Good Morning, Brooklyn: Wednesday, November 24, 2021

November 24, 2021 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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HOSPITAL TRADE GROUP HONORS 2 BROOKLYN INSTITUTIONS: American Hospital Association (AHA) honored three hospitals in the health system —two of these in Brooklyn —in appreciation for their 100 years of participation and leadership. NYC Health + Hospitals/Coney Island, Kings County, as well as Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, join 13 other New York City medical centers and 100 other hospitals across the nation that have been in the AHA for one hundred years or more. The Coney Island facility originated in 1875 as an emergency first-aid station located on the oceanfront beach near West 3^rd St. Founded more than 175 years ago NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County was originally an institution known as the Almshouse that evolved in the 18th and 19th centuries, with a hospital building completed in 1837, marking the beginning of the present extensive physical plant which has become one of the largest municipal hospitals in the United States.

Moreover, in 2022, NYC Health + Hospitals/Coney Island will open its new health care complex, renamed as NYC Health + Hospitals/South Brooklyn Health.

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THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY PRE-EMPTS THURSDAY TRASH PICKUP: The Department of Sanitation reminds New Yorkers with Thursday trash and recycling pickup days that this service is suspended this week, November 25, in observance of Thanksgiving. Residents who normally receive Thursday trash or curbside composting collection are advised to place their material out at curbside between 4 p.m. and midnight on Wednesday, December 1, for pickup on Thursday, December 2.

The Sanitation Department requests New Yorkers’ patience in the wake of post-holiday pickup delays.

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MAJOR SETTLEMENT WITH A ‘WORST LANDLORD’: A major settlement agreement between the city and a Brooklyn landlord on the Public Advocate’s watch list represents a victory for his tenants. Jason Korn, a Brooklyn-based landlord who has topped the NYC Public Advocate’s Worst Landlord Watchlist for two consecutive years, has agreed to fix a series of violations and desist from tenant harassment incidents in nearly 400 homes spanning Brooklyn and Manhattan. As part of the settlement with the New York City Department of Housing Preservation, Mr. Korn must also pay $235,000 in civil penalties, correct all outstanding housing code violations within 90 days and comply with the City’s tenant harassment laws.

An investigation of Korn’s buildings, including Brooklyn addresses on Avenue I, Ocean Ave., East 17^th St. and East 29^th St. established a pattern of gross building neglect resulting in unsafe conditions, such as infestation of vermin including roaches and mice, mold, lead-based paint and water leaks; and it found that Mr. Korn engaged in a pattern of false certification of the correction of violations.

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UFT SCHOLARSHIPS: The United Federation of Teachers awards $1 million in scholarships each year to academically excellent and financially eligible New York City public high school seniors through the UFT’s Albert Shanker Scholarship Fund. The deadline this school year to apply for a $5,000 scholarship will be just after the New Year, on Saturday, January 15, 2022

The scholarship’s namesake, Albert Shanker (1928-1997), was founder of the United Federation of Teachers, a New York affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers. He later served as the AFT’s president as well.

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IPS NEWS: MORE GRANTS FOR GUN VIOLENCE PROTECTION: Community and hospital-based gun violence intervention programs in communities across the state, including several in Brooklyn, will expand, thanks to $6.2 million in grants that Gov. Kathy Hochul announced yesterday. The funds are being directed at communities that have experienced significant increases in shootings and firearm-related murders over the past year. This latest group of grants builds on grants that Gov. Hochul made in September, to hire 39 new violence interrupters in New York City and street outreach workers at all 12 state-supported SNUG Street Outreach programs.

Street outreach and violence interrupter programs treat gun violence as a public health issue by identifying the source, interrupting its transmission, and treating it by engaging individuals and communities to change community norms about violence. Executive Order 211, which Governor Hochul recently extended, allows the state to expedite these grants.

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IPS NEWS: BROOKLYN ORGANIZATIONS RECEIVING GUN VIOLENCE INTERRUPTER GRANTS: Among the Brooklyn organizations receiving funds to hire the gun violence interrupter positions are the Brownsville Think Tank Matters: one position, $75K; CAMBA (Brownsville in Violence Out): three positions, $120K; CCI (RISE/Brooklyn, Save Our Streets/The Bronx, and Neighborhood Safety Initiatives/Harlem): six positions, $420K; East Flatbush Village: two positions, $120K, Elite Learners (Brownsville, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brookdale Hospital, Kings County Hospital):11 positions, $660K; Gateway Community Empowerment (Brooklyn): one position, $36K; Jewish Community Center of Greater Coney Island: three positions, $175,695, Kings Against Violence Initiative (Kings County Hospital): three positions, $180K and Southside United (Brooklyn): two positions, $92K.

The state Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) has partnered with the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice to distribute funding to nonprofit organizations operating community-based programs while DCJS will administer the grants to hospital-based programs and the state’s 12 SNUG Street Outreach programs.

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CHASE REOPENS ON MERMAID AVE.: Chase Bank is reopening a full-service branch in Coney Island for the first time since 2016. As a neighborhood that currently only has one full-service bank at the western end of Mermaid Avenue, Coney Island welcomes the reopening of Chase, at 1428 Mermaid Ave. which closed its branch shortly after Superstorm Sandy.

Participating in the official ribbon-cutting were Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Councilmember Mark Treyger, Councilmember-elect Ari Kagan, State Senator Diane Savino, Assemblymember Mathylde Frontus, Michael A. Cundari, Chase Executive Director/Market Director, Lorraine Kelly-Fowler, Chase Coney Island Branch Manager, Sekou Kaalund, Chase Divisional Director of Consumer Banking Mike Cherney, Chase Regional Director, Alliance for Coney Island, local Coney Island businesses and stakeholders.

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NEW TD BANK BRANCH: TD Bank opened its newest branch in Bushwick, with a ribbon-cutting. Participating at the 20 Graham Ave .location were Randy Peers, president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, incoming Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and Branch Manager Hank Goris.

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WEEKSVILLE MARKET SHOWCASES BLACK-OWNED BUSINESSES: Weeksville Heritage Center and Black-Owned Brooklyn, a digital publication spotlighting Black-owned, Brooklyn-based businesses, are partnering to produce a holiday market on December 11 and 12. The market, to be held at Weeksville Heritage Center’s campus in Crown Heights, from noon to 5 p.m. daily, brings together more than 25 vendors across the categories of apparel, food, home goods, and self-care products. Curators for the Holiday Market are Black-Owned Brooklyn’s husband-and-wife team Tayo Giwa and Cynthia Gordy Giwa.

Visitors may also tour Weeksville’s historic Hunterfly Road houses.

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SCHOLARSHIPS FOR STUDY ON ANXIETY: McDonald’s Black & Positively Golden Scholarship Program have teamed up to award $500,000 in scholarships to 35 students attending Historically Black Colleges and universities, including Brooklynites Norre Emmanuel, attending Clark Atlanta University and Shakiayah Sanders, attending Florida A&M University. This program, in partnership with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF), followed a recent study of Black college students conducted by McDonald’s, in which three in four respondents acknowledged struggling with symptoms of anxiety or depression in the study. One of the scholarship partners, Shine, will also give the 2021 scholarship recipients lifetime app memberships that provide access to personalized self-care tools.

McDonald’s and TMCF have awarded more than $1M in scholarships to HBCU students since the program’s launch. Scholarship recipients will also receive school supplies including a tablet, backpack, and more, to help with their day-to-day studies.

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THANKSGIVING IN THE NYPD 73^RD PRECINCT: Retired NYPD Detective Katrina Brownlee And Young Ladies Of Our Future will host Thanksgiving dinner for the community. Recently-retired NYPD Detective Katrina Brownlee, profiled in The New York Times last month for her leadership and resilience against domestic violence, founded the non-profit organization Leading Ladies of our Future to help at-risk women. Detective Steven of the 73rd Precinct will provide the music for the dinner, from 2-6 p.m. at the Flagstone Family Center. City Councilmember Alicka Ampry-Samuel is expected to attend.

Brownlee has been featured in The New York Times surviving a horrendous shooting at the hands of her prison-guard boyfriend that killed her unborn child, and then for earning her NYPD badge to be, in her words, “a good cop.”

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OP ED: PANDEMICS CHANGED THE WORLD AND THE CHURCH: “The world has changed forever, and the church has changed forever, whether you want to believe it or not,” writes Pastor Gil Monrose, co-founder and president of the 67^th Precinct Clergy Council’s GodSquad in a guest editorial published in today’s editions of the Brooklyn Eagle. “Over the past year, we have experienced one pandemic after another, bringing both national and global attention to many of the issues the nation needs to address,” he wrote, referring to only COVID-19 but also gun violence, civil unrest and the shortcomings of political leadership.

Yet, Pastor Monrose pointed out, 2020 was the best year of his ministry because, even with closed church buildings, he was able to minister where he believes it is important… Why? Because the church truly is about people.”

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OP ED: HIGH-SPEED INTERNET IS VITAL SERVICE: The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act high-speed internet is as essential as water and electricity, posits Henan Galperin in The Conversation because Congress finally recognizes that “access to affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband is essential to full participation in modern life in the United States.” In other words, broadband access is like access to running water or electricity. It is essential infrastructure, the lack of which is a barrier to economic competitiveness and the “equitable distribution of essential public services, including health care and education.”

If decades of academic studies did not persuade Congress to enshrine this vision in law, the images of teachers in school parking lots and students outside fast-food restaurants connecting to remote classes during the COVID-19 pandemic probably did.

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Bishop-designate Robert J. Brennan will be installed as the eighth bishop of Brooklyn.
Photo courtesy of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus

NEW DIOCESAN BISHOP BEING INSTALLED The Most Rev. Robert J. Brennan will be installed as the eighth bishop of the Diocese of Brooklyn at a Mass at the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph in Prospect Heights next Tuesday, November 30, Officiating at the installation liturgy will be Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, and Archbishop Christophe Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America. Bishop Brennan, who has led the Diocese of Columbus since 2019, was named by Pope Francis to succeed Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio on Sept. 29, 2021.

Bishop DiMarzio’s mandatory letter of resignation sent on his 75th birthday to the Holy Father Pope Francis, was accepted on Sept. 29. SEE PAGE 1.