The folks at the New York City Human Rights Initiative sent over an advisory about a bus tour today to criticize a set of Bloomberg administration development initiatives brewing right now. "All of the stops will focus on projects which in some way divide communities, displace longtime residents, and deny their right to adequate housing and jobs," the advisory says.
The stops: Willets Point, Harlem, Chinatown, and Sunset Park (where a mostly contextual rezoning is planned).
Release below.
NYC Human Rights Initiative to Detail Bloomberg’s Bad Human Rights Record with "Money Talks" Bus Tour, Calls His Term Limits Plan "Undemocratic"
Human rights groups warn inequitable redevelopment projects in Willets Point, Harlem, Sunset Park, Chinatown will mean less access to housing, jobs for minorities in NYC
Members of the New York City Human Rights Initiative, a coalition of local human rights groups coordinated by the Human Rights Project at the Urban Justice Center, will host a Money Talks Bus Tour of Mayor Bloomberg’s most divisive and inequitable development proposals on Friday, including stops in Queens, Harlem, Chinatown and Brooklyn. The Human Rights Project will also point to Bloomberg’s latest political maneuver to extend term limits without public consent as yet another example of his bad human rights record.
The tour will begin in the Willets Point area of Queens at 9 AM tomorrow where a rezoning is set to displace 1,700 workers, and wind through the neighborhoods of the controversial Columbia University rezoning (East Harlem and Central Harlem), through Chinatown’s affordable housing-deficient redevelopment project, and then end in Sunset Park Brooklyn where another rezoning is planned. All of the stops will focus on projects which in some way divide communities, displace longtime residents, and deny their right to adequate housing and jobs.
Journalists and others are invited to hop on or off the bus at any point during the tour, or join attendees at any of the following stops:
- 9:00- 9:30am: Willets Point – Industrial Park, 37th Ave and 126th St (in front of the new Mets Stadium)
- 10:30-11:30am: East Harlem 125th and 2nd Avenue, Central Harlem and 133rd St and Broadway
- 12:30-1:00pm: Drive around Chinatown
- 1:30-2:00pm: Brooklyn – Sunset Park- 56th and 5th Ave
Tomorrow the Human Rights Project will also call Mayor Bloomberg’s push for changing term limits legislatively undemocratic, and call for any vote on an extension to be made by the people through public referendum.
The bus tour is part of a 60-day human rights campaign to express solidarity with the communities that are being displaced by the Bloomberg Administration’s development plans. International human rights law recognizes the right to adequate housing, and to work as an inherent human right guaranteed to all human beings regardless of their race, immigration status, or economic condition. These large-scale development projects violate these principles, organizers say.
