New York - Community Advocate to Challenge Espada

-

State Senator Pedro Espada Jr., the Bronx politician who staged a coup last summer and seized the Democratic majority leader’s seat in Albany, will have some challengers of his own to fend off.

Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter, a community advocate in the northwestern Bronx who has never before run for office, plans to announce on Saturday that she will challenge Mr. Espada for his seat representing that area.

Ms. Pilgrim-Hunter, 53, played a prominent role in killing the city’s plan to build a shopping mall inside the Kingsbridge Armory, a fortress that has sat empty for years. Ms. Pilgrim-Hunter helped persuade the City Council to reject the plan mainly because the city would not require the developer, which would have received millions of dollars in tax breaks, to guarantee that jobs there would pay more than the minimum wage.

She said that one of the issues that spurred her to run was the cloud of scandals surrounding Mr. Espada.

For months, he has been the target of an investigation by the attorney general’s office over the political activities of employees of the health clinics he founded, and whether he actually lives in his Senate district in the Bronx.

“I want to offer the district a fresh start,” Ms. Pilgrim-Hunter said in a telephone interview. “I want to return us to an honest and open government, sort of turning our backs on the old politics that has become a problem here in the Bronx and in Albany in general.”

Mr. Espada’s spokesman did not immediately return a call for comment.

Ms. Pilgrim-Hunter, a daughter of Guyanese immigrants, has become a leading voice in the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, a group with a long history of grassroots advocacy. She has held several fund-raisers in recent weeks, and will announce her candidacy on Saturday at 11 a.m. in front of the Bronx Library Center on East Kingsbridge Road.

NY Times

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Woodland, Washington - Swastikas, N-word among taunts at Woodland school

-
Tom Hammond says what happened to his son Caleb at Woodland Intermediate School shouldn't happen to any child. The incident took place last Thursday. Hammond told KATU News that a number of students surrounded his son and asked him if he was a Jew.  His son Caleb said “maybe” at which point the other kids allegedly drew swastikas on their hands and said “these repel you." From there, the attack got worse. “They surrounded him, kicking him in the stomach,” Hammond said. “ We're not sure which kids threw rocks and hit him in the back.  And then there was two other kids in the background acting like they were runnin' little video cameras goin' 'look at the gay dude.'” “Enough is enough,” Hammond said. “It's time for it to stop.” It appears the attack on Caleb is not an isolated incident. Other parents and kids are coming forward, saying the school isn't doing enough to stop student racial slurs. Student Gillian Brockman said she was called “nig...
Read more

Germany will compensate Kindertransport survivors $2,800 each

-
Germany has agreed to compensate those who fled Nazi Germany as children on the so-called Kindertransport with a one-time payment of approximately $2,800 each. The new agreement, negotiated by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany with the German government, comes 80 years after the first rescue transports of children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland to England. The British government had agreed to take a contingent of children under the age to 17 after the anti-Jewish pogrom of Nov. 9, 1938, known as Kristallnacht, made it more clear than ever that Jews in those countries were not safe. More than 10,000 Jewish children and youths were rescued. Many saw their parents for the last time as they said goodbye at train stations in the German Reich. According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the last transport from Germany left on Sept. 1, 1939, the day World War II began. The last transport from the Netherlands left for Britain on May 14, 1940, ...
Read more