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Category Archives: Religion

Race Cards and Rove: Is Ratner a Master Strategist, or Master Manipulator?

Posted on April 25, 2005 by dailyheights

In the Brooklyn Rail this month, NORMAN KELLEY interviews David Dyson, a veteran social justice activist and pastor of Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Fort Greene. Kelley is the author of The Head Negro in Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black Politics.

Kelley: …some of the alliances that you and the church have with ACORN and Reverend [Herbert] Daughtry, who have signed onto this project, are now threatened, which is distressing. Would you say that Ratner is playing the race card?

Dyson: Yes, and it’s very depressing. This project has actually split lifelong partners in the progressive movement. We feel that Reverend Daughtry and ACORN have been brought in by Ratner not as advocates for the community but as private business partners in the deal. We’re trying to prevent the misuse of eminent domain, trying to increase the number of affordable housing units, trying to decrease the number of high-rise luxury office buildings. Those are the kinds of issues that a community group should have, but the Reverend Daughtry—who’s also an old friend—and our friends at ACORN are trying to cut a personal deal so that they can be brokers over whatever little piece or crumb of this pie falls from Ratner’s table. Ratner has been to Brooklyn what Karl Rove was to Ohio and Florida—brilliantly able to play on people’s worst instincts in order to get what he wants in a way that he wants it.”

Thanks to No Land Grab for the find. [PHOTO: Brian Molyneaux.]

WE ARE THE WORLD

Posted on April 4, 2005 by dailyheights

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Longing for another 9/11 “Moment of Unity”? Check out today’s coverage of Pope John Paul II’s death in the New York Post (Click here for larger image).

The Post was so struck by grief that they actually ran a picture of Hillary and Chelsea without any pejorative, belittling adjectival modifiers or snarky commentary (i.e. “Bitter, self-promoting harpy Hillary Clinton used the pope’s death as a photo-op today…”).

And what’s this? They did not crop U.N. chief Kofi Annan out of the picture. It would have been so easy to move that “mourning nun” layer a few hundred pixels closer to Rudy.

The love-fest lasts for an unprecedented 4 pages. Then the attacks on Kofi begin anew, starting with this editorial cartoon of astoundingly obvious premise dropped awkwardly in the middle of what is supposed to be this paper’s society/gossip section.

Church in a High School: "Hymn Books Replace Textbooks"

Posted on February 7, 2005 by dailyheights

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From the "State vs. Church" Dept.: Architect Laura Evans, a Prospect Heights resident, attended church last Sunday in a public high school in Park Slope (John Jay High School). The New York Times quotes her: "It’s different from what I grew up with – the suburban church with a
steeple and a chapel … it’s not the type of building, but it’s the people who
make a church."

Turns out that Bloomberg has issues with churches that rent space from schools: "The churches – often desperate
for space – say the arrangement is only fair. But the practice,
generally accepted across the country, has run into opposition from
some parents in New York City, and the Bloomberg administration is
planning to challenge the court ruling."

The church Laura attends, Park Slope Presbyterian Church, is one of the religious organizations that now meet in New
York City public schools. In 2002, a federal court said the
city "had to provide space in school buildings to religious institutions
just as it did for other community groups," according to the New York Times. "The churches typically rent
on Sundays, when students are not present, and reimburse the city for
the cost of custodial services."

LISA GRUMET (senior lawyer in the city’s corporation counsel’s office) told the New York Times that the city thinks this practice violates the separation of church and state: "’We are concerned about having public schools used by religious
congregations as houses of worship … The diversity of this city is one of its greatest strengths … and this is why we are concerned about having the neighborhood
school, the public school, identified with a particular religious
congregation."

Robert Latham has two young children and lives down the street from John Jay High School, where Park Slope Presbyterian meets. According to the New York Times, he thinks that arrangement "blurs the lines between church and state": "There’s always
notices and secondary communications that spill over … It doesn’t give parents and children choices."