The Chinatown community has fought a long – and so far fruitless – battle to reopen Park Row at Chatham Square. The area in front of One Police Plaza was closed after the September 11th attacks. In spite of repeated requests from local elected officials, city and federal agencies, including the New York City Police Department and the Department of Homeland Security, have balked. Today, elected representatives are renewing their plea. The letter below to Mayor de Blasio was signed by U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez, State Sen. Daniel Squadron, State Assembly member Sheldon Silver, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and City Council member Margaret Chin.
Given that DeBlasio needs “to work” more on Lunar New Year holiday as a legal day off for observant kids, imagine how much “work” he’ll put into this issue!!! The heavy lifting has been done by activists for nearly 14 years on this issue, the mayor’s “work” is cut out for him on the “open park row” issue. Now is his time to follow up n BOTH issues for the Chinese community.
But I feel that Chinatown and Chinese got into trouble silently when the protest over closing Park Row to protect One PP and the courthouses and DA’s office came about after 9-11. White people and other non Chinese will never tell us that we messed up to our faces. I remember after 9-11, a lot of Black people in Queens had open faces and gestures towards total strangers in the days following because they felt that this was a united front of woe and grief. I think we got into big trouble putting our personal concerns over security which today is even more troubling because of ISIS recently discovered in Brooklyn.
I always thought it was weird that Little Italy got Historical District-ed after 9-11 and now we have the misnomer of Chinatown Working Group which is anything but – I think we are being shifted out of the way to Flushing more so than Sunset Park so we can go through our growing pains as American and the Judeo Christian learning curve off of Manhattan. I’m not saying we don’t deserve it. I’m not saying that Manhattan’s Chinatown must be preserved in amber but certainly it is not being developed. And LES e.g. Ludlow Street should remain little better than a banlieu of industry of working class affordable housing but it has these out of character shops – maybe one on each block and Chinatown proper has nothing like that despite its yummy proximity to all the govt agencies and courthouses.
Flushing does not have that – Jamaica Queens does but Jamaica is being developed.