The proposal to expand the 82nd Street Business Improvement District (BID), along the Roosevelt Avenue corridor, will place the working- and middle-class immigrant neighborhoods of Corona, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights at risk for hyper-gentrification and displacement of small businesses and economically vulnerable residents. These negative outcomes are not merely economic. They also bring to the table issues of social justice and immigrant civic engagement. Which calls forth the following question: Why are local non-profits – which stress a social justice perspective – absent from the BID debate?
The local BID debate has taken on the dimensions of a struggle between David and Goliath. The lines have been drawn. Grassroots mobilization against the BID has gravitated around Queens Neighborhoods United (QNU), an ad hoc group of local residents, small businesses owners, and immigrant social justice activists. While support for the BID has revolved around an influential urban growth coalition of landlords, realtors, and local elected officials. But where are the social justice non- profits in this important debate? Why are non-profits missing in action?
During the past fifteen-years, the emergence of local non-profit social justice organizations, have significantly altered the civic and political landscapes of Corona, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights. Local non-profits such as: Chhaya CDC, The Dominican-American Society (DAS), Drum, Make the Road New York (MRNY), New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE), The New York Civic Participation Project (NYCPP), and Vamos Unidos are important institutional players that support social justice, participatory democracy, and immigrant engagement. Institutionally, local non-profits have entered into innovative collaboration with forward-looking union locals, worker centers, ethnic community- based groups, faith-based organizations, and local activists.
Local bottom-up non-profits have made their presence felt in such social justice initiatives as: housing rights; anti-gentrification initiatives; educational reform; a living wage initiative; wage-theft legislation; street vendor rights; participatory budgeting; the Dream Act; immigrant municipal voting rights and; the successful establishment of a municipal I.D card, to just mention a few representative examples.
To date, Drum and Vamos Unidos are the only local social justice non-profits that have taken a public institutional stance against the BID initiative. Nonetheless, because of financial and programmatic limitations their participation has been constrained. That is understandable. What is not understandable is the institutional silence of non-profits in the BID debate. As the old adage states: “Not to decide, is to decide.” Moreover, in preparing this column, local non-profits were contacted for comment and clarification. To date, they have not responded.
Which brings us to MRNY. Up until recently, MRNY had a seat on the BID’s steering committee. Last week they publicly came out against the BID, and it is my understanding that institutionally they are no longer a member of the BID steering committee, although this has not been officially confirmed by the MRNY leadership. Nonetheless, MRNY’s change in its official position is both important and welcomed. What remains to be seen is the eventual role that MRNY will play, how they will go about structuring a balanced and equitable collaboration with QNU, and if they will critically question Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras’ and NYS Senator Jose Peralta’s aggressive support of the BID?
For now it would be unproductive to speculate on why MRNY originally supported the BID, why they changed their official position, and why local non-profits have withheld their voice and moral authority on this crucial social justice issue. Nonetheless, as social justice organizations that champion bottom-up organizing and transparency, they have a political and moral responsibility to fully explain their institutional stance.
By Arturo Ignacio Sánchez
Article published in QueensLatino, August 2014
Arturo Ignacio Sánchez, Ph.D. is chairperson of the Newest New Yorkers Committee of Community Board 3, Queens. He has taught contemporary immigration, entrepreneurship, and urban planning at Barnard College, City University of New York, Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, and Pratt Institute.
