Cleare Harlem is in trouble | why black people are leaving in new york city.

part of owning black business is to own the real estate meaningful enforceable upfront Community benefit agreements that are made right up front up front yeah you know give me the money first right we had a War on Drugs it was a war on people So speaking of governor hokel and her recent re-election can you express some other issues that would be important for her to ideally help the specifically Harlem community at this moment and Abby she spoke in her State of the State address about bringing h

ousing bringing housing that is Affordable but we know affordable is a term of art right yeah beauty is in the eye of the beholder yes and and every affordable is everything's affordable to somebody so she spoke a lot about that but you know what we can uh encourage her to do is to bring real affordability to our communities and and there's a few ways we have to look at it she talks about bringing people who wanted to be in New York so they could get uh apartments in New York and everybody could

come and live here but what I want to hear more about is how do we get the people who are living here able to stay here um and and that's that's my me and my family um I've fought for better housing opportunities my parents before me organized on our block and in our building with a lot of other people and we fought for Harlem we fought to keep Harlem we did our own tenant patrols many of us took over our buildings and cleaned them and shovel snow and pulled garbage and did all these things and

as a collective as a community if you look at Harlem in places like for example South Bronx we kept our buildings up we didn't we didn't let them knock the buildings down and you see those buses that come through here all the time they're looking at the wonderful architecture because we've preserved that that's because of us we did that and we have a right to stay here and a right to be here so we have to find ways to create deep affordability I think about young people like yourself uh like me

mbers in my own family who we said do the right thing get an education go away go to college and come back and give back to your neighborhood well they're able to do most of that but when it comes to the comeback part they can't come back unless they're coming to live with me which is okay for a little while but you know uh I I feel a little huxtableish if they stay too long but right and and young people should be able to come back and afford to live somewhere but some of these rents that we're

looking at no no person can afford that uh I don't care how much uh how many of you try to live together you're probably still gonna have to come to my house to eat and wash your clothes and do other things and watch my cable because you can't afford much more than that so we have to number one create housing that's truly affordable and then we have to look at affordable okay um it's there's some real loose wording around I saw an apartment listed 4 500 dollars a month for a uh two bedroom apar

tment it's not affordable yeah that is not affordable so we got to stop kidding ourselves and stop playing games with that and we really look into doing deep deep affordability for those returning home as well as for those who are in our shelter system we have we have so many children and families in our Shelter Systems and people are uh you know they get Mis they misunderstand many of those are working families people that go to work every single day but can't afford to live in our community I

look at you know the the jobs that many of us hold bus driver uh you know subway train conductor uh teachers cannot afford to live in these rents that are being charged right now so uh what are we creating a community of you know luxury renters or luxury buyers that's not Justice and that's not fair no it's not in some of these essential workers like you mentioned they're paying sometimes up to 60 percent of their income towards rent absolutely and these people are the the pulse of New York City

they're the reason it can operate is there some type of specific I know this is a tough question but some type of specific solution or some type of specific legislation that maybe the governor hokel's party can help put into place because there have been Housing Programs um like hudc and think governments that have come in and helped out the community so can we speak a little bit on how the government can help kind of protect what New York has become well sure you mentioned something very inter

esting uh Harbin I'm sorry Harlem Urban Development Corporation which existed pre-pataki uh that Administration the value of that is uh that here was an organization that could actually help determine what happened in the community right what we put where we had a we had a hand and and how things were done in our community uh the absence of such a body leaves it a free-for-all for anybody to just come and put whatever they want and that's what you're seeing now you're seeing you know a lot of pe

ople were happy and embraced Bill Clinton when he came okay look what happened with that yeah that brought everyone Uptown to do whatever and the frenzy began so now you have instead of community planning you have opportunists and real estate planning yeah and they're not looking at the things that we're looking at our growing number of seniors our young people wanting to come back home our families trying to make it every day working in our community they're not looking at that or measuring the

y're measuring profit and they're looking at how much they can make and instead of community and people uh planning our communities we're being driven by by greed yeah and so I mean the the increasing demand and the value of real estate in New York is clearly an issue all over the city and since the pandemic some people got their rents increased 50 60 percent so it's a real crisis now and what and it's obviously inevitable in a capitalistic City in Harlem and New York is a place that kind of set

s the tone for the world so I think this can be an opportunity and we're living at an interesting time but we're also living in a time where if we don't preserve some of these communities they might not exist anymore so given the fact that universities need to grow like Columbia business needs to be done in a capitalistic State what's what would you say is one of the ways to protect some of these essential workers and Families in Harlem specifically yeah well there's a number of things number on

e we do have legislation um that speaks to uh good cause eviction people get evicted you you know when you talked about an increase of 50 no one should be able to do that to someone that means that there's no regulation there's no parent protection for those people and if I decide today you're paying a hundred dollars and you know next year I feel like you should pay 500 but your check is stayed basically the same you only got a 20 raise that is not just and there's no balance there so we need l

aws in place that can regulate rents that can put some sort of a cap on how much uh landlords can go up because a lot of people are just going according to what the market can bear and not what salaries can bear uh you know your your your raise your salary does not go up just because your rent goes up and as we get older our salary decreases many of us when we retire so I look at my seniors who are struggling to pay rent who are struggling so we do need laws in place to keep a cap on that we als

o need to hold landlords accountable we have a bill in in in the Senate right now that looks at programs like 421a we were giving out money and telling people here here's money that you can build affordable housing but no one was monitoring it no one's monitoring it they take the money they're building something that's not affordable or it looks affordable for the first year and then the next year it's not and there was no clawback built into it even if we were monitoring it there was nothing th

at we could get back we couldn't take it back so we're looking at that we let that program at Sunset it uh this year I absolutely voted against renewing it because it has not created what it was set up to do um ninety percent of the housing in central Harlem that was created over 90 percent of it that was created with 421a tax credits is unaffordable to the residents of Harlem so we've essentially through not monitoring through not putting those safeguards in place have built our own displacemen

t so those kinds of checks and balances there has to be a political will to make sure that there's house and understanding that housing is a human right it can't be just a free-for-all and as much as you can get and as much as you can make and as high as you can go and as much as you can build it can't be that kind of wild wild west type situation that it has been no for sure I I think that makes a lot of sense and also going towards a more specific Workforce housing I've seen some interesting p

otential legislation around those issues to create more jobs especially for people that are in the community can you speak towards that and what your thoughts are on Workforce housing work described I'm sorry I don't know so pretty much just creating policies where we can in order to let's say a developer builds a new site you have to have a certain amount of essential workers that need to be able to live there or your the people who are helping create those projects are also getting jobs that a

re from the community okay I think both should happen I think first of all you should employ the community I look at the missed opportunities I think there were so many missed opportunities as Harlem was developing in the 90s and early 2000s there were missed opportunities for us to not only get Workforce Development but Business Development uh you know it's very difficult to become a construction company a contracting company but we had an opportunity with those projects to bring some of our sm

all black and other non-white developers to the table we fought to do some of that but those some of those uh Provisions were circumvented I mean you know when we said mwbe all of a sudden you know the white Contracting Company got his wife to come and now she's the owner so people found ways around this I think there has to be a really focused and deliberate and intentional uh effort to make sure that we're building uh wealth in the black community that we're building jobs in the black communit

y and yes that we are making sure there's space for everybody there should be incentives for them to create housing for essential workers incentives to create housing for the disabled for seniors for all of our community uh and you know right now they have certain you know preferences community board preferences but even those are circumvented because yeah how are they checked and what what what's the definition of someone how long have you lived in that community board and you know it we have t

o really be intentional and be much more deliberate about how we provide housing for people in our community if we're serious about doing it yeah that's that's interesting and in terms of just efforts that the community can take in order to SP maybe spend money in a better way support other black businesses circulate the dollar better which sadly African-American Community is last on the list at and starting off with Harlem as an example which luckily there are a lot of black owned companies and

businesses here that we can support you see some ways the community can be more specific and unified in terms of creating our own economy so we don't have to rely on so much government support well this is another reason why hudc uh is part of a critical formula that we really need uh to get to there are businesses uh you know I go up and down our main thoroughfare would be 125th Street and we've got you know a ton of businesses but hardly any are black owned businesses they're not black owned

and part of owning black business is to own the real estate when you look at who has survived in this community Sylvia's had the presence of mind to buy the property you can have a business in this community but if you if you're paying thirty thousand dollars a month rent I don't know what you're selling to pay that right right yeah you know and you're paying staff and you're paying uh you know other other bills what what could you possibly sell very few people that's not your mom and pop busine

ss that's not that business we have to build we have to build from within and we have to make sure that opportunities are going to smaller businesses you talk about Colombia when they moved in their expansion that came Uptown their most recent expansion knocked out so many businesses small businesses that were over there on that 12th Avenue uh area uh and uh you know I know I was part of a fight just to even make sure they got compensated not only did we lose and this is another issue when we ta

lk about bringing affordability we got to talk about preserving affordability right what point what is the point in US building a thousand units of new affordable housing and we're getting rid of 5 000 units we're just chasing our tail yeah and with the with Colombia's increase into Harlem and buying up a lot of real estate and over the past I don't know over 40 50 years has been a long time since they've been expanding more and more into the Harlem community and with the recent purchase of the

Fairway property let's say they're going to develop this property it's going to happen as someone who's a leader in the community and can make some political change for us what would be some specific requirements that the community should make Colombia hold hold a way for us to hold Columbia accountable for them really expanding and taking a lot of our real estate out of the community well first of all they shouldn't have it in the first place they really shouldn't um Columbia is a very wealthy

institution and even what they've built so far is not open to community you know there was some agreements that were made I fought this project so right I don't I I in no way found any iteration of it just but there should be commitments to the community that are related to Small Business Development that are related to them using the community buying from the community and and I'm talking about the indigenous Community there should be training and and uh education benefits for the community as

well you know I'm still fighting with them on their promise in this last deal that they did to help with the subway the L train at 125th Street and Broadway that escalator is decrepit sometimes it doesn't work when that happens nobody you a mother with a stroller if you're an older person with a walker a cane you're not going to get on that train no it's not going to get on that Subway they made a promise to help increase accessibility to at that station that they're benefiting from and we're st

ill fighting to make them live up to that promise it shouldn't be that hard and we should get paid up front we should and and legislatively uh I have a bill in right now as it relates to Penn Station the new Penn Station which is not in my district but I was inspired to do it because they got rid of 1900 units of rent stabilized housing to do that wow well you shouldn't be able to do that and they got it under the same uh type of uh legal mechanism that Colombia got much of this property under w

hich was imminent domain again another term of Art you know that we should get rid of something because it's blighted you know this is what they said about Seneca Village when black people had Seneca Village in uh Central Park if you look back at the newspaper articles of the day it was a slum it was a blight so we should we have a right to come in here and take this away from them and make something beautiful for everybody that's not fair to have that kind of a tool in your hand to be able to u

se that and if you do you must come and give the community something back that you took away from it that housing that was over there where Colombia is was much more important to this community than that Institution 100 percent and that's the reason this media Outlet exists to try and to try and at least educate the viewers on these important seriously Monumental things that are happening that many people are unaware of in our community so I think that's but that also goes with the with somewhat

of the problem of I guess the university and Ivy League structure because in order for them to use these endowments they have to a lot of that means they must expand and get more property so we're in a situation where if we're able to have some type of actual way to hold these institutions accountable can set a trend for other other cities that are dealing with this crazy gentrification issue does that make sense like I see this crazy Crossroads we're at yeah well there has to be much more um m

eaningful and enforceable front Community benefit s that are made right up front up front yeah you know give me the money first right you know give it to us first if you're going to do something when Columbia uh embarked on this uh we said I know I was part of a movement that said listen since after they won and they got it if you want to do a benefit for the community you should start right now start training them for the jobs that are going to be available in that institution right now because

that's the other thing that comes up you're not qualified right we're never qualified for the jobs and the opportunities so start preparing people right now to work in the institution but how enforceable is that how much of that really happened barely none I dare say barely none and we don't want uh and not that there's anything wrong with it but we don't only want to be your janitors yeah we don't only want to be your yards Keepers we don't only want to be your housekeeping okay and those are

great jobs and they're wonderful and respectful jobs but there are other jobs that pay more money that pay a living wage that allow for people to uh to advance and to grow and and accumulate some kind of wealth and that is those are the opportunities that are not available and that's when you get something like that when you that's priceless what they got Yeah in our community you owe us for that you owe the community you go any Community not just us you owe them that to raise them up to that le

vel otherwise essentially what you're doing whether it's now today or 10 years later you are displacing them you're pushing them out for sure and and to educate our viewers in terms of the Strategic displacement on the side of uh Colombia the last thing we were discussing was a lot of this this is placing the displacement that's happening in the Harlem Community specifically when it comes to Colombia and I wanted to go into the Strategic approach that impacts a lot of this displacement that many

of our viewers might not know and we can get into more of what eminent domain is but I wanted to talk about with their expansion strategy how they use the term eminent domain and blighted but there was a lot more strategy to take that over can we kind of get into that because we were talking about that off camera it's very interesting point yeah so part of it involves when you're the landlord and you allow a property to get run down and you neglect it to make sure that it is run down and make s

ure that it looks a certain way and is kept a certain way in the property around it you're responsible for that blight uh if if there's any blight at all because in some some parts of it it was not blight these were small business owners and there was housing over there and to say that your purpose is greater than their purpose and for the public good you know again I don't think that Colombia it was fair for them to use them in a domain because you know imminent domain is something where you cr

eate something for the public good like if we needed you know a railroad or a highway maybe or something that everybody could benefit from this institution is for them this is not for the public good this is just for them it's that you know I I can't walk through there or this hasn't made my life better in any way or anybody else in in the area or anywhere else this has made something good for them and for their uh constituency so the use of imminent domain uh was a poor use on many levels numbe

r one it was it was staged much of it number two it was a PR campaign to get uh you know the papers to report it as blighted and make it look a certain kind of way and then number three legally uh that was not the correct that is not my understanding of what eminent domain is yeah it's um just so our our viewers understand can you just educate them on what actually eminent domain is so imminent domain is basically we can we the state or uh other entity can come and we can use this property the s

tate declares it and they allow someone to say okay we're going to take this property because we have a greater good like if we needed to build a highway or if we needed to build something that the public everyone needed a new road or something that's something that we would put or maybe even a hospital something that's needed in a community to help a community um and uh they could come and take your property now usually with imminent domain there is compensation there is a limited amount of com

pensation and uh they didn't even want to do that in this case for many of the businesses we had to fight to see to help people get relocated and business help people get relocated in terms of their housing and and this was not something that wasn't volunteered at the beginning this is something that we had to throw in there and really fight to make sure it happened for people so imminent domain is taking your property you know you you may live in a house and the state feels a need to put a high

way right where your house is right your house becomes the highway through your house or a bridge or whatever it is that's needed and they say well we have a right to this property because we have something we we need to make sure that we're doing something for the whole state for the whole city this is not and this this is not the case with this expansion for sure especially with Colombia because they've been using since they're a non-profit University technically they're utilizing that to um a

s eminent domain as their card to to take over a lot of these properties right yes because and that goes back to what we were saying why hudc was such a major pillar for Harlem's you know development and success because there was a gatekeeper for Harlem a way to make sure the community was preserved exactly and even when you look at the type of businesses that have been coming to 125th Street you don't see the small pharmacists you don't see the small drug stores anymore that we'd go into you ha

ve big box stores you've got the Dwayne reads and the Rite Aids and the CVS's of the world who have taken over uh you know and and that that that yes some of them say okay we bring jobs but yeah but you you put out the small business and that small businessman who's from the community who lives there his dollar circulates much more than CVS's dollars those are dollars that go directly out of our community they don't stay here so it is more important as a community for us to have people who are i

n the community small business small business hires from the community I know first jobs they hire from their neighbors they hire they will give a chance to people in the community they are much more valuable to our communities than these big stores may seem bigger but our smaller businesses are much more valuable to them much more invested in our community and they're much more uh you know they contribute greater well said and I think we're going to touch on a little bit of your backstory in a

sec the last I guess legislative question I have for you is if you were today trying to help with the Mental Health crisis in New York what one out of three New Yorkers suffers for mental health I think the homelessness is way worse in New York honestly since I've I'm born and raised here I've I know this 20 block radius like the back of my hand and it hasn't really gotten any better in terms of the opportunities in terms of the hopefulness from my peers and people younger than me it seems like

honestly New York is going downhill sadly and I'm being very blunt and honest um what I know this is a loaded question but what do you think are some of the ways we can kind of help the youth and the people that are coming up to to have some more hope because I don't know that social Mobility the American dream that we all you know love and cherish it's it's getting away from a lot of people and I think it's kind of scary yeah that is a loaded question there's a lot of questions in that question

I know it was a little bit of a rant too I apologize it's a lot of answers in that question multi multiple levels uh you talk about the mental health issue that's a combination of things we didn't just get here right since I was a child they have been dumping substance abuse formally incarcerated mental health anything that nobody wanted in their neighborhood where do you think it went in Harlem it came to our neighborhood in similar communities you're going you're going to be impacted over a p

eriod of time you're going to be impacted and you continue to pour those type of things I'm not against Services I think we need them okay I've benefited from them my own family personally I know the value but it's not for us to get the entire uh share you know we have to have a fair share across the city every neighborhood has to absorb it otherwise you're creating an epicenter for people with saying the same vulnerabilities and the same needs and you know what that creates it creates people th

at come in that feed those people okay so then we have dealers and we have we have breakdowns and you know what else displacement causes it causes breakdowns even in those systems so now people are coming from everywhere I stop people I talk to them I talk to people I say well you know how can we help you what are you doing here where are you from like you know I'm like you I'm from here and I don't these faces look different and I'm saying what from Yonkers Staten Island Brooklyn these are not

even people from our community interesting these are not even people you go from Lexington to I'll say Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard across 125th Street you go from 124th Street to 134th Street 135th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard it has become a drug Haven cross and cross you go to 116th Street and Lexington Avenue there are pockets and why specifically because of the oversaturation of all these type of facilities and you have to think about every facility they place okay if you're placing shel

ters you know Harlem will get the shelter that's going to house you know the formerly recently released formally incarcerated another neighborhood will get families and children you know it's a difference you're starting it's a different population when you're doing that and it's not that we shouldn't those people shouldn't be housed that's not what I'm saying what I'm saying is that you're only putting one type of thing in an area and you're really concentrating people with similar needs simila

r vulnerabilities and you have then to top it all off you have the wards Island buses that come only to 125th Street the bus that makes one stop 125th Street yes they should get off that Island they're not prisoners no but they're supposed to get off so then go visit family so that they can go look for jobs so that they can go get treatment so they can go get help why does do you think that all these people who are getting off that bus the minute they get off their deal is waiting right there so

let's break that down they're dropping them off on 125th Street um and I've I walk down that Lexington Avenue and park it's it's not a pretty sight what I'm talking about yeah yeah I do so pretty much they're setting they're setting them up to to fail failure because I've talked to um I've talked to some people some social workers and they said something interesting about New York versus other cities that most of that you have Universal Health Care let's say Canada or Portugal or something when

when you have an addict and they want to get help there's a place for them to to clean up in New York they can't they can't find that place to get cleaned up but they can find their dealer every two seconds you can find them everywhere and right guaranteed he'll be at 125th Street oh yeah yeah or outside of the methadone clinic or we have to change we have to change systems systems racism has a lot to do with it it's not just the dumping this neighborhood got all these drug treatment and such p

rograms dumped on we have all the bus Depots dumped on us we have a wastewater treatment plant dumped on us nobody wanted it in their neighborhood and all these things impact us negatively and and that's why and then on top of that you have speaking of Pataki since that Administration we have been divesting in mental health we have not been doing what we're supposed to do we don't even want to pay the people who work in that field a living wage who would want to do this work they were just on st

rike yeah yeah who wants to where you have to do so much for an individual and you're not even getting paid adequately um and during the pandemic people say all it worsened independent worsen these people were here but this was an opportunity to throw more and more of them on the street if you don't stabilize someone's mind I'm not capable of even keeping an apartment if you give it to me yeah let alone the fact that you're not giving them anywhere to live there's no place for them to live there

's nowhere for them to go and it just continues to get worse and worse and worse and we have to start earlier and we also have to look at certain traumas right now I'm in New York as an adult I am traumatized by what happened in Memphis I was brought to tears this morning I tried my best to fight them back because I didn't want I said you know this this has happened but I couldn't help it because of the humanity of it all the humanity we as a people are traumatized over and over again we're not

dealing with that we're not dealing with that it's not even been recognized you know part of your healing is somebody has to say something's wrong I'm doing something wrong to you and I'm gonna stop doing that I'm gonna stop doing that to you and I'm going to help you I'm gonna help you because you need to get through what you've been through we had a War on Drugs it was a war on people we had a crack epidemic we never even addressed what happened crack babies are now crack grandparents wow yeah

it's uh I think the Cannabis business was kind of built I think it was overbuilt right the value in it and I'm one of the people protested and fought for it to be legalized I know everybody doesn't agree with that but I felt like from a Justice standpoint I've seen so many lives ruined over marijuana right what are we doing really what are we doing I've seen more people uh harmed domestic violence brutal beatings with alcohol than I've ever seen with marijuana okay I'm not telling anybody to go

smoke it I'm not saying not but I'm telling you what I've seen in a lifetime and alcohol is nobody's going to jail for that nobody's getting locked up and speaking of Colombia there was a time when I was younger that I would attend events over there and there was enough marijuana for everybody in Manhattan okay and I've never once seen a raid of the dorms anyone arrested across the park just walk through Morningside Park go straight across 116th Street and get over the Manhattan Avenue on 8th A

venue Frederick Douglass arrest left and right left and right for marijuana so for me it was about this is unfair this is unjust people have had children move from their homes all sorts of things horrible things have happened to people over marijuana arrests and Over The Possession so I was happy and I didn't give much thought to the fact that people would Now find a way to turn this into an economic development piece and I just think it's it's it's it's it's it's gonna be overrun um I don't kno

w how you stop people I don't I have no confidence that the business that has gone on for decades is gonna stop now suddenly and give it to the person that has the brick and mortar I don't see how that's going to happen and I guess I just have to really look harder I just never looked at it as a business opportunity I don't see it I don't see it working for us the way it should and I think the most harmed communities should have been the ones to gain the most but then you know they just a few we

eks ago with um announcing they were going to open the very first uh dispensary in New York state the first uh individually owned dispensary in New York state was about to open on 125th Street that we just talked about that has this problem that it has and I'm not saying you know that marijuana I'm not even saying marijuana is a gateway drug I'm just saying that I don't see how that's going to be allowed because uh you know Corner guy and Corner girl I'm gonna be standing right in front of your

place offering something they've always offered cheaper and to the people that know them so I don't know how this is going to become that big thing that we are supposed to gain generational wealth from other unless we're getting these licenses and we're going to sell them I don't know it yet and I don't want to put it down and I don't want to I don't know how we're going to be I don't know how this is going to work from a business standpoint and I don't know if it's if there's still time and roo

m for us to make money off of it which is what a lot of people think they can do and I just don't know that it was set up that way I don't I don't think and I don't think it was and I think what what folks may have to do at best and and I don't propose to be you know some big business person maybe come together and get these licenses together uh I don't think any one person is going to be able to invest alone and get and and get it because it this the deck is stacked um it's not it's just not th

at way you're gonna have to get some help and maybe you know there can be communities of people and that hasn't been the way that industry has worked as we've known it uh before the legalization so I think there's much more preparation that's needed one of the first bills I was asked to vote on when I got into the Senate was to give uh temporary licenses so that it could be Farm and my immediate uh reaction was no no I don't want to do that and so some people from upstate started talking to me s

ome other people who had been in this in terms of being in the legislature prior to I consulted with them I said I don't I don't think this is a good idea and they're like well what's your problem Senator Claire with that I said well I don't know any black farmers so if you're going to pass this bill that we're going to give these permits to the people it's not going to go to our people because I don't know any that can farm so um you know what it is is that I think we have to this is something

we're gonna have to watch um we may have to revisit a few things in order to make sure I think the people who crafted it tried to do it as fairly as possible or to give a head start to Black and non-white communities to give a head start to them but I don't know if it was enough Head Start for us to um last the race well I think it comes back to the you know the vital issue always which has plagued our community business-wise has been accessed to Capital so two percent of the black entrepreneurs

in cannabis there's only two percent of them in the whole in the whole game and that's just it's come a lot of these companies are publicly traded now you can buy some shares in them so and isn't that funny we were 90 of the inmates exactly the numbers just don't make sense you know you know something the stat the deck has been stacked against so now than ever we have to find specific ways to somehow consolidate our resources you know especially here in Harlem and that's what we're here we're r

eally here to do is try and at least educate our viewers and see some realistic ways that we can kind of do that and I appreciate your time today kind of telling us about that I have a I guess one one last question I don't know if there's any any others that we have here but I wanted to talk on specific elements of um which I know we talked about but I really think it's so essential so our viewers can understand it just on terms of Workforce housing and kind of just how that looks why it's so im

portant and I guess some of those essential workers that we need to make sure that we're taken care of like your teacher like your service worker the you know those essential New Yorkers that keep this city moving I want to kind of end on on that point sure well when you look at New York City and you look at black people other people of color uh thank God for civil service jobs because that has been the way up for many of us and when those people can't live here that's going to be problematic wh

at I always remind people of is the fact that the civil servant jobs is what has been there for black people in New York and other people of color it is the thing that it has been our way out and our way up uh to be able to get jobs with the MTA to be able to get jobs teaching um police even to the extent that we get jobs in New York City uh all these all these essential services are ways to employment and ways for us to find a way out yeah and when you make it so that those people cannot live h

ere you're really putting the city at risk uh you're putting you're putting us at risk of not having that Workforce close to us living near us uh and being able to continue to work in our city yeah and what's going to happen is a lot of those people are going to wind up going to these to other places and they're going to have to work there so it's not just a matter of housing it's a matter of preserving our communities period and then when you're talking about a place like Harlem to me you know

I think Harlem is the best place in the world I talk about it all the time that's the way I feel right and there's nothing like it it is the crossroads of black of the black world it is it is our Mecca it is where everyone comes it is where everything has happened uh you I you name it Nelson Mandela came to Harlem uh Thomas and Cara came to her Kwame and chroma came to Harlem Thurgood Marshall Bayard Rustin Martin Luther King Malcolm X you name it came to Harlem all our history Zoro Neil Hurston

uh Langston Hughes everything this defines there may be larger black communities in New York but Harlem is by far the most influential the most progressively black community most historic uh Community there is and that's worth something that's worth something yeah that's worth gold people don't come here to go to h m no people don't come here uh because they need to go to the Gap that's that's not what it is it's the culture yeah Harlem got swag it is a whole nother thing they want to hear that

stuff talking they want to see that they want to be a part of the vibe they want to feel it and little by little we are killing it we are killing what Harlem is and making it impossible for people to survive and live here so we have to turn this situation around we must we must or else we won't survive and if we don't survive there's a lot of other communities that are going to be under threat as well Harlem is worth protecting and preserving we have to make sure that workers can stay here we h

ave to make sure that workers can be in this city I mean what will we do without some of these services our sanitation workers are we have to have those people here we can have a a a a a a borough of wealthy people just wealthy people and when you look at a lot of these buildings you know I started looking around I'm like who's buying this stuff who's actually going in a lot of this is foreign investments okay they are far away from here New York has turned into an investment for international p

eople honestly just a place to launder money most of these luxury buildings are empty they're owned by the apartments are owned by shell companies you don't know who these guys are sketchy characters then you guys got got guys like Trump who's saying okay I won't vet you if you pay 50 million all cash right so these you know it's not bringing the best characters to our city and Harlem is one of the few communities that still has a community feel people are walking up the streets they know each o

ther thank you oh I forgot my wallet upstairs you're good I know you thank you that doesn't happen anywhere else that's why people come here you know and we speak to each other we look at each other we make eye contact I sometimes look at some of our new neighbors and they're like running away they don't they don't want to talk don't look at me you know they don't want to uh engage and um that that can't be that's not the community we are and that's not the community we're used to um we we're th

e cultures Fred Harlem is different so we do have to preserve it and we have to take every step we can to protect it I do want to end on a positive note I would say that a lot of the the people that are younger that I talk to about these issues once they hear about them even if they were aware before they weren't they want to see how they can help we have a very engaged smart group of people in this community and we have the power of Technology where we can get a message out quicker than ever no

w so I think what we're doing in this type of educational content and just telling these stories of why this city is so special and is the Mecca and should be really an inspiration and a template for other cities it's very important so I I really appreciate you coming by today I thought this was a great conversation we didn't get into your background but we'll have a we'll have a part too okay now you got to subscribe for that we're going to make a little money so um we'll have that soon this wi

ll be the Cliffhanger the trailer exactly exactly but but thank you for everything if there's any other questions I don't know I think we're I think we're good I'd like to say thank you thank you for what you doing this is valuable many times I sit down and sometimes I ride the Amtrak and I say where is the black communication where's the black press where's the black media where is the black message where is our message and I think it's getting drowned out uh by a lot of things but the more you

do things like this the more you do this uh the more you keep it alive and hopefully we'll be strengthened and we will get stronger black media issues black issues we hear issues but the things that we're talking about in our community that are bothering us every day that we see you don't hear it in mainstream media no not at all you don't hear it there and we need to get it there and we need also it's for the sanity of people to hear yes that's what I'm worried about that's my problem you unde

rstand we care about all these other things but yes rent we can't afford it yes milk have you seen the price of milk yes those things are what's important in our community the gun violence well yeah we talk about gun violence and we talk about mass shootings but what about the one-on-one killings that are happening in our community every day what about the centers that we don't have in the recreation what about 125th Street and Lexington Avenue what about these issues that are impacting us daily

so the more you do the work that you do you're helping that conversation and thank you now for sure that's why I'm able to get up in the every day in the morning and do this you know we're trying to be the black Rupert Murdoch's over here you know we need to control our own narrative yes because we make them the most money but we don't own the platform we don't own any of them that pisses me off more than anything more than anything you know the greatest import of this country the greatest expo

rt of this country is what do we know our greatest export is music yeah black music yeah yeah it's consumed all over the place but we don't own it and that's just music we're not even talking about sports we're not talking about fashion no we're not we're not even we're not talking about the swag that we put on it not only the trendsetters what yeah exactly we got we we named the uptowns [Music] foreign