Local
Affordable Housing: A Community United?
by Leah KregerLocal
If the first high-rise building in Greenpoint-Williamsburg had been conceived of from a perspective within the neighborhood, if it resembled the work of the community’s 197-A plan, it would not be taller than Northside Piers became during the month of February. Twenty-one of its soon-to-be 30 stories have been constructed. Our landscape, our relationship to the sky, the light and to Manhattan, has been changed forever by concrete and steel.
Are You Ready for the Flood?
by Sabine HeinleinLocal
Sophie Bednarczyk, sporting black curly hair and a heavy layer of make-up, said, “You have to pray and do the rosary to prevent global warming. We have zero influence on what’s going to happen. Take the Tsunami. Bad people live over there. Like, people in New Orleans were punished for all the prostitution, the gays and the lesbians. God doesn’t like that. So if the flood is going to come, it’s not from what we do.”
New York City’s Air Is Anything But Clean
by Jonah Owen LambLocal
Sonia Guadalupe and her son Eric live in a fourth floor apartment overlooking the Bruckner expressway in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. The tidy apartment’s walls are hung with mirrors. Family photos rest on the TV and two blue sofas sit untouched. Hardwood floors and glass tables glint from the light coming in through the windows. That’s because Sonia is always cleaning. She dusts several times a day just to keep up with the dirt that creeps in from the roadway.
Sharing Brooklyn’s Bounty with South African Youth
by Eleanor BaderLocal
Shortly after art teacher Sandy Edmonds arrived in Port Elizabeth, South Africa last August, she noticed that one of her students, 12-year-old Vuyo Mkalipi, held his scissors a few inches from his eyes. It was the only way he could see the paper he intended to cut.










