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☆ For the Price of a Police Helicopter, New York Could Save the Arts
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-21 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The multiplier effect of culture in New York is huge both in economic and human terms. But arts funding does not consistently rise to meet it. From one vantage, the city’s cultural funding can look robust. Over the past decade, the money allocated to the Department of Cultural Affairs has increased considerably, as City Hall officials will point out. And at any rate, between 2023 and 2024, the overall budget decreased by $7 million to $241 million, as the migrant crisis required cuts across municipal divisions.

Persons: Mark Morris’s, Burt Bacharach, Shakespeare, Kathleen Chalfant Organizations: Broadway, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Department of Cultural Affairs, City Locations: New York, America, Forest Hills, Queens

☆ The Brooklyn Museum Is Progressive. Why Is the Left Attacking It?
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-14 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

On Wednesday morning, Anne Pasternak, the director of the Brooklyn Museum, awoke to find that the front of her co-op building had been defaced with red paint and accusations — attacks inscribed on a large banner — calling her “a white supremacist Zionist.” Trustees and the museum’s president also found their morning colored by similar angry disparagements in front of their own apartments. These apparently coordinated attacks came nearly two weeks after 34 people were arrested at a pro-Palestine rally in front of the museum. Protesters, who assaulted security staff and damaged artwork displayed in the plaza outside, were calling for Israeli divestment from a museum facing budget cuts and lumbering along with an endowment smaller than, say, Harvard’s by a factor of 407. Seven months ago, the museum was criticized not for a sympathetic view toward Israel but instead for antisemitic leanings. The turmoil in which so many universities and cultural institutions were now engulfed was playing out at the museum as whiplash.

Persons: Anne Pasternak, Chuck Schumer, ’, ” Organizations: Brooklyn Museum, ”, Palestine, Protesters Locations: Israel, Palestine

☆ Victims of Random Street Attacks Face an Outdated Police System
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-31 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Earlier this year, I wrote about a friend who was attacked and thrown to the ground on a September afternoon, while she was walking toward Borough Hall in Brooklyn to go to the post office. She was on the phone with her mother when a man, whose erratic behavior she had noticed in the distance, pushed her into the street, leaving her with bruises, a chipped tooth and fear new to her after decades of living in New York. At the time, it did not seem as though the assault might be part of a dark emerging trend. But the incident would presage many others — instances in which women in New York were randomly punched on the street in the middle of the day. A few days before the announcement, a 9-year-old girl standing with her mother was punched in the face by a man at Grand Central Station.

Persons: Joseph Kenny Organizations: Borough Hall, city’s Police Department, Grand Central Station Locations: Brooklyn, New York, Manhattan, Chelsea

☆ Why Is N.Y.U. Forcing Protesters to Write Apology Letters?
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-17 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

At one point during the demonstrations at Columbia University in 1968, protesters took the acting dean of the liberal arts college hostage. Inevitably, questions around consequences for the student protests have become entangled in these contradictions. “Living and processing this distressing experience evokes various emotions and complex feelings which may affect your ability to focus and feel safe,” it read. But the only “distressing experience,” to her mind, was N.Y.U.’s decision to call in the police to quiet the protests in the first place. The office went on to promise “guidance, encouragement and support” for the problem it had created.

Persons: Barricading, Henry Simmons Coleman, Ellis Geary, ” Organizations: Columbia University, Navy, New York University, Students Locations: Gaza

☆ No Encampment, No Tents: Where Princeton’s Protest Found Its Gravity
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-10 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Hunger strikes are typically the third act of political protest, the point at which the conventional provocations, having failed to yield the desired result, push the most impassioned closer toward martyrdom. “What the university is making abundantly clear is that they would rather let students starve than enter a dialogue,” David Chmielewski, one of the strikers, a soft-spoken senior, told me. Princeton has been less responsive to student demands around the war in Gaza than some of its peers. The discussion had followed a sit-in that began on April 25 and then the occupation of an administrative building four days later, where 13 students were arrested. The hunger strikers have said that they will continue to limit themselves to water until the conversations around disentangling from Israel become substantive and the university allows students who have been arrested back on campus, dismissing the disciplinary charges against them.

Persons: Cannon Green, ” David Chmielewski, Scott Fitzgerald, Philippe, Christopher Eisgruber Organizations: Princeton University, Princeton, Palm Beach . Princeton Locations: Nassau, Palm Beach ., Gaza, Israel, disentangling

☆ Winners and Losers of the Columbia Protests? History Will Tell.
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-03 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Two years later, a plurality of Americans held the view that so-called outside agitators — in this instance, Communists — were behind the civil rights movement. If we think of attention as a prevailing measure of success, then the Columbia protests, inspiring so many others and consuming global headlines, have been triumphant. “I see very little talk this week about what is happening to Palestinians in Gaza,” Peter Staley, the celebrated AIDS activist, told me. He recalled a major ACT UP demonstration in December 1989 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral that is still debated among participants. The idea was to disrupt a Mass offered by Cardinal John O’Connor to condemn the church’s stance on condoms.

Persons: Eric Adams, ”, condescension, —, unmet, ” Peter Staley, Cardinal John O’Connor, ” Mr, Staley Organizations: Columbia University, Hamilton Hall, Gallup, Washington, Police Department, ACT Locations: Gaza, Columbia, Morningside Heights, St, Patrick’s

☆ What Columbia Should Have Learned From the Protests of 1968
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-25 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

If Nemat Shafik, the president of Columbia University, has convinced the world of anything during these last several calamitous days, it is almost certainly that there is no position in American executive life as thankless, as depleting or less enviable than running a major academic institution in an age of chronic, reflexive agitation. Criticized for capitulating to congressional Republicans in a hearing on antisemitism last week, she quickly found she had not been nearly ingratiating enough. “There is a pretty broad consensus that bringing in the police was precipitous and counterproductive,” Christopher Brown, a history professor who spoke at the rally, told me. In the spring of 1968, Columbia’s president, Grayson Kirk, rarely depicted without a pipe, moved in comparatively slow motion in response to unrest that had become an inflection point in the wave of campus activism that was redirecting history. Within days, students had occupied five buildings, seized the president’s office and taken Dean Henry Coleman hostage, holding him in his office for 26 hours.

Persons: Nemat, capitulating, Shafik, ” Christopher Brown, “, Grayson Kirk, Dean Henry Coleman Organizations: Columbia University, Republicans, Columbia, Barnard, New York Police Department Locations: Vietnam, Harlem

☆ Sexism, Hate, Mental Illness: Why Are Men Randomly Punching Women?
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-12 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Most were punched in the face — unprovoked, at random — in Manhattan south of Midtown and during the day. “I remember thinking it sounded so absurd that it couldn’t really have been a thing,” Ms. Pires, who comes to the city often, told me recently. The beauty of an accuser all too often breeds suspicion, however prejudicially, especially if the accuser is a TikTok influencer with more than a million followers. She registered that he was “quite well dressed,” but almost nothing else made an impression. Before she knew it he struck her with his fist, hitting her on the right side of her head.

Persons: Lisa Pires, Ms, Pires, ’ ” Halley McGookin, ” Organizations: Women’s Locations: New York, Amsterdam, Manhattan, Midtown, Essex

☆ Why the National Guard Can’t Ease All Fears About Riding the Subway
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-14 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Kathy Hochul announced, to immediate controversy, that she would deploy 1,000 members of the National Guard and the State Police to patrol New York City’s subway system in an effort to help people feel safer. “I could show you all the statistics in the world and say ‘you should feel safe’ because the numbers are better,” Ms. Hochul said. Crime in the transit system fell in 2023 compared with the previous year even as ridership increased. “But you’re the mom on the subway with your baby in the stroller, you’re the parent putting your kid on the subway to go high school, you’re that senior citizen going to a doctor’s appointment ” she continued. But the governor has made clear that shifting perceptions about the prevalence of disorder is not her only objective.

Persons: Kathy Hochul, ’ ’, Ms, Hochul, ”, Joe Scarborough Organizations: Gov, National Guard, State Police Locations: York, Brooklyn, Rockaway, New York

☆ A Billion-Dollar Donation (Without a Billion-Dollar Ego)
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-29 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

A single summer party on Long Island might raise millions of dollars for Southampton Hospital. This facility in Florida would be called the Julia Koch Family Ambulatory Care Center. David Gottesman, known as Sandy, an investor and early acolyte of Warren Buffett’s, was not a creature of Page Six or TV, of divorce settlements, $500 million yachts, Davos or social-media diatribes. According to new research from CASE, an organization for academic administrators involved with fund-raising, $58 billion in charitable giving was turned over to colleges and universities during the 2023 fiscal year. It was the second highest amount on record, and the number of gifts totaling $100 million or more — 11 of them — surpassed the figure in 2022.

Persons: Julia Koch, Ruth Gottesman, David Gottesman, Warren Buffett’s Organizations: Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Philanthropy, Southampton Hospital, Care Locations: West Palm, Long, Florida, Sandy, Davos

☆ Has Starbucks Surpassed Amazon as the Villain of Big Labor?
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-23 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

For more than a year, Felix Santiago has worked as a barista at a Starbucks near Times Square, and for about half that time he loved it. It was easy to swap shifts, easy to pick up new ones, easy to get along with supervisors who were largely accommodating. His rent, $1,000 a month, for a room in a Bronx apartment, was no longer manageable, he said, so he began bouncing around from sofa to sofa, from friend’s place to friend’s place. “I don’t have to tell you that Starbucks workers get our city moving every morning,” he wrote. “Their city stands with them in their push for fair conditions and workers’ rights.”But what did that mean in practice?

Persons: Felix Santiago, Mr, Santiago, Eric Adams, ”, “ Organizations: Starbucks, Local, Service Employees International Union, City, Department of Consumer and Worker, Workweek Law Locations: Times, Bronx

☆ Can a New Law Force Airbnb Hosts to Become Landlords?
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-09 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

If you were planning a trip to New York City for Presidents’ Day weekend and logged onto Airbnb Wednesday morning, the first two listings to turn up might have vexed you. One was for a hotel room on Park Avenue South, and the second was for a townhouse apartment in Jersey City, advertised for its proximity to the PATH train to Manhattan, useful because Jersey City is not actually in New York. But Airbnb thrived amid loopholes in the law. In May 2022, there were more than 10,500 New York City listings on the site for apartments or whole houses. In December, as demand for Airbnb spaces in New York fell by 46 percent, the growth in Jersey City and Newark exceeded 53 percent.

Persons: Airbnb Organizations: ’, Malaysian, Local, City Council, York, New Locations: New York City, Jersey City, Manhattan, Jersey, New York, Newark

☆ Truman Capote Cashed In on His Friends’ Secrets. It Cost Him Everything.
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-26 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | More About Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

She died of lung cancer in 1978 never having spoken to Capote again. In the fall of 1955, Mrs. Woodward shot and killed her husband at their estate in Oyster Bay, in the middle of the night, believing that he was a burglar. Capote decided it was not, even though someone eventually pleaded guilty to trying to rob the Woodward house on the night of the shooting. In mid-October, just as Capote’s story was set to drop, Mrs. Woodward killed herself in her uptown apartment. While she had had a difficult life and there was no way to know why she did it, many speculated about the correlation.

Persons: ”, William Paley, Paley, Capote, Ann Woodward, Capote’s, Woodward, Basque ”, “ Ann Hopkins, “, bigamist, ” Alex Belth, Rich Little Organizations: Basque Locations: New York, Oyster Bay, Nassau, Basque

☆ A Map Without Israel Plunges a Grade School Into a Political Firestorm
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-19 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | More About Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

A follow-up in The Post later that day focused on the outrage of local officials. Tova Plaut, an instructional coordinator for the department, has been especially vocal about what has happened at P.S. “This particular example speaks to why there needs to be systemwide training on how to recognize antisemitism,” she said. District 15 was “committed to making sure our students feel safe and supported at all times,” he wrote, perhaps somewhat ambitiously. “It would be devastating if the program were cut,” Lauren Katzman, the mother of a first grader at 261, told me.

Persons: Dan Goldman, “, Tova, ”, Rafael T, Alvarez, ’, ” Lauren Katzman Organizations: Democratic, city’s Department of Education, Holocaust, Alliance, New York Peace Institute Locations: Boerum, Israel, nonexistence, P.S

☆ If Your Child Is Addicted to TikTok, This May Be the Cure
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-17 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Over the past few years, hundreds of families and school districts around the country have sued big tech companies on the grounds that the hypnotic properties of social media popular with children have left too many of them unwell. Tech companies, claiming First Amendment protections, have sought to get these sorts of suits quickly dismissed. But on Tuesday, a federal judge in California issued a ruling to make that more difficult. Forty years ago, drunken driving was an epidemic, claiming the lives of young people, a seemingly unmanageable problem until a group of mothers committed themselves to pushing for laws that brought accountability. It was a pivotal moment in the modern history of public health, and, in the same way, 2023 is likely to be remembered as an inflection point in the health crisis surrounding social media.

Persons: ideation, Letitia James, — Organizations: Seattle Public Schools, New, Meta, Facebook, Tech Locations: New York, California

☆ Why the Bronx Voted Republican for the First Time in a Generation
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-10 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | More About Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

But a City Council race on Tuesday managed to bring uncommon suspense. By Wednesday the contest had been called in favor of an X-ray technician who became the first Republican to win public office in the Bronx in nearly 20 years, a place where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 10 to 1. With the support of Ms. Velázquez, the plan moved forward to unanimous approval by the City Council. A few days before the vote, they protested outside her office demanding that she be voted out. At one point a billboard truck drove by attacking her as the “Benedict Arnold” of Throgs Neck.

Persons: Marjorie Velázquez, Velázquez, Benedict Arnold ” Organizations: Council, Republican, Country Club, City Council Locations: New York, Bronx, Bruckner

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried Was a Grown Up Criminal, Not an Impulsive Man-Child
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-03 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | More About Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Sam Bankman-Fried, crypto’s Icarus, was convicted of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy on Thursday night after a trial that generated 10 million pages of documents and only a few hours of jury deliberation. As ever, it is perhaps best to start from the very beginning. Or, in the specific absence of that, what would 12 ordinary people see when they were seated on the other side of the witness stand from him? The prosecution hoped that they would observe a grown man, steeped in self-contradiction and capable of criminality, rather than the 31-year-old boy Mr. Bankman-Fried appeared to be, someone whose adolescent enthusiasms and distractibility caused him to make billions of dollars worth of hapless, innocent errors. In the end, the jury saw only the duplicitous adult.

Persons: Sam Bankman, Michael Lewis, Bankman, “, Fried, Ostentatiously, Shakespeare, distractibility

☆ Why Has This 258-Year-Old Mansion Been Left to Fall Apart?
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-27 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | More About Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Since then, millions more have been needed from elected officials to complete the work. The notion that “the board has been lax in passion is the farthest thing from the truth,” Lisa Koenigsberg, an architectural historian and the board’s chair told me. I understand the frustration and the sadness over the building,” she said. The building is the city’s responsibility.” This is a curious response in a place where public-private partnerships make most of our cultural life possible. When the preservation movement took hold in New York in the early 1960s, the goal was to prevent beautiful buildings from being destroyed.

Persons: ” Lisa Koenigsberg, Camilla Huey, Aaron Burr, Theodosia, “, ” Organizations: Parks Department Locations: New York

☆ On Elite Campuses, a New Protest Demand: Unwavering Support
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-20 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | More About Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +5 min

But a different dynamic seemed to be emerging against the backdrop of vastly different expectations. He imagined an entirely different and urgent reaction, he said, if the child in the picture had been African American. The campus protests of the late 1960s sought in part to dismantle the in loco parentis role that colleges and universities had held in American life. Ten years ago, when the former New York City police commissioner, Ray Kelly, was invited to speak at Brown University, students objected. The current campus protests reflect the limits of the more bonded relationship that students and universities have forged.

Persons: Richard Nixon, ”, “, Brown, ’, Linda Mills, Workman’s, —, Hamas’s, N.Y.U, Trump, Ray Kelly, beholden, John Huntsman Jr Organizations: Pentagon, Washington Square News, Columbia Spectator, Jewish, Stern, American, National Center for Education Statistics, Wellness, New, Brown University, University of Pennsylvania Locations: South Africa, N.Y.U, Israel, Columbia, New York City, Utah

☆ Children Are the Casualties in New Yorkers’ Daily Struggle for Space
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-22 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | More About Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Nicholas’s father, Otoniel Feliz, has said that he had no idea that a tenant was living there when he sent his son to the center. But Ms. Mendez, who wept during her most recent court appearance, has denied knowing that her licensed and recently inspected home business had become a stash house for a kilo of fentanyl and the accompanying paraphernalia. This was the second time in just a few weeks that a devastating loss proved to be the collateral damage of an informal leasing agreement. Last month, a 43-year-old woman named Zhao Zhao was killed in her apartment in Sunset Park in Brooklyn when a man went after her with a hammer, also injuring her two children, 3 and 5, who face a long recovery as they learn again how to walk. The apartment had three rooms; Ms. Zhao and her children occupied one, a single person lived in a second, and a 9-year-old boy took up the third with his father, who was charged in the killing.

Persons: Otoniel, Carlisto Acevedo Brito, Mendez, Mendez’s, Acevedo Brito’s, Zhao Zhao, Zhao Organizations: Prosecutors Locations: Bronx, Sunset Park, Brooklyn

☆ ‘So Much Suffering:’ What Migrant Children Carry to New York
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-16 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | More About Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Of the more than 110,000 asylum seekers who have recently landed in New York City, 20,000 are children now enrolled in public schools, facing challenges both familiar to any kid who has moved away and towering in their emotional complexity. More than 8,600 children in the city lost a parent to Covid. In response to these and other troubling statistics, the Adams administration released a mental health plan last March with a focus on children and teenagers and the goal of expanding clinical services in schools. The migrant crisis has been imagined largely in terms of the housing emergencies that have flowed from it. “We are seeing the highest level of mental health need we have ever seen, in our city, in our clinic, in our country,” Alan Shapiro told me recently.

Persons: Eric Adams’s, Adams, ” Alan Shapiro Organizations: Department of Health, RAND Locations: New York City, ”, York

☆ Congestion Pricing Is Coming. It Doesn’t Have to Be Painful.
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-08 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | More About Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Broadway tickets are incredibly expensive; eating out and parking have always been part of the calculation. “If you’re having a night out with the family for $1,000, I don’t think the congestion toll is going to be the decision maker,’’ she said. Some of the concern around the economic reverberations of congestion pricing stems from the presumption it will cost $23 to come into the designated zone during peak hours. about what the pricing — and exemptions from pricing — will be across constituencies. As Carl Weisbrod, the chairman of the board, put it, sorting this all out was like “a Rubik’s Cube.”

Persons: Tyler Cowan, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, ” Kathryn Wylde, ’ ’, Juliette Michaelson, Carl Weisbrod, ” Organizations: Partnership, New, Times, Traffic Locations: Washington, Manhattan, New Jersey, Queens, New York City

☆ The Forgotten Teenage Trailblazer of Women’s Tennis
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-01 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | More About Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

In practice sessions, Ms. Graber had beat two boys who made the team. Ms. Graber joined the team, where by her own admission, she was not the best player but could still claim many wins. At Cornell, where Ms. Graber played on the women’s tennis team, she met another woman who had also secured a position on a boys’ team. Between 1970 and 1972, the number of high school girls participating in team sports increased from 300,000 to 800,000. “I had a gradual awakening based on what I encountered in school, in Ms. magazine, in what was happening in the world around me,” Ms. Graber Jensen told me.

Persons: Ira Glasser, Graber, —, Phyllis Graber, Phyllis Graber Jensen, Holmes Norton, “, ” Ms, Graber Jensen, ”, Phyllis, Rob Goldberg, Dusty, Goldberg Organizations: American Civil Liberties Union, Education, Bates College, Cornell, tennis, Kenner Locations: Maine

☆ Crime Is Down. So Why Don’t New Yorkers Feel Safe?
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-04 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | More About Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Even when fear seems entirely justified, its expression can be hard to understand, inspired by so many variables. A poll conducted by The New York Times in January 1985, a few weeks after the Goetz shootings, found that half the city’s residents believed that crime was the worst thing about living in New York. A majority expressed support for what Mr. Goetz had done. In the days after the shootings, while Mr. Goetz was at large and the tabloids pumped out day after day of panic-feeding content, the “subway vigilante” emerged as a folk hero to New Yorkers. Some offered to cover his $500,000 bail (he refused); others suggested that he run for mayor.

Persons: Leon Neyfakh’s, “ Fiasco, Bernhard Goetz, Dennis Kenney, Goetz, ”, Joan Rivers Organizations: The New York Times, New Yorkers Locations: New York, New, New Hampshire, Rikers

☆ How the Gilgo Beach Suspect Wielded Power in Brownstone Brooklyn
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-21 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | More About Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

In his role as a consultant, Mr. Heuermann was often the person brought in to make these sorts of determinations. Like so many professions, architecture can be punishingly stratified, and Mr. Heuermann, who by all accounts was extremely knowledgeable about the city’s labyrinthine building codes, did not fall on the visionary side of the spectrum. Last week a friend called to say that someone had been apprehended in the Gilgo Beach murders and that, however astonishingly, we both knew him. Mr. Heuermann had been in her apartment — deeply aggravating in the moment and intensely creepy in retrospect — and had been rude and dismissive when her architect called him out on a miscalculation he made. During her own renovation, she told me, workers discovered some rotting beams between her apartment and the one above, a problem that Mr. Heuermann said needed to be remedied with drawings for the replacements, which he would produce.

Persons: Heuermann, Kelly Parisi Organizations: Fifth, AMS, Brooklyn Heights, Yale Locations: Massapequa, New York, Nantucket

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