Keep Rangel out of the Bronx, Rev. Diaz says

State Sen. Rev. Ruben Diaz has come out with another 'What You Should Know,' and this one goes after Assemblyman Denny Farrell. Diaz says Farrell (Manhattan), has no respect for Bronxites.

Farrell was recently quoted in the Daily News about redistricting, saying the first thing they work on is Rep. Charlie Rangel's district to ensure his reelection. Diaz hates this and goes after the 'machine' of Albany

"Are they are all a bunch of sell-outs or do they have the best interest for our community as their top priority?" he says. Here's the full post:

Assemblyman Denny Farrell shows no respect for Bronx residents, for Bronx elected officials, and especially no respect for the Bronx’s growing Hispanic population.

“You must understand, for the last 40 years, whatever district Charlie Rangel wants, we give it to him. I say, ‘Charlie, we can’t draw anything else in the state till we draw you.’ That’s always been our position — we do you and then everything. He’s the dean. He’s the No. 1.”

These words expressed today in a Daily News column by Bill Hammond titled ‘Albany's Gift to Charlie Rangel’ practically confirmed to the world what I have been asking all along about our representatives in Albany: Are they are all a bunch of sell-outs or do they have the best interest for our community as their top priority?

Today, my dear reader, Harlem is a very different community. Charles Rangel and Keith Wright may have brought “progress” to Harlem with great business proposals, 125th Street is thriving with stores and businesses, and people now go to Harlem to shop, but there is one big problem. They pushed their residents out – especially the African American community. They did not protect Harlem residents.

There are not enough African American residents in Harlem to keep Charles Rangel in his position, and there is no one to blame but Charles Rangel himself – and his colleagues. They allowed African Americans to lose Harlem to others communities. In other words, today Harlem is owned by others – not by African Americans as it used to be.

We cannot deny, and you should know, that Charlie Rangel is a legendary figure in the African American community and that whatever he wants for Harlem he has always gotten.
We also have to note that the historical beauty of Harlem has been their residents, their struggle for survival and their history. Harlem was a strong political power for the African American community in the eyes of the nation, until their leadership, led by Charles Rangel, sold them out to former President Bill Clinton and his business associates.

Now Charles Rangel, Denny Farrell and Keith Wright – after losing Harlem – want to come to the Bronx and without respect or consideration to the leadership, to the people of the Bronx, and to all of us who have fought to keep our community intact, contrary to what they did in Harlem. Remember Denny Farrell’s words, “Charlie, we can’t draw anything else in the state till we draw you … we do you and then everything.”

What a joke! What a farce! What a lack of respect to Sheldon Silver, to the rest of the Assembly members and to the people of the Bronx!

We in the Bronx have built housing to protect the Black and Hispanic community from leaving us. The census verified that the Bronx did not lose people – the Bronx gained residents because the Bronx leadership has been responding to the needs of its community and has not allowed others to come and push our people out.

We do not need Charles Rangel to come to the Bronx. We have enough people to get two congressional districts independent and apart from everything else, to take over our struggles and our fight.

When I hear Denny Farrell practically say that the Assembly will not do anything until “we do” Charles Rangel. I must wonder who is the real Speaker, Sheldon Silver or Denny Farrell. I also wonder how my Bronx colleagues will respond to this insult. I’d like to know how they can allow themselves to be disrespected like that.

I am Senator Reverend Ruben Diaz and this is what you should know.

MTA releases first-ever Late Night Map

Although the map won't be accessible to everyone--the MTA is releasing it first in a collectible series--here is a Late Night Map, perfect for when you have to find your way back to the Bronx from Brooklyn.

You can download a PDF of the map at the MTA website.

The map shows the scheduled overnight service of the subway system, when three subway lines don’t run, three lines become shuttle trains, six express trains run as locals, and a night-only shuttle appears. The map has a gray background color to prevent confusion with the normal subway map.

The New York City Subway is the only large subway or metro system in the world to maintain service to all its stations around the clock. The overnight service shown in the night map runs generally from midnight to 6 a.m., although certain lines’ overnight service patterns depicted in the map may begin or end slightly earlier or later than these times.

The MTA has printed 25,000 copies of the map in tandem with its normal press run of a million copies of the standard subway and railroad map. The night map is available free of charge while supplies last at the New York Transit Museum, at Boerum Place & Schermerhorn Street in Downtown Brooklyn, and at the Transit Museum Annex in Grand Central Terminal.

The night map, developed in-house by the MTA, is the same size as the standard map and similarly folds into a handy pocket-sized document. In addition to the folded version, 300 pristine, unfolded press sheets of the night map are available for purchase at the Transit Museum Annex for $20 each.

“The standard subway map depicts morning to evening weekday service,” said MTA Chairman Joseph J. Lhota. “This companion night map will, for the first time, depict service for a particular portion of the day. This is the latest effort we’ve taken to improve the availability of information and detail we provide to our customers.”

The following details the major differences in service shown on the night map, as compared with the standard subway map:

·         Three subway lines (the B, C and Z) and the 42^nd Street Shuttle do not operate overnight and are not shown on the map.

·         Five subway lines offer shorter service than usual:

o   The 3 terminates at Times Square.

o   The 5 runs as a shuttle in the Bronx between E. 180 St and Dyre Av

o   The M runs as a shuttle between Myrtle Av, Brooklyn, and Metropolitan Av, Queens.

o   The Q terminates at 57 St/7 Av in Midtown Manhattan.

o   The R runs as a shuttle in Brooklyn between 36 St and 95 St.

·         Six lines make additional stops they don’t make during the daytime.

o   The 2 makes all local stops in Manhattan.

o   The 4 makes all local stops in Manhattan and Brooklyn and is extended to New Lots Av, Brooklyn.

o   The A makes all local stops in Manhattan and Brooklyn; it runs to Far Rockaway but not Lefferts Blvd or Rockaway Park, which are served by shuttle trains.

o   The D runs local via Fourth Av in Brooklyn.

o   The E runs local via Queens Blvd.

o   The N runs local via the Financial District.

·         There is no skip/stop service on the J, which terminates at Chambers St on weekend overnight periods

·         Six subway lines (the 1, 6, 7, F, G, and L) and Franklin Avenue Shuttle run their normal routes as local trains. (There is no 6 or 7 express service.)

New maps under-represent City voters

The proposed maps for the state Senate released today by New York’s legislative task force on redistricting (LATFOR) systematically under-represent voters from New York City, New York World has found.

And they put together this nifty map showing just that. Under the proposed new lines, the average state Senate vote by a New York City resident weighs 7.3 percent less than the average vote cast upstate. The population of almost every district north of Westchester is more 4.5 percent smaller than the average-sized district.

The principle of “one person, one vote” is a cornerstone of American election law, and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that there must be no more than a 10 percent difference between the largest and smallest districts in a state. But even this margin allows room for manipulation. By creating systematic discrepancies in the sizes of districts, parties can create additional districts in regions that support them and dilute the voting power of regions that favor their opponents.

You can see all of our coverage on the LATFOR maps here.

Redistricted Bronx lines for Senate and Assembly (UPDATE)

There's a handful of days that resemble Christmas morning for diehard political fans (filing days, primary elections, general elections), and this is one of those days. The first draft of the state Senate and Assembly lines have been released by the legislative task force (LATFOR).

We'll go through each one in separate posts, which will all be linked from here (and they are all available to download at LATFOR's website).

29th Senate-Jose Serrano Jr.
32nd Senate-Rev. Ruben Diaz
33rd Senate-Gustavo Rivera
34th Senate-Jeff Klein
36th Senate-Ruth Hassell-Thompson

As for the Assembly, you can look at the individual maps here, but I'm not going to both going through each one because there are 11 of them and they don't drastically change. However, I have been able to speak with Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who briefly talked about his district and the Bronx as a whole:
81st Assembly-Jeffrey Dinowitz

If you love or hate these lines and want to tell LATFOR about it, Tuesday will be your chance.

And here are the citywide maps of both the Senate and Assembly:

There is mostly just minor adjustments for the Bronx Assembly districts. The biggest change is Peter Rivera's district would no longer be the 76th, it would now be the 87th. The new 76th ends up on the Upper East Side somehow. Oh LATFOR, you and your crazy ways.

Here's what the Assembly looks like now:

Jump below for the Update, the Senate lines, as well as a response blasting the Senate lines.

The proposed 81st Assembly district (UPDATE)

Maps of Assembly districts drawn by the legislative redistricting task force (LATFOR) have been sent to the relevant Assemblymember. We've reached out to the Bronx members and are waiting to hear back to get each one. Here's the first we've gotten, Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz's 81st. 

UPDATE: All the lines are out now on the LATFOR site, and you can check another post on Bronx Press Politics to see our breakdowns of the Senate. 

The proposed lines add the rest of Van Cortlandt Village, the Jerome Park Reservoir, Clinton HS, Bronx HS of Science, Harris Field and Lehman College, much of Kingsbridge Heights, the four buildings from the Marble Hill Houses that are in the Bronx, and returns the one election district at the bottom of Riverdale (2400 and 2500 Johnson Ave) that was taken away in 2002. Several election districts in Norwood were moved to the 80th Assembly District. The population of the new district is 126,402, a -2.08 percent deviation from the statewide average. The current district has 119,653. 

Every single Bronx AD is within 31 people of one another.


Dinowitz said he absolutely loves this proposed district because it puts nearly all of Community Board 8 in his district. It also gives him Lehman College and Bronx High School of Science, both which he attended, as well as a junior high school that goes by a different name now. It also has a good portion of Kingsbridge Heights, which is the neighborhood he grew up in.


In terms of the overall Bronx Assembly districts, "they're very reasonably drawn," he said. There aren't many "zig zags" but instead you see a lot of straight lines that keep communities together.

"To the extent that you can not divide neighborhoods," LATFOR did a good job with the Bronx.

For your consideration, here is Dinowitz's district as it looks now, drawn up in 2002:

Proposed 36th Senate District, Ruth Hassell-Thompson

Here is LATFOR's redistricted lines for the 36th Senate District, occupied by Ruth Hassell-Thompson.

Her district is much more compact now, no longer weaving along the Bronx River Parkway.

And her district as it is now:

Proposed 34th Senate District, Jeff Klein

Here is LATFOR's redistricting of the 34th Senate District, occupied by Jeff Klein. This is one of the more drastic changes for the Bronx. Klein's Westchester portion has been nearly completely destroyed, but the district itself is now actually legal. A rule, that not many people know, does not allow districts to cross county lines in two separate places. Klein's district does that now, but under the proposed lines, his district would run through the Bronx and only goes to Westchester one time.

He gains the Hunts Point Market, all of Riverdale--which previously had three senators--Norwood, and actually makes the connection in the central Bronx. The massive additions in the Bronx, as we reported earlier this week, was to make room for Republicans to gain votes to help win the soon-to-be vacated 37th District in Westchester.

And here is what Klein's district looks like now:

Proposed 33rd Senate District, Gustavo Rivera

Here is LATFOR's redistricting of the 33rd state Senate District, occupied by Gustavo Rivera.

The biggest change is that he loses Jerome Park Reservoir and a significant portion of land all directly below Van Cortlandt Park. That area been taken by state Sen. Jeff Klein, who was pushed farther into the Bronx to give the soon-to-be vacated 37th District seat a better chance to win for Republicans.

Rivera's new district would run much farther south, now having a solid chunk below the Cross Bronx Expressway.

And here is what Rivera's district looks like now:

Proposed 32nd Senate district, Ruben Diaz Sr.

Here is LATFOR's redistrict of the Bronx's 31nd Senate District, currently occupied by Rev. Ruben Diaz Sr.

He loses some waterfront access to state Sen. Jeff Klein, whose district was pushed farther into the Bronx to give the soon-to-be vacant 37th District in Westchester more Republican support. He also loses the Hunts Point Market

And here is what Diaz's old district looked like:

Hundreds protest Lehman High School turnaround plan

By MIAWLING LAM

Former Bronx teacher and education activist Peter Lamphere
speaks during a rally to save Lehman High School.

THE odds are stacked against them, but more than 200 former and current students, teachers and parents have mounted a fight to keep Herbert H. Lehman High School open.

Clutching an array of posters and wearing black t-shirts emblazoned with the words “Lehman United,” the crowd packed into the school’s auditorium last night to rally against its closure.

Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s controversial proposal, 33 of the city’s most troubled schools will close in June before being renamed and reopened three months later with the same students.

The radical proposal, which was announced during this month’s State of the City address, will also remove more than 1,500 teachers—up to half of the faculty—from these schools.

The aggressive strategy was developed after negotiations over teacher evaluations broke down, causing the state to withhold $30 million in federal funding from the city.

Of the 33 schools under fire, 10 are located in the Bronx including M.S. 391 in Tremont, Banana Kelly High School in Longwood and Fordham Leadership Academy in Belmont.