reading the news, give up the Times, and stick my
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What is AMI?
The new St. John’s Terminal housing development promises to open up 30% of its apartments to people with varying incomes, measured against the AMI, or Area Median Income. AMI is a number, released every year by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, that represents the combined income of an average New York City
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President Trump
By James Lincoln Collier Donald Trump sat at the famous desk in the Oval Office where Roosevelts, Kennedys, and other illustrious dead had sat, and looked around. So this, he thought, is what it’s like to be the most powerful man in the world. Well, he deserved it. He had worked hard, sinking Crooked Hillary—he’d
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The Luck of Having the Right Disease
By George Capsis The Times recently gifted Tamara Hutchinson, a “Neediest Case” person, $1000 to buy furniture for her new apartment and also recorded her 10 years as a member of the 50–person group which lives in Penn Station (they call themselves the “Penn Station Nation”). What I found remarkable about her account was how
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How to Speak to Trump
They turned people away at the “I Can’t Believe Trump Won” Meeting (a nightmare from which you can’t awaken). It was a rolling offering of protest meetings and rallies, and I thought of my own response. We live in the digital age. And, while an irritated Trump unburdens himself on Twitter, why not collectively confront him
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Villagers Take Action Amid Trump Ascendance
On Sunday, November 20th, following a call from City Council Member Corey Johnson, over 500 Village and Chelsea residents descended on The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center (The Center) on West 13th Street to express their concerns about the impending Donald Trump Presidency and to set out actions that people can take to
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The Trump Win and Our Lives
By Arthur Z. Schwartz I will not bore you with another piece about how awful Donald Trump is or is going to be. You can read that every day in the New York Times and watch it on CNN. Last January, I said that he was spawning a neo-fascist movement, and I still believe he
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The Law Treats One of Its Own
By George Capsis “I am going on trial tomorrow,” came the email from Attorney Arthur Schwartz, who had removed landlord surveillance cameras from the front of the apartment door of 94-year-old Ruth Berk, who was enjoying a rent controlled 95 Christopher Street terrace apartment worth thousands more. Ruth had been a singer at her husband’s
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VID Addresses Election and Local Healthcare
The Village Independent Democrats had their monthly meeting on September 8th at St. John’s Church on Christopher Street. Club President Nadine Hoffman and District Leader Keen Berger reported on a variety of political issues. Tony Hoffman and Erik Coler gave reports on election actions related to the presidential election and local democratic primaries. Alison Greenberg
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Indecent Disclosure
By Catherine Revland In the beginning there was silence. Not a word in the corporate-controlled media about the “water protectors”, a group of Native Americans at the Standing Rock Reservation protesting the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline, to be dug under the Missouri River for transporting toxic crude oil from the Bakken oil fields.
