Author: c.greene

The first Salsa Sunday event at Industry City courtyard takes place between two factory buildings. Men and women dance to salsa music and sip on beers while eating Puerto Rican food. But just outside a protest is ongoing, by other local residents. Residents hold signs and wave flags reading, “No displacement”. Fearing that the development of these buildings and the community around it will eventually force them out of their homes, their neighborhood.
Industry City was once a freight-handling terminal, dealing with both sea and rail transport. It is now a 35- acre complex designed to “attract designers, makers, and content creators”, according to their website. The complex houses retail spaces, a fitness center, shopping venues, a beer distillery, five acres of open spaces, a coffee bar, a cafe, billiards, and work studios for rent. Many artists, makers, and local food purveyors are renting out these studios. Employees and creators who work at Industry City are quickly moving into the surrounding area. Helping to shift a working class family based neighborhood into a more roommate based hipster vibe.
According to Census data from the years 2000 to 2010 there was a 42.8 percent increase in roommate based. The amount of Non-family households has increased from 5,882 to 8,397, with non-relative households nearly doubling in that time. This coincides with a 24 percent increase in rental prices of the neighborhood from 1990 to 2014.
“Things have been changing in the neighborhood, pretty rapidly actually. We’re seeing more twenty somethings, yeah. In the last few years alone, with the Park slope boom declining a bit, people are starting to expand down to Sunset.”, says real estate broker Katherine Angelucci.
Industry City has brought in an immense amount of business and employment opportunities to the Brooklyn Waterfront area. Employment in the complex has more than doubled since 2013. Though that seems significant, the original number from 2013 has not been released. About half of the people working there have moved into the surrounding area, says Industry City directors.
Industry City’s CEO plans to create more than 20,000 jobs by the year 2025. They have already placed about 100 local residents in jobs by using their Innovations Lab hiring initiative.
These changes however has been met with some pushback from the local community. Residents at a community meeting expressed feeling “left out”, scared of what is happening now that new neighbors are moving in. An elderly man talked about no longer knowing the people in his building, saying “all of them work on the waterfront! You know it use to be nothing!”
The Salsa Sunday event was only one of the community events held in Sunset Park and sponsored by Industry City. Artist and makers have lived in the complex for years now. In 2014, an exhibition was held at the vast complex. The exhibit was titled “Come Together: Surviving Sandy, Year 1”. It explored the damage and rebirth that took place in the city of Manhattan after Hurricane Sandy decimated many neighborhoods. Well-known artists displayed their art amongst beginners just finding their footing in Industry City and Sunset Park. As Industry City’s notoriety grew, so did the rent on their workspaces. Many of them the founding artists featured in “Come Together”. Artist were forced to find new studios due to the rising cost of living in Industry City. The waterfront of Brooklyn became a mecca for new businesses.
Restaurants and nightlife brought new life into the once forgotten area. Old warehouses are now venues for all night dance parties. Club Lust, a hip hop oriented strip club on 47th street has hosted parties with the likes of Rihanna, Travis Scott, Kid Cudi, Danny Brown and even Alexander Wang in attendance. Brooklyn Hangar, another dance venue hosts independent parties well into the morning, as well as concerts. It is in a secluded location on the waterfront, allowing for loud parties with little complaints about noise. This new found energy in the community and its new influx of people have brought developers just like those at Industry City looking to bring more transportation options to the area.
The Brooklyn Queens Connector (BQX) is a proposed street car light rail to connect the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront. The BQX website states that it will “link neighborhoods along a 16-mile route from Astoria to Sunset Park.” And “connect to up to 10 ferry landings, 30 different bus routes, 15 different subway lines, 116 Citi Bike stations, and 6 LIRR lines. It will travel primarily in dedicated lanes, separated from traffic and bicycles along the route.”. It is being proposed by the City of New York and is heavily back by Mayor de Blasio, though many in the community don’t trust that the connector will benefit the current residents of the area. Gloria Sanchez, 62, has lived in Sunset Park for the last thirty years and she doesn’t see how these new projects are helping out her community, “All I see us people having to leave us. Whole families are leaving that have been here for generations. How is this going to benefit us when we already are having trouble just making ends meet.” Protest have been increasing within Sunset residents who believe the plan is a challenge to their intelligence. As prices of apartments rise so do try the fears of the new living situations that are popping up in the community.

Black inmates line the fields of Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Since 1880, the 8,000-acre slave plantation turned prison has housed thousands of inmates. Most of them now, serving life sentences. All of them subject to forcible employment.

 

Prisoners at Angola (named after the area in Africa where its original slave inhabitants came from) that are cleared by the prisons physician can be forced to work with punishment used as incentive to comply.

 

Prisoners can make as little as 2 cents an hour for their work in the fields, the kitchen, or the manufacturing warehouses but legally they do not have to be compensated.

 

Angola is just one instance of forced prison labor in the United States made possible by the thirteenth amendment of the US Constitution.

 

The thirteenth amendment states that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

 

Basically, if you have been convicted of a crime the United States can subject you to “slavery” or “involuntary servitude”, which is exactly what the US government is doing.

 

In 1979, Congress created the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIE). It provided private companies with incentives to contract prison labor.

 

According to the National Correctional Industries Association, PIE is “designed to place inmates in a realistic work environment, pay them the prevailing local wage for similar work, and enable them to acquire marketable skills to increase their potential for successful rehabilitation and meaningful employment on release.”
However, it has been shown statistically that that is not what is happening. States like Georgia, Texas, and Arkansas don’t pay their inmates at all. Prisoners around the country are subject to incredibly low wages, a dangerous environment and some are sent to solitary confinement if they refuse to work.

Along with the Congress backed PIE, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), has played a central role in the United States prison system expansions.

ALEC’s website states them as, “a nonprofit organization of conservative state legislators and private sector representatives that drafts and shares model state-level legislation for distribution among state governments in the United States.”

Meaning that private corporations invest money into conservative state legislators to draft state level legislation and introduce said legislation to the courts.

ALEC has backed bills in favor of anti-immigration, voter ID, Stand Your Ground, Shoot to Kill laws, anti-greenhouse gas initiatives and the infamous “three strike” rule.

By allowing private corporations to invest into conservative legislators we are essentially allowing these corporations to make laws that only suit them and their interest.

For years’ members of ALEC were even sitting in on officials voting. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), was the chair of the crime task force within ALEC but had to step down after being caught “voting on the SB 1070 legislation in Arizona that would have put—that was designed to put more immigrants in detention facilities and jails for immigrants…”, says the Center for Media and Democracy.

With the help of the PIE and ALEC the private prison system expanded from only five private prisons in 1990 with a population of 2,000 inmates to a hundred private prisons with 62,000 inmates by the year 2000.

How does PIE, ALEC, private prisons, and inmate labor all have in common.

Well just about everything. By Congress creating PIE and ALEC being made up of state legislators and private corporations. The inmate work program became a gold mine that private corporations could profit off of as well as the private prison industry.

Inmate are the most efficient human workers an industry could ever want. They are always one the premises. They aren’t able to call in sick. Inmates can’t go anywhere on holidays or even take a day off. They are paid significantly less than their free citizen counterparts and have less overhead to deal with. Prisoners don’t need insurance and many work more than eight hours a day.

The list of private corporations under ALEC is vast. Some members of the Corporate Board are AT&T, Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, Johnson & Johnson, Koch Companies Public Sector, Kraft Foods Inc. and State Farm Insurance Co. Members involved for profit range from 1 800 contacts to American Express, with things like Bank of America, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart in between.

Inmates make many different things for companies. Like in Angola the prisoners tend to the fields of cotton on compound, others work in the electrical manufacturing warehouse. In other prisons inmates are outsourced to factories. They make shoes, bedding, extension cords, chairs, desks, batteries, canoes, surge protectors, even firearm targets. The company Unicor hires inmates to be call representatives, and advertises it as, “the best kept secret in outsourcing.”

After a nation wide prisoner strike many people were stunned at the conditions of the prisoners and the corporations that were involved. This interest continued with the release of the Netflix documentary The 13th. It documents american prison populations by decade and presidential administrations, and the impact the thirteenth amendment had on prison labor.

I would like to do my long form story on the policies that allow prisoners to do free work for corporations. I would like to find out how the government benefits from this arrangement as well if anything has been proposed to provide rights for inmates.

 

My dream publication to write for would be Mother Jones. I learned about them through their writer, Shane Bauer, doing an interview for his undercover reporting from a private prison. They do investigating reporting sometimes undercover and for long periods of time. Bauer went undercover as a corrections officer for four months in a private prison. He witnessed extreme violence and neglect during this time in order to tell the story of an otherwise cut off population. Their audience has to be a very intentional demographic of people. The magazine has a diverse range of topics but I’m not sure how many people read them.

In a gray hoodie pulled low over his face and a glass of red wine in front of him, Carl Schwartz, 24, sits at his kitchen table. Mustard chairs squeak under wooden linoleum; a plethora of vinyl records line a small coffee table next to him.

In the background stands a record player between two considerably large speakers. He sips his wine, while nervously joking about hating the sound of his voice played back to him, I assure him it wouldn’t be.

Schwartz is a 24-year-old Brooklyn transplant from Richmond, Virginia. He’ll be celebrating his first year in Sunset Park this December. Schwartz works as a teacher’s assistant at the Bronx Early College Academy through the non-profit organization City Year, his income is a modest $1,000 stipend. “Moving here was a total shot in the dark for me, but everything is kind of working out.”

Schwartz’s’ home state has only elected two democrats since 1960, one of them being Pres. Obama. However, Schwartz somehow emerged as a vocally liberal democrat, “I had a socially conscious but somewhat conservative upbringing.”

Schwartz’ mother comes from a conservative, Episcopalian family. He interacted minimally with them saying they didn’t really have a strong familial connection, “being with them was a completely different experience”.

His father being an overwhelmingly, liberal, Jewish man taught Schwartz about politics and the importance of being an active citizen, “I was included in adult conversations from an early age. We’d talk about sports, news. It was natural to talk politics while we ate, watched television. It was just normal discussion.”

Those discussions were mostly democratic, “They were all rooted in this idea that it’s about more than me, it’s about us. But it’s the best way of how to manage us, and thinking about the collective was always, like the mantra of the discussions.”

While clearing his throat Schwartz pulls down the strings of his gray hoodie. His small bearded face becoming a shadow in the florescent lighting of his kitchen. He sips his glass and stares straight ahead.

“And I, I think that just happened naturally. It’s not like it was ever explained, it’s not like it was group facilitation. Where it’s like this is the point! This is the thesis! Those rules weren’t laid out for family discussion.”, he pauses. “But if I look back, that was definitely the theme. Always.”

Schwartz is a strong American liberal, raised in the Virginia Beach and Richmond, Virginia. After his high school career, he began his work in civic duty. Beginning in non-profit work in his city, “I had to smoke Newport’s just to fit in!”, he laughs remembering his time riding in trucks with older African American men, to enlisting in the U.S. Coast Guard.

As a liberal from the South this election is worrying Schwartz. He is confused by his nations choice’s. Secretary Hillary Clinton was his first choice to be president but things became complicated when Senator Bernie Sanders was introduced.

Schwartz began learning more about Clinton and her past policies, “I’m finding out about all these lies that Hillary Clinton has told. How unreliable she is, the terribly racist parts of her, not only just the things that she’s said and the way that she’s lived her life but her husband’s policies. I really found out a lot more in the past year or so about her husband’s policies and how they hurt African Americans, especially African American males.”

This new information led to some deep political soul searching for Schwartz, “As a person who lives by moral conviction as often as I can. A person who is very intentional thoughtful about how I walk through life and the choices that I make and how they affect people. In the primary it just seemed right to me (to vote for Sanders). I can’t sleep at night knowing I did not vote for the best person here.”

Sanders’ was Schwartz’s ideal presidential candidate, he stood up to big business, supported the elimination of student loan debt, wasn’t aligned with any Super Pac’s, and had actually protested in the civil rights movement. Sander’s stood up for ‘the collective’ Schwartz’s family always taught him about.

“It took me all the way up until the week of the primary…I just I didn’t know if it made sense. If he was electable…. I don’t even know if someone that left has ever run before. But him standing completely on his own on stage, stages across America and speaking about people and for the people and doing it on a very low budget. I mean that was moving.”

But Sander’s didn’t win the primary and Schwartz was left with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as his choices, “Both of them are not my America, and I have no respect for a Bernie Sanders supporters who won’t vote for Clinton. There’s just so much at stake, and I don’t know…if you care, if you really care, it’s about making the best choice with your human being, citizen, vote in the United States of America. For the primaries that was definitely Bernie Sanders. So I flipped it was Hillary, then it was Bernie, and obviously I’m back to Hillary, just because it has to be, it has to be.”

 

“‘You’re closed?’ ‘Yes, we’re closed.’ ‘Can I get a hot chocolate?’ ‘Of course, large right?’”

Encounters like this happen multiple times as I try to interview Angel Miranda, owner of The Mug Café in Sunset Park. Though the Café has been closed for at least a half hour, Miranda keeps serving as long as the lights are on and the doors unlocked.

At the age of twenty-five, The Mug Café, is Miranda’s first business. But not his only focus, “I’m self-employed, I guess,” he says laughing. “I trade stocks; myself. I’m trying to get my real estate license and I’m also getting my Series Six.”

While attending St. Francis college Miranda was mentored by a professor and learned how to trade stocks, “I opened an E-Trade account and started trading, I loved it, I was good at it.”

Miranda is from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn and would switch to the N train at 59^th St. after school spending time at the local café’s and around the area. So when Miranda’s mother came to him with the idea of opening a restaurant in Sunset Park he loved the location but not the food industry. “I was like, yeah but the food business is like a 90% margin that you’re going to close. Like the risk rate is 90%. I was told once that out of every ten restaurants within 5 years only one stays open. Nine close. Then after 10 years out of those five that lasted, one out of them remain opened. So your odds are stacked to fail, which is true. It’s such a cutthroat business.”

Miranda never wanted the full on café, he just wanted to sell coffee and pastries, “No need for cooking, no kitchen work, no hiring a porter, no grill. But you can’t do that here, you can’t pay your rent just selling coffee.”

It’s been three years since The Mug Café opened in October 2013 and business is going well. They serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner options at very reasonable prices. Hospital catering has brought in more business; with Mount Sinai Hospital becoming a client.

But with transitioning neighborhood his target market is forever changing, “First it was all Asian people, then Hispanic, now we have white people, it’s like who is my target? And it weird because I’m Mexican myself, but I’ll hear my fellow Mexicans in Spanish say, ‘It’s only for blancitos.’ Like no what are you talking about! I’m Mexican! I own it!”, he says shaking his head.

“That alone annoys me. When like automatically your instinct is that’s white people only, it’s like what do you mean that white people only, that doesn’t make sense at all to me.”

Miranda continually looks for other sources of income. He’s studying to get his real estate license, as well as the Series Six exam. He would like to get back into day trading as well but it’s currently not an option, “I tried and I lost. In trading, seconds matter and I just don’t have the time. I’m trying to get different channels of income where you’re growing wealth instead of just being rich. You gotta hustle in New York, there’s no such thing as sleep, not if you want to make it here”

The Mug Café is located on 5811 4^th Avenue, Brooklyn 11220.

Source List

– Angel Miranda (347) 342 – 7288, aemiranda90@gmail.com

“I worked on Friday and Saturday.”

“I work at the Rose bar. I’m a waitress, a cocktail server.”

“It was long and exhausting, I wasn’t supposed to work on Saturday but I got called in because someone was late.”

“We had Halloween parties.”

“Got home from work at 6 a.m.”

“I didn’t really get to go out or anything.”

“I slept for two hours.”

“And had a million things to do the next day.”

 

This profile was done entirely through research which I found fascinating considering how long it is. It speaks on the intense relationship between former dancer turned reality star Blac Chyna and her world wind decent into the Kardashian World. From being best friends with Kim West to being shunned by the family after her break up with the    still up and coming rapper Tyga. The angle of the article is to tell the story of how an African American girl from around the way found herself pregnant and engaged to the last male Kardashian and how she did it all on her own terms.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/sylviaobell/karma-kardashian?utm_term=.gdd7aVWorJ#.ot9z23bwX4

Carl Schwartz is a 24 year old man from Richmond, VA finishing up his first year living in Brooklyn. Schwartz has been an political junkie since birth. Though his household was divided, he grew up with a liberal left wing father who taught him that “the collective” is more important than the individual.

Schwartz has worked in the non profit field since he graduated from high school in 2010. He is currently working under an AmeriCorp. contract with City Year of New York at the Bronx Early College Academy. To say his is a low income resident is putting it politely, he receives $1000 monthly stipend for his work. Leaving him little left over for rent and recently had to apply for Food Stamps to make ends meet.

Schwartz remembers Pres. Bill Clinton from his elementary school eyes and ears; learning he was an okay president, better than most and then George W. Bush entered the picture, “We bitched and moaned about him for eight years. Every day.” Obama was a welcome predecessor for the Schwartz family but now, another eight years have passed and Carl is worried. He’s had to rethink what and who is best for America. First backing Clinton, then Sanders, now back to Clinton; who he still isn’t sure about.

The story of Schwartz would be a profile on his views from childhood to now on who he thinks will best serve “the collective” and what that means to a struggling millennial transplant who believes in community overall.