New Column!

More than any other week of the year, this week in Brooklyn is about religious rituals. From street vendors selling palm fronds in front of St. Anthony's Church in Greenpoint on Palm Sunday, to Satmar and Pupa Hasidic Jews standing in line for boxes of shmura matzoh under the elevated J, to burning bread and lulavs at multiple checkpoints throughout South Williambsurg, the neighborhoods welcome Spring with traditions that go back decades. While there are more seders to come and sermons to listen to this weekend, my column this week explores what interfaith organizing could do in Greenpoint to improve the quality of life of residents of all backgrounds. Read more below!:
http://www.greenpointnews.com/news/short-takes-where-is-the-94th-clergy-council

Short Takes: Where is the 94th Clergy Council?

Apr 09, 2009 by Aaron Short
What do a community of interdenominational religious leaders and a New York City police precinct have in common?
In Williamsburg, Bushwick and other neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn, clergy leaders meet once a month at their local police precinct to plan events and discuss issues of importance to their congregants. Bushwick clergy council members, many of them Pentecostal ministers, have worked with the 83rd precinct officers to plan forums for families dealing with foreclosure or immigration crises while Williamsburg clergy council members hosted meetings to organize against a spate of gang violence that erupted on the South Side last summer.
In Greenpoint, no such group exists.
http://www.greenpointnews.com/news/short-takes-where-is-the-94th-clergy-council

From Williamsburg to Albany

I am currently staying in a large David Lynchian room at an Econo-Lodge on the outskirts of Albany. Why am I here? Business. Why am I really here? Lord knows. Just one of those unusual weekends that takes me from a United Jewish Organization legislative breakfast on Rutledge Street to a meeting with a roomful of Bushwick artists with a Rockefeller Foundaiton grant trying to maintain a permanent community on Morgan Avenue to hitching a ride with the Greenpoint Gazette up I-87 to visit Joe Lentol, Marty Dilan, and Vito Lopez in their home away from home.

Unfortunately we picked a Monday night to stay over. Everything is closed and there is very little to do here, but the Gazette is trying our hardest to blog the scene. I'm just happy to have some time to get some work done, and the state capitol reminds me of Hartford, CT, my home away from home. The legislative office building has the ambience of an airport hangar with less hospitality and for some reason it feels like we're in Canada. I've been calling the state troopers money and asking where we have to change currencies. Highlights for today include two of the reporters saw Assemblyman Lopez eating a roast beef sandwich but were too shy to say hello and wandering into one of Albany's two gay bars which had extremely normal names like the Waterworks Tavern. There's no double entendre there. Just a small neon rainbow sign in the window with the word Pride! flashing beneath it.

Tomorrow is a hearings day so the schedule is packed, plus lunch with Joe Lentol and his staff. Meanwhile, which of the following looks like he's about to get hoisted into the air while the crowd dances the hora below?
A. Steve Levin









B. Daniel Squadron