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"The World of Our Children": Jews, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Place and Race on the Lower East Side, 1963-1993
Barry Goldberg The Graduate Center, City University of New York
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“THE WORLD OF OUR CHILDREN”: JEWS, PUERTO RICANS, AND THE POLITICS OF PLACE AND RACE ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE, 1963-1993
by
BARRY GOLDBERG
A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in History in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York
2017
© 2017
BARRY GOLDBERG
All Rights Reserved
ii
“The World of Our Children”: Jews, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Place and Race on the Lower East Side, 1963-1993
by
Barry Goldberg
This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in History in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
______Date [Robert David Johnson] Chair of Examining Committee
______Date [Andrew Robertson] Executive Officer
Supervisory Committee:
Clarence Taylor Jonathan Rosenberg Hasia Diner Aldo Lauria-Santiago
THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
iii
ABSTRACT
“The World of Our Children”: Jews, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Place and Race on the Lower East Side, 1963-1993
by
Barry Goldberg
Advisor: Robert David Johnson
This dissertation examines how Jewish political leaders on the Lower East Side responded to neighborhood change, particularly the influx of Puerto Rican migrants, from the
1960s through the 1990s. Utilizing untapped archival material, including congressional records, municipal papers, legal files, articles from the ethnic press, and quantitative voting data, I demonstrate that the Lower East Side remained home to an influential network of Jewish political leaders, institutions, and voters long after the early twentieth-century. Residing on
Grand Street, largely Orthodox, and often descended from Lower East Side Jewish immigrants, this political base created, shaped, and implemented antipoverty, education, housing, and redistricting policy in the neighborhood. These efforts, often undertaken in conjunction with mayoral administrations and both secular and Orthodox Jewish defense agencies, shaped the social relationships, real and imagined community boundaries, and electoral coalitions between
Jews and Puerto Ricans on the Lower East Side. As a result, Jewish-Puerto Rican relations became a central feature of both local and citywide politics in the 1960s and beyond.
New arrivals to the neighborhood in the 1950s and 1960s, Puerto Ricans challenged
Grand Street’s control of neighborhood politics. During the last third of the twentieth century, these residents, collaborating with left-wing Jewish progressives and animated partly by black activism and new civil rights legislation, aimed to organize and provide economic security for
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low-income Puerto Ricans through direct action and legal reform. While Grand Street leaders
often paralleled earlier Jewish immigration to postwar Puerto Rican settlement and framed the
Lower East Side as an origin point for American Jewish success based on individual uplift,
Puerto Rican activists grounded their increasingly coherent agenda in a cosmopolitan vision of
the neighborhood as a historic haven for poor newcomers. As such, both Jews and Puerto Ricans
tied collective memories of the Lower East Side to specific political claims, most notably those
involving the definition and preservation of local space.
In all, Grand Street leaders helped shift New York City politics to the right in the late twentieth century. By aligning electorally with outer-borough white ethnic voters, cultivating ties to politically conservative Orthodox groups, and supporting the interests of private real estate, the Lower East Side’s Orthodox base, in both intention and effect, curtailed programs that organized the neighborhood’s poorest residents and accelerated the pace of Lower East Side gentrification. For this reason, Grand Street leaders helped exacerbate racial and class stratification in the neighborhood and reaffirmed broader changes in New York’s political economy during and after the 1970s, particularly the development of luxury real estate. These actions made the Lower East Side a vitally important site for the development of, and ideological fissures within, American Jewish politics in the last third of the twentieth-century.
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Acknowledgements I could not have completed this dissertation without the help of several people. First and
foremost, my academic advisor, Robert David “K.C.” Johnson, helped me strengthen, refashion,
and refine this project from its earliest days as a seminar paper. Professor Johnson’s approach to
research and teaching make him a professional role model. I could not have completed this
dissertation without his attentiveness, advice, and reliably constructive feedback. He helped
move the project forward at several critical junctures.
My dissertation committee also offered important assistance. Jonathan Rosenberg
conscientiously read my work throughout graduate school and offered important critiques of my writing. Clarence Taylor provided critical feedback as I wrote, and his class on the northern civil rights movement helped inspire this project. Hasia Diner graciously allowed me to attend her graduate seminar, “Jews and the History of American Diversity,” at New York University.
Professor Diner pushed me to consider Jewish-Puerto Rican relations as a subject worthy of historical inquiry, and her comments and questions helped clarify my findings. Aldo Lauria-
Santiago generously lent his expertise to this project, helping me track down important sources and offering his expertise on Puerto Rican history. He has a contagious passion for historical research and went above and beyond the call of duty in supporting my work.
I would also like to thank the CUNY Graduate Center’s History Department, Department of Jewish Studies, Advanced Research Collaborative, and Office of the Vice President for
Student Affairs for funding my research. The Graduate Center’s Doctoral Student Research
Grant, the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, the American Academy of Jewish Research, and the United Jewish Appeal-Federation also provided important financial assistance. In addition, I am indebted to Jodi Boyle at the University of Albany, Chloe Morse-
Harding at Brandeis University, Dwight Johnson at the New York City Municipal Archives,
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Douglas DiCarlo at the La Guardia and Wagner Archives, Troy Johnson at the New York City
Board of Elections, and Pedro Hernández at the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños for their
invaluable research assistance. Special thanks to John Mollenkopf for his help with Lower East
Side election data and Russ Buettner at The New York Times for sharing his research on Seward
Park. Archivists and reference librarians at the American Jewish Historical Society, the New
York Public Library Dorot Jewish Division, the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor
Archives, Smith College, the National Archives at New York City, the John F. Kennedy Library, and the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota also helped me complete this project. I am also grateful to New York History and the Journal of Policy History for publishing parts of my dissertation research. The Gotham Center for New York History also allowed me to present and workshop parts of my project.
Finally, I could not have completed this project without the help of several friends and colleagues. Chuck Meyers and Jeff Rice, two great teachers, wrote letters on my behalf as I applied to graduate school and helped me consider the bigger, “so what” questions of studying history. At the CUNY Graduate Center, research seminars with James Oakes, Judith Stein,
Thomas Kessner, and K.C. Johnson helped sharpen my writing and methodology. Max
Baumgarten, Ayelet Brinn, Avigail Oren, and Britt Tevis provided important feedback on several parts of the dissertation. My grandmother, Sylvia Barry, whose father settled on the Lower East
Side as a young Jewish immigrant, also read parts of my work. Dave Albulario, Wesley Cheng,
Jeff Diamant, Ben Hellwege, and Ishani Mukherjee regularly discussed the project – and the ups and downs of dissertation writing – with me at length. Nora Slonimsky deserves special recognition. She is an extraordinary scholar and a lifetime friend. Talks, lunches, and phone calls with her helped me complete this project. Laura Jo Schuster did all of these things and more. She
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took an interest in my research, and her insistence that we go on our very own Lower East Side
walking tour helped me visualize the buildings and spaces I was writing about. I could not have
finished this dissertation without her patience, laughter, and kindness. I am lucky to have her in my life. Most importantly, I want to thank my family. My parents, Loren and Steve, sister,
Melanie, brother-in-law, Ryan, and nephew, Asher, shared in my excitement at new discoveries and empathized during challenging moments. They provided family meals, movies, Broadway shows, Mets playoff tickets, an open door during times of need, and invaluable emotional support. I dedicate this dissertation to them.
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Table of Contents
Abstract iv Acknowledgements vi List of Figures and Tables x
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 25 “A Revolution in Rising Expectations”: Congressman Leonard Farbstein and Lower East Side Antipoverty Politics, 1963-1966
Chapter 2 73 “Why Can’t The Teachers Change?”: Bilingualism and Community Control on the Lower East Side, 1967-1975
Chapter 3 119 “These Few Blocks Belonged to Us”: Urban Renewal in Seward Park, 1965-1980
Chapter 4 173 The 1965 Voting Rights Act and Jewish-Puerto Rican Coalition Building in New York City, 1974-1992
Chapter 5 “Keepers of this Neighborhood”: Gentrification and 221 Racial Politics on the Lower East Side, 1984-1993
Conclusion 284 A “Decline of the Old Jewish Power Brokers?”
Sources Cited 296 Bibliography 298
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List of Figures and Tables Figures
Figure 1: 19th Congressional District 31
Figure 2: MFY Target Area 37
Figure 3: State Assembly Districts Within the 19th Congressional District 65
Figure 4: Grand Street area, Lower East Side (1992) 203
Figure 5: The 65th Assembly District (2016) 290
Tables
Table 1: Racial and Ethnic Breakdowns of the 32-33 19th Congressional District and Lower East Side
Table 2: 1966 Democratic Primary Between Leonard Farbstein 66 and Theodore Weiss (September 1966)
Table 3: Racial and Ethnic Breakdowns for 66 the 63rd, 65th, and 67th Assembly Districts
Table 4: Racial and Ethnic Breakdowns 67-68 for the 60th and 61st Assembly Districts
Table 5: Results for the 1992 12th District Congressional Race 219
Table 6: 1989 and 1993 Mayoral Election Returns 280-81 in the 62nd A.D. (Hispanic Election Districts)
Table 7: 1989 and 1993 Mayoral Election Returns 282-83 in the 62nd A.D. (White Ethnic Election Districts)
Table 8: 2016 Democratic Primary 291 for the 65th A.D. (Grand Street Areas)
x
Introduction On June 19, 1992, Martin Schulman penned an article for the Jewish Press: “What You
Never Knew About the Lower East Side.” Schulman argued that the neighborhood possessed a large and vibrant Jewish community, comprised of young children and “grandparents who have made the Lower East Side their home for tens of years.” A board member for a local service agency called the United Jewish Council (UJC), Schulman noted that these residents attended yeshivas, prayed at Orthodox synagogues, ate at kosher restaurants, and lived in Cooperative
Village, a set of middle-income co-ops on Grand Street. Perhaps most importantly, these Lower
East Siders enjoyed representation “at all levels of government.” “Many prominent judges, civic and political leaders such as Assemblyman Sheldon Silver,” Schulman pointed out, “make the
Lower East Side their home.”1 Indeed, the Press published a column on Silver directly beneath
Schulman’s article that alluded to the assemblyman’s tireless promotion of local Jewish interests.
“Shelly,” concluded a lawyer for the National Jewish Council on Law and Public Affairs
(COLPA), “has never really forgotten where he came from.”2
Schulman’s article contradicts typical scholarly descriptions of the Lower East Side.
Most work on the neighborhood confines its analysis to late nineteenth- and early twentieth- century immigrant life. Irving Howe’s classic social history of Eastern European settlement,
World of Our Fathers, perhaps best embodies this chronological and thematic focus.3 Howe
reasoned that the bulk of second and third generation New York Jewry came of age in the
suburbs, not the Lower East Side. While Howe noted that these Jews maintained cultural and
1 Martin Schuman, “What You Never Knew About the Lower East Side,” The Jewish Press, June 19, 1992. 2 “New State Budget Has a ‘Silver’ Lining,” The Jewish Press, June 19, 1992. 3 Other works also assume that Jewish life in New York City developed entirely outside the Lower East Side. See Deborah Dash Moore, At Home in America: Second Generation New York Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 4; Marc Dollinger, Quest for Inclusion: Jews and Liberalism in Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 15; Eli Lederhendler, New York Jews and the Decline of Urban Ethnicity: 1950-1970 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2001), 11, 34. 1
political ties to their immigrant ancestors, he claimed that the neighborhood stood as little more than a somber memorial to the Jewish past by the 1930s, a space full of abandoned synagogues and old buildings with “Hebrew letters…covered by Puerto Rican posters and the announcements of wrestling matches.”4
Howe’s book represented but one of the many scholarly and literary works published in the 1960s and 1970s that romanticized Jewish immigrant life on the Lower East Side. Indeed,
Howe himself acknowledged that his book allowed Jews to “cast an affectionate backward glance at the world of their fathers before turning their backs on it forever and moving on.”5
More recently, historians have similarly examined how and why the Lower East Side emerged as perhaps the most important symbol in American Jews’ collective memory. Beth Wenger, for instance, shows how the Lower East Side became a “nostalgic center for New York Jews” in the
1920s and 1930s. Even though most Jews had left the neighborhood by then, Wenger suggests that Jewish writers, artists, and organizations “elevated the Lower East Side to an almost mythical status,” turning it into a symbolic space that helped Jews understand their socioeconomic mobility and growing status as white insiders. For this reason, the Lower East
Side served as “a living reminder of an idealized immigrant world as well as a mirror of the past that reflected the extent of Jewish progress.”6 Hasia Diner similarly notes that the Lower East
Side became the “locus of the American Jewish founding myth” after World War II. This viewpoint celebrated the neighborhood as the site of Jews’ struggles against adversity,
4 Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the Eastern European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made, rev. ed. (New York: Schocken Books, 1989), 618, 637. 5 Kenneth Waltzer, “Irving Howe’s World of Our Fathers Twenty Years Later,” The Centennial Review, Vol. 41, No. 3, 567-68. 6 Beth Wenger, “Memory as Identity: The Invention of the Lower East Side,” American Jewish History, Vol. 85, Number 1, March 1997, 3, 4, 8.
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socioeconomic advancement, and cultural traditions.7
To some extent, the Lower East Side could only operate as a symbolic Jewish site because most Jews had indeed left the neighborhood by the 1920s. In 1890, for instance, 75 percent of all New Yorkers of Polish or Russian (and therefore almost entirely Jewish) descent lived on the Lower East Side. Between 1905 and 1915, however, about 2/3 of all Jews left the neighborhood and, by 1916, less than one-quarter of all Jews living in New York City remained.
By 1940, on the other hand, Jews comprised nearly 40 and 32 percent of the Bronx and
Brooklyn, respectively. By the end of the 1950s, these percentages remained virtually the same and the Jewish population in Queens also began to increase.8 After World War II, this shift continued as Jews relocated to the suburbs, albeit at a slower and more incremental pace than other white residents.9
The Lower East Side’s black, and particularly Puerto Rican, populace also grew at this time. Between 1950 and 1970, around 35,000 new Puerto Ricans settled in the neighborhood, a
250 percent increase, while the neighborhood’s white population declined by over 100,000.10 By
1970, African-Americans also comprised roughly 12 percent, and Puerto Ricans nearly 30 percent, of Lower East Side residents.11 And twenty years later, blacks, Hispanics, and Asian-
7 Hasia Diner, Lower East Side Memories: A Jewish Place in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 7, 165-69. See also See also Hasia Diner, Jeffrey Shandler, and Beth S. Wenger, eds., Remembering the Lower East Side: American Jewish Reflections (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); On the relationship between gentrification and Lower East Side nostalgia, see Richard E. Ocejo, “The Early Gentrifier: Weaving a Nostalgia Narrative on the Lower East Side,” City and Community, 10:3, September 2011. 8 Diner, Lower East Side Memories, 35, 49; C. Morris Horowitz and Lawrence J. Kaplan, The Estimated Jewish Population of the New York Area, 1900-1975 (New York: Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, 1959), 22. 9 Roughly 2.1 million Jews lived in New York in 1958; slightly over 1 million remained in 1990. From 1957 to 1970, the Jewish population in the city’s outlying suburbs of Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester Counties grew by roughly 300,000, but declined 42 percent in New York City; Eli Lederhendler, “New York City, the Jews, and the ‘Urban Experience,” in People of the City: Jews and the Urban Challenge, ed. Ezra Mendelsohn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 57-59. 10 Harry Schwartz, Planning for the Lower East Side (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973), 13. 11 U.S. Census Bureau, 1970 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Census Tracts, Part 14: New York, NY, U.S Census Statistics: Census Boundary Files and Maps, accessed September 15, 2016, 3
Americans represented over 40 percent of the neighborhood.12 These population changes made the Lower East Side a highly diverse area and allowed Puerto Ricans, in particular, to shape neighborhood life.
Despite these changes, the Lower East Side remained home to one of New York’s most politically powerful Jewish communities long after most immigrants had left the neighborhood.13
As the Lower East Side became a laboratory for postwar urban policy, this community shaped nearly every important domestic initiative in the neighborhood, including antipoverty programming, education, urban renewal, and electoral reform. From the 1960s through the
1990s, this Jewish political bloc, comprised of Orthodox elected leaders, civic officials, and politically active citizens residing on or around Grand Street wrote and interpreted laws, served on local community boards, filed legal briefs, cultivated ties with key municipal leaders, and voted decisively in local elections. These actions provided the Lower East Side with a distinctly tight-knit and influential Jewish leadership. For this reason, the Lower East Side remains a vitally important site within which to trace the development of Jewish politics and urban policy in late twentieth-century New York.
http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/c.php?g=95512&p=624011; U.S. Census Bureau, 1970 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Census Tracts, Part 14: New York, NY, “Table P-1: General Characteristics of the Population, 1970,” P-98-P-101 and “Table P-2: Social Characteristics of the Population, 1970,” P-298-P-301. 12 For the 1990 black and Hispanic numbers, see U.S. Census Bureau, 1990 Census of Population and Housing, Population and Housing Characteristics for Census Tracts and Block Numbering Areas, New York, NY PMSA, CPH-3-245H, Table 8. Race and Hispanic Origin: 1990, 818-824 and “Table 16. Selected Ancestry Groups and Persons in Selected Hispanic Origin Groups: 1990,” 1606-1612. For the Asian-American numbers, see “Ethnic Makeup of Proposed Hispanic-Based District (1990 Census),” Miriam Friedlander Papers, Box 1502, Redistricting Commission Legislation, 1990-91, LaGuardia and Wagner Archives (Queens, NY). 13 Reports estimate that Jews comprised about one-third of all Lower East Side residents in 1957, making it one of the largest Jewish neighborhoods in the city. Other reports estimated that Jews represented upwards of 25 percent of the neighborhood populace in the mid-1970s. Still others estimated that the Jewish population on the Lower East Side increased from 19,000 to 32,000 residents in the 1980s, the largest percentage growth of any Manhattan neighborhood; Horowitz and Kaplan, 27, 133; Joan Alyne Turner, “Building Boundaries: The Politics of Urban Renewal in Manhattan’s Lower East Side” (Ph.D. Dissertation, The City University of New York, 1984), 80; Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty, Jewish Poverty in New York City in the 1990s, “Estimates of Jewish Population by Community District, 1981-1991” (The Nova Institute: 1993), 36. 4
The Grand Street establishment, and its political allies, helped shift New York City politics to the right at this time. While at times rhetorically championing the ideals of cultural pluralism, Grand Street opposed left-wing social policies and interracial coalition building on the
Lower East Side, restricted the channels of local activism, and cultivated ties with other politically conservative Orthodox groups. Grand Street leaders legitimized these policies to municipal officials and the wider public by highlighting the Lower East Side’s cultural significance to American Jews and framing the neighborhood as an origin point in a narrative of
American Jewish success and advancement based on individual uplift, hard work, and social harmony. In so doing, Grand Street Jews tied collective memories of the Lower East Side to policies that aimed to define and preserve local Jewish space. These efforts, in both intention and effect, curtailed programs that organized the neighborhood’s most impoverished residents and accelerated the pace of gentrification in the neighborhood. In all, Grand Street reaffirmed and furthered major changes in New York’s political economy in the 1970s and 1980s, namely municipal policies that cut social welfare services, deregulated the economy, and redistributed urban resources from the public sector to private finance and large-scale commerce. For this reason, Grand Street leaders played a crucial role in exacerbating racial and class stratification on the Lower East Side in the last third of the twentieth century.
Puerto Rican activists and their progressive allies presented the most well-organized opposition to the Grand Street agenda. New arrivals to the neighborhood in the 1950s and 1960s,
Puerto Ricans increasingly gained political power as a result of federal and local antipoverty programs, school decentralization, and national civil rights legislation. These developments provided Puerto Ricans with the ideological impetus and institutional structure to craft an alternative political agenda for the Lower East Side. Animated by the language and objectives of
5
1960s black activism, Puerto Ricans, the neighborhood’s most disadvantaged residents, sought to
support the direct action and community organizing aspects of antipoverty programming,
strengthen parental control over school policy, reserve certain sectors of the neighborhood for
low-income residents, and more strictly regulate private investment on the Lower East Side. In
all, these efforts would redistribute political power away from Grand Street and maximize Puerto
Rican political power. Unlike their Jewish counterparts, Puerto Ricans grounded this agenda in a
cosmopolitan vision of Lower East Side history that cited the neighborhood’s role as a historic
haven for poor newcomers. In all, these divergent political interests shaped the social
relationships, real and imagined community boundaries, and electoral coalitions between Jews
and Puerto Ricans in the neighborhood. As a result, Jewish-Puerto Rican relations became a
central feature of both neighborhood and New York City politics in the 1960s and beyond.
------
Most scholarship on twentieth century American Jewish politics notes that second
generation Jews committed themselves, more consistently than other white ethnic groups, to the
tenets of New Deal and postwar American liberalism. Citing the archival records of Jewish
defense agencies, religious leaders, political clubs, and national voting data, these scholars
highlight Jews’ support for civil rights causes, social welfare programs, and urban reform.14
In her seminal work At Home in America, for example, Deborah Dash Moore shows how these
Jews actively participated in local politics and became “at home in the Democratic party, or at least the liberal wing of it.”15 Other scholars make similar claims. Marc Dollinger, for instance,
14 Moore, At Home in America; Dollinger, Quest for Inclusion, 1, 5. See also Henry L. Feingold, American Jewish Political Culture and the Liberal Persuasion (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2013). For voting statistics showing Jews’ continued support for liberal candidates, see Alan Fisher, “Continuity and Erosion of Jewish Liberalism,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly, Volume 66, No. 2., December 1976, 322-348; Rafael Medoff, Jewish Americans and Political Participation: A Reference Handbook (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2002), 191-195. 15 Moore, At Home in America, 217-19, 229. 6
argues that second generation Jews “represented the most influential liberal political
constituency in America” and helped direct the nation toward a vision of democracy rooted in
tolerance, pluralism, and rule of law” after World War II.16
In addition, most scholars examine Jewish liberalism through the prism of black-Jewish
relations. Jonathan Rieder, for instance, sees the “travails of liberalism” in the everyday tensions
between Jewish, Italian, and African-American neighbors in 1960s Canarsie, Brooklyn. Jerald
Podair similarly argues that, after New York’s 1968 teacher strikes, Jews embraced the
“unambiguous expressions of white identity” and aligned themselves electorally with more
conservative outer-borough Catholic voters.17 More recently, Cheryl Greenberg argues that the varied ways in which postwar liberalism viewed and addressed racial difference fostered Jewish-
black conflict.18 As such, Greenberg frames the more explosive confrontations between blacks
and Jews in the late 1960s, including the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Strike, as “symptoms, not causes, of the fraying of the coalition, which was rooted in the struggle over liberalism.”19
This dissertation complicates these analyses of American Jewish politics in three main
ways. First, it examines how Grand Street leaders, working with Jewish defense agencies,
Orthodox writers and groups outside the Lower East Side, and certain municipal officials,
contributed to New York City’s rightward political shift after the mid-1960s. In some respects,
16 Dollinger, Quest for Inclusion, 1, 5. 17 Jerald Podair, The Strike that Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 143-44, 209. 18 Cheryl Greenberg, Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 8. 19 Ibid., 206. For other works analyzing black-Jewish relations, see Hasia Diner, In the Almost Promised Land: American Jews and Blacks, 1915-1935 (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1977); Jonathan Kaufman, Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times Between Blacks and Jews in America (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1988); Murray Friedman, What Went Wrong? The Creation and Collapse of the Black-Jewish Alliance (New York: The Free Press, 1995); Jack Salzman and Cornel West, eds., Struggles in the Promised Land: Toward a History of Black-Jewish Relations in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Seth Forman, Blacks in the Jewish Mind: A Crisis of Liberalism (New York: NYU Press, 1998); Dollinger, Quest for Inclusion; Michael E. Staub, Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); Eric Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). 7
Grand Street held beliefs and enacted policies that defied a simple left-right, or liberal-
conservative, categorization. As Steven Cohen and Samuel C. Heilman note, “the ethos of
Jewish liberalism” continued to shape Orthodox Jews’ political ideology, particularly on issues
of race and gender, after World War II. Citing surveys showing political differences between
“traditional,” “centrist,” and “nominal” Orthodox Jews, Heilman and Cohen argue that “modern
Orthodox” Jews took positions “between the liberalism of the non-Orthodox and the
conservatism of the traditionalists.”20 Other authors also distinguish between older, more
conservative Orthodox groups like the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, and Orthodox and other
organizations, such as the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), the National Council of Young
Israel, and the Union of Orthodox Congregations in America (OU). In the postwar period, these
latter groups collaborated with secular organizations to back major civil rights and
antidiscrimination legislation. Lawrence Grossman suggests that, though these organizations
often split from their secular, liberal counterparts on church-state issues, they nevertheless embraced a “revised liberalism” that welcome interracial consensus.21
To a certain extent, Grand Street embodied this “revised liberalism.” This Jewish base
and its political allies – local members of Congress and union officials, the Lindsay, Koch, and
Dinkins’ administrations, secular Jewish defense agencies, and Orthodox assemblymen like
Sheldon Silver – represented key players in Democratic politics and recognized the realities of cultural pluralism and interethnic coalition building. Still another subset of Lower East Side
20 One survey found that less than half of all “traditional” Orthodox Jews agreed with the idea that a “wife should make her own decisions even if she disagrees with her husband,” but 71 and 65 percent of “nominal” and “centrist” Orthodox Jews did respectively. This same survey showed that nearly 50 percent of these Jews also backed the Equal Rights Amendment and 46 and 44 percent, respectively, supported affirmative action; Samuel C. Heilman and Steven M. Cohen, Cosmopolitans and Parochials: Modern Orthodox Jews in America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 167, 173, 179. 21 Lawrence Grossman, “Mainstream Orthodoxy and the American Public Square,” in Jewish Polity and American Civil Society, eds., Alan Mittleman, Jonathan D. Sarna, and Robert Licht (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, Inc., 2002), 286-88, 293. 8
Jews, activists who worked with and for local reform groups such as Frances Goldin, Esther
Rand, and Councilwoman Miriam Friedlander, traced their political roots to the Old Left and
sought to drastically restructure the Lower East Side’s political economy and cultivate strong
political ties with low-income minorities. To some degree, then, the ideological landscape of
Lower East Side Jewish politics revealed fissures within the Jewish Left on issues such as social welfare, government regulation, and affirmative action.
On the other hand, however, Grand Street adopted stances on church-state issues, racial equality, and welfare spending that approached, if not mirrored, those of the New Right in the
1970s and 1980s.22 The tendency of Orthodox Jews, including those on the Lower East Side, to
remain in their original urban neighborhoods even as those spaces became increasingly black or
Puerto Rican magnified this social and political conservatism.23 These residents often viewed
newcomers, particularly low-income minorities, as outsiders who brought with them a host of
social problems and, as such, viewed government programs targeting these new residents as
unhelpful and, in some cases, a direct violation of Orthodox rights and interests. Orthodox
groups such as the UJC, the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA),
and the Union of Orthodox Rabbis embraced these positions at various times to support Grand
Street’s political agenda. For this reason, progressive newspapers and government officials
sometimes called Grand Street “conservative.” In all, it was Grand Street’s relationship to the
right, not the left, that defined post-1960 Lower East Side politics. As such, this dissertation
offers an important exception to the typical analyses of twentieth-century Jewish liberalism.
22 Heilman and Cohen, 167; Greenberg, Troubling the Waters, 207; Forman, Blacks in the Jewish Mind, 195. For the difference between Orthodox and secular Jews on affirmative action policy, see Dollinger, 204-05. About 60 percent of Orthodox Jews – and 94 percent of Hasidic Jews – voted for President Reagan in 1980; Medoff, Jewish Americans and Political Participation: A Reference Book, 200. 23 Hasia Diner, The Jews of the United States: 1654 to 2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 296- 97. 9
This dissertation also demonstrates that Jewish politics on the Lower East Side were
defined by Jewish-Puerto Rican, not Jewish-black relations. To date, no scholar has examined
the precise nature of Jewish-Puerto Rican relations.24 Several scholars of American Jewish
history, however, have recently situated Jews more clearly within the full range of America’s
diverse tapestry. In her analysis of Jewish interracial collaboration, for instance, Shana Bernstein
examines coalition building between Jews, Asians, Mexicans, and African-Americans, and
encourages scholars to “shift the history of race, and specifically civil rights, in the United States
from its traditional black/white center to one that incorporates multiracial realities.”25 Ellen M.
Eisenberg makes a similar point in examining the Jewish responses to Japanese internment.
Eisenberg argues that internment exposed Jews’ hybrid status as white insiders and an ethnic
minority with a strong sense of sympathy for other disenfranchised groups. In making this case,
Eisenberg, like Bernstein, argues for more studies of Jewish life in the West, a more diverse area
where “race relations are far more complicated than black and white.”26
While these works add geographic diversity to the study of American Jewry, ample
opportunity remains for historians to explore Jews’ relationships with other non-black actors in
more familiar terrain, including New York City. By the mid-twentieth century, Puerto Ricans
had become a significant part of New York’s racial and ethnic landscape. By 1950, Puerto
24 Some works examine the current nature of Jewish-Hispanic relations. See Peter Beinart et al., Latinos and Jews: Old Luggage, New Itineraries (New York: American Jewish Committee, 2002) and Bridget Kevane, The Dynamics of Jewish Latino Relationships (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). For, a comparison of Jewish and Latino racial identity in the 20th century, see Victoria Hattam, In the Shadow of Race: Jews, Latinos and Immigrant Politics in the United States (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007). 25 Shana Bernstein, Bridges of Reform: Interracial Civil Rights Activism in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 11. See also George Sanchez, "What's Good for Boyle Heights Is Good for the Jews: Multiracialism on the Eastside during the 1950s,” American Quarterly, Volume 56, Number 3, September 2004, pp. 633-661; George J. Sanchez, ed., Beyond Alliances: The Jewish Role in Reshaping the Racial Landscape of Southern California (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2011). 26 Ellen M. Eisenberg, The First to Cry Down Injustice? Western Jews and Japanese Removal During World War II (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008), xvii. 10
Ricans living in New York City represented nearly 255,000 of the slightly over 301,000 Puerto
Ricans living in the continental United States. By 1970, the city’s Puerto Rican populace had
increased by over 600,000 people.27 In addition, Puerto Ricans represented a majority, or nearly
900,000 of the Latinos, living in New York City in the early 1990s.28 These population increases
created new spaces for Jews and Puerto Ricans to engage in grassroots interaction, formal civic
dialogue, and local electoral politics, particularly in new areas of Puerto Rican settlement like the
Lower East Side.
The Puerto Rican experience on the Lower East Side challenged Jews’ views of poverty
and race in new and distinct ways. On the whole, Puerto Ricans remained more marginalized in
New York’s postwar political economy than African-Americans. The Puerto Rican Forum
estimated that over 50 percent of the city’s Puerto Rican populace lived in poverty, a higher
percentage than the city’s non-white population, in 1960.29 In addition, over 30 percent of Puerto
Rican families in the city, compared to roughly 20 percent of African-American families, had annual incomes that fell below the federal poverty line, and the median income for Puerto Rican families fell roughly $1,500 below that of black families.30 At this time, Puerto Rican New
Yorkers, regardless of age and/or sex, had higher unemployment rates than their African-
American counterparts.31
These trends also developed on the Lower East Side. By the early 1970s, nearly one-third
27 Virginia Sánchez Korrol, From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 213. For a slightly lower estimate, see Puerto Rican Forum, A Study of Poverty Conditions in the New York Puerto Rican Community, 3rd ed. (Puerto Rican Forum: New York, 1970), 17. 28 Angelo Falcon and Christopher Hanson, Latinos and the Redistricting Process in New York City: An Assessment and Profiles of the New Latino Assembly, State Senate and Congressional Districts (New York: Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, 1992), 23. 29 Puerto Rican Forum, A Study of Poverty Conditions in the New York Puerto Rican Community, 15. 30 New York City Planning Commission, 1973 Community Planning Handbook, Manhattan, CPD 3, Section 6, Economic Development, “New York City.” 31 Puerto Rican Forum, A Study of Poverty Conditions in the New York Puerto Rican Community, 35.
11
of Puerto Rican families living in Community District 3, which covered the Lower East Side, sat
below the federal poverty line. In addition, nearly one-half of Puerto Ricans living in the
neighborhood worked as either “operatives,” or “service workers,” which tended to pay less than
more skilled positions. Though they still lagged behind whites, African-American families in the
district had higher median incomes, occupied more professional and managerial jobs, and earned
higher wages overall than their Puerto Rican neighbors. At the same time, Lower East Side
whites outpaced blacks and, to a greater extent, Puerto Ricans economically. Indeed, the median
income for non-Hispanic white families was over $1,500 greater than that of Puerto Rican
families and over one-fifth of Lower East Side whites worked as managers and professional
workers.32
Language barriers also stunted Puerto Rican advancement. Surveys showed that over 70
percent of Puerto Rican students in New York public schools spoke Spanish at home in the late
60s, but that only about one-quarter of all non-English speakers received bilingual services at
this time.33 As a result, nearly 40 percent of Puerto Rican children enrolled in the school system
exhibited “language difficulties.”34 Partly for this reason, New York City elementary schools
with the largest Puerto Rican populace had over 90 percent of their students reading below grade
level.35 In addition, only about 13 percent of New York Puerto Ricans twenty-five or older had
32 New York City Planning Commission, 1973 Community Planning Handbook, Manhattan, CPD 3, Section 6, Economic Development, “Employment and Income Profile: Manhattan Community Planning District 3.” 33 New York City Board of Education, “Non-English-Speaking Pupils by School Within District, October 31, 1970,” Table II-V: Spanish Usually Spoken in Home By Origin: November 1969 and Table VII-II: Special Instructional Help Received and Not Received by Non-English-Speaking Pupils in New York City Schools, 1970-1971, ASP, Box 26, Puerto Rican Data – 1970-71, RBML. 34 New York City Board of Education, “Non-English-Speaking Pupils by School Within District, October 31, 1970,” Table V-I: Survey of Pupils with Language Difficulties, October 31, 1970, ASP, Box 26, Puerto Rican Data – 1970- 71, RBML. 35 New York City Board of Education, “Non-English-Speaking Pupils by School Within District, October 31, 1970,” “Table IV-I: Ethnicity of 15 Elementary Schools at Bottom of April 1971 Reading Ranks,” ASP, Box 26, Puerto Rican Data – 1970-71, RBML. 12
finished high school (roughly one-third of African-Americans of the same age had) and over
one-half of Puerto Ricans over twenty-five had not completed the eighth grade. In addition,
Puerto Ricans attained less than 2 percent of the academic high school diplomas awarded by the
city in 1963.36 On the Lower East Side specifically, Puerto Ricans constituted about 68 percent of all public school students and less than 15 percent of Puerto Ricans twenty-five and older had completed four years of high school.37
In addition, African-Americans possessed more clout in New York electoral politics than
Puerto Ricans in the 1960s. By this time, black New Yorkers had established a thick network of civil rights groups and a political establishment that enunciated a distinct agenda and influenced local electoral politics. Puerto Ricans, however, occupied a more tenuous space within the city’s liberal coalitions and had developed only nascent organizational networks on the Lower East
Side. As historian Lorrin Thomas notes, Puerto Ricans settled in several New York City neighborhoods in the early twentieth century, most notably Red Hook, Borough Hall, and East
Harlem. These Puerto Ricans joined interethnic labor organizations, developed new civic clubs, and became important constituents in the local Democratic machine. This latter development allowed Puerto Ricans to secure important services from neighborhood leaders made Puerto
Ricans an important base in local politics.38 At the same time, Thomas notes, the Great
Depression motivated Puerto Rican leaders to create “scores of hometown clubs, employees’ unions, and various community defense groups” and engage more seriously with local issues and
36 Puerto Rican Forum, A Study of Poverty Conditions in the New York Puerto Rican Community, 18, 25. 37 New York City Board of Education, “Non-English-Speaking Pupils by School Within District, October 31, 1970,” Table III-V: Puerto Ricans by District, Selected Districts, October, 1970,” RBML; New York City Planning Commission, 1973 Community Planning Handbook, Manhattan, CPD 3, Section 6, Economic Development, “Manhattan Community Planning District 3.” 38 Lorrin Thomas, Puerto Rican Citizen: History and Political Identity in Twentieth-Century New York City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 23-24, 31-32, 36, 41. 13
political parties.39
African-Americans, however, represented a stronger, and more permanent constituency
within Democratic electoral politics. Despite organizing new political clubs in the 1920s and
1930s, many Puerto Ricans, especially in East Harlem, did not rely on the local machine for
basic services and found its leadership positions overwhelmingly occupied by black and Italian
residents.40 Compared to African-Americans, Puerto Ricans also lacked the “numerical force” to
influence electoral politics across the city.41 By the 1950s, few Puerto Ricans had established
few, if any, parallels to large-scale, national agencies such as the NAACP, and held only one
elected seat in New York City as late as 1956 (Felipe Torres, a Bronx assemblyman).42 In
addition, Puerto Ricans’ focus on the political status of Puerto Rico challenged the ideological
parameters of mainstream Democratic Party politics, which tended to ignore questions relating to
the island’s colonial status. This focus meant that Puerto Rican political concerns did not always fit neatly within the priorities of the Democratic Party focus and, at times, led pro-independence leaders to renounce U.S. electoral politics altogether.43
Nevertheless, city planners and policymakers took note of New York’s growing Puerto
Rican population in the 1950s. In response to public fears that New York had a “Puerto Rican
problem,” the city’s liberal establishment enacted a host of new welfare programs targeting the
Puerto Rican poor.44 In 1948, for instance, Puerto Rican policymakers collaborated to form the
U.S. Migration Division, offered Puerto Rican migrants housing, education, health, and
vocational services. Shortly thereafter, Mayor O’Dwyer created the Mayor’s Advisory on Puerto
39 Ibid., 94. 40 Ibid., 44. 41 Ibid., 104. 42 Ibid., 183. 43 Ibid., 94-96. 44 Thomas, Puerto Rican Citizen, 141-42. 14
Rican Affairs (MACPRA), a group of forty-six civic and educational leaders, to create new
avenues of opportunity for Puerto Rican New Yorkers and extend federal welfare benefits to
Puerto Rico. The city’s Board of Education complemented these services by conducting the first
academic studies of Puerto Rican students, while other civic groups organized programs to
educate public and school audiences about Puerto Rican culture. These efforts both improved the
public perception of Puerto Ricans and made them a popular object of social scientific study in
the 1950s and 1960s. As Migration Division head Joseph Monserrat recalled, “Puerto Ricans
suddenly came to be in fashion” at this time.45
Increasingly, however, Puerto Ricans aimed to create an independent political agenda
more responsive to their needs. While new city services and agencies aimed to address Puerto
Rican poverty, low Puerto Rican education and income rates persisted throughout the 1950s and
beyond. Increasingly, Puerto Ricans attributed these struggles to the city’s small Puerto Rican
political leadership, as well as a failure of groups like the Migration Division and MACPRA to
address the more structural causes of urban inequality, particularly in housing and education. As
historian Lorrin Thomas notes, the major Puerto Rican social organizations like the Migration
Division and MACPRA excluded grassroots Puerto Rican leaders from key positions and did not
strengthen Puerto Rican political power. As a result, Thomas notes, Puerto Ricans made a
“renewed push for political empowerment in the city” in the late 1950s and early 60s.46
Increasingly willing to collaborate with African- Americans and identify as a racial minority, a young cadre of Puerto Ricans created an institutional framework within which they could pressure liberal leaders to both share political power and reshape existing institutions in the city, while also attaining new and formally recognized civil and legal rights. This ideological and
45 Ibid., 152-54, 158-59, 167, 169-70. 46 Ibid., 167, 177-78, 182-83. 15
tactical shift hinted at the emergence of a new and distinct Puerto Rican political agenda by the
mid-1960s. This agenda centered on redistributing urban resources and gaining not just
“individual rights for young Puerto Ricans,” but “group justice.”47
Even as Puerto Ricans experienced discrimination and poverty, however, they did not
gain status as a disenfranchised racial minority as had African-Americans. Sonia Song-Ha Lee
posits that Puerto Ricans, unlike blacks, “straddled the worlds of the racially ‘in-between’
European immigrants as well as the Afro-Caribbean diaspora.” Lee views these racial categories,
however, not as fixed and immutable labels, but instead as “political categories” used by various
interests to justify certain policies and political perspectives. For this reason, Lee argues that
whether one categorizes Puerto Ricans along white ethnic or racial lines depended not on “an
objective conceptual differentiation but on a highly contested negotiation of power.”48
How Lower East Side Jews classified Puerto Ricans racially and ethnically, then, reveals
much about Jews’ own relationship to the power structure in both Lower East Side and New
York City politics. Unlike African-Americans, Puerto Ricans possessed a more ambiguous and
complex racial status that forced Jews on the Lower East Side to either identify Puerto Ricans as
a distinct minority subjected to the same racist impulses that had disadvantaged black Americans
and/or as new settlers experiencing similar challenges to past white ethnic, particularly Jewish,
47 Ibid., 186, 202, 212. 48 Sonia Song-Ha Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement: Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in New York City (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2014), Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement, 6-7. For another example of black-Latino relations in New York City, see Frederick Douglass Opie, Upsetting the Apple Cart: Black-Latino Coalitions in New York City From Protect to Public Office (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). Most other works focus on black-Mexican organizing on the west coast. See Laura Pulido, Black Brown Yellow And Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Neil Foley, Quest for Equality: The Failed Promise of Black-Brown Solidarity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010); Brian Behnken, ed., The Struggle in Black and Brown: African American and Mexican American Relations During the Civil Rights Era (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011); Josh Kun and Laura Pulido, eds., Black and Brown in Los Angeles: Beyond Conflict and Coalition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013); Gordon Mantler, Power to the Poor: Black-Brown Coalition and the Fight for Economic Justice, 1960-1974 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2013); Brian Behnken, Fighting Their Own Battles: Mexican Americans, African Americans and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Texas (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2014). 16
immigrants. While some Puerto Ricans argued the latter, others, particularly during and after the
civil rights era, enunciated a different political agenda centered on the politics of racial identity.
This agenda differentiated between Jewish and Puerto Rican history, welcomed black-Latino
collaboration, and illuminated the institutional factors behind Puerto Rican poverty. Given
Puerto Ricans’ socioeconomic stagnation and their nascent ties to municipal politics, this agenda
threatened to upset the city’s political status quo in new ways by forcing both Grand Street and
New York City leaders to confront the deeper structures of racial and economic inequality.
This dissertation also complicates typical analyses of American Jewish politics by
extending the chronology of postwar American Jewish history, which scholars typically bracket from the 1930s through the early 1970s.49 Numerous urban historians have recently re-
periodized this era by framing city neighborhoods as spaces within which liberal, interracial
coalitions broke apart as early as the 1930s and 1940s.50 These scholars demonstrate that
municipal leaders and constituencies interpreted and employed federal policies, some of which
dealt ambiguously with racial inequality, in a way that segregated metropolitan areas by race and
class. In so doing, these authors trace the interracial tensions and political disagreements that
would later undermine the national New Deal coalition back to various urban locales in the
World War II and immediate postwar period. Thomas Sugrue, for instance, has argued that “the
politics of liberalism was ineluctably a politics of place” as “states and localities became
battlegrounds over the meaning and implementation of federal policies.”51 Robert Self similarly
49 See Friedman, What Went Wrong; Forman, Blacks in the Jewish Mind; Dollinger, Quest for Inclusion; Podair, The Strike That Changed New York; Staub, Torn at the Roots; Greenberg, Troubling the Waters; Joshua Zeitz, Jews, Catholics, and the Shaping of Postwar Politics (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2007). 50 Many historians have argued that the national New Deal coalition collapsed only in the late 1960s under the strain of an increasingly aggressive brand of identity politics and new black challenges to inequality. See Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960’s (New York: Harper and Row, 1984); Jonathan Rieder, “The Rise of the ‘Silent Majority,’” in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order 1930-1980, eds., Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). 51 Thomas Sugrue, “All Politics is Local: The Persistence of Localism in Twentieth-Century America,” in The 17
locates broader tensions within liberalism over racial equality, housing segregation, and social welfare within specific political struggles over “the particular metropolitan distribution of wealth, opportunity, and resources” in postwar Oakland.52 In his study of postwar Philadelphia,
Guian A. McKee also asserts that “local governments, policymakers, and community activists continued to exert extensive and often defining influence over the implementation and on-the- ground operation of American public policy.” As such, McKee notes, “Liberalism for most
Americans in the postwar years actually wore a local face.”53
Most historians, however, have yet to subject the 1980s and 1990s to this analytical framework. Reflecting on At Home in America, Deborah Dash Moore calls upon American
Jewish historians to begin doing so by examining how Jews in particular shaped cities and urban policy during New York’s “urban crisis” in the last third of the twentieth century. In making this claim, Moore notes that the “shift in clout from Jews aligned with progressive politics to those committed to a city catering to its financial community remains largely an untold story.”54 This
Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History, eds., Meg Jacobs and Julian Zelizer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 302. 52 Robert Self, American Babylon, Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 2. 53 Guian A. McKee, The Problem of Jobs: Liberalism, Race, and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 11, 16. For other examples, see Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Heather Ann Thompson, “Rethinking the Politics of White Flight in the Postwar City: Detroit, 1945-1980, Journal of Urban History, Vol. 25, No. 2, January 1999, 163-198; Wendell Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002); Becky M. Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002); Amanda I. Seligman, Block by Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago’s West Side (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005); David Freund, Colored Property: state Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010); Clarence Taylor, “Conservative and Liberal opposition to the New York City School-Integration Campaign,” in Civil Rights in New York City From World War II to the Giuliani Era, ed. Clarence Taylor (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011), 95-117. 54 Deborah Dash Moore, “Remaking Ourselves at Home,” American Jewish History, Volume 100, Number 2, April 2016, 186-87. For one exception, see Lila Corwin Berman, Metropolitan Jews: Politics, Race, and Religion in Postwar Detroit (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2015). Berman shows how Jews shaped city life by engaging in private philanthropic work and devising urban revitalization plans. According to Berman, these actions signaled less that Jews had abandoned liberalism and more that they recognized the more limited parameters of government spending in urban areas in the 1970s; Berman, 214-15. 18
dissertation fills this historiographic gap by analyzing how Grand Street reaffirmed major
changes to New York’s political economy in the 1970s and 1980s – namely the emergence of
policies that eased large-scale finance and real estate access to public dollars and space.
To extend the chronological and geographic scope of typical studies of American Jewish and urban history, this dissertation also utilizes a range of archival records. Reconstructing the political power structure on the Lower East Side from the 1960s through the 1990s required me to examine numerous previously untapped documents: congressional correspondence, speeches, and reports; municipal planning documents and letters; the meeting minutes and internal memoranda of Jewish and Puerto Rican defense agencies; briefs filed by Jewish and Puerto
Rican legal organizations; Jewish, Puerto Rican, and Lower East Side newspapers; and local quantitative voting data. This array of sources reveals the significance of previously unknown or understudied political actors and shows how federal, local, and grassroots influences shaped policy formation on the Lower East Side. For this reason, this dissertation adds to the field of
“new” political history, which examines the interplay between local and elite political forces, and incorporates aspects of social and/or cultural history into studies that once focused wholly on formal government actions.55
The dissertation’s chapters are organized both thematically and chronologically. Chapter
1 demonstrates Grand Street’s growing ambivalence toward civil rights activism in the mid-
1960s. It does so by tracing two developments: the maturation of grassroots Puerto Rican
activism with the support of Mobilization for Youth (MFY), a federal anti-delinquency agency,
55 See Jacobs and Zelizer, The Democratic Experiment. Scholars recently debated the merits of this “new” political history. See Frederick Logevall and Kenneth Osgood, “Why Did We Stop Teaching Political History?” The New York Times, August 29, 2016; Julian Zelizer, “Political History is Doing AOK,” Process: A Blog for American History, August 31, 2016, http://www.processhistory.org/zelizer-political-history/; K.C. Johnson, “The Alarming Decline of U.S. Political History,” Minding the Campus, September 1, 2016, accessed September 30, 2016, http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/09/the-alarming-decline-of-u-s-political-history/. 19
and the policies of Leonard Farbstein, a long-standing Jewish Representative and lifelong Lower
East Side resident. MFY’s community organizing program, as depicted in agency program notes and meeting minutes, represented the first major instance of Puerto Rican political activism on the Lower East Side. The bulk of this activism focused on the neighborhood’s public schools. By pushing for more input over local school matters, Puerto Ricans cultivated alliances with black civil rights leaders and demanded policies that foreshadowed the later community control movement. These actions also offered Puerto Ricans a springboard into local electoral politics.
By articulating a concrete agenda through federal programs like MFY, Puerto Ricans emerged as an important political base in the neighborhood. The growing political influence of this Puerto
Rican base revealed itself for the first time in the 1966 Democratic congressional primaries between Representative Farbstein and Ted Weiss, a city councilman. Farbstein’s congressional records and quantitative voting data from the neighborhood reveal the skepticism with which the congressman and his white ethnic base viewed MFY programs and Puerto Rican activism. For this reason, the 1966 primary foreshadowed Jews’ later resistance to community control and
Grand Street’s electoral alliance with conservative white ethnics in New York’s outer-boroughs.
The Farbstein-Weiss race, however, hardly settled debates over Lower East Side education. In the late 1960s, Jewish teachers and civic leaders, many of whom lived on Grand
Street, clashed with Puerto Rican school activists over school decentralization and community control. While historians have examined these battles in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, no scholar has fully investigated similar, and concurrent, conflicts on the Lower East Side. Utilizing records from the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), Jewish defense agencies, and the ethnic press,
Chapter 2 demonstrates that debates over bilingual education made Jewish-Puerto Rican relations a central and publicly recognized aspect of neighborhood life. By opposing Puerto
20
Rican notions of bilingualism and new calls for community control, both Grand Street and their more secular Jewish allies shifted to the right on racial issues and solidified an emerging alliance with conservative, white ethnic voters. This shift became apparent during the 1973 Democratic mayoral primary run-off election between Comptroller Abe Beame and Representative Herman
Badillo. This contest represented, to a certain degree, a mandate on Lower East Side school policy and revealed, for the first, time, how the politics of Jewish and Puerto Rican identity could shape New York City mayoral politics.
Chapter 3 examines how Jewish and Puerto Rican actors shaped urban renewal on the
Lower East Side in the 1970s. Citing municipal planning documents, reports from the United
Jewish Council (UJC), and various court records, I show how Jewish civic groups, Orthodox aid societies, and Puerto Rican activists influenced redevelopment plans for the Seward Park
Extension Urban Renewal Area. Debates over how to revitalize Seward Park exposed Grand
Street’s growing embrace of conservative orthodoxy, namely the tendency to attribute poverty solely to individual failings and the single-parent home. At the same time, Seward Park represented a unique and particularly significant site for urban renewal. Located in the heart of
Grand Street, the territory represented an island of both Jewish residential settlement and political influence. For this reason, debates over the Seward Park Extension signaled Grand
Street’s desire to define, mark, and expand “Jewish” territory in the neighborhood. In claiming
“Jewish” space, Grand Street often invoked a collective memory of the Lower East Side past that painted the neighborhood as both wholly Jewish and socially harmonious. In so doing, Grand
Street showed its ability to fuse more abstract claims of authority with concrete political goals.
This strategy would allow Grand Street to control and shape both Seward Park and the Lower
East Side housing market for the next fifty years.
21
Chapter 4 shows how New York electoral districts came to reflect and reinforce Jews’
and Puerto Ricans’ spatial claims in the 1970s and 1980s. At this time, Orthodox and Puerto
Rican legal aid groups and politicians engaged in a running debate about the 1965 Voting Rights
Act’s (VRA) authority to create districts around distinct racial, ethnic, and religious communities. These debates highlighted both federal and state authorities’ recognition of Puerto
Ricans as specially protected minorities and triggered New York’s growing black-Latino electoral alliance. On the other hand, both the VRA and successive judicial rulings forced
Orthodox Jews in both Brooklyn and the Lower East Side to grapple with their dual identity as a white religious minority. During these cases – most notably UJO v. Wilson (1974) and UJO v.
Carey (1977) – national Orthodox groups paralleled the challenges faced by earlier Jewish immigrants and postwar Puerto Rican settlers and framed Puerto Ricans as white ethnics unworthy of categorization as a protected minority under the VRA. These legal debates culminated with the creation of a new Puerto Rican congressional district, the 12th district, which covered parts of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Lower East Side. The 1992 races for the 12th district
featured five Puerto Rican candidates running against Stephen Solarz, a longtime Jewish
congressman who previously had served the country’s largest Orthodox district in Brooklyn, and ended with the election of the first Puerto Rican woman to Congress. As a result of this election and the creation of the 12th district, Jewish-Puerto Rican conflict became a central feature of
New York congressional politics.
Finally, Chapter 5 examines Grand Street’s role in accelerating gentrification on the
Lower East Side. By analyzing mayoral correspondence, local housing group records, and local voting data, I show how Grand Street leaders stifled the efforts of a coalition of Puerto Ricans,
African-Americans, and left-wing whites to halt gentrification and build more low-income
22
housing in the Seward Park Extension and across the Lower East Side. In so doing, Grand Street leaders backed policies that advantaged large-scale real estate investment in the neighborhood and promoted luxury development. In all, local battles over gentrification also revealed Grand
Street’s ability to influence the city’s affordable housing initiatives. This influence appeared
most notably in the 1993 mayoral election between David Dinkins, the city’s first African-
American mayor, and Rudy Giuliani. Grand Street’s clout in municipal politics and ongoing support for gentrification fractured Dinkins’ interracial coalition on the Lower East Side and sabotaged more progressive housing policies in the neighborhood. After concluding Chapter 5, I briefly describe the recent fate of Grand Street’s Jewish political leadership, highlighted by
Sheldon Silver’s arrest and the assembly district elections to replace him.
In all, Grand Street’s political leaders, and, at times, their Jewish opponents, played a vital role in shaping Lower East Side life well into the late twentieth century. Long after their forbearers had left the neighborhood, Orthodox Jews remained a powerful bloc in both local and citywide politics. A politically-active, tight-knit, middle-class community, these Jews shaped the trajectory of neighborhood politics and the parameters of local social welfare, education, and housing policy. From the 1960s through the 1990s, Grand Street strengthened its control of neighborhood institutions and reaffirmed its particular economic and religious interests.
Throughout this period, this Jewish community undercut more progressive avenues to neighborhood change enunciated by a coalition of left-wing white residents and Puerto Rican groups. These factors made Jewish-Puerto Rican relations a central feature of both local and citywide politics, which illustrated how Orthodox Jews in the neighborhood viewed their own status as a religious minority, as well as the role race played in social and economic inequality.
Most importantly, Grand Street undergirded its political agenda by framing the Lower East Side
23
as an origin point in a narrative of American Jewish success and advancement. In so doing,
Grand Street Jews tied collective memories of the Lower East Side to policies that reinforced
Jews’ claims to neighborhood space. Such actions made Grand Street central to the acceleration of gentrification, both in the neighborhood across the city.
24
Chapter 1 “A Revolution in Rising Expectations”: Congressman Leonard Farbstein and Lower East Side Antipoverty Politics, 1963-19661
In September 1963, 45 Puerto Rican parents penned a letter to Irving Rosenblum, the
principal of P.S. 140 on the Lower East Side.2 Organized by a new federal anti-delinquency
agency called Mobilization for Youth (MFY), the parents, who dubbed themselves Mobilization
of Mothers (MOM), asked Rosenblum about the school’s homework policies and academic
requirements. “We want to know,” MOM wrote, “what we, as parents, can do to help our
children stay in school and get a good education.”3 The group also invited Rosenblum to a meeting at P.S. 140 the following month.4 The conference did not go as planned. At the meeting,
Rosenblum attributed his students’ academic struggles to language difficulty and “culturally deprived” homes. “Look at how hard it is for me to talk to you,” Rosenblum barked at MOM.
“Imagine how difficult it is…for a teacher to handle a class full of children who can’t speak
English.”5 After several exchanges, other parents told MOM to “organize” to prevent Rosenblum
from “walking all over you.”6 Henry Specht, an MFY staffer in attendance, agreed. At the end of
the meeting, Specht accused Rosenblum of alienating P.S. 140 parents and warned him that
MOM would soon “be justified in taking action outside of the school.”7
1 Parts of this chapter appeared in my article, “‘A Revolution in Rising Expectations’: School Activism and Interracial Politics on the Lower East Side, 1963-1966,” Journal of Policy History, Vol. 29, Number 1, 2017, pp. 140-176. Reprinted with permission from Cambridge University Press. 2 Valerie Jorrin to Harry Specht, “Conversations with Mr. Irving Rosenblum – Principal, P.S. 140, September 16, 1963, Daniel Knapp Papers (hereafter DKP), Box 27, Mobilization for Mothers School Dispute, 9/16/63-2/19/64, John F. Kennedy Library (Boston, Massachusetts) (hereafter JFKL). 3 “Report on Principals’ Dispute with Mobilization for Youth,” February 19, 1964, Frances Fox Piven Papers (hereafter FFPP), Box 56, Folder 3, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College (Northampton, MA) (hereafter SSC). 4 Ibid.; P.S. 140’s student body was roughly 75% Puerto Rican; “Part I – Public School Ethnic Composition, Tabular Data,” ASP, Box 26, Folder 2, RBML. 5 “Report on Principals’ Dispute with Mobilization for Youth,” February 19, 1964, FFPP, Box 56, Folder 3, SSC. 6 Harry Specht to George Brager, “Mobilization of Mothers,” October 22, 1963, FFPP, Box 55, Folder 9, SSC. 7 Ibid. 25
In recent years, historians have written a number of case studies dissecting race relations
in the postwar urban north. These scholars examine how municipal leaders and constituencies
implemented and interpreted federal housing, employment, and education initiatives at the local
level. In so doing, these authors show that the deterioration of interracial coalitions in northern
cities predated a white rejection of racial liberalism in post-1965 national and presidential politics. According to Thomas Sugrue, “urban elected officials and voters played a crucial role in implementing New Deal policies” in postwar Detroit.8 In so doing, he posits, white Detroiters
transferred the racial inequities embedded in these policies down to local areas and reshaped
“urban geography by class and race.”9 In American Babylon, Robert O. Self similarly argues that
“local politics in places like Oakland and the East Bay…became contests over the nature and
expression of the American welfare state” after World War II.10 Self’s work shows how these
contests fractured along racial lines, leading African-Americans and whites to engage in a
“struggle over control of urban resources in the late 1950s and 1960s.”11 Wendell Pritchett
similarly assesses how Community Action Programs affected race relations in Brownsville,
Brooklyn. While Pritchett argues that these initiatives represented the “high point of optimism
surrounding the civil rights movement,” he suggests that long-standing national and municipal housing policies made Brownsville a “segregated ghetto” and fostered black-Jewish political conflict.12
Despite this historiographical trend, however, few scholars have examined the intersection between MFY, a significant program funded with federal and city dollars, and
8 Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 10. 9 Ibid., 12. 10 Self, American Babylon, 3. 11 Ibid., 9. 12 Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn, 3-5, 218-19. 26
Lower East Side politics. Instead, most work on the agency either utilizes a sociological framework to dissect the theoretical underpinnings of social conflict or focuses on national politics and the War on Poverty.13 The lack of attention to the local political context within which MFY operated stems from the fact that few writers have analyzed post-1945 Lower East
Side race relations and politics. Instead, most work on New York’s civil rights movement, particularly black-Jewish relations, centers on the city’s outer-boroughs, relegating the Lower
East Side to studies of early twentieth century immigrant life.14 It is true that the Lower East
Side’s white ethnic, particularly Jewish, populace had declined significantly by 1945.15 As Jerald
Podair contends, it was in Ocean Hill-Brownsville where Jews ultimately embraced the
“unambiguous expressions of white identity” and grasped the “benefits…of white privilege” after the neighborhood’s 1968 teacher strikes. After this pivotal moment, Podair argues, Jews rejected calls for community control and aligned themselves with other, more conservative,
13 See George Brager and Francis Purcell, eds., Community Action Against Poverty: Readings from the Mobilization Experience (New York: College and University Press, 1967); Harold H. Weissman, ed., Community Development in the Mobilization for Youth Experience (New York: Association Press, 1969); Joseph H. Helfgot, Professional Reforming: Mobilization for Youth and the Failure of Social Science (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1981); Allen J. Matusow, The Unravelling of America; Noel Cazenave, Impossible Democracy: The Unlikely Success of the War on Poverty Community Action Programs (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007). 14 See Jonathan Rieder, Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn Against Liberalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985); Steve Gregory, Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Craig Steven Wilder, A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Podair, The Strike That Changed New York; Jill Jonnes, South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City, 2nd ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002); Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn; Walter Thabit, How East New York Became a Ghetto (New York: NYU Press, 2003). For a more recent study of a Manhattan neighborhood, see Robert W. Snyder, Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York City (New York: Cornell University Press, 2014). Several recent works examine how American Jews remembered the Lower East Side in the postwar period. See Christopher Mele, Selling the Lower East Side: Culture, Real Estate, and Resistance in New York City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000); Hasia Diner, Lower East Side Memories; Hasia Diner, Shandler, Wenger, eds., Remembering the Lower East Side. 15 By 1905, two-thirds of Lower East Side Jews had moved to upper Manhattan or Brooklyn. Roughly one decade later, only 23% of New York City Jews lived in the neighborhood; Diner Lower East Side Memories, 49. See also Jeffrey Gurock, Jews in Gotham: New York Jews in a Changing City, 1920-2010 (New York: NYU Press, 2012), 15. The Queens increase happened in the 1940s and 1950s; Gurock, 103. 27
white Catholic voters in local elections. For Podair, this process shifted “the electoral politics of
the city rightward” in the 1970s.16
This process, however, played out on the Lower East Side in the early-to-mid 1960s. This
chapter shows how Jewish elected officials, along with Jewish and other white ethnic voters,
responded to MFY’s efforts to organize Puerto Ricans, and to a lesser extent African-Americans, around local school issues in 1963 and 1964. These responses appear through the policies and electoral strategies of Representative Leonard Farbstein, a first-generation Jewish Democrat and lifelong Lower East Side resident who served the racially diverse 19th Congressional District,
which encompassed the Lower East Side in the 1960s.17 Federal politicians like Farbstein serve
as important, if overlooked, lenses into local politics. Unlike their presidential or mayoral
counterparts, such officials serve specific neighborhoods and take positions that both reflect and
influence differences between local constituencies. Thus, Farbstein’s relationship to MFY and
the initiatives it embraced offers an important, yet overlooked, window into the trajectory of
postwar urban liberalism and Lower East Side politics.
By 1964, white ethnics, blacks, and Puerto Ricans on the Lower East Side embraced
different notions of education reform and racial inequality. If these divisions did not produce the
heated conflict that enveloped Ocean Hill-Brownsville in 1968, they did influence local politics.
Publicly and privately, Farbstein embraced national civil rights legislation and disagreed with
white ethnic constituents who believed the new laws would enact reverse discrimination. This
16 Podair, 143-44, 209. Some argue that the children of Jewish immigrants maintained a distinct Jewish identity, as well as ties to Jewish institutions and neighborhoods even as Jews came to be seen increasingly as “white.” See Moore, At Home in America; Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998). 17 Most scholars examine interracial conflict in postwar New York City from the perspective of social or cultural history. See Rieder, Canarsie; Podair, The Strike That Changed New York; Jennifer Lee, Civility in the City: Blacks, Jews, and Koreans in Urban America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Snyder, Crossing Broadway; Zeitz, Jews, Catholics, and the Shaping of Postwar Politics. 28
stance, often justified by connecting Jewish, black, and Puerto Rican interests, allowed him to
sustain a viable interracial coalition in the 19th district. At the same time, however, Farbstein,
sometimes by alluding to particular notions of American Jewish success and advancement,
remained skeptical of local grassroots protest and race-based initiatives that challenged the deeper structures of racial stratification on the Lower East Side. This skepticism led the congressman, along with several ideologically sympathetic municipal officials, to call for scaling back MFY’s community organization program in 1964 and left him increasingly out of touch with black and Puerto Rican voters.
Farbstein’s 1966 primary campaign against reform-minded challenger Theodore Weiss exposed this subtle, yet growing, disconnect. That election, the first after city and state authorities investigated MFY for its involvement in local protests, highlighted Farbstein’s reliance on Jewish and Italian voters and suggested that Jews and Catholics had entered into an electoral alliance on the Lower East Side before 1968. In this way, the primaries foreshadowed
Jewish-black-Puerto Rican conflict over community control in the late 1960s and 1970s.18
------
The 19th Congressional District
Three distinct areas comprised New York’s 19th Congressional District: western
Manhattan, lower central Manhattan, and the Lower East Side (Figure 1).19 The district was racially and ethnically diverse. Immigrant and first generation Eastern Europeans comprised nearly 19 percent, and Italians nearly 10 percent, of the 19th district’s population in 1960. Puerto
Ricans and African-Americans also comprised nearly 18 percent and 7 percent, respectively, of
18 Despite Farbstein’s long political career, scholars have yet to cite from his unprocessed, but accessible, archival collection. 19 I am defining the “Lower East Side” as all territory south of East 14th Street and west of the Bowery. As historians note, however, others may define the boundaries differently. See Diner, Lower East Side Memories, 41-42. 29
the district’s population at this time. Furthermore, the Lower East Side possessed a disproportionate share, roughly 41 percent, of the 19th district’s residents and about 60 percent of
its Puerto Rican and Eastern European populaces in 1960 (Table 1). As I will later show, these
statistics meant that political developments on the Lower East Side influenced the 19th district as
a whole.
30
Figure 1: 19th Congressional District
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Congressional District Atlas (Districts of the 88th Congress): A Statistical Abstract Supplement, "New York," 327.
31
Table 1: Racial and Ethnic Breakdowns of the 19th Congressional District and Lower East Side
*19th Congressional District (1960)
Total population 445,175 Race or ethnicity Population Percent of total populace (to the nearest tenth) **Eastern European 82,903 18.6% **Italian 43,215 9.7% **German 12,878 2.9% Puerto Rican 79, 686 17.9% African-American 31,392 7.0% *These figures include census tracts through which the congressional district boundary ran **Immigrant and first generation Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Congressional District Data Book (Districts of the 88th Congress): A Statistical Abstract Supplement, “Vote Cast and Population,” 340.
*19th Congressional District (1970)
Total Population 379,012 Race or ethnicity Population Percent of total populace (to the nearest tenth) **Eastern European 53,410 14.1% **Italian 22,345 6.9% **German 7,474 2.0% Puerto Rican 65,835 17.4% African-American 36,615 9.7% *These figures include census tracts through which the congressional district boundary ran **Immigrant and first generation Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Congressional District Atlas (Districts of the 92d Congress), “New York: Districts Established January 23, 1970” and “Congressional District Data,” 15; Bureau of the Census, 1970 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Census Tracts, Part 14: New York, NY, “Table P-1: General Characteristics of the Population, 1970,” P-98-P-109 and “Table P-2: Social Characteristics of the Population, 1970,” P-298-P-309. These figures include census tracts through which the congressional district boundary ran.
Lower East Side (1960)
Total population 183,761 Race or ethnicity Population Percent of total populace (to the nearest tenth) **Eastern European 48,801 26.6% **Italian 15,297 8.3% **German 3,120 1.7% Puerto Rican 48,173 26.2% African-American 14,593 7.9% **Immigrant and first generation Source: U.S. Census Bureau, of the Census, Congressional District Data Book (Districts of the 88th Congress): A Statistical Abstract Supplement, 327; U.S. Census Bureau, 1960 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Census Tracts, Part 1: New York, NY, accessed October 10, 2015, http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/c.php?g=95512&p=624011; U.S. Census Bureau, 1960 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Final Report, Part 1: New York City, “Table P-1: General Characteristics of the Population By Census Tracts, 1960,” 113-116.
32
Lower East Side (1970)
Total population 165,696 Race or ethnicity Population Percent of total populace (to the nearest tenth) **Eastern European 23,903 14.4% **Italian 7,568 4.6% **German 1,813 1.1% Puerto Rican 48,263 29.1% African-American 20,424 12.3% **Immigrant and first generation Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Congressional District Atlas (Districts of the 92d Congress), “New York: Districts Established January 23, 1970”; U.S. Census Bureau, 1970 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Census Tracts, Part 14: New York, NY, accessed October 10, 2015, http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/c.php?g=95512&p=624011; U.S. Census Bureau, 1970 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Census Tracts, Part 14: New York, NY, “Table P-1: General Characteristics of the Population, 1970,” P-98-P-101 and “Table P-2: Social Characteristics of the Population, 1970,” P-298-P-301.
Despite this diversity, the Lower East Side’s two major constituencies – Jews and Puerto
Ricans – occupied different spaces within the neighborhood’s political economy. While two- thirds of Jews had left the neighborhood by 1905, many remained to operate Jewish-owned schools and businesses and lived in Jewish-owned housing complexes.20 In the mid-twentieth century, groups such as the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACW) and
International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) constructed the Amalgamated, Hillman,
East River, and Seward Park co-ops. These complexes, lined along Grand Street, possessed a substantial middle-class Jewish population.21 Indeed, Farbstein lived in the Hillman Houses as an elected official, joined local Jewish institutions like the Bialystoker Synagogue, one of the oldest
20 Diner, Lower East Side Memories, 49; Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 86; Gurock also notes that, in spite of restrictive immigration laws, Eastern European immigrants continued to settle on the Lower East Side in the late 1920s; Gurock, 26. 21 Jews comprised an estimated 75% of Amalgamated and Hillman inhabitants and a significant portion of Seward Park residents at this time. For these breakdowns and a good overview of these projects, see Mele, 134; Joel Schwartz, The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and the Redevelopment of the Inner City (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993), 134-137, 176-77; Joshua Freeman, Working Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II (New York: The New Press, 2000), 114-115. Some authors also estimate higher percentages. See Turner, “Building Boundaries,” 83-89, 199. 33
in the neighborhood, and served on the board of a local Talmud Torah Hebrew school.22 While
providing a physical space for Jewish settlement, these structures also strengthened Jews’
cultural ties to the Lower East Side. In the postwar period, Jews viewed the Lower East Side as a
marker of American Jewish success and survival, and reimagined the past neighborhood, despite
its previous diversity, as wholly Jewish. As one scholar notes, the neighborhood became “the
locus for an American Jewish founding myth” after the Second World War, a place where Jewish
immigrants, through individual effort, “triumphed, becoming educated, middle-class
Americans.”23
If Grand Street became home to a substantial Jewish middle-class, however, Puerto Ricans’ economic prospects steadily declined on the Lower East Side after World War II.24 At this time,
Puerto Rican garment industry jobs increasingly relocated off-shore or went to outside
contractors, leading to depressed wages and unemployment.25 Puerto Ricans also attended
segregated schools and, in the MFY area specifically, read at significantly lower levels than their
white peers.26 In addition, Puerto Rican New Yorkers tended to live in substandard housing
compared to their black and white counterparts. As of 1960, for instance, over 95 percent of
Puerto Ricans rented housing, over 87 percent lived in buildings constructed before 1939, and roughly 40 percent lived in units with either “deteriorating” or “dilapidated” plumbing.27 In
22 Kurt F. Stone, The Jews of Capitol Hill: A Compendium of Jewish Congressional Members (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2011), 204; “Leonard Farbstein,” Henry Street Settlement Records (hereafter referred to as HSS), Box 98, Folder 9, Social Welfare History Archives (Minneapolis, MN) (hereafter referred to as SWHA); “Durable Congressman: Leonard Farbstein,” The New York Times, July 2, 1966. 23 Diner, Lower East Side Memories, 7. 24 Other statisticians count an additional 35,000 Puerto Ricans entering the Lower East Side between 1950 and 1970, a 258% population increase. Harry Schwartz, Planning for the Lower East Side, 13. 25 Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 126-27; Thomas, 214-15. 26 Less than ten-percent of all Puerto Rican third graders read at grade level in the MFY target area; Tamar W. Carroll, Mobilizing New York: AIDS, Antipoverty, and Feminist Activism (Chapel Hill: UNCP Press, 2015), 34; “Report on Principals’ Dispute with Mobilization for Youth,” February 19, 1964, FFPP, Box 56, Folder 3, SSC. 27 Puerto Rican Forum, A Study of Poverty Conditions in the New York Puerto Rican Community (New York: Puerto Rican Forum), 39-41. 34
addition, Lower East Side public housing also became heavily Puerto Rican by the late 1960s,
due partly to urban renewal initiatives.28 In the MFY area, specifically, Puerto Ricans comprised
over one-third of the residents who lived in and around the Wald and Riis houses, an area that
possessed high rates of poverty and juvenile delinquency.29
Mobilization for Youth MFY attempted to address these trends by organizing black and Puerto Rican residents
within a distinct target area that included a large portion of the Lower East Side east of Avenue B
(Figure 2).30 The agency formed in 1958 when the Henry Street Settlement, concerned about
local gang violence and juvenile crime, received $500,000 to form a new anti-delinquency program from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).31 Henry Street leaders based
MFY’s mission on a new sociological theory penned by two Columbia University sociologists,
Lloyd Ohlin and Richard Cloward. In their book, Delinquency and Opportunity, Cloward and
Ohlin posited that juvenile crime occurred when a gap existed between an adolescent’s
aspirations and his/her opportunities for socioeconomic advancement. The theory offered several
measures to reduce delinquency.32 Driven partly by curiosity regarding the psychological roots
of prejudice after World War II, “opportunity theory” accepted individual and behavioral
remedies to reduce crime.33 However, the theory also suggested that societal structures and institutions limited opportunities available to the poor.34 The idea thus provided MFY with the
28 Studies showed that nonwhites represented nearly half of all those relocated to public housing as a result of urban renewal by the late 1950s and that Puerto Ricans represented the largest sub-set of this group; Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Public Housing That Worked: New York In the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 170, 174. 29 Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 134; Turner, 79; Schwartz, Planning for the Lower East Side, 19. 30 Carroll, 28. 31 Carroll, 25-30; Cazenave, 21. 32 Cazenave, 37; Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth- Century U.S. History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 127-28. 33 O’Connor, 98-109; Cazenave, 38. 34 O’Connor, 127-28; Cazenave, 37-38. 35
basis to reduce delinquency through institutional, not solely individual, change. MFY staffers believed that achieving this change required the poor to articulate concrete political interests by organizing themselves. On the Lower East Side, this meant that the agency would encourage blacks and Puerto Ricans to confront local authorities utilizing a “collective expression of discontent and alienation.” Doing so, MFY argued, would at once steer potential delinquents toward legal behavior and alleviate the stresses that provoked juvenile delinquency in the first place.35 The federal government conferred further support upon this mission when the
President’s Committee on Juvenile Delinquency (PCJD), organized by the Kennedy administration to oversee local anti-delinquency programs, pledged $2 million to MFY in 1962.
At a ceremony held to celebrate the contribution, federal officials called MFY the “most advanced program yet devised to combat delinquency on a broad scale.”36
35 Carroll, 31; “The Community Organization Program of Mobilization for Youth,” FFPP, Box 55, Folder 10, SSC; “Meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee to Review the Community Organization Program,” FFPP, Box 56, Folder 5, SSC. 36 Marjorie Hunter, “U.S. and City Open 12.6-Million War on Delinquency,” The New York Times, June 1, 1962. 36
Figure 2: MFY Target Area
Source: “Map of the Lower East Side,” in Mobilizing New York: AIDS, Antipoverty, and Feminist Activism, by Tamar Carroll (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2015), 28.
The agency’s top “institutional target” was the public school system.37 MFY leaders argued that school reform would provide preventative, rather than rehabilitative, services to the
Lower East Side nonwhite poor. At a 1963 meeting with Charles Tenney, the City Administrator under Mayor Robert Wagner, Richard Cloward noted that MFY had to choose between “serving those who are damaged and preventing future damage.”38 For Cloward, “preventing future damage” required government leaders to redistribute municipal resources to low-income minorities and, in education, make schools more attuned to the racial backgrounds of their students. At the meeting, he claimed that Lower East Side schools were “the cause of many of our problems” and had “never succeeded in engaging the low-income youngster.”39 According to
37 “The Community Organization Program of Mobilization for Youth,” FFPP, Box 55, Folder 10, SSC; “Meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee to Review the Community Organization Program,” FFPP, Box 56, Folder 5, SSC. 38 “Meeting Called by the City Administrator, April 17, 1963” Box 55, Folder 4, SSC. 39 Ibid. 37
Cloward, schools relied too heavily on services like reading clinics and guidance programs that,
while important, ducked more holistic, and potentially race-based, remedies to black and Puerto
Rican underachievement. “We can organize rehabilitative services until the public coffers are
exhausted,” Cloward told Tenney. “But the origins, the pressures, must be removed.”40
While Cloward did not define what he meant by “origins,” MFY leaders soon began
arguing that black and Puerto Rican parents deserved more decision-making power in the city’s
schools. During congressional hearings on juvenile delinquency, MFY board members testified
that they needed to “find some way by which people can begin to control their schools so the
schools can develop programs for different groups.”41 In another memorandum, MFY leaders argued that the agency had to make school administrators more responsive to “critical” parents.42
In other meetings, MFY argued that public schools prioritized “security” for teachers and
espoused a “Dick-and-Jane” celebration of “the homogenized life of white, middle-class children in the suburbs.”43 At another MFY-sponsored school board meeting, black and Puerto Rican
residents criticized Lower East Side schools for hiring only white principals and encouraging
nonwhite students to take vocational classes.44 In 1963, MFY’s Community Organization (C.O.) program, which initiated many of the agency’s social action activities, also took control of
MFY’s Parent-Ed Program, which aimed to adjust parents to schools’ expectations through home
40 Ibid. 41 “Green Hearings,” April 29, 1963, FFPP, Box 55, Folder 4, SSC. 42 George Brager, Richard Cloward, and James E. McCarthy to All Staff, undated, Mobilization for Youth Bound Documents, The Crisis: A Documentary Record, Volume V, June 1963-February 1965, Research Center, Columbia University School of Social Work (hereafter CUSSW). 43 “Ad Hoc Meeting on Problems of Liaisoning Communication with the Board of Education,” June 14, 1963, FFPP, Box 56, Folder 3, SSC; “Report on Principals’ Dispute with Mobilization for Youth,” February 19, 1964, FFPP, Box 56, Folder 3, SSC; George Brager to Florence Becker, July 5, 1963, FFPP, Box 56, Folder 3, SSC; George Brager, “Training Conferences, 1963-1964 Series…The Case of the Schools,” March 9, 1964, FFPP, Box 56, Folder 3, SSC; “Meeting Called by the City Administrator,” April 17, 1963, FFPP, Box 55, Folder 4, SSC. 44 “Report Prepared by the Principals of Districts 1-4 Presenting the Bases for the Telegram of January 27, 1964 Requesting an Investigation of Mobilization for Youth and the Dismissal of Mr. George A. Brager,” February 24, 1964, Mobilization for Youth Bound Documents, The Crisis: A Documentary Record, Volume V, June 1963- February 1965, CUSSW. 38
visits and in-service lectures.45 In a December 1963 meeting, C.O. staffers told Parent-Ed aides to stop establishing “service relationships” with parents and instead compile specific grievances that would allow the C.O. program to “develop a position with regard to altering the educational system.”46 This shift meant that Parent-Ed aides would encourage parents to take “necessary social action when their problems and concerns are not heard and resolved.”47 By the end of
1963, the aides also promised to help parents achieve changes “in housing laws, in securing better schools, in increasing job opportunities, and in the distribution of power.”48
MOM’s actions emblemized this ideological and strategic shift. By the end of 1963, the
group, which had initially requested information about P.S. 140’s homework policy, called for
Assistant Superintendent Florence Becker to fire Principal Rosenblum for a “lack of feeling for
minority parents.”49 Soon thereafter, MOM circulated flyers around the Lower East Side telling residents to join the group if they had “a complaint with the manner in which your children are
treated and taught in the public school.”50 Around this time, the MFY-backed Council of Puerto
Rican and Hispanic Organizations (CPRHO) also called upon Becker to resign for comparing
MOM to disobedient children and telling the group that “civilized people” worked toward
“cooperation” when resolving conflicts.51 Then, at a 1964 school board meeting held to discuss
the MOM incident, the National Association for Puerto Rican Civil Rights (NAPRCR)
45 Ibid. 46 Minutes of the Ad Hoc Committee Meeting on Community Organization Program, “Parent Education Program,” December 3, 1963, FFPP, Box 56, Folder 5, SSC. 47 “Meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee to Review the Community Organization Program,” March 4, 1964, FFPP, Box 56, Folder 5, SSC. 48 Ad Hoc Committee on Community Organization Program, “Report on Parent Education Program,” December 3, 1963, FFPP, Box 56, Folder 3, SSC. 49 MOM to Florence Becker, January 22, 1964, FFPP, Box 55, Folder 9, SSC. 50 “Report Prepared by the Principals of Districts 1-4 Presenting the Bases for the Telegram of January 27, 1964 Requesting an Investigation of Mobilization for Youth and the Dismissal of Mr. George A. Brager,” February 24, 1964, Mobilization for Youth Bound Documents, The Crisis: A Documentary Record, Volume V, June 1963- February 1965, CUSSW. 51 “Report on Principals’ Dispute with Mobilization for Youth,” February 19, 1964, FFPP, Box 56, Folder 3, SSC. 39
demanded that the city’s Board of Education (BOE) offer more Spanish-language courses, require teachers to learn Spanish, and hire more Puerto Rican administrators.52
The MOM incident, in short, led Puerto Ricans to call for new race-based reforms in
Lower East Side schools. These calls, backed by MFY, tapped into Puerto Ricans’ broader understandings of race in the 1960s. As historian Lorrin Thomas notes, Puerto Ricans at this time asserted “particular group rights, like ballots and civil service tests in Spanish and bilingual education” and called upon the BOE to hire more Puerto Rican school officials.53 Underlying
these calls was a growing belief that Puerto Ricans, like African-Americans, represented victims of racial discrimination and, as such, needed a coherent political agenda that sought benefits for
Puerto Ricans specifically.54 Often, this goal fostered black-Puerto Rican collaboration on civil
rights issues. This collaboration notably occurred during the 1964 New York City school
boycott, launched by the New York Citywide Committee for Integrated Schools. In 1963, the
Committee set a deadline of December 1 for the BOE to implement new school pairing and
transfer mandates that would integrate city schools by race.55 While the BOE had enacted some
new reforms in the early 1960s, the Committee criticized them as piecemeal and voluntary
measures that did not desegregate the school system, which by 1964 was over 40 percent black
and Latino and possessed increasingly segregated student bodies and teaching staffs.56 When the
52 Susan Goodman, “Puerto Ricans Turn Out: Bitterness Revealed Over E. Side Schools,” The Village Voice, February 20, 1964, Mobilization for Youth Bound Documents, The Crisis: A Documentary Record, Volume I, August-September 1964, CUSSW. 53 Thomas, 21, 217. 54 Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement, 12; Thomas, 215-17. 55 Clarence Taylor, Knocking at Our Own Door: Milton A. Galamison and the Struggle to Integrate New York City Schools (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 121-23; Parents Workshop Newsletter, ASP, Box 20, Folder 6. Workshop, 1961-1962, RBML. 56 Taylor, Knocking at Our Own Door, 116, 128. In 1959 and 1960, the BOE implemented permissive zoning, which allowed black and Puerto Rican elementary and junior high school students in overcrowded schools to transfer to out-of-district white schools not filled to capacity, and Open Enrollment, which permitted high school and junior high school students attending schools with at least an 85 percent black and/or Puerto Rican student population to transfer to underutilized schools with at least a 75 percent white population. In 1963, the BOE also pledged to pair and integrate twenty black and white elementary schools as part of the city’s new “Princeton Plan.” See Taylor, 81, 40
BOE failed to meet this deadline and selected only a few schools for pairing, the Committee
launched a student boycott on February 3, 1964 that kept over 460,000 children out of class.57
At the behest of Bayard Rustin, one of the boycott’s organizers, Manny Diaz, MFY’s
director of Community Affairs, and Gilberto Gerena-Valentin, a labor organizer, recruited Puerto
Rican parents to support the boycott and ran pro-boycott ads in El Diario, a large Spanish- language newspaper.58 MFY became further involved when the Lower East Side Civil Rights
Committee (LESCRC), comprised mostly of black and Puerto Rican parents, asked the agency to
endorse the boycott.59 In response, MFY organized a Civil Rights Committee to alert parents to
“collective protest – such as rent strikes, boycotts, petitioning, picketing, [and] mass marches.”60
The committee then drafted a formal statement that, while attributing school segregation to
residential patterns, called upon the BOE to “exercise the necessary social engineering” and to
integrate schools by implementing new pairing initiatives, construction strategies, and bilingual
programs.61 Two days after the boycott, which kept over 75 percent of Lower East Side students
home, MFY reiterated its commitment to change the “political and economic policies which
regulate access to opportunities in our society” through mass action.62 As a result of these
activities, MFY became an almost exclusively black and Puerto Rican program. While blacks
and Puerto Ricans comprised only about one-third of MFY’s target area at this time, they
102-103 and Diane Ravitch, The Great School Wars: A History of the New York City Public Schools (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 268-70. 57 Taylor, Knocking at Our Own Door, 125, 135-37, 141-42. 58 Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement, 117, 119-121. 59 Rev. Michael Allen and Rev. Richard Johnson to Winslow Carlton, January 7, 1964, Mobilization for Youth Bound Documents, The Crisis: A Documentary Record, Volume V, June 1963-February 1965, CUSSW; Fred Powledge, “Boycotters Push Grass-Root Drive,” The New York Times, February 9, 1964. 60 George Brager et al. to Board Civil Rights Committee, January 15, 1964, Mobilization for Youth Bound Documents, The Crisis: A Documentary Record, Volume V, June 1963-February 1965, CUSSW. 61 “A Draft Policy Statement on School Integration For Mobilization for Youth,” Mobilization for Youth Bound Documents, The Crisis: A Documentary Record, Volume V, June 1963-February 1965, CUSSW. 62 “MFY’s Participation in the Civil Rights Movements,” James McCarthy et al. to All Staff, Mobilization for Youth Bound Documents, The Crisis: A Documentary Record, Volume V, June 1963-February 1965, CUSSW; Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement, 121. 41
represented between 75 and 90 percent of the agency’s clientele.63 On the other hand, Jews and
Italians comprised nearly 40 percent of MFY area residents, but fewer than 15 percent of MFY
clientele during this same period.64 These statistics suggest that, by 1964, MFY had tied itself to
and helped spark organized black and Puerto Rican activism on the Lower East Side.
Local Responses to MFY
These ties, however, coincided with white New Yorkers’ growing skepticism of both the
strategies and objectives of civil rights protest. In September 1964, the New York Times reported
that over one-half of all whites in the city thought that the civil rights movement had gone “too
far” and would enact “reverse discrimination.” An even greater majority, about 80 percent, disagreed with school pairing plans. Importantly, the poll also suggested that religious background had become an increasingly irrelevant factor in one’s position on racial issues. For instance, 42, 46, and 63 percent of New York Protestants, Jews, and Catholics, respectively, wanted the civil rights movement to “slow down.” As such, the poll suggested that Jews,
Catholics, and Protestants had all begun to embrace common interests and coalesce around a
“white” identity by the mid-1960s.65
The political responses to MFY and the causes it embraced suggest that this trend developed on the Lower East Side. By 1964, MFY programs exposed a growing ideological gap between white ethnics, blacks, and Puerto Ricans in the neighborhood. These gaps became apparent through the positions maintained by Representative Leonard Farbstein, a Lower East
63 Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement, 116; Stephen J. Leeds, “Who Was Reached: An Analysis of the Population Served by Mobilization for Youth, 1962-1965,” “Table 3, Program Materials: Ethnicity,” FFPP, Box 57, Folder 1, SSC. 64 Leeds, “Who Was Reached.” 65 Fred Powledge, “Poll Shows Whites in City Resent Civil Rights Drive,” The New York Times, September 21, 1964. 42
Side resident and long-time congressman for the 19th district. Farbstein embraced the key tenets of postwar liberalism. Confident that government should promote equality of opportunity and protect individual citizens from both racial and religious discrimination, he linked Jewish, black, and Puerto Rican interests as racial and religious minorities. However, Farbstein remained skeptical of the kind of local activism and race-based initiatives backed by MFY and its nonwhite base. These positions weakened Farbstein’s political standing in black and Puerto
Rican sections of the Lower East Side (and district). This electoral shift became evident during the congressman’s 1966 primary race against Councilman Theodore Weiss, a candidate who openly courted the Puerto Rican vote, supported community activism, and backed race-conscious social policy.
These changes were only barely visible when looking at Farbstein’s congressional voting record. The congressman earned high marks on the American for Democratic Action’s (ADA)
“Liberal Quotient” and secured endorsements from Democratic leaders such as President Lyndon
Johnson.66 While he remained committed to New Deal policies like the minimum wage and
Social Security, he also backed federal civil rights legislation.67 In a 1962 speech, Farbstein called upon Congress to enforce the Brown ruling and recognize racial segregation as a “total national problem.”68 In letters to constituents, the congressman also emphasized his ties to
66 Louis Hollander to Leonard Farbstein, September 23, 1948, HSS, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA; Thomas O’Leary to Leonard Farbstein, October 8, 1948, HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA; Citizens’ Union, “Re-Elect Assemblyman Leonard Farbstein,” HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA; “Independent Citizens Committee Formed to Campaign on Behalf of Rep. Leonard Farbstein,” East Side News, March 27, 1964. 67 “Reelect Assemblyman Leonard Farbstein,” October 26, 1948, HSS, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA; Leonard Farbstein Legislative Summary, 1947-48, HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA; Citizens’ Union, “Reelect Leonard Farbstein,” HSS Records Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA; “Statement of Honorable Leonard Farbstein to the Committee on Ways and Means Urging Increased Social Security Benefits,” June 26, 1958, HSS Records, Box 98, Leonard Farbstein, Folder 9, SWHA; Farbstein Report on Activities, November 1963, HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA; Helen Hall and Ralph B. Tefferteller to Leonard Farbstein, August 6, 1964, HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA; Leonard Farbstein to Ramish Shah, August 23, 1963, HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA. 68 “Statement of the Honorable Leonard Farbstein Before the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Integration in Federally- Assisted Education, April 11, 1962, Leonard Farbstein Papers (hereafter LFP), Box 5 of 12, M.E. Grenader Department of Special Collections and Archives, SUNY Albany (Albany, New York) (hereafter MEG). 43
national civil rights leaders and causes, describing his speech at a Lower East Side rally for
Martin Luther King, Jr. and pointing out that he supported picketing Woolworth’s for racial
discrimination.69 In 1965, Farbstein similarly assured the Greenwich-Village NAACP that he
opposed seating Mississippi House members, due to the state’s history of voting
discrimination.70
Farbstein also linked his own Jewish background with the civil rights agenda. He assured
several Jewish organizations, including the Jewish Labor Committee and the Jewish War
Veterans, that he backed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.71 He also believed, as a “member of a religious group that has been the object of persecution for over twenty centuries,” that the law should protect individuals from both religious and racial discrimination.72
At the same time, Farbstein rejected arguments from his white ethnic constituents that the
Civil Rights Act would lead to reverse discrimination. In February 1964, a Jewish Lower East
Sider named Esther Lubin complained to the congressman that the Civil Rights Act would lead
employers to hire employees based on race, not merit, and to busing, which existed “to prove to
the Negroes, that we will do things to suit their rabble rousing leaders.”73 In her opinion,
African-Americans had nothing to “complain about” because they have “gotten and helped [sic]
much more than Jewish people.”74 Farbstein disagreed with this assessment. “Frankly, I am
69 Leonard Farbstein to R.J. Davall, July 25, 1963, LFP, Box 7 of 12 – Part I, Civil Rights Legislation, 88th Congress, MEG. 70 Leonard Farbstein to Larry R. Canton, July 10, 1965, LFP, Box 4 of 11, Legislation, 89th Congress, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, MEG. 71 JLC to Leonard Farbstein, December 5, 1963; Leonard Farbstein to Adolph Held, December 10, 1963; Telegram to Leonard Farbstein, February 2, 1964; Leonard Farbstein to Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, February 4, 1964; Felix M. Putterman to Leonard Farbstein, February 17, 1964. All in LFP, Box 7 of 12 - Part I, Civil Rights Legislation, 88th Congress, MEG. 72 “Draft – re adding word ‘religion’ to public accommodations clause of Civil Rights Bill” and Memo to Rabbi Irwin Blank, Father John Cronin, Dr. Eugene C. Blake in LFP, Box 4 of 12 - Part II, MEG. 73 Ethel Lubin to Leonard Farbstein, February 20, 1964, LFP, Box 7 of 12 - Part I, Replies to Newsletter - February 4, 1964, MEG. 74 Ibid. 44
unable to reply to the problem of civil rights,” he wrote, “except that there is no question but that the Negro has been given inferior education in our schools.”75 In another letter, an Italian constituent told Farbstein that he would vote against the congressman “in any future elections” if he backed the 1964 legislation. In response, Farbstein stated, “as a member of a minority race and as the son of an immigrant,” he sympathized with victims of discrimination and believed it was “about time that the rights of the Negro as American citizens be recognized.”76
Farbstein also remained attentive to Puerto Ricans in his district. In 1959, he had introduced a bill asking the Foreign Affairs Committee to investigate the impact of Puerto Rican migration to the United States.77 Several years later, he told El Diario that he supported abolishing the state’s English-language literacy test for citizens who had obtained a sixth grade education.78 The congressman also supported MFY. In 1962, he introduced a bill to create a
Domestic Peace Corps to reduce juvenile delinquency across the country. After the Kennedy administration established a committee to study the proposal, Farbstein told federal officials, including the president, that his experience with MFY made him understand “the need for some manner in which a well-trained organization can be established.”79 Shortly thereafter, Farbstein
75 Leonard Farbstein to Ethel Lubin, February 26, 1964, LFP, Box 7 of 12 - Part I, Replies to Newsletter - February 4, 1964, MEG. 76 Walter Costello to Leonard Farbstein, November 29, 1963, LFP, Box 7 of 12 – Part I, Civil Rights Legislation, 88th Congress, MEG; Leonard Farbstein to Walter Costello, December 3, 1963, LFP, Box 7 of 12 – Part I, Civil Rights Legislation, 88th Congress, MEG. 77 “Resolution To authorize the Committee on Foreign Affairs to conduct an investigation and study of certain problems arising from population migrations within the United States between the United States and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico,” HR 21, 86th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record [January 7, 1959], H.Res.21, 86th Congress, First Session, January 7, 1959, LFP, Box 5 of 12 - Part A, H.Res.21, 86th Congress, First Session, MEG. 78 This clause would eventually become part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Leonard Farbstein Press Release, March 1, 1962, LFP, Box 4 of 12 - Part II, MEG; “Statement of Honorable Leonard Farbstein In Support of H.R. 10516 Before the Committee on the Judiciary,” March 13, 1962, LFP, Box 4 of 12 - Part II, H.R. 7146 Folder, MEG. 79 Leonard Farbstein to President John F. Kennedy, March 29, 1962, LFP, Box 5 of 12 – Part A, Domestic Peace Corps, MEG; Leonard Farbstein to Sargent Shriver, June 15, 1962, LFP, Box 5 of 12 – Part A, Domestic Peace Corps, MEG. 45
expressed hope that the Domestic Peace Corps would “expand the Mobilization for Youth program on a national scale.”80
During election season, Farbstein also utilized rhetoric that seemed to embrace
“opportunity theory.” One Democratic club newspaper, for instance, claimed that Farbstein brought “OPPORTUNITY, NOT CHARITY TO THE PEOPLE OF HIS DISTRICT,” remained
“a product of the Lower East Side throughout his career of public service,” and stood for
“grassroots democracy.”81 These statements suggested that Farbstein backed community activism and more structural solutions to local poverty. Such statements served to foster ideological ties between his white ethnic, black, and Puerto Rican base.82
Nevertheless, Farbstein remained more skeptical of grassroots activism and race-based reform than his black and Puerto Rican constituents. Despite his support for MFY, for example,
Farbstein did not fully embrace the agency’s social action activities. Farbstein’s ties to MFY stemmed largely from his relationship with the Henry Street Settlement House. He donated money to Henry Street and often solicited feedback from director Helen Hall, who chaired his reelection committee.83 Henry Street, however, remained a tepid supporter of MFY’s community organization initiatives. According to Hall, the settlement house viewed MFY as a larger
80 Leonard Farbstein Press Release, undated, LFP, Box 5 of 12 – Part A, Domestic Peace Corps, MEG. 81 The paper claimed that Haddad possessed “a wealthy father-in-law or rich friends,” a veiled reference to the candidate’s wife, the granddaughter of Franklin Roosevelt; “Questions to a Stranger in Town” Lower East Side Democrat, May 1964, HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA; R.W. Apple, Jr., “Haddad Gets Aid of Rep. Roosevelt,” The New York Times, May 13, 1964; “Questions to a Stranger in Town” Lower East Side Democrat, May 1964, HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA. 82 According to the New York Times, Jews comprised about 50 percent of all registered voters in the 19th district. Puerto Ricans reportedly comprised about 25 percent of all registered voters in the district. See R.W. Apple, Jr. “Religious Issue Lingers in 19th,” The New York Times, May 27, 1964; Raymond Daniel, “Two of Incumbent’s 3 Rivals in 19th Run Quietly,” The New York Times, Oct 28, 1964. 83 Leonard Farbstein Payment Receipt, June 3, 1958, August 28, 1959, and September 28, 1961, HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA; Leonard Farbstein to Helen Hall, November 16, 1938, HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA; Helen Hall to Leonard Farbstein, September 22, 1948, HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA; “To the Voters of the 4th Assembly District on New York’s East Side,” HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA; Leonard Farbstein to Helen Hall, November 15, 1962, HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA. 46
embodiment of traditional settlement house work, which would “saturate a whole poverty area
with services enough to change its living conditions.”84 However, the National Institute of
Mental Health (NIMH) rejected Henry Street’s initial funding request for MFY because it neither
planned to reform local institutions nor promised to organize local residents.85 In turn, NIMH
required Henry Street to ground MFY programs in new social science theory. It was this
mandate, and not Henry Street’s own initiative, that led the settlement house to link up with
Professors Ohlin and Cloward, the authors who had developed “opportunity theory.” As such, if
Henry Street had assumed total control of MFY, the new agency likely would have downplayed
its emphasis on collective action and institutional change. Henry Street’s Chairman of the Board,
Winslow Carlton, acknowledged as much in one interview when he recalled that the settlement
house was “not accustomed to being enablers of continuous protests” and remained unconvinced
that “people should go on their own – should feel that they had some power.”86
Farbstein’s ties to Henry Street foreshadowed his support for MFY’s more conventional
services that shied away from social activism, deemphasized institutional change, and, in the
words of one historian, made MFY appear “more like a social service agency than a political
group.”87 In congressional speeches, Farbstein highlighted MFY’s Homework-Helper initiative, the only MFY program, according to one survey, that white residents utilized more than Puerto
Ricans or African-Americans.88 He also supported training courses that aimed to increase
workers’ “cleanliness, politeness, [and] punctuality” to maximize their “amenability to
84 Cazenave, 22-23. 85 Ibid., 23; O’Connor, 128-29. 86 Cazenave, 24-25. 87 “And a Few More Questions...”, Lower East Side Democrat, May 1964, HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA; Press Release, undated, Leonard Farbstein Papers, Box 5 of 12 - Part A, Domestic Peace Corps, MEG; Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement, 117. 88 Mobilization for Youth, 88th Cong., 2nd sess., 1964, H., HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA; Stephen J. Leeds, “Who Was Reached: An Analysis of the Population Served by Mobilization for Youth, 1962-1965,” “Table 3, Program Materials: Ethnicity,” FFPP, Box 57, Folder 1, SSC. 47
supervision” and the Adventure Corps program, which promised to inject discipline into teenage
boys by organizing them into “paramilitary” squads.89 At times, MFY’s black and Puerto Rican
base criticized these programs. In 1963, for example, Puerto Rican teenagers claimed that the
agency’s counseling services had nothing “to do with getting a job” and that “some of our
counselors and bosses don’t understand our problems,” an observation that exposed the possible
disconnect between programs geared toward traditional settlement work and the more politicized
goals of black and Puerto Rican youth.90
Farbstein also remained skeptical of local school integration mandates. While he backed
the Brown decision, the congressman, unlike some civil rights groups, did not seek to apply the
decision to northern schools. In a speech praising Brown, Farbstein argued that only local school
boards could implement school pairing plans and warned his listeners not to “be guilty of having
‘pipe dreams.’”91 Farbstein echoed these comments at a 1964 school board meeting on the
Lower East Side. A representative from the Lower East Side Democratic Association, with
Farbstein’s backing, worried that school pairings in the neighborhood would force students to
make “desolate walks” around run-down areas and remove students from their schools at a
“tender and sensitive age.”92 A local rabbi echoed these claims, noting that a pairing plan for P.S.
89 Mobilization for Youth, 88th Cong., 2nd sess., 1964, H., HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA; Goals of the Exploratory Work Course” and “Programs in the World of Work,” A. Harry Passow Collection, Gottesman Libraries Archive (New York, NY); Sanford Kravitz, Leonard F. Stern, “Mobilization for Youth Visit, February 21, 1963,” April 3, 1963, DKP, Box 27, Mobilization for Youth - New York City, Bulletins, Correspondence, Reports, 12/26/62-11/9/67 and Undated, JFKL; Mobilization for Youth, “Program Fact Sheet,” January 3, 1963, MFY Papers, Box 16, Minutes: 3-4 January 1963 - Citizens’ Advisory Council, RBML; Bob Schrank, “Annual Report,” Undated, FFPP, Box 56, Folder 9, SSC; Mobilization for Youth, “Program Fact Sheet,” January 3, 1963, MFY Papers, Box 16, Minutes: 3-4 January 1963 - Citizens’ Advisory Council, RBML. 90 “We Want to Know Why,” MFY Papers, Box 16, Minutes: 13 March 1963 - Executive Committee, RBML; Memorandum, George Brager to All Staff, MFY Papers Box 16, Minutes: 13 March 1963 - Executive Committee, RBML. 91 “Statement of the Honorable Leonard Farbstein Before the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Integration in Federally- Assisted Education, April 11, 1962, LFP, Box 5 of 12, MEG. 92 Meeting of the Local School Board - Hearings of Local Integration Plans,” October 8, 1964, FFPP, Box 56, Folder 3, SSC. 48
110, whose student body was roughly two-thirds non-black and non-Puerto Rican, would prevent
Jewish children from attending neighborhood Hebrew schools and hurt academic achievement.93
Some Puerto Rican parents at the meeting agreed. One mother, for example, noted that insufficient reading programs – the lack of a “proper education” – for Puerto Rican students remained a larger problem than racial imbalance.94 But others linked segregation on the Lower
East Side with the Jim Crow South, calling local schools “Birmingham, Alabama on Grand
Street.”95 The PTA chairman at P.S. 134, a school with a 75 percent black and Puerto Rican population, similarly encouraged local residents to “have courage here - not in Mississippi.”96
Farbstein reemphasized these claims in letters to white ethnic constituents, often the same ones who criticized the Civil Rights Act. In his reply to Esther Lubin, for instance, Farbstein argued that blacks’ “inferior education” would improve if “the teaching that the Negro children have been getting” got better, but that this would not happen “overnight.”97 To justify this gradual approach, Farbstein wrote that he had worked hard as a child and attended night school to earn his law degree, and contrasted this work ethic with that of black and Puerto Rican youth.
Arguing that “people are not satisfied to work the way we did when we were young,” the
93 Ibid.; “Ethnic Composition of New York City Public Schools,” ASP, Box 26, Folder 2, RBML. 94 Meeting of the Local School Board - Hearings of Local Integration Plans,” October 8, 1964, FFPP, Box 56, Folder 3, SSC. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid.; “Ethnic Composition of New York City Public Schools,” ASP, Box 26, Folder 2, RBML. These arguments were more tempered than those of other white ethnic groups like Parents and Taxpayers (PAT), which organized in 1963 to protest student transfers from P.S. 92, a heavily black school in Corona, Queens, to P.S. 149, a middle-class Jewish and Italian school in neighboring Jackson Heights. While PAT argued that busing and pairing initiatives would lower property values and water down academic standards, other parents utilized more racialized language, comparing the initiatives to anti-Jewish quotas and even Mein Kampf. See David Rogers, 110 Livingston Street: Politics and Bureaucracy in the New York City Schools (New York: Random House, 1968), 76; Gregory, Black Corona, 78; Thomas Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York: Random House, 2008), 466; Podair, 27-29; Leonard Buder, “Parents Picket Gracie Mansion,” The New York Times, October 10, 1964; For an analysis of how Jewish intellectuals and writers viewed new civil rights initiatives in the 1960s, see Michael Staub, Torn at the Roots, 49-50, 63, 68-70, 94-97, 107-109. 96 Meeting of the Local School Board - Hearings of Local Integration Plans,” October 8, 1964, FFPP, Box 56, Folder 3, SSC. 97 Leonard Farbstein to Ethel Lubin, February 26, 1964, LFP, Box 7 of 12 - Part 1, Replies to Newsletter - February 4, 1964, MEG. 49
congressman told Lubin that “we are living in an era of a revolution in rising expectations and
we are trying to cope with it the best we can.”98 Two days later, Farbstein repeated this line to another writer who identified himself as an Italian-American and told the congressman that he had overcome past discrimination not through “‘boycotts’ and demonstrations and ‘crying,’” but by “showing the people that we deserve to be treated as Americans,” working hard, and
“teaching [my] children right from wrong. You cannot force people to like one another.”99
These exchanges exposed Farbstein’s complicated relationship with white ethnics in his
district who objected to black and Puerto Rican activism. While Farbstein did not equate protest
with “crying” and “rabble-rousing,” he nonetheless attributed mass social action – specifically
that which endorsed race-based initiatives like busing or affirmative action – to people not being
“satisfied to work the way we did when we were young.” In making this connection, he
suggested that the “rising expectations” of blacks and Puerto Ricans represented a shortcut to
merit-based, individual advancement, a claim more vociferous opponents of community control
would make in the late 1960s. Such arguments, however, downplayed the basis for racial protest
on the Lower East Side, as well as the hostile ways in which white authorities like Principal
Rosenblum and Superintendent Becker responded to black and Puerto Rican parents who sought
even minor decision-making power in the public schools. Federal officials acknowledged as
much, characterizing the responses to MOM as defensive attacks against “newly vocal elements
of the Negro and Puerto Rican communities” whose children attended schools where “the
problems are more severe, the deprivation is more massive” than those in middle-class areas.100
98 Ibid. 99 Letter to Leonard Farbstein, February 24, 1964, LFP, Box 7 of 12, Part I, Replies to Newsletter- February 4, 1964, MEG. 100 Ellen Winston to Ivan A. Nestigen, February 19, 1964, “Mobilization for Youth,” DKP, Box 27, Mobilization for Youth Bulletins, Correspondence, Reports, 12/26/62 – 11/9/67 and undated, JFKL. 50
Despite Farbstein’s penchant for citing his own background as a religious minority to appeal to these “newly vocal elements” and legitimize civil rights law, the congressman struggled to connect with his Puerto Rican residents’ political priorities. During a 1964 visit to the Puerto Rican Community Development Project (PRCDP), the city’s first Puerto Rican anti- poverty agency, Farbstein told his Puerto Rican audience that “my people came at the turn of the century and faced some of the poverty problems that Puerto Ricans know” and expressed optimism that Puerto Ricans would rise economically in a fashion similar to Jewish immigrants.
But this message ignored the PRCDP’s overall goal to distinguish the “story of the Puerto
Ricans” from the “story of the immigrants who came before.” Rather than collaborate with white ethnics politically, PRCDP officials believed their clientele had to embrace a specific “ethnic identification” that would provide them with “opportunities for jobs, prestige, and power at the middle levels of the city’s organizational life.” As Sonia Song Ha-Lee notes, this belief in
“ethnic identification” closely mirrored black strategies to frame politics along racial lines.101 In this way, groups like the PRCDP symbolized Puerto Ricans’ tendency, in the mid-1960s, to model the black civil rights movement and push for policies that would benefit Puerto Ricans as a distinct political group. Farbstein’s comments and letters approached, but did not fully embrace, this understanding. Paralleling white ethnic and Puerto Rican history and interests justified civil rights initiatives and enunciated a common message for a racially and economically diverse constituency. However, this practice did not align perfectly with an increasingly assertive brand of Puerto Rican politics.
For this reason, Farbstein offered a middle-of-the-road position on MFY’s community organization programs. Circumstances required him to speak publicly on MFY in August 1964,
101 Paul Hoffman, “New Agency to Help Puerto Ricans Opened,” The New York Times, June 7, 1966, my emphasis; Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement, 143-45. 51
when the Daily News characterized the agency as a “Red honeycomb for leftists.”102 MFY reports indicate that this accusation resulted from months of secret FBI and NYPD investigations, as well as a telegram sent by twenty-six Lower East Side principals accusing the agency of employing “full time paid agitators and organizers for extremist groups” and launching a “war against individual schools and their leaders.”103 The telegram seemed to have made an impression on Mayor Wagner, who soon afterword allegedly told MFY chairman
Winslow Carlton that the organization was “filled with Communists, from top to bottom.”104
After the Daily News article appeared in August 1964, Paul Screvane, chairman of the city’s
Anti-Poverty Operations Board, which oversaw local poverty programs, and John Marchi, a
Republican State Senator from Staten Island, conducted two investigations on MFY. Both issued their findings in late 1964.
Support for the agency split along racial lines. Given MFY’s clientele, it was not surprising that black and Puerto Rican groups unequivocally backed the agency. The CPRHO, for example, viewed the inquiries as “detrimental to the best interest of the community served by
MFY.”105 Some members also accused city authorities of red-baiting MFY to discredit Puerto
Rican activism. “Not very long ago,” one CPRHO member said, “these same principals said we
102 “Youth Agency Eyed for Reds,” New York Daily News, August 16, 1964, Mobilization for Youth Bound Documents, The Crisis: A Documentary Record, Volume I, August-September 1964, CUSSW; The scrutiny into the agency allegedly began in August 1963 when an FBI agent claimed to have “received a request” to investigate the agency’s involvement in a Lower East Side protest against discrimination in the construction trades, the upcoming March on Washington, and a local rent strike. By the end of 1963, these secret investigations led to rumors that MFY had employed and worked with Communists; MFY Report entitled “Kirschenbaum,” undated, 6, 10-14, FFPP, Box 55, Folder 9, SSC. 103 “Report Prepared by the Principals of Districts 1-4 Presenting the Bases for the Telegram of January 27, 1964 Requesting an Investigation of Mobilization for Youth and the Dismissal of Mr. George A. Brager,” February 24, 1964, Mobilization for Youth Bound Documents, The Crisis: A Documentary Record, Volume V, June 1963- February 1965, CUSSW. 104 MFY Report entitled “Kirschenbaum,” undated, 20-21, FFPP, Box 55, Folder 9, SSC. 105 “Statement by the Council of Puerto Rican and Hispanic Organizations of the Lower East Side,” August 18, 1964, Mobilization for Youth Bound Documents, The Crisis: A Documentary Record, Volume V, June 1963- February 1965, CUSSW, my emphasis. 52
did not participate because we didn’t care. Now that we do, they call us Communists.”106 Black groups made similar claims. In a letter to Mayor Wagner, the NAACP’s Greenwich Village-
Chelsea Branch argued that MFY “[raised] the morale of the neighborhood” and New York
CORE accused the city of investigating MFY because it upset “don’t-rock-the-boat, Papa-knows best” social welfare.107
While federal officials backed MFY, the Wagner administration took a more nuanced position.108 An initial draft of the Screvane report argued that MFY, despite some administrative gaffes, remained a beneficial program under an unnecessary “cloud of suspicion and allegation.”109 The Wagner administration also called Marchi’s report, which portrayed the agency as a front for Communism and black nationalism, “chop suey” that lacked “sober thought, digestions, checking and evaluation.”110
106 Susan Goodman, “Puerto Ricans Turn Out: Bitterness Revealed Over E. Side Schools,” The Village Voice, February 20, 1964, Mobilization for Youth Bound Documents, The Crisis: A Documentary Record, Volume I, August-September 1964, CUSSW. 107 James Yates to Robert F. Wagner, August 19, 1964 and Clarence Funnye to The New York Times, November 16, 1964; Mobilization for Youth Bound Documents, The Crisis: A Documentary Record, Volume V, June 1963- February 1965, CUSSW. 108 For examples of national support, see “Report of the Technical Review Panel,” October 1964, DKP, Box 5, PCJD-OJD Background Materials, Key Internal Developments, 1964, JFKL; Ellen Winston to Ivan A. Nestigen, February 19, 1964, “Mobilization for Youth,” DKP, Box 27, Mobilization for Youth Bulletins, Correspondence, Reports, 12/26/62 – 11/9/67 and undated, JFKL. 109 Paul Screvane, “Report on Mobilization for Youth: Recital of Facts, Circumstances and Chronology,” Mobilization for Youth Bound Documents, The Crisis: A Documentary Record, Volume VI, Official Investigations, CUSSW. 110 For an analysis of Mayor Wagner’s stance on civil rights and racial issues, see Taylor, “Conservative and Liberal Opposition to the New York City School-Integration Campaign.” Marchi dug up old Socialist Party nominating petitions that contained the names of MFY staff, and claimed that sixteen MFY workers had sent May Day greetings to the Daily Worker in 1947. He also questioned Calvin Hicks, an MFY organizer who, in 1960, organized On Guard for Freedom, a black nationalist committee most known for its anti-imperialism and pan-Africanism and tried to subpoena another aide who had allegedly compared poor Cuban peasants living under Fulgencio Batista to Puerto Ricans living in New York; “Preliminary Data Report of the Senate Committee on Affairs of the City of New York on Mobilization for Youth, Inc.,” December 29, 1964, Mobilization for Youth Bound Documents, The Crisis: A Documentary Record, Volume VI, Official Investigations, CUSSW; Tom Dent, “Umbra Days,” Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1980), 105; Hearing of the Committee on the Affairs of the City of New York on the Senate of New York, November 24, 1964, John Marchi Papers, Box 54, Mobilization for Youth - Committee on the Affairs of the City of New York Hearing, 29-October-1964, 2:25 PM, College of Staten Island Special Collections (Staten Island, NY). 53
Nevertheless, MFY minutes from meetings with Wagner officials suggest that the administration worried about the political ramifications of MFY’s community organization initiatives. In one meeting, Deputy Administrator and MFY liaison Henry Cohen accused MFY officials of alienating local institutions and making city officials feel like “snooks.”111 At another meeting, Cohen told MFY staffers that he wanted “a better sense of what is happening” in the agency’s C.O. program and worried “where the hell the thing [MFY’s community organizing] is going to break on me.” 112 Shortly thereafter, city officials informed MFY leaders that Mayor
Wagner remained “very concerned about what MFY was doing in the neighborhood, and what stands MFY was taking on crucial local issues.”113 Later, Wagner reiterated these statements to
Winslow Carlton, telling the MFY Chairman that he was “concerned about MFY’s C.O. program, especially in relation to the schools.”114 One anonymous Lower East Side Democrat expressed a balder political concern to agency staffers: that MFY’s voter registration program would “create a complete political upheaval down here and throw us out of power.”115
Screvane’s report expressed a similar skepticism of MFY’s social action program. It noted that some MFY grassroots campaigns did not achieve “real goals and benefits for the people of the neighborhood” and instructed MFY to tether itself to “social realities rather than irrelevant but inflammable trivialities.”116 These considerations led Screvane to place MFY under the control of the Antipoverty Operations Board to oversee the agency’s activities more closely. While scholars differ on the degree to which this action affected the agency, the more
111 “City Administrator’s Meeting, January 15,” FFPP, Box 55, Folder 4, SSC. 112 “August 8th Cohen Meeting,” FFPP, Box 55, Folder 4, SSC; Henry Cohen’s Meeting, April 17, 1963, FFPP, Box 55, Folder 4, SSC. 113 MFY Report entitled “Kirschenbaum,” undated, 17, FFPP, Box 55, Folder 9, SSC. 114 Ibid. 115 “Voter Registration Campaigns,” Undated, DKP, Box 30, “Mobilization for Youth - New York City, Working Drafts For Project History,” Undated, JFKL. 116 Anti-Poverty Operations Board to Robert F. Wagner, January 15, 1965, Mobilization for Youth Bound Documents, The Crisis: A Documentary Record, Volume VI, Official Investigations, CUSSW. 54
important aspect of the report involved its view of black and Puerto Rican activism.117 The report characterized MFY’s involvement in local protests as trivial and suggested that organizing the poor did not provide real “benefits” to local residents. As such, the report implicitly criticized programs that aimed to address racial inequality through mass action and direct confrontation, a tactic embraced by MFY and its black and Puerto Rican base.
Farbstein took a similar position on MFY. To the House, he denied that the agency represented a Communist front.118 Nevertheless, Farbstein implied that the agency needed to reduce or eliminate its C.O. program, and called rent strikes and school boycotts “divisive and harmful” while praising national, well-recognized protests like the March on Washington.119
While Farbstein claimed that he did not want to “stifle the creativity or initiative of the people who benefit most directly” from Mobilization, he argued that the agency needed to “maintain a sense of responsibility to the whole community . . . and to the maintenance and peace and lawful activity.”120 The statement exposed Farbstein’s attempt to balance the interests of the Lower East
Side’s black and Puerto Rican residents, those who benefited most directly from MFY, with those of the “whole community,” or the Lower East Side’s white ethnic populace. Differences clearly remained between Farbstein’s stance on MFY and those offered by John Marchi, a conservative Republican who represented outer-borough Catholic voters. Unlike Marchi,
117 Some argue that MFY programming continued as before and that the agency laid the groundwork for Community Action Programs and the training of social workers to become community activists. See Harold Weissman, interview by Paige Knapp and Daniel Knapp, December 4, 1967, transcript, DKP, Working Files, Box 51, Interviews, Harold Weissman, 4 December 1967, JFKL; Richard Cloward, interview by Daniel Knapp, December 5, 1967, transcript, DKP, Working Files, Box 51, Interviews, Richard Cloward, 5 December 1967, JFKL; Sanford Kravitz, interview by Daniel Knapp and Paige Knapp, December 11, 1967, transcript, DKP, Interviews, Sanford Kravitz, 11 December 1967, JFKL. Others argue that the investigations demoralized the C.O. staff, led the agency to hire staffers and board members with less experience in political activism, and caused the organization to abandon mass protest activities. In addition, Bertram Beck, a member of the PCJD who became MFY’s Executive Director after the investigations, admitted that the MFY Board sought someone who was “not controversial” and “less interested in ideological causes.” See Helfgot, 101-102, 123-124; Cazenave 130-131. 118 Mobilization for Youth, 88th Cong., 2nd sess., 1964, H., HSS Records, Box 98, Folder 9, SWHA. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid. 55
Farbstein neither suggested that MFY would overturn “law and order,” nor viewed the agency as
an organized black nationalist conspiracy. Nevertheless, the congressman’s more veiled critiques
of MFY -- and the local empowerment it engendered – foreshadowed conflicts within postwar
American liberalism over how to address racial inequities in the urban north even after the
passage of important federal civil rights legislation. Farbstein’s position also suggested that
Lower East Side white ethnics, particularly Jews, might later resist black and Puerto Rican
efforts to gain control over neighborhood resources and institutions. In all, the MFY
investigations showed that Farbstein presided over a Lower East Side constituency increasingly
divided on racial issues.
These divisions soon manifested themselves in electoral politics. In 1966, the first election cycle after the MFY investigations, Farbstein ran a close race against Councilman
Theodore Weiss, a Reform Democrat who immigrated to the United States from Hungary in
1938 and later served as an Assistant District Attorney.121 Weiss’ challenge represented the
Reformers’ third attempt to wrest the 19th district from Farbstein.122 The Reform movement,
which had organized against the remnants of the Tammany machine in the 1950s, routinely
criticized Regular Democrats for being out of touch and squelching intraparty debate.123 By the
mid-1960s, Reformers had gained standing in municipal politics, highlighted by Mayor
Wagner’s split from the Regulars in 1961.124 Weiss’ candidacy drew upon this momentum.
Several liberal newspapers, including the New York Post, The New York Times, and The Village
121 For biographical background on Weiss, see “This is Ted Weiss,” Allard K. Lowenstein Papers (hereafter AKLP), “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (hereafter SHC); Ted Weiss Biographical Pamphlet, AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC; “Theodore S. Weiss, a Biographical Sketch,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC. 122 Thomas P. Ronan, Reform Democrats Pick Weiss in the 19th, The New York Times, March 11, 1966. 123 For background on the Reform Democrats, see Christopher McNickle, To Be Mayor of New York: Ethnic Politics in the City (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 89, 114-116, 121, 139-140, 151, 161-62. 124 McNickle, To Be Mayor, 154-161. 56
Voice, endorsed Weiss on the grounds that he was “alert, aware, and creative,” while Regular candidates were “clubhouse hacks” exhibiting the “sloth of incumbency.”125 The Weiss campaign embraced a similar strategy, telling audiences that Farbstein had “long ago lost touch with this city and its people.”126
On specific policy, Weiss’s primary criticism was that Farbstein backed the Vietnam War at the expense of addressing local issues. In truth, Farbstein expressed private doubts about the war, but publicly backed the Johnson administration and distrusted peace activists who called for an immediate end to the conflict. The congressman, for instance, told constituents that the U.S. had an obligation to check Communist forces in Vietnam and that immediate withdrawal would wreck the United States’ global credibility.127 In addition, Farbstein worried that a 1965 meeting between Secretary of State Dean Rusk, various local reform Democratic clubs, and the Lower
East Side Mobilization for Peace Action (LESMPA) to discuss the war would open a “Pandora’s
Box” of residents asking about U.S. policy. As a result, the congressman promised to “dispose of these requests” to the Secretary of State.128 Then, in a 1965 letter to the New York Times,
Farbstein criticized peace activists as overzealous and uncompromising people who refuse “to
125 “Congressional Races,” The New York Times, June 24, 1966; “A Primary Preview: For Silverman, Weiss, Victor, Dubin, Cooper and Bunn,” New York Post, June 24, 1966. The Village Voice backed Weiss more specifically for his position on Vietnam. See “Primary Day, June 28, Weiss, Wilson,” The Village Voice, June 23, 1966. 126 Kenneth Gross, “Reform Clubs Pick Weiss as Farbstein Foe,” New York World Telegram and Sun, March 11, 1966; Weiss Opens Drive on Rep. Farbstein, The New York Times, March 12, 1966. 127 Leonard Farbstein, “Reports from Congress,” March 1966, LFP, 90th Congress Subject Files, Legislation - A, 90th Congress, MEG; Leonard Farbstein to Ralph Behrends, May 7, 1965, LFP, Box 10 of 12, Legislation - B, 89th Congress, MEG; Cong. Rec., 89th Con., 1st sess., 1965, AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC, The Wilson Library; In 1964 and 1965, the U.S. steadily increased its commitment to protect South Vietnam against incursions from the Communist North and Hanoi-backed National Liberation Front (NLF). In December 1964, the Johnson administration initiated its first bombing campaign over North Vietnam and, several months later, sent the first U.S. ground troops into the South. By 1966, the U.S. had pledged to send 100,000 troops into the country and expanded its bombing targets in the North. See George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1974, 4th Ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 151-61, 164-65. 128 Leonard Farbstein to Dean Rusk, July 20, 1965, LFP, Box 4 of 11 - 89th Congress, Foreign Affairs, State Department, re Vietnam Meeting, July 15, 1965, MEG; Press Release, July 15, 1965, LFP, Box 4 of 11 - 89th Congress, Foreign Affairs, State Department, re Vietnam Meeting, July 15, 1965, MEG; Leonard Farbstein to Elliot J. Stamler, July 21, 1965, LFP, Box 4 of 11 - 89th Congress, Foreign Affairs, State Department, re Vietnam Meeting, July 15, 1965, MEG. 57
acknowledge the integrity of any position less absolutist than their own,” subjected him to
“bedevilment and harassment,” and remained prone to “aimless emotional outburst.”129 Shortly after the Johnson administration started bombing North Vietnam in 1965, Farbstein also rejected calls from LESMPA and others to hold open hearings on the war in the 19th Congressional
District, arguing that “government instrumentalities” could best settle the conflict.130 While
Farbstein eventually called upon the Johnson administration to suspend bombings in North
Vietnam and back an “all-Asian settlement” to the war, he hesitated to publicly criticize the war
effort and sought guidance from the administration about how to respond to antiwar sentiment on
the Lower East Side.131 After hearing rumors that the administration had rejected an offer to
negotiate from Hanoi, for example, Farbstein pointedly asked Rusk, “How do you suggest that I
now reply to my constituents?” How do I, in good faith, continue my unwavering support [for
the war]?”132
In the realm of Lower East Side politics, Farbstein’s public position on Vietnam revealed
his reliance on older, white ethnic, and particularly Orthodox Jewish, voters. Throughout the
1960s, Orthodox Jewish leaders refashioned the “domino theory” in strictly Jewish terms,
claiming that the Vietcong threatened the United States, Europe, and “Jewish existence.”133
These writers, as well as Meir Kahane, who would later found the right-wing Jewish Defense
129 Leonard Farbstein to the Editor of The New York Times, November 1, 1965, LFP, Box 5 of 11 - Subject Files, 89th Congress, State Department - Vietnam, MEG. 130 Leonard Farbstein constituent letter, December 20, 1965, LFP, Box 5 of 11 - Subject Files, 89th Congress, State Department - Vietnam, MEG. 131 Leonard Farbstein et. al to Lyndon Johnson, December 11, 1965, LFP, Box 4 of 11 - 89th Congress, Foreign Affairs, White House - 89th Congress, MEG; Leonard Farbstein to the Editor of The New York Times, November 1, 1965, LFP, Box 5 of 11 - Subject Files, 89th Congress, State Department - Vietnam; “Congressman Leonard Farbstein Urges Rusk to Ask Thailand to Settle Vietnamese War,” East Side News, August 19, 1966, LFP, Box 5 of 11 - Subject Files, 89th Congress, State Department - Vietnam, MEG. 132 Leonard Farbstein to Dean Rusk, November 17, 1965, LFP, Box 5 of 11 - Subject Files, 89th Congress, State Department - Vietnam, MEG. 133 On the other hand, Reform Jewish groups, as well as the American Jewish Congress (AJCong), had publicly called for a cease-fire in Vietnam in 1965. Diner, The Jews of the United States: 1654 to 2000, 298; Staub, 123-25. 58
League (JDL), also claimed that withdrawing from Vietnam would lead others to test America’s
commitments to other small states like Israel.134 Farbstein embraced this position. In the days
leading up to the runoff, Farbstein’s friend, S. Daniel Abraham, issued a pamphlet asking Jews to
support the Johnson administration’s Vietnam strategy to ensure a “good peace that will
safeguard the freedom of all peoples.”135 Even as he privately criticized the war in letters to
Rusk, Farbstein backed the pamphlet, noting that Jews should vote for him because he had
“assisted the Jewish people throughout the world.”136 In another instance, Farbstein asked his
assistants to not send news releases criticizing the war to those with “Irish or Italian sounding
names.”137 These strategies suggest that Farbstein remained committed to earning the support of
the district’s older white ethnic groups, including Orthodox Jews.
Weiss, on the other hand, represented a younger, and generally more secular, generation
of Jewish Americans who would soon take up the mantle of the New Left. Born in the 1920s,
roughly two decades after Farbstein, many of these Jews participated in campus organizations
like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Free Speech Movement.138 Importantly,
these younger Jews drew fewer direct connections between Soviet Communism and the
Holocaust and believed, in some instances, that anticommunism restricted civil rights and civil
134 Staub, 125,128. 135 Clayton Knowles, “War is Top Issue in Primary Fight Here Tomorrow” The New York Times, September 26, 1966. 136 Ibid. 137 Memo attached the Lower East Side Mobilization for Peace Press Release, December 6, LFP, Box 5 of 11 - Subject Files, 89th Congress, State Department - Vietnam, MEG. 138 Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter, Roots of Radicalism: Jews, Christians, and the New Left (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 80-81, 213-14; McNickle, To Be Mayor, 141-143. 59
liberties at home.139 Groups like LESMPA, with two Jewish co-chairs, embodied these ideas.140
The group, for instance, encouraged Lower East Siders to attend a meeting of the “Congress of
Unrepresented People” in Washington D.C., comprised of those who wanted to “fight for integration” and “want an end to poverty” rather than commit U.S. funds and soldiers to
Vietnam.141 Weiss made similar points during the 1966 campaign against Farbstein. After
Farbstein told one constituent concerned about “dirty streets” to bring the issue up with a “local representative” because he was preoccupied with “international problems,” the Weiss team created an ad entitled “What About These Dirty Streets?” that claimed Weiss would prioritize
“community problems” such as “housing, education, and unemployment.”142 The Reform politician also spoke at local LESMPA rallies, called the war “morally indefensible” and backed direct negotiations with the Vietcong.143 Calling the 19th district “forgotten,” Weiss promised to forge a “strong urban coalition…to look out for the terrible areas of the cities” and claimed that ending the war would allow the country to reallocate military funds to the War on Poverty.144
139 Leading Jewish agencies tried to balance anticommunism with pro-civil liberties positions. Throughout the postwar period, agencies like the American Jewish Committee (AJC), AJCong, and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) opposed extreme red-baiting on the grounds that it targeted the causes of Jews and other social outsiders. However, these organizations also worried that taking these positions would trigger a backlash against Jews. The AJC and ADL, for example, refused to publicly oppose policies like the 1948 Mundt-Nixon bill, which forced Communists to register with the federal government, and did not publicly criticize the Hollywood Ten and Rosenberg cases. The AJCong also cut ties with affiliated organizations that permitted Communist membership; Stuart Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 113-117, 126, 130-31, 134, 149-151, 165, 169. 140 LESMPA neighborhood mailing, July 28, 1965, LFP, Box 5 of 11, Subject Files, 89th (Vietnam Corresp), MEG. 141 Lower East Side Mobilization for Peace Action Letter, July 28, 1965, LFP, Box 5 of 11 - Subject Files, 89th Congress, Vietnam - State Department, MEG. 142 Judy Michaelson, “Primary in the 19th: Weiss vs. Farbstein,” New York Post, June 21, 1966; Weiss for Congress, “What about these dirty streets?” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC. 143 “Vietnam: Ted Weiss Thinks,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC; “This is Ted Weiss,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC; Press Release,” Weiss Hits Viet Policy at Rally,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC. 144 Judy Michaelson, “Primary in the 19th: Weiss vs. Farbstein,” New York Post, June 21, 1966; “Councilman Theodore S. Weiss calls for broad use of Federal money to meet the challenges of automation,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC. 60
This position also hinted at the differences between Weiss and Farbstein on domestic issues. The left-wing councilman embraced positions taken by MFY’s C.O. program during the election. While Farbstein backed national civil rights law, Weiss unequivocally supported grassroots black and Puerto Rican activism, arguing that “tenants must be taught how to fight slumlords and City Hall,” that “the poor must be given a policy role in local poverty programs,” and that the city had to create “community-centered” urban renewal initiatives.145 The Weiss campaign tied these positions to addressing “civil rights in the north” and “civil rights problems here – jobs, schools, housing.”146 Unlike Farbstein, Weiss also called for the BOE to integrate public schools.147 One Weiss ad, for example, called upon the BOE to pair P.S. 199, where whites made up roughly 62 percent of all students, with P.S. 191, whose students were almost entirely black and Puerto Rican.148
Weiss’ most notable position, however, involved police reform. In 1964, the councilman introduced a bill that would have created an all-civilian review board to investigate allegations of police brutality.149 Although the City Council’s City Affairs Committee voted 4-1 against the bill, Weiss’ dissenting report argued that a new board would staunch urban unrest and help police regain the trust of black and Puerto Rican New Yorkers.150 The report mirrored MFY’s
145 “Poverty: Ted Weiss Thinks,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC; “Can You Find Your Congressman When You’ve Got a Problem?” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC. 146 “Civil Rights: Ted Weiss Thinks,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC; “This is Ted Weiss,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC; “V.I.D. Committee for Ted Weiss,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC; “Urban Decay: Ted Weiss Thinks,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC; “Ted Weiss Proposes,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC. 147 “Civil Rights: Ted Weiss Thinks,” “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC. 148 Paul Crowell, “City Schools Win New Pairing Test,” The New York Times, July 18, 1964; “This is Ted Weiss,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC; Parents at P.S. 199 unsuccessfully challenged the mandate; ‘Opponents of School Pairing Win a Show Cause Order,” The New York Times, June 25, 1964. 149 Nat Hentoff, Whose Due Process? The Village Voice, May 14, 1964; Charles G. Bennet, “Democrats Back Board on Police,” New York Times, June 16, 1964; Cannato, 156. 150 “Minority Report of a Special Subcommittee to Study the Feasibility of Creating an Independent Civilian Complaint Review Board to Investigate, Hear and Make Recommendations Concerning Allegations of Police Brutality,” May 18, 1965, Papers of the Council of the City of New York, Box 96, Folder 5, Wagner and LaGuardia Archives (Queens, New York). 61
stance on police issues. Less than a year earlier, the agency supported a CORE-led demonstration in Harlem after an off-duty policeman shot James Powell, a black teenager, on the Upper East
Side.151 During the protest, the Progressive Labor Movement, a Communist group, handed out signs reading “Wanted For Murder – Gilligan the Cop,” allegedly printed with MFY equipment.152 While the demonstration led to riots in Harlem and Bedford Stuyvesant, Weiss ads nevertheless stressed his support for civilian review and celebrated his defense of MFY during the city and state investigations.153 This record generated Weiss endorsements from Puerto Rican civic leaders, including Humberto Aponte, who served on the MFY Board of Directors; Manuel
Diaz, a former MFY community worker; and Gilberto Gerena-Valentin, a labor organizer who worked with Diaz to recruit Puerto Ricans to the March on Washington and 1964 school boycott.154 Herman Badillo, the Bronx Borough President who would become the nation’s first
Puerto Rican-born congressman in 1970, also endorsed Weiss, since the councilman had
“worked very hard on behalf of the Puerto Rican community.”155
Weiss’ support for MFY and its community organization programs signified broader ties between the agency and the city’s Reform Democratic clubs. Within MFY’s target area, about
151 James Mills, “The Detective: A Good Cop Fights For Law, But the Deck is Stacked Against Him,” Life Magazine, December 3, 1965, 115; James Lardner and Thomas Repetto, NYPD: A City and Its Police (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000), 253. 152 Homer Bigart, “City Hunts Reds in Youth Project on the East Side,” The New York Times, August 17, 1964; Paul L. Montgomery and Francis X. Clines, “Thousands Riot in Harlem Area,” The New York Times, July 19, 1964; Cazenave, 121. 153 “V.I.D. Committee for Ted Weiss,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC; “This is Ted Weiss,” “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC; V.I.D. Committee for Ted Weiss, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC. 154 “Bolivar-Douglass Committee for the Election of Ted Weiss,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC; “27 Names Directors of Youth Project,” The New York Times, July 17, 1965; “74 out of these 75 leaders in your nation and community endorse the candidacy of Ted Weiss for Congress,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC; Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement, 80, 117, 120-21. 155 “What They Think of Ted Weiss,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC; “Badillo, Herman,” History, Art, and Archives: United States House of Representatives, accessed February 12, 2015, http://history.house.gov/People/Detail/8806; “74 Out of These 75 Leaders in Your Nation and Community Endorse The Candidacy of Ted Weiss for Congress,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC; “Herman Badillo Endosa Ted Weiss for Congress,” AKLP, “Campaign Literature: Weiss,” SHC; Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement, 80, 146. 62
40% of the adult population remained unregistered to vote.156 While historians disagree on the precise cause of Puerto Ricans’ low voter turnout, MFY blamed the Regular Democratic Party for catering to middle-class whites at the expense of the nonwhite, particularly Puerto Rican, poor.157 MFY’s C.O. program thus organized “collective campaigns” in 1963 and 1964 to register black and Puerto Rican voters in its target area.158 MFY leaders believed that these campaigns would enhance black and Puerto Ricans’ power as an independent political force on the Lower East Side, gaining “the ability to influence public policy decisions, rather than secure personal favors and individual rewards.”159 This necessarily meant reducing Puerto Rican dependence upon the Regular Democratic Party. Indeed, MFY’s voter registration campaign explicitly wanted Puerto Ricans to take advantage of “new channels for choice and argument” in local elections.160 The agency also argued that these voters should avoid allying themselves with
“existing institutions” and charged that “party faithfuls and ‘old line’” poll workers deliberately lowered black and Puerto Rican voter turnout.161 For this reason, MFY leader James McCarthy
156 Carroll, 39. 157 James Jennings regards New York’s Democratic Party as “the party of the Jewish school teacher, the Italian construction worker, the Irish policeman” and suggests that white ethnic Democratic leaders feared voters would switch to the Conservative and Republican parties if Democrats more aggressively courted Puerto Rican votes. See James Jennings, Puerto Rican Politics in New York City (Washington D.C.: University Press of America, 1977), 133; See also Sherrie Baver, “Puerto Rican Politics in New York City: The Post World-War II Period,” in eds., James Jennings and Monte Rivera, Puerto Rican Politics in Urban America (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1984), 44. Other authors, argue that Puerto Ricans’ exclusion from leadership positions within the Liberal Party, the political arm of the ILGWU, weakened Puerto Ricans’ influence in local elections. See Jose R. Sanchez, “Puerto Rican Politics in New York: Beyond ‘Secondhand’ Theory,” in eds., Gabriel Haslip-Viera and Sherrie L. Baver, Latinos in New York: Communities in Transition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), 273-74, 287, 295-96; Henry Cohen’s Meeting,” April 17, 1963; FFPP, Box 55, Administration Minutes, Meetings Called by the City Administrator, SSC; Phil Kramer to Harry Specht, “Preliminary Draft: Voter Registration Campaign,” May 17, 1963, FFPP, Box 56, Voter Registration Campaign, 1963, SSC. Marjorie Hunter, “U.S. to Open 12.6-Million War on Delinquency,” The New York Times, June 1, 1962. Lorrin Thomas notes that, in 1952, only about 35,000 eligible Puerto Ricans registered to vote out of a possible 250,000. Thomas, 185. 158 Henry Cohen’s Meeting,” April 17, 1963; FFPP, Box 55, Administration Minutes, Meetings Called by the City Administrator, SSC; Phil Kramer to Harry Specht, “Preliminary Draft: Voter Registration Campaign,” May 17, 1963, FFPP, Box 56, Voter Registration Campaign, 1963, SSC. 159 “Voter Registration Campaigns,” Undated, DKP, Box 30, “Mobilization for Youth - New York City, Working Drafts For Project History, Undated, JFKL. 160 Ibid. 161 Ibid. 63
recognized that this program could have “tremendous implications for the Democratic Party” in the area.162 An anonymous Democratic official confirmed this suspicion when he accused one
MFY leader in 1962 of trying to “create a complete political upheaval down here and throw us out of power,” a comment that reflected Regular Democrats’ growing anxiety over the party’s reform-wing assumed control of several local districts in the late 1950s.163 These anxieties increased on the Lower East Side when Reform Democrats, hoping to unseat Farbstein in the
1964 primaries, printed advertisements using MFY printers at MFY headquarters, a sign that
Reformers viewed the agency as a potential base for new unregistered voters.164
Statistical evidence suggests that Puerto Rican organizing, as well as Weiss’ positions and public endorsements, led black and Puerto Rican voters on the Lower East Side to back the
Reform candidate. New York’s 1966 annual election report broke down the Farbstein-Weiss results by State Assembly District (A.D.). Six A.D.s, either in whole or in part, lay within the
19th district in 1966 (Figure 3). Weiss earned majorities from voters who lived within the 63rd,
65th, and 67th A.D.’s (Table 2). These voters resided within the western portion of the 19th district, the base of Reform Democrats’ power since the late 1950s (Figure 3).165 This area possessed fewer white ethnic, black, and Puerto Rican residents and more affluent, second and third generation Jews than both the 60th and 61st A.D.s, which covered the Lower East Side and lower Manhattan (Tables 3 and 4).166
162 In 1964, MFY registered nearly 3,000 new voters in its target area; “Voter Registration Campaigns,” Undated, DKP, Box 30, “Mobilization for Youth - New York City, Working Drafts For Project History, Undated, JFKL; “Henry Cohen’s Meeting,” April 17, 1963; FFPP, Box 55, Administration Minutes, Meetings Called by the City Administrator, SSC; Christopher McNickle, To Be Mayor, 152. 163 “Voter Registration Campaigns,” Undated, DKP, Box 30, “Mobilization for Youth - New York City, Working Drafts For Project History, Undated, JFKL; McNickle, To Be Mayor, 89, 114-116, 121, 139-140, 151, 161-62. 164 Homer Bigart, “City Hunts Reds in Youth Project on East Side,” The New York Times, August 17, 1964. 165 McNickle, To Be Mayor, 114-15. 166 Wellington Wales, “Four Reformers in Search of a Nomination,” The New York Times, March 7, 1966. Table 2 shows, in addition, that only about 1,500 fewer voters total turned out in the A.D.’s covering the 60th and 61st A.D. than in the western areas. 64
Figure 3: State Assembly Districts Within the 19th Congressional District
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Congressional District Atlas (Districts of the 88th Congress): A Statistical Abstract Supplement, "New York," 327; U.S. Census Bureau, 1960 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Census Tracts, Part I: New York, NY, http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/c.php?g=95512&p=624011; New York City Elections Board, "Maps Showing the Assembly Districts for New York City, 1968,” New York Public Library.
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Table 2: 1966 Democratic Primary Between Leonard Farbstein and Theodore Weiss (September 1966)
State Assembly District Farbstein Weiss 60 6,907 2,609 61 3,597 2,550 62 275 341 63 3,019 4,247 65 2,685 4,517 67 786 1,913 Total 17,269 (52.1 percent) 16,177 (47.9 percent) Source: New York City Board of Elections, 1966 Annual Report of the Board of Elections in the City of New York, New York Board of Elections (New York, NY).
Table 3: Racial and Ethnic Breakdowns for the 63rd, 65th, and 67th Assembly Districts
63rd, 65th, and 67th Assembly Districts (1960)
Race or ethnicity Population Percent of total populace (to the nearest tenth) *Eastern European 33,717 15.5% *Italian 14,070 6.5% *German 10,101 4.6% Puerto Rican 24,843 11.4% African-American 13,900 6.4% *Immigrant and first generation Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 1960 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Final Report, Part 1: New York City, “Table P-1: General Characteristics of the Population By Census Tracts, 1960,” 117-125; U.S. Census Bureau, 1960 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Census Tracts, Part 1: New York, NY, http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/c.php?g=95512&p=624011.
63rd, 65th, and 67th Assembly Districts (1970)
Race or ethnicity Population Percent of total populace (to the nearest tenth) *Eastern European 26,308 15.6% *Italian 7,690 4.6% *German 4,951 2.9% Puerto Rican 13,017 7.7% African-American 12,231 7.2% *Immigrant and first generation Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 1970 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Census Tracts, Part 14: New York, NY, “Table P-1: General Characteristics of the Population, 1970,” P-101-P-109 and “Table P-2: Social Characteristics of the Population, 1970,” P-301-P-309; U.S. Census Bureau, 1970 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Census Tracts, Part 14: New York, NY, http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/c.php?g=95512&p=624011.
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Table 4: Racial and Ethnic Breakdowns for the 60th and 61st Assembly Districts
60th Assembly District (1960)
Race or ethnicity Population Percent of total populace (to the nearest tenth) *Eastern European 19,675 16.1% *Italian 19,350 15.8% *German 1,117 0.9% Puerto Rican 25, 777 21.1% African-American 8,316 6.8% *Immigrant and first generation Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 1960 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Final Report, Part 1: New York City, “Table P-1: General Characteristics of the Population By Census Tracts, 1960,” 113-116; U.S. Census Bureau, 1960 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Census Tracts, Part 1: New York, NY, http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/c.php?g=95512&p=624011.
60th Assembly District (1970)
Race or ethnicity Population Percent of total populace (to the nearest tenth) *Eastern European 10,634 10.2% *Italian 10,031 9.6% *German 678 0.6% Puerto Rican 19,733 18.9% African-American 8,269 7.9% *Immigrant and first generation Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 1970 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Census Tracts, Part 14: New York, NY, “Table P-1: General Characteristics of the Population, 1970,” P-98-P-101 and “Table P-2: Social Characteristics of the Population, 1970,” P-298-P-301; U.S. Census Bureau, 1970 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Census Tracts, Part 14: New York, NY, http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/c.php?g=95512&p=624011.
61st Assembly District (1960)
Race or ethnicity Population Percent of total populace (to the nearest tenth) *Eastern European 30,533 29.7% *Italian 7,642 7.4% *German 2,243 2.2% Puerto Rican 26,750 26.0% African-American 9,097 8.8% *Immigrant and first generation Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 1960 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Final Report, Part 1: New York City, “Table P-1: General Characteristics of the Population By Census Tracts, 1960,” 113-115; U.S. Census Bureau, 1960 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Census Tracts, Part 1: New York, NY, http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/c.php?g=95512&p=624011.
67
61st Assembly District (1970)
Race or ethnicity Population Percent of total populace (to the nearest tenth) *Eastern European 14,327 14.2% *Italian 3,794 3.8% *German 1356 1.3% Puerto Rican 32,495 32.2% African-American 15,443 15.3% *Immigrant and first generation Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 1970 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Census Tracts, Part 14: New York, NY, “Table P-1: General Characteristics of the Population, 1970,” P-98-P-100 and “Table P-2: Social Characteristics of the Population, 1970,” P-298-P-300; U.S. Census Bureau, 1970 Census of Population and Housing, Series PHC (1): Census Tracts, Part 14: New York, NY, http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/c.php?g=95512&p=624011.
Farbstein, however, won a greater majority of voters in the 60th A.D. than Weiss did in the three western A.D.s combined (Table 2). In 1960, the 60th A.D., which covered parts of the
Lower East Side and lower Manhattan, was roughly 28 percent black and Puerto Rican and roughly 32 percent immigrant and first generation Eastern European and Italian (Table 4). In addition, the Lower East Side portion of the 60th A.D., where most of the A.D.’s residents lived, contained the heavily Jewish Grand Street co-ops, Farbstein’s synagogue, and P.S. 110, the school Farbstein defended against busing initiatives 1964.167 By 1966, these white ethnic voters, like their outer-borough counterparts, had become wary of new civil rights initiatives. That year, a referendum sponsored by the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association, asked voters whether the city should maintain an all-police review board.168 Nearly 60 percent of 60th A.D. voters said
“yes.”169 While no evidence suggests that Farbstein directly addressed this issue, the returns suggested that his supporters remained less critical of policing than black and Puerto Rican
167 Carroll, 28. 168 Vincent J. Cannato, The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 171-72; New York City Board of Elections, 1966 Annual Report of the Board of Elections in the City of New York, 119, New York Board of Elections (New York, NY). 169 New York City Board of Elections, 1966 Annual Report of the Board of Elections in the City of New York, 119, New York Board of Elections (New York, NY). 68
groups.170 As such, the returns foreshadowed white ethnics’ susceptibility to citywide and
national calls for “law-and-order” in response to urban unrest. In this way, the 60th A.D. returns
provide a microcosm of the larger racial divisions that emerged within the New Deal coalition at
the national level in the late 1960s.171
Weiss had a better showing in the 61st A.D. According to census data, Eastern Europeans and Italians comprised about 37 percent of 61st A.D. voters in 1960 (Table 4). Contrary to what one might expect, however, 61st A.D. voters backed Farbstein by about 1,000 votes, a much
smaller margin than 60th A.D. voters did (Table 2). In addition, 61st A.D. voters said “no” to the
police referendum, meaning that they backed a review board comprised of civilians and police
officers, a position closer to Weiss’ original bill in 1964.172 Despite its large white ethnic base,
however, blacks and Puerto Ricans comprised nearly 35 percent of 61st A.D. residents, a larger
percentage than they did in the 60th A.D. (Table 4). In addition, the 61st A.D. possessed a sizable
chunk of the MFY target area, including MFY headquarters, P.S. 140, the scene of MOM’s
confrontation of Irving Rosenblum, and the heavily Puerto Rican Wald and Riis houses.173 Most importantly, the 61st A.D.’s white ethnic population declined dramatically between 1960 and
1970. As Table 4 shows, Eastern Europeans and Italians comprised about 37 percent of the 61st
A.D. in 1960, but only about 18 percent of 61st A.D. residents in 1970.174 On the other hand, the
61st A.D.’s black and Puerto Rican populace rose from about 15 percent in 1960 to nearly 50
170 Polls revealed that outer-borough Jews and Catholics comprised most of the 63% of all New York voters who backed the referendum, while a majority of black and Puerto Rican voters opposed the referendum and favored a new civilian review board; Cannato, 183. 171 Historians have recently pushed back against the argument that “law-and-order” represented a veil for white racism. See Cannato; Michael Flamm, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 172 New York City Board of Elections, 1966 Annual Report of the Board of Elections in the City of New York, 119, New York Board of Elections (New York, NY). Cannato, 159. 173 Carroll, 28. 174 As Tables 1 and 4 show, this decline represented a substantial portion of the entire Jewish and Italian decline across the entire 19th district. 69
percent ten years later (Table 4). This growth did not occur in the 60th A.D., which heavily
backed Farbstein. There, the Eastern European and Italian population declined by about 12
percent between 1960 and 1970, while the black and Puerto Rican population remained virtually
the same (Table 4). Farbstein thus depended upon the Jewish and Italian vote in lower Manhattan
and the Lower East Side to remain in power. Support for the congressman waned in areas that
lost white ethnic voters and gained black and Puerto Rican voters. The returns further suggest
that Jewish and Italian voters and interests had merged in Lower East Side electoral politics by
1966. For Weiss, the exact opposite occurred: he gained support in areas where the black and
Puerto Rican population increased and the white ethnic population decreased between 1960 and
1970. This trend suggests that black and Puerto Rican voters on the Lower East Side had begun to identify common political interests and become more permanent factors in local politics at this time.
While these 61st A.D. returns did not cost Farbstein the election, they did highlight the
growing opposition to the congressman on the Lower East Side. Initially, the results indicated
that Weiss had won by 61 votes.175 However, a recount by the Board of Elections declared
Farbstein the winner by a mere 151 votes out of nearly 35,000 cast. On appeal from the Weiss
campaign, the State Supreme Court then ordered a new election on the grounds that roughly
1,100 invalid votes had been cast during the primary, some by non-Democrats.176 The final recount, finalized roughly three months later, increased Farbstein’s margin for victory to slightly over 1,000 votes.177
175 Bernard Weinraub, “For Farbstein and Weiss, the Long Fight is Ending; Young and the Old,” The New York Times, September 25, 1966. 176 Paul L. Montgomery, “Court Nullifies Farbstein Choice,” The New York Times, July 30, 1966 177 “Recanvas Raises Margin For Farbstein Over Weiss,” The New York Times, October 1, 1966. 70
Farbstein’s close victory highlighted growing electoral divisions between Jews, blacks,
and Puerto Ricans on the Lower East Side. During his second campaign against Weiss, Farbstein
alluded to his Grand Street base, noting that Orthodox Jews, above all others, would “come out
in force” because “they realize the necessity of a friend in Congress.”178 This acknowledgement
did not indicate that Farbstein had completely lost the neighborhood’s black and Puerto Rican
vote. Indeed, he still defeated Weiss in the 61st A.D., albeit more narrowly than he did in the
neighboring 60th A.D.
Nevertheless, the 1966 race illustrated the gaps between Farbstein’s positions on race and
civil rights and those of his black and Puerto Rican constituents. Farbstein, unlike some of his
white ethnic constituents, embraced national civil rights legislation, linked Jewish, black, and
Puerto Rican interests as racial and religious minorities, and remained committed to racial
pluralism. But African-Americans and Puerto Ricans, with MFY’s assistance, had begun to organize an alternative political agenda, particularly within the public school system, which advocated race-based reform and systemic change. Emphasizing the effects of institutional racism, MFY and its black and Puerto Rican base wanted to integrate neighborhood schools, diversify curricula and teaching staffs, and attain concrete decision-making power within the education system. Farbstein’s political views approached, but did not fully embrace, this vision.
While the congressman’s positions hardly embodied a white “backlash” against civil rights, he situated black and Puerto Rican residents within a narrative of Jewish advancement centered on individual hard work and responsibility. This framework appealed to white ethnic voters and revealed their ambiguous response to new civil rights activism on the Lower East Side. These
178 Bernard Weinraub, “For Farbstein and Weiss, the Long Fight is Ending; Young and the Old,” The New York Times, September 25, 1966 71
arguments also foreshadowed Jews’ more vocal opposition to “community control” in the late
1960s and reinforced Jewish-black-Puerto Rican conflict in local politics.
72
Chapter 2 “Why Can’t The Teachers Change?”: Bilingualism and Community Control on the Lower East Side, 1967-1975
In September 1973, over 400 Lower East Side residents met at P.S. 19 for a school board meeting in support of Luis Fuentes, the neighborhood’s district superintendent. Fuentes, hired in
1972 by a board comprised of Puerto Rican, black, and Chinese parents, worked to implement
new bilingual programs in Lower East Side schools. The superintendent and his supporters
argued that these programs would provide the district’s Spanish-speaking students with a long
overdue educational accommodation: the right to learn in their native language. While most
recognized the necessity of bilingual services, however, Fuentes and his backers on the board envisioned a more far-reaching, and controversial, program. In the early 1970s, Puerto Rican parents on the Lower East Side, empowered by the city’s 1969 school decentralization law, pushed for new Spanish-language subject classes, more Puerto Rican teachers, and a new curricular emphasis on Hispanic culture. To a certain extent, these goals represented an extension, and perhaps a product, of MFY’s organizing campaigns in the mid-1960s.
Bilingualism and the struggle over school decentralization crystallized the political tensions between Grand Street and Puerto Ricans only hinted at during the 1966 Farbstein-Weiss primary. Fuentes’ hiring, and the Puerto Rican activism that backed him, triggered a swift response from Jewish residents, teachers, and organizations both on and outside of the Lower
East Side. The superintendent’s vision not only threatened the labor interests of the United
Federation of Teachers’ (UFT) heavily Jewish membership, but also rested partly on the anti-
Semitic assumption that Jewish teachers controlled the city’s public schools and conspired against the interests of black and Puerto Rican students.1 Indeed, Fuentes had allegedly made
1 Reports suggest that Jews comprised about 56% of UFT teachers; Mary Breasted, “Acrimony Marks Campaign in 73
several comments to that effect as an assistant principal in Ocean Hill-Brownsville during the
city’s 1968 teacher strikes. These comments – combined with skepticism over the effects of new
bilingual classes on UFT personnel – led Grand Street, with backing from the UFT and the major
Jewish defense agencies, to try to remove Fuentes from his post and gain control of the local
school board. These developments led residents at the 1973 board meeting to view local
education debates as a fundamentally Jewish-Puerto Rican conflict. Indeed, one Fuentes
supporter at the meeting criticized Lower East Side residents who were “too old to have children
in the schools but [were] trying to continue to dominate them.” Another observer more expressly
noted that Puerto Rican parents “regard the older Jewish voters in the neighborhood and their
children, the current generation of Jewish teachers, as their enemy.” As a result, the observer
concluded that disagreements over the neighborhood’s public schools had created an “increase in
anti-Jewish feeling in the Puerto Rican community.”2
Numerous scholars have examined conflicts between parents and teachers in New York
City’s black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods in the late 1960s. As these scholars suggest,
debates about whether and how parents could shape education policy often slid into broader
conversations regarding the racial and ethnic composition of neighborhoods, schools, and
teaching staffs. For this reason, debates over schooling at this time exacerbated older strains
between the city’s predominantly Jewish teaching staff and the black and Puerto Rican
neighborhoods within which they worked.3
Fuentes District,” The New York Times, April 4, 1973. 2 “District 1 School Board Meeting at P.S. 19 (As observed from the Fuentes-Ramos camp),” September 11, 1973, United Federation of Teachers Papers (hereafter UFTP), Box 38, Folder 4, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives (New York, NY) (hereafter TL). 3 See Murray Friedman, What Went Wrong; Jonathan Kaufman, “Blacks and Jews: The Struggle in the Cities,” in Struggles in the Promised Land: Toward a History of Black-Jewish Relations in the United States, ed. Jack Salzman and Cornell West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Forman, Blacks in the Jewish Mind; Dollinger, Quest for Inclusion; Podair, The Strike That Changed New York; Greenberg, Troubling the Waters. 74
Few scholars, however, have examined how these debates unfolded outside Ocean Hill-
Brownsville, one of three demonstration districts created by the Board of Education in 1967 as
experiments in decentralization.4 On the Lower East Side, decentralization provoked grassroots clashes and electoral divides between parents, teachers, and administrators. It also triggered
different debates than in Ocean Hill-Brownsville because Puerto Ricans comprised about 68
percent of public school students in the former neighborhood.5 School debates on the Lower East
Side thus centered on the nature and goals of bilingual education, which both hinted at the
development of a distinct Puerto Rican political agenda and reaffirmed Grand Street’s power in
local politics.
The political conflict between these neighborhood constituencies appeared in two
interrelated political arenas: local school board and mayoral elections. In 1973, the Fuentes affair
both politicized the Lower East Side school board and helped fracture the city’s Jewish and
Puerto Rican electorate. That year, the Democratic primaries featured a runoff election between
Comptroller Abe Beame, a candidate to become the first Jewish mayor in New York City history, and Herman Badillo, the first Puerto Rico-born congressional representative in U.S. history. This election – as well as local school board contests in 1974 and 1975 – exacerbated
Jewish-Puerto Rican conflict in the neighborhood and reinforced the general alignment of Grand
Street with conservative white ethnic voters in the outer-boroughs.
------
4 For exceptions, see Heather Lewis, New York City Public Schools from Brownsville to Bloomberg: Community Control and its Legacy (New York: Columbia University, 2013); Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement. 5 New York City Board of Education, “Non-English Speaking Pupils by School Within District, October 31, 1970,” “Table III-V: Puerto Ricans By District, Selected Districts, October, 1970,” ASP, Box 26, PR Data – ’70-71, RBML. 75
Decentralization
Decentralization emerged as a potential solution to school inequality for black and Puerto
Rican parents in the 1960s. Despite BOE integration programs, reports suggested that city schools had become more segregated as the decade progressed. While African-Americans and
Puerto Ricans comprised roughly 35 percent of elementary and junior high school students in
1957, ten years later they represented 57 percent and over 53 percent of such students.6 In addition, a number of city schools with at least an 85 percent black and Puerto Rican populace increased by about 20 percent at this time.7 More tellingly, in 1967, blacks and Puerto Ricans
constituted nearly 70 percent of the city’s vocational school students, and only about 33 percent
of all academic high school students.8 These trends led black and Puerto Rican parents to view
decentralization and local control as an alternative to BOE school transfer and remedial
programs that had apparently failed to remedy school inequality.
Events at I.S. 201, a new Harlem school designed to relieve overcrowding and foster
integration, kick started this push for local control. In 1966, District Superintendent Daniel
Schreiber classified I.S. 201 as “integrated” even though the student body was 50 percent black
and 50 percent Puerto Rican.9 In response, Harlem residents began to argue for more decision-
making powers within local schools. One such resident, Preston Wilcox, a social worker, called
for committees of residents and local leaders to hire school personnel. When the BOE balked,
parents and their allies, including officials from the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
6 Joseph Fitzpatrick, “Educational Experience of the Puerto Rican Community in New York City: A Review Paper,” “Table I: Special Census of School Population – Composition of Register Trend in Distribution of Pupils Enrolled by School Level, Fall 1957-1967,” ASP, Box 26, PR Data, RBML. 7 Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement, 172. 8 Joseph Fitzpatrick, “Educational Experience of the Puerto Rican Community in New York City: A Review Paper,” “Table I: Special Census of School Population – Composition of Register Trend in Distribution of Pupils Enrolled by School Level, Fall 1957-1967,” ASP, Box 26, PR Data, RBML. 9 Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement, 173-74. 76
Committee (SNCC), CORE, and others, led a boycott of I.S. 201 and demanded that a black principal lead the school.10 Shortly thereafter, in December 1966, African-American parents from Ocean Hill-Brownsville, criticizing their lack of voice at BOE meetings, formed the
“People’s Board of Education” and elected Milton Galamison, leader of the 1964 school boycott, as its new president.11 In response, Mayor John Lindsay, seeking additional state funding for
education, formulated a plan to create smaller, community-based school districts in the city.12
Hoping to avoid a protracted conflict, the BOE, agreed to create three such districts as
experiments in decentralization. These districts resided in Harlem, Ocean Hill-Brownsville, and
the Lower East Side.13
From the start, parents, education officials, and the Lindsay administration viewed these
experimental districts differently. The BOE hoped the new districts would balance local and
centralized rule. As a result, the BOE proposal gave the board final say on school personnel
decisions and promised to place teachers based on their score on the city’s standardized civil service exam. While the BOE plan thus left the main skeleton of the school system intact, it nevertheless allowed local school boards to place teachers based on “the differences in needs as reflected in the pupil population of the districts.”14 These provisions – as well as parent activists’
growing disillusionment with the BOE – meant that black and Puerto Rican parents expected the
experimental local boards to provide them with tangible decision-making power over school
policy.
10 Ibid., 175-76. 11 Podair, 71-73; Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement, 176. 12 Podair, 77-79. 13 Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement, 176. 14 Podair, 79. 77
But the Lindsay administration, backed a more far-reaching proposal than the BOE. In
1967, Lindsay commissioned the Ford Foundation to write a report on decentralization, which called for the city to divide its school system into 30-60 districts, with a local school board that could devise curriculum, and hire, fire, and promote teachers without regard to the city’s civil service exam. Shortly thereafter, the UFT countered with a separate plan that reined in the powers of local school boards. Under the UFT proposal, the BOE would maintain final say over school finances and curriculum, and make personnel decisions based solely on civil service lists.
The UFT’s plan also called for only fifteen, not 30-60, new districts. These revisions underscored the UFT’s main criticism of the Ford Foundation plan: schools would hire teachers based on race and “community prejudices,” not performance.15
These conflicting visions of decentralization led to explosive conflicts in Ocean Hill-
Brownsville. The BOE had called for Ocean Hill-Brownsville to create a “planning council” of
various local school interests to outline the new local school board’s specific powers as an
experimental district in 1967.16 That summer, however, with UFT teachers on break, the Ford
Foundation and its allies hired Rhody McCoy to head the new Ocean Hill-Brownsville district.
McCoy, the principal of a special needs school on the Upper West Side, had not taken a civil
service exam and quickly supported the parents on the “planning council” who wanted to fully empower local school boards. McCoy and the parents then presented a plan which gave boards complete power over school personnel and curriculum. Making quick use of these powers shortly after Ocean Hill-Brownsville’s first school board election, McCoy told the BOE that he would staff schools in the district with principals not listed in the city’s regular civil service registry.17
15 Under this proposal, teachers and administrators would only need to hold a New York State certificate in teaching, which required candidates to complete only basic undergraduate classes; Ibid., 91-93. See also Lewis, 55. 16 Podair, 82. 17 Ibid., 84-87. 78
Eager again to avoid confrontation, the BOE created an entirely new category of civil servant,
the “demonstration” principal, who needed to possess only a New York State certificate to qualify for hiring. The UFT and Council of Supervisory Organizations (CSO) immediately filed
a lawsuit against the plan. After a series of rulings against the demonstration principals in 1968, the New York Court of Appeals approved the position in January 1969, but ruled that the city
had to subject demonstration principals to a new civil service exam at a later date.18
While the courts continued to debate the status of demonstration principals, tensions erupted between the local school board and Ocean Hill-Brownsville’s teaching staff. In
May 1968, the new school board fired nineteen teachers and principals, eighteen of whom were white, at JHS 271. Terminated without a fair hearing (as mandated by the UFT’s contract), the
teachers ignored the decision and reported to work several days later, only to have a wall of parents and school board members block their entrance into the school. When Mayor Lindsay tried to force the school to readmit the teachers, the local school board closed all Ocean Hill-
Brownsville schools. In response, roughly 350 UFT teachers walked out of their classrooms.19
While a court ruling reinstated the nineteen fired teachers, the local school board refused to
admit the teachers. In response, the UFT launched a massive strike that kept over 54,000 teachers
out of school in September 1968. While UFT teachers returned after Mayor Lindsay and the
BOE guaranteed their future right to a fair hearing before being transferred, the UFT initiated a
second strike when the local board orchestrated an organized intimidation campaign against
several teachers and refused to give them their old teaching assignments.20 When the teachers returned to their classrooms under guarantees and, in some cases, physical protection from BOE
18 Ibid., 88-90, 138, 141; Bill Kovach, “Court Reinstates Three Principals Here,” The New York Times, January 16, 1969. 19 Podair, 99, 101, 104, 109. 20 Ibid., 114-17. 79
officials, the local school board further dug in its heels, telling McCoy to fire the district’s UFT
teachers. In response, the union launched yet another strike and called for the BOE to remove
McCoy as district chief. The strike ended only after BOE officials acceded to UFT demands that the board remove the Ocean Hill-Brownsville demonstration principals and temporarily suspend the local school board.21
Despite this resolution, the city had yet to decide how, if, and when to decentralize the
rest of its school system. The UFT’s initial strike led the state legislature, in a bill sponsored by
Republican John Marchi, to delay decentralizing the entire city school system until 1969.22 As
had occurred two years earlier when the city established its demonstration districts, civil rights groups, UFT officials, and BOE members disagreed on the specifics of decentralization, most notably the power of local school boards and the required credentials for public school teachers.
The final decentralization law created thirty local school districts, maintained the Board of
Examiners, as well as the exams they administered, allowed local school boards to hire principals
using civil service lists (though not necessarily in order of rank), and allowed the boards to
appoint district superintendents holding only New York State certification. In response to the
events at Ocean Hill-Brownsville, the law also prohibited school boards from suspending
teachers without a hearing and forcing them to transfer to new schools.23 While some scholars note that the final law made local communities only “limited partners, but not co-managers, in the business of running the public school system,” decentralization nonetheless provided parents with a new vehicle for political power, the local school boards, thus raising new questions about parental influence on school policy.24
21 Ibid., 122-23, 137-38, 142. 22 Ibid., 109-110. 23 Ibid., 145-146; Lewis 59. 24 Podair, 79. 80
The law also failed to settle the fallout from the Ocean Hill-Brownsville crisis. Several
anti-Semitic incidents occurred during the 1968 strike, including the anonymous placement of a
letter in teacher mailboxes at JHS 271 calling for black teachers to teach black students and
attributing black underachievement to Jews, “The Middle East Murders of Colored People” and
“Bloodsucking Exploiters.” UFT leader Albert Shanker, the son of Eastern European
immigrants, publicized the letter as evidence of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville school board’s
extremism and the dangers of decentralization.25 Mainstream Jewish defense agencies also
viewed events like these as signs that anti-Semitism had pervaded the New York City school
system. The ADL, for instance, issued a report warning readers that the city faced a “crisis” of
anti-Semitism and that the Ocean Hill-Brownsville board had driven “Jewish teachers and
principals -- as Jews -- out of schools” through the “ancient art of scapegoating.”26 As evidence,
the agency quoted articles penned by black educators in the late 1960s alleging that Jews
“dominate and control the educational bureaucracy” and had destroyed the “minds and souls of
our black children.” Most notably, Leslie Campbell, a black Afro-American History teacher in
OHB, had read a poem on WBAI in which began “You pale faced Jew boy – I wish you were
dead.”27 Jewish teachers and residents also forwarded examples of anti-Jewish behavior to the
American Jewish Committee (AJC), forcing the agency to acknowledge that it could no longer
“distinguish between…remarks against Jewish teaching personnel from…anti-Semitism” and to
suggest that community control had adversely affected the “Jewish civil servant and the
25 Ibid., 124; Richard D. Wallenberg, Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 15. 26 Podair, 144; ADL, “Anti-Semitism in the New York City School Controversy,” January 1969, Jewish Labor Committee Papers (hereafter JLCP), Box 164, Folder 38, TL. 27 ADL, “Anti-Semitism in the New York City School Controversy,” January 1969, JLCP, Box 164, Folder 38, TL; Podair, 143, 165. 81
supervisory Jewish leadership so deeply involved in the Central Board of Education.”28 These
events also exacerbated black-Jewish political conflict. One poll, for instance, indicated that
Jews backed the UFT 63-8 percent, while African-Americans backed the Ocean Hill-Brownsville
school board 50-14 percent. Significantly, other polls showed that Jews viewed African-
Americans, not Catholics, as the city’s chief source of anti-Semitism by an almost 2:1 margin.29
Such trends would shape the Jewish responses to decentralization on the Lower East Side.
Decentralization and Bilingualism on the Lower East Side
News reports, however, initially differentiated the Lower East Side demonstration
district, dubbed Two Bridges, from Ocean Hill-Brownsville. Two Bridges ran from the
Williamsburg Bridge to the Brooklyn Bridge along the western part of the Lower East Side from
Essex Street to Two Bridges and Chinatown.30 According to the New York Times, this district
possessed a 40 percent Chinese, 35-40 percent Puerto Rican, and 13 percent African-American
student body. The “polyglot nature” of the district, the Times noted, had prevented the racial
polarization wrought by the 1968 teacher strikes from affecting the Lower East Side.31
These conclusion proved overly optimistic. The city’s 1969 decentralization law replaced
Two Bridges with School District 1, a territory outlined by the more conventional boundaries of the Lower East Side: virtually all land south of 14th street and east of the Bowery to the
28 Israel Laster to Nathan Perlmutter, June 13, 1968, “New York Chapter Activities in Relationship to Jewish Teachers and School Decentralization,” American Jewish Committee Papers (hereafter AJCP), Box D52, Decentralization, 1968-69, The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives (Cincinnati, OH) (hereafter AJA); Israel Laster to Nathan Perlmutter, “Anti-Semitism Against Teaching Personnel,” June 12, 1968, AJCP, Box D52, Decentralization, Anti-Sem. In Schools, 1968, AJA. 29 Podair, 126. 30 For an outline of the city’s demonstration and decentralization districts, see “Historic States of New York City School District Boundaries,” ArcGIS, accessed December 7, 2016, https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=a7a6d94036944e3a8c58722a724d8c2c. 31 Will Lissner, “Two Bridges Section Calm in School Crisis,” The New York Times, December 8, 1968;“In McCoy Lie the Conflicting Loyalties of the School Crisis,” The New York Times, October 13, 1968. 82
Manhattan Bridge.32 This new area became the city’s largest Puerto Rican school district.33 At the same time, Puerto Ricans faced unique academic challenges. Reports showed that nearly 60 percent of Puerto Ricans enrolled in academic high schools in 1970-1971 either spoke English either “hesitatingly” or spoke little English at all and that nearly 40 percent of all Puerto Rican students in New York exhibited some form of “language difficulty.”34 Partly for this reason,
Puerto Ricans comprised nearly two-thirds of all New York City students attending vocational or special schools, but only about 13 percent of academic high school students.35 Despite their academic difficulties, however, only about one-quarter of the city’s non-English speaking students received bilingual instruction in 1970-71, and Puerto Rican students enrolled in English- as-a-second-language (ESL) courses quickly returned to English-only classrooms.36 These trends made District 1 one of the most underachieving school districts in the city. A staggering 96.6 percent of all District 1 elementary school students read below grade level and Puerto Ricans comprised roughly 87 percent (and non-English speakers nearly 45 percent) of these students.37
32 “Historic States of New York City School District Boundaries,” ArcGIS, accessed December 7, 2016, https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=a7a6d94036944e3a8c58722a724d8c2c. 33 As noted earlier, Puerto Ricans comprised roughly 68 percent of all District 1 students by 1970. See New York City Board of Education, “Non-English Speaking Pupils by School Within District, October 31, 1970,” “Table III- V: Puerto Ricans By District, Selected Districts, October, 1970,” ASP, Box 26, PR Data – ’70-71, RBML. 34 New York City Board of Education, “Non-English-Speaking Pupils By School Within School District, October 31, 1970,” “Table V-I: Survey of Pupils With Language Difficulties, October 30, 1970,” ASP, Box 26, PR Data – ’70-71, RBML. 35 New York City Board of Education, “Non-English-Speaking Pupils By School Within School District, October 31, 1970,” “Table III-12: New York City English As a Second Language Learners, High School Pupils, 1970-71,” ASP, Box 26, PR Data – ’70-71, RBML; Joseph Fitzpatrick, “Educational Experience of the Puerto Rican Community in New York City: A Review Paper,” “Table III – Special Census of School Population – Composition of Register City-Wide by School Group – October 31, 1967,” ASP, Box 26, PR Data, RBML. 36 New York City Board of Education, “Non-English-Speaking Pupils By School Within School District, October 31, 1970,” “Table VII-II, “Special Instructional Help Received and Not Received by Non-English-Speaking Pupils in New York City Public Schools, 1970-1971,” ASP, Box 26, PR Data – ’70-71, RBML; Luis Fuentes, The Fight Against Racism in Our Schools (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973), 10; Isaura Santiago Santiago, “Aspira v. Board of Education Revisited,” American Journal of Education, Vol. 95, No. 1 (Nov. 1986), 158. 37 New York City Board of Education, “Non-English-Speaking Pupils By School Within School District, October 31, 1970,” “Table IV-I: Ethnicity of 15 Elementary Schools at Bottom of April 1971 Reading Ranks,” ASP, Box 26, PR Data – ’70-71, RBML. 83
Three years later, District 1 had more students reading at least two years below grade level than any other school district in the city.38
These language difficulties made bilingual instruction the most important, and hotly contested, issue in Lower East Side schools during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Puerto Rican parents sought a district superintendent who understood both the neighborhood’s obvious need for more bilingual education and the experiences of Puerto Rican students. The school board honed in on Luis Fuentes to fill this post. In 1967, Rhody McCoy hired Fuentes, a former reading instructor, as the city’s first Puerto Rican principal at P.S. 155 in Ocean Hill-Brownsville.39 At
P.S. 155, Fuentes became the center of ongoing legal debates over the status of demonstration
district principals. In 1968, the Council of Supervisors and Administrators successfully
challenged Fuentes’ appointment – and hiring practices in the demonstration districts as a whole
– in the State Supreme Court on the grounds that he had not taken the city’s civil service exam required of regular school officials.40 While Ocean Hill-Brownsville’s demonstration principals
went to the Court of Appeals after the Appellate Division upheld this decision, the settlement of
the third and final UFT strike required the BOE to temporarily reassign the principals. After
initially refusing to leave P.S. 155, Fuentes eventually vacated the school to cheers of “Viva
Fuentes!” from his supporters.41 However, the Court of Appeals’ decision further muddied
Fuentes’ status. In January 1969, the court ruled that demonstration principals would eventually
38 “7 Excess Buildings Noted in Torn School District 1,” New York Times, October 20, 1975. 39 “East Side Parents Ask Local Board’s Suspension,” The New York Times, September 17, 1968; Podair, 88; Martin Mayer, “The Full and Sometimes Very Surprising Story of Ocean Hill, the Teachers’ Union and the Teacher Strikes of 1968,” The New York Times, February 2, 1969. 40 “50 Union Teachers Go Back, Averting Crisis in Brooklyn,” The New York Times, November 21, 1968; Bill Kovach, “Court Reinstates 3 Principals Here,” The New York Times, January 16, 1969. 41 Ibid. 84
have to take the test, but, because they needed to run a “more community-centered school,” could be hired based on different criteria from regular principals.42
As these legal proceedings unfolded, local protestors on the Lower East Side, led by a group of black and Puerto Rican parents and students called “Community Control for District 1,” called for the local school board to hire Fuentes as district superintendent. This group, and other
parent activists, interrupted school board meetings at least four times to call for a new district
superintendent. In turn, a group of white parents who lived in the northern portion of the neighborhood near Stuyvesant Town, formed a group called Compact to represent the
“responsible majority” of parents and students on the Lower East Side.43
Throughout the fall and winter of 1968, Compact, Community Control for District 1, and their respective allies pressured the local school board to hire a new district superintendent. In
September 1968, a group of white parents from several local schools asked the BOE to suspend the board for caving to pressure from neighborhood “extremists” and firing district superintendent Theresa Rakow. According to the group, some parents had threatened physical violence against those who opposed Rakow’s dismissal and called her replacement, Daniel
Schreiber, a “pawn to the racist Board of Education.”44 At a subsequent meeting at P.S. 20, these parents and others threatened a sit-in unless the board fired Schreiber. According to a group of
Lower East Side school supervisors, these residents hijacked the meeting, shouting “White pigs” and “Up with black power.”45 One participant, Julio Rosado, of the Committee for Community
Control, also told the New York Times that black and Puerto Rican parents would run the schools
42 Bill Kovach, “Court Reinstates 3 Principals Here,” The New York Times, January 16, 1969. 43 “Race Issue is Fuse in School Dispute,” The New York Times, January 19, 1969. 44 “East Side Parents Ask Local Board’s Suspension,” The New York Times, September 17, 1968. 45 Supervisors of District 1 to Bernard Donovan, October 24, 1968, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 2, TL. 85
“by force if necessary.”46 These disturbances continued at a follow-up meeting at Seward Park
High School. According to the supervisors, the school board voted to fire Rakow only after
forming a self-enclosed circle on stage to block out audience interference.47
Shortly thereafter, a group of Lower East Side residents, claiming to represent over 3,000
parents in the neighborhood, called upon BOE officials to hire a superintendent who would
“better reflect the community.”48 Tensions peaked in January 1969, when the local school board,
citing evidence of a fabricated a letter of recommendation and outstanding loan, rejected Luis
Fuentes’ application to man this post.49 Fuentes attributed this decision to discrimination. The former P.S. 155 principal claimed that school board leader Frances O’Brien “really didn’t want a
Puerto Rican as superintendent” and that he had “been put on the defensive like we Puerto
Ricans always are.”50 After successive board elections increased UFT-backed candidates’ control
of the board, Fuentes remained as an assistant principal at P.S. 155 until August 1971, when a
new school board in Ocean Hill-Brownsville fired Fuentes from his post.51 These conflicts put the local school board in a difficult position. The board’s policies, noted Frances O’Brien, were
“not fast enough for the militants and too fast for the others.”52 The statement encapsulated the
political challenges of local control and suggested that the District 1 school board had become a
46 “East Side Parents Ask Local Board’s Suspension,” The New York Times, September 17, 1968. 47 Supervisors of District 1 to Bernard Donovan, October 24, 1968, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 2, TL. 48 “Parent Groups Press Demands for Puerto Rican School Head,” The New York Times, September 19, 1968. 49 M.A. Farber, “Fuentes Rejection Laid to His Resume,” The New York Times, January 22, 1969. 50 Ibid. 51 In August 1969, the BOE overturned Fuentes’ 5-2 appointment as district chief by citing a law requiring 10 school board members to vote on such matters. A few weeks later, the State Supreme Court upheld this action and ordered a special election to fill 3 seats on the school board. In October 1969, three opponents of Fuentes’ appointment, allegedly backed by both the CSA and UFT, filled these seats; “City School Board Bars an Election,” The New York Times, August 15, 1969; “Court Voids Naming of Fuentes to School Post,” The New York Times, September 10, 1969; Leonard Buder, “Critics of Two Bridges Board Win, Apparently Blocking Fuentes,” The New York Times, October 12, 1969; John Darnton, “5 Ocean Hill Principals Reported Ousted,” The New York Times, August 9, 1971. 52 “Race Issue is Fuse in School Dispute,” The New York Times, January 19, 1969. 86
major site for interethnic conflict between black, white, and Puerto Rican parents on the Lower
East Side.
These conflicts reached an apex when the school board selected Luis Fuentes as district superintendent in the summer of 1972. The hiring of Fuentes resulted from a series of complicated events. At the end of January 1969, fed up with dissention on the Lower East Side, the BOE temporarily suspended the local school board and sent the existing district superintendent, Jacob Landman, back to his position as JHS 71 principal.53 Tensions on the
board also led several board members to resign in June 1971.54 As a result of these resignations and the removal of another member for not attending meetings, a 4-4 split developed on the board that prevented it from attaining the necessary 5 votes to fill vacancies and attain a majority vote. The board then filled two vacancies with Eric Snyder, a white minister who often sided with black and Puerto Rican interests, and Jane Tam, a Chinatown resident sympathetic to community control. As a result of this turnover, the new board included four Puerto Ricans, one
Chinese, and one African-American member. The new board then passed a significant measure: it would aim to hire school staff that “is more nearly representative of the student population of the district.”55 While School Chancellor Harvey Scribner overturned this resolution, the board
nevertheless hired Luis Fuentes as superintendent from a pool of six Puerto Rican, Chinese, and
African-American finalists.56
53 M.A. Farber, “Donovan Acts to Mend District 1, Torn by Superintendent Conflict,” The New York Times, January 31, 1969. 54 “City School Board Bars an Election,” The New York Times, August 15, 1969; Ronald Smothers, “Lower East Side is Watchful as Fuentes Takes School Post After Four-Year Fight,” The New York Times, August 7, 1972. 55 Ronald Smothers, “Lower East Side is Watchful as Fuentes Takes School Post After Four-Year Fight,” The New York Times, August 7, 1972. 56 “Lower East Side Board Hires Principal Ousted in Brooklyn,” The New York Times, July 21, 1972; “In the Matter of The Grievance Submitted to the Chancellor with Respect to Community School Board District 1 and Luis Fuentes,” UFTP, Box 38, Box 8, TL; Harvey Scribner to Georgina Hoggard, June 16, 1972, JLCP, Box 137, Folder 22, TL; David Ashe to Harvey Scribner, June 19, 1972, UFT Papers, Box 38, Folder 3, TL. 87
Fuentes entered his position as new district superintendent committed to instating new bilingual programs on the Lower East Side. First and foremost, the new district superintendent argued that bilingual programs would provide Puerto Ricans with a fair and equal education. In an El Diario editorial, for instance, Fuentes argued that Lower East Side schools were “mass producing illiterates” and possessed the highest illiteracy rates in the city. As a result, Fuentes noted, Puerto Ricans dropped out of schools at alarming rates and, without the training and experience to secure a job, turned to crime.57 During a December 1972 speech at New York
University, Fuentes noted that Lower East Side schools “produce twice as many junkies as
literates,” because most Puerto Ricans in the neighborhood “had stopped looking [for work] by the time they are 20.”58 As a result, Fuentes framed bilingualism as an obvious and much needed
solution to Puerto Rican underachievement and poverty on the Lower East Side. “For children to learn what you are teaching,” he concluded in El Diario, “they have to understand what you are saying.”59
A series of legislative developments and judicial rulings on bilingualism buttressed these arguments. As historian John Skrentny has shown, federal authorities, both independently and in
response to Latino groups, broadened the reach of civil rights legislation to address language-
based school inequality in the late 60s and early 70s. The 1968 Bilingual Education Act, for
instance, provided certain school districts with federal funding to develop programs for Limited
English Proficiency (LEP) students.60 The law, as well as its chief sponsor, Senator Ralph
Yarborough, stated that monolingual classes unconstitutionally discriminated against non-
57 Luis Fuentes, “The Real Issues in District 1,” El Diario-La Prensa, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 11, TL. 58 Robert C. Beck, “School District One Head Blames Teachers For Ills,” Washington Square Journal, Vol. 18, No. 38, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 11, TL. 59 Luis Fuentes, “The Real Issues in District 1,” El Diario-La Prensa, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 11, TL. 60 John Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), 180, 193. 88
English, particularly Spanish-speaking, students. In making this case, Yarborough and others
followed the legal argument utilized by the NAACP during the 1954 Brown case, arguing that
English-only classrooms not only prevented some students an equal opportunity to a good
education, but also denigrated Hispanic culture and language. According to Yarborough, this
message inflicted “psychological damage” on Spanish-speaking students and led to
disproportionate failure and dropout rates.61 Two years later, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR),
stated that schools receiving federal funding that failed to devise new services for LEP students discriminated on the basis of national origin and, as such, violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil
Rights Act.62 Then, in 1974, the Supreme Court issued its first decision regarding student language rights. The case, Lau v. Nichols, ruled that the Title VI required school districts to
provide new services for non-English speakers after a legal challenge on behalf of roughly 3,000
Chinese-American students in San Francisco. Though the case framed monolingual classes as discrimination based on nationality, politicians and future judicial decisions understood the Lau case as a clear and unambiguous precedent for bilingual education.63
Puerto Ricans rode these legal developments to carve out new bilingual programs for
Spanish-speaking students in New York City. In 1972, ASPIRA, represented by the Puerto Rican
Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF), alleged that the city’s bilingual programs failed
to provide necessary services for over 80,000 Limited-English Proficiency students. New York’s
Southern District agreed with these claims in Aspira v. Board of Education (1973), which forced
the BOE and ASPIRA to sign a consent decree in 1974 that outlined the implementation of new
bilingual services in the city’s public schools. The decree represented a wide-ranging, if
61 Ibid., 203-04. 62 Ibid., 180, 212. 63 Ibid., 222-25. 89
ultimately flawed, attempt to raise the academic performance of Spanish-speaking students. The
agreement ruled that “all children whose English deficiency prevents them from effectively participating in the learning process” would take English language classes and receive some
regular course instruction in Spanish.64
However, two main factors limited the potential reach of the Aspira decision. First, the
court’s Special Master assigned to monitor the implementation of the decree required schools to
quickly place students who gained English literacy in English-only classrooms. As such, Aspira
did not make Spanish-language instruction a permanent part of the school curriculum. Second, and more importantly, the decree did not precisely define the term “English deficiency.” While
ASPIRA hoped that the new programs would serve a wide range of bilingual students, the court sanctioned initiatives that would aid only those with the least English proficiency. More specifically, only students who scored in the lowest 20th percentile on the city’s English-
language “Language Assessment Battery” and scored higher on a Spanish version of the same
exam would qualify for bilingual instruction. Only about 85,000 of the 250,000 Spanish-speakers
in the New York public schools met these criteria during the 1975-76 school year. As a result,
one historian estimates that these new programs served only about 40 percent of Puerto Rican students who needed bilingual instruction.65
While the Aspira ruling may have limited the reach of new bilingual programs, however,
it would nevertheless lead schools to restructure their teaching staffs. The consent decree, at the
urging of ASPIRA and PRLDEF, required new bilingual teachers to possess Spanish and English
fluency and a knowledge of content areas. The decree also required the BOE to “implement an
64 Santiago, “Aspira v. Board of Education Revisited,” American Journal of Education, Vol. 95, No. 1 (Nov. 1986), 149-50, 159-60. 65 Ibid., 161-64. 90
affirmative action program” to hire new bilingual teachers and create new bilingual licenses in
“special subject and special license areas.” While schools could English-speaking staff the opportunity to learn a second language, they would likely have to hire new Spanish-speakers to
teach various academic subjects. Indeed, the Puerto Ricans comprised about 22 percent of New
York public school students, but only 464 of the over 59,000 teachers in the city’s public schools
in 1969. At this time, the entire school system had only 625 Hispanic teachers, and 14 Hispanic
principals and assistant principals.66 Other reports noted that Hispanic students comprised about
28 percent of the city’s public school students, but only 2.5 percent of the teachers and roughly 3
percent of the principals by 1975.67 These numbers increased after the Aspira decree took effect.
By the 1984-1985 school year, for instance, the city possessed nearly 3,800 Hispanic teachers and 144 principals and assistant principals.68
District 1 planners, and Luis Fuentes, wanted new bilingual programs on the Lower East
Side to hire more Puerto Rican teachers and create new subject classes taught solely in Spanish.
This viewpoint aligned with Puerto Rican leaders such as Joseph Monserrat, the head of the
Migration Division, and Herman Badillo, the first Puerto Rico-born congressman in New York history, who backed bilingualism to not only improve classroom learning, but to also strengthen
Puerto Rican self-esteem and legitimize Hispanic culture. As part of this argument, Sonia Song-
Ha Lee notes, Puerto Rican leaders believed that bilingual education would “instill ethnic pride
through role models who shared students’ ethnicity.”69
66 Ibid., 168-69, 172. 67 Migration Division, “Puerto Ricans and Other Hispanics in New York City’s Public Schools and Universities” (Migration Division: New York, 1975), 4. 68 Santiago, “Aspira v. Board of Education Revisited,” 172. 69 Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement, 189-90. 91
When he took over District 1, Fuentes stated that he would offer parents the option of sending their students, for their first three school years, to classes taught entirely in Spanish. He
justified this program as a means to improve students’ academic achievement and confidence.70
Fuentes also acknowledged that programs such as these would require schools to hire more
Puerto Rican teachers. As an assistant principal, Fuentes ran P.S. 155’s bilingual program and later acknowledged that, all qualifications being equal, districts should hire “ a black educator that had the black experience” to teach African-American students.71 Fuentes applied this same argument to Puerto Rican students during later hearings into his conduct at P.S. 155. During the proceedings, Fuentes argued that “a bilingual person who has experienced a bicultural life is a more qualified teacher for a youngster who comes into our system speaking only in Spanish.”72
In El Diario, Fuentes similarly argued that “meaningful education” for Puerto Ricans in District
1 meant hiring more “bilingual staff – as teachers, administrators, and paraprofessionals” to
“bridge the lingual and cultural gaps” between students and instructors in the neighborhood. The
evidence certainly suggested that the district, partly due to its lack of bilingual education, lacked
Puerto Rican teachers. In the article, for instance, Fuentes claimed that only six Puerto Rican
teachers worked in the district’s elementary schools.73 During a 1972 NYU speech, the
superintendent similarly noted that Puerto Ricans comprised roughly one-quarter of the city’s
public school students, but less than 1 percent of its teaching staff. This difference, Fuentes
argued, separated “the Puerto Rican child from his own culture, background, and language.”74
70 Ronald Smothers, “Lower East Side is Watchful as Fuentes Takes School Post After Four-Year Fight,” The New York Times, August 7, 1972. 71 Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement, 191-92; “In the Matter of The Grievance Submitted to the Chancellor with Respect to Community School Board District 1 and Luis Fuentes,” 14, UFTP, Box 38, Box 8, TL. 72 “In the Matter of The Grievance Submitted to the Chancellor with Respect to Community School Board District 1 and Luis Fuentes,” 14, UFTP, Box 38, Box 8, TL. 73 Luis Fuentes, “The Real Issues in District 1,” El Diario-La Prensa, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 11, TL, my emphasis. 74 Victor Herwitz to Vincent Broderick, January 31, 1973, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 10, TL, my emphasis. 92
Independent reports supported Fuentes’ claims. One report, for example, noted that District 1 had
only 15 Puerto Rican teachers and one Puerto Rican principal as of 1971.75 Three years later, press reports also noted that white teachers comprised about 80 percent of District 1 teachers, while blacks and Hispanics comprised roughly 87 percent of the student body.76 In sum, Fuentes
saw bilingualism as a means to instruct students in their native language, hire more Puerto Rican
teachers, and develop multicultural curricula.
This vision, however, contrasted sharply with that offered by the United Federation of
Teachers (UFT). Formed in 1960 and comprised of seventy different teaching organizations, the
union had become the major collective bargaining agent for the city’s teachers, launching its first
strike and winning the largest annual raise for them in New York history in 1962.77 By this time,
the union also included a sizable portion of New York’s Jewish middle-class. Second generation
Jewish college graduates, still partly excluded from the private sector in the 1930s, used the
BOE’s centralized testing system to enter and rise within New York’s public schools. Indeed,
Jews represented 60 percent of the city’s new public school hires from 1940 to 1960 and, by
1967, Jews held nearly two-thirds of the city’s teaching and supervisory positions.78 These
figures meant that Jews also comprised a significant share of the UFT and the city’s educational leadership. Indeed, the New York Times, citing the UFT’s own data, estimated that Jews represented roughly 56 percent of the union’s membership.79 UFT chief Albert Shanker
embodied Jews’ role within both the union and school system. A first generation Eastern
75 Coalition for Education in the Lower East Side to Executive Boards of All P.A./P.T.A.’s in District 1, All Members of Presidents Council, District 1, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 2, TL. 76 Bernard Bard, “When Job Security Clashes with Ethnic Power,” The National Jewish Monthly, December 1974. 77 Kahlenberg, 49-50; Podair, 15. 78 Podair, 14-15; Jonathan Kaufman, “Blacks and Jews: The Struggle in the City,” in Struggles in the Promised Land: Toward a History of Black-Jewish Relations in the United States, ed. Jack Salzman and Cornell West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 112. 79 Mary Breasted, “Acrimony Marks Campaign in Fuentes District,” The New York Times, April 4, 1973. 93
European immigrant who grew up speaking fluent Yiddish, Shanker worked as an English and
Social Studies teacher in the early 1950s before becoming UFT president in 1964.80
While the union acknowledged the obvious need for teachers to communicate with non-
English speakers, it believed that Fuentes’ notion of bilingualism threatened teachers’ job security and weakened academic instruction. This is not to say that the UFT completely ignored the issue of bilingual education. In 1967, for instance, the union stated that it supported “an overhaul” of the city’s curriculum for Puerto Rican students that would include instruction in
Spanish and the “culture and history of Puerto Rico.” The new proposal, however, hardly amounted to a drastic “overhaul.” Under the UFT plan, Spanish speakers would receive an extra hour of English instruction per day in small classrooms capped at eight students and taught by
“specially qualified teachers.”81 The UFT also backed the BOE’s existing bilingual position, the
“Bilingual Teacher in School and Community Relations.” This teacher, however, worked as a
“resource person,” a “participant in the guidance process,” and a “community relations agent,” not as a fulltime teacher. Indeed, one BOE report outlining this new position, for instance, explicitly noted, “While language transition may be an important aspect of the work of the
Bilingual Teacher, the translation of cultural differences…is more the essence of the duties” of
this teacher. “He does not teach regular classes,” the report emphasized.82
The UFT thus backed a far more limited version of bilingualism than that embraced by
Fuentes and other Puerto Rican leaders. In one 1972 press release, the union argued that a separate bilingual license for subject area teachers would potentially divide teachers by salary
80 Kahlenberg, 31-33, 59. 81 “UFT Favors Overhaul in Program to Teach English to Puerto Rican Pupils,” UFTP, Box 222, Folder 9, TL. 82 Nathan Brown to All Superintendents, Principals, Directors, and Heads of Bureaus and to Professional Organizations and Community Associations, “Bilingual Teacher in School and Community Relations (Formerly Auxiliary Teacher),” UFTP, Box 222, Folder 1, TL. 94
and rank and make those with bilingual licenses overly reliant on newly-funded bilingual
programs and classes that the BOE might eventually cancel.83 At a December 1974 meeting, the
UFT reasoned that separate bilingual licenses for subject teachers would lead schools to hire
Spanish speakers that lacked basic content knowledge. Instead, the union proposed that teachers
first pass exams on subject content and then apply for an ancillary certificate in another
language.84 This structure, along with UFT proposals to train teachers in a second language,
made it less likely that new bilingual teachers would replace existing teachers. Indeed, at a BOE meeting around this time, UFT Vice President Abe Levine stated that only the Bilingual Teacher
in School and Community Relations deserved a separate bilingual license and called separate
bilingual licenses for subject teachers a “threat to job security.”85
While the UFT viewed new bilingual licenses as a threat to the union, it also worried that
Puerto Rican activists would use bilingualism as a cover to hire solely based on race and
ethnicity.86 In his weekly New York Times column, UFT chief Albert Shanker argued that creating new subject area bilingual licenses would create “ethnic quotas in New York’s teaching staff.”87 At a 1974 meeting of the House subcommittee on education, Abe Levine, a UFT leader,
told the audience that schools had hired unqualified bilingual teachers on a “patronage
basis…solely because of their national origin.”88 Still other UFT papers claimed that some
83 “The Position of the United Federation of Teachers on Bilingual Programs,” March 24, 1972, UFTP, Box 222, Folder 9, TL. 84 “UFTs DA Calls for Upgrading of Bilingual Education; Scrapping of Quotas, Patronage,” New York Teacher, December 1, 1974, UFTP, Box 222, Folder 9, TL. 85 “Levine Presents UFT Positions on Bilingual Phys Ed Licenses,” New York Teacher, November 17, 1974, UFTP, Box 222, Folder 9, TL. 86 Gene I. Maeroff, “Bilingual Education Plan for City’s Schools,” The New York Times, March 12, 1975, UFTP, Box 222, Folder 3, TL. 87 Albert Shanker, “Should Bilingualism Call for Ethnic Quotas,” The New York Times, arch 5, 1972, UFTP, Box 26, Folder 23, TL. 88 Keith Moore, “100,000 in Schools Find English Anguish,” New York Daily News, May 11, 1974, UFTP, Box 222, Folder 3, TL. 95
bilingual programs sought only “teacher and student classifications based on nationality and ethnicity” and had “little concern that English ever be learned.”89 Shortly thereafter, in a 1977
Newsweek article, Shanked noted, “It’s no coincidence that bilingual-education teachers in New
York are mostly Spanish-surnamed.” “What many community groups want,” he continued, “is
not a teacher who’s fluent in English and Spanish, but a teacher who’s Puerto Rican.”90 On the
whole, the UFT characterized Fuentes’ bilingual proposals as too vague and potentially destructive to the school system. Borrowing Fuentes’ exact language, a 1974 UFT resolution noted that “bilingualism and biculturalism are being confused” and that creating separate subject courses taught in Spanish encouraged ethnic and racial hiring quotas.91
The UFT and Jewish press buttressed this argument with broader claims about the
purpose of public schooling. UFT position papers argued that schools needed to instruct non-
English speakers in their native languages to build basic subject and skill knowledge, and then
transition, as quickly as possible, into English-language classrooms.92 Shanker, for instance,
argued that creating a separate bilingual license for subject teachers would segregate Spanish and
English-speaking students in two separate academic tracks and thus undercut the vital function of
public schools: to train students to live in a pluralistic society.93 The Jewish Press, which catered
to Orthodox and politically conservative Jews in the city, made a stronger claim. Calling the
Aspira decree the work of “militant Puerto Ricans who seek to impose Spanish as the language of the public schools,” a 1975 editorial argued that English instruction in public schools served as the main vehicle for immigrants, most notably first and second generation Jews who “earned
89 “UFT Position on Bilingual Education,” UFTP, Box 222, Folder 9, TL. 90 “Teaching in English-Plus,” Newsweek, January 7, 1977, UFTP, Box 222, Folder 3, TL. 91 “UFTs DA Calls for Upgrading of Bilingual Education; Scrapping of Quotas, Patronage,” New York Teacher, December 1, 1974, UFTP, Box 222, Folder 9, TL. 92 “UFT Position on Bilingual Education,” UFTP, Box 222, Folder 9, TL. 93 Albert Shanker, “…The Board’s New Program, If Cleared of Its Dangers, Can Provide the Answer,” The New York Times, June 2, 1972, UFTP, Box 222, Folder 3, TL. 96
their way in the once-great New York City public school system,” to assimilate and advance in
American society.94 Herbert Teitelbaum, a PRLDEF attorney, responded to these critiques by
arguing that ethnic identity remained an integral part of U.S. history, dating back to the days of
early twentieth-century immigration and continuing today. In making this case, Teitelbaum argued that those harkening back to the assimilation of early twentieth century immigrants through monolingual, English-only instruction embraced “notions of language and cultural superiority that have formed a basis for much of the resistance to bilingual education.”95 This
back-and-forth highlighted the ways in which policymakers and writers compared Puerto Ricans and white ethnic immigrants to buttress specific political positions in postwar America.
Puerto Rican activists, including Luis Fuentes, attacked the UFT’s position on bilingualism. They doubted that English-speaking teachers would become fluent enough in
Spanish to effectively teach regular subject classes and reasoned that the union’s fundamental interest in job security would limit the reach of bilingual instruction.96 In a piece entitled The
Fight Against Racism in Our Schools, Fuentes noted that the UFT saw its “basic responsibility as
the protection of their memberships, regardless of competence in their current jobs.”97 “I set up
classes in Spanish and Chinese,” Fuentes continued, “and two dozen out of 800 teachers take them. The rest talk job security.” The only solution to this situation, Fuentes claimed, was to implement new bilingual programs on “as massive a basis as possible.” A failure to do so,
Fuentes noted, suggested that the union “prefers massive illiteracy to the replacement of any of
94 The article claimed that Jews constituted about 60 percent of the city’s teachers and 70 percent of its school administrators; Howard L. Hurwitz, “Dual Languages and Jewish Teachers,” The Jewish Press, May 23, 1975, UFTP, Box 222, Folder 3, TL. 95 Herbert Teitelbaum, “Bilingual Education Here,” The New York Times, May 26, 1975, UFTP, Box 222, Folder 3, TL. 96 Luis Fuentes et al. to Albert Shanker, May 1, 1972, UFTP, Box 26, Folder 23, TL. 97 Fuentes, The Fight Against Racism, 8. 97
its current membership.”98 Evelina Antonetty, the head of United Bronx Parents, similarly dismissed the teachers who learned Spanish under existing UFT bilingual programs, noting that
the teachers “go to San Juan, drink a few drinks and think they can teach language.” For
Antonetty, these programs emblemized the main shortcoming of UFT teachers: they did not
immerse themselves in Puerto Rican culture and learned textbook Spanish, not “living Spanish.”
According to Antonetty, this practice meant that English-speaking, predominantly white,
teachers could neither fully instruct Puerto Rican students in their native language nor “relate” to
them culturally.99
Political Response to Fuentes
These debates over bilingualism extended beyond the Lower East Side. In 1972, three
major Jewish defense agencies alleged that the local school board hired Fuentes using a racial
quota and disregarded several anti-Semitic comments he made as an assistant principal in Ocean
Hill-Brownsville. These allegations would shape not only future school board elections on the
Lower East Side, but also make Jewish and Puerto Rican identity politics a central feature of the
1973 mayoral election. For these reasons, Lower East Side debates over bilingualism crystallized
Jewish-Puerto Rican conflict in both neighborhood and citywide politics.
Immediately after the District 1 school board resolved to hire educators to match the
racial and ethnic composition of Lower East Side schools in June 1972, New York’s Anti-
Defamation League (ADL) branch sent a telegram to Chancellor Harvey Scribner to overturn
this resolution as a “clear negation of the merit system” and an unconstitutional racial quota.100
The New York wing of the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) and the Metropolitan Council of the
98 Ibid., 10. 99 “Latin Groups Blast UFT on Bilingualism,” The Voice, June 23, 1972, UFTP, Box 222, Folder 3, TL. 100 Milton Seymour to Harvey Scribner, June 9, 1972, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 3, TL. 98
American Jewish Congress (AJCong) sent similar letters to Scribner shortly thereafter.101
Although the board ultimately rescinded its resolution, these agencies challenged Fuentes’
appointment as district superintendent in August 1972. That month, they jointly petitioned
School Chancellor Harvey Scribner to investigate both Fuentes and the District 1 school board’s
hiring procedures. The petition accused the school board of hiring Fuentes to meet an ethnic
quota and ignoring his previous comments about Jewish staff at P.S. 155. The agencies also
called upon Scribner to remove the board members who voted to hire Fuentes as district
superintendent as a way to protect decentralization from “the divisive and destructive actions of a
few persons” in District 1.102
These arguments fit within the agencies’ broader opposition to ethnic and racial quotas at
the time.103 While secular Jewish agencies backed certain forms of affirmative action, like expanding recruitment efforts, they did not support racial quotas or point systems. Indeed, by the
1970s most secular Jewish agencies filed opposition amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases
dealing with affirmative action, like DeFunis v. Odegaard (1974) and University of California
Regents v. Bakke (1978), while African-American groups filed supporting briefs. According to historian Cheryl Greenberg, these different views of affirmative action “went straight to the heart of black-Jewish differences” in the 1970s. For Jewish groups, the program harkened back to the quotas that excluded Jews from private clubs and colleges in the 1920s and 1930s and undermined equal opportunity and the principles of colorblind liberalism. For black groups,
101 David Ashe to Harvey Scribner, June 19, 1972, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 3, TL; Theodore Kolish to Harvey Scribner, June 16, 1972, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 3, TL. 102 ADL Press Release, August 31, 1972, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 9, TL. 103 These agencies supported affirmative action programs that did not utilize specific quotas and aimed to strengthen initiatives (such as expanding recruitment searches) that would diversify certain institutions. As historian Marc Dollinger notes, “affirmative action programs lost popularity with many American liberals, including the vast majority of Jews, when they became associated with restrictive race-based quotas.” See Dollinger, Quest for Inclusion, 204-06. See also Greenberg, Troubling the Waters, 236-38; Diner, The Jews of the United States, 336. 99
affirmative action, and even some quotas, represented necessary remedies to the continued
exclusion of black candidates from jobs and colleges even after the passage of antidiscrimination laws.104
Despite this pressure, Scribner called the dispute over Fuentes a natural outcome of decentralization, and expressed hope that the local school board would resolve the matter.105 The
ADL, JLC, and AJCong called this response an “absurd interpretation” of decentralization.106
After the board cleared Fuentes of all charges, Scribner, perhaps due to the persistence of the
Jewish groups, appointed an independent investigator, Vincent Broderick, a former U.S.
Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to hold hearings on Fuentes.107
During the hearings, Broderick heard detailed, and damning, testimony regarding
Fuentes’ time in Ocean Hill-Brownsville. Two assistant principals who served under Fuentes in
P.S. 155, Henry Richman and Burton Lax, testified that Fuentes claimed the Board of Examiners had written its civil service test in Yiddish, that he would have to put a Star of David on top of the exam to pass, and that it had “resulted in many Jewish people passing the exam at the exclusion of others.108 The principals also accused of Fuentes stating that Jews, like previous
immigrants, would have to change their last names if schools began to pair students and teachers
based on race and ethnicity. The principals also testified that Fuentes had made comments about
a “prominent Jewish feature” while looking at a picture of P.S. 155’s former principal and threw loose change at a group of picketing UFT teachers during the 1968 teacher strikes while
104 Diner, The Jews of the United States, 336; Greenberg, 236-39. 105 Harvey Scribner Press Release, August 10, 1972, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 9, TL. 106 ADL, AJCong, and JLC Press Release, September 14, 1972, JLCP, Box 137, Folder 22, TL. 107 Vincent Broderick Resume, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 8, TL; “In the Matter of The Grievance Submitted to the Chancellor with Respect to Community School Board District 1 and Luis Fuentes,” UFTP, Box 38, Box 8, TL. 108 “In the Matter of The Grievance Submitted to the Chancellor with Respect to Community School Board District 1 and Luis Fuentes,” 8-11, UFTP, Box 38, Box 8, TL. 100
exclaiming, “This is for UJA, you Jew cockroaches!”109 Finally, the Jewish organizations quoted
Fuentes as having stated, during a May 1970 BOE meeting, that the board would remove him
from P.S. 155 because “I’m untested, I’m uncircumcised.”110 Fuentes denied making all of these comments.
Despite these allegations, Broderick supported Fuentes’ appointment as District 1 superintendent. The investigator found no evidence of an ethnic quota in the district and noted that, “given the nature of the school district…with its high percentage of Spanish-speaking (and
Chinese-speaking) students,” the board likely hired Fuentes due to his “commitment to bilingual education.” Citing a three-year statute of limitations on bringing charges against school officials in the city’s education law, Broderick also declined to rule on Fuentes’ anti-Semitic utterances.
While acknowledging that he made some off-color remarks, Broderick characterized Fuentes as
“intensely concerned about the need for teachers effectively to communicate with their students”
and denied that Fuentes was a “bigot” or a “racist.” The investigator then recommended that
Scribner allow the school board to decide Fuentes’ fate and drop the charges by the Jewish organizations.111 In response, the ADL, JLC, and AJCong stated that Fuentes had a “clear record
of bigotry and racism” and criticized Broderick for allowing “racism to be ignored or swept
under the rug” and pledged to “pursue this matter vigorously” by appealing the investigator’s
ruling to the BOE.112 Despite these comments, Scribner formally accepted Broderick’s report in
April 1973.113
109 Ibid., 13, 20-21. 110 Ibid., 24-25. 111 Ibid., 50-51, 53, 56-57, 58-59. 112 Press Release Draft, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 8, TL; Gary Rosenblatt, “Whitewash Charged in Fuentes Bigotry Case; 3 Organizations to Appeal to Education Board,” American Examiner-Jewish Week, April 12-18, 1973, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 11, TL. 113 Stephen M. Jacoby to Joseph Monserrat, JLCP, Box 137, Folder 23, TL. 101
Broderick’s favorable findings, however, hardly settled growing Jewish-Puerto Rican tensions over schooling on the Lower East Side. These conflicts first emerged within the pro-
Fuentes District 1 school board. In the spring of 1973, the city’s local school boards held a round of new elections. On the Lower East Side, these elections featured two slates of candidates. The
pro-Fuentes slate, dubbed “Por Los Niños,” believed schools needed to better reflect the needs of black and Puerto Rican Lower East Side residents. Calling for parents to exercise a greater voice
in school affairs, Por Los Niños contained almost exclusively Chinese, African-American, and
Puerto Rican candidates and pointed out the “close link between the home, [and] the
neighborhood.” Many of these candidates worked in both citywide and neighborhood civil rights
and welfare groups, including ASPIRA and the Lower East Side Joint Planning Council, an
umbrella organization actively involved in local housing issues.114
Por Los Niños also earned support from Victor Gotbaum, the head of District Council 37
(DC 37) of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and Bertram
Beck, the head of the Henry Street Settlement and MFY’s former director.115 In the mid-1960s,
Gotbaum, a labor organizer born in East New York, emerged as one of the city’s most influential union leaders, nearly tripling DC 37’s numbers in ten years and negotiating an end to standoffs between labor and Mayor Beame during the city’s 1975 fiscal crisis.116 Representing nearly
22,000 paraprofessionals and school workers, Gotbaum claimed to support Por Los Niños
because DC 37 members on the Lower East Side believed the slate understood the needs of the
114 “Let’s Start Facing Facts…,” UFT Papers, Box 38, Folder 10, TL. 115 Victor Gotbaum and Lillian Roberts to District 37 Council members, April 20, 1973, UFT Papers, Box 38, Folder 10, TL; “Let’s Start Facing Facts…” UFT Papers, Box 38, Folder 10, TL; Eric Pace, “Bertram M. Beck, 82, Leader in the Field of Social Work,” The New York Times, April 5, 2000. 116 Stephen Greenhouse, Victor Gotbaum, 93, Dies; Labor Leader Helped Rescue New York City in 1970s,” The New York Times, April 5, 2015. 102
neighborhood’s paras.117 Beck’s support stemmed from MFY’s ties to Puerto Rican activism on
the Lower East Side. In 1971, Henry Ramos, a pro-Fuentes member of District 1’s school board, requested that the agency provide students with legal aid during transfer and suspension hearings
and lend the district lawyers to advocate for bilingual funding. In response, Nancy LeBlanc, the head of MFY’s Legal Services program, provided District 1 with six MFY lawyers who would
research information and manage cases relating to local school issues.118
UFT-backed candidates, or the “Brotherhood” slate, represented the most well organized
opposition to Por Los Niños. Brotherhood’s message centered on the politics of Jewish identity and subtly framed Jews as social and political authorities on the Lower East Side. Grand Street backed the UFT candidates most strongly and the Brotherhood slate possessed Orthodox Jewish
and white ethnic candidates.119 Some of these candidates worked for the United Jewish Council
(UJC), a major Orthodox civic group in the area, and the Lower East Side Democratic
Association, a major local political club for regular Democrats and white ethnic voters as noted in Chapter 1.120 The Jewish press noted that the UFT specifically targeted this Lower East Side
Jewish base. According to an article from The National Jewish Monthly, the union delivered votes from the Grand Street co-ops by emphasizing the board’s use of ethnic quotas to hire teachers. The article also cited a UFT pamphlet that tied “violence, extremism, narcotics- peddling, and the political spoils system” to community control. “These arguments,” the Monthly
continued, “have strong emotional appeal in the lobbies and hallways of the middle-income
enclaves.”121
117 Victor Gotbaum to Emmanuel Muravchik, June 4, 1973, JLCP, Box 137, Folder 27, TL; Leonard Buder, “Election is Scene of Latest Shanker-Gotbaum Clash,” The New York Times, May 14, 1974. 118 Nancy LeBlanc to Henry Ramos, September 17, 1971, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 2, TL. 119 Mary Breasted, “Acrimony Marks Campaign in Fuentes School District, The New York Times, April 4, 1973; “Report on District 1,” Box 38, Folder 5, TL. 120 “Stop Racism! Elect a New School Board for District 1,” UFT Papers, Box 38, Folder 10, TL. 121 Bernard Bard, “When Job Security Clashes with Ethnic Power,” The National Jewish Monthly, December 1974. 103
This argument also led the UFT to criticize Bertram Beck’s support for Por Los Niños. In
1974, Abe Ruda, lobbied Ray Rubinow, Executive Director of the Kaplan Fund, to halt its grants
to the Henry Street Settlement, which Beck headed. In the letter, Ruda claimed that Bertram
Beck had sabotaged Henry Street’s “traditional role” and catered to “the most disruptive, irresponsible, and racial factions in a community that it had previously served with great distinction.” The letter criticized Beck for backing a “radical redistribution of wealth and governmental power” and supporting those who wanted to exile opponents of community control from the Lower East Side. Ruda then advised Rubinow to gain support from Rabbi Heshy Jacob, the head of the newly formed UJC.122 Later, when Beck told UFT officials that he had planned a
meeting with the heads of the District 1 Parent Associations to discuss how to maximize voter
turnout for another round of school board elections, one UFT official exasperatingly asked
Albert Shanker whether the city could cut its Henry Street funding.123 These exchanges revealed
the ways in which Henry Street, and by extension MFY, continued to both reflect and shape
Jewish-Puerto Rican relations on the Lower East Side. Like others before him, Ruda undercut
calls for community control by praising Henry Street’s more conventional welfare programs and,
implicitly, the white ethnic population they had targeted.
At other times, the UFT flyers both implicitly and explicitly compared Fuentes’ backers
to undemocratic extremists. Brotherhood flyers painted Por Los Niños candidates as part of a racist “Fuentes Band” that aimed to “destroy the merit system everywhere.”124 One Brotherhood
candidate, Martin Schiff, compared Fuentes’ supporters to Nazis. Schiff called allegations that
Brotherhood wanted to dismantle bilingual education a “Hitlerian approach to politics – to tell
122 Abe Ruda to Ray Rubinow, May 24, 1974, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 5, TL. 123 Atkins Preston et al. to Sy Schwartz, December 2, 1974, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 5, TL; Sy Schwartz to Albert Shanker, February 4, 1975, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 5, TL. 124 “You Can Stop Them,” UFTP, Box 38, Folder 5, TL. 104
the Big Lie often and loudly enough so that people come to believe it.”125 The candidate made a similar point in a separate article for the National Jewish Monthly, claiming that Fuentes had made a concerted effort to remove Jews from leadership positions in Lower East Side schools.
More specifically, Schiff noted that Fuentes had failed to investigate allegations that the head of a parent group at JHS 22 had attacked its Jewish principal, Leonard Lurie, and yelled, “Hitler didn’t kill enough Jews.” Then, according to Schiff, Fuentes told one fired guidance counselor,
“we are getting rid of you because you are not members of this community and you do not understand the problems of the community.” When the counselor responded that she lived on the
Lower East Side, he responded, “but you are not members of the community.”126 The comment hinted at the ways in which “community” had become a loaded word in the realm of Lower East
Side politics. While Puerto Ricans constituted an increasingly large and vocal portion of the neighborhood, Jews’ real and imagined attachment to the Lower East Side led them to contest local Puerto Rican political claims. Indeed, in his National Jewish Monthly article, Schiff cited one rabbi who characterized a seemingly random attack on a local synagogue as part of a
“systematic plan to drive out all remnants of Jewish community on the Lower East Side.”127
Brotherhood’s 1973 victory, by a 6-3 margin, exacerbated and further revealed Jews’ and
Puerto Ricans’ different bases of political power on the Lower East Side. After the election, the
Committee for Democratic Elections Laws (CoDEL), which provided oversight for city elections, challenged the results on behalf of PRDLEF and the NAACP. The organizations claimed that the city had set up too many polling places in and around the Grand Street co-ops,
125 Nicomedez Sanchez, “School Board Criticized,” and Martin Schiff, “School Board Responds,” Village East Towers Newsletter, Box 38, Folder 13, TL. 126 Martin Schiff, “Crying Out Loud: When Bigotry Rules, Education Suffers,” The National Jewish Monthly, January-February 1975, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 11, TL, my emphasis. 127 Ibid. 105
wrote unclear ballot instructions, and required voters to furnish official identification before voting.128 CoDEL claimed that these policies led to a 60 percent average turnout in white areas of District 1 and only a 19 percent average turnout in Puerto Rican sections of the neighborhood.129 As such, CoDEL, the NAACP and PRDLEF asked a judge to invalidate the
May 1973 election results and prohibit the new pro-UFT board from making any personnel decisions, including removing Fuentes from his post, until the court reached a decision on the case.130
Despite these appeals, the new board suspended Fuentes indefinitely with pay at an
October 1973 school board meeting, on the grounds that he had improperly campaigned for candidates during the 1973 election and appointed over sixty teachers to new positions without informing the new board.131 In response, pro-Fuentes parents and students, headed by Miriam
Gonzalez of the Council of Presidents of the Parents Associations, staged a six-day boycott, which kept roughly 65 percent of students out of District 1 school classes.132 On the second day of the boycott, Judge Charles E. Stewart of New York’s Southern District Court temporarily rescinded Fuentes’ suspension and ordered the new board to make no further personnel decisions until a court ruled on the legality of the 1973 elections.133 Three months later, Stewart affirmed
128 “Coalition for Education in District One et al., v. The Board of educations of City of New York et al.,” 495 F.2d 1090 (2nd. Circ. 1974), Justia U.S. Law, http://openjurist.org/495/f2d/1090/coalition-for-education-in-district-one-v- board-of-elections-of-city-of-new-york, accessed July 3, 2014. 129 Committee for Democratic Election Laws, “A Report on the New York School Board Elections Held June 23, 1973, Focus on District One,” JLCP, Box 137, Folder 24, TL. 130 Ibid.; Committee for Dem Election Laws (CoDEL) to District One Community, October 8, 1973, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 4, TL. 131 Leonard Buder, “School District 1’s Ongoing Dispute Over Fuentes, the U.F.T. and Community Control,” The New York Times, October 25, 1973; Luisa A. Quintero, “Anuncian Apoyo a Luis Fuentes Y Piden Investigar Elecciones,” El Diario-La Prensa, October 28, 1973. 132 Gene I. Maeroff, “11,000 Pupils Out in Protest of Fuentes Ouster,” The New York Times, October 19, 1973; Leonard Buder, “Judge Returns Fuentes to School Post,” The New York Times, October 20, 1973; Iver Peterson, “East Side School Boycott is Ended After Six Days,” The New York Times, October 24, 1973; “Fuentes suspended by District Board As Supporters Jeer,” The New York Times, October 17, 1973. 133 Leonard Buder, “Judge Returns Fuentes to School Post,” The New York Times, October 20, 1973. 106
the NAACP and PRDLEF claims that the 1973 school board elections had disenfranchised eligible black, Chinese, and Puerto Rican voters by noting that the district set up a disproportionate number of polling places in the Grand Street co-ops.134 As such, he placed the
Chancellor of Schools, Irving Anker, temporarily in charge of the district and ordered a new round of voting to take place in twenty schools across the neighborhood.135
Stewart’s ruling, however, hardly resolved Jewish-Puerto Rican conflicts over community control. In 1973, the ramifications of Fuentes’ case bled into New York mayoral politics and reaffirmed the city’s growing electoral alliance, as detailed in Chapter 1, between
Jews and Catholics. Though the roots of these conflicts had originated earlier, they produced tangible political effects during New York’s 1969 mayoral election. That year, John Marchi, the
conservative State Senator from Staten Island who had investigated MFY for subversive
activities in 1964, captured the Republican nomination for mayor, while Mario Procaccino, a law
and order politician from the Bronx, earned the Democratic nomination.136 Both candidates
performed strongest in Jewish and Italian-American outer-borough neighborhoods such as Forest
Hills, Bensonhurst, Midwood, and Howard Beach. Though Mayor Lindsay, running on the
Liberal Party line, edged both Procaccino and Marchi in the general election, he failed to earn a majority, received fewer votes than he did in 1965, and earned only about one-half of the total
Jewish votes cast.137
Fuentes’ appointment as District 1 superintendent reinforced outer-borough Jews’
disillusionment with community control and Puerto Rican activism. Both liberal Jewish and
134 Leonard Buder, “School Board 1 is Ousted By Court; Anker in Charge, The New York Times, January 5, 1974; Bernard Bard, “When Job Security Clashes with Ethnic Power,” The National Jewish Monthly, December 1974. 135 Iver Peterson, “Court Ends Suit on School Vote,” The New York Times, May 4, 1974; Robert D. McFadden; Iver Peterson, “Tight Supervision Is Set in Election,” The New York Times, May 12, 1974; Leonard Buder, “School Board 1 is Ousted By Court; Anker in Charge, The New York Times, January 5, 1974. 136 Cannato, 403, 409. 137 Ibid., 437-38. 107
conservative Catholic politicians protested Fuentes’ appointment. Shortly after the district hired
Fuentes, the ADL informed Albert Blumenthal, a liberal assemblyman from the Upper West
Side, about Fuentes’ past actions. In turn, Blumenthal asked Harvey Scribner to immediately suspend Fuentes and hold formal hearings on his conduct.138 Two other more conservative
Catholic politicians joined Blumenthal in protesting Fuentes. In August 1972, Mario Biaggi, a
Democratic representative from the Bronx elected in 1968 on a law and order platform who had
served in the city’s police department for over two decades, joined an ADL-led protest of about
250 Jews at the BOE over Fuentes’ District 1 appointment.139 Fuentes had appeared on Biaggi’s radar as early as 1968. That year, Biaggi, then president of the Grand Council of Columbia
Associations, an Italian-American civic group, wrote a letter to the BOE alleging that Fuentes had called certain P.S. 155 teachers “guineas,” labeled one of his assistant principals “the
Mafia,” and criticized college instructors at St. Joseph’s as “ignorant Catholics.”140 John Marchi,
the Republican state senator from Staten Island who had attacked MFY as a Communist front in
1964 and ran for mayor in 1969 by appealing to the “silent majority,” also called upon State
Education Commissioner Ewald Nyquist to temporarily suspend the District 1 board until the city concluded its investigations into Fuentes’ appointment.141 These collaborative efforts by
138 Albert Blumenthal to Harvey Scribner, August 7, 1972, Box 38, Folder 9, TL; Walter H. Waggoner, “Albert H. Blumenthal Dies at 55; Ex-Majority Leader of Assembly,” The New York Times, July 10, 1984. 139 Andrew Wolf, ”Mario Biaggi at 90,” NY Sun, October 29, 2007; “BIAGGI, Mario (1917-2015),” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=B000432, accessed July 14, 2014; Leonard Bader, “City Unit Weighs Fuentes Dispute,” The New York Times, August 9, 1972; “B’Nai B’Rith Leads Protest in Brooklyn on Fuentes’ Job,” JLCP, Box 137, Folder 21, TL; McNickle, To Be Mayor, 242. 140 Mario Biaggi to the Board of Education, April 23, 1968, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 9, TL. 141 John Marchi to Ewald Nyquist, October 13, 1972, JLCP, Box 137, Folder 22, TL; Cannato, 416-17; Zeitz, White Ethnic New York, 178-79; Maurice Carroll, “Marchi Declares Crime Top Issue,” The New York Times, September 20, 1973; Robert D. McFadden, “John Marchi, Who Fought for Staten Island in Senate, Dies at 87,” The New York Times, April 26, 2009. 108
Blumenthal, Biaggi, and Marchi signified growing alignment of Jews and Catholics in New York
electoral politics.
This white ethnic coalition reemerged during the 1973 Democratic primaries for mayor,
the first time Jewish-Puerto Rican relations became a central feature in New York mayoral
politics. That year, the Democratic primaries featured four main candidates: Biaggi, Blumenthal,
Comptroller Abe Beame, and Representative Herman Badillo. As previously noted, Biaggi
represented the most conservative candidate and racked up several endorsements from the
Republican and Conservative Party.142 Blumenthal, as noted earlier, embodied the liberal wing
of the Democratic Party and earned the endorsement of the New Democratic Coalition (NDC), a
group of reform Democrats who came together in the 1960s to oppose the Vietnam War.143
Beame, the son of Polish immigrants who settled on the Lower East Side, attended the city’s
public schools, majored in business administration at City College, and had worked as a high school teacher and an accountant.144 He entered politics in the 1930s by joining a Democratic
club in Crown Heights, an up-and-coming Jewish neighborhood, to develop contacts for his
accounting job.145 In the 1940s and 1950s, Beame served on the Joint Committee of Teacher
Organizations to represent public school teachers’ interests in Albany and then as Budget
Director under Mayor Wagner before becoming the City Comptroller.146 Finally, the primary
also featured Herman Badillo, the first congressman born in Puerto Rico in New York history.147
142 McNickle, To Be Mayor, 242-43. 143 Ibid. 144 Abe Beame, Interview by Mitchell Krauss, February and March 1979, transcript, Abraham D. Beame Oral History Interview, 1-4, 8-12, American Jewish Committee Oral History Collection, New York Public Library Dorot Division (New York, NY) (hereafter NYPL). 145 Ibid., 15; Robert Daley, “The Realism of Abe Beame,” The New York Times, November 18, 1973. 146 Abe Beame, Interview by Mitchell Krauss, February and March 1979, transcript, Abraham D. Beame Oral History Interview, 16-17, 22, American Jewish Committee Oral History Collection, NYPL; McNickle, To Be Mayor, 245. 147 Robert D. McFadden, “Herman Badillo, Fixture of New York Politics, Dies at 85,” The New York Times, December 3, 2014. 109
Badillo settled in East Harlem in 1940, graduated from City College in 1951, and served under
Mayor Wagner before becoming Bronx Borough President in 1965 and, later, a Bronx
Representative.148 In the end, Beame and Badillo finished first and second, respectively, in the
four-way race, after which they competed in a run-off election because neither had received 40
percent of the vote required to secure the nomination outright.149
Initially, appeals to identity politics did not dominate the contest between Beame and
Badillo. Both embraced similar positions on race, crime, public spending, and community control, and Badillo, in particular, distrusted the race-based organizing principles of the War on
Poverty and community control.150 During the 1968 UFT strike, Badillo also downplayed the role that “ethnic, religious, or nationalistic backgrounds” played in the classroom and, in the
1973 mayoral debates, swatted away suggestions that the structure of the education system needed an overhaul, arguing instead that schools needed to enact stricter grade promotion standards.151 For these reasons, publications like The New York Times endorsed Badillo as a
candidate of “quiet competence” who would ensure “racial tranquility,” and some Jewish
publications applauded Badillo’s reluctance to “lash out” at the middle-class in his social policies
and platforms.152
Jewish-Puerto Rican conflict, however, came to define the Beame-Badillo runoff.
Orthodox newspapers framed the election as a referendum on Jewish influence and survival in
148 Ibid.; McNickle, To Be Mayor, 226. 149 McNickle, To Be Mayor, 249. 150 Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement,154-55, 236-37; Leonard Buder, “Giardino Warns of Danger in Plan for School Reform,” The New York Times, November 9, 1967; McNickle, To Be Mayor, 249. 151 M.A. Farber, “School Board Yields Point in Brooklyn,” The New York Times, June 6, 1968; Peter Kihss, “All 10 Mayoral Candidates Agree on Need for Changes in City’s School System,” The New York Times, April 20, 1969; “Excerpts from the Debate Between Rivals in the Democratic Mayoral Runoff,” The New York Times, June 15, 1973. 152 “A Vote for Badillo,” The New York Times, June 26, 1973; Richard Yaffe, “Dull Primary Divided Jewish Vote 4 Ways; Run-Off To Be Close,” Jewish Week and the American Examiner, June 7-13, 1973.
110
city politics. The Jewish Press implied that elected officials ignored Jewish positions on
community control. “We must advise the next mayor of New York City,” one editorial noted,
“that there is a JEWISH VOTE that will not tolerate the neglect of the past eight years.”153
Roughly one week later, the Press formally endorsed Beame, citing his opposition to racial
quotas, his “tremendous assistance” to Jewish institutions like synagogues and yeshivas, and his endorsements from Orthodox and Hasidic Jews.154
At times, Jewish and Puerto Rican newspapers injected the Fuentes matter into the
Beame-Badillo runoff. After Fuentes became the District 1 superintendent, BOE President
Joseph Monserrat, a Puerto Rican, wrote an article of Fuentes’ “record of anti-Jewish racism” for
El Diario. This record, Monserrat noted, represented an “embarrassment to the Puerto Rican
community of New York” and raised “serious questions about his stability as an educator.”155 In
response, Badillo penned an editorial in El Diario concluding, after meeting with Italian
American, Jewish, and Puerto Rican leaders and Fuentes himself, that the superintendent enjoyed
widespread support. After saying Monserrat should have investigated Fuentes’ support more
closely, Badillo then called upon the superintendent to “clarify” his position on community
control and ethnic hiring.156 El Diario then ran a separate editorial on Badillo’s comments, which
reinforced Badillo’s claims and painted Fuentes as a good principal at P.S. 155. Rather than highlight Fuentes’ negative comments toward Jews, the column focused on the city’s school system, which was “horrible and discriminated against the Puerto Rican children,” and concluded that Fuentes represented the popular choice of Lower East Side residents.157 On the
153 Seymour Samuels, “Grassroots Commentary,” The Jewish Press, May 25, 1973. 154 Why We Endorse Abe Beame, The Jewish Press, June 1, 1973. 155 Joseph Monserrat, “Time to Speak Up,” El Diario-La Prensa, August 4, 1972, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 11, TL. 156 Hay Que Aclarar Posición Fuentes: Badillo, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 11, TL; Luisa A. Quintero, “Marginalia,” El Diario-La Prensa, August 8, 1972, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 11, TL. 157 Luisa A. Quintero, “Marginalia,” El Diario-La Prensa, August 8, 1972, UFTP, Box 38, Folder 11, TL. 111
other hand, Jewish Week cited Badillo’s editorial and his failure to consult with the ADL, JLC,
and AJCong as a main reason for its decision to endorse Beame.158 Later, the paper similarly
characterized Badillo as “blameworthy for his support of Luis Fuentes.”159 During this time, the
Jewish Press endorsed Mario Biaggi, a candidate in the original primary race, partly because he
“carried the banner against FUENTES.”160
Jewish and Puerto Rican neighborhoods played a crucial role in the Beame-Badillo
runoff. In the original primary race, Badillo drew his support from heavily black and Puerto
Rican areas in Manhattan and the Bronx, while Beame’s strongest support came from heavily
Orthodox outer-borough neighborhoods such as Borough Park, Flatbush, Crown Heights, and
Midwood.161 These results meant that Badillo, who finished five points behind Beame in the first
primary, needed to win over some outer-borough Jewish voters to win the nomination. For this
reason, Badillo campaigned accordingly in white, middle-income areas to “dispel the stereotype of the little Puerto Rican” and enhance his image as a “typical middle-class kid.”162 He also
walked in the Israeli Day parade and hit the trail with his wife Irma, the daughter of Orthodox parents who spoke Yiddish.163 At the same time, Badillo acknowledged a high Puerto Rican
turnout remained his most likely path to victory.164 The Spanish-speaking press also framed
Badillo’s candidacy as a call to Puerto Ricans to vote – it was “now or never” to elect Badillo
158 “Does Badillo Equate All Political Opposition to Him with Racist Bias?” n.d., Jewish Week. 159 Badillo at Turning-Point of an Important Political Career,” June 29-July 11, 1973, American Examiner-Jewish Week. 160 “Biaggi for Mayor,” The Jewish Press, May 25, 1973. 161 Frank Lynn, “Goldin Defeats 3,” The New York Times, June 5, 1973; “Primary Hunting Ground,” The New York Times, June 17, 1973; “The Jewish Press Carries Jewish Areas for Beame,” The Jewish Press,” June 15-June 21, 1973. 162 Thomas P. Ronan, “Badillo Stumps in Beame Land,” The New York Times, June 9, 1973; 163 Frank Lynn, “Beame and Badillo Using New Strategy,” The New York Times, June 21, 1973; Ronald Smothers, “Badillo Attacks Rival on Housing,” The New York Times, June 11, 1973. Frank Lynn, “Beame and Badillo Using New Strategy,” The New York Times, June 21, 1973; Judy Klemesrud, “Jewish-Gentile Marriages: As Number Grows, So Does Debate,” The New York Times, June 25, 1973. 164 Luisa A. Quintero, “Badillo Ofrece Cuentas Claras Durante su Administracion,” El Diario-La Prensa, June 20, 1973. 112
and, in so doing, reaffirm their status as U.S. citizens.165 El Diario similarly argued that Badillo’s
campaign demonstrated that “Puerto Ricans are a political force which will have to be taken into account in the future.”166 Other El Diario ads forcefully declared that voting for Badillo would
“HONOR PUERTO RICO” and urged Puerto Rican voters to “WAKE UP...DEFEND WHAT IS
YOURS!”167
On the other hand, major outer-borough Jewish publications like the Jewish Press continued to depict the Bronx Representative as a racial extremist with a “narrow constituency.”168 Other ads highlighted Beame’s commitment to Orthodox Jewish
neighborhoods by noting his opposition to quotas and “neighborhood changes without community participation,” a statement that hinted at the ethnic struggles at the center of decentralization.169 Another Beame ad warned that Badillo would “turn [New York] upside
down,” while a group calling itself Citizens for Beame implored Jews to “vote as if your life
depended upon it, because it does.”170 When Badillo criticized the ad during one debate as a blatant “ethnic appeal to the Jewish community,” Beame responded by accusing Badillo of telling Puerto Ricans to vote for him based on his background. Increasingly frustrated by these attacks, Badillo called Beame a racist, “vicious little man” during the campaign’s final debate.171
165 “Ejercer el Derecho del Voto Libre y Democraticamente Es Deber de la Comunidad Hispana de NY el Martes 26,” El Diario-La Prensa, June 24, 1973; “Como Votar por HERMAN BADILLO,” El-Diario-La Prensa, June 25, 1973. 166 Luisa A. Quintero, “Marginialia: Importancia del Voto,” El Diario-La Prensa, June 29, 1973. 167 “Vota Por Herman Badillo,” El Diario-La Prensa, June 26, 1973; Luisa A. Quintero, “Marginalia,” El Diario-La Prensa, June 19, 1973. 168 “You Must Vote for Beame to Save the City,” The Jewish Press, June 22-June 28, 1973. 169 “New York Needs What Beame Knows,” The Jewish Press, June 1, 1973. 170 McNickle, To Be Mayor, 251; Maurice Carroll, “Racism is Charged by Foes in Runoff in City Tomorrow,” The New York Times, June 25, 1973; Frank Lynn, “Beame and Badillo Using New Strategy,” The New York Times, June 21, 1973. 171 McNickle, To Be Mayor, 251. 113
In the end, Beame won the 1973 runoff in a landslide victory that revealed a fractured
Jewish-Puerto Rican electorate. He carried all the outer-boroughs, and secured the support of
roughly 70 percent of all Jewish, Italian, and Irish voters.172 He also won large majorities in
Bronx and Staten Island territories that had previously gone for Biaggi, carried districts where
Biaggi finished a close second to Badillo, and finished close in areas previously carried by
Blumenthal.173 On the other hand, Badillo’s support came almost exclusively from black and
Puerto Rican sections of the South Bronx, Harlem, and Bedford-Stuyvesant.174
The results were closer on the Lower East Side, where Badillo won by slightly more than
2,000 votes out of about 16,500 votes cast. It is difficult to ascertain which parts of the
neighborhood Beame carried because the city did not print election reports in the 1970s, but it seems likely that the close returns revealed the participation of both Puerto Rican and Grand
Street voters in the election. Indeed, even as Badillo’s support for Fuentes likely ingratiated him
to Puerto Rican voters, the neighborhood still provided Beame with the fourth highest vote total
in Manhattan.175 At the same time, supporters framed Beame’s general election victory – he
earned 57 percent of the vote against John Marchi, Biaggi (running on the Conservative-Safe
City ticket) and Blumenthal (running with the Liberal Party) – as a Lower East Side success
story. One Hasidic supporter, for instance, called Beame’s victory a “summary of the whole
Jewish experience in the city” and claimed the election showed that “in one generation you can be elected Mayor.”176 The quote suggested that the Lower East Side, Beame’s childhood home,
172 Ibid., 252; Frank Lynn, “Beame’s Victory: A Minority Candidacy is Rejected,” The New York Times, July 1, 1973; Frank Lynn, “A 3-to-2 Victory,” The New York Times, June 27, 1973. 173 Frank Lynn, “Beame’s Victory: A Minority Candidacy is Rejected,” The New York Times, July 1, 1973; Frank Lynn, “A 3-to-2 Victory,” The New York Times, June 27, 1973. 174 Frank Lynn, “Beame’s Victory: A Minority Candidacy is Rejected,” The New York Times, July 1, 1973. 175 “Primary Results by Assembly District,” The New York Times, June 27, 1973. 176 McNickle, To Be Mayor, 253. 114
had become, by the 1970s, a symbolic origin point for the narrative of American Jewish success
in postwar America.
The Resolution of the Fuentes Affair
Beame’s election left unsettled the more immediate question of Fuentes’ suspension as
District 1 superintendent. As noted, the Southern District revoked Fuentes’ suspension in 1973,
temporarily placed School Chancellor Anker in charge of local schools, and ordered the district
to hold new school board elections. These elections took place in May 1974 and featured
virtually the same Por Los Niños and Brotherhood candidates.177 After fifteen rounds of ballot counting, Brotherhood won a 5-4 majority on the new board.178 The results seemed to reaffirm
the growing Jewish-Puerto Rican split on Lower East Side school issues. Pro-Fuentes board
members noted that 67 percent of the people who voted for Brotherhood were over 60 and
claimed that 80 percent of Brotherhood’s entire voting base came from two co-ops on Grand
Street where less than 100 District 1 students lived.179 Shortly after the election, in August 1974,
the board moved to suspend Fuentes again for his “hostility” toward board members,
mismanagement of school funds, and unilateral personnel appointments.180 In response, Fuentes
petitioned the Southern District to overturn his suspension. Although the law entitled Fuentes to a hearing before an independent trial examiner, Fuentes claimed that school boards would select the trial examiner from UFT-generated lists only.181 As such, Fuentes argued that Marcy Cowan,
177 “Bilingual Instruction At Issue in District 1,” The New York Times, April 28, 1974; 12.29.11. 178 Paul L. Montgomery, “U.F.T. Slate Wins In District 1 Vote,” The New York Times, May 19, 1974. 179 Ibid.; Luis Fuentes, “Community Control Did Not Fail in New York: It Wasn’t Tried,” The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 57, No. 10, June., 1976, 693. 180 Iver Peterson, “Local School Board Will Try to Suspend Fuentes Again,” The New York Times, August 6, 1974; Luis Fuentes v. Adolph Roher et al., 395 F. Supp. 1225 (Southern District. 1975), Leagle, http://www.leagle.com/decision/19751620395FSupp1225_11456.xml/FUENTES%20v.%20ROHER, accessed August 13, 2014. 181 U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, “A Summary of the 1969 School Decentralization Law for New York City,” April 30, 1969; Lewis, 55-59. 115
the trial examiner and a former teacher in Brooklyn, would have a predetermined bias against his
case. Fuentes also argued it unconstitutional to allow board members to testify against him and to
rule on his suspension, a procedure that effectively made the board his judge, jury, and
executioner.182 The court disagreed with this argument, pointing out that Cowan, the trial examiner, did not possess UFT membership and maintained no personal ties to any District 1 board members. The court also trusted the testimony of board members who claimed that they did not formally collaborate with the UFT during the 1973 and 1974 school board elections.183
As a result of these proceedings, the board hired Leonard Lurie, an assistant principal from JHS
22, as district superintendent in July 1975 after School Chancellor Irving Anker made two
temporary appointments.184
Lurie’s appointment as District 1 superintendent revealed Jews’ and Puerto Ricans’
different views of decentralization on the Lower East Side. For Jews in the neighborhood, Lurie represented a qualified and experienced choice who had experienced the anti-Semitism that seemed to accompany community control.185 Puerto Ricans, however, expressed dismay at the
Lurie appointment. In January 1977, Alfredo Matthew, a former Puerto Rican superintendent for an Upper West Side school district, accused Lurie of only filling principal vacancies with Jews who lived around Grand Street and attended the same synagogue.186 Matthew’s allegations
suggested that Puerto Ricans viewed Grand Street as an ethnically and economically distinct
182 Luis Fuentes v. Adolph Roher et al., 395 F. Supp. 1225 (Southern District. 1975), Leagle, http://www.leagle.com/decision/19751620395FSupp1225_11456.xml/FUENTES%20v.%20ROHER, accessed August 13, 2014. 183 Ibid. 184 Leonard Buder, “Fuentes Critic Is Chosen to Head School District 1,” The New York Times, February 20, 1975; “Anker to Appoint District 1 School Chief,” The New York Times, April 9, 1975; Leslie Maitland, “2d Replacement for Fuentes Named in School District 1,” The New York Times, April 10, 1975; Leslie Maitland, “Schools Run Ad for Fund-Raiser,” The New York Times, January 19, 1976. 185 The head of the JHS 22 Parents Association had allegedly yelled, “Hitler didn’t kill enough Jews” at Lurie during a school board meeting. 186 Alfredo Matthew to Leonard Lurie, January 27, 1977, UFT Papers, Box 38, Folder 6, TL. 116
community within the Lower East Side by the mid-1970s. Lurie’s response hinted at these
residents’ growing concern with their Puerto Rican neighbors. Lurie characterized Matthew’s
claim as “religiously bigoted” and another instance of the BOE’s “barely disguised anti-
Semitism.” As a result of community control, Lurie argued, the board had become wholly negligent of “the interests of an often persecuted American minority, the Jews of this city.”187
The new District 1 superintendent then forwarded Matthew’s letter to the ADL and Louis
Weiser, head of the Council of Jewish Organizations in Civil Service.188 Shortly thereafter,
Weiser penned a column for the Jewish Civil Service Council News that declared Jews could “no longer afford the luxury of being circumspect when blatant cases of anti-Semitism erupt” and refuted Matthew’s comment about Grand Street. “Since when,” Weiser asked, “does attendance at the same house of worship mean an individual is biased or incompetent?”189 In all, both Lurie and Weiser framed their support for Grand Street into a broader defense of Jews against the excesses of community control. As such, the comments hinted at the significance of Grand Street to wider Jewish arguments about race and schooling.
By the mid-1970s, these arguments also tapped into questions regarding Jews’ physical
place on the Lower East Side. Speaking to the New York Times about District 1’s upcoming
school board elections, Luis Fuentes pointed to a local street and noted, “Look at the number of
shopkeepers who have put out signs ‘Acqui Habla Espanol.’ They didn’t move away or stop
selling - they changed. Why can’t the teachers?”190 The quote hinted at the Lower East Side’s transition, both real and imagined, from a Jewish to a Puerto Rican neighborhood.
187 Leonard Lurie to Alfredo Matthew, February 2, 1977, UFT Papers, Box 38, Folder 6, TL. 188 Louis Weiser, “A Frightening Letter,” Jewish Civil Service Council News, February 25, 1977, AJCP, Box C59, Education, NYC, 1976-80, AJA; Robert Kohler to Alfredo Matthew, February 17, 1977, AJCP, Box C59, Education, NYC, 1976-1980, AJA. 189 Louis Weiser, “A Frightening Letter,” Jewish Civil Service Council News, February 25, 1977, AJCP, Box C59, Education, NYC, 1976-80, AJA. 190 “Bilingual Instruction At Issue in District 1,” The New York Times, April 28, 1974. 117
Decentralization underscored this transition by providing Puerto Rican parents with a
tangible vehicle within which to express their concerns and organize politically: the local school
board. Puerto Rican attempts to implement new bilingual programs, and to control the board,
tapped into Jewish fears that community control would displace them from schools, undo the system within which first and second generation Jews had entered the professional middle-class, and deprive Grand Street of its political influence. The UFT, with support from certain Orthodox outlets of the Jewish press, noted with alarm the potential ramifications of bilingualism: allowing parents to hire Puerto Rican teachers utilizing ethnic quotas. In the early 1970s, Grand Street, the major Jewish defense agencies, and outer-borough conservative politicians united to oppose Luis
Fuentes’ appointment as District 1 superintendent. By the late 1960s, these Jews viewed themselves as the neighborhood’s responsible majority and the last remnants of the most historic
Jewish community in the U.S. This perspective further hinted at Grand Street Jews’ electoral shift to the right, as well as their opposition to Puerto Ricans’ political agenda in the neighborhood. As I will show in the following chapter, Jewish-Puerto Rican conflict over the
Lower East Side’s physical landscape reinforced these trends.
118
Chapter 3 “These Few Blocks Belonged to Us”: Urban Renewal in Seward Park, 1965-1980
On August 8, 1974, The Village Voice ran an article entitled “Jews Without Hope.” The piece described the daily lives of several elderly Jews still living on the Lower East Side. The article’s author, Paul Cowan, characterized these individuals as “battered,” “abandoned,” and poor. He focused particularly Hedy Shapiro, a Russian immigrant who came to the neighborhood in 1915 and still lived in one of its old tenements. Shapiro had no surviving family, lived on a fixed income, and suffered from rising rent costs. According to Cowan, nearby abandoned
buildings, an old Matzoh factory, kosher delicatessens, and a local Hebrew school served as
painful reminders of her social isolation. However, Shapiro maintained faint ties to the Lower
East Side’s Jewish institutional network. Throughout 1974, she received home health visits from
the United Jewish Council of the East Side (UJC), an organization created in 1971 to serve the
area’s elderly poor just off Grand Street. The nearby Beth Israel Hospital had also called one of
the Grand Street co-ops trying to attain a single-room apartment for her. “As soon as I get there,”
Shapiro told Cowan, “I’ll kiss the floor of the new building.”1
In the 1970s, agencies like the UJC and residents like Shapiro became central players in
ongoing debates over housing policy on the Lower East Side. During these debates, the UJC
teamed with a host of other Orthodox Jewish associations to represent the interests of Grand
Street’s middle-income residents. These groups unbendingly opposed plans to build low-income
housing in the Seward Park Extension, nearly twenty-six acres of land located just north of
Seward Park between Delancey and Grand Streets.2 Instead, these Jewish leaders supported a
1 Paul Cowan, “Jews Without Hope,” The Village Voice, August 8, 1974. 2 “Aid for City Housing: U.S. Sets Aside 7 million for Lower East Side Project,” The New York Times, January 7, 1959. 119
large-scale commercial revitalization of the Seward Park Extension, highlighted by the construction of a new “international mall” in the area.
This proposal came at a time when municipal officials increasingly subjected the causes of urban poverty, particularly among black and Puerto Rican residents, to public and academic debate. Orthodox leadership on the Lower East Side contributed to this debate by implicitly and explicitly characterizing low-income tenants as irretrievably harmful to the social fabric of the neighborhood. In making these assumptions, the UJC and others reaffirmed housing policies, backed by the major housing authorities in postwar New York, which distinguished between the
“deserving” and “undeserving” poor and ignored the ways in which urban renewal programs stratified neighborhoods by race and class. Grand Street lent weight to these arguments by alluding to the allegedly superior social values of the neighborhood’s older Jewish residents. In so doing, Orthodox Jews linked their support to gentrify the Seward Park Extension with collective memories of a more harmonious and orderly “Jewish” Lower East Side. Even as
Grand Street leaders railed against the fiscal costs and social drawbacks of low-income housing, however, they lobbied municipal officials to admit Orthodox Jews into existing public housing in the Seward Park Extension. In all, by backing policies that prioritized upscale redevelopment over affordable housing and opening public housing slots for Jewish residents, Grand Street worked to maintain the Seward Park as a Jewish area.
Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, these Jewish leaders both influenced and reaffirmed the Koch administration’s plans to redevelop the Seward Park Extension. Capitalizing on the administration’s desire to revitalize the city’s failing economy and Koch’s strong ties to outer-borough and Orthodox Jewish voters, the UJC pressured the mayor to fully embrace its vision for Seward Park. Throughout, the UJC, as well as conservative outlets of the Jewish press,
120
synthesized arguments about nonwhite urban poverty with particular understandings of Lower
East Side history to promote commercial development. These actions revealed the diverging
interests of Jews and Puerto Ricans on the Lower East Side and hinted at Grand Street’s influence in municipal politics. By 1980, Grand Street had demonstrated its ability to both define and shape Jewish space on the Lower East Side.
------
Urban Renewal in the Seward Park Extension
Plans to redevelop the Seward Park Extension date back to the late 1950s, when the
Board of Estimate labeled a bloc of land north of Seward Park between Delancey and Grand
Street a “substandard area.”3 In early 1959, the Urban Renewal Administration set aside over
seven million dollars of federal money to redevelop this territory.4 Six years later, the Housing
and Redevelopment Board (HRB), previously known as the Slum Clearance Committee,
submitted an official plan to the Board of Estimate and the City Planning Commission (CPC).5
The HRB proposed to build 1,800 new apartments in the Seward Park Extension, reserving 1,240
for middle-income families and 200 for the elderly.6 The HRB plan also promised to construct
new parking facilities, recreational areas, and retail developments.7 According to the agency,
these changes would “replace a warren of antiquated, worn-out, and neglected buildings with
3 City Planning Commission Summary of Seward Park Extension Plan, June 2, 1965, Citizens Housing Planning Council Papers (hereafter CHPCP), Box 36, Folder 8, Citizens Housing Planning Council Archives and Library (New York, NY) (hereafter CHPCL); “Aid for City Housing: U.S. Sets Aside 7 million for Lower East Side Project,” The New York Times, January 7, 1959. 4 “Aid for City Housing: U.S. Sets Aside 7 million for Lower East Side Project,” The New York Times, January 7, 1959. 5 City Planning Commission Summary of Seward Park Extension Plan, June 2, 1965, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 8, CHPCL; Turner, “Building Boundaries,” 178. 6 “Housing and Redevelopment Board Finalizes Plans for a New Seward Extension,” East Side News, April 23, 1965. 7 Ibid.; Turner, 203-206. 121
a...healthy mixture of low and moderate income residency” and maintain an economic “diversity
so essential to a healthy, viable community.”8 Jewish representatives – including
Congressman Leonard Farbstein, a local B’Nai B’Rith chapter, the Bialystoker Synagogue, and
Downtown Talmud Torah – backed the plan, characterizing the Extension site as “badly
deteriorated” with “poor living conditions” that had a “blighting influence on the surrounding
neighborhood.”9 Finally, the HRB also called for the city to construct two new public housing projects holding a total of 360 apartments for Seward Park Extension residents displaced by the redevelopment plan.10 Both the CPC and Board of Estimate approved the proposal in 1965.11
These representatives, as well as citywide housing agencies like the Citizens Housing and
Planning Council (CHPC), backed the plan because they felt that the Lower East Side possessed
too much low-income housing. In addition to old tenements, the neighborhood also contained
over 12,000 units of “public low-rent housing” by the mid-1960s, including some of the city’s
first public housing complexes like the First, Vladeck, Wald, and Riis Houses.12 For this reason, the CHPC had initially pushed the city reserve Seward Park for middle-income families. During
public hearings in 1957 over plans to build the Seward Park co-op, for instance, the agency
warned officials that if displaced tenants received priority rights to live in the new apartments,
“we would continue to have the Lower East Side as the home of the lowest-income families
forever.”13 Eight years later, CHPC chief Roger Starr made a similar argument about tenanting
8 HRB Press Release, April 19, 1965, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 8, CHPCL. 9 “Public Hearing in the Matter of the Final Report for the Seward Park Extension Urban Renewal Project,” July 22, 1965, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 8, CHPCL. 10 Ibid.; “Statement by Herbert B. Evans,” May 12, 1965, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 8, CHPCL. 11 City Planning Commission Summary of Seward Park Extension Plan, June 2, 1965, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 8, CHPCL; Walter Fried Template Letter, June 30, 1965, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 8, CHPCL; Charles G. Bennett, “Renewal is Voted in East Side Area,” The New York Times, July 23, 1965, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 9, CHPCL. 12 Bloom, Public Housing That Worked, 136-138; “Public Hearing in the Matter of the Final Report for the Seward Park Extension Urban Renewal Project,” July 22, 1965, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 8, CHPCL. 13 “Transcript of Statement of Mr. Ira Robbins,” July 17, 1957, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 9, CHPCL. 122
the Seward Park Extension, telling Mayor Wagner that on-site tenants should not receive “some
peculiar encouragement for continuing their residency” in the area.14 In this same letter, Starr
attributed the Lower East Side’s current supply of low-income housing to the profit motives of old slumlords seeking to exploit poor immigrants. Planners had built low-income housing in the neighborhood, Starr noted, “not because this was the most intelligent or most humane place in which build [it],” but because “this was an area which could most easily be exploited by the overbuilding of low-rent units in a very crowded and deteriorated section of the city some 80 years ago.”15 More public housing, he concluded, would “perpetuate this pattern of
overcrowding.”16
This argument, however, overlooked important differences between low-cost public
housing and old tenement buildings. Urban planners originally viewed public housing as a way
provide poor residents with an affordable alternative to the tenement.17 Backed by a new state
program and federal subsidies from the 1937 Housing Act, the New York City Housing
Authority (NYCHA), which oversaw the city’s public housing system, built a broad swath of
low-cost housing in the 1930s and 1940s.18 While the agency built many of these new complexes
in the outer-boroughs to avoid displacing too many residents, the Lower East Side became the
first site for NYCHA housing.19 In 1939, the agency built the First Houses and charged tenants
$6/room/month. According to Langdon Post, NYCHA’s chairman at the time, the First Houses
represented “the first dwellings which are predicated upon the philosophy that sunshine, space,
14 CHPC Executive Director to Robert Wagner, July 15, 1965, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 8, CHPCL; Bruce Lampert, “Roger Starr, New York Planning Official, Author and Editorial Writer, Is Dead at 83,” The New York Times, September 11, 2001. 15 CHPC Executive Director to Robert Wagner, July 15, 1965, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 8, CHPCL. 16 Ibid. 17 Bloom, 13-15. 18 Ibid., 36-37, 41. 19 Ibid., 70-71. 123
and air are minimum housing requirements to which every American is entitled, no matter how
small his income.”20 One year later, NYCHA constructed the Vladeck Houses with a similar
motive.21 As Samuel Zipp notes, these initial projects signified NYCHA’s goal to build
“affordable, sanitary, community-friendly developments” and illustrated the American public’s
general faith in government-sponsored housing immediately after World War II.22
However, the purpose and clientele of NYCHA houses began to shift in accordance with
broader political and economic changes occurring in postwar New York. The 1949 Housing Act
partly provoked this change because it guaranteed, in Section 105, that those displaced by slum
clearance possessed the first right to live in affordable, “safe, and sanitary dwellings” either
within or outside the urban renewal area.23 The law, however, emphasized urban renewal above public housing.24 This situation meant that those residing in new housing projects, beginning in
the 1950s, increasingly came from the city’s poorest, and increasingly black and Puerto Rican,
neighborhoods. At this time, nonwhite residents became disproportionate victims of urban
renewal programs and occupied a greater share of the city’s public housing units. By 1956, for
instance nonwhites represented nearly half of all those relocated to public housing as a result of
urban renewal. (Puerto Ricans represented the largest sub-set of this group.25) These trends also
emerged on the Lower East Side. In 1965, Puerto Ricans comprised 46 percent of those
displaced by urban renewal on the Seward Park Extension site and the Extension area reportedly
20 Ibid., 28-30, 48-49. 21 Ibid., 59. 22 Samuel Zipp, Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 257, 264. 23 Ibid., 282-83; “Seward Park Slum Clearance Plan Under Title I of the Housing Act of 1949 As Amended,” New York City Housing Authority Papers (hereafter NYCHAP), Box 67E2, Folder #2, LaGuardia and Wagner Archives (Queens, NY) (hereafter LWA). While New York City received the largest amount of funds from the ’49 act and also millions of dollars in future subsidies; Bloom, 117. 24 Zipp, 21. 25 Bloom, 170-71. 124
contained a 60 percent nonwhite, and mostly Puerto Rican, populace by 1970.26 These statistics
coincided with Puerto Ricans’ growing presence in public housing. By 1969, black and Puerto
Rican residents occupied over 70 percent of all public housing units in the city and, on the Lower
East Side, NYCHA claimed that its houses had become “nearly one-half Puerto Rican.”27 These
trends continued in the 1970s. Between April 1971 and March 1972, Puerto Ricans comprised
604 of the 883 total residents to move into – and whites one-half of all those moving out – and a
Lower East Side public housing unit.28 In addition, Puerto Ricans comprised the largest
majorities in the Lower East Side’s federally-subsidized projects, including the Seward Park
Extension, the LaGuardia, Baruch, Riis Federal, and Hernandez houses, by the 1970s.29
In all, public housing came to reflect local patterns of racial and economic segregation by
the 1960s. Rather than provide access to social mobility for the urban poor, public housing
recreated, as Samuel Zipp notes, “the racial and economic ghettos that had previously formed by
way of the private real estate market.”30 However, the CHPC and others ignored the ways in which broader economic and racial changes had changed the function of public housing in New
York’s postwar urban landscape. By paralleling tenements to public housing, CHPC officials
reinforced an increasingly negative public and official view of the latter and laid the groundwork
for the city to reduce its supply of low-cost housing on the Lower East Side.
Certain assumptions about low-income residents undergirded these arguments. The
changing demographics of the city’s public housing coincided with a growing belief that housing
wholly reflected individual character and personal choice. This ideological shift stemmed partly
26 Turner, 83-84, 208. 27 Bloom, 174. 28 “Rental Summary of Lower East Side Projects,” NYCHAP, Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA. 29 NYCHA, “Project Data, December 31, 1971,” NYC.gov, December 31, 1971, accessed May 3, 2015, http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nycha/downloads/pdf/pdbdec1971.pdf; Bloom, 270-76. 30 Zipp, 287. 125
from broader political debates about the sources of nonwhite urban poverty and partly from more
specific criticisms from industrial leaders, as well as some Republican and southern Democratic
congressmen, that public housing represented a “creeping socialism” that would undermine
property rights and weaken “individual initiative and responsibility.” This rhetoric reinforced the
notion that public housing residents were lazy and shiftless. To a degree, New York urban
planners had always made these claims about the city’s poorest residents. In the 1940s, for
instance, NYCHA reserved its apartments for the upwardly mobile poor or working class, those
“families whose earnings are above income limits for present low-rent projects, but too low for
newly privately built housing,” particularly veterans or and other middle-class tenants.31 To this
end, the agency attempted to deselect potential tenants with sketchy payment and employment
histories. However, the agency also utilized criteria centered on vague social or cultural
standards, including “poor housekeeping” and a “lack of parental control” over children. This
practice often led NYCHA to exclude “unwed women with out-of-wedlock children” because
they “exercise, as a rule, exercise very little control over their children.”32
The CHPC, as well as their Jewish and non-Jewish allies, reaffirmed these views during
the Seward Park Extension hearings in 1965. During these hearings, pro-renewal representatives
argued that the presence of “disorganized families” and “those ineligible for public housing
because of social reasons” made it foolish to build more low-income housing in the Extension
area.33 In his letter to Mayor Wagner, CHPC head Roger Starr similarly argued that Extension residents’ “family histories and personal habits make them undesirable to the Authority as tenants” and predicted that they would likely become “destructive of their neighbors’ tranquility”
31 Bloom,110-112; Freeman, 109; Zipp, 269. 32 Bloom, 78, 176, 209-10. 33 “Public Hearing in the Matter of the Final Report for the Seward Park Extension Urban Renewal Project,” July 22, 1965, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 8, CHPCL. 126
and NYCHA property.34 Nationally, this argument foreshadowed the country’s retreat from the premises of New Deal liberalism and, at the local level, provided an ideological framework within which Lower East Side groups like the UJC could oppose low-income housing.35
Indeed, these characterizations of families in the Seward Park Extension coincided with
wider public debates on the causes of nonwhite urban poverty. As noted in Chapter 1, social
scientists developed new arguments about the “culture of poverty” after World War II. Unlike
earlier studies of lower-class life, postwar analysts schooled in behavioral science aimed to
understand the psychological basis for antisocial or deviant activity amongst the country’s poor
populace.36 These experts believed that family structure played a large role in nurturing such
behaviors. According to historian Alice O’Connor, sociological studies in the 1920s and 1930s
tended to view the lower-class family as an “economic unit” that required mothers to work.
While writers disagreed over whether female employment was a positive or negative influence
on child development, they nevertheless attributed the trend to continued discrimination against
African-American men. In the postwar period, however, O’Connor argues that sociologists
“severed the family from its social and economic context and began to view it in a much more
exclusively psychological light.”37 These writers viewed female work not as an economic necessity, but rather as a cause of psychological trauma to young children. This shift led postwar
34 CHCP Executive Director to Robert Wagner, July 15, 1965, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 8, CHPCL. 35 Michael Katz, The Undeserving Poor: Americans Enduring Confrontation With Poverty, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 163-64; Premilla Nadasen, Rethinking the Welfare Rights Movement (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2012), 111-15. 36 O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge, 99, 103-04. 37 Ibid., 108-109. For an analysis of how New Deal and Great Society programs reinforced men’s positions as head- of-the household wage earners, see Eileen Boris, “Contested Rights: The Great Society between Home and Work,” in Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur, eds., The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 115-44. 127
psychologists and sociologists to view delinquent behavior as the manifestation of “personality
disorders” that developed disproportionately within female-headed homes.38
The Negro Family, penned in 1965 by Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick
Moynihan, represented one of the most noted examples of this perspective.39 The report, issued
the same summer in which policymakers debated the merits of the Seward Park Extension plan, stated that “Negro children without fathers flounder and fail” and that the “matriarchal structure”
of the urban black family had slowed “the progress of the group as a whole and imposed a
crushing burden on the Negro male.”40 In homes led by working single mothers, Moynihan
argued, children suffered from a lack of attention to their “school matters…now a standard
feature of middle-class upbringing” and lacked professional and financially independent male
role models.41 On the flip side, Moynihan attributed the social mobility of others that had
suffered discrimination — such as Chinese and Japanese-Americans — to their “close-knit
family structure.”42
However, Moynihan did not entirely reject the notion that nonwhite poverty stemmed
from larger societal factors. Echoing the words of earlier black academics such as W.E.B. Du
Bois and E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family argued that “three centuries of injustice have
brought about deep-seated structural dislocations in the life of the Negro American.”43 To fix these injustices, Moynihan believed that the federal government should enact large public works
38 O’Connor, 109, 113. 39 Alice O’Connor views the report as a “deeply flawed...and shared social scientific vision of the dynamics of gender, race, and poverty in the black lower-class family.” Ibid., 208. 40 Gareth Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1996), 86; James T. Patterson, Freedom is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America’s Struggle over Black Family Life from LBJ to Obama (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 54; Katz, 19-21. 41 Katz, 20-21. 42 Patterson, 43-44. 43 Ibid., 58. For these earlier arguments about black families, see Patterson, 26-36. 128
programs.44 These initiatives would create true economic equality between nonwhites and whites and meet growing calls from civil rights leaders for the government to intervene more forcefully in the country’s labor and real estate markets.45 For Moynihan, racial discrimination had so
deeply affected the nonwhite poor that family structures, “once or twice removed [from the
original source of the discrimination]” became “the principal source of the most aberrant,
inadequate, or anti-social behavior.” According to the Assistant Secretary, then, family life did
not directly and irreversibly impact individual behavior, but instead perpetuated a vicious “cycle
of poverty and deprivation” that stemmed from a history of legal discrimination.46
The CHPC view of Seward Park Extension residents echoed Moynihan’s argument.
Indeed, while the agency reaffirmed NYCHA’s family-based admittance standards, it also
implored Mayor Wagner to address the needs of those excluded from NYCHA housing. In his
letter to the mayor, CHPC chief Roger Starr argued that the city needed to face “the problem of
the ineligible families.” “What is to be done about them? Whose responsibility are they?…What
federal programs and funds might be applied to the problems of the ineligibles?”47 These
questions echoed Moynihan’s own calls for new federal programs to address the needs of
maladjusted, single-parent families. In all, both the CHPC and the Moynihan Report implied that
female-headed homes fostered individual pathologies and misbehavior that perpetuated poverty.
Both also believed, however, that remedial laws and new state interventions could break up this
passed-down “culture” of poverty and impact individual decision-making and family life. While
both reasoned that single-parent homes had developed a culture of poverty within poor, nonwhite
44 Davies, 84-85; Patterson, 21-22, 41, 44. 45 Patterson, 25, 50. 46 Ibid., 54-55. 47 CHCP Executive Director to Robert Wagner, July 15, 1965, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 8, CHPCL. 129
families, they did not view these families as immune to broader societal reform.48 The positions of the CHPC and its local Jewish allies on the Seward Park Extension thus represented a mainstream understanding of low-income residents held by the political and social scientific establishment.
Black civil rights leaders and writers, however, correctly predicted that arguments like those of Moynihan and the CHPC lent weight to more conservative arguments about poverty and social welfare. Martin Luther King, for example, predicted that The Negro Family would “justify neglect, and rationalize oppression” and lead some to pin black poverty on “innate Negro weaknesses.”49 James Farmer, the head of CORE, viewed the racial implications of the report even more strongly. In the Amsterdam News, Farmer called the report a “massive academic cop- out for the white conscience” and “the most serious threat to the ultimate freedom of American
Negroes to appear in print in recent memory.”50 The noted sociologist Herbert Gans similarly believed that The Negro Family would limit “further programs to bring about real equality” and legitimize “demands for Negro self-improvement or the development of a middle-class family structure.”51 These criticisms hinted at the fact that both civil rights leaders and the architects of the Great Society had begun to focus on the racial dimensions of economic inequality, as evidenced by the recent passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, President Lyndon Johnson’s call for “equality as a fact” at Howard University, and new affirmative action mandates.52
This ideological shift laid the groundwork for Lower East Side housing activists to lobby
for more low-income housing in the Seward Park Extension. The Puerto Rican and Hispanic
48 O’Connor, 197-201. 49 Patterson, 78, my emphasis. 50 Ibid., 85. 51 Ibid., 78-79. 52 Davies, 83, 87-89. 130
Organizations on the Lower East Side, the Puerto Rican Citizens Committee on Housing, NYU
CORE, as well as two major tenant advocacy groups, the Metropolitan Council on Housing
(MCH), and the Cooper Square Community Development Committee (CSC) all testified that
the original Extension plan did not provide enough affordable housing for displaced tenants at
the 1965 CPC hearings.53 In making this case, these groups pushed back against mainstream
arguments about the character and quality of impoverished families and attempted to broaden
public understandings of who or what constituted “legitimate” communities. While these
arguments did not alter the area’s final urban renewal plan, they would soon influence efforts to
have various political officials recognize Puerto Ricans’ legal right to local housing.
MCH and the CSC remained particularly sensitive to the ways in which urban renewal disproportionately impacted low-income blacks and Puerto Ricans in New York City. A set of tenant organizers, Frances Goldin, Jane Benedict, and Esther Rand, had organized MCH in 1959 to increase the city’s supply of affordable housing. The trio came from a left-wing ideological tradition: Goldin and Benedict had become politically active as organizers for the American
Labor Party (ALP), while Rand had become active as a member of the Communist Party.54 MCH
also maintained close ties to Mobilization for Youth (MFY), whose housing coordinator had set
up a local clinic to serve as “headquarters for some form of site tenants’ committee for the
Seward Park Extension area.”55 Steeped in the ideology of the Old Left, Rand and Goldin helped
53 “Public Hearing in the Matter of the Final Report for the Seward Park Extension Urban Renewal Project,” July 22, 1965, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 8, CHPCL. 54 Roberta Gold, When Tenants Claimed the City: The Struggle For Citizenship in New York City Housing (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 92-93, 96-97. 55 Ezra Birnbaum to Jane Benedict, November 21, 1963, Metropolitan Council on Housing Papers (hereafter MCHP), Box 14, Mobilization for Youth, TL. In addition to joining the MFY-led Lower East Side Rent Strike Committee, MCH praised Mobilization for fixing “the housing conditions of those “who suffer from deplorable conditions, particularly Negroes and Puerto Ricans” and sent a formal resolution to Mayor Wagner opposing the “McCarthy-like” investigations into the agency. See Gold, 127; MCH to Congresswoman Edith Green, May 1, 1963, MCHP, Box 145, Mobilization for Youth, TL; “Wage War on Poverty, Not on Poor, Met Council Plea to Mayor on Mobilization for Youth,” November 17, 1964, MCHP, Box 14, Mobilization for Youth, TL. 131
form the Cooper Square Committee (CSC), which proposed an alternative plan to redevelop a
twelve-block area on the Lower East Side called Cooper Square in the early 1960s. The committee argued that Cooper Square residents lived there because they “cannot afford to do it elsewhere” and maintained that all communities, even low-income ones, possessed “inherent
social and economic values.” As such, the CSC claimed that Cooper Square’s poor residents
maintained the “ethnic, social, cultural, and economic associations and dependencies” of a
legitimate community. The CSC wanted to shrink the Cooper Square Urban Renewal Area and
commit roughly 43 percent of the proposed 1,440 new apartments to low-income housing.
According to the agency, this action would acknowledge that those living in run-down areas like
Cooper Square had an “indisputable priority to the new housing on sites from which they are
displaced.”56
In a 1963 letter to The Nation, Esther Rand applied this understanding of low-income areas directly to Jewish-Puerto Rican relations. She criticized an article that attributed a drop in
East Bronx Jewish residents to the influx of Puerto Ricans, countering that Puerto Rican housing in the Bronx, Harlem, and Lower East Side remained “far worse that it was when the Jews lived in these communities” and blasting the author of the article for implying that “Jews were better housekeepers than the Puerto Rican tenants are.”57 This argument contradicted NYCHA’s and
the CHPC’s emphasis on home and family life when evaluating prospective tenants and
suggested that the conditions within Puerto Rican neighborhoods stemmed largely from
economic and political forces that limited individual choice and opportunity.
56 Gold, 157-59. 57 Esther Rand to Editor of The Nation, February 2, 1963, MCHP, Box 25, Misc. East Side Papers, TL. 132
Public Housing in the Seward Park Extension
Puerto Ricans’ lack of political and economic power on the Lower East Side became more apparent once the 360 units of public housing became available for rent in the Seward Park
Extension in January 1972. Census data, court hearing transcripts, and The New York Times all claimed that Puerto Ricans comprised anywhere from 55 to 60 percent of the Seward Park
Extension populace at this point.58 In addition, NYCHA and the Housing and Development
Administration (HDA), previously the HRB, also issued a set of regulations in 1968 that guaranteed on-site families the first priority to live in one of the new apartments.59 Despite this promise, NYCHA opened up 171 units to tenants who did not live in the Seward Park Extension.
Of these 171 residents, slightly over half had transferred from other public housing projects on the Lower East Side and the vast majority (88 percent) were white.60 As a result of this practice, whites occupied roughly 59 percent of Seward Park Extension public housing by May 1972.61
In addition, NYCHA also rented out at least forty-eight of the open Extension apartments to Orthodox Jews who wished to reside closer to Beth Medrash Hagodol, a local synagogue.62
NYCHA Chairman Simeon Golar justified the transfers by citing agency guidelines that allowed families in “emergency need of housing” or residing in “substandard or hardship conditions” to
58 Arnold H. Lubasch, “Judge Forbids Preference For Jews in City Housing,” The New York Times, May 24, 1972; Otero, et al., v. NYCHA et al., 344 F. Supp. 737, 11 (Southern District of New York. 1972), NYCHAP Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA; Turner, 84; Some publications claim that Puerto Ricans, Blacks, and Chinese comprised eighty-five percent of the total number of these eligible families. See “Golar Denies ‘Jewish Pressure’ Won Apartments,” Manhattan Tribune, April 29, 1972 and “Public Housing Ethnic Dispute,” New York Voice, April 28, 1972 in NYCHAP, Box 0059B3, Folder 57, LWA. 59 Arnold H. Lubasch, “Judge Forbids Preference For Jews in City Housing,” The New York Times, May 24, 1972; Francisco Otero, et al., v. NYCHA et al., 72 civ. 1733, 10-11 (Southern District of New York. 1973), NYCHAP Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA; Turner, 179-180. 60 Francisco Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., 72 civ. 1733, 6-7 (Southern District of New York. 1973), NYCHAP Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA. 61 Peter Kihss, “U.S. is Looking Into How the City Housing Authority Selects its Tenants,” The New York Times, May 11, 1972. 62 Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., 72 civ. 1733, 2, 6, 10 (Southern District of New York. 1972), NYCHAP Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA; Other newspapers claimed that Jews filled “most” of these 171 apartments; “Signed on East Side Housing Project,” The Jewish Press, March 1, 1974; Turner, 223. 133
switch public housing complexes.63 During court proceedings in 1972 and 1973, the agency
stated that it had applied these guidelines to Orthodox Jews who lived in other low-income apartments and needed to reside “within walking distance of their house of worship” because they were regularly “harassed and physically abused on their way to synagogue.”64 Records show that NYCHA had rented fifty-four apartments to whites living in subpar housing by April
1972. During this same period, however, the agency rented only seven apartments to Puerto
Ricans living under similar conditions.65 As a result of these actions, over 300 former, mostly
Puerto Rican, Extension tenants filed a class action suit against NYCHA for illegally leasing
public housing apartments to those who had never resided in the Seward Park Extension. MFY’s
Legal Services Division represented these plaintiffs.
Francisco Otero et. al v. The New York City Housing Authority (1972) appeared three
times before New York’s Southern District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals between May
1972 and June 1973. The case centered on varying interpretations of the 1949 Housing Act and
NYCHA’s housing regulations. According to NYCHA Chairman Simeon Golar, as well as other
housing officials, the 1949 Housing Act aimed to provide a “decent home and suitable living
environment for every family” and to maintain “integrated, residential neighborhoods.”66
Housing officials reasoned that the law could only do so by requiring housing agencies to relocate displaced tenants into any available and adequate housing across the city.67 NYCHA had
upheld its obligation to displaced Puerto Rican tenants living in the Extension, officials argued,
63 Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., 72 civ. 1733, A1-A2 (Southern District of New York. 1972), NYCHAP Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA. 64 Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., Irving Wise Affidavit, NYCHAP Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA; Francisco Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., 72 civ. 1733, 36 (Southern District of New York. 1973), NYCHAP Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA. 65 NYCHA, “Seward Park Extension Summary, Rentals by Category,” NYCHAP, Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA. 66 Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., S. William Green Affidavit, NYCHAP, Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA. 67 Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., Simeon Golar Affidavit, NYCHAP, Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA. 134
by transferring said residents to other public housing.68 MFY disputed this argument, noting that
that NYCHA’s own regulations guaranteed Puerto Ricans priority rights to a new apartment in
the Seward Park Extension specifically.69
The case’s larger significance, however, extended beyond the particular interpretations of
these guidelines. Otero forced New York urban planners to determine how they could promote
racial integration on the Lower East Side in the face of more entrenched patterns of economic
and racial stratification. This tension forced housing officials, as well as Jewish and Puerto Rican
representatives, to debate the very meanings and purposes of “racial integration.”
In May 1972, Judge Marvin Frankel issued a preliminary injunction against NYCHA
from transferring any more Jewish residents into the new Extension houses.70 In his decision,
Frankel ruled that, by ignoring its own 1968 priority right of return regulation, NYCHA had perpetuated both “religious (and, concomitantly, racial) preferences.”71 While NYCHA did not
intentionally discriminate against nonwhites, Frankel decided, these policies nevertheless
perpetuated an “inevitable pattern of racial discrimination.” In so doing, NYCHA had ignored
laws banning discrimination in federally funded programs, and violated the Fourteenth
Amendment. Moreover, Frankel argued that NYCHA had used “a criterion of religious
selection” when admitting applicants to the Extension houses, an action that violated the
Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.72
68 Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., S. William Green Affidavit, NYCHAP, Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA. 69 Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., 72 civ. 1733, 2-3, 10-11 (Southern District of New York. 1972), Box 49, Civil Case Files, 72-Civ-1733, Volume 1, Folder 2, Accession No. 021-75A-467, National Archives of New York City (New York, NY) (hereafter NANYC). 70 Ruling Barring Transfer of Jewish Tenants from City Project to Be Challenged,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 25, 1972. 71 Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., 72 civ. 1733, 12-13, 19 (Southern District of New York. 1972), NYCHAP Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA, my emphasis. 72 Ibid., 2, 9, 20-21. 135
Less than one month later, the Southern District Court granted the National Commission
on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA), a national legal aid group for Orthodox Jews, permission
to represent the 48 Jewish residents who had transferred into Extension apartments from other
public housing complexes.73 COLPA formed after secular organizations challenged parts of the
1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that offered federal aid to both public
and parochial schools. Viewing itself as a much-needed counterpoint to secular views of church
and state, the agency framed religious instruction as but one piece of the “diverse educational
ventures and expressions of view” that public education intended to nurture. In its early briefs,
COLPA cited cases like Brown to show the state’s valuation of equal educational opportunity
and then tied them to the needs of their own yeshivas, noting that “separation of church and
state” should not overturn the government’s obligation to help those “parochial school children
who are in need of special educational services.”74 These arguments signaled widening political
divisions between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews on church-state issues. For secular groups
like the AJCong, protecting the rights of religious minorities to free worship meant removing
religious rituals and symbols from public life, particularly schools.75
Shortly thereafter, in October 1972, COLPA filed a brief opposing Otero’s call for
summary judgment. The brief made three main legal claims. First, COLPA claimed that
Orthodox Jews gained permanent rights to new Seward Park Extension apartments by signing leases with NYCHA before Frankel’s ruling. These leases, the agency argued, trumped the goal of integration under the 1968 Fair Housing Law.76 Like NYCHA officials, COLPA also alleged
73 Francisco Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., 72 civ. 1733, 5101 (U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Cir., 1973), NYCHAP, Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA. 74 Robert Daniel Rubin, “The Righteousness of Difference: Orthodox Jews and the Establishment Clause, 1965-71,” in Laura Jane Gifford and Daniel K. Williams, eds., The Right Side of the Sixties: Reexamining Conservatism’s Decade of Transformation, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012),127-128, 131, 132. 75 Ibid., 123-24. 76 Francisco Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., 72 civ. 1733, “Memorandum of Law of Defendants-Intervenors…In 136
that Puerto Ricans lost their right to priority housing in the Extension once they relocated to
other public housing complexes. To rehouse these displaced tenants in the Extension, COLPA
claimed, would deprive others with more urgent housing needs, like Orthodox Jews.77 Third,
COLPA claimed that admitting Orthodox Jews into new Extension apartments did not promote a specific religion and violate the Establishment Clause. Instead, NYCHA had allowed a group of old, religious, and immobile Jews to live near their house of worship, an action sanctioned by prior First Amendment rulings to “allow citizens full and unimpaired freedom to worship their
God.”78 Undergirding all three of these arguments was COLPA’s claim that Orthodox Jews
deserved official government recognition as a “minority of a minority.” Arguing that the
Orthodox had as many, if not more, societal grievances than Puerto Ricans, COLPA argued that
Jews had been entirely “overlooked and ignored by the poverty agencies and the ‘major’ civil
rights organizations” in the country.79
COLPA underscored these legal arguments by framing the Lower East Side as a special
Jewish space that needed to entitle Jewish settlement. Calling the Lower East Side the “cradle of
Jewish life in the United States” and a “historical landmark” of the American Jewish past, the
agency reminded the court that “a proud and vibrant Jewish community still remains and
struggles to maintain its identity” in the neighborhood. Issuing an injunction against NYCHA,
however, had made this community “doomed to extinction.” In addition, COLPA implicitly denigrated Puerto Rican claims to neighborhood space by celebrating the historic lifestyle of
Lower East Side Jews. After leaving an oppressive Eastern Europe behind, these Jews had
Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment,” 6-7 (Southern District of New York. 1972), Box 49, Civil Case Files, 72-Civ-1733, Volume 2, Folder 6, Accession No. 021-75A467, NANYC. 77 Ibid., 11-13. 78 Ibid., 20-21. 79 Ibid., 3. 137
established a home in the neighborhood with “great effort, sacrifice and tenacity” and
reestablished their traditional culture in a new American environ. This process made the Lower
East Side not only an important home for American Jews, but also an embodiment of “‘the great
melting pot’ called America” where people “worked harmoniously without losing their own
peculiar ethnic and cultural identities.”80 These statements implied that Puerto Rican activism upset notions of social integration in the neighborhood and cited Jews’ historic place on the
Lower East Side to legitimize local Jewish claims.
Other Orthodox residents who had signed leases for a Seward Park Extension project also approached the Legal Aid Society for support. Kalman Finkel, a leading Orthodox lawyer for the
Society with ties to Brooklyn’s Hasidic community, represented these residents.81 In a
memorandum of law seeking summary judgment, Finkel, like COLPA, claimed that his clients
had signed Extension leases before the Southern District issued its injunction and, as such, did
not have to vacate their apartments. Like COLPA and NYCHA officials, he also argued that
Puerto Rican Extension tenants had already relocated to new public housing complexes, thus
negating their first right to rent a new apartment over the Orthodox Jews who more urgently
needed housing. Finally, Finkel argued that NYCHA’s actions fell in line with the integration
mandates of the 1968 Fair Housing Act.82
Like COLPA, however, Finkel buttressed his claims with a specific view of Lower East
Side history. The lawyer pointed out that his Orthodox clients, whose “entire life in this country
has revolved around the Lower East Side,” relied on age-old religious and social institutions in
80 Ibid., 3-5. 81 Jonathan P. Hicks, “Ex-Civil Rights Chief Named Housing Agency Chairman,” The New York Times, February 1, 1994; “Governor Mario Cuomo,” The Jewish Press, January 7, 2015. 82 Francisco Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., 72 civ. 1733, “Memorandum of Law In Support of Defendants- Intervenors-Tenants Motion for Summary Judgment and Class Recognition,” 10, 16-17, 21, 26-27 (Southern District of New York. 1972), Box 49, Civil Case Files, 72-Civ-1733, Volume 2, Folder 6, Accession No. 021-75A467, NANYC. 138
the neighborhood.83 More tellingly, Finkel argued that the Lower East Side’s unique role in
Orthodox Jewish life should trump a strict reading of the 1968 Fair Housing Law. Arguing that
“equities in this case, on balance” should lead the court to rule on his clients behalf, Finkel noted
that “our intervenors have lived most, if not all of their lives, on the Lower East Side, and have
deep attachments to this community and its institutions.” Puerto Ricans, by contrast, lacked “any
evidence of the duration and depth of the attachment of their class to the Lower East Side.”84 As a result, Finkel argued, allowing Orthodox Jews to rent Extension apartments would preserve
“the historic and varied ethnic character and background of this neighborhood.”85 In all, Finkel
romanticized and reimagined the Lower East Side as a wholly Jewish space to undergird a
particular political position. Claims like these served to privilege Orthodox interests on the
Lower East Side and provided Jews with continued social and political authority in the
neighborhood.
In February 1973, Judge Morris E. Lasker of the Southern District Court issued a final
ruling on Otero after COLPA, NYCHA, and the Puerto Rican plaintiffs moved for summary
judgment. Lasker reaffirmed Frankel’s earlier decision. While Lasker reasoned that housing
agencies sometimes had to place “white tenants in an area tending to become predominantly
black” to foster integration, he posited that this situation did not apply to the Lower East Side.86
Like Frankel, Lasker cited NYCHA’s earlier promises to the Extension’s former site tenants.87
The judge’s most significant claim, however, centered on his interpretation of fair housing law.
Lasker ruled that laws like the 1968 Fair Housing Act could not “achieve integration at the
83 Ibid., 3, 5, 6. 84 Ibid., 14. 85 Ibid., 7, 20 my emphasis. 86 Francisco Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., 72 civ. 1733, 21-22, 25 (Southern District of New York. 1973), NYCHAP Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA. 87 Ibid., 13-14. 139
expense of minority groups.” As evidence, the judge cited previous cases which decided that the
courts could still uphold policies that helped nonwhite residents, but maintained racial
imbalance. Lasker reasoned that promoting racial balance at the expense of nonwhites would
ignore the interests of “minority groups, particularly blacks, who, as the result of the nation’s
history of discrimination, had been prevented from securing decent housing.” As such, Lasker
argued it would be “ironical” if Lower East Side blacks and/or Puerto Ricans lost access to
public housing in the name of promoting integration.88 This argument reflected the legal
system’s acceptance of color-conscious social policy.
The judge also disagreed with Orthodox claims that granting Jews apartments closer to
their place of worship would support the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion.89 The judge argued that the Establishment Clause did not obligate government to “ensure a citizen’s exercise of his religion,” but instead “restrains government from interference with that free exercise.” Unlike fair housing, Lasker argued, the Establishment Clause did not represent a
“mandate for affirmative action” on behalf of religious minorities. By selecting Jewish tenants for new apartments in the Seward Park Extension, Lasker concluded, NYCHA had thus violated
the First Amendment because they “favored believers or non-believers and churchgoers over persons who worship at home.”90 This argument mirrored those made by secular and Reform
groups who believed that “freedom of religion” meant that the federal government had to divorce
itself from religious institutions and issues, not lend equal support to them. One secular Jewish
organization, the AJC, agreed with the judge. Samuel Rabinove, the Director of the AJC’s Legal
Division, dissuaded AJC officials from getting involved in the Extension case and viewed
88 Ibid., 26-27. 89 Ibid., 36; COLPA supported this argument in other cases besides Otero; Rubin, 133. 90 Francisco Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., 72 civ. 1733, 37-38 (Southern District of New York. 1973), NYCHAP Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA. 140
COLPA’s legal brief as both “curiously unconvincing” and an unconstitutional argument for
religious preference.91
The U.S. Court of Appeals issued a new ruling on Otero after NYCHA, COLPA, and the
Legal Aid Society appealed Lasker’s ruling.92 Writing for the court, Judge Walter R. Mansfield
agreed with Frankel and Lasker that the 1968 Fair Housing Act prohibited discrimination that
left “minority races...in urban ghettos in dense concentrations where employment and
educational opportunities were minimal.”93 However, the judge ruled that the country’s fair housing law did not establish a “‘one-way street’” requiring nonwhite residents to integrate a white neighborhood.94 Instead, Mansfield argued that planners had to consider how new public housing would impact a neighborhood’s racial concentration. If such housing promoted racial imbalance, then government had to “prevent an increase in segregation” at all costs, even reserving new housing for white tenants. Mansfield thus reasoned that Lasker had given “too little weight to Congress’ desire to prevent segregated housing patterns” and undermined long- term concerns about the “ghettoization of our urban centers.”95 Mansfield acknowledged that
NYCHA had denied Puerto Ricans in the Seward Park Extension a “governmental
benefit...without notice, hearing, or other due process of law” by ignoring its own former site tenant regulations.96 However, he believed the key question remained whether this policy would
lead the Extension’s population to become almost wholly nonwhite. NYCHA answered yes,
claiming that non-white families would comprise 80 percent of new Seward Park Extension
91 Samuel Rabinove to Theodore Ellenoff, December 13, 1972, AJCP, Box C35, Housing, AJA. 92 “City Housing Authority to Appeal Court Ruling Barring Rentals to Orthodox Jews in Housing Project,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 16, 1973. 93 Francisco Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., 484 F. 2 1122, 5113 (U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Cir., 1973), NYCHAP, Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA. 94 Ibid., 5096. 95 Ibid., 5114-16. 96 Ibid., 5109-5110. 141
apartments. The plaintiffs and Judge Lasker, however, claimed that NYCHA’s regulation would
still leave the entire Seward Park Extension area heavily white by family (not individual) and
maintain an overall racial balance on the Lower East Side. These discrepancies led Mansfield to conclude that Otero required a new “trial, at which the parties may offer evidence with respect to the relevant issues” and a final ruling on whether NYCHA’s regulation furthered racial segregation on the Lower East Side.97
Mansfield, Lasker, and Frankel thus interpreted fair housing law, and the very definition
of “integration,” differently. For Mansfield, racial integration meant to “benefit the community as a whole, not just certain of its members.”98 Applied to the Seward Park Extension, this definition
suggested that the area’s Jewish residents had a right, under the principles of integration, to attain
public housing. Judges Frankel and Lasker, however, outlined a more flexible definition of
integration that centered less on maintaining a statistical racial balance and more on recognizing
Puerto Ricans’ legal claim to space. Both sets of court rulings illustrated how difficult it had become for urban planners to promote racially integrated neighborhoods and to re-house displaced tenants in the same area they used to live. That the courts could reasonably disagree on the purpose and definition of racial integration reveals the extent to which existing civil rights and fair housing law had failed to prevent low-income pockets of the Lower East Side from becoming black or Puerto Rican, and hinted at broader debates regarding whether the federal government’s ability to sponsor equal economic opportunity between whites and nonwhites.
Puerto Rican leaders on the Lower East Side defined integration similarly to Frankel and
Lasker. Though the Extension houses would become heavily Puerto Rican if officials followed
97 Ibid., 5118-5121. 98 Francisco Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., 484 F.2d 1122, 5115 (U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Cir., 1973), NYCHAP, Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA, my emphasis. 142
NYCHA’s earlier regulation, Ampare Tirado, a local Puerto Rican civic leader, emphasized that
“we are not against anybody...I believe in integration and integration is the only way we can grow.”99 One year later, when the case finally settled, Tirado reiterated this message, telling the
New York Post that “one of the things we were trying to do from the beginning is integrate these buildings.”100
For Puerto Ricans like Tirado, the term “integration” meant more than racial balance; it meant recognizing Puerto Ricans’ legal rights, guaranteed by NYCHA, on the Lower East Side.
As noted in Chapter 1, this desire for “recognition” represented an ideological shift within New
York’s organized Puerto Rican leadership in the 1960s. According to Lorrin Thomas, Puerto
Ricans at this time aimed to attain a “share in the policy making of a system so vital to themselves” through grassroots organizing.101 These calls represent but one example of Puerto
Rican efforts to become “valid and legitimate social actors” in 1960s and 1970s New York.
Activists repeatedly expressed this argument to housing officials during the early phases of the Otero case. During meetings with NYCHA, Tirado, Rosa Esperon, the head of a local welfare agency called “It’s Time,” and Robert Napoleon, head of the Lower East Side
Community Corporation (LESCC), pressured NYCHA to publicize data regarding the Extension site’s new tenants and told housing officials that the “Puerto Rican community was tired of being taken for granted.”102 Shortly after the meeting, another group of Puerto Ricans asked El Diario to encourage eligible Puerto Ricans to apply for admission into the new houses. These actions,
99 Owen Moritz, “Flats for Jews Keep Development Empty,” New York Daily News, August 28, 1972. 100 “Reach Compromise in Housing Dispute,” New York Post, February 19, 1974, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 9, CHPCL. 101 Thomas, Puerto Rican Citizen, 13. 102 Bianca Cedeno to Simeon Golar, “Sit in at District IV Office 3/30/72 and Subsequent Meeting on 4/4/72 Re Seward Park Renting,” April 5, 1972, NYCHAP, Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA. 143
the protestors noted, would clear the way for “our rights be recognized and respected.”103
Roughly one month later, Esperon and Tirado organized a demonstration which called for formal hearings on NYCHA’s policies.104 Both leaders publicized the protest in El Diario and similarly
told Puerto Ricans to demand a “recognition of our rights” from NYCHA officials.105 In making
these claims, Tirado and Esperon contradicted arguments made by mainstream, pro-renewal city
agencies like the CHPC and Housing Redevelopment Board (HRB) that defined “a healthy,
viable community” as one possessing a mix of mostly middle-income families and commercial development.106
Some black and Puerto Rican activists, building upon earlier anti-colonial arguments
made during and immediately after World War II, buttressed these calls for “recognition” by
situating their relationship to New York’s political establishment within the broader context of
Puerto Rico’s relationship to the United States.107 While Thomas notes that these Puerto Ricans
often remained, to the chagrin of Puerto Rican independence activists, “deeply influenced by
their local context,” they nevertheless viewed colonialism and imperialism as ideological
frameworks within which to express more immediate concerns such as “economic displacement,
epidemic garbage, poisonous ghetto housing, [and] failing schools.”108 For young Puerto Ricans,
now attending college and joining civil rights and Black Power campus groups, Great Society
liberals and War on Poverty programs seemed either unwilling or incapable of remedying these
103 “Citan Inquilinos de Seward Park Para Que Concurran Ante la Corte,” El Diario-La Prensa, November 9, 1972, NYCHAP, Box 0059B3, Folder 57, LWA, my emphasis; “Alerta a Boricuas A Reclamar Proyectos,” El Diario-La Prensa, September 7, 1972, NYCHAP, Box 0059B3, Folder 57, LWA. 104 “Important: Latest News on the Lower East Side Struggle Against New York City Housing Authority,” NYCHAP, Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA; Seward Park Demonstration Notice, NYCHAP, Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA. 105 Manuel Mariotta, “Boricuas Invadiran Corte Vera Discrimen Viviendas,” El Diario-La Prensa, May 11, 1972, NYCHAP, Box 0059B3, Folder 57, LWA. 106 HRB Press Release, April 19, 1965, CHPCP, Box 36, Folder 8, CHPCL. 107 Ibid., 11, 13-14, 21. 108 Ibid., 223, 228, 238. 144
social and economic problems. Indeed, young activists viewed antipoverty leaders as “poverty
pimps” who got fat on federal money and cared little for helping local communities. As such,
activist groups increasingly sought to run, control, and organize their own communities and
believed that the local establishment perpetuated Puerto Rican poverty. The language of anti- imperialism – supported by the growing antiwar movement, various Third World independence struggles, and Puerto Rico’s status as a U.S. territory – justified this viewpoint by painting the political establishment as a mere replica of the colonial rule that had seemingly subjugated native peoples across the globe. As such, U.S. foreign policy provided young Puerto Ricans with a convincing explanation of local poverty and decay.109
At times, the Puerto Ricans involved in the Otero case embraced this more global,
populist rhetoric. Just after 150 Puerto Ricans had staged a sit-in at the Seward Park renting
office on Grand Street, for instance, the LESCC circulated a notice criticizing “discrimination
against the nonwhite poor” by NYCHA and calling for “the people of the Lower East Side” to
march from the Seward Park Extension to court with signs reading “NO!”110 The notice also
called for voters to elect a Chinese representative to the District 1 school board because “we have
no Chinese on the Board now” and criticized “anti-progress groups” like the Jewish Defense
League (JDL) that wanted to fill the board with their own supporters.111 The LESCC, one of
twenty-six neighborhood antipoverty agencies formed by the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act’s
Community Action Programs to review all Office of Economic Opportunity projects, also tapped
into this rhetoric.112 According to the agency’s by-laws, the LESCC aimed to spark “the
109 Ibid., 228-232. 237-38. 110 Roberto Napoleon and Carmelo Negron to All Delegate Agencies and Other Interested Community Organizations, May 4, 1972, NYCHAP, Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA. 111 Ibid. 112 Clarence Taylor, “Race, Rights, Empowerment,” in Summer in the City: John Lindsay, New York, and the American Dream, ed. Joseph P. Viteritti (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 72-73; “Constitution of the Community Corporation of the Lower East Side,” Petra Santiago Papers (hereafter PSP), Box 3, Folder 11, 145
involvement of alienated and disoriented low income people in the self-determination of their destinies.”113
Otero also forced Jews, both on the Lower East Side and across the city, to grapple with
whether they could support a quota that aided, not discriminated against, Jews. One Jewish
newspaper confronted this question directly after Judge Lasker’s February 1973 ruling, asking,
“Should Jews fight for quotas? -- a concept they have always opposed -- in a situation where
they stand to benefit?”114 Some Orthodox Jewish leaders like Marvin Schick, a former COLPA
leader who had served as John Lindsay’s liaison to Jewish communities in New York, claimed
that Jews remained “uneasy” with NYCHA’s argument that the Seward Park Extension houses
needed to accept a certain number of whites to remain integrated. This action seemed to mimic
the very quotas Jewish organizations had routinely opposed.115 In a separate editorial for The
Jewish Press, Schick also framed Puerto Rican claims in Seward Park as a normal function of
“interest group activity” and argued that “Puerto Ricans have every right, in a sense they have an
obligation, to demand what they regard best for Puerto Ricans.”116
Overall, however, Jewish writers and leaders on the Lower East Side supported the
Jewish transfers. Both the mainstream press and NYCHA officials conceded that local religious
and political leaders had pressured the agency to reserve a set amount of Extension apartments
Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, Hunter College Silberman School of Social Work (New York, NY) (hereafter Centro). 113 Taylor, 73; Turner, 349; “By Laws of the Lower East Side Community Corporation,” Petra Santiago Papers, Box 3, Folder 11, Centro, my emphasis. 114 Gary Rosenblatt, “Who’s Entitled? Old East Side Jews or Puerto Ricans Being Displaced?” American Examiner- Jewish Week, June 7-13, 1973. 115 “Mayor Lindsay Appoints Marvin Schick As Assistant to Mayor in Intergroup Relations,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 11, 1970; Cannato, The Ungovernable City, 391; Gary Rosenblatt, “Who’s Entitled? Old East Side Jews or Puerto Ricans Being Displaced?” American Examiner-Jewish Week, June 7-13, 1973. 116 Marvin Schick, “In The City,” The Jewish Press, February 16, 1973. 146
for elderly Jewish residents in the neighborhood.117 Other housing groups made similar claims at the time, blaming NYCHA officials for “giving in pressure from Jewish residents along Grand
Street who want to keep the area Jewish.”118
Publicly, Orthodox leaders framed the transfers as a litmus test for Jews’ commitment to
retaining the Lower East Side as a “Jewish” neighborhood. Despite his earlier comments, Marvin
Schick supported the Orthodox claims in the Seward Park Extension because “the Lower East
Side was the historic Jewish neighborhood for American Jewry” and criticized Jewish leaders for ignoring the neighborhood’s “remnant of Jewry.”119 The Jewish Press made a similar claim, praising NYCHA for helping Jews “move back to the Lower East Side” and allowing the neighborhood to “retain even a fraction of that character.”120 An anonymous letter to The Jewish
Press more pointedly argued that Puerto Ricans “threatened” Jews from living in the Extension apartments, a “haven for Jews presently living in dangerous areas of the Lower East Side.”121
Supporting NYCHA made particular sense given the Chairman Simeon Golar’s statements on
the Otero case. In a 1972 affidavit, Golar argued that the courts had to “take judicial notice of the
historic Jewish character of the Lower East Side” and approve the Jewish transfers into the
Seward Park Extension.122 These arguments sidestepped the legal dimensions of the case and
argued that Jews possessed a natural right to Lower East Side space.
In addition, Orthodox leaders supported these claims by ascribing certain characteristics
to the old Jewish Lower East Side. In one public address, Rabbi Louis Bernstein, head of the
117 Richard Schwartz, “Golar Answers Critics,” New York Post, April 3, 1972, NYCHAP, Box 0059B3, Folder 57, LWA; Turner, 150-51; “Golar Denies ‘Jewish Pressure’ Won Apartments,” Manhattan Tribune, April 29, 1972, NYCHAP, Box 0059B3, Folder 57, LWA. 118 “Public Housing Ethnic Dispute,” New York Voice, April 28, 1972, NYCHAP, Box 0059B3, Folder 57, LWA. 119 Marvin Schick, “In The City,” The Jewish Press, February 16, 1973. 120 “A Federal Judge’s Decision and the Jews,” The Jewish Press, June 9, 1972. 121 A Lower East Side Resident, “Puerto Ricans Demand Jewish Apartments,” The Jewish Press, May 26, 1972. 122 Otero, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., Simeon Golar Affidavit, NYCHAP, Box 0066E7, Folder 7, LWA. 147
Rabbinical Council of America, suggested that immigrant Jews had immersed themselves in a
“melting pot of all ethnic groups who have managed to live in harmony” and told his audience
that “we cannot allow the balance to be tipped.”123 The statement painted Puerto Ricans, despite their legally sound claims, as disruptive forces that would overturn the Lower East Side’s racial diversity and accompanying values of social tolerance. COLPA’s appeal of the Lasker ruling made the same case, calling older Jews on the Lower East Side, despite their repeated conflicts with Puerto Ricans in the area, a “model for integrated living for the entire country.”124 The title
of another article in The Jewish Press, “City to Appeal Ruling Barring Orthodox Jews in
Housing,” suggested that Jews, not Puerto Ricans, represented aggrieved victims of housing
discrimination in the Seward Park Extension. Protestors who held signs telling city officials to
provide a “Fair Shake” for Lower East Side Jews possessed a similar mentality.125
Orthodox writers heightened these arguments by comparing the Lower East Side to
Ocean Hill-Brownsville. Addressing the aforementioned protest, one Jewish leader implored the crowd not to “allow the cradle of American Jewry to become another Brownsville” at the hands of “so called anti-poverty organizations such as Mobilization for Youth Legal Services.”126 This
connection between Brownsville and the Lower East Side made sense. Brownsville, like the
Lower East Side, had once been a large working class Jewish neighborhood, but became a
ubiquitous symbol of urban decline and disinvestment by the 1970s.127 While scholars such as
Wendell Pritchett attribute this decay to specific housing policies, others blamed the poor
123 “March on Federal Court House Demanding Fair Housing For Jewish Elderly in Seward Park Extension,” East Side News, February 23, 1973. 124 Gary Rosenblatt, “Who’s Entitled? Old East Side Jews or Puerto Ricans Being Displaced?” American Examiner- Jewish Week, June 7-13, 1973. 125 “City to Appeal Ruling Barring Orthodox Jews,” The Jewish Press, February 23, 1973. 126 “March on Federal Court House Demanding Fair Housing for Jewish Elderly in Seward Park Extension,” East Side News, February 23, 1973. 127 Whites comprised roughly 85 percent of Brownsville in 1940, but only about 4 percent of the neighborhood by 1970. See Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn, 1, 149. 148
themselves. Jewish writers reinforced this position by reimagining both the Lower East Side and
Brownsville as idyllic neighborhoods with traditional families. S. Elly Rosen, the head of the
Association of Jewish Anti-Poverty Workers, argued that the Jews who had moved from the
Lower East Side to Brownsville at the turn of the century had infused the latter with “open
markets,” “baby carriages,” and “busy mothers,” and shielded youth from “the major evil of the
city - juvenile delinquency.” However, Rosen lamented that Brownsville had become the center
of “racial conflict” and “burning, looting, [and] riots” by the 1970s. Rosen eliminated any doubt
as to who, or what, he blamed for this change when he declared that “the Brownsville
community has changed colors,” resulting in a “Yuden Rein,” a Nazi term for making an area
“free of Jews.”128
Locally, the United Jewish Council of the East Side (UJC) became the most vocal
proponent of this position. Formed in 1971, the agency advertised itself as a “multi-service
center” catering to all Lower East Siders, “the elderly, poverty stricken, youth, or immigrant.”129
In truth, the agency focused almost exclusively on the area’s elderly Jewish poor. UJC programs
included young adult-senior citizen mentoring initiatives, CPR training, free medical care,
“senior citizens’ lunch clubs,” and nursing home surveys.130According to the agency, these programs provided “revolutionary” social services that connected “agencies and clients through crisis intervention and preventative treatment” and filled an important void in the neighborhood’s social service sector.131
128 S. Elly Rosen, “The Jewish Neighborhoods - Aftermath,” The Jewish Press, June 9, 1972. 129 UJC, “A Community Based Social Service Delivery Network: A Profile,” Ed Koch Papers (hereafter EKP), Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, United Jewish Council of the East Side, Municipal Archives (New York, NY) (hereafter MA). 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid. The UJC formed just as Jewish leaders began lobbying federal officials for more antipoverty funding; “Probe Proves Charges Poor Jews Not Getting Fair Share in Anti-Poverty Programs,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, August 13, 1971. For details on how this affected UJC operations, see “Anti-Poverty Agency to Appoint Jewish 149
The UJC believed that these programs would help erode elderly Jews’ social isolation and low morale. The agency noted that the “basic social and morphological changes that have taken place in the Lower East Side” had surrounded elderly Jews with those possessing a
“difference in age, language, and cultural customs” and “younger families of varied cultural and
ethnic backgrounds.”132 The report implicitly contrasted the two groups of neighbors, blaming
feelings of “despair, loneliness and abandonment” among elderly residents on the “transiency” of
the new arrivals.133 Ironically, UJC reports also attributed the poor condition of the
neighborhood’s elderly populace to “forced relocation” due to urban renewal while failing to
mention how these programs affected Puerto Ricans.134
Despite this statement, the agency opposed public housing in the Seward Park Extension
because it assumed that Puerto Ricans, and not Jews, would comprise most of the houses’ new
residents. And despite its concern for the elderly poor, the UJC represented Grand Street’s middle-class interests. The agency sat across from the Hillman Houses and possessed a leadership that lived in the Grand Street co-ops.135 Municipal reports regularly referred to local
conflicts over the Seward Park Extension conflict as one between “the Hispanic, predominantly
low income population” and the “Jewish, predominantly moderate income population
represented by the United Jewish Council (U.J.C.).”136 Other newspaper reports similarly noted
Board Members,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 9, 1971; “Poor Jews in City Get Poverty Aid,” The New York Times, February 8, 1973. 132 Data on Elderly Poor on the Lower East Side, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, United Jewish Council of the East Side, MA; UJC, “A Community Based Social Service Delivery Network: A Profile,” EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, United Jewish Council of the East Side, MA. 133 UJC, “A Community Based Social Service Delivery Network: A Profile,” EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, United Jewish Council of the East Side, MA. 134 Ibid. 135 Turner, 152. 136 Seward Park Background Report, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, Seward Park, MA, my emphasis. 150
that the agency opposed low-income housing because it would “endanger the stability of the middle-income, mostly Jewish cooperative buildings south of Grand Street.”137 Tito Delgado, a
tenant organizer for MCH who was born in the Seward Park Extension, similarly believed that
these local conflicts broke along class lines. Delgado argued that urban renewal pitted “the
people at the Amalgamated and Hillman” against “everybody else” and believed that the UJC
helped build an “invisible wall” between the Grand Street co-ops and “the rest of the community.”138 These statements overrode poor Jews’ and Puerto Ricans’ overlapping economic
interests. While both groups might have benefited from public housing, the UJC’s firm stance against it on behalf of the neighborhood’s Jewish middle-class exacerbated Jewish-Puerto Rican conflict and undercut the potential for progressive, interracial coalition building.
Commercializing the Seward Park Extension
In 1974, lawyers working the Otero case, wary of additional court proceedings, hashed out a short-term compromise over the rental policy in the Seward Park Extension.139 The deal
reaffirmed the right of former site tenants to occupy the 161 apartment units already rented out
by NYCHA. The agency would then distribute 197 units (minus two apartments for housing
employees) using a fixed quota. Puerto Ricans would occupy 60 percent, and whites 40 percent,
of Seward Park’s new apartment units, a proportion that roughly matched the racial distribution
on the Extension site.140 Under the agreement, Jews would obtain about 120 apartments.141 In
addition, the Grand Street Guild, a housing bureau for the nearby St. Mary’s Roman Catholic
137 Turner, 242. 138 Tito Delgado, interviewed by Kara Becker, Seward Park Oral History Project, February 27, 2008. 139 John Darnton, “Ethnic Battle on Selecting Tenants Apparently Over,” The New York Times, February 11, 1974; Turner, 227. 140 Owen Moritz “Hispanics, Whites OK a Compromise for Seward Park,” New York Daily News, February 11, 1974. 141 “Signed on E. Side Housing Project,” The Jewish Press, March 1, 1974. 151
Church, promised to rent 75 percent of 160 of its unrented low-income apartments to former
Extension residents.142 According to some estimates, this ratio meant that Puerto Ricans would attain at least 121 of the Guild’s apartments.143 In a joint statement, lawyers for both sides of the case praised the compromise as a sign that “the most volatile issue of our time -- racial integration -- can be met squarely and resolved openly by those who love our city.”144
However, the compromise did not address the fate of the remaining Seward Park
Extension land and failed to mollify the larger political conflicts between Jewish and Puerto
Rican groups in the neighborhood. The Lower East Side Joint Planning Council (JPC), an interracial organization comprised of nearly two-dozen local service agencies, became the chief advocate for more low-cost housing on the Seward Park Extension.145 By the mid-1970s, the JPC had secured guarantees from the Housing and Development Administration (HDA) that it would provide roughly 900 units of low and middle-income housing within the Extension area. In 1974 and 1975, a member of the JPC, the Pueblo Nuevo Housing Corporation, also presented plans to construct a new public housing complex north of the Seward Park Extension.146
The UJC fought these proposals and worked fiercely behind the scenes to redevelop the area surrounding the Grand Street co-ops.147 In June 1978, the UJC wrote the Commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), formerly the HDA, asking it to make the agency the sole sponsor of an “international mall” on a plot of land two blocks east
142 Peter Fretberg, “Reach Compromise in Housing Dispute,” New York Post, February 9, 1974, NYCHAP, 0090A2, Folder 7, LWA; John Darnton, “Ethnic Battle on Selecting Tenants Apparently Over,” The New York Times, February 11, 1974. 143 John Darnton, “Ethnic Battle on Selecting Tenants Apparently Over,” The New York Times, February 11, 1974. 144 Owen Moritz “Hispanics, Whites OK a Compromise for Seward Park,” New York Daily News, February 11, 1974. 145 Turner, 145-49. 146 Ibid., 238-240. 147 Jolie B. Hammer to John LoCicero, “Seward Park Urban Renewal Area,” EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, Seward Park, MA; Turner, 265-66. 152
of the Extension’s public houses.148 The UJC believed that the mall would provide new jobs for
local residents and help prevent the Lower East Side from becoming a “low-income ghetto.”149
Echoing its earlier statements, the UJC suggested that the mall would inject social harmony and
an older sense of “community” into the Lower East Side. In so doing, the UJC conjoined two
competing ideas — one claiming that the mall would upgrade and modernize the area, and
another claiming that the mall would allow an allegedly older and more historic set of values to
reemerge in the neighborhood. In one report, the UJC looked back to the early 1800s, when the
area “stood as a symbol for all Americans” and became “the haven for those seeking an
alternative to oppression…the Jews, Italians, German, and Irish.”150 Despite growing Jewish-
Puerto Rican conflict, the report then claimed that a similar “melting pot” of Jewish, black,
Puerto Rican residents existed in the 1970s, living “side by side, working together for
improvement and change.”151 As the report described the mall’s economic benefits, including
increased private investment and tax revenue, it also claimed that the new structure would
“become a focal point for community pride” and serve as “a symbol of the diverse ethnic cultures of the Lower East Side.”152 This public display of diversity, combined with the plan’s
financial benefits, would help “reaffirm the faith, spirit, and vitality all New Yorkers and
148 Harold Jacob to Ed Koch, June 27, 1978, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, United Jewish Council of the East Side, MA; Map of Seward Park Extension site, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, Seward Park, MA. 149 Harold Jacob to Ed Koch, June 27, 1978, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, United Jewish Council of the East Side, MA; Harold Jacob to Ed Koch, October 25, 1979, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, United Jewish Council of the East Side, MA. 150 UJC, “Economic Development and Restoration on the Lower East Side,” EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, United Jewish Council of the East Side, MA. 151 Ibid. 152 Ibid.; Harold Jacob to Nathan Leventhal, June 20, 1978, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, United Jewish Council of the East Side, MA. 153
Americans have for this area.”153 At best, this argument delegitimized claims for affordable housing and masked the agency’s deeper economic interest in the plan. At worst, as Esther Rand noted, the plan possessed an “implicit racism” and represented part of a “program of discrimination” against the area’s Puerto Rican residents.154
In the late 1970s, the Koch administration supported the UJC’s vision. Koch’s support for the UJC stemmed from several factors, including his ethnic coalition and fiscal policies in the late 70s. In 1977, the year Koch became mayor, the Democratic primaries featured three Jewish candidates, the incumbent Abe Beame, Bella Abzug, and Koch, an Italian candidate, Mario
Cuomo, a Puerto Rican candidate, Herman Badillo, and a black candidate, Manhattan Borough
President Percy Sutton.155 In the end, Koch earned 19.8 percent of the vote, while Cuomo and
Beame fell slightly behind at 18.7 percent and 18 percent respectively. Koch then defeated
Cuomo in both a runoff and general election.156
Koch owed his 1977 victory to a broad black, Latino, and Jewish coalition. At the time,
Koch remained less well-known than both of his Jewish rivals, Beame and Abzug. As noted in the previous chapter, Beame received substantial Jewish support in 1973. Four years later, he earned the endorsements of the ILGWU and UFT, remained popular with Brooklyn’s white ethnic voters, and continued to frame himself as the “first Jewish mayor in New York history.”157 On the other hand, Koch, the son of Eastern European garment workers, remained uninformed about the central tenets of Judaism when his term began, admitted in one interview
153 UJC, “Economic Development and Restoration on the Lower East Side,” EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, United Jewish Council of the East Side, MA. 154 Esther Rand to Ed Koch, March 21, 1979, MCHP, Box 9, Rand, Esther, TL. 155 McNickle, To Be Mayor, 260-61. 156 Jonathan Soffer, Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 125, 142. 157 Ibid., 126-27; Asher Arian, Arthur S. Goldberg, John H. Mollenkopf, and Edward T. Rogowsky, Changing New York City Politics (New York: Routledge, 1991), 25; McNickle, To Be Mayor, 262. 154
that he had “never been a Jewish activist,” and claimed that many of his own constituents did not
even know his religious background.158 To the degree that voters did know Koch, many
considered him “ultraliberal” based on his ties to the Village Independent Democrats (VID), one
of the city’s predominant Reform Democratic groups, and his positions on gay rights, abortion,
and divorce, all of which put him at odds with Orthodox and, to a lesser extent, non-Orthodox outer-borough Jews.159 In the 1960s, Koch also became involved in civil rights issues. He
claimed to support “militancy in the struggle for equal rights in housing, education, and
employment,” backed busing proposals in Greenwich Village, and helped Councilman Ted
Weiss draft his Civilian Complaint Review Board bill in 1964.160 Finally, Koch’s pragmatic political appointments also increased his support among black and Puerto Rican voters. During the 1977 campaign, he promised to appoint “more blacks than the Lindsay and Beame administration combined,” offered Herman Badillo a Deputy Mayor position, and selected Basil
Paterson, a former New York Secretary of State, as the administration’s labor liaison.161 Koch
also courted the African- American vote by promising to soften his denunciations of welfare and
save Sydenham Hospital, the nation’s first private integrated hospital, from looming budget cuts
due to the city’s fiscal crisis.162
However, the Jewish vote remained the most important component of Koch’s coalition.
In the Democratic primaries, Jews comprised slightly over one-half of Koch’s votes and he enjoyed strong support within the Brooklyn assembly districts that went for Abe Beame.163
158 Soffer, 83-84; Ed Koch, interviewed by Ed Edwin, Notable New Yorkers, Columbia University Oral History Research Office, Interview #6, December 26, 1975, 180. For online access, see http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/nny/koche/introduction.html. 159 McNickle, To Be Mayor, 257-58, 263; Soffer 14-15, 30-35, 45-46. 160 Soffer, 62. For specific examples of Koch’s civil rights activism in the South, see Soffer, 50-51, 61-62, 64-65. 161 Ibid., 137; Arian et al., 24, 27-29; McNickle, To Be Mayor, 275. 162 Soffer, 137. 163 McNickle, To Be Mayor, 267. 155
During the runoff with Cuomo, Koch also expanded this outer-borough base by earning the support of key Regular Democratic officials in Brooklyn and Queens.164 During the runoff, Koch
won the Jewish areas of Sheepshead Bay, Canarsie, and Forest Hills and earned over 75 percent
of the city’s registered Jewish Democratic vote, while still carrying most of the assembly
districts held by Sutton and Badillo.165
Koch’s strong Jewish support stemmed largely from his actions during a major housing
controversy in 1971. That year, the Lindsay administration planned to build three public housing
projects in Forest Hills, a middle-class Jewish neighborhood. The plan represented a part of
Lindsay’s larger goal to create thirteen new “scatter-site” projects, comprised of “small” and
“unobstrusive” low-income complexes in middle-class neighborhoods. Lindsay believed that the
plan would slowly integrate neighborhoods by class and race and elevate the living conditions of
New York’s nonwhite poor. Initially, Lindsay targeted Corona, a heavily Italian community, as
one of the first sites for the new low-cost housing. However, local resistance led the
administration to move the new complexes to Forest Hills. Under the proposal, the
administration would construct three, twenty-four story low-income apartment buildings in the
neighborhood. The new project would hold a total of 840 residents.166
While some Jewish groups backed the proposal, the plan garnered negative coverage in
the Jewish press.167 Some articles suggested that goods and services in middle-income
neighborhoods would out-price low-income families and inflate welfare costs.168 Other Jewish
164 Ibid., 267-68; Soffer, 134-35. 165 Soffer, 134-35; Arian et al., 25; McNickle, To Be Mayor, 269. 166 Cannato, 505-08; Soffer, 109. 167 For examples of support, see Isidor Chein, “Forest Hills: Some Further Observations,” Congress Bi-Weekly, AJCP, Box C61, Scatter-Site Housing - Forest Hills, AJA; 167 “New York Federation of Reform Synagogues Statement on Forest Hills Public Housing Project,” AJCP, Box C61, Scatter-Site Housing - Forest Hills, AJA. 168 “An ‘Issur’ Against the Forest Hills Project,” The Jewish Press, January 14, 1972; “Let’s Get the Forest Hills Picture Straight,” The Jewish Press, January 21, 1972. 156
newspapers misleadingly argued that low-income neighborhoods represented a form of “cultural
pluralism.” Defining cultural pluralism as “the right to be different” and the “needs, values, and
tastes” of “religious, racial, social, economic, and political groups,” The Jewish Times paralleled
the “Little Chinatowns, Italys, Polands, [and] Germanys” to poor New York neighborhoods,
implying that some individuals preferred to live there. According to the author, scatter-site housing in Forest Hills violated these principles and thus lacked “democratic value,” while also depressing the neighborhood economy and requiring residents to sacrifice their own “freedom to move up the economic ladder.”169 An article in The Village Voice echoed this idea that
neighborhoods formed as a direct result of personal choice. According to the author, people
living in middle-class neighborhoods “aren’t better off because the area is nicer. They’re better
off because they made the area nicer.”170 This statement contrasted Lindsay’s view that more
upscale and middle-class neighborhoods could shape the economic prospects and social mobility of the city’s low-income residents.
Some Jewish leaders also framed the Forest Hills conflict in purely racial terms. The
Jewish Post and Opinion called the Forest Hills controversy the “biggest Jewish fight in years”
and claimed that it had fomented “the largest coalition of Jews to take a stand on an issue
probably since Zionism was winning over U.S. Jewry.” As in Seward Park, Orthodox leaders
viewed the proposal as a deliberate attack on a Jewish neighborhood. The leader of Agudath
Israel believed the plan would crush “a well-knit Jewish community which has...built many cultural and educational institutions to serve its local needs.”171 Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the
169 Philip Perlmutter, “Bluntly Speaking,” The Jewish Times, December 30, 1971, AJC Papers, Box C61, Scatter- Site Housing - Forest Hills, AJA. 170 Cannato, 509. 171 “Fight of Queens Jews Gains Momentum,” The Jewish Post and Opinion, January 7, 1972, AJC Papers, Box C61, Scatter-Site Housing - Forest Hills, AJA. 157
President of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, wrote President
Nixon that the proposal had “flagrantly and arbitrarily” violated “Jewish minority rights in the process of helping other minorities.”172 Jewish protestors in Forest Hills also held signs reading,
“DOWN WITH ADOLF LINDSAY AND HIS PROJECT.”173 Such messages spoke to the ways in which some Jews, like those involved the Seward Park Extension case, invoked memories of
European anti-Semitism to justify concerns about personal safety in neighborhoods undergoing racial change. In February 1972, Samuel Rabinove, the head of the AJC’s Legal Division, told a leading staffer of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations that building low-income housing in Forest Hills would create “the ‘black festering cities’ you and so many of us dread.”
After Rabinove noted that the “bitterness and desolation of the black poor” led it to mug civilians, attack students, and destroy property, he sympathized with Forest Hills residents who remained unwilling to “sacrifice their own children on the altar of black revenge.”174
Koch’s position on Forest Hills defied simple categorization. On the one hand, he viewed some opponents of the plan as members of the “fanatic right” who had made statements that
“could reasonably be interpreted as rank racism.”175 Koch also believed that the Lindsay administration had to shrink, but not completely eliminate, the Forest Hills project and suggested that those backing the proposal unfairly believed that Jews in the area had to “pay their dues.”176
This position echoed the outrage of other Jewish groups that did not object to public housing in principle, but nevertheless believed that the city placed it disproportionately in Jewish neighborhoods because of Jews’ historic support for civil rights. One 1971 QJCC publication, for
172 “Rabbi Moshe Feinstein Urges Nixon to Halt Forest Hills Bldng.,” The Jewish Press, January 1972. 173 Cannato, 508. 174 Samuel Rabinove to Albert Vorspan, February 22, 1972, AJCP, Box C33, August-Dec, 1971, New York, AJA. 175 Cannato, 508-509; Ed Koch, interviewed by Ed Edwin, Notable New Yorkers, Columbia University Oral History Research Office, Interview #3, December 20, 1975, 88 and Interview #4, December 23, 1975, 100-101. 176 Ed Koch, interviewed by Ed Edwin, Notable New Yorkers, Columbia University Oral History Research Office, Interview 3, December 29, 1975, 89-90. 158
example, called the Forest Hills plan “both purposeful and cynical,” while another local rabbi
accused Mayor Lindsay of viewing the neighborhood as a place to “safely deposit his housing
project” because “Jews are not given to violence: they wouldn’t burn black homes.”177 Finally,
Koch framed scatter-site housing as a policy that would “destroy our middle-class communities,
black or white.”178
However, Koch also justified his skepticism of scatter-site housing on the notion that it
would provoke a “rational fear of increased crime” in Forest Hills.179 In making this case, Koch
made simplistic connections between race and crime that painted criminal behavior as an
inherent feature of poor black communities. In one 1976 interview, Koch flatly characterized
“New York crime, physical assault” as “basically, overwhelmingly nonwhite-committed” and
criticized those who believed that crime resulted from “social conditions.”180 In this same
interview, Koch argued that “80% of those that commit physical assaults who are captured and
are facing jail are nonwhites.”181 Some statistics supported Koch’s statements. Official reports
from the late 1960s indicated that the nation’s violent crime rate had in fact ballooned. By 1971,
similar reports showed that African-Americans comprised nearly two-thirds of those arrested for theft and homicide in the U.S. and a disproportionate number of those charged with murder in
New York City.182 On the Lower East Side, crime rates rose 7 percent between 1967 and 1968, particularly in the neighborhood’s northern, heavily Puerto Rican, sector. A separate report also showed that the murder, rape, and assault rates increased more in this area than in the
177 QJCC Notice, October 26, 1971, AJCP, Box C61, Scatter-Site Housing - Forest Hills, AJA; Cannato, 511. 178 Cannato, 511. 179 Soffer, 111. 180 Ed Koch, interviewed by Ed Edwin, Notable New Yorkers, Columbia University Oral History Research Office, Interview #3, December 20, 1975, 91-92. 181 Ibid. 182 Flamm, Law and Order, 125-27; Cannato, 525-27. 159
neighborhood’s two other precincts near Chinatown and the Grand Street co-ops, as well as other
poor neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant.183
Koch, however, accepted an uncomplicated view of these crime rates, viewing crime as
an inherent feature of poor, nonwhite communities and rejecting the social and economic bases
for criminal activity. In his 1976 interview, Koch argued that those who factored “social
conditions” into explanations of crime excused violent and dangerous behavior.184 By dismissing
the external factors that impacted crime rates, Koch suggested that statistics on nonwhite crime
revealed not the substantive differences between poor whites and poor nonwhites, but instead
“black crime,” an almost inherent characteristic of New York’s low-income neighborhoods.
Puerto Rican leaders took issue with Koch’s stance on crime in Forest Hills. In a column
for The Village Voice, Herman Badillo suggested Koch and others had played on white fears of
“black crime” and underestimated the benefits scatter-site housing brought to poor whites and the elderly (also mostly white). Badillo also argued that while poor areas “breed extra problems and higher crime rates,” Koch and others had used faulty crime statistics to “infer that any grouping of black and Puerto Rican families will...bring large amounts of crime.” For Badillo, this argument represented “stereotyping at its worst” and prematurely ruled out the possibility of integrating neighborhoods by race and class.185 The Bronx Representative bolstered this claim by
citing his experience as the Commissioner of the Department of Relocation under Mayor
Wagner. In that position, Badillo designed urban renewal plans that constructed a mix of public
housing apartments, middle-income housing, and new luxury buildings while providing priority
183 Schwartz, Planning for the Lower East Side, 150-51. 184 Ed Koch, interviewed by Ed Edwin, Notable New Yorkers, Columbia University Oral History Research Office, Interview #3, December 20, 1975, 91-92. 185 Herman Badillo, “The Forest Hills Affair: Beyond Stereotypes,” The Village Voice, December 2, 1971. 160
rights to former site tenants.186 While Badillo thought it foolish to replace a slum with only low-
income housing, he believed that mixed housing would allow young slum dwellers to become
economically mobile by countering the idea that “that there was nothing but poor people in the
world.”187 This faith in mixed housing neighborhoods differed drastically from the position that
the Koch administration would take – and the UJC had taken – in the Seward Park Extension.
Like Jewish leaders involved in housing debates on the Lower East Side, Koch also
grounded his opposition to low-income housing in a particular understanding of the American
Jewish experience. In a 1972 public interview, Koch claimed that the conflict in Forest Hills
represented the clash of “two traditions,” one centered around hard work, thrift, and legitimate
enterprise, and the other based upon the notion that “some people, because of historical
circumstances beyond their control, can’t get that better life unless the government assists them,
literally picks them up and moves them there.”188 These statements misjudged the intent of the
scatter-site program, which Mayor Lindsay designed less as a free handout to the urban poor and more as a way to widen its path toward socioeconomic advancement.189 The program hardly
absolved individuals from having to act in the manner Koch described, nor did it overturn the
guiding principles of American capitalism. In all, Koch’s position foreshadowed policymakers’
ability to make arguments against public housing by synthesizing specific economic arguments
with more abstract notions of neighborhood history. By the late 1970s, Koch, the UJC, and other
186 Badillo described his work on the West Side Urban Renewal Project, specifically, which ran from 87th to 97th Street and from Central Park West to Amsterdam Avenue. See Herman Badillo, interviewed by Jonathan Soffer, Oral History #06.002.1.0380, April 23, 1991, LWA. 187 Ibid. 188 Soffer, 109. 189 Mario Cuomo helped forge a compromise in Forest Hills. In 1972, Cuomo met with Lindsay aides and proposed to reduce the number of low-income units on site to 432 and reserve 40 percent of them for senior citizens. Eventually, the city built these units in three twelve-story buildings and turned the complex into a co-op. In 1976, one year after the buildings opened, whites comprised nearly sixty-four percent of all apartments in the new buildings; Soffer, 513-515. 161
Jewish representatives would merge these ideas into a powerful elixir that undercut attempts to
build low-cost housing in the Seward Park Extension. More immediately, the Forest Hills
episode made Koch a household name in New York politics, particularly among outer-borough
Jews perhaps put off by Koch’s reputation as a reform-minded Democrat from lower
Manhattan.190
In the 1980s, these voters became the most important component of Koch’s ethnic
coalition. The new mayor solidified the electoral power of this voting bloc by deliberately
undercutting the possibilities of black-Latino coalition building. While Latino voters backed
Koch more than African-American, but less than white ethnic voters in the 1977 and 1981
primaries, he earned a surprising 70 percent of the Latino vote in the 1985 primaries. This
support stemmed from several sources: Koch’s ability to forge ties with Puerto Rican leaders,
black-Latino disagreement on who to nominate to challenge Koch, and the mayor’s suggestion
that Latinos remained “the most deserving of government help” during a 1985 press
conference.191 These actions provided a blueprint for moderate and conservative white leaders to
attract Latino support and undercut multiracial coalitions on the left.192 As Chapter 4 will show,
elected Jewish politicians and more conservative Orthodox groups utilized similar strategies to
squelch black-Latino electoral organizing at this time.
Unlike Latinos, African-Americans steadfastly opposed Koch throughout his mayoralty.
From labelling anti-poverty leaders “poverty pimps” and calling upon Mayor Beame to deploy
190 Cannato, 511-512. 191 When Basil Paterson, a former State Senator and Deputy Mayor, dropped out of the race, Herman Badillo viewed himself as the presumptive challenger. However, a group called Coalition for a Just New York endorsed Herman Farrell, a black assemblyman from Harlem, instead. Some Latino leaders viewed this move as a strategic attempt by Harlem’s black power brokers to suppress Latino political power. For a longer explanation of this event, see Opie, Upsetting the Apple Cart, 161-168. 192 John Mollenkopf, A Phoenix in the Ashes: The Rise and Fall of the Koch Coalition in New York City Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 107, 112, 116-17, 120-21; Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement, 238-39. 162
the National Guard in response to looting in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant during the city’s
1977 blackout, Koch made a series of comments and policy decisions that alienated the black
vote.193 Perhaps most notably, he closed Sydenham Hospital in 1979, breaking a campaign
promise to black leaders and instigating what would become, in his words, his biggest “racial
controversy.” While closing the hospital had some fiscal and administrative merits, Harlem
residents viewed the decision as an unnecessary attack on a historic Harlem institution staffed heavily by black doctors and physicians.194
African-Americans also criticized Koch’s stance on policy brutality. In 1983, evidence
suggested that six police officers had beaten and strangled Michael Stewart, a 25-year-old
African-American artist who had drawn graffiti inside a New York subway station. While the
officers claimed that Stewart resisted arrest, several witnesses claimed to have seen the beating and Stewart’s causes of death, a spinal cord injury, contradicted the medical examiner’s testimony that the suspect had died of cardiac arrest. In the end, a jury acquitted the six officers of any wrongdoing.195 Despite the well-publicized event, Koch attempted to forge a middle- ground on police brutality during 1983 hearings on the issue held by Representative John
Conyers (D-Michigan). While the mayor acknowledged that police officers sometimes used unnecessary force, he denied that they did so disproportionately, and more often, against black and Latino residents. The statement contradicted hours of testimony, drew the ire of notable
African-American congressmen Charles Rangel and Major Owens, and seemed to reinforce the mayor’s disregard for African-American concerns.196 These actions reaffirmed Koch’s declining
black support in the 1980s. In the 1981 primaries, Koch, running on a Democratic-Republican
193 Soffer, 8; McNickle, To Be Mayor, 263-64. 194 Soffer, 190-93, 195-96. 195 Ibid., 340-42. 196 Sam Roberts, “Koch Defends Police at Hearing on Brutality,” The New York Times, November 29, 1983. 163
ticket, lost African-American assembly districts by a 2:1 margin and earned only 37 percent of the vote in districts that backed Percy Sutton in 1977. As the mayor’s support among blacks declined, he earned stronger backing from Catholic voters and the white ethnics who lived in districts that went for Abe Beame in 1977. In the 1981 general election, Koch went on to win white districts by at least a 10:1 margin.197
In addition, Koch’s support for the UJC mall proposal aligned with his overall response to the city’s economic downturn in the 1970s. By 1975, New York had amassed an “operating deficit” of three billion dollars. This debt, financed mostly by both long and short-term bonds and exacerbated by a shrinking job and tax base, quickened the city’s economic decline.198
Eventually, financial institutions refused to back municipal bonds unless city officials, with significant oversight from state and federal boards, balanced the city’s budget.199 To resuscitate the New York economy, officials pledged to cut social spending and welfare costs, even as inflation grew considerably. According to historian William Sites, these actions popularized the notion that the “excessive demands of poor people, municipal workers, racial minorities, and community groups” had led to the city’s fiscal crisis.200
Koch’s and the UJC’s opposition to low-income housing in the Seward Park Extension, however, represented more than a simple budgetary measure. Instead, it foreshadowed a broader reorientation of municipal resources away from the public sector and toward private finance.
This policy did not necessarily mean that the city would spend less; it meant that it would spend more on large commerce and luxury housing. Roger Starr, the former CHPC Executive Director
197 McNickle, To Be Mayor, 279; Arian et al., 31, 37. 198 Martin Shefter, Political Crisis/Fiscal Crisis: The Collapse and Revival of New York City (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 106-08, 112, 115-16. 199 Ibid., 129, 132-34. 200 William Sites, Remaking New York: Primitive Globalization and the Politics of Urban Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 38-39. 164
and head of the HDA, embodied this shift. Starr supported a policy known as “planned
shrinkage,” which argued that the city should disinvest from its poorest neighborhoods and leave
them for complete commercial redevelopment.201 In articles penned for both general and
academic audiences, Starr argued that urban planners should “simply withdraw all housing
construction from certain sections where the disorderly and disorganized families concentrate,
where there is a critical mass of very, very difficult people.”202 In one 1980 interview, Starr suggested that the Koch administration was essentially “following the policy [‘planned shrinkage’], but does not say so overtly because it is politically so unpopular.”203 Koch’s actions
would soon prove Starr correct. The mayor received hefty campaign contributions from
corporate and real estate interests and noted early in his term that the central goal of government
“is to create a climate in which private business can expand in the city to provide jobs and profit.”204 He would accomplish this goal by cutting spending, balancing the budget, and
reducing taxes on big business.205
Koch’s stance on the Seward Park Extension project embodied these fiscal priorities. In
February 1979, Peter Solomon, the Deputy Mayor for Economic Policy and Development,
informed the UJC that the administration would permit the agency to sponsor a new international
mall in the Extension.206 Shortly thereafter, Mayor Koch described his “personal commitment to
the revitalization of the Lower East Side” and claimed to “value deeply the United Jewish
Council’s participation in our efforts to renew and rebuild one of our City’s most historically
201 Turner, 255-56; Bruce Lampert, “Roger Starr, New York Planning Official, Author and Editorial Writer, Is Dead at 83,” The New York Times, September 11, 2001. 202 Sites, Remaking New York, 39. 203 Turner, 256. 204 Shefter, 175, 177. 205 Mollenkopf, A Phoenix in the Ashes, 137-38; Soffer, 155; Shefter, 197. 206 Peter J. Solomon to Harold Jacob, February 2, 1979, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, Seward Park, MA. 165
vital neighborhoods” in a letter to UJC President Heshy Jacob.207 The mayor expressed similar
arguments to other citywide Orthodox groups who had taken an interest in the Seward Park
Extension. In separate letters, the mayor reassured Rabbi Hersh Ginsberg, head of the Union of
Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, that the administration believed the
international mall plan would “improve local employment opportunities and expand retail
development.”208 Koch expressed a similar opinion to The Association of American Rabbis
Survivors of Nazi Persecution. In a letter to Koch, the group argued that new low-income
housing would threaten the Beth Hamedrash Hagodol Synagogue, one of the city’s oldest
Orthodox temples and a living memorial for congregants who lost family members during World
War II.209 In his response, Koch acknowledged that Beth Hamedrash represented a “community
which extends far beyond the physical boundaries of the Lower East Side” and said he wanted to
preserve the synagogue by providing a “lower resident population and density for the site.”210 In
making this argument, Koch, like the UJC, combined a desire for commercial development with
more intangible arguments about Lower East Side Jewish history.
The UJC’s international mall proposal aligned with Koch’s broader pro-development
agenda. In December 1979, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD)
officially approved a plan to redevelop five new Extension area “sites” between Delancey and
207 Ed Koch to Harold Jacob, June 25, 1979, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, Seward Park, MA. 208 Ed Koch to Rabbi Hersh H. Ginsberg, October 10, 1979, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, Seward Park, MA; Ed Koch to Rabbi Hersh H. Ginsberg, August 14, 1979, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, Seward Park, MA. 209 Rabbi A.M. Israel to Ed Koch, July 16, 1979, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, Seward Park, MA. 210 Ed Koch to Rabbi A.M. Israel, August 14, 1979, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, Seward Park, MA. 166
Broome Streets.211 According to the plan, the city would reserve four of the sites for commercial
redevelopment, including two for the mall project. The other site would contain 150 units of
senior citizens housing, sponsored by the Chinatown Planning Council, and another 100 new
units of low-income housing.212 Like the UJC, the HPD described the plan as a way to “improve
local employment opportunities” and bring “new retail development” to the area.213 The plan would need to gain approval from the area’s Community Board, the CPC, and the Board of
Estimate after public hearings.214 Importantly, this new plan resulted from consultation with the
JPC, which had written administration officials in April 1979 with a compromise proposal that
would allow the city to construct the international mall and 150 units of elderly and low-income housing each.215 After reminding Koch in May 1979 that the plan represented a “severe
compromise on our part,” the JPC signed off on the final proposal, which included 100, not 150,
low-income units, in a letter to the Jolie Hammer of the Department of City Planning.216
Despite the JPC’s compromise, however, the UJC and other Orthodox representatives still opposed the plan because it included new low-cost housing. In June 1979, UJC President
Harold Jacob told Mayor Koch that the plan violated the interests of “the Lower East Side community,” one that apparently omitted the neighborhood’s Puerto Rican population. Jacob then argued that since Puerto Ricans resided in Lower East Side public housing, they did not
211 HPD, “Proposed Plan: Seward Park Extension Urban Renewal Area,” June 19, 1979, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, Seward Park, MA. 212 Turner, 276-77. 213 HPD, “Proposed Plan: Seward Park Extension Urban Renewal Area,” June 19, 1979, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, Seward Park, MA. 214 Ibid., After a 1974 referendum, New York City created fifty-nine new Community Boards. Each board consisted of fifty people. Boards could hold public hearings on urban renewal plans and then offer recommendations to the City Planning Commission (CPC) and Board of Estimate, who would also hold public hearings on the plans; Turner, 250-53. 215 Nestor Cortijo to Jolie B. Hammer, April 17, 1979, Miriam Friedlander Papers (hereafter MFP), Box 1411, LES Joint Planning, 1980, LWA. 216 Nestor Cortijo to Ed Koch, May 29, 1979, MFP, Box 1411, LES Joint Planning, 1980, LWA; Nestor Cortijo to Jolie Hammer, June 13, 1979, MFP, Box 1411, LES Joint Planning, LWA.
167
have a “just claim....that the City has failed to provide housing.” Despite its emphasis on
commercial development, the proposal would thus lead the Lower East Side to “the fate of the
South Bronx” and spell the “end of New York’s oldest Jewish community.”217
Several months later, Jacob echoed arguments made in 1965 by housing groups like the
CHPC. In October 1979, the UJC leader told Koch that the city should construct only middle-
income housing in the Extension site and argued that adding 100 additional units of low-cost housing in the area would repeat the “planning errors of the past” and turn the Lower East Side into a “total low-income ghetto.218 In the summer and fall of 1979, the Association of Orthodox
Rabbis head, Rabbi Liebes, also wrote several letters to the administration asking it to
“reconsider the present proposal” because it would “destroy” the Beth Medrash Hagodol
Synagogue and the “surrounding community.”219 In September 1979, Rabbi Hersh Ginsberg of
the Union of Orthodox Rabbis called the final proposal a betrayal to “the Lower East Side
community” and reminded Koch that the “Lower East Side is the birthplace of American
Jewry.”220 In all of these letters, Orthodox Jews made themselves both the true leaders and
members of the Lower East Side “community,” wholly ignoring Puerto Rican claims to
neighborhood space and political authority.
Koch tried to reason with Orthodox leaders. He reminded Jacob and others that “the need
for housing on the Lower East Side is no less compelling today than when the Seward Park
Extension Urban Renewal plan was originally adopted” and that the city only planned to add
217 Harold Jacob to Ed Koch, June 8, 1979, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, Seward Park, MA. 218 Harold Jacob to Ed Koch, October 25, 1979, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, United Jewish Council of the East Side, MA. 219 Rabbi I. Liebes to Herbert Rickman, September 17, 1979, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, Seward Park, MA. 220 Hersh H. Ginsberg to Ed Koch, September 6, 1979, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, Seward Park, MA. 168
100, not 900, new low-income units to the site.221 Koch then reminded Orthodox leaders of the
“varied, competing interests” in the neighborhood and the “needs of the Lower East Side’s
diverse population.”222 These statements mostly embraced the UJC’s pro-development vision,
but disputed the agency’s notion of the true Lower East Side “community.”
As the Board of Estimate hearing approached, the UJC continued its hardline opposition
to public housing. The agency lobbied several Jewish organizations to testify at the proceedings,
including the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, a longstanding UJC ally, and the ADL.
The agency also distributed leaflets informing Grand Street co-op residents to back the agency’s
position because it stood for “jobs for our community, safer streets and the beginning of a
revitalization of our area.”223 At a packed hearing hall, various Jewish groups, including the
National Council of Young Israel and the United Jewish Organization of Brooklyn, backed the
UJC position as a means to create “safer neighborhoods” and preserve the neighborhood’s
Jewish community. At the hearing, one Seward Park co-op resident argued that commercial
development would provide jobs and “get young women off the welfare rolls.” Another Grand
Street resident described the territory as “an oasis in an area of destruction” and a middle-class
hub that had “acted as the bulwark against ever-spreading deterioration surrounding it.”224
In the end, the UJC won out when Andrew Stein, the Manhattan Borough President,
introduced an amendment to delete the low-income housing provision from the proposal.
221 Ed Koch to Hersh H. Ginsberg, October 10, 1979, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, Seward Park, MA. 222 Ibid.; Ed Koch to Harold Jacob, June 25, 1979, EKP, Office of the Mayor, Special Assistant Herbert P. Rickman Subject Office Files, Accession 82-27, Box 5 of 8, Seward Park, MA. 223 The CPC had also held hearings on the proposal a few months earlier, in January and February 1980. In March 1980, the CPC formally approved the plan and sent it to the Board of Estimate; Turner, 297-301, 303. 224 Ibid., 305-06. 169
The amendment passed 9-2. Scholars and writers have offered various reasons as to why the
amendment passed. Despite the fact that the two “no” votes came from the mayor’s office, some
have claimed that Koch brokered a deal with Stein behind the scenes to eliminate the 100 low-
income units.225 One Koch advisor attributed the vote to a collaboration between City
Comptroller, Harrison Goldin, allegedly eager to gain the neighborhood’s Jewish vote, and
Sheldon Silver, a notable Orthodox assemblyman and Grand Street resident.226 Unsurprisingly,
JPC officials supported this conclusion. JPC co-chair Nestor Cortijo, for instance, claimed that “a group of them from the Jewish community met with Stein” and swayed him to delete the final agreement’s low-income housing provision.
Stein denied this charge. In a statement delivered at the Board of Estimate hearing, Stein
countered claims of special collusion with the UJC by noting that “no special interest group can
lay sole claim to any particular area or street in this borough. And, this is particularly true on
Grand Street.” Instead, Stein argued that the Seward Park Extension was a unique vacant land
plot that, located near the Williamsburg Bridge, possessed great potential, for “economic
development.” Characterizing such development as “site specific,” Stein supported low-income
housing only for other parts of the Lower East Side.227 Regardless of the details, the city’s final
redevelopment proposal for the Seward Park Extension did not include a single low-income
apartment.
The Board of Estimate vote also revealed ideological fissures within the Lower East Side
Jewish community. While the UJC continued to link commercial redevelopment with
maintaining Jewish space on the Lower East Side, Frances Goldin and Councilwoman Miriam
225 Ibid., 310-14. 226 Russ Buettner, “They Kept a Lower East Side Lot Vacant For Decades,” The New York Times, March 21, 2014. 227 “Statement by Manhattan Borough President Stein,” April 24, 1980, MFP, Box 1411, LES Joint Planning, 1980, LWA, my emphasis. 170
Friedlander, embodiments of the Jewish Left, claimed that the final vote contradicted, not
reflected, traditional Jewish values. At the Board of Estimate hearing, Goldin argued, to jeers and
boos, that failing to build more low-income housing fostered the emergence of “Warsaw
Ghettos” on the Lower East Side. Friedlander echoed this point in front of a similarly hostile
audience. “Yiddishkeit,” she noted, “is friendship, a philosophy I learned from my grandfather
who was a rabbi [and] a philosophy that should be applied to the Lower East Side.”228 One
Latino JPC leader, Nestor Cortijo, made similar claims. Cortijo, who came to the neighborhood
in 1938, painted ethnic change as a permanent factor of Lower East Side life, pointing
specifically to Chinese writing on the building previously housing The Jewish Daily Forward.
Cortijo then framed the Grand Street establishment as a “small conservative group” undoing
New York’s reputation as a refuge for immigrants.229 In a separate statement, Cortijo more specifically characterized the UJC as people who “know oppression,” but “have no qualms about
practicing it on other folks.”230 In all, Lower East Side housing issues raised larger questions about Jewish history and identity, while also exposing political fissures within the neighborhood’s Jewish community. Indeed, Friedlander and Goldin, and their Puerto Rican allies, linked Jewish history to contemporary politics in a decidedly different way than the UJC
and other Orthodox groups.
In March 1980, The New York Times quoted Edna Lieb, the owner of a small Jewish
delicatessen on Grand Street, for a story on the Seward Park Extension. “If they build more low-
income housing,” Lieb declared, “it will kill the Jewish community here.” Lieb, a forty-nine-
228 Andy Edelstein, “Lower East Side Jews Defeat New Low-Income Housing Plan,” The Jewish Week-American Examiner, May 4, 1980, MFP, Box 1411, LES Joint Planning, 1980, LWA. 229 Nestor Cortijo Statement, April 22, 1980, MFP, Box 1411, LES Joint Planning, 1980, LWA. 230 “Lower East Side Politics of Race,” The Village Voice, May 12, 1980, MFP, Box 1411, LES Joint Planning, 1980, LWA. 171
year-old former concentration camp inmate, compared the proposal to build more public housing
to her experiences in Europe during World War II. “In the past,” Lieb said, “I’ve run away and
run away. I’m not going to run anymore.” For Lieb, the entire future of the Lower East Side depended upon finding a way to “keep the young people and the middle-income people here.”231
These “middle-income people” represented more than an economic category. They represented
the last remaining tie to the Lower East Side’s Jewish past. As one Jewish cab driver wistfully
noted as he saw two Orthodox residents passing through a crowd of Puerto Rican teenagers, “In
those days, we knew that these few blocks belonged to us.”232
This combination of economic interest and cultural memory allowed Jewish leaders, most
notably the UJC, to shape the course of urban renewal in Seward Park. Groups like the UJC
exacerbated the neighborhood’s racial divide and furthered the area’s racial and economic
segregation. Throughout the 1970s, Jewish writers, civic leaders, and elected officials worked to
strengthen Grand Street’s political power and economic imperatives by opposing low-cost
housing in the Seward Park Extension. These representatives supported this position by tapping
into older debates regarding the nonwhite poor, characterizing them as residents who would
destroy the Lower East Side’s social fabric and undermine the area’s economic potential. Jewish
leaders added to these arguments by claiming that Jewish residents, past and present, possessed
superior social and familial values to their new Puerto Rican neighbors and framing the Lower
East Side as an exclusively “Jewish” neighborhood. In so doing, Grand Street undercut Puerto
Rican claims to neighborhood space and reinforced more conservative arguments against
affordable housing.
231 “3 Ethnic Groups Disputing Plans for Lower East Side,” The New York Times, March 12, 1980. 232 Paul Cowan, “Jews Without Money, Revisited,” in Naomi Levine and Martin Hochbaum, eds., Poor Jews: An American Awakening (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1974), 46. 172
Chapter 4 The 1965 Voting Rights Act and Jewish-Puerto Rican Coalition Building in New York City, 1974-1992
In May 1986, The Jewish Monthly reported that Hispanics and Jews had developed a
“hopeful new alliance.” Citing newsletters from the ADL and the AJC, the article posited that
Jewish organizations, motivated by an overarching commitment to building interethnic ties, had
begun to work with Hispanic leaders on a host of issues including housing rehabilitation, school
curriculum, and immigration policy. While the Monthly highlighted some potential obstacles to
this collaboration, it argued that the “Hispanic-Jewish coalition has already produced an effective political partnership.” “A decade from now,” concluded one AJC leader, “many more Hispanic candidates will reach out for Jewish support and vice versa…you will see how many issues
Hispanics and Jews will cooperate on.” The Monthly predicted that Hispanic-Jewish relations might soon become the central framework within which American Jews organized and understood intergroup affairs.1
The Monthly’s claim came at a time when federal authorities, due to the growing activism of Latino groups and the development of affirmative action law, extended new political rights to
Spanish-speaking Americans. For John Skrentny, this process constituted part of a “minority rights revolution,” during which policymakers “created the new category of ‘minority’
Americans and sought to guarantee nondiscrimination by giving positive recognition of group difference.”2 Skrentny argues that the 1964 Civil Rights Act created “institutional homes” (like the Equal Employment Opportunity Office) within which the federal government denoted certain nationalities and races as disadvantaged minorities. The law, Skrentny posits, provided federal
1 Edwin Black, “Hispanics and Jews: A Hopeful New Alliance,” The Jewish Monthly, May 1986, David Dinkins Papers (hereafter DDP), Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 13, Folder 122, LWA. 2 Skrentny, 4. 173
officials with a legal “tool kit” to apply nondiscrimination legislation to other non-black individuals. Latinos represented the first beneficiaries of this development.3 While Skrentny focuses on federal policymaking, the “minority rights revolution” unfolded in local areas as well.
As noted in Chapters 2 and 3, New York’s Southern District Court cited major civil rights legislation – the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1968 Fair Housing Act – to establish new bilingual and housing rights for Puerto Ricans on the Lower East Side. In so doing, the court recognized Spanish-speakers as language minorities entitled to special protection under new civil rights law.
Including Puerto Ricans in the “minority rights revolution,” however, did not produce the
Jewish-Hispanic coalition predicted by the Monthly. By designating Hispanics, but not white ethnics, as minorities, the “minority rights revolution” fostered Jewish-Puerto Rican debates over the scope of civil rights law and the legal categories of race. Starting in the 1970s, Jewish and
Puerto Rican New Yorkers debated whether they deserved special government recognition as politically disenfranchised minorities under the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). Several court cases involving New York’s ability to create electoral districts around distinct ethnic, racial, and religious communities under the VRA – particularly UJO v. Carey (1977) – sparked these debates. This case (and others) paralleled the discrimination faced by Hispanic and African-
American voters, subjected Puerto Ricans to special protection under the VRA, and led Puerto
Ricans to make new claims for increased Latino political representation. These claims focused on creating a new congressional district that would include several Puerto Rican neighborhoods in Queens, Williamsburg, and the Lower East Side.
3 Ibid., 8, 12. 174
Redistricting, however, raised questions about the legal status of Orthodox and Hasidic
Jews who resided near these Puerto Rican communities. Orthodox groups, including COLPA,
rejected judicial decisions that classified Jews as “white” and instead argued that their status as a
unique religious minority entitled them to special protection under the VRA. These arguments
relied on differentiating between the status of black and Puerto Rican voters by framing the latter
as a white ethnic group. This strategy revealed how Jewish representatives could shape racial
categories to fit specific group interests and underscored the growing opposition by both secular
and Orthodox Jewish groups against race-based districting.
Legal debates over the VRA made Jewish-Puerto Rican relations a central feature of New
York congressional politics in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1992, Jewish and Puerto Rican candidates
squared off in the Democratic primaries for the newly formed 12th district, the city’s new tri-
borough Latino district. The contest – which featured Nydia Velázquez, leader of the Department
of Puerto Rican Community Affairs (DPRCA), Elizabeth Colon, a noted Lower East Side civic
leader, and Stephen Solarz, a Jewish Representative serving the country’s largest Jewish, and
specifically Orthodox, district – highlighted Jews’ and Puerto Ricans’ different legal statuses
under the VRA. In all, the contest illustrated the maturation of Latino (particularly Puerto Rican)
electoral activism, the city’s growing black-Latino electoral alliance, and American Jews’
increasingly tenuous relationship with the city’s Puerto Rican electorate.
------
The Voting Rights Act and Redistricting in Brooklyn
The 1965 Voting Rights Act combatted the long history of racial discrimination against
African-Americans at the polls. Unlike earlier laws, such as the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and
1960, the VRA allowed Congress and the courts to more ably enforce the Fifteenth
175
Amendment’s ban on denying someone the right to vote because of race or color. While Section
2 banned voting qualifications such as literacy tests, Sections 4 and 5 prevented states from
implementing subtler procedural changes that could limit black turnout. Section 4b allowed the
Justice Department to monitor states (or smaller political areas) where voting qualifications
existed and less than 50 percent of the voting-age population voted in the 1964 presidential election or had registered to vote as of November 1, 1964. Section 5 required these areas to submit voting procedural changes to the U.S. Attorney General.4 Subsequent judicial rulings
stated that these changes included redistricting plans that reduced the potential electoral power of
racial minorities. While these rulings did not guarantee proportional representation based on
race, they reflected and reinforced racial bloc voting by acknowledging that African-Americans
and whites often elected candidates with dissimilar platforms and agendas.5
These rulings broadened the legal definition of voting discrimination and the
geographical reach of the VRA. Brooklyn, and other parts of the Bronx and Manhattan, came under Section 5 coverage in 1970. That year, amendments to the VRA established a nationwide ban on literacy tests for five years, which overturned the act’s original requirement that non-
English speakers from schools in U.S. territories like Puerto Rico attain at least a sixth-grade education in English to vote. These amendments also required areas with voting qualifications
4 Bernard Grofman, Lisa Handley, and Richard G. Niemi, Minority Representation and the Quest for Voting Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 12-17. 5 In Allen v. State Board of Education (1969) the Supreme Court decided that a Mississippi at-large election plan impeded African-Americans’ ability to elect candidates of their choice and therefore violated Section 5 of the VRA. While the court ruled that the VRA did not permit “members of a protected class” to demand representation directly proportionate to their population, it ruled that “the right to vote can be affected by a dilution of voting power.” Two years later, the Court reaffirmed the VRA’s jurisdiction over districting cases when it ruled, in Perkins v. Matthews (1971), that areas covered by Section 5 could not enlarge their districts without preclearance from the U.S. Attorney General. Two years later, the Supreme Court, citing the Allen case, ruled (1973) that Section 5 covered redistricting plans in Georgia v. the United States (1973). The U.S. Supreme Court had also ruled that vote dilution violated the Fourteenth Amendment in a series of cases both before and after Congress passed the VRA. See Grofman et al., 30- 34, my emphasis. 176
and a sub-50 percent registration rate for eligible voters as of November 1968 to submit any
electoral procedural changes to the U.S. Attorney General.6 As a result of these requirements
parts of Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan, which had low voter turnouts and had maintained
the sixth grade requirement, became covered under Section 5.7 New York challenged this
arrangement in New York State v. United States (1971), claiming that its English-language
literacy tests had not denied citizens the right to vote based on race or color. In 1972, David
Norman, the Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division,
agreed with this claim.8
In November 1973, Stanley Pottinger, the new head of the Civil Rights Division, reopened the case in the District Court of the District of Columbia and, in January 1974, reversed its decision and placed certain parts of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan under Section 5.
This decision required these areas to submit their previous 1972 district lines to the Justice
Department for approval. Shortly thereafter, the NAACP, which had intervened in the case when
Pottinger reopened the proceedings, lobbied the Justice Department to rule that these boundaries had diluted the black and Puerto Rican vote and, as such, violated the VRA.9 In turn, Pottinger
ordered the state legislature to redraw some of the congressional and assembly district lines in
Brooklyn and Manhattan, the first time the Justice Department had made such a move outside the
South.10 Pottinger argued that the 1972 lines had packed African-Americans and Puerto Ricans
6 James Tucker, The Battle Over Bilingual Ballots: Language Minorities and Political Access Under the Voting Rights Act (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2009), 19-20. 7 “Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act,” The United States Department of Justice, accessed June 16, 2016, https://www.justice.gov/crt/section-4-voting-rights-act#formula; Grofman et. al, 19. 8 “Background Memorandum on Application of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to Legislative Reapportionment in New York City, Prepared for Executive Committee Meeting, April 16, 1974, American Jewish Congress Papers (hereafter AJCong), Box 570, Folder 9, American Jewish Historical Society (New York, NY) (hereafter AJHS). 9 Ibid. 10 Stanley Pottinger to George D. Zuckerman, United Jewish Organization of Williamsburgh v. Wilson, Box 96, Folder EDNY 74 CV 877, Accession No. K000-79-0021-64N, NANYC; Lois Waldman, “Williamsburgh, AJCongress, and the Supreme Court, Congress Monthly, AJCong, Box 570, Folder 8, AJHS. 177
into certain Brooklyn Assembly Districts (A.D.s), while dispersing nearby minorities into heavily white districts.11 As a result, the state legislature revised Brooklyn’s district lines in May
1974. To spread the area’s nonwhite population more evenly, the committee transferred blacks and Puerto Ricans out of Bedford Stuyvesant’s 55th and 56th A.D.s into the whiter 57th and 59th
A.D.s.12 These changes gave Brooklyn 7 A.D.s with a nonwhite populace of at least 65 percent.13
The most controversial part of the plan, however, transferred some 57th A.D. Hasidim into the neighboring 56th A.D. In the early 1970s, roughly 45,000 Hasidic Jews lived in the 57th
A.D., mainly within the “Jewish triangle,” a 120-block area just south of the Williamsburg
Bridge.14 After World War II, a large number of Hasidic Jews, mostly from Hungary, settled in this area.15 Hasidim traced their roots back to eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, where a group of Orthodox Jews began to criticize their rabbis for failing to combat anti-Semitism, focusing too much on Talmudic study, and remaining generally disconnected from their followers.16 As they had in Europe, Williamsburg Hasidim organized their social lives around hierarchical and highly self-contained “courts” (or communities).17 Arriving in 1947, the Satmar soon established itself as Williamsburg’s strictest and largest Hasidic sect and appointed rabbinical leaders, subordinate
11 Ibid. 12 The Joint Committee on Reapportionment Redistricting Report, May 27, 1974, United Jewish Organization of Williamsburgh v. Wilson, Box 96, Folder EDNY 74 CV 877, Accession No. K000-79-0021-64N, NANYC. 13 The Joint Committee on Reapportionment Redistricting Report, May 27, 1974, “Appendix K – Criteria for Establishing Ethnic Composition, Kings Assembly,” United Jewish Organization of Williamsburgh v. Wilson, Box 96, Folder EDNY 74 CV 877, Accession No. K000-79-0021-64N, NANYC. 14 The Joint Committee on Reapportionment Redistricting Report, May 27, 1974, United Jewish Organization of Williamsburgh v. Wilson, Box 96, Folder EDNY 74 CV 877, Accession No. K000-79-0021-64N, NANYC; George Kranzler, Hasidic Williamsburg: A Contemporary American Hasidic Community (Northvale: Jason Aronson, Inc.), 9-10. 15 For details about earlier Orthodox settlement, see Kranzler, 5; George Kranzler, “The Jewish Community of Williamsburg Brooklyn, N.Y.: A Study of the Factors and Patterns of Change in the Organization and Structure of a Community in Transition” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1954), 13, 62-65. These residents included Joel Teitelbaum, a Satmar Rebbe who allegedly escaped the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp when Nazi forces began ransoming Jewish prisoners toward the end of the war; Jerome R. Mintz, Hasidic People: A Place in the New World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 27, 30. 16 Mintz, 9-11; Stephen Price, “The Effect of Federal Anti-Poverty Programs and Policies on the Hasidic and Puerto Rican Communities of Williamsburg” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Brandeis University, 1979), 17-18. 17 Mintz, 3, 29-31. 178
to the Rebbe, to oversee community affairs.18 Brooklyn’s 1974 lines threatened to split this population in half. Under the new plan, the new 57th A.D., which included the “Jewish triangle,” would possess roughly 27,000 Jews.19
These new boundaries raised questions about the legal status of blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Hasidic Jews under the VRA. In approving the new lines, Pottinger paralleled the political obstacles faced by blacks and Puerto Ricans and, in so doing, legally classified both as minorities that merited special protection under the VRA. While Pottinger acknowledged that blacks and
Puerto Ricans maintained distinct political agendas, he concluded that the Fifteenth Amendment protected both sets of voters from discrimination.20 He noted that Section 4e, the “Puerto Rican exception” which granted voting rights to non-English speakers, revealed a “congressional concern with Puerto Ricans” and intended to “provide that group with the protection of all the provisions of the Voting Rights Act.”21 Pottinger also invoked the concurring opinions of
Justices Brennan and Black in Oregon v. Mitchell (1970), which upheld Congress’ right to ban literacy tests under the Fifteenth Amendment by noting that they disenfranchised not only blacks, but also Puerto Ricans and other Hispanic voters.22 These considerations led Pottinger to
18 Kranzler, Hasidic Williamsburg 138; Price, 15. 19 “Brooklyn Hasidic Jews Plan Court Testing of Redistricting,” JTA Daily News Bulletin, June 13, 1974, AJCong, Box 570, Folder 10, AJHS. The New York Times estimated slightly lower figures. See Emmanuel Perlmutter, “Hasidic Groups File Suit to Bar Redistricting as ‘Gerrymander,’” The New York Times, June 12, 1974. 20 U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, “Memorandum of Decision,” July 1, 1974, United Jewish Organization of Williamsburgh v. Wilson, Box 96, Folder EDNY 74 CV 877, Accession No. K000-79-0021-64N, NANYC. 21 Tucker, 33; “Public Law 89-110, Voting Rights Act of 1965 Eighty-ninth Congress of the United States of America,” accessed June 16, 2016, http://library.clerk.house.gov/reference-files/PPL_VotingRightsAct_1965.pdf; Sandra Del Valle, Language Rights and the Law in the United States: Finding Our Voices (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd., 2003), 99. Curiously, Pottinger did not mention Katzenbach v. Morgan (1966), which upheld Section 4e. See Carlos R. Soltero, Latinos and American Law: Landmark Supreme Court Cases (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), 51, 54-55. This ruling overturned earlier decisions, in Camacho v. Doe and Camacho v. Rogers (1961) that upheld the English language literacy test. See Tucker, 29, 32-33. 22 U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, “Memorandum of Decision,” July 1, 1974, United Jewish Organization of Williamsburgh v. Wilson, Box 96, Folder EDNY 74 CV 877, Accession No. K000-79-0021-64N, NANYC; Tucker, 24-25. 179
conclude that blacks and Puerto Ricans had “mutual but individually conflicting interests” under
the VRA.23 He also made an opposite claim about white ethnic and Hasidic voters. “In contrast
to the foregoing conclusion regarding Puerto Ricans,” Pottinger noted, “there was nothing
revealed by our review…which indicates that Hasidic Jews or persons of Irish, Polish, or Italian
descent are within the scope of the special protections defined by Congress in the Voting Rights
Act.”24
Orthodox spokesmen objected to this argument. In June 1974, Nathan Lewin and Dennis
Rapps, two head lawyers for COLPA, challenged Pottinger’s ruling. Working as independent
counsel on behalf of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg (UJO), an umbrella
organization formed in 1966 to address Hasidic welfare issues, Rapps and Lewin filed a motion
in the Eastern District Court against the new redistricting plan.25 In UJO v. Wilson (1971), the
lawyers claimed that the new lines divided Hasidim and upheld an illegal 65 percent nonwhite
electoral quota.26
While this argument typified white claims of reverse discrimination, Lewin and Rapps
asserted that the quota violated the rights of a distinct ethnic and religious minority deserving
VRA protection. In court briefs, the lawyers argued that Hasidim, “although white in skin,”
remained “as discriminated against and as victimized by the public at large as any racial minority
has ever been.”27 As evidence, the lawyers noted that, unlike other Orthodox Jews, Hasidim
23 U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, “Memorandum of Decision,” July 1, 1974, United Jewish Organization of Williamsburgh v. Wilson, Box 96, Folder EDNY 74 CV 877, Accession No. K000-79-0021-64N, NANYC. 24 Ibid. 25 “Brooklyn Hasidic Jews Plan Court Testing of Redistricting,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, June 13, 1974; Mintz, 34. 26 United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, Inc., et al., v. Malcolm Wilson, Civil Action No. 74C-877, (Eastern District of New York. 1974), “Plaintiffs’ Motion For Summary Judgment,” United Jewish Organization of Williamsburgh v. Wilson, Box 96, Folder EDNY 74 CV 877, Accession No. K000-79-0021-64N, NANYC. 27 United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, Inc., et al., v. Malcolm Wilson, Civil Action No. 74C-877, “Plaintiffs’ Memorandum in Support of Summary Judgment or Preliminary Injunction,” 2 (Eastern District of New 180
remained wholly committed to “Old World traditions,” wore “hats or skullcaps,” and had “grown
out of the remnants of the most brutal deliberate human extermination known in the history of
man.” In turn, Hasidic voters had developed a “persecution complex” that led to social isolation and a hesitancy to participate in electoral politics.28 For these reasons, the lawyers argued that
Hasidim deserved “equal sympathy and at least as much in the way of affirmative action” as
blacks and Puerto Ricans.29 As such, Rapps and Lewin argued that the state should recognize
Hasidim as a “single community for electoral purposes” and not dilute their political power.30
Other Hasidic commentators similarly equated voting discrimination against African-Americans,
Puerto Ricans, and Jews. One local rabbi, for instance, argued that redistricting would nullify
Hasidic attempts to include Yiddish on city signs and exams. While bilingual reforms aided
“Spanish-speaking minorities,” the rabbi noted, “We are also a disenfranchised minority in need
of help. Have you ever seen the desperation of a frightened Hasid who is lost on the subway and
searching frantically for someone who speaks Yiddish?” he asked.31
Secular Jewish organizations such as the AJCong debated the merits of these Orthodox
claims. In some respects, the differences between Orthodox and secular, more liberal Jews on the
civil rights movement began to erode in the 1970s. Confronting the structures of economic
inequality outside the South through affirmative action, community control, and new integration
mandates exposed black-Jewish class conflict and challenged secular Jewish organizations’
commitment to racial liberalism.32 Some black nationalists who rejected integration as a white
York. 1974), United Jewish Organization of Williamsburgh v. Wilson, Box 96, Folder EDNY 74 CV 877, Accession No. K000-79-0021-64N, NANYC. 28 Ibid., 2-3. 29 Ibid., 11-12. 30 United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, Inc., et al., v. Malcolm Wilson, “Plaintiffs’ Motion For Summary Judgment,” Civil Action No. 74C-877 (Eastern District of New York. 1974), United Jewish Organization of Williamsburgh v. Wilson, Box 96, Folder EDNY 74 CV 877, Accession No. K000-79-0021-64N, NANYC. 31 Gerald F. Lieberman, “Brooklyn Hasidim Fighting Districting,” The New York Times, June 16, 1974. 32 Ibid., 205-06. 181
strategy to co-opt broader black goals also utilized anti-Semitic rhetoric to critique Jewish power
brokers.33 These statements – underscored by divergent views of Israel – led Jewish leaders to
view some elements of black organizing as antithetical to Jewish interests and embrace a
narrower political agenda centered on protecting Jewish identity. This ideological shift
challenged liberal groups to take a united position on affirmative action cases. Though they tried
to distinguish between programs that recruited minority applicants and those that utilized racial
quotas, these groups sometimes differed on precisely how race and racial statistics should factor
into hiring and admissions decisions.34
New York’s 1974 redistricting highlighted these internal debates. Unlike COLPA, the
AJCong argued that the VRA permitted states to draw race-based districts and worried that the
UJO’s claims challenged the entire law at a time when the Congress wanted to “rebuild old
coalitions.”35 Lawyers for the agency’s Commission on Law and Social Action and Urban
Affairs (CLSA) echoed this argument by suggesting that the VRA legalized the new 1974 lines
and comparing them to other affirmative action programs.36 At the same time, CLSA lawyers did
not think that the VRA protected Hasidim as a minority group. If the VRA covered both “racial”
and “religious” groups, the agency noted, a “total unworkable situation” would emerge:
countless ethnic and religious groups would also argue for new districts under the law.37 The
33 Ibid., 220-21, 223-24. 34 Diner, The Jews of the United States, 334-36; Greenberg, 233-34, 236-38. 35 Greenberg, 213. See also Will Maslow to John N. Mitchell, April 20, 1971, AJCong, Box 570, Folder 4, AJHS; Arnold Aronson to Heads of National Organization and Washington Representatives, April 13, 1971, AJCong, Box 570, Folder 4, AJHS; “Background Memorandum on Application of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to Legislative Reapportionment in New York City, Prepared for Executive Committee Meeting, April 16, 1974, AJCong, Box 570, Folder 9, AJHS; “Background Memorandum on Issues Involved in United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, Inc. v. Wilson,” September, 1974, AJCong, Box 570, Box 8, AJHS. 36 “Minutes of the Meeting of the Commission on Law, Social Action and Urban Affairs, American Jewish Congress,” October 22, 1974, AJCong, Box 570, Folder 9, AJHS. 37 CLSA/UA, “Background Memorandum on Race as a Factor in Legislative Apportionment,” AJCong, Box 570, Folder 10, AJHS. 182
CLSA thus believed that the VRA rightly offered special protection to black and Puerto Rican, but not Jewish, voters.
However, other AJCong statements opposed the idea of race-based districting. One agency report on the VRA, for instance, blamed the 1974 lines for supporting the notion that
“blacks can only be represented by blacks, Jews by Jews, etc.”38 The CLSA also issued a
resolution that opposed “the use of race as a factor in establishing legislative districts” and called
the new lines an illegal scheme to have voters “cast their ballots on the basis of ethnic group
identification.”39 These claims revealed the struggles of the AJCong – and liberal Jewish
agencies at large – to take a clear position race-based policies in the 1970s.
Although the Eastern District Court of New York rejected the UJO’s argument that the
1974 boundaries violated Hasidic voting rights, successive UJO challenges reopened the debate
regarding Hasidim’s legal classification under the VRA. In a January 1975 ruling, the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the Eastern District’s ruling by distinguishing blacks
and Puerto Ricans as racial minorities and Hasidic Jews as white religious minorities. Speaking
for the court, Judge James L. Oakes noted that the “judicial perplexity” of the case lay in the fact
that Hasidim had characterized themselves as both “white voters” and members of a distinct
religious minority, the “Hasidic community.”40 As such, Oakes ruled that the UJO could
challenge the new district lines as “white voters,” but not as “Hasidim.” While the judge called
Hasidim a “closely knit community” and “survivors of the Nazi Holocaust,” he asserted that this
38 “Background Memorandum on Issues Involved in United Jewish Organizations, Inc. v. Wilson,” September 1974, AJCong, Box 570, Folder 8, AJHS; “Background Memorandum on Application of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to Legislative Reapportionment in New York City, Prepared for Executive Committee Meeting, April 16, 1974, AJCong, Box 570, Folder 9, AJHS. 39 “Resolution on United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburgh, Inc. v. Wilson,” AJCong, Box 570, Folder 10, AJHS. 40 United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, Inc., et al., v. Malcolm Wilson, 510 F.2d 512, 5973, 5975 (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. New York. 1974), United Jewish Organization of Williamsburgh v. Wilson, Box 96, Folder EDNY 74 CV 877, Accession No. K000-79-0021-64N, NANYC. 183
did not guarantee their right to “community recognition” in a legislative district.41 Echoing the
CLSA’s argument, the court noted that such a ruling would “make reapportionment an
impossible task for any legislature.” Oakes then concluded that Brooklyn’s new lines had
correctly altered previous boundaries that diluted the nonwhite vote and had “run afoul of the
Voting Rights Act.”42
In an important dissent, Judge Marvin Frankel argued that the new boundaries established
unconstitutional racial quotas.43 Like the UJO, Frankel collapsed the distinction between
religious and racial discrimination. While he acknowledged the country’s history of intergroup
conflict, Frankel spoke of the country’s ability to “erase racial stigmatization as the sole test for
selecting leaders and conferring power” by citing the election of a “Catholic president.”44 The judge then argued that the state had arbitrarily combined blacks and Puerto Ricans when counting its “nonwhite” populace. As evidence, Frankel noted that some Puerto Rican spokesmen opposed the new reapportionment scheme because it did not create enough Puerto
Rican districts.45 More importantly, Frankel classified Puerto Ricans as a white ethnic group. Not
only did the 1974 lines encourage proportionate representation along racial and ethnic lines, but
they also failed to distinguish between different types of “white” voters. Oakes’ decision, the
judge noted, meant that German, Italian, Russian, Polish, Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Puerto
Rican residents also deserved their own districts.46 In making this claim, Frankel ignored
41 Ibid., 5988. 42 Ibid., 5990, 5993, 5996-97. 43 As mentioned in Chapter 3, Frankel had previously ruled in favor of Puerto Rican litigants in the Otero case. 44 United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, Inc., et al., v. Malcolm Wilson, 510 F.2d 512, 6010 (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. NY 1974), United Jewish Organization of Williamsburgh v. Wilson, Box 96, Folder EDNY 74 CV 877, Accession No. K000-79-0021-64N, NANYC, my emphasis. 45 Ibid., 6005. 46 Ibid., 6015. 184
Pottinger’s definition of “nonwhite,” explicitly categorizing Puerto Rican voters as white ethnics and thus distinguishing them from their African-American counterparts.47
Frankel’s dissent served as a guide for secular and Orthodox agencies to form a united front against Brooklyn’s redistricting plan. These agencies now framed Hasidim not as a distinct religious minority, but as a class of white voters subject to an illegal racial quota. In two separate amici curiae briefs supporting the UJO’s appeal to the Supreme Court, COLPA and the AJC argued that the 1974 lines contradicted “200 years of tradition in American government” by establishing an illegal, 65 percent black and Puerto Rican quota to encourage the election of a minority legislator.48 COLPA and the AJC also referred to Hasidic residents as “white” by predicting that the new districting plan would foster racial segregation by forcing Hasidim to leave Williamsburg.49 The AJCong, ADL, and JLC reiterated this argument in another amicus brief. While acknowledging controversies regarding the VRA’s coverage of racial and ethnic voters, the agencies did not classify Hasidim as a special religious minority.50 Instead, the
47 Some Puerto Rican spokesmen opposed the 1974 lines because they did not create a new Puerto Rican district. See “Playing Politics in Brooklyn,” El Diario-La Prensa, June 29, 1974 and Luis A. Olmedo to Stanley Pottinger, February 22, 1974, United Jewish Organization of Williamsburgh v. Wilson, Box 96, Folder EDNY 74 CV 877, Accession No. K000-79-0021-64N, NANYC. Other black and Puerto Rican leaders believed that the new districting plan benefited both sets of voters. For Herman Badillo’s support, see Herman Badillo to Stanley Pottinger, March 13, 1974, United Jewish Organization of Williamsburgh v. Wilson, Box 96, Folder EDNY 74 CV 877, Accession No. K000-79-0021-64N, NANYC and Willie Hamilton, “NAACP Court Victory May Tie Up Elections: Decision Ensures More Elected Black Officials,” New York Amsterdam News, January 12, 1974. For the support of black elected officials, see Shirley Chisolm to Stanley Pottinger, March 14, 1974, United Jewish Organization of Williamsburgh v. Wilson, Box 96, Folder EDNY 74 CV 877, Accession No. K000-79-0021-64N, NANYC and Samuel D. Wright to Stanley Pottinger, March 11, 1974, United Jewish Organization of Williamsburgh v. Wilson, Box 96, Folder EDNY 74 CV 877, Accession No. K000-79-0021-64N, NANYC. 48 United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburgh Inc., et al., v. Hugh Carey, et al. 430 U.S. 144, “Brief for the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA) and the American Jewish Committee as Amici Curiae,” 7 (U.S. Supreme Court. October 1975), AJCong, Box 570, Folder 8, AJHS. 49 Ibid., 10 50 United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburgh Inc., et al., v. Hugh Carey, et al., 430 U.S. 144, “Brief of American Jewish Congress, Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’Rith and Jewish Labor Committee, Amici Curiae, in Support of the Petition,” 17 (U.S. Supreme Court. October 1975), AJCong, Box 570, Folder 8, AJHS. 185
organizations posited that the Justice Department misinterpreted the VRA to guarantee
proportional racial representation through an illegal electoral quota.51
Nathan Lewin made similar claims before the Supreme Court. While Lewin previously
painted Hasidim as a distinct religious minority entitled to VRA protection, he now framed them
as white voters subject to an illegal racial quota. Lewin noted that the 1974 lines established
quotas against “this white community in Williamsburgh, which was and is a racial minority in
the district where it resides.”52 He reiterated this claim at oral argument, when pressed by Justice
William Rehnquist. Rehnquist asked Lewin whether it was “the same thing to say that Irish, and
Hasidic Jews…are not protected as a minority and to say that whites as a minority are not
protected.” Lewin responded by admitting, “It is true that the Irish or Italian as an entire group
may not be protected but…a white Irish community in a particular area which ends up being a
minority is protected.”53 This distinction framed Hasidim as a white group and represented a major shift in the Orthodox argument about voting rights.
The U.S. Attorney General’s Office and the Supreme Court countered this claim by
distinguishing between illegal quotas and the race-based districts mandated by the VRA. Justice
Byron White, for example, argued that the VRA required state legislatures to consider racial percentages when redrawing district lines. Solicitor General Robert Bork echoed this argument.
A future Supreme Court nominee whose social conservatism and opposition to parts of the 1964
Civil Rights Act would lead the Senate to reject his nomination in 1987, Bork backed the 1974 boundaries as a natural product of the VRA.54 In a claim that mirrored the CLSA’s argument,
51 Ibid., 7, 13. 52 United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburgh, Inc. v. Carey, 430 U.S. 144, Oral Argument, Oyez, October 6, 1976, accessed July 30th, 2016, https://www.oyez.org/cases/1976/75-104, my emphasis. 53 Ibid., my emphasis. 54 Anthony Lewis, “Question of Judgment,” The New York Times, September 27, 1987; Ethan Bronner, “A Conservative Whose Supreme Court Bid Set the Senate Afire,” The New York Times, December 19, 2012 186
Bork noted, “You cannot do redistricting without having racial considerations in mind, unless
you are willing to forget about the Voting Rights Act of 1965.” 55 Arguing that “race has been
the ‘political issue’ in this nation since it was founded,” Bork posited that colorblind districts
would lead to the “dilution of minority votes.” Bork then concluded that these racial
considerations were inherent to fully enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment.56
The Solicitor General’s comments hinted at the weakness of the UJO’s case. In 1977, the
Supreme Court upheld the new 1974 lines in UJO v. Carey by claiming that Section 5 allowed
states to make “racial considerations” when drawing district lines. This practice, the court
acknowledged, could lead to “deliberately creating or preserving black majorities in particular
districts” or, more broadly, ensuring that the number of districts with a “nonwhite majority”
approximately equal the percentage of nonwhites in a given county.57 The court thus upheld New
York’s decision to set a 65 percent nonwhite population minimum in certain districts to “achieve a nonwhite majority of eligible voters,” asserting that the use of “numerical quotas” did not, in and of themselves, violate the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.” The court also identified
Hasidim as white voters. In his statement affirming the court’s decision, Justice Brennan ruled that while the new district lines divided Hasidic residents, they remained “indirectly ‘protected’ by the remaining white assembly and senate districts within the county.” Brennan addressed the issue more directly later in his decision. The justice noted that the 1974 lines ignored ethnic and religious differences between white voters, creating a “morally undifferentiated group of
55 United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburgh, Inc. v. Carey, 430 U.S. 144, Oral Argument, Oyez, October 6, 1976, accessed July 30th, 2016, https://www.oyez.org/cases/1976/75-104, my emphasis. 56 Ibid., my emphasis. 57 United Jewish Organizations v. Carey, 430 U.S. 144 (U.S. Supreme Court. 1977), Find Law, accessed May 20, 2016. http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/430/144.html. 187
whites.” Though he acknowledged Orthodox objections to this reasoning, Brennan claimed that
the VRA rendered them moot.58
Creating a Puerto Rican District
Around this time, Congress amended, and the Supreme Court interpreted, the VRA in a
way that reinforced the UJO v. Carey (1977) decision. These new developments laid the
groundwork for the New York State Legislature to create a new Puerto Rican district in New
York City. In 1975, Congress passed amendments that strengthened the VRA’s bilingual
provisions by making the five-year nationwide ban on literacy tests (passed in 1970) permanent
and banning the use of English-only election materials in areas where non-English speakers comprised at least 5 percent of voting age population.59 In 1982, Congress amended Section 2 of
the VRA, which banned “voting practices or procedures” that discriminated based on race, color,
or language.60 These amendments allowed courts to find a VRA violation if certain voters had
“less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and
to elect representatives of their choice” based, at least partly, on office-holding statistics.61 The
Senate Judiciary Committee offered the courts additional criteria for finding a Section 2
violation, including “racially polarized voting” patterns, district shapes, and a given area’s
history of discrimination in education and employment.62 In 1986, the Supreme Court upheld
these criteria in Thornburg v. Gingles. Gingles also ruled that new minority districts had to
58 Ibid. 59 Grofman, 20-21. 60 “Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,” The United States Department of Justice, accessed June 16, 2016, https://www.justice.gov/crt/section-2-voting-rights-act#formula. 61 Grofman, 39. 62 “Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,” The United States Department of Justice, accessed June 16, 2016, https://www.justice.gov/crt/section-2-voting-rights-act#formula; Grofman, 40. 188
encompass a “geographically compact” area, possess voters who held a common set of political
beliefs, and routinely saw their “preferred candidate” lose to a challenger backed by whites.63
By the early 1990s, these legal and judicial precedents helped Puerto Ricans demand
additional congressional districts in New York City. By this time, Puerto Ricans comprised
roughly one-half of the city’s Hispanic population, which constituted nearly the same percentage of New York residents (25 percent) as African-Americans.64 However, while four African-
Americans held New York congressional seats at the time, Hispanics held only one, represented
by José Serrano, a Puerto Rican, in the Bronx.65
An opportunity to challenge the city’s congressional boundaries arose in 1992. At that
time, population shifts documented in the 1990 census required the state legislature to reduce
New York’s congressional delegation from 34 to 31 seats.66 However, the legislature, divided by
the Republican State Senate and the Democratic State Assembly, failed to agree on a
redistricting plan.67 In turn, some legislators asked the courts to act. On March 26, 1992, Michael
T. Waring, an upstate Republican who ran an unsuccessful congressional campaign in 1990,
asked a federal court in Rochester to devise new district boundaries.68 In turn, James L. Oakes, the Chief Judge for the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, appointed a three-judge panel to
63 Jack Quinn, Jonathan B. Sallet, and Donald J. Simon, “Congressional Redistricting in the 1990s: The Impact of the 1982 Amendments to the Voting Rights Act,” George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2, Winter 1990, 210-11, Stephen Solarz Papers (hereafter SSP), Box 1328, Voting Rights Act, Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections, Brandeis University (Waltham, MA) (hereafter BU). CHECK. 64 Edward B. Fiske, “Minorities a Majority in New York,” The New York Times, March 22, 1991; Angelo Falcon and Christopher Hanson, Latinos and the Redistricting Process in New York City: An Assessment and Profiles of the New Latino Assembly, State Senate and Congressional Districts (New York: Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, 1992), 23. 65 “Musical Chairs in Congress,” The New York Times, March 23, 1992. 66 Sam Howe Verhovek, “Congressional District Plan Unveiled,” The New York Times, SSP, Box 1084, 1992 Redistricting, BU. 67 Kevin Sack, “Democrats Denounce Albany Republicans’ Congressional Map,” The New York Times, September 18, 1991; Kevin Sack, Ex-Judge Given Albany’s Task for Districting,” The New York Times, May 13, 1992; Kevin Sack, “Lawsuit Takes Redistricting to U.S. Court,” The New York Times, March 27, 1992. 68 Kevin Sack, “Lawsuit Takes Redistricting to U.S. Court,” The New York Times, March 27, 1992. 189
hear the case.69 On the very same day, however, eight Democratic congressmen filed a separate lawsuit with the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn claiming that a state court should redraw state lines out of fear that Republican judges on the federal bench would redistrict to the Republicans’ advantage.70 Shortly thereafter, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF) asked the Eastern District Court to redraw the city’s congressional lines.71 In response, Judge
Oakes consolidated the PRLDEF and Waring cases into PRLDEF v. Gantt (1992) and set a deadline of April 27 for the legislature to come up with a plan.72 When the deadline passed, the
Eastern District appointed Frederick B. Lacey, a former district judge nominated by President
Nixon, to redraw the city’s congressional boundaries.73 Lacey’s plan created two new Hispanic districts in the city – one in Washington Heights and the Bronx, which included mostly
Dominicans; and one encompassing parts of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Lower East Side with a
Puerto Rican majority.74 Puerto Rican leaders praised the Lacey plan and viewed it as a benchmark for all future redistricting proposals in the city.75
Lacey’s plan came under heavy criticism because it threatened several long-time white incumbents, including Chuck Schumer in Brooklyn and Bill Green in Manhattan, as well as New
69 Ibid. 70 Ibid.; Kevin Sack, “Albany Legislators Agree on Plan for Revised Congressional Lines,” The New York Times, June 4, 1992. 71 Kevin Sack, “Ruling Gives Deadline to Albany for Redrawing Districts,” The New York Times, April 8, 1992. 72 Ibid.; “New York Redistricting Cases: the 1990s,” accessed May 25, 2016, http://www.senate.leg.state.mn.us/departments/scr/REDIST/Redsum/nysum.htm. 73 Kevin Sack, Ex-Judge Given Albany’s Task for Districting,” The New York Times, May 13, 1992. 74 Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund et al., v. David Gantt, et al., CV-92-1521, June 3, 1992 Hearing Transcript, 87 (Eastern District of New York. 1992), Puerto Rican Legal Defense et al., v. Gantt et al., Box 63, Folder 92 CV 1521, Accession No. K021-96-0342-NY2, NANYC. 75 Kevin Sack, “Court May Impose Redistricting Plan,” The New York Times, June 12, 1992. For specific statements from Puerto Rican leaders, see Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund et al., v. David Gantt, et al., CV-92-1521, June 3, 1992 Hearing Transcript, 86 (Eastern District of New York. 1992), Puerto Rican Legal Defense et al., v. Gantt et al., Box 63, Folder 92 CV 1521, Accession No. K021-96-0342-NY2, NANYC; Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund et al., v. David Gantt, et al., CV-92-1521, July 9, 1992 Hearing Transcript, 8-9 (Eastern District of New York. 1992), Puerto Rican Legal Defense et al., v. Gantt et al., Box 63, Folder 92 CV 1521, Accession No. K021-96-0342-NY2, NANYC. 190
York’s entire African-American congressional delegation, Edolphus Towns and Major Owens of
Brooklyn, Charles Rangel of upper Manhattan, and Floyd Flake of Queens.76 This opposition
forced the legislature to consider the merits of the alternative state court plan.77 On June 9, 1992,
the legislature formally approved this plan, which preserved more incumbent, and particularly
African-American, districts than the Lacey proposal.78 The state plan, however, created only one
new Latino district, the 12th district, which possessed a roughly 54 percent Hispanic, 18 percent
black, and 12 percent Asian populace.79 As such, 17 Hispanic federal, state, and city officials
held a press conference to criticize the plan two days before the state legislature approved the
new lines.80 Despite this criticism, the Justice Department approved the plan on July 2, 1992.81
The 12th Congressional District and Jewish-Puerto Rican Politics
The creation of the 12th district affected the political standing of several Jewish congressmen and constituencies in Brooklyn, most notably Representative Stephen Solarz and his large Orthodox base. Solarz represented the heavily Jewish 13th district, which covered a
broad swath of Brooklyn that included the Orthodox areas of Williamsburg and Borough Park.
Born in New York City in 1940, Solarz grew up in Midwood, a largely Jewish Brooklyn
community, and attended Brandeis University before enrolling in Columbia’s Public Law and
76 Sam Howe Verhovek, “Congressmen Criticize Judge’s Redistricting,” The New York Times, May 28, 1992; Sam Howe Verhovek, “Congressional District Plan Unveiled,” The New York Times, May 27, 1992; Hugh Hamilton, “Weighing the Downside of the Voting Rights Act,” The City Sun, September 8, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU; Elizabeth Edwardsen, “N.Y.’s Black Congressmen Oppose New Seat for Latinos,” Philadelphia Tribune, June, 19, 1992; J. Zamgba Browne, “NYC’s Black Representatives Blast Redistricting Plan,” New York Amsterdam News, June 20, 1992. 77 Sam Howe Verhovek, “Congressmen Criticize Judge’s Redistricting,” The New York Times, May 28, 1992; Kevin Sack, “Albany Legislators Agree on Plan For Revised Congressional Lines,” The New York Times, June 4, 1992. 78 Sam Howe Verhovek, “New York Court Adds Tangle to Congressional Redistricting,” The New York Times, June 2, 1992; Kevin Sack, “New Districts Are Adopted for Congress,” The New York Times, June 10, 1992. 79 Lindsey Gruson, “Solarz Will Run in District Tailored as a Hispanic Seat,” The New York Times, July 9, 1992; The Institute of Puerto Rican Politics estimates slightly different percentages. See Falcon and Hanson, 159. 80 Sam Howe Verhovek, “Hispanic Officeholders to Oppose Redistricting,” The New York Times, June 7, 1992. 81 Kevin Sack, Redistricting Plans Approved, The New York Times, July 3, 1992. 191
Government program in 1963. In 1966, he worked as a campaign manager for Mel Dubin, an
antiwar candidate challenging incumbent Abraham Multer for a House seat from the city’s 13th
district.82 Although Dubin lost a close race, it provided Solarz with some valuable political
experience. After declining an administrative offer from William Ryan, a congressman
representing the Upper West Side, Solarz decided to run, on his wife’s advice, for a Brooklyn
State Assembly seat.83 Solarz served in the Assembly until 1974, when he ousted Jewish
congressman Bertram Podell, who had been indicted on corruption charges, in the Democratic
primary. Immediately after his election, Solarz joined the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
where he would soon become one of the legislature’s leading foreign policy experts.84
Throughout his nearly two decades in office, white ethnics, and particularly Hasidic and
Orthodox Jews, comprised most of Solarz’s base. Newspaper reports from the early 1980s
suggested that Jews made up roughly 60 percent of the 13th district’s voters and, according to
1987 estimates, Jews represented over 50 percent of the district’s Democratic households.85
Indeed, in the 1980s, the 13th district had the highest number of Jewish constituents (and
Holocaust survivors) of any congressional district in the United States; and Solarz himself called
the 13th district “the most Jewish in the nation, with more Jews than Jerusalem.”86 Given this
breakdown, Solarz understood well that Jewish, particularly Orthodox, voters held the key to his
political fate. Reports penned by Solarz staffers in the mid-1980s called the heavily Orthodox
82 Stephen Solarz, Journeys to War and Peace: A Congressional Memoir (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2011), 1, 3, 5-7. 83 Ibid., 10-11. 84 Ibid., 13-14, 19-22 85 Jane Perlez, “Solarz Plans For a Race to Keep Brooklyn Seat,” The New York Times, January 23, 1982; Mike Lewan to Stephen Solarz, “1987 Voter Registration Figures,” SSP, Box 1350, Election Info, ’87-90 Misc., BU. In his memoir, Solarz estimates that Jews comprised roughly two-thirds of his district; Solarz, 22. 86 Solarz, 22, 36. 192
Borough Park “the most important political segment of the district” and advised the congressman to “target [Hasidic] Williamsburg carefully and comprehensively” in upcoming elections.87
These voters’ political behavior made them even more important to Solarz. The 13th district had a large base of Reagan Democrats – white working class voters alienated by the
Democratic Party’s shift – both perceived and real – toward social liberalism and away from the economic interests of blue-collar voters.88 A 1988 report from the State Board of Elections indicates that Democrats comprised roughly 73 percent of the district’s registered voters.89
However, reports penned by Solarz aides estimated that roughly one-third of all 13th district voters, on average, split their tickets from 1982-1986.90 Most of these ticket-splitters lived in
Bensonhurst, Borough Park, and Williamsburg, working-class Jewish and Catholic neighborhoods that had cast roughly 40 percent of the 13th district votes from 1982-1986.91 For this reason, Solarz staffers called Orthodox voters the “largest potential headache” in the district.92 Reports estimated that over one-half of all the voters in Borough Park split their tickets from 1982-1986 and that Borough Park and Williamsburg backed Reagan in 1984 and George
Bush in 1988.93 Aides recommended that Solarz identify and target these voters – “defecting
87 Untitled memorandum on 13th district neighborhoods and election results, SSP, Box 1350, Election Info. ’87-90 Misc., BU. 88 Ibid. 89 New York State Board of Elections, “1988 Enrollment by Congressional Districts,” SSP, Box 1350, Election Info. ’87-90 Misc., BU. 90 Untitled memorandum on 13th district neighborhoods and election results, SSP, Box 1350, Election Info. ’87-90 Misc., BU. 91 Nearly 40 percent of Bensonhurst’s voters split their tickets at this time and the two Assembly Districts which contained parts of Bensonhurst – the 47th and 49th A.D. – both went for Reagan in 1984. See Untitled memorandum on 13th district neighborhoods and election results, SSP, Box 1350, Election Info. ’87-90 Misc., BU; Mike Lewan to Rabbi Morris Shmidman, January 5, 1987 SSP, Box 1328, BU; Mike Lewan to Stephen Solarz, January 23, 1985, “1984 General Election Results” SSP, Box 1361, “Congressman Solarz General Election Results, BU. 92 Jeremy Rabinovitz to Stephen Solarz, “A Political Blueprint for the 101st Congress,” SSP, Box 1350, Election Info, ’87-90 Misc., BU. 93 Untitled memorandum on 13th district neighborhoods and election results, SSP, Box 1350, Election Info. ’87-90 Misc., BU; Mike Lewan to Stephen Solarz, January 23, 1985, “1984 General Election Results” SSP, Box 1361, “Congressman Solarz General Election Results, BU; For different estimates, see “Presidential – ‘84” Returns by A.D., SSP, Box 1350, Political, BU; Annette Lidawer to Stephen Solarz, “1988 Election Results, February 28, 1989, SSP, Box 1328, Election Results, BU. 193
conservative Democratic voters who have voted Republican in past elections…on ideological
grounds.”94
Solarz’s 1984 contest against Yehuda Levin, an Orthodox rabbi, reinforced this advice. A
former Democrat running as a Republican, Levin considered himself part of a new breed of
Republicans in the mid-1980s who had become disillusioned with the Democratic Party’s
position on social, and to a lesser extent, economic issues. Levin believed that Orthodox Jews
belonged on the front lines of a new Republican coalition comprised of disenchanted Democrats.
He claimed to represent devout Jews who remained untouched by “the urban, assimilationist, and
melting pot culture of America” and critiqued hallmarks of the 1970s women’s rights movement,
such as the Equal Rights Amendment, and access to abortion.95 Claiming to represent
“traditional Jewish views,” Levin alleged that Solarz represented an “extreme” form of liberalism that had given Jews a “black eye.”96 In particular, he pointed to Solarz’s support for
gay rights legislation to suggest that the congressman endorsed a “public policy of perversion” and conspired to undermine the “heterosexual religious community in America.”97 Orthodox
Jews and the Christian right both backed Levin’s 1984 campaign. Levin earned endorsements
from members of the Moral Majority, the American Life Lobby, and also the Boro Park
Community News on the grounds that Solarz had “voted against our basic values in life.”98
94 Untitled memorandum on 13th district neighborhoods and election results, SSP, Box 1350, Election Info. ’87-90 Misc., BU. 95 John Rees, “Rabbi Yehuda Levin: An Exclusive Interview with the Leader of the Pro-Family Forces Who is Challenging Abortionist Radical Congressman Solarz,” The Review of the News, September 5, 1984, SSP, Box 1328, Levin, BU. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid.; For more on Solarz’s support, see Steve Solarz to Fellow Supporters of H.R. 230, The Gay Rights Bill, “Proposed Amendments to the Bill,” SSP, Box 1112, Orthodox and Gay Rights Bill, BU. 98 John Rees, “Rabbi Yehuda Levin: An Exclusive Interview with the Leader of the Pro-Family Forces Who is Challenging Abortionist Radical Congressman Solarz,” The Review of the News, September 5, 1984, SSP, Box 1328, Levin, BU; “We Endorse,” Boro Park Community News, October 31-November 1, 1984, SSP, Box 1328, Levin, BU. 194
While these appeals did not cost Solarz the election, they clearly weakened his Jewish
support. In 1984, Solarz’s backing declined nearly 15 percent from the previous election. While
this decline occurred partly due to increased Republican turnout during a presidential election
year, the congressman lost 72 election precincts, roughly half of which lay in the Orthodox areas
in Williamsburg and Borough Park.99 The congressman’s support dropped precipitously, roughly
36 and 53 percent, respectively, in those neighborhoods.100
These returns led Solarz aides to acknowledge that the congressman had become “out of
sync with the emerging Orthodox electorate.”101 Noting that Levin’s showing would encourage future challenges, Chief of Staff Mike Lewan told Solarz that he needed to rebuild support from
Orthodox voters who believed the congressman had “refused to campaign or spend any money” in their communities and ignored their concerns.102 Lewan reiterated this advice heading into the
1986 election, reminding Solarz that Levin, who had done nothing but “yell about gay rights, pornography, abortion, [and] family issues…while wearing a long coat, yarmulke, and beard,” had reduced the congressman’s Jewish support with “embarrassing ease and little sophistication.”103
As a result, Solarz reinforced his ties to his Orthodox and Hasidic constituents after 1984.
In early 1985, Solarz met with Orthodox and Hasidic representatives from the UJO, the United
Jewish Organizations of Boro Park, and Menachem Lubinsky, the Vice President of Agudath
Israel.104 Advising Solarz on how to improve his “image…in the Orthodox Jewish community,”
99 Mike Lewan to Stephen Solarz, “1984 General Election Results,” January 23, 1985, SSP, Box 1328, BU. 100 Ibid. 101 Mike and Peter to Stephen Solarz, “Ethnic Analysis of Election Districts Lost or Marginal,” January 24, 1985, SSP, Box 1328, BU. 102 Mike Lewan to Stephen Solarz, January 23, 1985, “1984 General Election Results” SSP, Box 1361, “Congressman Solarz General Election Results, BU. 103 Mike Lewan to Stephen Solarz, “Orthodox Strategy for 1986,” October 1, 1985, SSP, Box 1328, BU. 104 “Menachem Lubinsky,” Lubicom Marketing Consulting, accessed July 16, 2016, http://www.lubicom.com/staff. 195
Lubisnky told the congressman to establish closer ties to the Jewish press, emphasize his
international work “on behalf of Jewish causes,” and make more regular appearances before
Hasidic and Orthodox audiences.105 Several months later, Mike Lewan encouraged Solarz to
build a grassroots operation in Williamsburg and Borough Park highlighted by public
appearances with a “Jewish heavyweight” like Elie Wiesel and “afternoon teas” between Nina
Solarz, the congressman’s wife, and Orthodox mothers.106 Lewan also suggested Solarz initiate a
mailing campaign to these neighborhoods with articles that stressed “family and other traditional
values,” build a network of loyal rabbis, and hire a Jewish representative, preferably Hasidic, to
serve as his “eyes and ears” in the district.107 Two months later, Lewan advised Solarz to better
publicize his record of delivering federal grants for yeshivas and sponsoring bills that respected
Jewish religious practices in both federal and military service.108 As a result of these actions,
Solarz increased his Orthodox support, earning endorsements from the UJO and several
Orthodox rabbis, while winning nearly 83 percent of the vote in the Orthodox portions of
Borough Park, and roughly 82 percent of the vote in Hasidic Williamsburg in 1986.109
Given these developments, Solarz understandably fought to retain a sizable Jewish base
when the state legislature moved to redistrict the city’s congressional seats in 1992. In 1991,
Solarz asked his aides to determine which New York City neighborhoods he should target if the
legislature dismantled the 13th district. In June of that year, Solarz aide Annette Lidawer asked
105 Menachem Lubinsky to Stephen Solarz, January 17, 1985, SSP, Box 1328, BU. 106 Mike Lewan to Stephen Solarz, “Orthodox Strategy for 1986,” October 1, 1985, SSP, Box 1328, BU. 107 Ibid. 108 Mike Lewan to Stephen Solarz, “Orthodox Meetings,” December 12, 1985, SSP, Box 1350, Political, BU. 109 These numbers represented an increase of roughly 32 and 44 percent, respectively, from 1984. See Annette Lidawer to Stephen Solarz, “1988 Election Results,” February 23, 1989, SSP, Box 1328, BU; Annette Lidawer to Stephen Solarz, “1990 General Election Results,” January 25, 1991, SSP, Box 1328, BU. Mike Lewan to Stephen Solarz, “1986 General Election Results, Part I,” December 17, 1986, SSP, Box 1350, Political, BU; “Orthodox Jews Need Friends They Can Count On,” Boro Park Voice, May 1986, SSP, Box 1352, 1986 Campaign Book, BU; Rabbi Morris Fisher Letter; Rabbi Shaya Schwartz Letter; Rabbi Nochum Fishman Letter, all undated, SSP, Box 1352, 1986 Campaign Book, BU. 196
Manhattan insiders for an overview of the borough’s political landscape. In advice that revealed
Lower East Side Jews’ continued significance in both Orthodox and citywide politics, Henry
Stern, a former councilman and Parks Commissioner under Mayor Koch, told Lidawer to go for
a “carefully selected area of the Lower East Side,” the Grand Street co-ops. While Stern noted that relatively few Jews lived in the neighborhood, he argued that they dominated the area politically. “They are the only group that actively votes,” Stern claimed, “and they would be completely supportive.” Lower East Side assemblyman Sheldon Silver similarly reassured
Lidawer that Solarz could count on a high Jewish turnout in the neighborhood. John LoCicero, an aide to Mayor Koch, also viewed the “Grand Street Houses” and other downtown co-ops that possessed a “stable working to middle class” as natural fits for Solarz,110
While these officials advised Solarz to include Grand Street in his new district, they
offered mixed reviews on Lower East Side Puerto Ricans. Lidawer told Solarz that she had
observed a “tremendous number of Hispanics, blacks and some Asians” in the neighborhood and
Franz Leichter, a state senator from western Manhattan, advised Solarz to avoid the Lower East
Side due to “all of its ethnic conflict.”111 However, most other officials predicted that the neighborhood’s Puerto Rican base would not hurt Solarz politically. One member of the Village
Independent Democrats (VID) called Puerto Ricans “very loud,” but “totally disorganized and
highly unregistered.”112 Steve Banks, a former organizer for Jesse Jackson on Manhattan’s West
Side, similarly advised Solarz to go “to the east side and deal with Hispanics” rather than deal
with more progressive, reform-minded West Side voters who might object to Solarz’s foreign
110 Annette Lidawer to Stephen Solarz, “1992 Redistricting/Manhattan,” June 11, 1991, SSP, Box 1350, Election Info, ’87-90 Misc., BU. 111 Ibid. 112 Ibid. 197
policy record, particularly his recent support for the Gulf War.113 Sheldon Silver, for instance, noted that “Hispanics may be unreasonable in some demands, but they don’t vote so the end result is a lot of noise, but no muscle.”114 Silver’s comments suggested that Puerto Ricans would need to continue to organize if they wanted to alter the Grand Street agenda.
Solarz’s experience with his own Hispanic constituents likely reinforced Silver’s advice.
Hispanics comprised about 19 percent of the 13th district in 1980 and 1990.115 However, while
Borough Park, Williamsburg, and Bensonhurst constituted roughly 40 percent of the district’s votes from 1982-1986, heavily Puerto Rican neighborhoods like Sunset Park and Red Hook produced only about 6.5 percent of the total district vote at this time.116 And once matters moved to the general election – quite unlike Solarz’s Jewish and Italian constituents – these voters regularly voted Democratic and gave Solarz about 75-80 percent of the vote.117 The combination of Puerto Ricans’ low turnout and electoral reliability led Solarz to take Hispanic support for granted. An internal report that called Hasidic Williamsburg a “key area” explicitly labeled the
Hispanic portions of the neighborhood “unimportant.”118 More tellingly, Solarz aide Jeremy
Rabinovitz noted in one 1989 memo that, while the team had previously launched a series of
“high-powered Orthodox operations” to win greater Jewish majorities, the “minority communities are not active politically and have been basically ignored by our operation.”119
113 For details on Solarz’s support, see Solarz, 196-203, 208-09. 114 Annette Lidawer to Stephen Solarz, “1992 Redistricting/Manhattan,” June 11, 1991, SSP, Box 1350, Election Info, ’87-90 Misc., BU. 115 New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment, “Summary of Current Congressional Districts, 1990 Population,” SSP, Box 1328, Voting Rights Act, BU. 116 Mike Lewan to Rabbi Morris Shmidman, January 5, 1987 SSP, Box 1328, BU. 117 Untitled memorandum on 13th district neighborhoods and election results, SSP, Box 1350, Election Info. ’87-90 Misc., BU; Mike Lewan to Stephen Solarz, “1986 General Election Results,” December 17, 1986, SSP, Box 1328, BU. These trends continued in 1988. See Annette Lidawer to Stephen Solarz, “1988 Election Statistics,” February 23, 1989, SSP, Box 1328, BU. 118 Untitled memorandum on 13th district neighborhoods and election results, SSP, Box 1350, Election Info. ’87-90 Misc., BU. 119 Jeremy Rabinovitz to Stephen Solarz, “A Political Blueprint for the 101st Congress,” SSP, Box 1350, Election Info, ’87-90 Misc., BU. 198
Solarz’s lack of engagement with the Puerto Rican portions of the 13th district would hurt his
election chances in 1992. Indeed, during the election, the Carroll Gardens Courier found
Solarz’s candidacy in a district that included Sunset Park ironic because it was a neighborhood
that he had “paid the least attention to over the last 18 years.”120
Partly for this reason, Solarz monitored rumors that redistricting would create a new
Hispanic district, possibly in his own backyard. Shortly after the meeting with Manhattan
officials, Solarz asked Jeremy Rabinovitz for an analysis of how the VRA would affect the 13th
district. In turn, Rabinovitz told Solarz that the VRA, particularly Section 2, would obligate the
legislature to create a new Hispanic district in Brooklyn.121 He then offered Solarz several legal
arguments to challenge the eventual redistricting. Rabinovitz reminded Solarz that Gingles
(1986) only permitted new minority districts in “geographically compact” areas where minorities
had become “politically cohesive” and regularly watched their candidate lose to one backed by
whites.122 Two months later, Rabinovitz made this same claim to Solarz after meeting with two
lawyers with experience on redistricting litigation. After reviewing the VRA again, Rabinovitz
reemphasized that the “DOJ really wants to draw new Hispanic districts in New York.” He then
suggested that Solarz compile evidence – Hispanic voting returns and the congressman’s liberal
voting record – that demonstrated his Hispanic support. Rabinovitz also noted that Solarz needed
to demonstrate a steady engagement with Hispanic voters. “Even though you are not Hispanic,”
Rabinovitz continued, “we can try to prove that you are actively involved in these community’s problems.”123 As previously noted, Solarz’s own aides, and to a lesser extent the local press, had
already suggested the opposite.
120 “Colon In the 12th,” Carroll Gardens Courier, September 20, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU. 121 Jeremy Rabinovitz to Stephen Solarz, “Voting Rights Act,” August 1, 1991, Box 1328, Voting Rights Act, BU. 122 Ibid. 123 Jeremy Rabinovitz to Stephen Solarz, “Minority Voting Rights Act Meeting with Jeff Wice and Wayne Arden,” 199
Perhaps sensing the likelihood of having to run in a Hispanic district, Solarz met with
Chuck Schumer, who represented the neighboring 10th district, to form a united front against the prospect of losing their respective territories.124 In December 1991, Solarz aides Annette
Lidawer and Jeremy Rabinovitz met with Schumer for a 90-minute meeting in his office to form
a common strategy to keep both the 10th and 13th districts intact. Schumer proposed stoking
black-Hispanic tensions by asking the legislature to create a new Hispanic district in Ed Towns’ territory.125 “Obviously,” Schumer noted, “Black resistance to a new minority district can only
help our cause.” Lidawer and Rabinovitz, however, viewed Schumer as an unreliable ally when
he suggested that Solarz run in a new Hispanic district that would include parts of Borough Park.
Perhaps fearing Schumer’s proposal, Rabinovitz lobbied several notable Jewish civic and
political leaders, including AJCong director Henry Siegman, Vice President of Agudath Israel
David Zwiebel, and Grand Street leader William Rapfogel to pressure Assembly Speaker Saul
Weprin to maintain Solarz’s district.126
Initially, it appeared as if Solarz’s fears might come to naught. The Lacey proposal,
which also created two new Hispanic seats, kept much of Solarz’s old district intact. The plan
gave Solarz the 6th district, which ran through central Brooklyn and occupied much of Schumer’s
old base.127 Lacey’s lines thus forced Schumer to either challenge Solarz or run in a district
October 7, 1991, SSP, Box 1328, Voting Rights Act, BU, my emphasis. 124 For background on Solarz’s relationship with Schumer, see Richard L. Berke, “Side by Side by Solarz and Schumer: A Rivalry,” The New York Times, April 7, 1991; Steve Kornacki, “Steve Solarz (1940-2010) and the making of Senator Schumer,” Politico, November 30, 2010, accessed June 26, 2016, http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2010/11/steve-solarz-1940-2010-and-the-making-of-senator- schumer-067223. 125 Jeremy Rabinovitz and Annette Lidawer to Stephen Solarz, “Meeting with Chuck,” December 20, 1991, SSP, Box 1328, Voting Rights Act, BU. Towns represented a 44 percent black and 42 percent Hispanic district; New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment, “Summary of Current Congressional Districts, 1990 Population,” SSP, Box 1328, Voting Rights Act, BU. 126 Jeremy Rabinovitz and Annette Lidawer to Stephen Solarz, “Meeting with Chuck,” December 20, 1991, SSP, Box 1328, Voting Rights Act, BU. 127 Kevin Sack, “Albany Legislators Agree on Plan For Revised Congressional Lines,” The New York Times, June 4, 1992. 200
where Hispanics comprised about 60 percent of the population.128 For these reasons, Solarz
applauded the Lacey plan while Schumer criticized it.129
However, the incumbent backlash against Lacey’s plan and the subsequent passage of the
state plan hurt Solarz. Realizing that it could not reduce New York’s congressional seats from 34
to 31 by redistricting only Manhattan, the state legislature redrew the lines for both Solarz’s and
Schumer’s territories in a way that ensured the two congressmen would not square off in a
primary election. Some of Solarz’s territory, including Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach,
was attached to a district in western Manhattan represented by Ted Weiss. Schumer’s new
district, on the other hand, extended eastward into parts of Queens.130
The state plan, unveiled less than two weeks after the Lacey proposal, thus left Solarz
with a sudden dilemma: whether to run in a new 8th district, which included much of Weiss’ constituency, or the new Hispanic 12th district. Commentators predicted that Solarz would run in
the 8th district. Despite its large base in western Manhattan, the district still possessed parts of
Solarz’s old territory, including Bensonhurst, Borough Park, and the congressman’s Manhattan
Beach residence.131 Ted Weiss shared this assumption. Several days after the legislature finalized
its plan, Weiss named Solarz as his likely opponent in a press release to his constituents that
explained the new 8th district boundaries.132
However, Solarz decided to run in the new Hispanic district for several reasons. The
congressman considered his friendship with Weiss. One document that outlined Solarz’s reasons
128 Sam Howe Verhovek, “Congressional District Plan Unveiled,” The New York Times, May 27, 1992. 129 Ibid. 130 Todd S. Purdum, “In Carving Up of Districts, Some Share the Leftovers,” The New York Times, June 5, 1992. 131 Ibid.; Claude Solnik, “The Main Event: Weiss vs. Solarz,” The Villager, June 16, 1992; “Solarz Decides to Avoid Race Against Weiss in Manhattan,” The Villager, July 15, 1992; Solarz, 208. Some reports estimated that the district still possessed slightly over 40 percent of Solarz’s old base; Michael Tomasky, “Trahison des Reformers,” The Village Voice, June 16, 1992. 132 “Congressman Ted Weiss Campaign Committee,” June 19,1992, David Dinkins Papers, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 10, Folder, 100, LWA. 201
for running in the 12th district noted that he was “not eager to run vs. a [Democratic] colleague w/ whom I’ve had a good relationship over the years,” a claim repeated to The Villager in
1992.133 That Weiss was ill and would pass away the day of the Democratic primaries also made
Solarz worry that he would have to inject Weiss’ health into the race as a campaign issue.134 In
addition, over 70 percent of the new 8th district’s Democratic voters came from Weiss’ old
base.135 Solarz viewed his recent support for the Gulf War, despite Democratic opposition, as a
liability with these voters.136 Indeed, Manhattan insiders had advised Solarz to stay away from
areas in the new 8th district like the West Village, Soho, and Tribeca, territories that were “too
liberal” and would “kill” Solarz politically.137 A separate Solarz memo echoed these predictions, noting that “Steve’s strengths are negatives on the West Side: war, centrist…role as a consensus builder.”138
The 12th district, however, presented Solarz with an unsympathetic base. Called a
“cartographic absurdity” by one publication, the district covered parts of the Lower East Side
and Chinatown in Manhattan, Williamsburg, Sunset Park, Red Hook, and Bushwick in Brooklyn,
and Corona in Queens, most of which were unfamiliar to the congressman.139 As noted earlier,
the district possessed a roughly 54 percent Hispanic, 18 percent black, and 12 percent Asian
133 Ibid.; “Solarz Decides to Avoid Race Against Weiss in Manhattan,” The Villager, July 15, 1992. 134 Solarz, 209. 135 Solarz, 208. 136 In 1990, Solarz vocally supported the use of military force to roll back Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait; he worked with Republicans, including President Bush, to co-sponsor a resolution to deploy U.S. forces in Iraq. For details, see Solarz, 196-203, 208-09. 137 Annette Lidawer to Stephen Solarz, “1992 Redistricting/Manhattan,” June 11, 1991, SSP, Box 1350, Election Info, ’87-90 Misc., BU. 138 “Sunset Park, Red Hook, part of Williamsburg,” SSP, Box 1084, 12th C.D. Race, BU. 139 Richard Bernstein, “Wandering Jew: Representative Solarz Goes Latino,” The New Republic, September 21, 1992. 202
populace.140 (Puerto Ricans comprised nearly one-half of these Hispanic constituents.141) In addition, Hispanics and African-Americans constituted about two-thirds of the district’s registered Democrats.142 Importantly, planners also excised the Jewish portions of Brooklyn and
Manhattan that likely would have backed Solarz, including the “Jewish triangle” and Borough
Park in Brooklyn and Grand Street in Manhattan (Figure 4).143 On the other hand, the new 12th district included the Puerto Rican section of the Lower East Side above Houston Street.144
Figure 4: Grand Street area, Lower East Side (1992)
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Congressional District Atlas: 103rd Congress of the United States, Volume 2, “New York County – Inset G,” 40.
140 Lindsey Gruson, “Solarz Will Run in District Tailored as a Hispanic Seat,” The New York Times, July 9, 1992; “Twelfth Congressional District,” The Phoenix, September 11, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU; The Institute of Puerto Rican Politics state that the 12th district had a nearly 58 percent black, 19 percent Asian, and 9 percent black populace; Falcon and Hanson, 159. 141 Falcon and Hanson, 159. 142 Kenneth J. Cooper, “Solarz Faces Barriers in Hispanic District,” The Washington Post, September 13, 1992. 143 Angelo Falcon and Christopher Hanson, Latinos and the Redistricting Process in New York City: An Assessment and Profiles of the New Latino Assembly, State Senate and Congressional Districts (New York: Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, 1992), 163. 144 Nicholas Goldberg, “District Boosts Hispanic Clout,” Newsday, June 12, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU. 203
Despite these obstacles, Solarz still believed he could win the 12th district. He had name
recognition, $3 million in campaign funds, and the benefit of running against several Hispanic
candidates who might split the Puerto Rican vote.145 Anticipating that Puerto Ricans would
mobilize against him, Solarz hired two Puerto Rican advisors – Mickey Ponce and Rudy Garcia,
an editor for Noticias del Mundo, a local Spanish-language newspaper – to advise him on
Hispanic affairs and familiarize the Spanish-language media with his candidacy.146 The congressman also believed that he could appeal to other racial and ethnic constituencies in the new district. Solarz aides calculated that Hispanics comprised less than one-half of the 12th district’s registered Democrats.147 As such, the aides reasoned that Solarz could win with
minimal Hispanic backing, particularly if more than one Hispanic candidate challenged him, and
planned outreach campaigns to the district’s non-Hispanic voters.148
Solarz’s main strategy, however, was to downplay the ethnic dimensions of the election.
During the campaign, aides advised him to “minimize public controversy over running for the so-called ‘Hispanic’ seat,” emphasize his merits as a congressman, and “reject the notion that only an individual of a particular race or nationality can represent people of that nationality.”149
Solarz followed suit, claiming, instead, that voters, “like most Americans, will want the best
145 Todd S. Purdum, “In Carving Up of Districts, Some Share the Leftovers,” The New York Times, June 5, 1992; For a lower estimate, see Lindsey Gruson, “Solarz Will Run in District Tailored as a Hispanic Seat,” The New York Times, July 9, 1992. 146 “The ‘New’ 12th Congressional District: Situation Analysis,” SSP, Box 1084, 12th C.D. Race, BU; Lindsay Gruson, “The Selling of Stephen J. Solarz,” The New York Times, August 21, 1992. 147 “The ‘New’ 12th Congressional District: Situation Analysis,” SSP, Box 1084, 12th C.D. Race, BU. 148 Ibid. Solarz specifically targeted Chinatown voters as a part of this strategy. In 1992, he invited the major Chinatown presses to meet and discuss the VRA’s new bilingual provisions. See “Press Conference with Rep. Stephen J. Solarz, Democratic Candidate, 12th Congressional District,” SSP, Box 1084, Bilingual Issues, BU; “Statement by Rep. Stephen J. Solarz, Democratic Candidate for Congress,” SSP, Box 1084, Bilingual Issues, BU; “Bill Summary – HR 4312, The Voting Rights Language Assistance Act of 1992,” SSP, Box 1084, Bilingual Issues, BU. 149 “The ‘New’ 12th Congressional District: Situation Analysis,” SSP, Box 1084, 12th C.D. Race, BU; “Sunset Park, Red Hook, Part of Williamsburg,” undated, SSP, Box 1084, 12th C.D. Race, BU. 204
person available to represent them in Congress.”150 Later, he reiterated this message in a drafted reply to an unfavorable New York Post editorial. “The very idea that I, as a Jew, cannot represent
Hispanic and Jewish interests in Williamsburg,” Solarz argued, “is not simply absurd, but
ultimately flies in the face of much of what America stands for.”151
This argument gained traction when some Latinos made anti-Semitic comments about
Solarz early in the race. During a July press conference at City Hall, Armando Montano, a
member of the Latino Voting Rights Committee, attributed Solarz’s candidacy to
disproportionate Jewish money and influence in the city, announcing that it was “time for the
Jewish community to share with the Latino community because they can’t have everything.”152
That same month, at a separate news conference, a man accused the congressman of supporting
“death squads” in El Salvador and held a sign that read, “A Vote for Solarz is a vote for
Hitler.”153 Later, a letter to El Diario alleged that Jews had donated millions to Solarz during the
race. Though the writer noted that other white voters funded their candidates with similar vigor,
the letter exposed class tensions between Hispanics and Jews. “Our candidates,” she noted, “can
only count on our votes, as our community cannot contribute large sums of money.”154
These statements, however, did not dictate the tone and tenor of the campaign. Both the
ADL and other Puerto Rican representatives rebuked Montano’s statement.155 In addition, Nydia
Velázquez, one candidate for the 12th district seat, denounced the Hitler sign as “disgusting” and
150 “Statement by Rep. Stephen J. Solarz,” July 8, 1992, SSP, Box 1084, 12th C.D. Race, BU. 151 Letter to the Editor Draft, SSP, Box 1084, 12th C.D. Race, BU. 152 David Sherman, “Solarz Foe: Jews Can’t ‘Have Everything,’ New York Post, July 23, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU; “Citizens Committee to Elect Armando Montano, Jr.,” DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 11, Folder 103, LWA. 153 Joel Siegel, “Latinos Unite: Congress Cracks Race Mosaic,” New York Daily News, July 24, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU. 154 “A Favor de Nydia Velázquez,” El Diario-La Prensa, September 14, 1992. 155 David Sherman, “Solarz Foe: Jews Can’t ‘Have Everything,’ New York Post, July 23, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU; ADL News Release, SSP, Box 1084, 12th C.D. Race, BU. 205
had one of her aides emphatically state that “this campaign does not stand for anti-Semitism.”156
Mayor Dinkins, as well as the New York Times and Daily News, also criticized Montano’s statement.157 Dinkins, the city’s first African-American mayor, rejected the notion that 12th district voters should oppose Solarz on racial grounds by recalling endorsements from his own
Jewish primary opponents, Richard Ravitch, Harrison Goldin, and Ed Koch.158
Nevertheless, a wide cross-section of Puerto Rican, black, and Jewish spokesman utilized race-neutral language to characterize Solarz as an outsider seeking election in a district organized around the interests of low-income Latino voters. These ongoing critiques forced Solarz into a defensive position from the start of the campaign. Almost immediately after Solarz announced his candidacy, Herman Badillo penned an editorial for Newsday asking why the congressman
would “thwart the hopes of more than one-and-a-half million Latinos who seek representation.”159 Tracing the history of Puerto Rican electoral power from bilingual ballots to
redistricting, Badillo argued that Solarz remained disconnected from Latinos and accused him of
exploiting the district’s split Hispanic vote.160 Angelo Falcon, head of the Institute for Puerto
Rican policy, added that planners designed the 12th district to “give our community some degree
of choice, Latinos or non-Latinos who have some connection with the community. Mr. Solarz
doesn’t fit that bill at all.”161 El Diario echoed this comment. One editorial praised Solarz’s
political acumen but noted that he underestimated “our long efforts to achieve the creation of this
district with a Hispanic majority,” while another called Solarz a “foreign affairs expert” who
156 Joel Siegel, “Latinos Unite: Congress Race Cracks Mosaic,” New York Daily News, July 24, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU. 157 “Politics and Prejudice,” The New York Times, July 26, 1992 and “Who Runs Where?” New York Daily News, July 29, 1992 in SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU. 158 Maurice Carroll, “Carpetbagger: Spelled Solarz,” Newsday, July 27, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU. 159 Herman Badillo, “Why Steve Solarz Is Way Out of Line,” Newsday, July 13, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU. 160 Ibid. 161 Ibid., my emphasis. 206
would “meddle in inner city affairs” by running in the 12th district.162 Solarz’s opponents echoed these claims. Ruben Franco, the former PRLDEF president, suggested that Solarz believed he could “buy the seat” from Puerto Rican voters, while Nydia Velázquez labeled Solarz an out-of- touch millionaire disconnected from Puerto Rican communities.163
Perhaps seeking to incorporate Latinos into their own electoral coalitions, mainstream political figures, including Mario Cuomo and Rudy Giuliani, also opposed Solarz’s candidacy.164
In a letter to The Jewish Press, Giuliani claimed it “perfectly fair for the Latino community to be angered by Mr. Solarz” and noted that Latinos remained “grossly underrepresented in our
Congressional delegation.”165 Andrew Stein, the President of the City Council, similarly warned
Solarz that his election would precipitate “resentment and anger within the new district” and make it impossible for him to serve as an “effective…representative for this needy community.”166 To a certain extent, these critiques underscored Puerto Ricans’ growing significance in city politics.
Despite these wide-ranging criticisms, Solarz nevertheless benefited from the fact that he had five Latino opponents. Three of these candidates – Ruben Franco, Eric Melendez, and Rafael
Mendez – posed little threat to the field.167 Together, they earned roughly 12 percent, or 4,200,
162 “A Low Blow…and the Adequate Response,” El Diario-La Prensa, July 10, 1992; “The Moment Demands Unity,” El Diario-La Prensa, July 24, 1992. 163 Lindsey Gruson, “Solarz Will Run in District Tailored as a Hispanic Seat,” The New York Times, July 9, 1992; Evido De La Cruz, “Importantes respaldos para Nydia,” El Diario-La Prensa, July 24, 1992. 164 Kevin Sack, “Redistricting Plans Approved,” The New York Times, July 3, 1992; Maurice Carroll, “Carpetbagger: Spelled Solarz,” Newsday, July 27, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU. 165 Letters to the Editor, “Giuliani Urges Solarz Not To Run in New Cong. District,” The Jewish Press, August 7, 1992. The newspaper dismissed Giuliani’s critique as a blatant ploy to win Latino support and argued that he had undercut the ideal of colorblind politics; “In Response to Mr. Giuliani Concerning Congressman Solarz,” The Jewish Press, August 7, 1992. 166 Andrew Stein to Stephen Solarz, July 21, 1992, SSP, Box 1084, 12th C.D. Race, BU. 167 The New York Times called Eric Melendez, a city engineer, a “political novice” who supported the death penalty sentences for drug dealers. Mendez, a psychology professor, represented the New Alliance Party, a small, controversial, left-wing party that had run in both local and national elections. The ADL accused the party of anti- Semitism; James Dao, “Large Issues Overshadow Solarz Race,” The New York Times, September 7, 1992. Alan Finder, “Party, Described as Cult, Seeks Role in Primary,” The New York Times, September 9, 1989. 207
of the vote during the election.168 Two other Puerto Rican candidates emerged as more serious
challengers: Elizabeth Colon and Nydia Velázquez. Colon, who had settled on the Lower East
Side in the 1950s, became a local activist, working in an anti-poverty organization and
collaborating with Petra Santiago, a community leader who had founded the Council of Puerto
Rican and Hispanic Organizations of the Lower East Side (CPRHO) and worked for MFY.169
Shortly thereafter, Colon ran for a seat on the District One school board on the “Por Los Niños” slate, which supported community control in the neighborhood. During this time, she also implemented voter registration drives on the Lower East Side, and in Bushwick and
Williamsburg.170 By the early 1990s, Colon had established herself as a notable Puerto Rican
civic leader as the head of APRED.171
Unlike Colon, Velázquez had deep ties to the Puerto Rican political establishment in both
Puerto Rico and the United States. One of nine children born to a farmer and labor activist,
Velázquez became the first member of her family to finish high school, after which she attended
the University of Puerto Rico and then earned a master’s degree in political science from NYU in
1976.172 After teaching political science at Hunter College, she worked as an aide to
Congressman Edolphus Towns on Hispanic affairs in 1983 and became the first Puerto Rican
woman to serve on the City Council in 1984.173 Two years later, Velázquez became the National
168 New York City Board of Elections, 1992 Annual Report, “Statement and Return of the Votes for the Office of Representative in Congress: 12th Congressional District, Democratic Party,” Board of Elections (New York, NY). 169 Elizabeth Colon for Congress Summary Bio, DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 100, LWA; “Twelfth Congressional District,” The Phoenix, September 11, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU; “Petra Santiago Papers Finding Aid,” Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, accessed July 10, 2016, http://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/sites/default/files/faids/pdf/Santiago_Petra.pdf. 170 Elizabeth Colon for Congress Summary Bio, DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 100, LWA. 171 Ibid. 172 Francisco Rosales, Dictionary of Latino Civil Rights History (Houston: Arte Público Press, 2006), 434-35. 173 “Nydia Velázquez for Congress,” DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 100, LWA; Nydia Velázquez Resume, Office of the Government of Puerto Rico in the Unites States Papers (hereafter OGPRUSP), Box 3115, Folder 9, Centro. 208
Director of the Puerto Rican Migration Division, which monitored Puerto Rican settlement in the continental U.S., and then served as Secretary of the Department of Puerto Rican Community
Affairs (DPRCA).174
While Colon earned a slew of notable endorsements from mainstream politicians and the news media, Velázquez more ably tapped into the city’s growing black-Latino electoral alliance.175 As the head of the Migration Division and DPRCA, Velázquez cemented her position as an up-and-coming face in Latino politics. During this time, she wrote regularly for El Diario and published columns for DPRCA on a host of domestic issues.176 She also gained visibility for establishing the “Atrévete” (Dare to Go For It) voter registration program, which registered
Latino voters in Williamsburg, Sunset Park, Bushwick, and the Lower East Side.177 These activities, as well as her visibility in Puerto Rican island politics, earned Velázquez endorsements from Rafael Hernandez Colon, the Governor of Puerto Rico, Miguel Hernandez
Agosto, the Senate President of Puerto Rico, Blanca Irizarry, the head of the National
174 Elizabeth Butson, “Nydia Velázquez: A Quick Start in Shaping Agenda in Congress,” The Villager, October 7, 1992; Article on Nydia Velazquez, September 20, 1992, Carroll Gardens Courier, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU; “Nydia Velázquez for Congress,” DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 100, LWA; Nydia Velázquez Resume, OGPRUSP, Box 3115, Folder 9, Centro. 175 Colon won endorsements from Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, several Dominican councilmembers and civic leaders, and Representatives Adam Clayton Powell and Major Owens. Two notable Jewish leaders, Andrew Stein and Ed Koch, also endorsed Colon. The Daily News, New York Times, El Diario, and The Village Voice also backed Colon. “Congressman Major Owens Endorses Colon for Congress,” August 28, 1992, DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 101, LWA; Bob Liff, “Who You’re With Counts in Campaign,” Newsday, September 13,1992, DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 11, Folder 102, LWA; Elizabeth Colon News Advisory, DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 101, LWA; “Koch’s Choice,” New York Post, August 13, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU; “For Congress: The Case for Colon,” New York Daily News, September 13, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU; “Five For Congress,” The New York Times, September 9, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU; “Para Cámara Por El Distrito 12,” El Diario-La Prensa, September 14, 1992; “Elizabeth Colón For Congress,” El Diario-La Prensa, September 14, 1992. 176 About Nydia M. Velázquez, OGPRUSP, Box 3115, Folder 9, Centro; Nydia Velázquez, “Dialoguemos,” El Diario-La Prensa, July 22, 1986, OGRPUSP, Box 3075, Folder 1, Centro; Nydia Velázquez, “La Centralizacion No Es La Solucion,” December 8, 1988, OGPRUSP, Box 3074, Folder 32, Centro; Nydia Velázquez, “Manteniendo El Orden – Dentro Y Fuera De La Policia,” OGPRUSP, August 3, 1990, Box 3115, Folder 9, Centro; Nydia Velázquez, “Para Una Mejor Relacion,” OGPRUSP, March 16, 1990, Centro; Nydia Velázquez, “Es Nuestra Oportunidad,” September 2, 1991, OGPRUSP, Box 3115, Folder 9, Centro. 177 Atrévete Background, OGPRUS, Box 2820, Folder 1, Centro. 209
Association for Puerto Rican Civil Rights, and Dennis Rivera, the head of Local 1199 of the
Service Employees International Union (SEIU).178 Local activists in Williamsburg, such as
Bryan Karvelis, a reverend for the Transfiguration Church, and David Santiago, head of the
Southside Political Action Committee, also supported Velázquez.179 This support suggested
Velázquez’s candidacy had gained credibility with local Puerto Rican residents, particularly in
Brooklyn, which included about one-half of the 12th district’s total, and 60 percent of its Latino,
population.180
By 1992, Karvelis and Santiago, in particular, had become notable figures in ongoing
Jewish-Puerto Rican disputes in Williamsburg. By the 1990s, Latinos, mostly Puerto Ricans,
constituted a majority of the neighborhood and competed for public housing with their Hasidic
neighbors.181 To reinvigorate Williamsburg’s housing supply, NYCHA had built two public
housing complexes in the “Jewish triangle” in the mid-1960s, Jonathan Williams Plaza and
Independence Towers. Despite initial concerns, both Hasidim and Puerto Ricans viewed the new
buildings as major upgrades over Williamsburg’s old housing stock.182 Through negotiations with the local Democratic machine and NYCHA officials, Hasidic residents and rabbis easily reserved a space in the new houses.183 While Puerto Ricans tried to do the same, NYCHA rented
out 75 percent of the new apartments to Hasidic tenants. Puerto Ricans alleged that NYCHA
178 Nydia Velázquez for Congress, “Endorsements,” DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 100, LWA. 179 Karvelis claimed to support any of the candidates except Solarz. See Nydia Velazquez Endorsements, DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 100, LWA; Alison Mitchell, “Seven Priests and a Nun Back Hispanic Rivals Over Solarz,” The New York Times, September 15, 1992. 180 Falcon and Hanson, 159-60. 181 Mintz, 248-49; Reports estimate that Latinos made up roughly 60 percent and Hasidim 24 percent of the neighborhood by this time. See Dennis deLeon to David Dinkins, “Briefing for your meeting with Williamsburg Leaders,” December 3, 1990, DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 35, Folder 324, LWA. For Hasidim’s economic status when they settled in Williamsburg, see Kranzler, “The Jewish Community of Williamsburg Brooklyn, N.Y.,” 107-110. 182 Price, 130, 136-38. 183 Ibid., 143-148; Mintz, 252. 210
deliberately established this quota when it placed them in a nearby, federally subsidized complex
with a large black population.184
These conflicts escalated when the city formed the Williamsburg Urban Renewal Area
(WURA), a 17-block territory located in the southwestern portion of the neighborhood shortly
thereafter.185 Approved in 1967, the WURA project called for 2,500 new middle- and low- income apartments to house an estimated 1,200 displaced families.186 Federal guidelines required
“sponsors,” or local civic groups, to oversee the construction of these houses. The UJO, several
Jewish and Catholic leaders, including Karvelis, and the Spanish-American Civic Association
vied to become these sponsors. Through negotiations with the Housing and Development
Administration (HDA), the UJO-sponsored Bedford Gardens, a complex of nearly 650 units,
roughly 190 of which NYCHA controlled, and the religious leaders sponsored the nearby
Roberto Clemente Plaza.187 Bedford Gardens utilized the same tenant breakdown as those
established at the Williams and Independence complexes.188 This situation led Karvelis to lobby
the HDA to approve an almost 90-10 black-Puerto Rican tenant split at Clemente Plaza to compensate for the quota established in the other WURA complexes.189 City officials informally
agreed to a more moderate 75-25 ratio sometime between 1975 and 1976.190
But the UJO and other anonymous Hasidic leaders had assumed Clemente Plaza would possess a similar ethnic breakdown as Bedford Gardens and pressured the city to abandon this agreement.191 As the city wavered, PRLDEF and Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A, which
184 Ibid., 130, 137-140. 185 “Renewal Approved for Williamsburg,” The New York Times, June 22, 1967; Price, 208. 186 “Nathan Announces Final Plans for $76 Million Williamsburg Urban Renewal, Third Major Uplift Announced for Brooklyn This Month,” May 24, 1967, CHPCP, Box 17, Folder 12, CHPCL. 187 Price, 209-210, 217. 188 Marwell, 50-51; “Bedford Gardens – Sponsor Meeting,” March 9, 1973, PRLDEF, Box 192, Folder 3, Centro. 189 Bryan Karvelis to Laila Long, May 29, 1975, PRLDEF, Box 192, Folder 3, Centro. 190 Marwell, 51-52. 191 Blanca Cedeno to Edward W. Norton, “History of the Renting of Independence Towers and Williams Plaza,” 211
offered affordable legal services to low-income Williamsburg residents, filed a class action
against NYCHA on behalf of WURA’s black and Puerto Rican residents. In Williamsburg Fair
Housing Committee v. NYCHA (1976), the plaintiffs accused NYCHA of establishing an illegal
quota against blacks and Latinos in Williams, Independence, Bedford Gardens, and several other
complexes.192 In response, the UJO became intervenor defendants and asked the Southern
District Court to stop NYCHA from tenanting Clemente Plaza.193
The UJO and PRLDEF struggled to settle the case for over a decade. While a Consent
Decree required NYCHA to balance its new Williamsburg complexes using a temporary quota in
July 1977, PRLDEF and Brooklyn Legal accused the agency of making the quota permanent (in
all projects except Taylor-Wythe) twelve years later.194 In turn, NYCHA agreed to house 190
Hispanic families who alleged that the agency had unfairly denied them housing between 1980
and 1989.195
David Santiago embroiled himself in similar controversies. Santiago served as co-
chairman of the Southside Fair Housing Committee, which, in 1990, challenged a cross-subsidy
agreement under which the city used revenue from the sale of certain WURA sites to the UJO to
fund low-income housing built by the Epiphany Church.196 The UJO used these sites to build
Brooklyn Villas, a complex of over 200 market-rate apartments that, through targeted ad sales in
May 20, 1976, PRLDEF, Box 199, Box 8, Centro. 192 WFHC et al., v. NYCHA, “Complaint (Class Action),” 76 Civ. 2125 (Southern District of New York. 1976), PRLDEF, Box 200, Folder 1, Centro. 193 “Jews File Suit Against Injunction barring Them From East Side Low Income Housing Project,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, June 14, 1972. 194 “Consent Decree,” WFHC et al., v. NYCHA and UJO et al., and UJO v. Kent Village Housing Co., Inc. and Los Sures Management Co., Inc., and HUD, 76 Civ. 2125, 10-17 (Southern District of New York, 1977), PRDLEF Papers, Box 201, Folder 5, Centro; Stuart Ain, “Settlement Near in Williamsburg Hispanic-chasidic tiff,” The Jewish Week, June 15, 1990, DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 34, Folder 319, LWA. 195 “Fact Sheet – Williamsburg Settlement,” DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 34, Folder 322, LWA. 196 Mintz, 262; Memo on Williamsburg Urban Renewal Area, March 19, 1990, DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 34, Folder 319, LWA; Mintz, 259. 212
the Yiddish press and requiring a large down payment, housed mostly Hasidim.197 Southside activists claimed that these actions drove Puerto Ricans from WURA and established an
“unconstitutional official religion” in the Jewish triangle.198 Around this time, Southside made a similar claim when it alleged that the city had illegally granted the United Talmudic Academy
(UTA) WURA land to establish a large synagogue and yeshiva.199
Velázquez also earned significant support from notable African-American leaders. Her two most significant African-American endorsements came from Dinkins, the city’s first black mayor, and Jesse Jackson, a two-time challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination in
1984 and 1988.200 Jackson and Dinkins modeled their candidacies on that of Mayor Harold
Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor elected in 1983 with the support of a new black-Latino electoral coalition.201 The founder of an interracial group called People United to Serve
Humanity (PUSH) in 1971, Jackson formed the Rainbow Coalition in 1984 to advocate for progressive policies on behalf of racial and ethnic minorities.202 After deliberately courting the
Latino vote through voter registration drives, taking favorable positions on immigration and establishing Latinos for Jackson organizations, Jackson won several minority districts and nearly
197 Memo on Williamsburg Urban Renewal Area, March 19, 1990, DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 34, Folder 319, LWA; Mintz, 264. 198 Bob Liff, “Two Fronts in Old Battle Over B’klyn Housing,” Newsday, January 5, 1990, DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 34, Folder 319, LWA. 199 Memo on Williamsburg Urban Renewal Area, March 19, 1990, DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 34, Folder 319, LWA; Memo on Williamsburg Urban Renewal Area, December 3, 1990, DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 35, Folder 324, LWA. In 1990, the Eastern District rejected this claim; “Housing Issues, Williamsburg,” DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 34, Folder 323, LWA; Velazquez for Congress, “Endorsers,” DDP, Assistant Block Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 100, LWA. 200 Elizabeth Butson, “Nydia Velázquez: A Quick Start in Shaping Agenda in Congress,” The Villager, October 7, 1992; Michael Tomasky, “Political Gymnastics,” The Village Voice, August 4, 1992; Albert Davila and Frank Lombardi, “Jesse Pulpits for Nydia in New District,” New York Daily News, September 14, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU. 201 For details on Washington’s background and election, see Opie, Upsetting the Apple Cart, 129-130, 135-36, 139- 41. 202 Rodney E. Hero, Black-Latino Relations in U.S. National Politics: Beyond Conflict or Cooperation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 10-11. Fred Hampton, a leader of the Chicago Chapter of the Black Panther Party, first coined the term; Opie, 94-95. 213
the citywide vote in 1984.203 With support from two black and Latino-led labor unions, Local
1199 headed by Dennis Rivera and DC 37, headed by Stanley Hill, Jackson won a majority of
the city’s Latino vote four years later.204
Mayor Dinkins also owed his victory to black-Latino organizing. A political veteran who
had come up through Harlem’s Democratic machine, Dinkins targeted Latino voters for
Jackson’s 1984 campaign and won endorsements from black, Latino, and progressive white
leaders during his successful bid to become Manhattan Borough President in 1985.205 These
efforts, as well as some select Latino appointments, paved the road for Dinkins’ 1989 mayoral
victory. That year, Latino staffers formed Latinos for Dinkins. Headed by Local 1199 head
Dennis Rivera, Latinos for Dinkins made a detailed study of the city’s Latino districts, registered
Latino voters, and tried to elect Latino leaders.206 These efforts paid off. In the 1989 Democratic
mayoral primary, Dinkins won 51 percent, and Koch 42 percent, of the city’s vote due largely to
black and Latino support.207 The returns showed that 94 percent of African-Americans and 70
percent of Latinos, mostly of Puerto Rican descent, backed Dinkins.208 He then earned about 91 percent of the black vote and 65 percent of the Latino vote in the general election against Rudy
Giuliani.209 Though Velázquez encouraged Latinos not to automatically cast a vote for Dinkins,
she attributed his victory to Puerto Rican turnout and argued that it made him indebted to the
203 Opie, 146-47, 148-49, 151. 204 Ibid., 189-190, 192; J. Phillip Thompson III, Double Trouble: Black Mayors, Black Communities, and the Call for a Deep Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 187. 205 Opie, 149, 178-81. 206 Ibid., 201-04, 206. 207 Ibid., 224. 208 Christopher McNickle, To Be Mayor, 35; For a slightly lower number for the Latino vote, see Opie, 224. 209 “A Portrait of New York City Voters,” The New York Times, November 9, 1989; For slightly higher estimates, see Shelly L. Andersen, “An Uneasy Alliance: Blacks and Latinos in New York City Politics” (Ph.D. Dissertation, The Ohio State University, 2002), 122. 214
“Puerto Rican and Hispanic community.”210 Several years later, Dinkins endorsed Velázquez by
citing her Puerto Rican ties and her “ability to create and work in coalitions.”211
Election returns suggested that Velázquez owed her victory to black-Latino support. As
Table 5 shows, Velázquez, Colon, and Solarz ran a tight race. Velázquez won nearly 34 percent,
Solarz about 28 percent, and Colon almost 26 percent, of the 12th district vote.212 Table 5 shows
the A.D.s. included in the 12th district. While the district’s odd shape meant that it contained only
parts of these A.D.s, the table nevertheless shows that Velázquez won the district’s most
Hispanic and, to a lesser extent, African-American, areas.
Puerto Ricans’ electoral power in the 12th district is most apparent in the 63rd A.D. This
territory, dubbed “Loisaida,” gave Velázquez and Colon over 75 percent of the total vote.213 As
noted in Chapter 1, Ted Weiss, then a young, reform-minded candidate, had run competitively in
this part of the Lower East Side against Leonard Farbstein, an old incumbent with close ties to
Grand Street, in the 1966 Democratic congressional primaries. The area’s growing support for
Velázquez and Colon in 1992 revealed the neighborhood’s growing political base and, with
reinforcement from the VRA, the electoral payoff of Puerto Rican activism.
Velázquez won the 53rd and 54th A.D.s. most convincingly, carrying over 40 percent of the vote – nearly as much or more support than Solarz and Colon combined.214 These A.D.s
covered a large swath of Bushwick, resided close to the heavily black and Hispanic
210 Nydia Velázquez, “¿Quien Es El Mejor Candidato?” March 17, 1989, OGPRUSP, Box 3074, Folder 32, Centro. Nydia Velázquez, “Hacia Una Nueva Ciudad,” March 31, 1989, OGPRUSP, Box 3074, Folder 32, Centro; Nydia Velázquez, “Primarias 1989 Y La Comunidad Puertorrquena,” OGPRUSP, Box 3074, Folder 32, Centro; Nydia Velázquez, “Se Inicia Nueva Era,” September 15, 1989, OGPRUSP, Box 3074, Folder 32, Centro. 211 “Statement by Mayor Dinkins Endorsing Nydia Velázquez For U.S. Congress,” August 10, 1992, DDP, Assistant Block Subject Series, Box 10, Folder 101, LWA. 212 That year, an investigation showed that Solarz had written over 700 bad checks from his House bank account. For background on scandal and its limited effect on the election, see Solarz, 211. 213 Board of Elections in the City of New York, 1992 Annual Report, “Statement and Return of the Votes for the Office of Representative in Congress: 12th Congressional District, Democratic Party.” 214 Ibid. 215
neighborhoods of Bedford Stuyvesant, East New York, and Brownsville, and included the non-
Hasidic section of Williamsburg. These neighborhoods ran across northern Brooklyn and included mostly Latino and black majority areas.215 Both A.D.s possessed the highest Hispanic
populace in the 12th district, while African-Americans comprised roughly one-quarter of the 54th
A.D., the largest black population in any A.D. that possessed a sizable voter turnout (Table 5). El
Diario recognized that Velázquez owed her election to black-Latino support, arguing that her victory highlighted the “importance of…identifying the common denominators between Latinos and African-Americans without losing sight of the differences.”216 Velázquez agreed, thanking
“Latinos… and African-Americans as well for their incredible support” in her acceptance speech.217
Solarz, on the other hand, performed better in the district’s white and Asian areas. He earned more votes in the 54th A.D. – a territory in eastern Brooklyn that included the district’s
largest white territory – than in the 53rd A.D. (Table 5).218 The congressman also won some
Asian support. Asian-Americans, mostly of Chinese descent, represented a larger share of the
overall and voting-age population than Latinos in the Lower East Side portion of the 12th
district.219 Solarz won some of these voters in the 62nd A.D., the area below Delancey Street
(minus Grand Street) that contained a mostly “mixed” and “majority Asian” populace (Figure
215 “1992 Assembly District Maps,” New York State Legislative Taskforce on Demographic Research and Reapportionment, accessed July 15, 2016, http://www.latfor.state.ny.us/maps/?sec=1992a; Angelo Falcon and Christopher Hanson, Latinos and the Redistricting Process in New York City: An Assessment and Profiles of the New Latino Assembly, State Senate and Congressional Districts, 164. 216 Celina Romany, “La elección de Nydia Velázquez,” El Diario-La Prensa, September 29, 1992. 217 Santiago Nieves, “Nydia Velázquez Overcomes Obstacles To Taste Victory,” New York Amsterdam News, November 14, 1992. 218 Falcon and Hanson, Latinos and the Redistricting Process in New York City: An Assessment and Profiles of the New Latino Assembly, State Senate and Congressional Districts, 164. 219 Latinos – particularly Puerto Ricans – represented only about 36 percent of the district’s voters on the Lower East Side; Falcon and Hanson, 162. 216
6).220 While Solarz’s precise support from Asian-Americans remains unclear, he amassed his largest vote total in this A.D. (Table 5). These returns corroborate what political insiders had previously told Solarz aide Annette Lidawer: that Chinatown’s moderate stance on the Gulf War and focus on business matters (despite some “activists” like Margaret Chin, the neighborhood’s councilwoman) might play to Solarz’s advantage in an election.221
Solarz lost, however, because he did not garner enough black, and particularly Hispanic, support. Solarz only won pluralities in the 62nd A.D., the 50th and 51st A.D., which covered parts
of Sunset Park and a small sliver of Williamsburg (minus the “Jewish Triangle”), as well as
smaller pockets of Queens, because Colon and Velázquez split the vote. Indeed, Solarz failed to
win more votes than Velázquez and Colon combined in every part of the 12th district except the
48th A.D., where 663 votes were cast, and the 56th A.D., where nine votes were cast (Table 5). At
the same time, he earned only about 18 and 25 percent of the votes in the 53rd and 54th A.D.s,
Velázquez’s strongest territories. In addition, Solarz’s earned only about 14 percent of the vote in
the 63rd A.D., which included “Loisaida” (Table 5). In all, black and Puerto Rican voters did not
back Solarz. As Jeremy Rabinovitz told the congressman after the election, “Across the district –
you simply did not do well in heavy minority areas.”222
The results thus suggested that the VRA had both reinforced the city’s black-Latino
electoral alliance and made Latinos, and particularly Puerto Ricans, an important voting bloc in
municipal politics. Indeed, commentators celebrated Velázquez’s primary victory as a political
triumph not just for Puerto Ricans, but for all Latinos. El Diario claimed the country’s history of
220 Falcon and Hanson, Latinos and the Redistricting Process in New York City: An Assessment and Profiles of the New Latino Assembly, State Senate and Congressional Districts, 164. 221 Annette Lidawer to Stephen Solarz, “1992 Redistricting/Manhattan,” June 11, 1991, SSP, Box 1350, Election Info, ’87-90 Misc., BU. 222 Jeremy Rabinovitz to Stephen Solarz, “Election Results – 12th District,” SSP, Box 1328, 12th C.D. Ed. x Ed., BU. 217
black-white racism had fostered discrimination against all Latinos and required them to unite politically. “The fact that some of us may be brown, or black, or white, that we are American citizens or not…that we are professional or blue collar,” the paper argued, mattered little.223 In
an editorial on the 12th district, Angelo Falcon, head of the Institute of Puerto Rican Policy,
similarly suggested that anti-Latino discrimination had kept Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and
Columbians “out of the centers of power.”224 In this same piece, Falcon disputed those who
equated anti-Latino and anti-Jewish discrimination. Those who argued that legislatures should
redistrict by race and religion, Falcon noted, “takes the very different political experiences of
Jews and racial-ethnic minorities in this country and conflates them in a meaningless
analogy.”225 The statement encapsulated the VRA’s different racial categorization of Jews and
Puerto Ricans.
223 Celina Romany, “La elección de Nydia Velázquez,” El Diario-La Prensa, September 29, 1992. 224 Angelo Falcon, “Latinos Still Need the Voting Rights Act,” Newsday, September 3, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU. 225 Ibid. 218
Table 5: Results for the 1992 12th District Congressional Race
A.D. Non- African- Hispanic Non- Solarz Velázquez Colon Franco Hispanic American Hispanic White Asian New York 62nd 29.02% 6.35% 21.45% 42.88% 1856 1609 1323 187 63rd 58.5% 8.71% 25.75% 6.62% 656 1464 2143 169 66th 81.56% 4.32% 7.83% .2% 46 30 53 1 County N/A N/A N/A N/A 2558 3103 3519 357 Total Brooklyn 40th 3.04% 69.08% 25.83% 1.24% 45 36 20 3 48th 73.2% 1.92% 12.91% 11.6% 328 122 152 26 50th 56.01% 20.37% 20.29% 2.79% 253 239 88 26 51st 21.43% 11.86% 59.05% 7.01% 1445 1374 1291 254 52nd 76.03% 5.55% 12.82% 5.29% 108 55 69 8 53rd 12.95% 10.19% 71.44% 4.53% 1381 3229 1372 1136 54th 5.62% 24.52% 65.82% 2.98% 1438 2337 1038 556 56th .88% 86.09% 11.94% .63% 5 3 1 0 County N/A N/A N/A N/A 5003 7395 4031 2009 Total Queens 30th 58.95% 1.98% 22.42% 16.05% 166 48 105 3 34th 22.85% 3.70% 56.81% 15.80% 1017 586 695 80 35th 16.85% 23.56% 32.67% 26.13% 664 284 411 35 37th 44.39% 11.51% 31.84% 11.64% 165 89 77 15 38th 77.41% 1.37% 15.49% 5.30% 8 3 1 0 County N/A N/A N/A N/A 2020 1010 1289 133 Total
District N/A N/A N/A N/A 9581 11508 8839 2499 Total District N/A N/A N/A N/A 28.1% 33.7% 25.9% 7.3% % Sources: New York State Legislative Taskforce on Demographic Research and Reapportionment, “1992 Assembly District Maps,” http://www.latfor.state.ny.us/maps/?sec=1992a Board of Elections in the City of New York, 1992 Annual Report, “Statement and Return of the Votes for the Office of Representative in Congress: 12th Congressional District, Democratic Party,” Board of Elections (New York, NY).
In all, New York’s experiments in redistricting from the mid-1970s until 1992 exposed the divergent ways in which federal civil rights law categorized Jews and Puerto Ricans. While the VRA and successive court rulings paralleled black and Hispanic discrimination, they classified Hasidic Jews as “white,” sparking an intra-communal debate regarding Jewish positions on race-based policy and fostering Jewish-Puerto Rican electoral conflict. While both
219
Orthodox and secular Jewish groups united in opposition to New York’s new district lines, this
electoral conflict persisted into the 1990s with the creation of the 12th district. That district
featured one of the city’s most public Jewish-Puerto Rican political confrontations: the 1992
Democratic primary race between Stephen Solarz, the nation’s leading congressional advocate for Orthodox Jews, and members of the city’s emerging Puerto Rican civic leadership. Solarz’s loss, as well as the creation of the 12th district, strengthened the legal and public recognition of
Latinos (particularly Puerto Ricans) as a distinct minority and highlighted their growing
significance in municipal politics.
Puerto Rican leaders, however, viewed these electoral gains as but one step in the larger project of Latino empowerment. Eddie Bautista, who led the New York branch of the National
Congress of Puerto Rican Rights, characterized the Latino challenges to Solarz’s candidacy as a top-down process detached from the true needs of the 12th district’s Latino base.226 Angelo
Falcon similarly labeled black and Latino Democrats as “professional politicians disconnected
from the day-to-day realities of the Latino community” and, as such, complicit in the party’s
broader failures to implement more progressive social and economic policy.227 In making these
claims, Bautista and Falcon argued that the politics of class, not only racial identity, needed to
drive future Democratic reform. While debates over representation did not entirely silence
grassroots voices, this claim would prove prescient as New York’s booming real estate market
brought issues of housing and gentrification to the forefront of city politics in the 1980s and
1990s. This shift would challenge the limits of Puerto Rican politics and Mayor Dinkins’ black-
Latino political coalition on the Lower East Side.
226 Untitled newspaper article, undated, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU. 227 Hugh Hamilton, Untitled article, The City Sun, July 28, 1992, SSP, Box 1118, Campaign, BU. 220
Chapter 5 “Keepers of this Neighborhood”: Gentrification and Racial Politics on the Lower East Side, 1984-1993
In February 2000, the New York Times ran a feature article on an Orthodox couple in
their mid-20s, Shoshona and Abe Laks. In 1998, the Laks moved from Brooklyn into a Lower
East Side apartment previously occupied by Shoshona’s grandfather. Though they initially
balked at moving into the same neighborhood – and apartment – where their ancestors settled,
the Laks soon bought an apartment in Cooperative Village, which managed the Hillman and East
River co-ops on Grand Street. According to the Times, the Laks’ journey represented but a small
part of a Jewish “revival” occurring on the Lower East Side, driven by the affordability of the co-
ops. According to the article, these homes represented an oasis of middle-class opportunity and quaint community life, surrounded by new Jewish schools, synagogues, and kosher restaurants.
“This is not the Lower East Side of poverty and sweatshops,” the article pointed out, nor “the one of trendy nightclubs and tenements converted into million-dollar lofts.” Heshy Jacob, the manager of Cooperative Village and the nearby United Jewish Council (UJC), agreed. According to Jacob, young, Orthodox families settled on the Lower East Side because they, like their ancestors, sought to live near other Jews in a clean, safe, modestly priced space. William
Rapfogel, head of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty with close ties to the UJC, agreed.
“I’ve always held,” he told the Times, that the world of our fathers could also be the world of our children.”1
By 2000, the Lower East Side had indeed “reclaimed” many of its “children.”2
1 Jacob’s family had lived in the neighborhood for five generations; Tina Kelley, “A Jewish Enclave Reclaims its Children; Cultural Ties and Low Costs Lure Orthodox Couples to Lower East Side,” The New York Times, February 29, 2000. 2 This Jewish increase occurred mostly in the 1980s. From 1980 to 1990, the Lower East Side’s Jewish population increased from about 19,000 to about 32,000, the largest percentage growth of any Manhattan neighborhood; Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty, Jewish Poverty in New York City in the 1990s, “Estimates of Jewish Population by Community District, 1981-1991” (The Nova Institute: 1993), 36. In 2004, 221
Undoubtedly, the middle-income co-ops, as well as cultural attachments to the neighborhood, led
some Jews to return. However, widespread gentrification in the 1980s played an equally
important role in this process. At this time, municipal planners and elected officials incentivized
large-scale, private investment on both the Lower East Side and in New York City as a whole.
These policies revitalized the city’s corporate infrastructure and luxury housing market. They
also tightened the real estate market to the detriment of low and moderate-income New Yorkers
and reconfigured the landscape of poorer neighborhoods like the Lower East Side.
From 1984-1993, a thick network of local tenant organizations, most notably the Lower
East Side Joint Planning Council (JPC), and left-wing Jewish housing activists forged a
progressive, interracial alliance to stop these developments. Working on behalf of the area’s
sizable low-income, black and Puerto Rican residents, these groups worked to regulate the
Lower East Side’s real estate market and build low-more income housing on the neighborhood’s
abandoned city-owned, or in rem, land. They grounded these efforts in a collective vision of the
Lower East Side as a historic, multiethnic enclave for the world’s most vulnerable peoples.3
Throughout the 1980s, the JPC collaborated with both neighborhood and mayoral officials, most
notably Councilwoman Miriam Friedlander and Mayor David Dinkins, to implement its vision.
By 1990, both Friedlander and Dinkins defined the Lower East Side’s history, inhabitants, and needs similarly to the JPC and pledged to shield the neighborhood from the effects of luxury
reports indicate that 31,300 Jews lived on the Lower East Side; Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty and the UJA-Federation of New York, Report on Jewish Poverty, January 2004, “Exhibit 4.2,” (The Nova Institute: 1993), 25. 3 Latinos comprised about 32 percent of Lower East Side residents in 1990. This data also suggests that Puerto Ricans comprised 32,593 of the 47,625, or over 68 percent, of the Latinos that lived in the neighborhood at this time; 1990 Census of Population and Housing, Population and Housing Characteristics for Census Tracts and Block Numbering Areas, New York, NY PMSA (Section 1), CPH-3-245H; Table 8. Race and Hispanic Origin: 1990, 818-824. For a slightly higher estimate of the Hispanic populace, see Puerto Rican/Hispanic Political Council, “A Proposal for a Hispanic-Based District on the Lower East Side,” MFP, Box 1502, Redistricting Commission Legislation, 1990-1991, LWA. 222
housing and gentrification. By the end of the 1980s, the JPC had offered a counterexample to
New York’s “era of big development” on the Lower East Side.4
But Grand Street leadership stifled this political vision. The UJC, as well as local leaders
who resided in the Grand Street co-ops such as William Rapfogel and Assemblyman Sheldon
Silver aimed to channel public monies into private development, market-rate housing, and
commercial revitalization. Like the JPC, Grand Street pressured both neighborhood and citywide
officials to implement this agenda by enunciating a collective vision of the Lower East Side
centered on preserving both middle-class and Jewish space. By crafting this image, Grand
Street’s Jewish establishment linked gentrification with the more abstract idea of preserving
Jewish history. In so doing, Jewish leaders naturalized local redevelopment schemes, particularly in the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA), and influenced both neighborhood and mayoral politics. This influence became most apparent during the elections between Antonio
Pagán and Councilman Friedlander in 1991, and Rudy Giuliani and Mayor Dinkins in 1993. In both cases, the UJC and its supporters undermined the more progressive, interracial coalition fostered by Friedlander, Dinkins, and the JPC. These efforts further privatized Lower East Side real estate and accelerated neighborhood gentrification.
------
Gentrification on the Lower East Side in the 1980s
In the 1980s, private developers began to gentrify the Lower East Side. Anticipating that the recent commercialization of areas like SoHo, Greenwich Village, and Chinatown would soon spread to neighboring areas, these developers purchased abandoned, city-owned (or in rem) land
4 Soffer, Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City, 259. 223
in the neighborhood.5 Initially small-scale speculators interested in flipping, not rehabilitating
property, these buyers focused on an area the public would soon recognize as the East Village,
located above East Houston Street between the Bowery and the East River.6 This speculation led larger real estate firms to view East Village property as a “good buy” by the mid-1980s. Unlike the initial investors, these firms would redevelop large landholdings and attract significant tax incentives from the city.7 These actions paved the way for luxury housing and up-scale
commerce to replace small businesses and older rental units. By 1987, the New York Times
outlined two competing “visions” for the East Village.8 As gentrification spread eastward from
the Bowery toward the East River, the Times noted, “expensive housing is fashioned out of
privately owned tenements and moribund commercial buildings.”9 As a result, a new part of the
Lower East Side had emerged: “Alphabet City,” a “playful, anarchic place filled with artists’
studios, eccentric cafes, and experimental theaters” where “art galleries replace shooting
galleries, and gourmet delis take over bodegas.”10
The Koch administration both reflected and reinforced these trends. By the time Mayor
Koch took office, neighborhoods like Park Slope and the Upper West Side had already
experienced what some observers termed an “urban renaissance.”11 Nevertheless, the mayor
made gentrification a cornerstone of his administration and, according to one of his deputies,
5 Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 222-25; Neil Smith, Betsy Duncan, and Laura Reid, “From Disinvestment to Reinvestment: Mapping the Urban ‘Frontier’ in the Lower East Side,” in From Urban Village to East Village, 161- 63. For details on this development in Chinatown, see Jan Chien Lin, “The Changing Economy of the Lower East Side,” in From Urban Village to East Village, 56-58. 6 Christopher Mele, “The Process of Gentrification in Alphabet City,” in From Urban Village to East Village, 170- 75. 7 Ibid., 172-75, 177-78. 8 Lisa D. Foderaro, “Will it be Loisaida or Alphabet City?; Two Visions Vie in the East Village,” The New York Times, May 17, 1987. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid.; For an analysis of the relationship between art culture and gentrification, see Neil Smith, Betsy Duncan, and Laura Reid, “From Disinvestment to Reinvestment: Mapping the Urban ‘Frontier’ in the Lower East Side,” From Urban Village to East Village, 156; Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 226-28, 233-35. 11 Soffer, 257-58. 224
became a “hero in the real estate industry and in the business community,” who ushered in New
York’s “era of big development.”12 As previously mentioned, Koch responded to the city’s fiscal
crisis in the 1970s by reallocating public dollars to the private sector, in turn expanding the city’s
corporate and financial sectors.13 These policies weakened municipal government’s ability to
regulate the private real estate and, according to one historian, “created a new spatial order for
New York City in the 1980s” that prioritized luxury construction and attracted young, affluent
professionals back to the metropolis. This new “spatial order” emblemized a major shift in New
York’s political economy. At this time, the city offered millions in tax deferrals and abatements
to large corporations and real estate developers.14 Koch reasoned that these new structures would
ultimately provide benefits for everyone by expanding the city’s tax base, creating safer streets,
and reinvigorating the city’s commercial base.15 While the mayor neither approved every
redevelopment scheme that crossed his desk nor blatantly disregarded the needs of the city’s
poor people, he embraced a pro-development agenda that accelerated gentrification and reduced
the city’s stock of low-income housing.16
Koch’s program triggered a great deal of debate on the Lower East Side, particularly with
regard to the neighborhood’s in rem properties. By the 1980s, the city owned roughly 6,000
properties on the Lower East Side, over one-third of which were either empty buildings or land
plots.17 In 1984, the Lower East Side Joint Planning Council (JPC), an interracial group of 25
12 From 1981-1990, the Koch administration offered over $1 billion in tax exemptions to real estate firms and the city experienced a 22 percent increase in its corporate office space; Soffer, 259. 13 Ibid., 255-56, 259; William Sites, “Public Action: New York City Policy and the Gentrification of the Lower East Side,” in From Urban Village to East Village, 193-94. 14 For details, see Soffer’s explanation of the J-51 and 421-a program; Soffer, 259-60. 15 Ibid., 255-57 16 For examples, see Soffer, 261-62, 279, 285-85; Mollenkopf, A Phoenix in the Ashes, 200-01. For statistics on New York’s increasingly rent-burdened populace and growing homeless rate, see Soffer, 277-78, 291. 17 Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 258. 225
local civic and religious institutions, offered the first plan to deal with these properties.18 The
JPC, comprised largely of Puerto Rican churches and local housing groups, had emerged as a major advocacy group for low-income housing during the conflicts over tenanting the Seward
Park Extension in the 1970s. In 1984, the agency penned a report entitled “This Land is Ours,” which argued that the city needed to create 20,000 new low and moderate-income units to offset the effects of gentrification in the neighborhood.19 While the JPC wanted to make “full use of
government programs” to maintain this low-cost housing, it realized that, given recent federal cuts to these programs, it would have to rely on private sales to do so.20 As such, the agency
developed a cross-subsidy proposal that required developers to use profits from selling
refurbished in rem property to construct low-cost housing on other in rem sites in the
neighborhood.21
Most developers and city officials believed that cross-subsidies offered an opportunity to
both ride the East Village gentrification wave and build new low-income housing.22 Harry
Skydell and Samuel Glasser, who rehabilitated the Christodora House, a former settlement house
and headquarters for the Young Lords on 9th Street and Avenue B, professed in one interview
that profits from selling new units in the house would allow them to easily build low-income
18 Lower East Side Joint Planning Council, “A Community Proposal to Preserve and Develop the Lower East Side,” MFP, Box 1409, In Rem, 1978-84, LWA. 19 The report cited statistics showing that over 40 percent of all renters on the Lower East Side spent over one- quarter of their income on rent and that the neighborhood’s median rent costs had risen at least three-fold; “This Land is Ours: A Strategy for Preservation of the Lower East Side,” City Limits, June-July 1984, MFP, Box 1373, Housing I, 1985-86, LWA. 20 For examples on how the Carter and Reagan administrations reduced federal spending on housing, see William Sites, “Market, Community and Local State: Neighborhood Revitalization in New York’s Lower East Side” (Ph.D. Dissertation, The City University of New York, 1994), 124; Soffer, 300; George W. Goodman, “A New Plan for the Lower East Side,” The New York Times, January 6, 1985. 21 “This Land is Ours: A Strategy for Preservation of the Lower East Side,” City Limits, June-July 1984, MFP, Box 1373, Housing I, 1985-86, LWA. 22 Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 260-61. 226
housing in the neighborhood.23
Almost immediately, however, the JPC realized that such private sales would not cover
the cost of building its stated goal of 20,000 low- and moderate-income units. The agency also argued that unchecked private development would inflate housing prices drastically for the entire
neighborhood. The city, for example, had acquired the Christodora House for $60,000 in 1973.
Eleven years later, Harry Skydell bought it for $1.2 million and then flipped it to Samuel Glasser
for about $3 million.24 The developers reported that the house’s new units fetched prices $55 per
foot higher than expected and that they had listed one unit, an apartment with three terraces, two
fireplaces, and its own elevator, at $1.2 million.25 Another such firm, Manhattan Capital
Properties, had recently turned an old furniture warehouse into luxury apartments that ran as high
as $895,000. In turn, one developer from the firm envisioned Avenue A as the “future Columbus
Avenue of the Lower East Side.”26 These new trends did not transform the Lower East Side
overnight because the neighborhood still possessed a sizable public housing stock, numerous
rent-regulated apartments, and landlords who preferred to milk their tenants for higher rent
slowly rather than evict them.27 Nevertheless, these statistics and statements suggest that
developers would drastically restructure the neighborhood’s real estate market and physical
layout. Indeed, the JPC reported that nearly one-half of all Lower East Side residents spent over
25 percent of their incomes on housing by 1984. These trends disproportionately impacted
23 Lisa D. Foderaro, “Will it be Loisaida or Alphabet City?; Two Visions Vie in the East Village,” The New York Times, May 17, 1987; Rebecca Ann Amato, “Alien Spaces: Planning, Reform, and Preservation on the Lower East Side, 1880-2002,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, The City University of New York, 2013), 252. 24 Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 225. 25 Lisa D. Foderaro, “Will it be Loisaida or Alphabet City?; Two Visions Vie in the East Village,” The New York Times, May 17, 1987. 26 Ibid.; Joan Lebow, “And now it’s the Lower East Side’s turn,” Crain’s New York Business, March 14, 1988, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 11, Folder 334, MA. 27 Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 251-52; Neil Smith, Betsy Duncan, and Laura Reid, “From Disinvestment to Reinvestment: Mapping the Urban ‘Frontier’ in the Lower East Side,” in From Urban Village to East Village, 163; Christopher Mele, “The Process of Gentrification in Alphabet City,” in From Urban Village to East Village, 180-81. 227
Puerto Ricans, who represented over one-quarter of the neighborhood’s total population, but
earned a median income of less than $7,500.28
Faced with these realities, the agency abandoned its cross-subsidy idea and instead
crafted a series of proposals to regulate the real estate market and build more low-income housing. To “prevent the private market from running roughshod over broader community needs,” the JPC wanted to set up a tenant-controlled Community Land Trust that, through a combination of public and private funds, would reserve all city-owned property on the Lower
East Side for low and moderate-income housing.29 However, the agency’s plan went beyond this
city-owned property. It also mandated that developers replace every low-income apartment they
removed from the neighborhood with another low-cost unit at rents limited to 25 percent of a
tenant’s income. The report also called for real estate firms to allot 20 percent of their newly
built units for low-income residents, a requirement known as “inclusionary zoning.” Finally, the
agency proposed that the city create a Local Enforcement Unit comprised of housing officials,
JPC appointees, and local civic groups to oversee the construction of low-cost housing and enforce rent control and eviction procedures.30
In 1984, the Lower East Side’s community board, Community Board 3, vaguely endorsed
the principles of the JPC plan and formed a delegation to discuss the proposal with the Koch
administration. Like the JPC, the board called for a Local Enforcement Unit and required
developers to reserve 20 percent of their new units for low-income tenants. After much debate,
the board narrowly backed a proposal to reserve the city’s in rem land for an equal number of
28 “This Land is Ours: A Strategy for Preservation of the Lower East Side,” City Limits, June-July 1984, MFP, Box 1373, Housing I, 1985-86, LWA. 29 Ibid.; Sites, “Market, Community, and Local State,” 165. 30 “This Land is Ours: A Strategy for Preservation of the Lower East Side,” City Limits, June-July 1984, MFP, Box 1373, Housing I, 1985-86, LWA. 228
market-rate and low-income apartments.31 This 50-50 split did not meet the JPC’s call for the
city to reserve all of its property for low-income housing. Some members criticized this
compromise as a sell-out, claiming that the agency should have “taken steps to preserve its
independent identity rather than become tied to the community board.32 Frances Goldin, who had
tried to develop mixed-income housing for the East Village with the Cooper Square Committee,
similarly called the compromise with Community Board 3 a “bitter pill to swallow.” Other JPC
members, however, understood that the JPC and community board played fundamentally
different roles in local politics, as suggested by JPC Co-Chair Lisa Kaplan, who distinguished
between the JPC’s reform-minded, progressive agenda and the “political people” who sat on the
community board. While Kaplan expressed ambivalence over the final 50-50 plan, she
recognized that the JPC had little choice but to accept it given the agency’s lack of formal ties to
the city’s political establishment. As such, Kaplan characterized the JPC’s initial position as a
negotiating ploy to draw more concessions from the community board.33 Publicly, the JPC called
the Community Board 3 plan a “reasonable and realistic approach” to balance the prerogatives of
redevelopment with the neighborhood’s need for affordable housing.34
The JPC proposal – and the agency’s decision to form a delegation with Community
Board 3 to negotiate with housing officials – appeared to trigger a rushed and vague response
from the Koch administration.35 In July 1984, Koch proposed a plan to sell over 400 vacant land
plots and city-owned property to private developers who would reserve 20 percent of their new
31 Sites, “Market, Community, and Local State,” 166-67, 169. 32 Minutes of the Lower East Side Joint Planning Council General Membership Meeting, February 23, 1989, MCHP, Box 63, Folder 20, TL. 33 Janet Abu-Lughod, “Defending the Cross-Subsidy Plan: The Tortoise Wins Again,” in From Urban Village to East Village, 323-24. 34 “Proposal for the Redevelopment of Lower East Side Presented before the CB #3 Disposition Committee,” November 18, 1985, MFP, Box 1373, Housing I, 1985-86, LWA. 35 Sites, “Market, Community, and Local State,” 168. 229
units for low-income housing.36 The city would then utilize an unspecified amount of the revenue from these sales to rehabilitate some of the neighborhood’s nearly 1,300 city-owned apartments.37 While Koch assured New Yorkers that the plan would preserve the Lower East
Side’s “ethnic and cultural diversity” and foster economic integration, JPC leaders characterized the plan as a “double-cross” that did not promise to reserve all in rem land for low-cost housing and offered few details regarding low-income housing or housing subsidies.38 Both Community
Board members and the JPC viewed this proposal as a thinly veiled attempt to undercut the JPC proposal and divide the community board.39
Despite these criticisms, the Department of Housing and Preservation (HPD) signed off on the Community Board 3 proposal in 1987.40 Covering most of the Lower East Side, the plan proposed to create 1,000 new low-income and 1,000 new market-rate units on the neighborhood’s in rem land. The city would reserve one-half of these 1,000 affordable units for
“moderate” earners taking home $15,000-$23,000 annually, and the other half for those earning
$15,000 or less annually.41 City officials would implement this plan in 200-unit increments with the city using revenues from property sales plus municipal subsidies to construct low-cost housing.42
36 George W. Goodman, “A New Plan for the Lower East Side,” The New York Times, January 6, 1985. 37 Joyce Purnick, “Property Sale is Key to Plan to Renew Lower East Side,” The New York Times, July 25, 1984. 38 Sites, 167-68; George W. Goodman, “A New Plan for the Lower East Side,” The New York Times, January 6, 1985. 39 Sites, “Market, Community and Local State,” 168-69. 40 Koch signed this agreement for several reasons. As noted earlier, the Lower East Side’s inflated property prices made developers eager to purchase in rem land, even if the city would reserve some of it for low-income housing. Observers at the time also attributed the agreement to Paul Crotty, the new HPD Chairman. Crotty worked more closely with the community board than his predecessor, Anthony Gliedman. Under criticism for the city’s growing homeless population, Koch also announced a 10-year, multi-billion dollar initiative to create and rehabilitate 250,000 new housing units for low and middle-income New Yorkers in 1985. The mayor viewed the plan as a political compromise that would create new mixed-income areas. See Sites, “Market, Community and Local State,” 195, 199-200; Soffer, 290-91, 293-94. 41 Janet Abu-Lughod, “Defending the Cross-Subsidy Plan: The Tortoise Wins Again,” in From Urban Village to East Village, 324-25. 42 Sites, “Market, Community, and Market State,” 190. 230
Gentrification and Neighborhood Politics in the 1980s and 1990s
The UJC emerged as the major proponent of Koch’s plan on the Lower East Side. The
agency’s leaders made several arguments in the plan’s defense. Like Koch, the agency believed
that a limited cross-subsidy would spark private, middle-class home ownership and provide the
neighborhood with a self-sustaining tax base for new social services.43 UJC Director Doug Balin
also characterized the JPC plan as economically infeasible. By pushing for additional low-
income housing in Seward Park, Balin noted, the JPC held the “quixotic hope that the Federal
Government will once again spend billions of dollars for housing subsidies.” Balin thus praised the Koch plan for attempting to solve “the problems unique to the Lower East Side with the limited resources available.”44
More importantly, UJC officials linked gentrification with the more abstract idea of preserving the Lower East Side as a Jewish neighborhood. A leading UJC member to make this claim was William Rapfogel, an Orthodox Jew and lifelong Lower East Side resident who lived in the East River Co-ops on Grand Street.45 In 1992, Rapfogel would become the head of the
Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, where he became “New York Jewry’s poverty czar”
and raised millions in government funds.46 Rapfogel also maintained close ties with the Jewish political leaders on Grand Street. In the mid-1980s, he served as head of the UJC’s South
Manhattan Development Corporation (SMDC) and wrote editorials for the UJC newsletter that embraced private redevelopment and linked Jewish preservation to gentrification. In 1985,
Rapfogel praised the UJC for trying to “preserve and retain the distinctly Jewish religious and
43 “Analysis of Community Board #3 and HPD’s Memo of Understanding,” Lower East Side Voice, Fall 1987, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 22, Folder 206, MA. 44 Letter to the Editor, Douglas Balin, “Plan a Misnomer,” The New York Times, January 27, 1985. 45 Kenneth Lovett, “Sheldon Silver Aide Says She Didn’t Know of Husband’s Alleged Theft from NYC Charity,” New York Daily News, September 25, 2013. 46 Josh Nathan-Kazis, “Willie Rapfogel’s Downfall in Scandal Means Murky Future For Jewish Programs,” The Jewish Daily Forward, August 14, 2013. 231
cultural identity of our community.” Citing the Lower East Side as “the ‘promised land’ of our forefathers,” Rapfogel argued that the SMDC should “encourage future development here to try and mesh with our historic community.” Maintaining the twin goals of preservation and commercialization, Rapfogel implored the city to establish the Lower East Side as a “special historic district protecting the Jewish religious and cultural landmarks” and allowing the
“middle-class to reclaim this community” through “economic revitalization.” Rapfogel then concluded that such redevelopment would “make our poor into the middle class as well,” a statement that embodied the trickle-down orthodoxy of the Reagan years and belied his role as an anti-poverty leader.47
Other UJC outlets and representatives made similar arguments. In a 1987 editorial, the
Lower East Side Voice, the UJC newsletter, argued that reserving one-half of Lower East Side in rem land would drive those who could “move up the economic ladder” from the neighborhood.
The article argued instead for middle-class housing that would bring commerce, social services, and schools to the Lower East Side. This position meant that the UJC, dismissing low-income housing as a measure of “social engineering,” ignored the needs of the neighborhood’s large low-income population and underestimated the ways in which gentrification closed off economic opportunities to those at the bottom of the economic ladder.48 This argument rested upon more
conservative notions of social mobility and effectively supported policies that would redistribute
public funds to private developers. Heshy Jacob, the UJC leader and head of Cooperative
Village, drove this point home in a rare interview recently conducted about the Seward Park
area. Jacob called luxury building a necessary byproduct of gentrification, argued that residential
47 William E. Rapfogel, “The Lower East Side Faces Challenges,” The Jewish Press, August 23, 1985, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 21, Herbert Block Subject Files, Folder 205, MA. 48 “Analysis of Community Board #3 and HPD’s Memo of Understanding,” Lower East Side Voice, Fall 1987, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 22, Folder 206, MA. 232
turnover revealed the benefits of free market capitalism, and believed that a large developer like
Donald Trump needed to redevelop the Seward Park site.49
At the same time, the UJC failed to define precisely what it meant by “middle-class.”
Gentrification had inflated the specific income levels required to live a truly middle-class existence in New York City. Grand Street Jews represented a segment of the city’s older middle- class, one that came of age during the mid-twentieth century and, as union-built co-op residents, benefited directly from the city’s strong social welfare state and base of steady industrial work.
The city’s 1970 fiscal troubles, however, had ushered in policies that channeled investment into the city’s corporate and service sectors. As such, New York’s middle-class both shrunk and changed. By the 1980s, a new, professional middle-class had emerged in the city. Inflated real estate costs meant that New Yorkers needed a high income and specialized skill-set to enter this new middle-class. Grand Street Jews, however, continued to insist that the poorest Lower East
Siders could easily move up the economic ladder.50 Superimposing their experience on the new
class of poor, predominantly black and Puerto Rican Lower East Siders led Grand Street to
ignore the ways in which economic changes, including widespread gentrification, had closed off
avenues of economic mobility and created a more exclusive middle-class in the city. On the
Lower East Side, the very same forces that the UJC claimed would create a new middle class – the creation of market-rate housing – had also led certain parts of the neighborhood’s Puerto
Rican populace to decline dramatically.51 As such, the UJC’s support for middle-class housing
masked the group’s deeper commitment to maintaining its political base. The agency further
49 “Heshy Jacob on SPURA,” The Lo-Down, February 24, 2010, accessed March 15, 2016, http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2010/02/tld-interview-harold-heshy-jacob-on-spura.html. 50 By the 1990s, however, this climb had become increasingly difficult for the city’s working class and poorer residents. Between 1991 and 1996, incomes of upper-class families rose by one-third; both poor and middle-class family incomes went up only slightly; Freeman, Working Class New York, 328. 51 Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 250; Neil Smith, Betsy Duncan, and Laura Reid, “From Disinvestment to Reinvestment: Mapping the Urban ‘Frontier’ in the Lower East Side,” in From Urban Village to East Village, 156. 233
cloaked these positions within arguments about preserving Jewish history on the Lower East
Side and the neighborhood itself.
Other UJC leaders reinforced these claims by equating low-income housing with drugs and crime. In an editorial for the Lower East Side Voice, Doug Balin suggested that adding more low-income housing to the neighborhood would lead it to “deteriorate and remain a haven for drugs, prostitution and poverty.”52 In a letter to the Times, Balin similarly argued that the JPC cross-subsidy plan would only benefit “the pushers, muggers and prostitutes.”53 Another Lower
East Side Voice article attacked the neighborhood’s community board for preventing the sale of
vacant land at market value and creating “the largest drug shopping center in the city.”54
These arguments, while expressed in softer tones, held some validity with groups across the political spectrum. As historian Christopher Mele notes, dire conditions in some parts of the
Lower East Side led real estate speculators, middle-class professionals, and low-income residents to embrace “the quality-of-life improvements” that came with gentrification, including increased
safety and cleanliness.55
Nevertheless, debates on the Lower East Side revolved less around the merits of “quality- of-life” and more around how to attain it. While the UJC linked poverty and crime with the need for large-scale private development, groups like the JPC viewed these trends as at least a partial product of urban disinvestment. The agency wanted to correct this situation by using the revenue from private real estate sales to build more affordable housing. For this reason, the UJC claim that the community board’s plan would turn the neighborhood into a drug den oversimplified the
52 “JPC Report Disappointing,” Lower East Side Voice, Summer 1984, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 21, Folder 205, MA. 53 Letter to the Editor, Douglas Balin, “Plan a Misnomer,” The New York Times, January 27, 1985. 54 “Analysis of Community Board #3 and HPD’s Memo of Understanding,” Lower East Side Voice, Fall 1987, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 22, Folder 206, MA. 55 Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 278. 234
causes of urban poverty.
These ongoing debates between the UJC and JPC spilled over into both community board and local electoral politics. New York’s community boards, created in 1975 after a city charter revision, did not have formal authority to make policy, but held public hearings on and reviewed local land policies and issues involving subsidized housing. Both the City Planning Commission
(CPC) and Board of Estimate (BOE) considered these reviews when deciding whether to implement housing and zoning proposals.56 To a degree, community boards also reflected the tenor of local politics. Borough presidents appointed all 50 community board members, half of whom came from a list of recommendations provided by a neighborhood’s local councilperson.57
As such, community boards represented both a source of patronage for local politicians and a vehicle through which local interests could pressure citywide officials to implement specific policies.58 As such, community boards provided a platform for low-income residents and representatives to shape housing initiatives.59 For this reason, the boards could often reflect and magnify local political conflict.
During the 1980s, those loyal to the JPC gained control over Community Board 3. This shift resulted partly from public criticism of the Artists Homeownership Program (AHOP), which would convert in rem buildings into co-ops for middle-income (mostly white) artists displaced by urban renewal and neighborhood revitalization plans. The JPC, however, criticized the proposal for using public money to house artists instead of poor residents. While the Koch administration believed AHOP would economically “integrate” the neighborhood, JPC officials
56 Turner, “Building Boundaries,” 342; Peter Marcuse, “Neighborhood Policy and the Distribution of Power: New York City’s Community Boards,” Policy Studies Journal, Volume 16, Issue 2, December 1987, 279. 57 Turner, 342. 58 Ibid. 59 Marcuse, 281-82. 235
argued that the plan would pave the road for more gentrification. After debates between board
members loyal to Grand Street and the JPC, the board eventually approved the proposal 25-13.60
JPC supporters attributed the vote to Grand Street’s disproportionate representation on the
community board. Indeed, Jews living on Grand Street held eighteen seats on the board and all
whites on Grand Street represented nearly one-third of all board members. Hispanics held only
five board seats at this time.61
Ongoing debates about the AHOP proposal – in front of the City Planning Commission
and then directed to the Board of Estimate – lent publicity to the JPC’s argument about
Community Board 3’s racial and ethnic makeup. In addition, several notable artists began to
oppose AHOP after opponents lobbied the Board of Estimate against the plan.62 As a result of
this growing scrutiny, Manhattan Borough President Andrew Stein, perhaps swayed by public
opinion and anticipating his own City Council run, opposed the proposal and promised to
diversify the community board.63 Soon thereafter, David Dinkins, who would soon become New
York’s first African-American mayor, won Stein’s seat, in a convincing victory over
Assemblyman (and future Congressman) Jerrold Nadler.64 As borough president, Dinkins made
Community Board 3 more representative of the Lower East Side’s population. By 1987, whites
comprised slightly over 50 percent, and Latinos 22 percent, of all board members.65
The UJC criticized the new board’s racial and ethnic composition. At the agency’s 1987
legislative breakfast, UJC leaders claimed that Dinkins’ appointments were “not reflective of the
60 Sites, “Market, Community, and Local State,” 137-141. 61 Turner, 344 62 Sites, “Market, Community, and Local State,” 142-44. 63 Ibid., 155; “Why Artists’ Housing Went Down,” The Village Voice, February 22, 1983; Christopher McNickle, The Power of the Mayor: David Dinkins, 1990-1993 (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2013), 19. 64 Opie, Upsetting the Apple Cart, 181. 65 Herbert Block to David Dinkins, “United Jewish Council of Lower East Side Meeting,” November 11, 1987, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 22, Folder 206, MA. 236
needs of the community” and had “resulted in the Jewish community losing many votes.”66
Shortly thereafter, UJC Executive Director Doug Balin suggested that the new community board
served as little more than a mouthpiece for the JPC. In a 1987 interview with the Lower East
Side Voice, Balin noted that the new board “does not reflect the diversity of interests in the
community but one homogenous group.”67 In this same issue, the newspaper reported that
“radicals,” or JPC members, controlled the community board.68 The UJC echoed this critique in
another editorial. Citing a slew of UJC projects voted down by the board, the editorial
characterized the board as a tool for the JPC that did not reflect “community interests.”69
The UJC also blamed the new composition of the board on Councilwoman Miriam
Friedlander, who, as the Lower East Side councilmember, recommended board members to the borough president.70 Friedlander’s ideas placed her firmly in the camp of the Jewish Old Left. A
first generation Ukrainian immigrant who served the Lower East Side’s 3rd and 2nd council
districts from 1974-1991, Friedlander allegedly remained an active member of the Communist
Party in the 1950s and, under the 1952 McCarran Act, had to register as a Communist with the
Justice Department.71 As a councilwoman, Friedlander established progressive positions on both
local and national issues. During her campaigns, she called for diversifying the city’s public
66 Herbert Block to David Dinkins et al., “United Jewish Council – Problems,” May 31, 1987, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 22, Folder 206, MA. 67 “Memo of Understanding between HPD and CB#3, DDP, Lower East Side Voice, Fall 1987, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 22, Folder 206, MA. 68 “Analysis of Community Board #3 and HPD’s Memo of Understanding,” Lower East Side Voice, Fall 1987, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 22, Folder 206, MA. 69 Lower East Side Voice editorial, Spring 1988, MFP, Box 1466, Opposition Press, 1988-89, LWA. 70 Herbert Block to David Dinkins et al., “United Jewish Council – Problems,” May 31, 1987, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 22, Folder 206, MA. 71 Lincoln Anderson, “Miriam Friedlander, councilmember who helped voiceless, 95,” The Villager, Volume 79, Number 19, Oct 14 - 20, 2009; “Woman Here is Ordered to Register as Communist,” The New York Times, November 6, 1962; Mayor Koch noted that he and Friedlander “rarely agreed on anything” and characterized the councilwoman as a proud Communist until her last days. Friedlander’s surviving family claims that Friedlander was not a Communist; Lincoln Anderson, Miriam Friedlander, councilmember who helped voiceless, 95,” The Villager, Volume 79, Number 19, Oct 14 - 20, 2009. 237
schools, enforcing anti-discrimination laws, and increasing federal welfare spending.72 She also
wanted the Lower East Side’s political clubs to “reflect all ethnic groups,” particularly the
neighborhood’s “emerging leadership of Puerto Rican, Black and Oriental communities” and, as
the City Council’s Women’s Committee chair, became one of the city’s most noted feminists.73
Friedlander’s positions on housing, however, irked Grand Street. Calling New York City
“fantastically poor in…housing, educational, and cultural facilities for the poor,” Friedlander
backed plans to subsidize more low-income housing and a more progressive income tax and a
plan to “overhaul real estate assessments, particularly on vacant land.”74 In 1979, she became
one of only three council members to vote against a bill introduced by the Koch administration
that provided landlords who had not paid property taxes a longer grace period before foreclosure,
a loophole that many owners utilized to continue to collect rent and stall the city’s in rem
proceedings.75 The fact that one of the other “yes” votes came from Gilberto Gerena-Valentin, a
notable Puerto Rican labor and civil rights activist elected to a Bronx council seat in 1977,
solidified Friedlander’s ties to the Puerto Rican left.76
By 1981, a New York paper had placed Friedlander on Mayor Koch’s “hit list.” She
called tax abatements developed under the Koch administration “unbalanced” proposals that
squeezed the low and middle class and labeled the mayor a neoconservative.77 One year later, the
72 Friedlander Campaign Pamphlet, MFP, Box 1466, Misc. Campaign, 2 of 2, 1983-84, LWA. 73 “Make the City Council Act!” MFP, Box 1466, Misc. Campaign, 1983-84, LWA; “Statement by Miriam Friedlander on Proposed Reapportionment Plan for City Council Districts,” MFP, Box 1467, 1973 General Election, LWA; Lincoln Anderson, Miriam Friedlander, councilmember who helped voiceless, 95,” The Villager, Volume 79, Number 19, Oct 14 - 20, 2009. Herman Badillo also endorsed Friedlander during her first campaign in 1973; Badillo Endorsement Letter, May 1972, MFP, Box 1467, 1973 General Election, LWA. 74 Miriam Friedlander, “Notes from the City Council,” MFP, Box 1471, Campaign Files, 1974-1981, LWA. 75 “Study Finds Landlords Use Loopholes to Stall Foreclosure,” “No Amendments!! No 492-A” and “Community Housing Advocates” in MCHP, Box 62, Folder 19, TL. 76 City Council Vote,” The New York Times, November, 10, 1977; and “Community Housing Advocates” in MCHP, Box 62, Folder 19, TL. Herman Badillo also endorsed Friedlander when she ran for office in 1973; Herman Badillo Endorsement Letter, May, 1972, MFP, Box 1467, 1973 General Election, LWA. 77 Dan Porcher, “Miriam Friedlander: Lower Manhattan Maverick,” The New York Alliance, August 1, 1981, MFP, Box 1471, Campaign Files, 1974-81, LWA. 238
councilwoman further alienated Koch by chairing a task force that pushed for a longer moratorium on auctioning off in rem land to private developers.78 She also argued that Koch’s cross-subsidy plan would displace “most of the ethnic and minority population, destroying the
Lower East Side.”79 After news broke of another redevelopment proposal, Friedlander criticized
Koch for making “secret deals with developers” and not collaborating with “the Lower East Side community for a fair housing plan.”80
These positions led Grand Street to mobilize against Friedlander.81 These efforts paid off in 1991, during a City Council election cycle called the “biggest…in city history” by the Daily
News.82 That year, Antonio Pagán, head of a housing nonprofit called Lower East Side Coalition
Housing, ran against Friedlander.83 Local newspapers referred to the contest as a “clear-cut ideological square off.”84 Both the Daily News and The Village Voice endorsed Friedlander.
After the liberal New York Times endorsed Pagán for taking a “tough, sensible approach to problems in a district,” The Village Voice responded by calling Friedlander an “unreconstructed progressive” and told readers that Grand Street Jews, “ultraconservative white interests on the
Lower East Side,” backed Pagán.85 The following week, the Voice called Pagán “just plain
78 “Meeting the Housing Needs of the Lower East Side Community,” MFP, Box 1373, Housing, In Rem, LWA; Sites, 81. The Koch administration instead recruited specific developers to submit new proposals and then evaluated these proposals; JPC News Release, February 11, 1983, MFP, Box 1362, Artists Housing, 1980-82; Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 258-59. 79 Miriam Friedlander, “Notes from the City Council,” MFP, Box 1466, Miscellaneous Campaign, 1 of 2, 1984-85, LWA. 80 “Friedlander Challenges the Mayor to Talk Housing with the Lower East Side,” DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 11, Folder 334, MA; Janet Abu-Lughod, “Defending the Cross-Subsidy Plan: The Tortoise Wins Again,” in From Urban Village to East Village, 322. 81 This opposition emerged first in her 1974 campaign. That year, she defeated Grand Street resident Sheldon Silver for the newly structured 2nd district by a mere 95 votes; “Defeated Candidate in Primary to Appeal for Vote on Monday,” The New York Times, October 24, 1974. 82 Juan Gonzalez, “Rainbow is Ready for These 10,” New York Daily News, September 11, 1991. 83 James C. McKinley Jr., “Money Gives an Unknown Introduction,” The New York Times, September 7, 1991; James C. McKinley, “New York City Council Results Show Ripples of Change,” The New York Times, November 6, 1991. 84 “Ideological Issues are Focus of Challenge to Friedlander by Pagán,” The Villager, June 27-July 14, 1991. 85 “For City Council From Manhattan,” The New York Times, September 6, 1991; “‘Voice’ Choices,” The Village Voice, September 10, 1991; Wayne Barrett, “Whine of the Times,” The Village Voice, September 17, 1991. 239
dangerous” in an article that painted Friedlander as the best hope to continue the “black and
Latin-led progressive front that took hold in 1988 [during Jesse Jackson’s presidential
campaign]” and would soon become central to David Dinkins’ election as mayor.86
The race centered on two neighborhood issues: homelessness in Tompkins Square Park and redistricting the City Council. For years, Tompkins Square Park, located in the heart of the
East Village between Avenues A and B, had existed as an informal space for public performances and tourists.87 By the late 1980s, the New York Times noted that park had become
a place for a host of eclectic forces – “radicals angered about neighborhood gentrification, drug
addicts, skinheads, [and] self-proclaimed anarchists” – and a substantial homeless population.88
This varied mix led local residents, old and new, to make frequent noise complaints. In turn,
Community Board 3 beefed up overnight security in the park.89 While the board did not vote to
enforce the city’s official 1 AM park curfew, police officers tried to do so.90 In response, protestors demonstrated to keep the park open and violently clashed with police in a chaotic scene that left 38 injured.91 To a certain extent, these protestors viewed the closure as a broader
symptom of gentrification, holding signs that read “Gentrification is Class War,” and marching
on the nearby Christodora House, chanting “Die Yuppie Scum!”92 Shortly thereafter, the NYPD and Parks Department evicted homeless residents for violating a city order that banned “tents or structures in the park.” After several more evictions and another scuffle between the police and
86 Michael Tomasky, “Race and Stasis,” The Village Voice, September 24, 1991. 87 Janet Abu-Lughod, “The Battle for Tompkins Square Park” in From Urban Village to East Village, 236-37. 88 Alex S. Vitale, “Enforcing Civility: Homelessness, ‘Quality of Life,’ and the Crisis of Urban Liberalism,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, The City University of New York, 2001), 244; Dorine Greshof and John Dale, “The Residents in Tompkins Square Park,” in From Urban Village to East Village, 268-69; Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 268. 89 Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 265. 90 Janet Abu-Lughod, “The Battle for Tompkins Square Park” in From Urban Village to East Village, 237-38. 91 Robert D. McFadden, “Park Curfew Protest Erupts into a Battle and 38 Are Injured,” The New York Times, August 8, 1988. 92 Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 264. 240
some concertgoers, the NYPD barricaded the park completely in May 1991.93
Pagán and Friedlander took different positions on these actions. The councilwoman
agreed that the city should clean up the park, but only after it opened a nearby “help center” for
the homeless.94 Like the protestors, she also linked the clashes at Tompkins Square to Lower
East Side gentrification.95 Pagán did not make these broader connections. He chaired the
Tompkins Square Park Neighborhood Coalition (TSPNC), a group of residents living in and around the park that wanted the city to permanently remove the homeless residing there.96 He
also backed both the NYPD decision to enforce the park’s curfew and the decision to close the
park entirely.97 At the same time, Pagán viewed the park protestors as a group of “white, middle- class young people from the suburbs” using the homeless issue as a front to “[live] out their revolutionary fantasies.”98 These policies emblemized Pagán’s broader pro-development agenda,
which claimed that the Lower East Side had become a “dumping ground” for social programs
and posited that low-income housing would segregate Latinos in substandard housing.99 Such an
argument echoed earlier comments by William Rapfogel of the UJC, who claimed that
gentrification would “make our poor into the middle class.”100
Pagán and Friedlander also took different positions on plans to redistrict the City Council.
The city had implemented a new redistricting plan after New Yorkers voted to revise the City
93 Greshof and Dale, 271, 279. 94 Ibid., 271-72; Vitale, 247; “Sharp Exchange in Friedlander Challenge,” The Villager, July 18-30, 1991. 95 “Friedlander Condemns Police Action in Tompkins Square,” July 6, 1989, MCHP, Box 65, Folder 23, TL. 96 Vitale, 247-48, 250; Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 270. 97 Janet Abu-Lughod, “The Battle for Tompkins Square Park” in From Urban Village to East Village, 246; Kevin Sack, “The Issue in One Bronx Race: Getting Even,” The New York Times, August 29, 1991. 98 Evelyn Nieves, “Squatters and Friends March, But Tompkins Sq. Is Weary,” The New York Times, October 13, 1991. Protestors greeted Antonio Pagán’s death in 2009 by gathering near the park for an “anti-memorial memorial.” See Lincoln Anderson, “A complex legacy: Friends and foes reflect on Pagán,” The Villager, Volume 78 - Number 37, February 11 - 17, 2009. 99 Paavo Trabit, “Downtown Veteran Faces Three Foes,” The Villager, September 5-15, 1991. 100 William E. Rapfogel, “The Lower East Side Faces Challenges,” The Jewish Press, August 23, 1985, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 21, Folder 205, MA. 241
Charter in 1989. That year, the Supreme Court ruled that the Board of Estimate, a body
comprised of the borough presidents, comptroller, mayor, and city council President, violated the idea of one person-one vote.101 In response, Mayor Koch appointed a Charter Revision
Commission that eliminated the board and increased the size and power of the City Council to
make it more responsive to constituent needs.102 The charter, however, issued a conflicting set of
regulations to achieve this goal: to draw district lines that maintained existing “neighborhoods
and communities” while also guaranteeing “fair and effective representation” for the city’s
“racial and ethnic language minority groups.”103
In 1990-91, the commission held 27 public hearings to solicit testimony and feedback on these new districts.104 Pagán and Friedlander backed different plans to redistrict the area.105 The councilwoman backed a plan created by Lower East Siders for a Multi-Racial District. Headed
by JPC leaders Elaine Chan and Carlos Garcia, the plan’s district would combine the Lower East
Side and Chinatown and possess a roughly 37 percent Asian, 34 percent Hispanic, and 13 percent black population. Framing the Lower East Side as an historic “viable and lively multi- ethnic community,” the proposal suggested that this district allowed Chinese and Puerto Rican voters to “detail their common needs” and oppose the forces of gentrification that had displaced long-time residents in both Chinatown and Lower East Side. Importantly, the proposal also advised the commission to exclude the neighborhood’s Orthodox leadership from the new
101 Bruce Berg, New York City Politics: Governing Gotham (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 181- 82. 102 The Commission increased the size of the City Council from 35 to 51 members and provided it with more authority over the budget and land use issues; Ibid., 183-84; 231-14, 217. 103 Ibid., 236. This requirement stemmed from the mandates of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, discussed in Chapter 4. 104 Lorraine Carol Minnite, “Identity, Voting Rights, and the Remapping of Political Representation: A Case Study of New York City’s 1991 Redistricting,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, The City University of New York, 2000), 14. 105 Another plan, sponsored by Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE), would create a district including Chinatown, Tribeca, SoHo and the Financial District, with a Chinese plurality of roughly 38 percent. For details about this plan, see Minnite, 295-303, 307-08 and Felicia R. Lee, “Blocs Battle to Draw Chinatown’s New Council Map, The New York Times, April 30, 1991. 242
district, characterizing Grand Street as a “conservative” and “highly organized” group that
“[controlled] local politics and set the political agenda for the area as a whole.” Citing the “long history of strife between the leadership of the cooperative housing and the rest of the district,” the report claimed that Grand Street dominated local school and antipoverty boards. As a result, the proposal noted, “minority representation was absent and…the needs of the minority community were ignored” in the neighborhood. The proposal specifically alluded to the 62nd
Assembly District headed by Sheldon Silver. While minority residents comprised over one-half of the district’s residents, the report noted, Silver and the “Grand Street group” had marginalized
their local political presence.106
By the 1990s, Silver had indeed consolidated his political power. A first generation
Jewish immigrant and lifelong resident of the Hillman co-ops, Silver had served the district as an
assemblyman for nearly two decades and become a leading voice for Grand Street.107 In 1994, he
expanded his influence by becoming Assembly Speaker, a position he would hold for the next
two decades. Throughout his political career, Silver cultivated close ties with UJC leaders
William Rapfogel, the Met Council chief, and Heshy Jacob, the head of Cooperative Village and
the UJC. According to the Jewish Daily Forward, Silver, Rapfogel, and Jacob represented a
“troika of neighborhood power brokers that dominated local politics.”108 Rapfogel and Silver
were particularly close. Silver had previously coached Rapfogel in a local basketball league; they
attended the same synagogue; and, in 1976, Silver hired Judy Rapfogel, William’s wife, to work
as an administrative assistant. She would eventually work as Silver’s Chief of Staff when he
106 Lower East Siders for a Multi-Racial District, “Redistricting: Community Empowerment in Action, A Plan for Redistricting of the Lower East Side/Chinatown Area,” March 11, 1991, MFP, Box 1502, Redistricting Commission Legislation, 1990-91, LWA. 107 Silver became Speaker of the Assembly in 1994; “The Obstructionist,” New York Magazine, June 1, 2008. 108 Josh Nathan-Kazis, “Willie Rapfogel’s Downfall in Scandal Means Murky Future For Jewish Programs,” The Jewish Daily Forward, August 14, 2013. 243
became Assembly Speaker.109 These personal ties solidified an ongoing professional
collaboration between Silver and Rapfogel. As I will later show, both leaders maintained ties to corporate real estate that belied their reputations as modest and devout representatives of the
Lower East Side’s Jewish middle-class.
On the other hand, the Puerto Rican/Hispanic Council, formed by Antonio Pagán,
Roberto Napoleon, a local tenant leader and former chief of the Lower East Side Community
Corporation, and others, opposed the Multi-Racial plan. The council claimed that the plan arbitrarily combined two distinct neighborhoods – Chinatown and the Lower East Side – into a single district that overrode each area's distinct “historical, racial, economic, ethnic, and religious ties.”110 The council also argued that “little history of cooperation” existed between Asian and
Latino voters and worried that the plan would place Puerto Ricans within a Chinese-dominated
district, a setup that could force Chinese and Latino voters to split their votes and hand the new
council seat to a white candidate.111 For these reasons, Pagán proposed a district that would
possess a Hispanic plurality and reside entirely on the Lower East Side.112
Behind this call for a Puerto Rican district lay a particular vision of the Lower East Side
centered on the tenets of commercial development and gentrification. In a letter to the New York
Times, Pagán claimed the Multi-Racial plan would create a “museum of poverty” by taking
109 Kenneth Lovett, “Sheldon Silver Aide Says She Didn’t Know of Husband’s Alleged Theft from NYC Charity,” New York Daily News, September 25, 2013; “Where Gangsters Prayed: Stepping Inside the Bialystoker Synagogue on the LES,” Bowery Boogie, March 25, 2016. 110 Puerto Rican/Hispanic Council, “A Proposal for a Hispanic-Based District on the Lower East Side,” January 22, 1991, MFP, Box 1502, Redistricting Commission Legislation, 1990-91, LWA. 111 Ibid.; Felicia R. Lee, “Blocs Battle to Draw Chinatown’s New Council Map, The New York Times, April 30, 1991. 112 “Hispanics in the Lower East Side Join Forces to Win Elections,” January 22, 1991, PRDLEF, Box 3101, Folder 10, Centro. Under the plan, Hispanics would comprise slightly over 36 percent of the district’s total populace. See Puerto Rican/Hispanic Council, “A Proposal for a Hispanic-Based District on the Lower East Side,” January 22, 1991, MFP, Box 1502, Redistricting Commission Legislation, 1990-91, LWA. 244
“primarily Hispanic and low-income Alphabet City and [calling] that the Lower East Side.”113
Instead, Pagán argued that a true Lower East Side district needed to encompass “the splendid
diversity of ethnic groups” in the neighborhood and incorporate “traditional Lower East Side
communities.”114 For this reason, Pagán’s proposed new district combined Puerto Rican
territories with Grand Street and the least black and Hispanic sections of the neighborhood.115
Behind Pagán’s calls for diversity and respect for “traditional communities” lay a more overtly
political motivation to incorporate white ethnic, and more developed, areas into the new district
and build a base sympathetic to private redevelopment.
After much debate, the Commission decided to split the Lower East Side into two
chunks, one centered in Chinatown (the 1st district) and another in the eastern section of the
Lower East Side and Midtown East (the 2nd district).116 This split reflected the logic of the City
Charter, which encouraged districts to encompass specific racial and ethnic voting blocs, and foreshadowed the growth of the Chinatown neighborhood as a distinct political base on the
Lower East Side. Indeed, a group called Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE) tapped into this argument by convincing the Commission that the city’s Chinese population would grow exponentially and become more politically active in the coming years. As evidence, the AAFE predicted that Margaret Chin, who immigrated to Chinatown in 1963, helped form the organization, and had already organized a campaign, would eventually win a seat in the new district.117
113 Letter to the Editor, Antonio Pagán, “Lower East Side and Chinatown Need Distinct Council Districts,” The New York Times, May 2, 1991. 114 Ibid. 115 Puerto Rican/Hispanic Council, “A Proposal for a Hispanic-Based District on the Lower East Side,” January 22, 1991, MFP, Box 1502, Redistricting Commission Legislation, 1990-91, LWA; Letter to the Editor, Antonio Pagán, “Lower East Side and Chinatown Need Distinct Council Districts,” The New York Times, May 2, 1991. 116 “New City Council Districts for Sept. Primary,” The Villager, July 27-August 4, 1991. 117 Minnite, 307, 309; Margaret Chin Biography, The New York City Council, accessed April 15, 2016, http://council.nyc.gov/d1/html/members/biography.shtml. 245
This new configuration helped Pagán eke out a slim 121-vote victory over Friedlander.118
The new Chinatown district, District 1, included poor Puerto Rican sections of the Lower East
Side in the southeastern part of the neighborhood that embraced Friedlander’s positions on
housing.119 As a result, the 2nd district, where Pagán and Friedlander ran, included the Grand
Street Jewish area and possessed only an 18 percent Latino populace even though Latinos
comprised nearly one-third of the entire Lower East Side.120 These boundaries increased the weight of the Jewish vote in 2nd district and led The Villager, a local newspaper, to claim that the
election came down to the “vote from Grand Street.”121 During the election, Sheldon Silver and
the Truman Democratic Club, which routinely backed Grand Street candidates, endorsed
Pagán.122 While Pagán earned endorsements from Latino officials like Herman Badillo and
members of the Hispanic/Puerto Rican Council, The Village Voice argued that Pagán owed his
victory to “Sheldon Silver, who delivered votes from the Grand Street Co-Op.”123 Pagán also
recognized the importance of the Jewish vote in the election. When one staffer announced that
Pagán had won Grand Street, his campaign headquarters allegedly erupted in a celebration that
led one observer to compare the scene to “Bourbon Street at Mardis Gras.”124
Friedlander’s supporters also recognized the importance of Grand Street. After the
election, The Village Voice suggested that a district including more Puerto Rican and Chinese
118 James McKinley, “Final Counts in Council Contests; New Winner in Tight Bronx Race,” The New York Times, September 13, 1991; “Complete Council Results,” New York Post, September 13, 1991. 119 Minnite, 322-23. 120 Sarah Ferguson, “Tompkins Square Everywhere,” The Village Voice, September 24, 1991; Source: “New City Council Districts for Sept. Primary,” The Villager, July 27-August 4, 1991. 121 “Paul Ranis, “In the Second District: Fateful Night for Incumbent Hinges on the Vote from Grand Street,” The Villager, September 12-22, 1991. 122 Ibid.; “Smears and Fears,” The New York Times, September 15, 1991; Paavo Trabit, “Downtown Veteran Faces Three Foes,” The Villager, September 5-15, 1991; “Sharp Exchange in Friedlander Challenge,” The Villager, July 18-30, 1991; Lauren Esserman, “In the Running for New Council Seats,” The Villager, June 27-July 14, 1991; James C. McKinley Jr., “Money Gives an Unknown Introduction,” The New York Times, September 7, 1991. 123 11.30.05; Paavo Trabit, “Downtown Veteran Faces Three Foes,” The Villager, September 5-15, 1991. 124 “Paul Ranis, “In the Second District: Fateful Night for Incumbent Hinges on the Vote from Grand Street,” The Villager, September 12-22, 1991. 246
voters would have reelected the councilwoman.125 Instead, the 2nd district that elected Pagán
would drive working class blacks and Puerto Ricans from the neighborhood and “end…the
Lower East Side as we have known it,” a neighborhood of “cultures and subcultures knocking up
against each other.”126 The East Side Tenants Council, a branch of the Metropolitan Council on
Housing (MCH), similarly criticized “the…racist gerrymandering of the Lower East Side” and
claimed that the new 2nd district resulted from the tactic of “divide and rule against a community
which has fought together against gentrification for years.”127
Gentrification and Mayoral Politics on the Lower East Side: The Lefrak Plan
In 1988, the Koch administration proposed a new cross-subsidy plan that heightened these local conflicts and made Lower East Side housing issues a significant factor in New York mayoral politics. The proposal awarded unutilized sites in the Seward Park Extension (Chapter
3) to Samuel J. Lefrak, a long-time developer of middle-class housing for the city.128 Under the
agreement, the Lefrak Organization would buy one of these sites for $1 and sell 400 new
condominiums there at market value.129 The company would then combine the revenue from
these sales with a municipal subsidy of $25,000/unit to construct 800 middle- and moderate-
income rental apartments on the Extension site.130 To earn tax exemptions on the properties,
Lefrak also agreed to reserve 20 percent of these new rental units for low- and moderate-income
families.131 The mainstream press hailed the plan as a way to bring affordable housing to the
125 Sarah Ferguson, “Tompkins Square Everywhere,” The Village Voice, September 24, 1991. 126 Ibid. 127 East Side Tenants Council Statement on Tompkins Square Park, MCHP, Box 65, Folder 23, TL. 128 Alan Finder, “Koch and Lefrak Agree on Plan for 1,200 Middle-Income Units,” The New York Times, February 29, 1988. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid.; Alan S. Oser, “Perspectives: The Lefrak Plan, Using Condo Sales to Assist New Rentals,” The New York Times, April 10, 1988. 131 Alan S. Oser, “Perspectives: The Lefrak Plan, Using Condo Sales to Assist New Rentals,” The New York Times, April 10, 1988. 247
Lower East Side. The Daily News similarly called the proposal “one of the great experiments of
our time,” while Newsday called it a “smart proposal to build subsidized housing.”132 New York
Times articles called Lefrak a “kind of Donald Trump for the middle class” and viewed the plan
as a “realistic” way to build affordable housing in lieu of continued federal cutbacks.133
Despite these endorsements, the Lefrak plan exacerbated political conflict between middle-class Jews and housing activists on the Lower East Side in ways that would soon reverberate in citywide politics. As noted earlier, developers and reformers alike both endorsed cross-subsidies as a strategy to use private revenue for affordable housing construction. These groups, however, defined “affordable” differently. The Lefrak plan reserved 640 of its proposed
800 rental units for “middle-income” families, those defined by the city as earning $25,000-
48,000 per year, and the remaining 160 rental units (or 20 percent of the rental units) for “low- income earners.”134 However, Lefrak followed higher federal income limits for this latter group.
The federal government classified “low income” New Yorkers as those who earned 50-80
percent of the median family income in the city, or roughly $16,000-$26,000 annually. City
officials, however, defined “low-income” families as those earning less than $15,000 per year.135
By the city’s standards, then, Lefrak provided no apartments for this income group. At the same
time, the Lefrak agreement allowed families earning up to 180 percent of the city’s median
family income to rent new apartments and permitted the company to sell the new rental units as
132 Owen Moritz, “Lefrak Plan to Help Solve New York Housing Problem,” New York Daily News, March 1988, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA; “Lefrak’s Smart Proposal to Build Subsidized Housing,” Newsday, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 133 “Samuel Lefrak: A Donald Trump for the Middle Class,” The New York Times, January 14, 1988; “Housing, the Koch-Lefrak Way,” The New York Times, March 17, 1988. 134 Alan Finder, “Koch and Lefrak Agree on Plan for 1,200 Middle-Income Units,” The New York Times, February 29, 1988; Alan S. Oser, “Perspectives: The Lefrak Plan, Using Condo Sales to Assist New Rentals,” The New York Times, April 10, 1988. 135 Alan S. Oser, “Perspectives: The Lefrak Plan, Using Condo Sales to Assist New Rentals,” The New York Times, April 10, 1988. 248
co-ops or condos in twenty years.136 These stipulations reveal Lefrak’s central goals: to tenant
his new apartment with affluent New Yorkers residing outside the Lower East Side and to reap
potentially massive profits. For this reason, HPD Commissioner Abraham Biderman, who once
called the plan “philanthropic,” acknowledged that the proposal did not represent a “gift” to the
city, but a “20-year gift of a middle-income resource.”137
Local housing groups criticized the plan for this reason. Bonnie Brower, head of the
Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, Inc., an umbrella organization working on behalf of low-income residents in the city, characterized the Lefrak plan as an “upper middle-income and luxury project.”138 During an April 1988 meeting, JPC officials called for the
Seward Park Extension to have low, moderate, and middle-income housing that would house
existing Lower East Side tenants.139 MFY similarly viewed the agreement as “in fact not
different from any project by a private developer.”140
These debates over the Lefrak plan, however, turned on more than just economic
calculation. They also tapped into broader conflicts over Lower East Side history. The JPC
responded to the Lefrak plan by outlining a collective vision for the Lower East Side based not
only on the neighborhood’s literal racial and ethnic composition, but also its more abstract past.
Carlos “Chino” Garcia, the JPC chairman in the early 1990s, located this identity in the
neighborhood’s name. Garcia distinguished the Lower East Side, a term centered on the area’s
136 Ibid. 137 Alan Finder, “Lefrak’s Offer Allows Chance for Conversions,” The New York Times, April 2, 1988, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 11, Folder 334, MA, my emphasis; Michael Moss, “City, Builder Plan 1,200 Unit Project,” Newsday, February 29, 1988, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 138 Letter to the Editor, “Lefrak Plan,” The New York Times, May 29, 1988; Bonnie Brower, Letter to the Editor of the Real Estate Section of the New York Times, April 15, 1988, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 11, Folder 334, MA. 139 JPC Membership Meeting Minutes, April 28, 1988, MCHP, Box 63, Folder 20, TL. 140 Charles V. Bagli, “Lefrak Plan Sparks Heated Controversy,” The New York Times, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 11, Folder 334, MA. 249
working class, multiethnic, immigrant history, from “Alphabet City” or the “East Village,”
commercial labels designed to spur gentrification and drive residents from the neighborhood.141
In this way, Garcia, a former gang leader turned community activist who helped found
CHARAS, a housing agency and JPC member, hoped to link Lower East Side Puerto Ricans
with the classic immigrant “rags to riches” narrative of the early twentieth century.142
This reconceptualization did not mean that Garcia wanted to blur the cultural and political distinctions between 1970s Puerto Ricans and their earlier European counterparts.
Instead, Garcia and a local poet named Bimbo Rivas coined and marketed the term “Loisaida,” a
rough Spanish translation of Lower East Side.143 In the 1980s, the public came to know Loisaida as the most impoverished and heavily Puerto Rican part of the neighborhood, located above
Houston Street between Avenues A and D. In the 1980s, major real estate journals characterized
Loisaida as a barren territory filled with crime and drugs under the close watch of private
investors who had begun to revitalize its crumbling infrastructure. As a result of this
reinvestment, Loisaida had become the “hot new real estate area in Manhattan” and a “growth
stock” in the Manhattan real estate market.144 This shift led Loisaida’s Puerto Rican population
to decline in the 1980s.145
For Garcia, however, “Loisaida” represented less a new frontier of urban development and more a cultural label that marked and defined Puerto Rican neighborhood space.146 This
141 Liz Sevcenko, “Making Loisaida: Placing Puertorriquenidad in Lower Manhattan,” in Arelene Davila and Agustin Lao-Montes, eds., Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York Montage (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 297-98. 142 Amato, 240, 241-42. 143 Sevcenko, 298-99. 144 Thomas Glynn, “One Hundred Years of Exploitation: Loisaida,” Neighborhood, Spring 1983, Petra Santiago Papers, Box 5, Folder 16, Centro. 145 Mele, Selling the Lower East Side, 250; Neil Smith, Betsy Duncan, and Laura Reid, “From Disinvestment to Reinvestment: Mapping the Urban ‘Frontier’ in the Lower East Side,” in From Urban Village to East Village, 156. 146 Sevcenko, 300. 250
label provided local activists an ideological framework within which to push for new physical infrastructure – housing and cultural centers – that would allow Puerto Ricans to remain on the
Lower East Side and develop needed social services.147 For the JPC, then, the very name(s) used
to label the area south of East 14th Street between the Bowery and East River held political value.
JPC leaders assumed that calling this area the “Lower East Side” or “Loisaida” could help shield
residents from outside redevelopment and maintain a foothold in the neighborhood.148
Local activists and JPC members invoked these arguments frequently in response to the
Lefrak proposal. Pointing to its record as “the refuge of successive generations of immigrants
and as the haven of the poor,” the Lower East Side Catholic Area Conference, a JPC member,
argued that Mayor’s Koch’s cross-subsidy plan neglected the “critical housing needs of this
community and the people who have traditionally made it in [sic] their home.”149 The agency
then called for elected leaders to “recognize the urgency of the housing crisis on the Lower East
Side” and craft policies that would “support tenant and neighborhood groups in the struggle to
save their home.”150 Another JPC member claimed that the agency represented the “keepers of
this neighborhood – the ethnic diversity, the low-income nature of the community” and argued
that the JPC’s housing plan upheld the “symbolic” significance of the Lower East Side: “all people’s right to live in an economically and ethnically diverse community.”151 MCH founder
Frances Goldin echoed these comments, arguing that developers had branded the “East Village,”
the territory east of 3rd Avenue between Houston and 14th Streets, an upscale, trendy area. For
147 Amato, 248-49. 148 Sevcenko, 307. 149 Lower East Side Catholic Area Conference Position Paper, November 5, 1984, MFP, Box 1373, Housing, In Rem, LWA. 150 Ibid. 151 Alan Finder, “Lower East Side Housing: Plans and Conflict,” The New York Times, May 14, 1988; Charles V. Bagli, “Lefrak Plan Sparks Heated Controversy,” The New York Times, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 11, Folder 334, MA. 251
Goldin, however, believed that this territory still represented a grittier and more inclusive
“Lower East Side.”152 Like the JPC, Goldin assumed that the values and traditions of the Lower
East Side mandated more, not less, public interest in the urban poor and accused Koch of turning
the neighborhood “over to Helmsley-Spear,” the real estate firm that owned and operated the
Empire State Building.153
The JPC repeatedly lobbied public officials, particularly in the Dinkins administration, to
make this vision of the Lower East Side a tangible reality. Dinkins’ interracial electoral base, his
stated political priorities, and personal guarantees to the JPC made Lower East Side housing
activists optimistic that the new mayor, elected in 1989, would overturn the Lefrak plan. A
veteran of city politics who had come up through Harlem’s Democratic machine, Dinkins
possessed both the political experience and wide appeal to construct a coalition of African-
Americans, Latinos, and progressive whites.154 As noted in Chapter 4, Dinkins modeled both his run for Manhattan Borough President in 1985 and mayor in 1989 on the campaigns of other prominent African-American politicians, including Harold Washington, elected mayor of
Chicago in 1983, and Jesse Jackson, a Democratic presidential candidate in 1984 and 1988.
These campaigns made concerted outreach efforts to construct a “Rainbow Coalition” of black,
Latino, and progressive white voters.155
Dinkins’ rhetoric aimed to uphold this coalition. By repeatedly telling voters that he
would uphold New York’s “gorgeous mosaic,” Dinkins implied that he could reduce racial
152 Lisa Belkin, “The Gentrification of the East Village,” The New York Times, September 2, 1984. 153 Ibid.; Eric Pace, “Alvin Schwartz, an Owner Of Helmsley-Spear, Dies at 89,” The New York Times, September 14, 2001. 154 He also utilized a similar coalition to become Manhattan Borough President in 1985. See Opie, Upsetting the Apple Cart, 179-185 and Mollenkopf, A Phoenix in the Ashes, 119. 155 For a specific description of the Washington and Jackson coalitions, see Opie, 129-143; 145-153, 189-93. 252
hostility in the city and reinvigorate a liberal form of multicultural politics.156 New Yorkers
welcomed this message as a positive alternative to the Koch years. By 1989, Koch saw his public
approval ratings drop precipitously due to a slew of corruption charges against various local
Democratic leaders and several episodes of racial violence.157 That year, white teenagers in
Bensonhurst, a working class Italian-American neighborhood, killed a 16-year-old African-
American named Yusuf Hawkins for allegedly dating a white woman.158 Black activists tied the
shootings to a pattern of racial hostility during the Koch years and criticized the mayor for opposing a demonstration led by Al Sharpton and Sonny Carson, a black nationalist. These
critiques underscored Koch’s already fragile relationship with African-American voters, who, as
noted in Chapter 3, disagreed with the mayor’s closing of Sydenham Hospital, his views on
black crime and poverty, and tepid response to well-publicized police brutality cases.159 The
resulting clash between NYPD officers and the demonstrators left dozens injured and reinforced
the sense that New York race relations had gotten worse under Koch.160 This perception led
several mainstream liberals, including Governor Mario Cuomo, and the editorial boards at the
New York Times and The Daily News, to endorse Dinkins.161
In the 1989 Democratic primary, Dinkins won 51 percent, and Koch 42 percent, of the
city’s vote.162 Dinkins maintained the Rainbow Coalition, winning 93 percent of the black vote
156 McNickle, To Be Mayor, 295. About 1/3rd of Dinkins voters claimed that the events in Bensonhurst confirmed and solidified their vote for Dinkins; Sam Roberts, “The New York Primary: A Sense of Quiet Strength,” The New York Times, September 1989. 157 Christopher McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 2; By January 1989, polls showed that a paltry 17 percent of the city’s voters backed Koch for reelection; McNickle, To Be Mayor, 299. 158 Opie, 222 159 Ibid., 222-23; Marc Santora, “Sonny Carson, 66, Figure in 60s Battle for Schools, Dies,” The New York Times, ember 23, 2002. 160 Ibid., 223. 161 McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 34-35, 43. 162 Opie, 224. 253
and nearly 70 percent of the Latino vote, primarily from the city’s Puerto Rican communities.163
At the same time, Dinkins earned more support from white voters and outer-borough Jews than
previous black candidates, despite running against Harrison J. Goldin and Richard Ravitch, two
Jewish candidates. Exit polling also suggested that white voters, regardless of religion, trusted
Dinkins to manage race relations.164
Nevertheless, Jews still lent Koch far more support than Dinkins. The new mayor won 27
percent, and Koch 68 percent, of the Jewish vote.165 Rudy Giuliani, Dinkins’ Republican
opponent and an Italian-American born in Brooklyn who had previously served as a prosecutor
for New York’s Southern District, tried to pick up these Jewish voters in the general election.166
He did so primarily by characterizing Dinkins as a supporter of black anti-Semitism. Roger
Ailes, a top Giuliani aide and future founder of Fox News, emphasized Dinkins’ ties to black
activists like Leslie Campbell (now Jitu Weusi), the Dinkins advisor who had the infamous poem
“You pale faced Jew boy – I wish you were dead” over the radio during the 1968 teacher strikes,
and Sonny Carson.167 Giuliani also called Dinkins a “Jesse Jackson Democrat,” a reference to
Jackson calling Jewish parts of New York “Hymietown,” and his anti-Semitic claim that New
York Jews had conspired to scrutinize his finances during a 1984 off-the-record talk.168
While several Jewish leaders, including Koch himself and several Orthodox leaders,
endorsed Dinkins, his narrow victory over Giuliani revealed Jews as an important, yet tenuous,
part of Dinkins’ coalition.169 Despite the fact that five times as many New Yorkers registered as
163 McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 35; Opie claims Dinkins won 55 percent of the Hispanic vote; Opie, 224. 164 Mollenkopf, A Phoenix in the Ashes, 178-79. 165 Opie, 224; For a slightly lower estimate, See McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 35. Koch also earned 63 percent of the Catholic vote; McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 35. 166 Opie, 227. 167 McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 40-41; Opie, 231-32. 168 Opie, 153, 232-33. 169 For examples of these endorsements, see Opie, 233; McNickle, To Be Mayor, 308-09. McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 39-40, 43. 254
Democrats than Republicans and Dinkins at one point held nearly a 20-point lead, the 1989
mayoral race was the closest in New York City history. Dinkins defeated Giuliani by less than
50,000 votes and 3 percentage points.170 Exit polls suggested that this slim margin resulted from
the significant number of white ethnic Democrats who voted for Giuliani.171 While Dinkins
earned solid backing from regular Democrats and earned 35 percent of the Jewish vote, a higher
percentage than the white population overall, 63 percent of the city’s Jewish voters, 80 percent of
the city’s white Catholic voters, and 71 percent of the city’s overall white voters still backed
Giuliani.172 If Dinkins’ Jewish support had sunk to his Catholic support, he would have lost the
election.173 On the other hand, Dinkins won 91 percent of the black vote, and 65 percent of the
Latino vote, including 67 percent of the Puerto Rican vote.174 With both the black and white
Catholic vote solidly going for each candidate, Latinos and Jews had become essential swing voters. A slight dip in either voting bloc would have produced a Giuliani victory. The New York
Times made this point after the election, framing Giuliani as a rising star in city politics, partly
because many Koch voters had voted Republican during the general election. The article noted
that these voters could provide Giuliani with a solid base in a heavily Democratic city, and thus
considered Dinkins’ coalition temporary.175 To a certain extent, Dinkins would face the same
electoral challenge of retaining the white ethnic, and particularly Jewish, vote during his 1993
rematch with Giuliani.
By the late 1980s, Grand Street had become an important Jewish constituency within
170 McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 44; Opie, 196, 233. 171 One exit poll showed 6 in 10 Democrats who had voted for Koch in the 1989 primary claimed that they would sooner support a Republican candidate in a general election than vote for an African-American candidate; Opie, 234. 172 “A Portrait of New York City Voters,” The New York Times, November 9, 1989. For a brief explanation of this Regular Democratic support, see Mollenkopf, A Phoenix in the Ashes, 204. 173 McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 44. 174 “A Portrait of New York City Voters,” The New York Times, November 9, 1989. 175 Roger Stone, “Why Giuliani Only Came Close,” The New York Times, November 9, 1989. 255
Dinkins’ ethnic coalition. Dinkins first met UJC representatives during his campaign for
Manhattan Borough President in 1985. At that time, Dinkins told the group that he understood the “significant cultural, religious and historical importance of the Lower East Side to the Jewish community.”176 Shortly thereafter, he met with UJC leaders to discuss the Lower East Side’s in rem property, the Seward Park Extension, and Community Board 3 membership.177 Dinkins also penned articles in the agency’s newsletter, the Lower East Side Voice, that denounced black anti-
Semitism and emphasized the value of black-Jewish coalition building.178 In May 1987, Dinkins emphasized a similar point in a special issue of the Jewish Press that celebrated the Lower East
Side.179 Charting the influx of various immigrant groups into the neighborhood, Dinkins claimed that Jews had left a permanent institutional and intellectual mark on the area and praised attempts to preserve “the rich history of the Jewish people” by making certain neighborhood buildings historical landmarks and refurbishing old synagogues. Dinkins then included Jews in the
“gorgeous mosaic” he mentioned during the 1989 mayoral campaign, comparing Jews to “most minorities” who “are rarely mentioned in standard history texts.”180 Roughly one year later,
Dinkins appeared with Sheldon Silver at the 12th Annual Lower East Side Jewish Festival. There, the mayor again made reference to New York as a “mosaic,” linking the “bodega in El Barrio to the shops on Orchard Street” and calling Jews on the Lower East Side “one of the most famous and important Jewish communities in the world.”181
176 Herbert Block to David Dinkins et al., “United Jewish Council,” January 28, 1986, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 21, Folder 205, MA. 177 Herbert Block to B. Lynch et al., “United Jewish Council Mtg,” January 21, 1986, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 21, Folder 205, MA. 178 “Manhattan Borough President Elect David Dinkins: On Louis Farrakhan,” Lower East Side Voice, Winter 1985- 1986, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 21, Folder 205, MA. 179 David Dinkins, “Preserving a People’s History,” The Jewish Press, May 29, 1987, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 22, Folder 206, MA. 180 Ibid. 181 David Dinkins Speech at Lower East Side Jewish Festival, June 5, 1988, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 22, Folder 206, MA. 256
The UJC, however, became increasingly dissatisfied with Dinkins’ record on Lower East
Side issues. According to Herbert Block, Dinkins’ chief aide on Jewish affairs, UJC members
had made “many negative comments about DND and his office’s actions” and claimed that
“nothing has improved or changed on the Lower East Side in many years” at the agency’s 1987
legislative breakfast. In making this critique, the UJC lumped Dinkins with other politicians, who
did nothing but pay lip service to “preserving the Jewish community in the area.” In turn, Block
advised Dinkins to “set up a meeting with a few members of the UJC leadership in order to
reestablish dialogue and discuss their gripes.”182 Several months later, Block reiterated that the
“UJC is likely to be upset that we have not taken a position on what should be done with the
[Seward Park Extension] site and have not followed up on this issue with them.”183 Three years later, Block reiterated this advice, suggesting that Dinkins attend another UJC meeting and street fair called the Festival of Lights Dinner because “the community in the area feels we are ignoring them.”184
While Dinkins appeared unresponsive to UJC lobbying, he seemed to recognize the
Lower East Side as a Puerto Rican neighborhood. In his inaugural address as borough president,
for instance, Dinkins pledged to stand up for “those neighborhoods that have been neglected –
Harlem, El Barrio, and the Lower East Side.”185
He also worked closely with the JPC to revise the Lefrak plan. Dinkins’ aides noted in
June 1988 that the soon-to-be-mayor was “hard-pressed by some LES activists, particularly the
Joint Planning Council, to take a position opposing the Lefrak proposal.” In response, these aides
182 Herbert Block to David Dinkins et al., “United Jewish Council – Problems,” May 31, 1987, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 22, Folder 206, MA. 183 Herbert Block to David Dinkins, “United Jewish Council of Lower East Side Meeting,” November 11, 1987, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 22, Folder 206, MA. 184 Herbert Block Scheduling Request, November 29, 1990, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 22, Folder 206, MA. 185 Carlyle C. Douglas, “Dinkins Takes Post as Leader of Manhattan,” The New York Times, January 2, 1986. 257
asked the Department of Housing and Preservation (HPD) for more details about the plan,
specifically its breakdown of luxury, middle, and moderate-income apartments and its clause
allowing Lefrak to eventually convert 800 rental units into privately owned co-ops.186 In
February 1989, JPC officials planned to make an appointment with Dinkins to push him to “take a position regarding Seward Park and Lefrak’s development of it.”187 JPC officials got their
meeting with Dinkins in April in 1989, but he still wanted to hear more about the plan before
taking a position.188 Sometime between then and November 1989, however, the borough
president promised the JPC that the agency’s “concerns over the future of the Seward Park site
would be relieved” if he became mayor.189 The JPC immediately reminded Dinkins about this promise when he took office.190 Other housing groups like the MCH similarly implored Dinkins
to take a “long, hard look at the housing programs of the last administration” and implement
policies focusing on low-income earners. As part of this effort, MCH hoped to have “meaningful
input” on Dinkins’ housing policy and expected that, as mayor, he would build “permanent,
integrated, affordable housing” in the city.191
Dinkins initially took steps to fulfill this promise. Early in his term, he pledged to study
the city’s growing homeless rate and promised to create new homeless shelters.192 Dinkins then
appointed Felice Michetti, a person some tenant groups expected would “soften some of the
186 United Jewish Council Annual Activity, Lower East Side Briefing Notes, June 5, 1988, DDP, Herbert Block Subject Files, Box 22, Folder 206, MA. 187 Minutes of the Lower East Side Joint Planning Council General Membership Meeting, February 23, 1989, MCHP, Box 63, Folder 20, TL. 188 Lower East Side Joint Planning Council General Membership Meeting, April 27, 1989, MCHP, Box 63, Folder 20, TL. 189 Carlos Garcia and Valerio Orselli to David Dinkins, August 12, 1992, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 190 Valerio Orselli to David Dinkins, April 3, 1990, DDP, Box 49, Folder 483, MA. 191 Mike Stein and Bess Stevenson to David Dinkins, MCHP, Box 62, Folder 8, TL. 192 McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 116-17. 258
roughest edges of Koch’s housing policy,” as new HPD Commissioner.193 Michetti promised to
offer direct subsidies to “lower the rents in the vacant buildings program” and “[reevaluate]” the
Lefrak plan.194 The following year, Michetti worked with the JPC, the New York City Housing
Authority (NYCHA), and other members of the Dinkins administration to find additional sites
for new NYCHA units recently distributed by the Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD). After an exhaustive search for sites that met federal integration standards,
HPD officials pitched the idea of building these apartments in tandem with middle-income housing on the Lefrak site. By the end of 1991, the Dinkins administration signed off on this proposal. The new NYCHA-HPD plan reserved the Lefrak site for a mix of public, moderate, and middle-income housing.195 This proposal drastically restructured the original Lefrak plan by
eliminating luxury housing from the Seward Park Extension. These policy shifts led MCH leader
Frances Goldin to optimistically note that “because of Dinkins and Michetti, the housing for low- income people is moving on the Lower East Side.”196
In working to implement its new plan, the Dinkins administration equated the JPC’s
position on low-income housing with the interests of the entire Lower East Side. In so doing, the
administration, like the JPC, recognized the Lower East Side as a black and Puerto Rican
neighborhood. In November 1991, HPD Chair Felice Michetti backed the NYCHA-HPD
proposal in a letter to Deputy Mayor Barbara Fife because it provided the “long-term
affordability for the low-income units that the community has long sought.” In this same letter,
Michetti told Fife that NYCHA head Laura Blackburne had recently met with the “Lower East
193 Alan Finder, “Should the Poor Get the Housing that Koch Built?” The New York Times, March 18, 1990. 194 Alan S. Oser, “Changeover in the Housing Agency, Putting a Dinkins Imprint on a Koch Plan,” The New York Times, July 8, 1990. 195 Felice Michetti to Deputy Mayor Barbara Fife, November 14, 1991, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 11, Folder 334, MA; “Seward Park Development Proposal,” DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files Box 10, Folder 333. 196 Sites, “Market, Community, and Local State,” 227. 259
Side community” to outline the NYCHA-HPD proposal. The memo also compared the proposal
favorably to other mixed-income plans “much heralded by the Lower East Side community.”197
At a meeting between NYCHA Chair Laura Blackburne and the JPC, NYCHA staffers also
distinguished the Lower East Side “community” from the “Grand Street community.”198 In so
doing, they suggested that groups like the UJC did not speak for the entire Lower East Side, but
rather represented a vocal minority residing in a specific part of the neighborhood.
The JPC enunciated a similar vision of the Lower East Side in its letters to Dinkins about implementing the NYCHA-HPD plan. In June 1992, Reverend Kevin P. O’Brien, the Regional
Vicar for southern Manhattan, speaking on behalf of twenty-one Catholic churches in the
neighborhood, argued that the plan maintained the “economic and social viability of the City of
New York’s low-income neighborhoods” by injecting them with mixed-income housing and new commercial space. O’Brien legitimized the proposal by arguing that the Lower East Side had historically housed the “low income and working families from around the World who have come to this community seeking opportunity” – the “struggling people” who had practiced in the church for the past “170 years.”199 Other JPC organizations made similar claims. In a letter to
Dinkins, Shawn G. Demunnick, a reverend from St. Mary’s church, located just south of the
Seward Park Extension, told Dinkins that his positions on Lower East Side matters would uphold his vision of New York City as a “great mosaic.” In the letter, Demunnick alluded to the neighborhood’s constant “Immigrant Population” and argued that the “need for housing remains
197 Felice Michetti to Deputy Mayor Barbara Fife, November 14, 1991, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 11, Folder 334, MA, my emphasis. 198 JPC to Laura Blackburne, November 13, 1991, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 11, Folder 334, MA. 199 Kevin P. O’Brien to David Dinkins, June 5, 1992, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 11, Folder 334, MA. 260
constant and crosses all ethnic boundaries.”200 These claims thus situated blacks and Puerto
Ricans within a history of social activism – both real and imagined – on the Lower East Side and
illustrated the ways in which neighborhood history remained a highly contested tool for political
conflict in the early 90s.
But Dinkins backed off the NYCHA-HPD plan for both fiscal and political reasons.
Dinkins’ first term coincided with an economic downturn in New York City caused by over-
speculation in real estate and, at the national level, a continued loss of urban manufacturing jobs
and out-migration to the suburbs. As a result, Dinkins inherited a $715 million deficit that could
rise to nearly $2 billion by 1991.201 This downturn reduced real estate’s appetite for new land
purchases, making it less likely that cross-subsidies alone would fund low-income housing.202
Around this time, HPD Commissioner Felice Michetti also told the Lefrak Organization that its
“project could not move forward” because the city could not raise the required $25,000 subsidy per unit to lower the cost of the company’s planned rental units.203 These fiscal issues led
Dinkins to institute spending cuts aimed at balancing the budget and, fearful of losing control of
the city’s finances to the Financial Control Board (created in 1975 to review the city’s budget)
braced New Yorkers for a “meaner city.”204
Opposition from the UJC, however, also played a role in Dinkins’ decision to abandon
the NYCHA-HPD plan. In 1992 and 1993, UJC leaders also lobbied Dinkins to build solely
200 Shawn G. Demunnick to David Dinkins, June 3, 1993, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 201 At the end of World War II, nearly one million New Yorkers worked in manufacturing. By 1990, only about 360,000 New Yorkers did; McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 61-63, 67. 202 The city had only contributed enough funding for developers to construct 200 of the 1,000 promised cross- subsidy low-income units on the Lower East Side; Sites, “Market, Community, and Local State,” 217-18, 232-33. 203 “Summary of the Seward Park Urban Renewal Project,” DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA; Felice Michetti to Deputy Mayor Barbara Fife, November 14, 1991, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 11, Folder 334, MA. 204 For details about these cuts, see Sites, “Market Community, and Local State,” 230-32. McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 69-70, 82, 91. 261
middle-income housing on the Seward Park site. Rabbi Yitzchok Singer, the UJC President, informed Dinkins that the agency had explained to him the “importance of this property to the stability and growth of New York’s oldest and [most] historic Jewish community” at a recent
UJC legislative conference. After reminding Dinkins that he had not informed the agency formally about any new plans for the Seward Park Extension, Singer told the mayor that the UJC expected to “join in consultation with you and your relevant staff concerning the development of plans” for the area.205 Hearing no response, another UJC leader, Rabbi Yehuda Kravitz, then
accused Dinkins of “totally [ignoring] our past correspondence” and demanded that Dinkins
“contact and involve” the UJC in all future discussions about the Lefrak site.206
Sensing this pressure and hoping to avoid controversy before the 1993 election, Dinkins
stopped discussing the NYCHA-HPD plan entirely. In June 1992, after hearing UJC gripes on
the new proposal, Dinkins aides advised the mayor not to meet with Catholic leader Kevin
O’Brien, partly because “the local Jewish community is not at all supportive of the plan.”207 By
August 1992, Dinkins had cancelled three meetings with the JPC to discuss the Seward Park site,
twice due to scheduling conflicts and because the project lacked funding. In turn, JPC chairs
Carlos Garcia and Valerio Orselli told Dinkins that the plan “literally provides something for
everyone – those with low, moderate, middle income and the business community.” Garcia and
Orselli then implored Dinkins to use his mayoral influence to get the project off the ground,
reminding him that “since the Housing Authority and the HPD are ‘on board…it remains for
205 Rabbi Yitzchok Singer to David Dinkins, November 22, 1991, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 11, Folder 334, MA. 206 Rabbi Yehuda Kravitz to David Dinkins, May 6, 1992, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 11, Folder 334, MA. 207 Jessica Williamson to Nancy Devine, June 29, 1992, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 11, Folder 334, MA. 262
City Hall to be the engine that drives the machine.”208 Three months later, Garcia wrote another
letter to Dinkins reminding him that, as borough president, he had promised that “our concerns
over the future of the Seward Park site would be relieved” when he became mayor and that he
had broken several promises to meet with the group.209
By the end of 1992, Deputy Mayor Barbara Fife promised the JPC that the administration
would allocate funds in next year’s budget for the NYHCA-HPD plan.210 Behind the scenes,
however, the administration insisted that the plan required more Jewish support. In early 1993,
the JPC sent Fife a letter praising Dinkins’ housing budget and confirming the administration’s
support for the NYCHA-HPD plan. However, Fife attached a note to this letter stating that she
needed to meet with Sheldon Silver, the Lower East Side assemblyman, about cross-subsidies.211
At a subsequent meeting, Silver told Fife that Seward Park possessed too much low-income housing already and, perhaps confident that Dinkins would soon lose the mayor’s seat, urged the administration to delay the project until after the 1993 election.212 The Dinkins team did not buy
Silver’s argument. In March 1993, Shirley Jaffe from the Mayor’s Office of Housing
Coordination asked an HPD staffer to provide a breakdown of Seward Park housing.213 The
breakdown showed that the city classified over 45 percent of the housing there as middle-
income, about 16 percent as “moderate” income, and 17 percent as low-income.214 The Office of
208 Carlos Garcia and Valerio Orselli to David Dinkins, August 12, 1992, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 209 Carlos Garcia to David Dinkins, November 17, 1992, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 210 Carlos Garcia to Barbara Fife, November 22, 1992, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 211 Elaine Chan to Barbara Fife, February 9, 1993, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 212 Barbara Fife to David Dinkins, “Seward Park Urban Renewal Area,” August 16, 1993, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 213 Shirley Jaffe to Sara Grecke, March 16, 1993, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 214 Jittu Bhatnagar to Sarah Gerecke, March 17, 1993, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 263
Housing Coordination then told the HPD to prepare a memo for Fife stating that “most housing
in Seward Park is not low” and that the Office would continue to support the NYCHA-HPD
proposal.215
Silver’s comments to Fife emblemized the assemblyman’s steady opposition to low-
income housing. As previously noted, Silver was the most politically influential member of the
Grand Street establishment. However, unlike William Rapfogel and Heshy Jacob, who stated
their housing positions publicly, Silver exercised his influence behind-the-scenes by collaborating with large real estate developers. While he publicly emphasized pro-tenant
positions, Silver secretly lobbied administrators to oppose low-income housing in Seward
Park.216 In 1994, for instance, he lobbied the Giuliani administration to have developer Bruce
Ratner build a Costco on the vacant Seward Park sites.217 These efforts solidified Silver’s ties to
Ratner and directly benefited William Rapfogel. In 2006, Silver helped Ratner gain approval for
his Atlantic Yards project, which soon developed the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, with millions
in tax exemptions. Two years later, Ratner raised $1 million for Met Council and donated nearly
$60,000 to Democratic assembly members. Shortly thereafter, Ratner made a proposal to
redevelop the vacant Seward Park sites with Met Council.218
This collaboration with Ratner symbolized Silver and Rapfogel’s corporate connections.
215 Letter to Shirley Jaffe, Undated, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 216 Tom Robbins, “The Shame of Speaker Shelly Silver's Resistance to Seward Park Redevelopment,” The Village Voice, August 12, 2008. For specific examples of these positions, see Karen Dewitt, “Affordable Housing is ‘Disappearing’ Everyday, Says Silver,” WNYC News, April 11, 2011, accessed April 29, 2016, http://www.wnyc.org/story/123603-blog-affordable-housing-disappearing-every-day-says-silver/; “Sheldon Silver’s Record on Tenants’ Rights,” Metropolitan Council on Housing, January 2015, accessed April 29, 2016, http://metcouncilonhousing.org/news_and_issues/tenant_newspaper/2015/january/sheldon_silver%E2%80%99s_rec ord_on_tenants%E2%80%99_rights. 217 Joyce Purnick, “Assembly Leader Wields Power By Keeping Albany Guessing,” The New York Times, June 20, 2007; Tom Robbins, “The Shame of Speaker Shelly Silver’s Resistance to Seward Park Redevelopment,” The Village Voice, August 12, 2008; Russ Buettner, “They Kept a Lower East Side Lot Vacant For Decades,” The New York Times, March 21, 2014. 218 Russ Buettner, “They Kept a Lower East Side Lot Vacant For Decades,” The New York Times, March 21, 2014; Katherine Clarke, “The City That Shelly Built,” The Real Deal, January 1, 2016. 264
These connections would eventually land both leaders in hot water. In 2013, New York State
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman investigated Rapfogel for stealing $1 million from Met
Council and ordering the agency’s insurance carrier, Century Coverage, to pay various political candidates, including Judy Rapfogel, who ran unsuccessfully for a City Council seat in 1997. A subsequent investigation by the Daily News suggested that Rapfogel also donated Century money to certain candidates. Those who received campaign contributions from Century, including Sheldon Silver, funneled millions in state funds back to the Met Council. In April
2014, Rapfogel plead guilty to larceny, tax fraud, and money laundering and the State Supreme
Court sentenced him to up to 10 years in prison.219
In January 2015, authorities arrested Silver on two main corruption charges. One of the charges involved a scheme whereby Silver funneled state money to Dr. Robert Taub, who ran a cancer research center at Columbia University, in return for the right to refer patients to a personal injury firm, Weitz and Luxenberg. Silver received over $3 million in legal fees from the firm.220
The assembly speaker, however, lay at the center of a more wide-ranging real estate scheme. According to court records, Silver persuaded two major developers, Glenwood
Management and the Witkoff Group, to have Jay Goldberg, a childhood friend who represented
Cooperative Village, file property assessments, or tax certioraris, with the city to reduce the companies’ tax liability.221 In return, Goldberg siphoned off a portion of his legal fees to Silver.
219 See David W. Chen and Katie Taylor, “Power Broker, Fired, Faces Inquiry on Political Donations, The New York Times, August 12, 2013; Ken Lovett, “William Rapfogel’s Close Relationship with Sheldon Silver,” New York Daily News, August 26, 2013; Kenneth Lovett, “Sheldon Silver Aide Says She Didn’t Know of Husband’s Alleged Theft from NYC Charity,” New York Daily News, September 25, 2013; Russ Buettner, “Inquiry of Ex-Charity Chief Sheds Light on Payments by ’97 Council Campaign,” The New York Times, October 20, 2013; James C. McKinley Jr., “Philanthropist Admits Stealing More Than $1 Million From Charity,” The New York Times, April 23, 2014. 220 William K. Rashbaum and Thomas Kaplan, “Sheldon Silver, Assembly Speaker, Took Millions in Payoffs, U.S. Says,” The New York Times, January 22, 2015. 221 Charles V. Bagli, “Developer Who Keeps Low Profile is Embroiled in Silver Scandal, The New York Times, 265
In the United States of America v. Sheldon Silver (2015), prosecutors claimed that, in return for
Goldberg’s services, Silver accepted campaign contributions from Glenwood, worked with
lobbyists to provide over one billion dollars in tax exemptions to the firm, and stopped a drug
treatment center from opening up near a Glenwood complex in lower Manhattan.222 Prosecutors
also alleged that Silver provided additional financing to Glenwood as a member of the Public
Authority Control Board (PCAB), which handled state housing issues, and weakened the city’s rent regulation law in 2011.223 In return for these services, the prosecution noted, Glenwood gave
Goldberg more of its building assessments, an arrangement that earned Silver roughly $700,000
by the time of his arrest.224 These connections led prosecutors to conclude that Silver failed to
disclose his outside income, accepted illegal kickbacks, and misled his constituents about his
position on luxury housing. “A man who postured himself as Mr. Tenant,” the prosecution noted,
“is on a secret retainer to the landlords, to the wealthiest developer of real estate in New York
City.”225
The defense countered these claims by denying that Silver violated any state laws, which
permitted assembly members to earn referral fees and outside income, and argued that Glenwood
and Witkoff and Silver did not have a quid pro quo arrangement. Importantly, the defense
disguised Silver’s illegal ties by placing him within the neighborhood’s storied immigrant past.
Far from a symbol of shady backroom dealing with corporate real estate, Silver’s career
January 26, 2015; Josh Nathan-Kazis, “Sheldon Silver’s Fall Signals End of a (Jewish) Era in New York Politics,” The Jewish Daily Forward, January 22, 2015. 222 United States of America v. Sheldon Silver, Trial Transcript, November 3, 2015, 15 Cr. 0093, 25-29, PACER (Southern District of New York. 2015); United States of America v. Sheldon Silver, Trial Transcript, November 13, 2015, 15 Cr. 0093, 1719-1720 (Southern District of New York. 2015). 223 United States of America v. Sheldon Silver, Trial Transcript, November 23, 2015, 15 Cr. 0093, 2889-2890, PACER (Southern District of New York. 2015); Justin Elliott, “A Sheldon Silver Mystery: Did He Betray New York Renters?” Pro Publica, January 27, 2015. 224 United States of America v. Sheldon Silver, Trial Transcript, November 23, 2015, 15 Cr. 0093, 2902-03, PACER (Southern District of New York. 2015). 225 Ibid., 2845. 266
emblemized a great “rags to riches” story of a first generation immigrant turned assembly
speaker. Silver could not betray the public’s trust, defense lawyer Steven Molo claimed, because
he had grown up humbly on the Lower East Side as a first generation Orthodox Jew and the son
of a hardware store owner. Molo then implied that Silver stayed true to these roots because he
and his wife had raised a family in the neighborhood. The attorney also noted that The Statue of
Liberty, the ultimate symbol of hope and opportunity for America’s immigrants, at one point fell
within Silver’s district.226 Such arguments cloaked Grand Street’s support for luxury housing
within a language that valorized the Jewish past on the Lower East Side.
Silver’s request that Dinkins delay the project until after the 1993 election also suggests
that the assemblyman either hoped or anticipated that the city would elect a new mayor by then.
This was a reasonable assumption given recent events. These conflicts severely tested Dinkins’ billing as a mayor capable of bringing people together and further alienated Democratic Jewish voters.
In the fall of 1989, just before Dinkins officially took office, Reverend Al Sharpton had led mass protests in Bensonhurst over the murder of Yusuf Hawkins. Facing racist chants from the heavily Italian American neighborhood, Sharpton declared that the black community would
“burn the town down” if the courts found the suspected killers innocent.227 In 1990, African-
Americans boycotted a Korean-owned grocery store when its owner allegedly assaulted a black
patron for attempted shoplifting. Participants and observers framed the events as symptoms of
Jewish-black conflict. One Korean man, for instance, justified the Korean grocer’s actions by
noting that “we Koreans are like the Jews – a small country located between hostile countries,
226 United States of America v. Sheldon Silver, Trial Transcript, November 3, 2015, 15 Cr. 0093, 2866-67, PACER (Southern District of New York. 2015). 227 McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 192-93. 267
always under the threat of invasions.” After Dinkins publicly called for an end to the
demonstration, C. Vernon Mason, one of the boycott’s leaders, claimed that Dinkins “ain’t got
no African left in him” and instead had “too many yarmulkes on his head.”228 Roughly one year
later, Leonard Jeffries, the Chairman of the African-American studies department at City College and an advisor for New York State’s official curricula committee, made headlines when he went on an anti-Semitic rant that castigated a slew of Jewish scholars, including historian Arthur
Schlesinger, Diane Ravitch, and CCNY President Bernard Somer, for misrepresenting black history.229
But the most significant event occurred in Crown Heights in 1991. That summer, a four-
day riot erupted when Yosef Lifsch, a driver accompanying the Grand Rebbe of the Lubavitcher
community, fatally struck an African-American child on a nearby sidewalk. After false rumors
spread that a Hatzoloh ambulance had refused to treat the child, a riot unfolded during which a
black teenager named Lemrick Nelson stabbed 29-year old graduate student Yankel Rosenbaum
to death. Things escalated further when the NYPD arrested Nelson, but not the Hasidic driver
(due to conflicting accounts of whether he had violated any traffic laws). Despite the arrest,
Hasidic leaders criticized Dinkins for responding slowly to the riot and compared it to a pogrom.
The Jewish Press went so far as to claim that Dinkins had explicitly ordered the police to give
the rioters a “day of grace,” a charge the mayor flatly denied.230 To make matters worse, a court
acquitted Nelson of murder due to contradictory testimony and police evidence, even though
police had confiscated the murder weapon and Rosenbaum had identified his killer.231 Jewish
leaders criticized Dinkins for failing to denounce the verdict and, shortly thereafter,
228 Witness accounts of this incident differ greatly. See McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 193-195, 197-98. 229 Ibid., 223-24. 230 Ibid., 225-29, 231-32, 239. 231 Thompson, Double Trouble, 223. 268
Rosenbaum’s family won the right to depose the mayor as part of a civil suit. The press,
permitted to witness the proceedings as a matter of public interest, reported that Dinkins often
appeared frustrated at the line of questioning.232
Dinkins countered this criticism by invoking New York’s “gorgeous mosaic” and linking
black and Jewish persecution. During a speech at an Upper East Side synagogue, the mayor told
congregants that the Crown Heights riot threatened to undo an alliance of “two great peoples,
oppressed and reviled across generations.” The mayor called blacks and Jews “natural allies” and
“great and historic friends” who possessed “the special ties of history and hope.” He pointed out
that Jews, who had “long suffered…from hatred and violence,” had “marched side by side with
those who faced the worst of racial discrimination.” Situating his election as one that continued
New York’s tradition of ethnic succession, Dinkins then compared past Jewish immigration to
the migration of African-Americans to New York from the “alien and inhuman world of slavery
and segregation.”233 While Dinkins fiercely rejected claims that he had delayed the police’s response to the riot, he took responsibility for the ongoing violence and called Rosenbaum’s death a lynching.234
To some degree, these statements still resonated with liberal Jews. Some commentators
noted that criticism of Dinkins emanated mostly from Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, and cited
polls showing Dinkins with 40 percent of the Jewish vote in the spring of 1993, an increase from
the final tally in 1989.235 Some returns from the 62nd A.D., which included Wall Street, Battery
Park, and all the Lower East Side below East Houston Street, confirmed Dinkins’ Jewish
232 McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 311-13; Thompson, 224. 233 “Remarks by David Dinkins at Temple Shaaray Tefilla,” October 3, 1993, DDP, Joyce Brown Series, Jewish Community Affairs Subject Files, Box 6, Folder 215, MA. 234 Samson Mulugeta and Rob Speyer, “Dave, Rudy Court Key Jewish Votes,” New York Daily News, October 4, 1993, DDP, Joyce Brown Series, Jewish Community Affairs Subject Files, Box 6, Folder, 215, MA. 235 Frank Lombardi, “Mayor Gains Among Jews,” New York Daily News, DDP, Joyce Brown Series, Jewish Community Affairs Subject Files, Box 6, Folder 215, MA. 269
support. Table 7, for example, shows 18 election districts in the 62nd A.D. – either on the Lower
East Side outside the Seward Park area or outside the Lower East Side entirely – that possessed a
white ethnic population of about 15 percent or higher.236 Of these 18 EDs (most of which did not
possess a high Hispanic populace) only eight gave Giuliani a majority in 1993, while twelve
provided Dinkins with more support in 1993 than in 1989. (Tables 6 and 7).
Nevertheless, Crown Heights clearly remained a liability for Dinkins with Jews across
the political spectrum. Politically conservative and Orthodox Jewish newspapers cited the event
to suggest that Dinkins was soft on crime and endorsed Giuliani in 1993. The Jewish Press
argued that a “criminal revolution” had erupted in New York City and, citing Dinkins’ handling
of the Korean grocer boycott, argued that the mayor used a double standard to address black and
non-black crime.237 Orthodox Riverdale Rabbi Avi Weiss, who had held a sign with Dinkins’
face at a protest at Gracie Mansion that read “Wanted for Murder,” argued in the Manhattan
Jewish Sentinel that Dinkins had gone “AWOL” during the riot and left “many Jews to doubt
whether they are real partners in the mayor’s grand mosaic.”238 Like other Orthodox writers,
Weiss then compared the Crown Heights riot to the Holocaust, noting that Hasidim represented
the first victims of Nazism and that “an attack on any one Jew because he or she is Jewish is an
attack on every Jew.”239
Crown Heights also made liberal, secular Jews more skeptical of Dinkins. Jewish
Democrats told The New York Times that they hesitated to support Dinkins due to the city’s
236 I wish to thank John Mollenkopf for providing me with vital voting statistics from the 62nd A.D. for the 1993 election. 237 JPC Membership Meeting Minutes, April 28, 1988, MCHP, Box 63, Folder 20, TL. 238 McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 264; Avi Weiss, “Struggling With Dinkins on the Issues,” Manhattan Jewish Sentinel, October 27-November 2, 1993, DDP, Joyce Brown Series, Jewish Community Affairs Subject Files, Box 6, Folder 21, MA. 239 Avi Weiss, “Struggling With Dinkins on the Issues,” Manhattan Jewish Sentinel, October 27-November 2, 1993, DDP, Joyce Brown Series, Jewish Community Affairs Subject Files, Box 6, Folder 216, MA. 270
growing racial discord.240 The Jewish Daily Forward reported that Upper West Side congregants
had warmly greeted Giuliani at a local synagogue in July 1993 and claimed that secular liberal
leaders like Kenneth Bialkin, a former president of the Jewish Community Relations Council,
also planned to support Giuliani.241 Around this time, Ed Koch also penned an op-ed for the
Daily News that criticized Dinkins’ response to the Korean grocer boycott and Crown Heights
riot. In both cases, Koch argued, Dinkins “averted his gaze while mobs engaged in violence
against others who did not look like them.” The former mayor then endorsed Giuliani because he
would preside over an “efficient, technocratic government” and “maintain a single standard for
all citizens.” 242 These statements suggested that liberal and moderate white ethnic Democrats were prepared to vote for Giuliani in 1993. During his campaign, the Republican challenger seemed to note as much, admitting that Dinkins had “created opportunities for me [with Jewish voters] that were not there before” and arguing that the Crown Heights riot would not have occurred under his watch.243
Certain polls confirmed Giuliani’s take on the Jewish vote. The release of a state report
that criticized Dinkins for not doing more to stop the riot in July 1993 undid whatever credibility
he might have regained with Jewish voters earlier.244 A July 1993 poll, for instance, showed that
58 percent of Jewish voters characterized the riot as “typical of Mayor Dinkins’ inability to act
240 Celia W. Dugger, “Reactions Are Wary as Dinkins Goes After Jewish Voters,” The New York Times, October 4, 1993. 241 Jeffrey Goldberg, “Dinkins Seeks Path to Jews,” The Jewish Daily Forward, July 30, 1993, DDP, Joyce Brown Series, Jewish Community Affairs Subject Files, Box 6, Folder 215, MA. 242 Ed Koch, “Enough of Dave, Give Rudy a Chance,” New York Daily News, October 15, 1993, DDP, Joyce Brown Series, Jewish Community Affairs Subject Files, Box 6, Folder 216, MA. 243 Samson Mulugeta and Rob Speyer, “Dave, Rudy Court Key Jewish Votes,” New York Daily News, October 4, 1993, DDP, Joyce Brown Series, Jewish Community Affairs Subject Files, Box 6, Folder, 215, MA; Thompson, 226. 244 McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 311-12; Jeffrey Goldberg, “Dinkins Seeks Path to Jews,” The Jewish Daily Forward, July 30, 1993, DDP, Joyce Brown Series, Jewish Community Affairs Subject Files, Box 6, Folder 215, MA. 271
decisively as a real leader in a crisis,” a higher percentage than other white voters.245 This same
poll showed that while a majority of New Yorkers thought that “the issue of Crown Heights
should be put to rest,” only 37 percent of Jewish voters thought so.246 Shortly thereafter, the
Jewish Press, criticizing Dinkins’ performance in a debate against Giuliani, urged Jewish voters
to turn out and hold the incumbent for his “dismal record” and inability to “solve the city’s ever- growing problems.”247 These criticisms would become all the more important if the 1993
election was as close as the one four years prior.
The prospect of dwindling Jewish support likely remained in the back of Dinkins’ mind
as he tried to navigate Lower East Side racial politics. In the months leading up to the election,
Dinkins continued to oppose the NYCHA-HPD plan, explicitly telling JPC representatives that it
did not have enough Jewish support and a lacked a broader neighborhood consensus. These
messages sharply contrasted with the Dinkins administration’s earlier position on the plan. In
January 1993, for example, one JPC member, the Cooper Square Committee, praised the
administration for backing the NYCHA-HPD plan and advised city officials not to “put off
sound policies because of conservative and often volatile segments of the population’s reaction,”
a clear reference to the Grand Street Jewish community.248 In reply, Dinkins staffer Nancy
Devine, reiterated that the plan deserved “broad local support” and required the administration to
“work with all elements of the community to make the plan happen.”249 In June 1993, Reverend
Shawn G. Demunnick of St. Mary’s Church, another JPC member, pressured Dinkins more
245 NY1 Poll, July 27, 1993, DDP, Joyce Brown Series, Jewish Community Affairs Subject Files, Box 6, Folder 215, MA. 246 Ibid. 247 “Mayor Dinkins and the ‘Rose Garden’ Strategy,” The Jewish Press, August 13, 1993, DDP, Joyce Brown Series, Jewish Community Affairs Subject Files, Box 6, Folder 215, MA. 248 Maria Torres Bird to Barbara Fife, January 11, 1993, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 249 Nancy Devine to Maria Torres Bird, January 25, 1993, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 272
directly. “You well know the road to your re-election will be an arduous one,” he wrote. “I am sure it will be less difficult with the support of the Lower East Side behind you.”250 That same
month Dennis Sullivan, a pastor at St. Teresa’s, another JPC member, told Deputy Mayor
Barbara Fife that he would “monitor your position on the development of this site and…inform
my parishioners about what you do.”251 Several months later, Sullivan reiterated this pledge to
Dinkins himself, noting that “the failure to date of your Administration to develop this site leaves
my Hispanic parishioners with questions about your pre-election commitment to them.”252
Despite this pressure, however, the Dinkins administration remained non-committal. In
August 1993, several months after Fife’s meeting with Sheldon Silver, Fife acknowledged in a
memo to Dinkins that opposition from Jewish leaders like Silver had made NYCHA hesitant to
implement a plan that “does not have full community support.”253 She also told the mayor that the JPC has “continued to lobby the administration” and recently asked to meet with the mayor on the plan’s progress. Fife then advised Dinkins to turn down this request.254 Dinkins reiterated this message in a letter to JPC Chairman Carlos Garcia outlining the city’s budgetary issues and stating that the “future of Seward Park rests on finding a plan that has broad local support.” “To date,” the mayor told Garcia, “this has not been achieved.”255
Dinkins lost the 1993 election to Rudy Giuliani almost as narrowly, 51-48, as he had won
250 Shawn Demunnick to David Dinkins, June 3, 1993, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA, my emphasis. 251 Dennis J. Sullivan to Barbara Fife, January 6, 1993, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 252 Dennis J. Sullivan to David Dinkins, June 4, 1993, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 253 Barbara Fife to David Dinkins, “Seward Park Urban Renewal Area,” August 16, 1993, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 254 Ibid. 255 David Dinkins to Carlos Garcia, August 17, 1993, DDP, Housing Coordination Subject Files, Box 10, Folder 333, MA. 273
it in 1989.256 Voters did not abandon Dinkins en masse in 1993 and he for the most part
maintained his electoral coalition of blacks, Latinos, and progressive whites.
However, a small number of defections caused Dinkins to lose the election. While the
mayor earned 95 percent of the African-American vote, an increase from 1989, he won 60 percent of the Hispanic, 61 percent of the Puerto Rican, and 32 percent of the Jewish vote. These numbers declined 5, 6, and 3 percent, respectively, from 1989.257 Though some of Dinkins’
declining Latino support resulted from Herman Badillo’s decision to run as a candidate for
comptroller on Giuliani’s ticket, the election results suggested a more widespread apathy with
Dinkins’ mayoralty. Indeed, the New York Post and the Daily News endorsed Giuliani, while the
reliably liberal New York Times only tepidly endorsed the mayor.258 Importantly, the election
validated the Times’ earlier prediction that the white ethnic base that Giuliani had begun to
cultivate in 1989 would get him elected. While all voting blocs shifted away from Dinkins in
1993, the evidence suggests that his biggest losses occurred in white ethnic areas.259 Giuliani
earned a larger share of the Manhattan Jewish vote and an additional 20,000 Brooklyn voters –
primarily in Hasidic, Jewish, and Italian neighborhoods – in 1993 than he did four years earlier.
In all, he earned 75 percent of the white vote, 85 percent of the Catholic vote, and 65 percent of
the Jewish vote in 1993, higher percentages in each category than he had earned in 1989.260
Returns from the Lower East Side both confirmed and contradicted this outcome. By
1993, redistricting had split the Lower East Side neighborhood into two separate Assembly
256 McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 329; John Mollenkopf, “Afterword,” in A Phoenix in the Ashes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 210. 257 “A Portrait of New York City Voters,” The New York Times, November 4, 1993; McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 300-01. For slightly different estimates, see Sam Roberts, “The 1993 Elections: News Analysis; The Tide Turns on Voter Turnout,” The New York Times, November 4, 1993. 258 McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 326-27; Thompson, 237. 259 John Mollenkopf, “Afterword,” 211-12, 214. 260 A referendum on Staten Island seceding from New York City also brought more Catholic voters to the polls; McNickle, The Power of the Mayor, 329- 331. 274
Districts – the 62nd A.D., described earlier, and the 63rd A.D. As previously noted, the 62nd A.D.
included the Lower East Side below Houston Street and lower Manhattan.261 The 63rd A.D.
included the Lower East Side north of East Houston Street, which included Loisaida, and
Midtown East.262 The 62nd A.D. included more Hispanics, Puerto Ricans, African-Americans, and fewer white ethnics than the 63rd A.D. The 63rd A.D. also possessed a lower percentage of
families who lived below the poverty line.263 Given this breakdown, one might have expect
Dinkins to have won the 62nd A.D. However, Dinkins lost this district, despite winning it handily
in 1989 by about 1,500 votes, and won the 63rd A.D. by about 2,000 votes.264
Why did Dinkins lose the 62nd district despite its high black and Puerto Rican base? One
possible answer is that the district also possessed Grand Street’s politically-active Orthodox
residents who distrusted Dinkins’ handling of Crown Heights. The data suggests that these voters
either backed Dinkins in 1989 and then turned on him in 1993 or never backed him at all. Table
7 shows that Dinkins’ support declined in 15 of the 19 EDs located in the “Seward Park and
Bordering Areas” part of the 62nd A.D. While it would be misleading to attribute this decline
solely to the Jewish vote, since most of these EDs possessed a significant Hispanic populace,
Dinkins’ support dropped in 4 of the 5 EDs in this territory which possessed more Jewish and
white ethnic than Hispanic residents (Tables 6 and 7). Significantly, these EDs lined Grand
Street (62039) and possessed the Seward Park Co-op (62037), the Bialystoker Synagogue
(62062), and the Seward Park Extension (62061). In addition, Dinkins’ numbers were among the
261 New York City Elections Board, Maps Showing Assembly Districts, 1994, 62nd Assembly District, New York Public Library (New York, NY). 262 Ibid. 263 U.S. Census Bureau, 1990 Census of Population and Housing, Population and Housing Characteristics for Census Tracts and Block Numbering Areas, New York, NY PMSA (Section 1), CPH-3-245H; Table 8. Race and Hispanic Origin: 1990, 818-824. Section 1; Table 16. Selected Ancestry Groups and Persons in Selected Hispanic Origin Groups: 1990, 1606-1612, Section 2; Table 19. Income and Poverty Status in 1989: 1990, 2359-2367, Section 3. 264 “The Vote for Mayor and Comptroller by Assembly District,” The New York Times, November 4, 1993. 275
lowest in the EDs that held the Hillman Houses (62069), the UJC and Amalgamated Dwellings
(62033), and the Seward Park Co-op (62037) (Table 7).
As noted, however, Jews and white ethnics residing outside Grand Street and the Seward
Park area lent Dinkins solid support in 1993. While this support hinted at the political differences
between Grand Street and non-Grand Street Jews, it also placed greater weight on the Lower
East Side Hispanic vote. Some of Dinkins’ largest Hispanic losses came from voters who lived
around Seward Park – the home to several JPC members, including St. Mary’s and St. Theresa’s
Church, which had lobbied Dinkins to build mixed-income housing in the area. Table 6 shows that the “Seward Park and Bordering Areas” section of the 62nd A.D. contained 19 total election
districts (EDs). Of these districts, 14 provided Dinkins with less support in 1993 than 1989, four did not provide enough data for a comparison, and one, holding the Seward Park co-op, provided
Dinkins with marginally better, but still low, support in 1993. Dinkins’ greatest losses occurred in the most Hispanic areas around Seward Park, specifically EDs 62029 and below on Table 6.
As the table suggests, seven EDs in the “Seward Park and Bordering Areas” of the 62nd A.D.
possessed at least a 50 percent Hispanic populace. Of these EDs, five gave Dinkins large
majorities in 1989, but went overwhelmingly for Giuliani in 1993.265 While Dinkins earned roughly 55 to 82 percent of the vote in these EDs in 1989, he won only about 18 to 47 percent of the vote there four years later. Dinkins’ support thus declined by at least 30 percent in each of these EDs between the two elections (Table 6). Importantly, this dramatic decline did not occur in the less Hispanic portions of Seward Park. As Table 6 shows, 11 EDs around Seward Park possessed a Hispanic populace under 50 percent. All but two of these EDs, 62034 and 62069, gave Dinkins between 10 and 24 percent less support in 1993 than in 1989. This drop-off did not
265 The other two EDs, 62036 and 62065, did not provide enough data for both elections. 276
match the decline in Seward Park’s more Hispanic EDs (Table 6).
Dinkins also suffered major Hispanic losses in parts of the Lower East Side outside
Seward Park. Table 6 shows that 21 EDs existed within the “Lower East Side Areas Outside
Seward Park and Bordering Areas.” Dinkins lost support in 14 of these EDs, some (in EDs
62051 and 62052) by as much as 55 percent. Furthermore, Dinkins’ suffered his greatest losses
within the most Hispanic sections of this part of the 62nd A.D. – twelve EDs 62027 and below
within the “Lower East Side Areas Outside Seward Park and Bordering Areas” on Table 6. Nine
of these twelve EDs gave Dinkins less support in 1993 than in 1989.266 While this decline was
negligible in two EDs (62055 and 62066) it reached as high as 40 or 50 percent in other areas,
including 62027 and 62072 and the EDs around the First Houses, 62051 and 62052. Similar
trends also developed in the 62nd A.D. outside the Lower East Side. Dinkins lost support in three
of the five total EDs located in this portion of the district, all of which contained sizable Hispanic
populations (Table 6).267 Conversely, Giuliani earned more support in the Hispanic-heavy parts of the 62nd A.D. in 1993 than in 1989. In 1989, for instance, Giuliani won over 25 percent of the
vote in only nine of the forty-five EDs located in the most Hispanic portions of the 62nd A.D.
(Table 6). However, the new mayor gained support in 37 of the 45 – or roughly 82 percent – of
these EDs four years later. He also won majorities in over half of these EDs (Table 6).
It is possible that this abrupt reversal occurred at least partly because 62nd district
Hispanics remained only weakly committed to Dinkins in the first place. Indeed, some Hispanic
EDs, (62029, 62038, 62048, and 62049) backed Dinkins in the 1989 general election, but not the
Democratic primary (Table 6).
266 Specifically, EDs 62027 and below on the “Lower East Side Areas Outside Seward Park and Bordering Areas” section of Table 6. 267 Two of these EDs did not contain enough data for a comparison between the 1989 and 1993 returns. 277
However, the large-scale and sudden Hispanic shift from Dinkins to Giuliani on the
Lower East Side only makes sense as an objection to specific policy. Dinkins proved unable to
reconcile the conflicting priorities of Grand Street, the JPC, and the neighborhood’s low-income
residents. As a result, he broke repeated promises to the JPC to implement the NYCHA-HPD
mixed-housing plan for Seward Park. This failure cost Dinkins the Puerto Rican vote on the
Lower East Side and splintered the neighborhood’s interracial electoral coalition. The way
mayoral politics played out on the Lower East Side thus confirmed political scientist John
Mollenkopf’s hypothesis: Dinkins had failed to manage his interracial coalition by taking “a
series of highly contradictory policy steps,” particularly on housing issues.268
On the one hand, this outcome signaled that Puerto Ricans had emerged as a significant
voting bloc on the Lower East Side. Their votes had tipped the Lower East Side for Giuliani in
1993, just four years after he lost the neighborhood convincingly.269 That such a drastic shift
happened in four years suggests that Puerto Ricans had found an institutional base, the JPC, from
which to craft a distinct political agenda and flex their collective electoral muscle. In a sense, this
influence represented a culmination of Puerto Rican political organizing on the Lower East Side
that dated back to the 1960s.
On the other hand, persistent lobbying from the UJC and Dinkins’ concerns with shoring up his Jewish base after Crown Heights led him to back off the JPC’s housing agenda. In this
way, Puerto Ricans’ vote for Giuliani in 1993 reconfirmed the electoral power of Grand Street in both local and citywide politics. While the JPC had emerged as a visible neighborhood presence,
Grand Street’s long-standing ties to municipal and state leaders allowed groups like the UJC to
successfully oppose low-income housing for Seward Park and reinforce the city’s recent push for
268 Mollenkopf, A Phoenix in the Ashes, 205-06. 269 “The Vote for Mayor and Comptroller by Assembly District,” The New York Times, November 4, 1993. 278
private redevelopment and gentrification. These ties made it politically ill-advised for Dinkins to alienate Grand Street, especially in light of recent black-Jewish confrontations. In all, by lobbying Dinkins to abandon mixed-income housing in Seward Park, Grand Street fractured the mayor’s black-Latino-white coalition on the Lower East Side and stalled its progressive vision for the neighborhood.
After nearly three decades, Grand Street remained one of New York City’s preeminent bases of Jewish political leadership. From 1984-1993, these leaders reinforced both the pace and course of gentrification on the Lower East Side. The UJC linked gentrification with preserving a
Jewish past in the neighborhood. An interracial alliance of left-wing whites and low-income
minorities headed by the JPC countered this argument. Their positions harkened back to an older,
progressive tradition of urban liberalism that emphasized social spending and economic
regulation. The JPC and its allies legitimized these positions by enunciating a collective vision of
the Lower East Side centered on its multiethnic, working class history. In the late 1980s, the JPC
appeared poised to staunch the tide of gentrification in the neighborhood and reverse the local
effects of the Koch administration’s pro-development policies. The elections of Antonio Pagán and Rudy Giuliani, however, signaled Grand Street’s influence both local and citywide politics.
Both elections represented a major blow to the JPC agenda and fractured the neighborhood’s interracial alliance of progressive whites, African-Americans, and Puerto Ricans. The collapse of this coalition accelerated the gentrification of the Lower East Side and reinforced the city’s rightward political shift in the 1980s and 1990s.
279
Table 6: 1989 and 1993 Mayoral Election Returns in the 62nd A.D. (Hispanic Election Districts)
1993 ED Hispanic% 1989 DD% 1989 1989 RG% 1993 DD% 1993 (primary) DD% (general) (general) RG% (general) (general) Seward Park and Bordering Areas 62034 0.00 64.29 53.57 25.00 17.55 81.99 62035 0.00 N/A N/A N/A 26.92 72.60 62039 8.17 56.91 53.04 41.30 39.64 59.64 62037 (Seward 18.88 23.40 22.34 72.07 25.87 75.13 Park Co-op) 62069 (Hillman 22.03 79.58 74.49 18.00 21.89 78.11 Houses) 62062 23.60 74.01 70.38 23.98 60.52 38.83 (Bialystoker Synagogue) *62061 (Seward 24.50 74.01 65.00 27.86 54.42 43.01 Park Extension) 62023 26.42 65.06 62.16 29.31 49.26 49.26 62074 33.51 75.61 68.58 24.31 44.68 55.32 62059 33.68 72.59 77.67 12.89 73.56 24.44 62070 37.67 75.00 77.03 14.83 67.41 31.70 62029 (East River 52.06 34.58 54.52 36.43 22.46 77.05 Houses) 62058 57.60 72.62 82.30 12.39 46.77 52.85 62038 62.63 31.03 70.48 21.43 39.91 58.77 62036 62.81 N/A N/A N/A 26.70 72.57 62030 65.00 30.95 70.43 23.19 17.83 81.40 62065 77.06 55.75 80.28 14.89 N/A N/A 62028 (East River 79.09 64.71 73.08 19.23 30.22 69.33 Houses) 62033 (UJC and N/A N/A N/A N/A 16.02 82.49 Amalgamated Dwellings)
280
1993 ED Hispanic% 1989 DD% 1989 DD% 1989 RG% 1993 DD% 1993 RG% (primary) (general) (general) (general) (general) Lower East Side Areas Outside Seward Park and Bordering Areas 62022 23.86 71.33 72.81 22.48 67.31 29.98 *62009 27.42 73.68 73.85 21.54 79.95 20.32 (Smith Houses) 62073 27.49 80.91 77.14 14.86 17.78 76.11 *62024 31.88 55.37 60.78 29.68 65.68 33.14 (Vladeck Houses) *62025 36.82 65.99 66.39 22.54 68.72 29.52 (Vla deck Houses) 62014 40.43 70.83 65.85 28.05 32.93 65.24 62016 41.45 67.50 72.38 22.03 20.38 79.43 62001 42.13 N/A N/A N/A 52.56 46.98 62057 48.64 72.86 76.92 13.85 70.46 27.43 62027 52.59 72.76 74.39 15.81 23.39 75.92 62072 53.25 64.78 76.20 14.76 35.05 64.95 62055 59.86 73.22 84.01 9.24 83.90 14.81 62056 71.02 67.35 70.67 16.00 69.87 28.03 62054 73.60 59.18 78.82 11.35 73.53 24.51 *62050 (First 74.49 55.43 74.94 18.44 44.26 54.24 Houses) 62047 75.13 55.52 78.84 12.85 51.24 46.64 62048 75.87 48.58 67.74 20.56 72.37 26.46 62049 75.95 48.62 75.98 18.07 77.80 20.63 62053 80.63 56.33 77.27 12.73 77.78 19.81 *62051 (First 80.71 56.27 77.96 16.13 22.42 77.36 Houses) *62052 (First 80.73 56.15 82.79 12.09 28.21 69.80 Houses)
Outside of the Lower East Side 62068 36.16 63.31 68.33 24.51 N/A N/A 62064 47.23 72.57 73.94 13.30 66.06 32.13 62045 49.67 46.33 66.03 24.44 44.76 54.29 62071 51.55 57.73 61.80 30.66 37.98 60.80 62066 78.44 55.75 82.47 12.89 N/A N/A
*E.D. located at or near public housing
Sources: New York City election results compiled by John Mollenkopf, Center for Urban Research, from the New York City Board of Elections; New York City Elections Board, Maps Showing the Assembly Districts of New York City, “Borough of Manhattan, 62nd Assembly District,” New York Public Library.
281
Table 7: 1989 and 1993 Mayoral Election Returns in the 62nd A.D. (White Ethnic Election Districts) 1993 ED Jewish% German Italian 1989 1989 1989 1993 1993 % % DD% DD% RG% DD% RG% (primary) (general) (general) (general) (general) Seward Park and Bordering Areas 62035 0.00 33.00 0.00 N/A N/A N/A 26.92 72.60 62065 .43 0.00 0.65 55.75 80.28 14.89 N/A N/A 62036 .93 0.00 5.61 N/A N/A N/A 26.70 72.57 62029 1.42 1.84 1.42 34.58 54.52 36.43 22.46 77.05 (East River Co-op) 62028 1.47 .49 2.45 64.71 73.08 19.23 30.22 69.33 (East River Houses) 62034 1.47 7.35 10.29 64.29 53.57 25.00 17.55 81.99 62058 2.66 2.66 1.45 72.62 82.30 12.39 46.77 52.85 62059 3.55 4.49 1.71 72.59 77.67 12.89 73.56 24.44 62070 7.09 6.83 5.37 75.00 77.03 14.83 67.41 31.70 62074 7.78 7.78 5.82 75.61 68.58 44.68 24.31 55.32 62069 7.83 7.71 5.80 79.58 74.49 18.06 21.89 78.11 (Hillman Houses) 62023 9.53 4.99 5.87 65.06 62.16 29.31 49.26 49.26 62038 10.09 1.08 3.80 31.03 70.48 21.43 39.31 58.77 62039 11.98 9.79 14.23 56.91 53.04 41.30 39.64 59.64 62062 12.67 6.46 7.25 74.01 70.38 23.98 60.52 38.83 (Bialystoke r Synagogue ) *62061 17.27 5.31 8.57 68.68 65.0 27.86 54.52 43.01 (Seward Park Extension) 62030 22.93 1.47 2.94 30.95 70.43 23.19 17.83 81.40 62037 22.94 1.38 2.91 23.40 22.34 72.07 25.87 73.13 (Seward Park Co- op) 62033 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 16.02 82.49 (UJC and Amalgamat ed Dwellings)
282
1993 ED Jewish% German Italian 1989 1989 1989 1993 1993 % % DD% DD% RG% DD% RG% (primary) (general) (general) (general) (general) Lower East Side Areas Outside Seward Park and Bordering Areas *62024 7.17 4.11 4.85 55.37 60.78 29.68 65.68 33.14 (Vladeck) 62017 7.52 6.72 9.67 77.56 74.27 22.61 55.05 44.95 62073 7.83 7.68 5.76 80.91 77.14 14.86 17.78 76.11 62018 14.19 5.19 7.64 42.67 48.04 45.07 61.78 37.07 62077 15.81 8.90 11.83 33.91 38.37 56.21 61.97 36.97 62075 15.84 8.73 11.60 33.48 30.43 59.73 36.52 62.61 62020 17.21 5.26 8.68 N/A N/A N/A 58.59 40.09 62060 17.29 5.27 8.64 80.27 72.17 22.17 N/A N/A 62022 17.33 5.32 8.67 71.33 72.81 22.48 67.31 29.98 *62019 17.39 5.25 8.63 21.08 23.25 71.14 69.38 28.05 (LaGuardia) *62021 17.40 5.40 8.80 85.07 79.0 17.0 72.38 26.03 (LaGuardia)
Outside of the Lower East Side 62078 15.56 9.08 11.83 33.68 33.43 60.41 46.34 52.85 62076 15.88 8.75 11.50 34.45 32.49 59.45 20.99 78.24 62002 22.95 1.50 2.87 31.09 21.28 69.68 37.26 61.03 62003 24.91 3.50 7.76 10.95 18.04 77.17 32.44 66.96 62005 25.00 3.57 7.80 26.58 27.59 69.21 40.15 58.30 62004 25.06 3.46 7.78 10.85 25.41 71.29 37.50 60.29 62006 25.18 3.56 7.82 26.84 31.49 62.66 36.36 62.53 *E.D. located at or near public housing
Sources: New York City election results compiled by John Mollenkopf, Center for Urban Research, from the New York City Board of Elections; New York City Elections Board, Maps Showing the Assembly Districts of New York City, “Borough of Manhattan, 62nd Assembly District,” New York Public Library.
283
Conclusion: A “Decline of the Old Jewish Power Brokers?”
By the mid-1990s, it appeared as if Grand Street had solidified its political leadership on the Lower East Side. In January 1994, the New York State Assembly elected Sheldon Silver interim Speaker after the sitting Speaker, Saul Weprin, had a stroke.1 The Jewish Press praised
Silver’s appointment, noting his support for Orthodox interests and describing his long ties to the
neighborhood.2 Silver would hold this position for roughly two decades.
More recently, however, commentators have declared an end to this political influence.
For decades, The Jewish Daily Forward wrote in a 2013 article, Sheldon Silver, William
Rapfogel, and Heshy Jacob had made Grand Street the most influential political faction in the
neighborhood. But this “Jewish political muscle” had recently started to weaken. As evidence,
the Forward alluded to Essex Crossing, the new redevelopment plan for the Seward Park Urban
Renewal Area (SPURA).3 A 1.9-million-square foot and six-acre development, Essex Crossing
will include a movie theater, a luxury bowling alley, several new commercial stores, a
community center, and 1,000 new apartments. The plan reserves one-half of these apartments for
low-, moderate-, and middle-income families, a breakdown previously backed by the JPC and
Community Board 3.4
While city officials note that the plan will serve “the diverse needs of the community,”
Essex Crossing has engendered similar controversies over housing rights as the older Seward
1 James Dao, “Man in the News; Groomed for Leadership in Assembly; Sheldon Silver,” The New York Times, January 25, 1994. 2 Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, Orthodox Jew, Chosen to Lead NYS Assembly, The Jewish Press, January 28, 1994; “A Salute to Assemblyman Sheldon Silver,” The Jewish Press, January 28, 1994. 3 Josh Nathan-Kazis, “Lower East Side Development Spells Decline of Old Jewish Power Brokers,” The Jewish Daily Forward, March 4, 2013. 4 Charles V. Biagli, “City Plans Redevelopment for Vacant Area in Lower Manhattan,” The New York Times, September 17, 2013; Alison Gregor, “The Lower East Side Goes from Gritty to Glossy,” The New York Times, May 29, 2015; Ronda Kaysen, “New Mixed-Income Housing on the Lower East Side,” The New York Times, July 24, 2015. 284
Park plans. The new development, for instance, gives priority rights to residents displaced from
the Seward Park Extension between 1965 and 1973, but housing officials say they will not track
down these residents and income requirements may preclude them from renting a new apartment.
As a result, Puerto Rican tenants who vacated the Seward Park Extension in the 1960s worry that
they may never return to the Lower East Side.5 Indeed, one New York Times columnist expressed
doubt if Essex Crossing will reverse the “Lower East Side diaspora” caused by earlier periods of urban renewal.6
In other ways, however, Essex Crossing stands as a testament to the decline of Grand
Street as a center of Jewish political power. Though Heshy Jacob opposed the proposal, the
Grand Street co-ops, increasingly comprised of younger and more diverse residents, backed it.7
Even Sheldon Silver acknowledged that Essex Crossing reflected “the needs and wishes of our
neighborhood.”8 Silver’s statement suggested that Grand Street had changed. Indeed, the Jewish
Community Relations Council of New York now estimates that Jews comprise only 6.8 percent
of the Lower East Side and have moved into other parts of the neighborhood’s 65th A.D. (Figure
5), a trend that suggests a decline in the neighborhood’s older, Orthodox population. At the same
time, Asians and Latinos now comprise roughly 40 and 20 percent of the 65th district and more than 50 percent of its registered Democrats.9 These population shifts led Dominic Berg, the
5 “Guidance for Former Site Tenants,” Essex Crossing, accessed December 27, 2016, http://essexcrossingnyc.com/residential/; Charles V. Biagli, “City Plans Redevelopment for Vacant Area in Lower Manhattan,” The New York Times, September 17, 2013; Ronda Kaysen, “Trying to Undo a Lower East Side Diaspora,” The New York Times, December 9, 2016. 6 Ronda Kaysen, “Trying to Undo a Lower East Side Diaspora,” The New York Times, December 9, 2016. 7 Josh Nathan-Kazis, “Lower East Side Development Spells Decline of Old Jewish Power Brokers,” The Jewish Daily Forward, March 4, 2013. 8 Ibid. 9 The district also encompasses Chinatown, and the lower Manhattan areas of Wall Street and Battery Park. One political group estimates that Jews comprised about 15 percent of the 65th A.D. See Doug Chandler, “Bracing for Life Without Shelly,” The New York Jewish Week, April 13, 2016; Stewart Ain, “A Lot Less Silver for Lower East Side,” The New York Jewish Week, September 7, 2016; Lincoln Anderson, “Yuh-Line Niou is a New Contender for Silver’s Ex-Seat,” The Villager, December 17, 2015. 285
former head of Community Board 3, to note that the Grand Street co-ops no longer speak with a
“monolithic voice.”10
This development has significantly affected Lower East Side politics. In November 2015, a jury found Silver guilty of money laundering, fraud, and extortion. Several months later, a federal judge sentenced the assemblyman to twelve years in prison.11 In April 2016, Lower East
Siders conducted an election to temporarily fill Silver’s seat. In some ways, the election showed
that Silver, and Grand Street, still cast a long shadow over the neighborhood. Before the election,
roughly 180 Democratic County Committee members selected a nominee to run for the vacant
seat. The committee, dominated by the largest Regular Democratic clubs that have historically
backed Silver, selected city official Alice Cancel, who migrated from Puerto Rico to the South
Bronx and settled on the Lower East Side in the 1970s.12 Though Cancel became well-known in
the neighborhood as a district leader and tenant advocate, her candidacy drew strength from the
Silver machine.13 Cancel is married to John Quinn, a leader of the Regular Lower East Side
Democratic club, which routinely backed Silver and, under the committee’s rules, possessed
thirty-two votes in the nomination process.14 In addition, the spouses of Silver and William
Rapfogel, Rosa Silver and Judy Rapfogel, also backed Cancel on the committee.15 For these
10 Josh Nathan-Kazis, “Lower East Side Development Spells Decline of Old Jewish Power Brokers,” The Jewish Daily Forward, March 4, 2013. 11 Doug Chandler, “Bracing for Life Without Shelly,” The New York Jewish Week, April 13, 2016; Benjamin Weiser and Vivian Yee, “Sheldon Silver, Ex-New York Assembly Speaker, Gets 12-Year Prison Sentence,” The New York Times, May 3, 2016. 12 “Our Interview With Alice Cancel, Democratic Nominee in the 65th AD,” The Lo-Down, February 6, 2016, accessed December 27, 2016, http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2016/02/our-interview-with-alice-cancel- democratic-nominee-in-the-65th-ad.html. 13 Ibid., Leila Roos, “NYS Assembly Candidate Alice Cancel Wants to Bring Grassroots to Albany,” Jewish Political News and Updates, April 9, 2016. 14 “Our Interview With Alice Cancel, Democratic Nominee in the 65th AD,” The Lo-Down, February 6, 2016, accessed December 27, 2016, http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2016/02/our-interview-with-alice-cancel- democratic-nominee-in-the-65th-ad.html. 15 Leonard Greene, “Sheldon Silver’s Wife, Friend Help Choose His Successor in Albany,” New York Daily News, February 8, 2016; Stephen Nessen, “Whiff of Cronyism in Race for Silver’s Seat,” WNYC News, February 24, 2016; 286
reasons, Cancel earned the endorsement of The Jewish Press, one of the city’s leading Orthodox newspapers.16
In response to Cancel’s nomination, Yuh-Line Niou, a self-described “policy wonk” and
Flushing assemblyman Ron Kim’s Chief of Staff, ran for Silver’s seat on the Working Families
Party line.17 As a sign of the popular backlash against Silver, Niou earned endorsements from
The New York Times, City Comptroller Scott Stringer, local State Senator Daniel Squadron, and
Chinatown political clubs.18 Despite Cancel’s attempts to distance herself from Silver, Niou argued that the process by which the Democratic County Committee nominated Cancel did not
“reflect the diversity of our district,” a position oft-repeated by past critics of the Grand Street establishment.19
In the end, Cancel, who ran a lackadaisical campaign marred by inadequate funding and prolonged public absences, unimpressively won by about 1,000 votes.20 Her support came from many of the neighborhood’s NYCHA complexes, which possessed sizable Puerto Rican tenancies and perhaps knew Cancel as a district leader.21 Despite her second place finish, however, Niou earned strong support in Chinatown and, most importantly, outpolled Cancel in
16 “Jewish Press Endorsements: April 19 New York Special Elections,” The Jewish Press, April 7, 2016; Lincoln Anderson, “Yuh-Line Niou is a New Contender for Silver’s Ex-Seat,” The Villager, December 17, 2015. 17 JiaYang Fan, “Lower Manhattan’s New Voice in the State Assembly,” The New Yorker, December 13, 2016. 18 “New York Times Endorses Assembly Candidate Yuh-Line Niou,” The Lo-Down, April 9, 2016, accessed December 27, 2016, http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2016/04/new-york-times-endorses-assembly-candidate- yuh-line-niou.html; “Squadron, Kavanagh Endorse Yuh-Line Niou For State Assembly,” The Lo-Down, April 1, 2016, accessed December 27, 2016, http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2016/04/squadron-kavanagh-endorse-yuh- line-niou-for-state-assembly.html. 19 “Follow-up: Alice Cancel Wins Sheldon Silver’s Seat, Fall Campaign Already Underway,” The Lo-Down, April 22, 2016, accessed December 27, 2016, http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2016/04/follow-up-alice-cancel-wins- sheldon-silvers-seat-fall-campaign-already-underway.html. 20 Ibid.; Carl Campanile, “Alice Cancel Reveals Why She Hasn’t Started Campaigning for Silver’s Seat,” New York Post, March 24, 2016; “Council Member Margaret Chin Endorses Alice Cancel in Special Election (Updated),” The Lo-Down, April 8, 2016, accessed December 27, 2016, http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2016/04/council- member-margaret-chin-endorses-alice-cancel-in-special-election.html. 21 “Follow-up: Alice Cancel Wins Sheldon Silver’s Seat, Fall Campaign Already Underway,” The Lo-Down, April 22, 2016, accessed December 27, 2016, http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2016/04/follow-up-alice-cancel-wins- sheldon-silvers-seat-fall-campaign-already-underway.html. 287
every election district in and around Grand Street except the Seward Park Extension.22 The
returns revealed a major shift in Lower East Side politics: Silver and his allies appeared to have
lost the Grand Street co-ops.
However, Cancel’s victory proved short-lived. That September, she faced primary
challenges from five candidates – Niou, Don Lee, a local businessman, GiGi Li, a former head of
Community Board 3, Jenifer Rajkumar, a local district leader and a civil rights lawyer, and Paul
Newell, a modern Orthodox community activist who had run against Silver on an anti-corruption platform in 2008.23 As The New York Times noted, the election underscored the Lower East
Side’s ethnic and racial diversity and demonstrated the new political possibilities with Silver out
of power.24 More specifically, the election revealed Chinatown’s growing relevance as a center
of political power on the Lower East Side. Indeed, while white ethnic turnout during the election
remained relatively high, Chinese-Americans comprised about 41 percent of the district and out-
registered their Puerto Rican counterparts.25 This shift did not bode well for Cancel, who needed
the Grand Street machine to win.26
The election returns confirmed the birth of a new era in Lower East Side politics. Niou
earned nearly 32 percent, Jenifer Rajkumar 18 percent, and Paul Newell roughly 16 percent of
the 65th A.D. vote. Cancel finished fourth, winning only about 12 percent of the district’s vote.
22 Ibid.; New York City Board of Elections, “Statement and Return Report by Election District: Special Election 59 62 and 65 Assembly – 04/19/2016,” Board of Elections in the City of New York, accessed December 27, 2016, http://vote.nyc.ny.us/downloads/pdf/election_results/2016/20160419Special%20Election/00102300065New%20Yor k%20Member%20of%20the%20Assembly%2065th%20Assembly%20District%20EDLevel.pdf; “NYC District Maps,” Board of Elections of the City of New York, accessed December 27, 2016, http://vote.nyc.ny.us/downloads/pdf/maps/ad/ad65.pdf. 23 Lawrence Downes, “Winds of Change on the Lower East Side,” The New York Times, August 26, 2016; Liz Robbins, “Race to Replace Sheldon Silver Reflects His District’s Ethnic Diversity,” The New York Times, August 29, 2016; David Howard King, “As Sheldon Silver Heads to Trial, A Democratic Challenger is Poised to Run,” City Limits, October 27, 2015. 24 Liz Robbins, “Race to Replace Sheldon Silver Reflects His District’s Ethnic Diversity,” The New York Times, August 29, 2016. 25 Ibid. 26 Stewart Ain, “A Lot Less Silver for Lower East Side,” The New York Jewish Week, September 7, 2016. 288
Niou then coasted to a general election victory, defeating Republican Bryan Jung by a 67-13
margin. Niou’s victory made her only the second Asian-American to serve in the state legislature
– and the first to represent Manhattan – in New York history.27 More importantly, the returns
showed that Grand Street, once the center of Jews’ political power on the Lower East Side, lent
little support to Cancel, the candidate backed by Silver’s allies. As Table 8 shows, voters living
on and around Grand Street cast a total of 2,332 votes in the 65th A.D. Democratic primary.
Cancel won only about 339, or about 14.5 percent, of these votes, while Niou, Rajkumar, and
Newell split most of the remainder. Cancel’s supporters lived near her home, the Southbridge
Towers, located just south of the Brooklyn Bridge, and around several Lower East Side public housing projects, including the Rutgers, Rafael Hernandez, and Vladeck Houses. While Niou performed most strongly in Chinatown, she also earned a plurality, or 712 (roughly 30 percent), of the votes on or around Grand Street.28 She also won the Seward Park and Amalgamated co- ops, while running evenly with Newell in the East River co-ops. In all, the returns suggested that the center of political power in the 65th A.D. had shifted from Grand Street to Chinatown and
confirmed the decline of Jewish political power on the Lower East Side. Indeed, few Jewish
voters repeated the concern of one Jewish constituent: that replacing Silver would lead the new assemblyperson to “represent Chinatown over us.”29
27 “Yuh-Line Niou Wins Democratic Primary in 65th Assembly District,” The Lo-Down, November 9, 2016, accessed December 27, 2016, http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2016/09/yuh-line-niou-wins-democratic- primary-in-65th-assembly-district.html. 28 For Niou’s Chinatown returns, see election districts 23, 24, 30, 31, 32, 59, 59, 60, and 61. 29 Lincoln Anderson, “Yuh-Line Niou is a New Contender for Silver’s Ex-Seat,” The Villager, December 17, 2015; “Our Interview with Assembly Candidate Yuh-Line Niou,” The Lo-Down, April 13, 2016, accessed January 12, 2017, http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2016/04/our-interview-with-assembly-candidate-yuh-line-niou.html; Liz Robbins, “Race to Replace Sheldon Silver Reflects His District’s Ethnic Diversity,” The New York Times, August 26, 2016. 289
Figure 5: The 65th Assembly District (2016)
Source: “NYC District Maps,” Board of Elections of the City of New York, accessed December 27, 2016, http://vote.nyc.ny.us/downloads/pdf/maps/ad/ad65.pdf
290
Table 8: 2016 Democratic Primary for the 65th A.D. (Grand Street Areas)
E.D. Niou Rajkumar Newell Cancel Li Lee 41 29 23 13 10 13 11 44 (East River co-ops) 56 51 77 44 7 5 45 (East River co-ops) 79 43 87 38 13 11 46 (East River co-ops) 55 35 53 34 4 3 47 (East River co-ops) 53 46 53 21 6 1 48 79 46 78 19 6 2 51 (Amalgamated co-ops) 69 37 47 32 15 6 52 (Seward Park co-ops) 41 31 49 24 32 1 53 (Seward Park co-ops) 68 35 32 32 16 1 54 (Seward Park co-ops) 64 28 42 20 18 2 55 66 44 32 22 7 2 56 29 31 7 21 6 8 57 24 26 5 22 12 22 TOTAL 712 476 575 339 155 75 Source: New York City Board of Elections, “Statement and Return Report by Election District: Primary Election 2016 – 09/13/2016, New York County, Democratic Party, Democratic Member of the Assembly, 65th Assembly District,” Board of Elections in the City of New York, accessed December 27, 2016, http://vote.nyc.ny.us/downloads/pdf/election_results/2016/20160913Primary%20Election/01102800065New%20Yo rk%20Democratic%20Male%20State%20Committee%2065th%20Assembly%20District%20EDLevel.pdf; “NYC District Maps,” Board of Elections of the City of New York, accessed December 27, 2016, http://vote.nyc.ny.us/downloads/pdf/maps/ad/ad65.pdf
Despite this shift, however, the Lower East Side remained a center for Jewish politics long after most scholars suggest. From the 1960s through the 1990s, Grand Street elected leaders and civic groups, with the backing of both secular and Orthodox Jewish groups, municipal planners, and mayoral administrations, formed an influential Orthodox political base in the neighborhood. These leaders wrote and interpreted laws, served on school and community boards, filed legal briefs, and influenced both local and citywide elections. In so doing, Grand
Street leaders controlled the flow of urban resources on the Lower East Side and shaped antipoverty, education, housing, and districting policy in the neighborhood. These actions helped remake the physical and political landscape of the Lower East Side and New York as a whole.
Grand Street policies shaped the real and imagined community boundaries, social relationships, and electoral coalitions between Jews and Puerto Ricans in both the neighborhood and city. In all, Grand Street leaders remained skeptical of Puerto Rican political organizing on
291
the Lower East Side. Often romanticizing the experiences of their forbearers and equating the
experiences of earlier Jewish immigrants with more recent Puerto Rican settlers, Grand Street
leaders reined in Puerto Rican attempts to craft an increasingly coherent and independent
political agenda on the Lower East Side. These attempts – driven by new community organization programs, civil rights legislation, and a growing collaboration between home-grown
Puerto Rican groups and left-wing reformers – aimed to restructure neighborhood institutions and reorient the policy priorities of municipal government. During and after the 1960s, Puerto
Ricans sought to gain political power on the Lower East Side by organizing through antipoverty agencies, joining local school and community boards, and gaining access to affordable housing.
Through these efforts, Puerto Ricans hoped to address the needs of the neighborhood’s low- income, Puerto Rican residents. By working to strengthen community action programs, enact new bilingual education laws, create new electoral districts, and regulate the private real estate market, Puerto Ricans challenged the governing principles of Grand Street’s Jewish leadership and New York’s political establishment in new and unique ways. Often, Puerto Ricans grounded
these proposals in a cosmopolitan vision of Lower East Side history that cited the
neighborhood’s role as a historic haven for poor newcomers.
In response, Grand Street fought to preserve its political power in the neighborhood. In
the 1960s, Representative Leonard Farbstein and his heavy white ethnic base responded
ambiguously to new grassroots Puerto Rican activism sponsored by Mobilization for Youth
(MFY). By enacting new voter registration drives, supporting local protest, and organizing low-
income parents in neighborhood schools, MFY helped Puerto Ricans establish a political
presence on the Lower East Side. Though he backed national civil rights legislation, Farbstein, a
Democratic stalwart in the House and a long-time Grand Street resident, criticized MFY
292
programming, opposed local integration proposals, and became increasingly out of touch with his district’s growing Puerto Rican base. After speaking out against MFY’s direct action campaigns, partly by equating them with unfair shortcuts to economic mobility, Farbstein won a closely contested election against Ted Weiss, a young councilman whose candidacy achieved some traction within the increasingly Puerto Rican sections of the Lower East Side. The contest foreshadowed growing electoral divisions between Jews and Puerto Ricans in neighborhood politics.
These divisions became more apparent in the early 1970s. At this time, Puerto Rican parents sought to control local school boards and influence school policy on the Lower East Side by hiring more Puerto Rican teachers and implementing new bilingual programs. In response, public school teachers, represented by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the major
Jewish defense agencies, and the Orthodox Jewish Press equated new bilingual programs with ethnic and racial quotas. Conflicts over bilingual education – and school decentralization more broadly – made Jewish-Puerto Rican relations a central and publicly recognized aspect of neighborhood life. These conflicts also impacted citywide politics. By citing Lower East Side school issues to discredit Herman Badillo’s run against Comptroller Abe Beame during the 1973
Democratic primary, conservative Jewish publications aligned the interests of outer-borough white ethnics with those of Grand Street teachers and civic leaders.
These political similarities reappeared during later redistricting campaigns. Classifying
Puerto Ricans as “white,” COLPA, an Orthodox legal aid group, opposed federal attempts, on behalf of PRLDEF and the NAACP, to create additional black and Puerto Rican electoral districts. These attempts, reflecting several judicial rulings on the 1965 Voting Rights Act, led state officials to create a new majority Latino district, the 12th district, which encompassed parts
293
of Brooklyn, the Queens, and Lower East Side, and eventually elected the city’s first Puerto
Rican congresswoman, Nydia Velázquez. Her race against Steve Solarz, a Jewish congressman representing the nation’s largest Orthodox district, as well as the 12th district’s creation, exposed
the electoral incompatibility of Orthodox and Puerto Rican political bases, particularly in the
Lower East Side and Williamsburg.
But Grand Street leaders most significantly impacted Lower East Side housing. For
nearly fifty years, Heshy Jacob, Sheldon Silver, the UJC, COLPA, and their political allies
prevented the construction of low-income housing in the Seward Park Extension. These
Orthodox leaders did so by attributing poverty to individual failings, depicting low-income families as inherently dangerous and unstable, and framing Seward Park as an exclusively Jewish space. By invoking a collective memory of the Lower East Side past, Grand Street leaders tied more abstract claims of authority with an increasingly conservative political agenda. All told, the
UJC, with support from Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, undercut displaced Puerto Rican tenant
claims to new housing and blocked the development of new low-income housing in Seward
Park. By reserving public land for middle-income and market rate housing, Grand Street leaders
furthered neighborhood segregation by class and race and preserved their distinct Jewish base.
These actions furthered gentrification and hinted at Grand Street’s support for the city’s pro-
growth policies in the 1970s and 1980s. For these reasons, Grand Street leadership reinforced
broader and more permanent changes in New York’s political economy in the last third of the
twentieth century, namely the reallocation of public funds to private, large-scale real estate developers. These efforts led partly to Mayor Dinkins losing the Lower East Side in his 1993 race against Rudy Giuliani and signaled the broader ethnic tensions that undid Dinkins’ electoral coalition.
294
All told, Grand Street’s Jewish leadership adds ideological diversity to typical studies of
New York Jewry. While Grand Street leaders did not speak for all Jews on the Lower East Side – indeed Jews helped lead reform groups like LESMPA, the MCH, and the JPC – its Orthodox
base, occupying seats of power in both city and state government, left a deeper, more permanent
imprint on neighborhood policy. In the post-1965 period, Grand Street leaders took positions on
housing and civil rights law that underscored Orthodox Jews’ political conservatism. At this time, these leaders called upon city and state officials to scale back community organizing programs, institute welfare cuts, weaken the separation of church and state, roll back the 1965
Voting Rights Act, and build market-rate housing. These positions reinforced New York City’s rightward political shift in the 1970s and 1980s, made Jewish-Puerto Rican relations a central feature of both neighborhood and citywide politics, and demonstrated that the Lower East Side remained a significant site for the development of American Jewish politics in the late twentieth century.
295
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Citizens Housing Planning Council Library CHPCL Citizens Housing Planning Council Papers CHPCP
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library JFKL Daniel Knapp Papers DKP
LaGuardia and Wagner Archives LWA Miriam Friedlander Papers MFP New York City Housing Authority Papers NYCHAP
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