The Buzz

Volume One, Issue 15, January 5 - 11, 2007

The Buzz

Super-organizer: Housing Conservation Coordinators — the Hell’s Kitchen-based, nonprofit, affordable housing advocacy group that does quite a lot of work in Chelsea — has promoted one of its top community organizers, John Raskin, to a new position, director of organizing. “We’re expanding our capacity to organize affordable housing campaigns and other neighborhood campaigns in Chelsea/Hell’s Kitchen, and I’m going to be coordinating our organizers,” Raskin explained. Over the past several years at H.C.C., Raskin, who is just 25, has organized neighborhood campaigns to help win affordable housing commitments, protect tenants whose apartments are threatened, launch the West Side Neighborhood Alliance and, most famously, defeat the proposed West Side Stadium. In fact, Raskin was one of the “stars” of the documentary “A Stadium Story: The Battle for New York’s Last Frontier,” which premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival. In his off hours, Raskin is one of the volunteer leaders of ACT NOW New York, a grassroots organization that enlists, trains and deploys hundreds of volunteers for progressive campaigns. During the 2004 presidential election, Raskin founded Democracy in the Park, a political action group that contacted swing voters by using free weekend cell phone minutes; calling from Central, Union Square and Tompkins Square parks, thousands of dialers lobbied voters to back John Kerry. Said Laura Morrison, State Senator Tom Duane’s chief of staff: “Whatever John leads, a crowd follows.”

The birds: There’s no question anymore: The red-tailed hawk in Washington Square Park definitely seems to have taken up residence there. Dave Lawrence, manager of the park’s small dog run, said of the Downtown raptor’s doings, “I’ll walk my dog in the park every day between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. and now I expect the hawk to be somewhere in the park.” Meanwhile, red-tail mania has spread to Chelsea, where Laura Covino reports a recent wild encounter: “I was on Eighth Ave. and 25th St. Friday when I heard frantic squeaking and felt something whoosh by from behind me. I looked up and saw a large bird, glinting red, already high over Eighth Ave. and heading southeast. The young woman next to me asked, astonished, ‘Did that really just happen?’ She had been facing the bird and confirmed that it was, indeed, carrying a mouse. Is it possible that the Washington Square hawk is using Penn South as a hunting ground?”…. At this rate, Penn South seniors might consider tossing aside their canasta games and strapping on gauntlets and taking up falconry. We asked Lawrence if the Washington Square hawk similarly “glints red,” to which he said, “I didn’t notice a glint. Maybe she saw a flamingo?” “It flashed red,” Covino said, adding she’s certain it was a hawk.

Park political intrigue: The Hudson River Park Advisory Council has become a hotbed of political activity — perhaps not surprising given its new chairperson, Arthur Schwartz, Village Democratic state committeeman. The council hasn’t had an executive committee for three years, and the recent election of seven members to fill the committee ruffled some feathers, after local elected officials failed to win a single seat. Three seats on the executive committee are automatically filled by representatives of Community Boards 1, 2 and 4, the boards that border the park. The other four seats were won by the Greenwich Village Little League, Municipal Art Society, Downtown Boathouse and Hudson River Water Trail Association. Assemblymembers Richard Gottfried and Deborah Glick and State Senator Duane all failed to get elected. Afterwards, however, Glick complained there hadn’t been proper notification that a vote would be held. Schwartz contended there had been. Yet, in an effort to avoid controversy, Schwartz said he’ll hold a revote at the advisory council’s Jan. 17 meeting. Speaking this Tuesday, Glick said she’s got plenty of work to do in Albany, and that’s where she’s putting her focus in 2007, 2008 and hopefully beyond, that’s what “33,000 voters in the 66th District” elected her to do and that she doesn’t want to belabor the advisory council flap.