Context: This past week, hundreds of brown girls in NYC (some anonymously, some not) shared their sexual assault stories on Instagram and Twitter, and the culprits were all brown boys (South Asian descent, mainly). Chelsea Community News’ Summer 2020 intern and contributing reporter, Hiba Sohail, wrote an essay unpacking brown boy misogyny for her blog, […]
Note: The following is a June 25, 2020 letter sent to New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, reprinted with the author’s permission. Dear Speaker Johnson, I know you are very busy, but please take a moment and read this. As you know I’m a proud public school special education teacher. I have been teaching […]
BY DONATHAN SALKALN | The exodus of city residents has already begun. With the combination of working remotely now the norm, the fear of future deadly diseases, and the recent civil unrest that included widespread looting to vulnerable sections of New York City, including Chelsea, people are moving to the suburbs like never before. It […]
BY CHRISTINE BERTHET, CO-FOUNDER OF CHEKPEDS | The COVID-19 quarantine has made us all aware of how wonderful New York can be: How clean and fresh the air has been, how quiet without gridlock blocking EMS, and without too many cars! Most significantly, there were no pedestrian fatalities in the last two months in Manhattan[1]. […]
BY DONATHAN SALKALN | Crime is an infectious disease, and should be treated on the scale of the Coronavirus outbreak. A citywide emergency should have been declared after a Barnard College student, Tessa Majors, was murdered on December 11, 2019. The horrific crime in Manhattan’s Morningside Park, allegedly by youths aged 13 and 14 years […]
BY JOHN MUDD, PRESIDENT, MIDTOWN SOUTH COMMUNITY COUNCIL | There are 62,000 plus homeless people hiding out, tucked away, pushed aside, and sprinkled about our city of New York. At least that’s what’s on record. But if you ask the professionals—the ones on the front lines—they will tell you that the numbers are much higher. […]
BY DONATHAN SALKALN | For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a black incisor tooth in the front of my mouth. I only go to the dentist if I have a major toothache, always in the back of my mouth, yet every dentist has always turned their attention and their tapping of pliers […]
BY ASSEMBLY MEMBER RICHARD N. GOTTFRIED | New York badly needs to combat the influence that big-money interests exert on State government—and I’ve been fighting to change the system. This is not a new cause for me. I wrote New York’s first bill on public campaign financing. That bill, modified over the years, has passed the […]
BY DONATHAN SALKALN | Civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel has been visiting Chelsea a whole lot lately. And he’s not Clement Clarke Moore’s fabled St. Nicholas, bringing an overflowing bag of toys by sled and reindeer, to the rooftops of the privileged Chelsea landmarked brownstones, of which Moore wrote in A Visit from St. Nicholas. […]