That's what someone scrawled on the car of a Jewish family in the Marine Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. This is the latest in a string of reported incidents that have come throughout the month of November. First, there was the firebombing of cars and antisemitic graffiti in the largely Jewish neighborhood of Midwood. Then there was vandalization of a sign at the Avenue J train station to read "Avenue Jew." Last week, vandals scratched swastikas into an elevator in a building in Williamsburg. Now there's this; "G-d don't like Jews." According to WCBS, this is the sixth antisemitic incident in Brooklyn this month alone.
Swastikas were found in an apartment building elevator on Friday afternoon in Brooklyn's latest antisemitic hate crime. This time, the incident occurred in Williamsburg, a mixed neighborhood with a large Hassidic Jewish population. This incident comes on the heels of the firebombing of cars and antisemitic graffiti in Midwood and graffiti changing a sign at the Avenue J train station to "Avenue Jew" earlier this month. Moreover, this is the second such incident in this particular building this month.
Thought it might be useful to take a look at how the local dead tree media are playing what went down yesterday.
And I have a question for the NYC media this morning. After week when Mike Bloomberg basically spat directly in your collective face, after he blocked you from actually doing your jobs by trying to hide the work he was doing in the public's name from you and after he arrested a good number of your members in the line of duty...how do Bloomberg's boots taste this morning?
As someone who consumes an unhealthy amount of NY/NYC media everyday, even I'm kind of blown away by the tone of this morning's coverage. I mean, I expect semi literate, semi coherent hippie bashing from the New York Post. That's what they do. They've never made a dime doing it, but the Post isn't a business so much as a mouthpiece. The Daily News isn't all that much better in that context, but it's usually a damn sight better than this.
The legacy media of NYC should really hang their head in shame this morning.
Looks like the takeaways from the morning papers are essentially:
1. Blood
2. Hippies vs Harhats
3. OWS is a menace to the entire city, is sad, inconsequential
4. OWS is over, Bloomberg victorious
While the Post goes with celebrity breakups on their FP, the Daily News goes the "bleeds/leads" route.
NYDN's coverage is all over the place, but let's start with Hippies vs Hardhats; Also, pointless:
Occupy Wall Street protesters and police scuffle in Zuccotti Park on Thursday.
Here's what the Occupy Wall Street bunch accomplished Thursday by having a conniption in lower Manhattan:
They showed just how pointlessly obnoxious they could be.
The occasion was a Day of Disruption, in which the self-anointed representatives of the 99% flocked downtown en masse, presumably to throw wrenches into the gears of the financial sector, thereby damaging an economy that has left many jobless.
Whatever. No one expects clear thinking from tots throwing tantrums.
Two months after the birth of the movement, days after they lost the Zuccotti Park encampment, some in the revealingly small band declared: "Resist austerity. Rebuild the economy. Reclaim our democracy."
Experts think protesters should take their show on the road
Mitchell Moss, NYU professor of urban policy and planning, said it's time for the protesters to take their show on the road.
"At this point, I think they should quickly migrate to the Washington Monument," he said. "There's ample space, and close proximity to the decision makers.
"That should be the next stop on their magical mystery tour."
....
"New Yorkers are a work-oriented people, and there is only a limited amount of patience with people who want to disrupt the city," he said.
....
"This isn't a movement. It's a fad."
Also check out "Scary Bloody Guy Is Scary, Bloody"
"These guys should be arrested!" yelled Jeff Davis, as he tried to elbow his way through the crowd at East Fifth Street and Broadway on his way home from work to Staten Island.
"This is unbelievable!" he said when he realized his M5 bus - which connects him to the ferry - wouldn't arrive any time soon.
Working stiffs at quitting time were confronted with walls of people that rivaled Times Square on New Year's Eve - disrupting commuters on foot, headed for commuter rail and riding in cars.
Lower Manhattan took the brunt of the protest pain, with massive demonstrations in the morning and evening making even a simple trip across the street completely hellish.
One of the worst streets was Broadway, a protest route that stretched from the bottom of Manhattan all the way north to Union Square.
"I'm trying to get to class!" fumed Gillian Enteman as she headed uptown to school.
She felt it necessary to add: "Class that I pay for!"
As apocalyptic acts of public protest go, yesterday's Occupy Wall Street act-out was a bit of a piffle.
There was the promise to shut down Wall Street. Didn't happen.
There was an effort to disrupt subway service. Didn't happen.
And there were to be acts of "massive" civil disobedience at Foley Square and the Brooklyn Bridge. Didn't happen, either.
To be sure, Foley Square was full to overflowing by 5 p.m. - hardly surprising, when it's surrounded by government office buildings and the public-employee unions have been an Occupy mainstay from the outset two months ago.
Which is ironic, given that government employees in New York enjoy health-care and pension benefits that even millionaires might envy - and that surely elude the reach of the vast majority of 99-percenters.
But, in the end, Occupy Wall Street's Day of Action turned out to be all talk.
The rhetoric was rabid, sure.
But there were nowhere near the "tens of thousands" of demonstrators who were supposed to fan out across the five boroughs and convulse New York.
"Some of the demonstrators deliberately pursued violence," Mayor Bloomberg said. "That's behavior that has nothing to do with the First Amendment."
Thus there were arrests - 177 by sunset, including five for assault.
But the "real story," Bloomberg asserted, "is that not that many people are here."
Except, at the end, for the union members.
As rush hour approached, contingents from a number of unions - including the SEIU health-care union, the UFT and DC37 - participated in a largely peaceful march across the Brooklyn Bridge.
But not before a gaggle of the usual suspects went through the ritual-arrest process, and an embarrassing number of elected officials prostrated themselves before their union masters.
So what happened to the "revolution"?
Well, it was wet and very chilly yesterday; bad weather always puts a damper on uninformed outrage.
Monday night's cleansing of Zuccotti Park has clearly diminished the movement's critical mass.
But maybe that "movement" was more illusion than reality all along.
At the end, there were more vagrants, criminals and nut-jobs than protesters at Zuccotti Park.
Apart from self-aggrandizing union poobahs pushing their own agendas, there has been little coherence in any of the protesters' "demands" - just resentment, envy and entitlement.
Yesterday doubtless could have ended differently, of course. Credit the professionalism and patience of the NYPD for seeing to it that it didn't.
Bottom line, though: It seems that Occupy Wall Street has passed its sell-by date - and even the Occupiers know it.
And they saved some column space for Podhoretz to call OWS a bunch of fucking babies. No, really. It's right there in the hed:
This guest post comes from Costas Panayotakis, a New York City labor activist with the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the faculty union at the City University of New York.
Costas has sparked an innovative public education effort, detailed below. I'm sharing it with you as a great example of creativity at work in unions today, and as something that others might adapt and repeat as part of their own political efforts.
In unusual times one has to do unusual things. That's how my stolid existence as a sociology professor at the City University of New York came to be enriched, by my second life as Austerity Nut.
Austerity Nut rides the New York City subways preaching the virtues of budget cuts, and the need for working-class sacrifice for the sake of our suffering brothers and sisters on Wall Street. He reminds riders, "Ask not what the billionaires in your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country's billionaires."
This week Austerity Nut took a break from his subway sermons, and brought his message to Tuesday's March on the Billionaires of Park Avenue. With more than 1,000 people gathered across from the Plaza Hotel, Austerity Nut stood up and spoke out:
We are in a terrible crisis, my friends, because people who work for a living in this country have just gotten too greedy. The rich, on the other hand, are falling further and further behind - and they need our help!
The crowd loved it. Austerity Nut is a way to engage people's attention with a little humor - and it seems to work. After speaking at the Billionaires' March, I got laughter, congratulations, and was interviewed by WNYC radio and a Chinese news agency.
Austerity Nut gets a positive response in the subways, too-- thumbs-up signs, smiles and laughs, and sometimes a subway car full of applause. Cutting education, health care and social services is inevitable, Austerity Nut reminds strap-hangers and anyone else who will listen. "We surely wouldn't want to tax our brothers and sisters on Wall Street," he explains. "After all, our rich people are the reason our economy is in such great shape!"
These impromptu performances have sparked appreciative notes to Austerity Nut's email address (austeritynut@gmail.com), and invitations to perform at union events and demonstrations. It's turned out to be an effective way to expose the absurdity of the "shared sacrifice" propaganda favored by the economic and political powers-that-be, by pretending to embrace it.
And now Austerity Nut: The Movie has been unleashed on the world, along with a companion website (austeritynut.com). The video features not just me, but several other members of the growing Austerity Nut movement, which daily preaches the virtues of budget cuts. The website includes the basic script for Austerity Nut, and encourages people to adapt it for their own style and needs, and upload video of their own performance.
You too can join the Austerity Nut army - because it will take two, three, many Austerity Nuts, to shine a light on the terrible crisis we find ourselves in.
Costas Panayotakis is associate professor of sociology at NYC College of Technology, one of the 18 colleges that make up the City University of New York. His double life as "Austerity Nut," and the thinking behind it, are detailed in his new book Remaking Scarcity, available in November from Pluto Press.
Once again The Fates have come our way to provide a story, and once again, we have a contender for the "Ironic Story Of The Year".
It's got everything you need for serious irony: an irascible comedian who mocked religion at every opportunity, a city that loved him, and the rich coincidence of his having been born at the crossroads of New York City's communities of religious education.
And that's why, today, we'll be talking about the effort to name the street right next to Manhattan's Seminary Row...Carlin Street.
(And before we go further, a language warning: we'll be quoting George Carlin liberally, and that means there may be present today certain of the seven words with which he created one of his best known routines. You are now officially warned.)
Sure it's old news, but you've got to get a chuckle out of the lawsuit brewing against Mike Bloomberg over the Cathy Black hiring. You can read about it here. A few comments about this sloppy abuse of power:
1. A few pundits have tried to give Bloomberg credit for realizing his mistake and moving expeditiously to correct it. I suppose its true that he could have compounded the error by digging in his heels, but I find it hard to award points for correcting an error that was obvious to all before it was made. How could her complete lack of knowledge about education -- even the basic nomenclature -- or her intemperate nature not have been a red flag? Could no one on Bloomberg's staff talk him out of it?
Just about 40 seconds after (Yes, He's Actually The) President Barack Obama brought forth his Certificate of Live Birth unto the world Donald Trump was accusing Obama of somehow sneaking his way into some University or another.
If Trump's to be believed, Obama was a terrible student at a College, and then he somehow snuck his way into a University; after that he basically grifted his way into becoming the President of the Harvard Law Review.
Trump would tell you that he's a hustler, that Obama is, and we've got to do whatever it takes to figure out what kind of semi-illegal shenanigans Obama's University experience was all about.
But here's the thing: Donald Trump has his own history of semi-illegal University shenanigans-and it appears that some of his semi-illegal shenanigans continue to this very day.
Republican Rep Michael Grimm-Reaper of CD-13 in Brooklyn and Staten Island will be holding 2 Town Halls this week. The first will be on Wednesday, April 27th at 7PM at William McKinley JHS, 7301 Fort Hamilton Parkway in Brooklyn and the next night there will be one on Staten Island. I don't have the address of the SI location but if you want to attend that meeting call 718-351-1062. The Brooklyn # for Grimm-Reaper is 718-630-5277 You MUST reserve your "seat" for either Town Hall and there will be a "Moderator" fielding questions. I certainly hope both bloggers and the media are at BOTH events so they can truthfully report on it. If you want to attend but are worried that you won't be accepted because you don't live in the district, there are many apartment buildings in this district or, heck, use the address for Century 21 which is also located in the district. Since I live in the district I had no problem reserving my seat.
So I return again to freshman Republican Michael Grimm and the one competitive Congressional district in NYC, New York's blue-collar 13th District covering Staten Island and parts of South Brooklyn like Bay Ridge.
Staten Island Republican politics is basically a crazy ward where disgraced Congressman Vito Fossella still wields an odd amount of influence, and Grimm's solid rise through it in order to win the 2010 GOP primary is impressive. Although it's the most Republican district NYC, NY-13 is very much a swing district as it voted for both Al Gore and John McCain.
If Grimm has ambitions for being able to weather worse years for the Republican Party than 2010, or to be eventually mentioned as a potential statewide candidate as his fellow New York Republican Rep. Pete King consistently is, Grimm obviously cannot vote or behave the same as a rural Congressman from the South or whatevsky.
About 120 demonstrators gathered in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, to protest a proposed mosque that opponents argue will dramatically alter the quality of life in the neighborhood. The protest, organized by about 80 supporters of the mosque, was within shouting distance of a counter-protest and drew locals and nationally prominent critics of Islam.
Without getting into my opinions on the substance of this issue which I will do in subsequent posts, I'd like to comment on the press coverage of the LIFO issue and how it could and should be presented with more balance.
I think it's inarguable that the overwhelming majority of the coverage among New York media outlets is supportive of the Mayor's position that LIFO should be done away with. The clearest evidence of this is that papers, blogs, and television news happily report on a daily basis on the DOE projections of what possible layoffs would do to individual schools. It has been far less noted that this speculation is a rather obvious way of dividing Union members and parents who are rightly frightened by the DOE's scenarios.
News on gay rights activists that blocked traffic this morning in New York City, at Sixth Avenue and 42nd Street, calling on the New York State government to pass marriage equality in this session.
As organizers, we know that some of the best organizing in the U.S. has historically happened in a church context. We all know about the Black Church and the civil rights movement, churches and the new sanctuary movement protecting refugees, New York churches and homelessness and AIDS. (And while churches are usually predominant, you can include synagogues and mosques as well.)
That's why we're putting on Congregations 2.0, a day long training in online organizing for the progressive faith community.
Unfortunately, we cannot say that religious institutions are at the forefront of using technology - not by a long shot. But so many of the congregations involved in CBCO - Congregation Based Community Organizing - are poor, run by an older and less wired cohort, or rely on the communications infrastructure that lies outside their community instead of creating one that they can control.
The vote became necessary after not one but two prior referenda - in 1993 and 1996 - had been overturned by a vote of the City Council, goaded along by gentle prodding from the mayor's office. Conveniently enough, the law was changed just in time to allow said mayor to run for a third term.
It really was as if the political class had said to the voters 'yes, we know you wanted that thing, but are you sure you still want that thing?'
Ruben Diaz and Sheldon Silver-supported Richard Brodsky came out yesterday as the only AG candidate to oppose the Park51 project, and threw in some old-fashioned Muslim-hating for good measure:
The mosque being built in that area is offensive to me
Well, as least I know who I don't want to be the next Attorney General.
Rick Lazio, having found the ticket for actually getting people to notice he exists, has resorted to straight-up bigoted lies in his crusade against moderate, peace-loving Muslim New Yorkers. Check out this ridiculous advertisement:
He calls Imam Rauf a "terrorist sympathizing Imam."
If someone like Imam Rauf is "terrorist-sympathizing," then Rick Lazio is a bigot who hates all muslims. If the Cordoba House is something repugnant to conservatives like Rick Lazio, they are saying that no muslim can be moderate enough to not be a terrorist. And that is called bigotry, ladies and gentlemen.
At least most New Yorkers aren't falling for his strategy of demonize and divide:
Cuomo leads Lazio 60-26% and Paladino by 60-27% percent.
In a three-way race, Cuomo garners 56% to 19% for Lazio (identified as a Republican) and 12 percent for Paladino (identified as an independent). In a three-way race identifying Paladino as the Republican and Lazio as the Conservative, Cuomo leads 56% to 16% for Lazio, and 14% for Paladino. Lazio's primary lead over Paladino among enrolled Republicans is down to 13 points, 43-30%, down from a 20-point lead in July, the poll shows.
But then, isn't it always true that bigots are usually people who are failures in their own lives who seek to divert attention to others to distract from their own failures? Thanks for reminding everybody of that, Mr. Lazio.
Long time readers of this site will know that I haven't always been the Mayor's biggest fan. But, I simply must give credit where credit is due. Mayor Bloomberg's speech at Governor's Island yesterday was masterful and spot on.
"In the mid-1650s, the small Jewish community living in lower Manhattan petitioned Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant for the right to build a synagogue, and they were turned down. In 1657, when Stuyvesant also prohibited Quakers from holding meetings, a group of non-Quakers in Queens signed the Flushing Remonstrance, a petition in defense of the right of Quakers and others to freely practice their religion. It was perhaps the first formal political petition for religious freedom in the American colonies, and the organizer was thrown in jail and then banished from New Amsterdam.
"In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion, and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780s, St. Peter's on Barclay Street, which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site, and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center.
"This morning, the city's Landmark Preservation Commission unanimously voted to extend-not to extend-landmark status to the building on Park Place where the mosque and community center are planned. The decision was based solely on the fact that there was little architectural significance to the building. But with or without landmark designation, there is nothing in the law that would prevent the owners from opening a mosque within the existing building.
"The simple fact is, this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship, and the government has no right whatsoever to deny that right. And if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
"Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here.
"This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favor one over another. The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.
It was just yesterday that we decided to take a day off from politics and talk about music, both familiar and not so much; the conversation ran a bit long, and when we got halfway through we decided to get together tomorrow.
It was pretty fun, what with sewers and male models and Gorillaz and all, and when we had put down the pen it was just after taking in Sarah Vaughan's reworked dance version of the Peggy Lee classic, "Fever".
They say tomorrow never comes...but now it has...and we have eight more songs to talk about before we can finish our multigenerational "Summer Music Appreciation Playlist".
Today we'll incorporate jazz and dance, the invention of modern musical recording, arguably the greatest saxophone player ever, and a shout out to "our man in Paris".
If all that wasn't enough, we also discover what happens when you graft a certain Pepper onto Jamaica's musical tree.
You don't want to stop now, so jump on board and let's get this train rollin'.
It is a huge news day today, what with death and confirmation on everyone's mind...and I'm not going to do anything about it-well, not today, anyway.
Instead, I'm taking the day off to bring you something more compelling: a music appreciation class, with recordings old and new, and just right for your summer soundtrack.
And if that's not enough...by an amazing coincidence, we also get to talk about the (I never even know it existed) McRice burger, and, just for a summer bonus, we even have a smoking hot male model to grab your attention.
It's all about fun today, so let's get right to having some.
In unusual times one has to do unusual things. That's how my stolid existence as a sociology professor at the City University of New York came to be enriched, by my second life as 
