SAN FRANCISCO — Wayne Cooksey joined the flight of African-Americans from this city last year to escape soaring rents and buy a home. Michael Higgenbotham left six years ago for a safer neighborhood and better schools for his three children. Adell Adams retired and wanted to downsize but knew her home’s equity wouldn’t go far in a market where decent condos start at $500,000.

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A year ago, six auto repair shops packed the corner of Broadway and 131st Street, in West Harlem’s dingy industrial zone. The bulky, five-story building employed about 45 people, mostly black and Latino residents of the area, who spent their days servicing cars that rolled in from homes on the West Side.

At the end of July, both workers and property owners were emptied out of their shops. Not long after buying 3251 Broadway last year, Columbia University informed the tenants that they would have to permanently vacate the space. The school does not plan to demolish 3251 Broadway until 2015 when it will make room for its ambitious $7 billion 17-acre academia mixed-use expansion project.
But for the next eight years — like many local businesses plucked by the university — the building will collect dust.

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 Write this down: Michael Vick’s return to the NFL in 2010 will be the league’s biggest non-Super Bowl Sunday. And it just might even be in a Falcons’ uniform.

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According to the Columbia Spectator,  “the population of Community Board 9 (CB9), which stretches from 110th to 155th streets, is 43 percent Latino. Yet on the local community board that represents the area, only five of 50 members identify as Latino.

To remedy that situation, some Latino CB9 members have formed a caucus to conduct outreach to Latino residents in the neighborhood and to encourage them to apply to the board.

Heated discussions have erupted over the issue at CB9 meetings, and it prompted a confrontation last spring between members of the Mirabal Sisters, an advocacy group, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who appoints community board members.

The caucus has experienced a backlash from some board members, who say its efforts are divisive and that the board is not to blame if Latinos choose not to apply.”

Click here for original article.

To visit the Community Board 9 website, click here.

The Asian American Arts Alliance, Association of Hispanic Arts, Harlem Arts Alliance, the Queens Council on the Arts, and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian - in partnership with the Bronx Council on the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts - announce the continuation of their consortium grants program, the Urban Artist Initiative/New York City (UAI/NYC). This fellowship program provides individual NYC artists of color in all disciplines with general support to advance their artistic and professional development.

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20 years after the release of their astonishing debut album Yo! Bum Rush the Show, Public Enemy returns with the provocative How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul??? .

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Official Major League Baseball caps blatantly featuring colors and
symbols for some of America’s deadliest street gangs are
turning up on store shelves in Harlem.

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