Artspace Project, Inc, and it's President Kelley Lindquist

Artspace Project, Inc’s president Kelley Lindquist is described as eccentric, energetic, extraordinary, motivated and an optimistic visionary by his friends and colleagues. He is the president of the organization since 1987. The organization along with El Barrio’s “Operation Fightback” will start their first project in New York City by altering a public school, P.S. 109, in El Barrio that has been deserted in 1995 into an apartment complex for artists and their families.

Kelley Lindquist is very motivated by this project because East Harlem is a very vibrant community that is vital to the city, and because P.S. 109 is an extremely beautiful building that has the potential to be a masterpiece in itself.  

Currently, residents of El Barrio face many of the same problems Artspace did before they bought along Mr. Lindquist due to the area being plagued with gentrification. Before Kelley joined they were working out of a small office notifying artists of places they could move into, sometimes semi legal ones. Artists would move in, fix it up, and then get kicked out by the new wave of individuals moving into the community.

 Kelley’s love for arts and community building helped him transform Artspace Projects once he started his tenure there in 1987 into an organization that would transform buildings or start completely new projects for living spaces for artists where they are surrounded by creativity. This latest project of Artspace will host 90 units of affordable housing and a 15,000 square foot area for Latino arts and cultural organizations. The living spaces will be set aside for artists whose income is less than 60% of the area’s median income.

The leasing process of the residential units is expected to be completed in 2014. On Artspace’s website information about the project including the leasing process can be delivered to anyone that subscribes to the updates.  The non-profit organization has ensured that 50% of the tenants are residents of El Barrio. They are ensuring that East Harlem artists are well-represented in the facility by applying NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development’s (HPD) lottery process.

They had the groundbreaking ceremony on Tuesday, the 2nd of October from 4 – 8 pm at 215 East 99th Street. In attendance was Mayor Bloomberg, Councilwoman Melissa Mark Viverito, Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate D. Levin, National Endowment for the Arts Chair Rocco Landesman, Kelley Lindquist, Ford Foundation President Luis Ubinas, and El Barrio’s Operation Fightback Executive Director Gustavo Rosado. Performances included Salsa legend Johnny Colon and his orchestra.

 It is a $52 million dollar venture. In October 2011 the project has received a tax credit allocation that will generate approximately $24 Million in equity funding to the project. With this essential funding in place, they hope to complete their financial closing by year-end and begin construction this winter. While there will be many tangible benefits to emerge from this project, one of the most immediate will be the creation of nearly 500 jobs during the two-year construction phase according to Mayor Bloomberg.

The Ford Foundation gave Artspace $4.75 million, some having been allocated to the El Barrio P.S. 109 project.

The Effects 9/11 Had On Jews In NYC

According to a Wikipedia article titled “Demographics of New York City” “The New York metropolitan 

area's Jewish population in 2001 was approximately 1.97 million.” They write before that “The New York 

metropolitan area is home to the largest Jewish population in the world outside Israel. After dropping from a 

peak of 2.5 million in the 1950s to a low of 1.4 million in 2002.”

Taking into account these statistics when answering the question is has any ethnicity/religion/nationality/etc been as big of a target in New York City as Jews due to 9/11.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City

Two Options Why America Supports The Apartheid/Security Fence

OPTION 1:               
A example of America being a pluralist country is its stance on what some people call the “Apartheid Wall”. A January 2004 ARNSI poll conducted by IPSOS- Public Affairs, one of the largest polling organizations, showed that 68% of Americans agree with the statement “Israel has the right to take action to defend itself by building a security fence, even if many other countries disagree.” Only 22% disagree. The administration at that time joined more than 2 dozen other countries in support of the International Court of Justice not taking up this matter. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) commonly votes against Israeli policies when they are brought into the (ICJ). The ICJ has a large amount of influence in the international community therefore a vote by it against the security fence might stop Israel from building it. A pluralistic America would have supported an action in favor of Israel’s security fence at that time because for a country to be pluralistic its citizens’ public opinion must be reflected by its policies. In this case this is especially true since the odds were over 3:1 in support of Israel building the security fence. America’s action towards the ICJ was done to help Israel build the security fence. Therefore, this was a pluralistic action.


OPTION 2: 
The vote to block the ICJ from ruling on this case by the United States is explained is explained differently by the by two things according to the power elite theory, the public’s perception of Israel, and the terminology to describe the Apartheid Wall/Security Fence by the media. If one were to consider the trend of public and media support for Israel, which was shown to usually be positive and if the media uses a neutral term to describe the Security Fence/Apartheid Wall while all other variables are held constant it would be illogical to believe that Americans’ reactions would not be pro-Israel. According to recent research the Apartheid Wall/Security Fence is being described by neutral terms such as “Wall”, and “Fence” by mainstream media. Therefore, this proves the power elite theory is right because politicians would have to support Israel if they want to look good in the media. This is because the media is pro-Israel on this issue, which can be proven because one can assume the media is logical in its rationality, and all of the past examples lend a lot of credence to the belief that they favor Israel in their reporting. Therefore, if the president at the time wanted to be elected according to the power elite theory he would have voted against the ICJ judging this. This is contrary to pluralism because it states media was the reason for America’s decision.

Here's Why I Don't Believe The Palestinians Were Ethnically Cleansed

In “The Fate of an Honest Intellectual” Noam Chomsky writes that Norman Finkelstein was hardly allowed to get his PHD degree, went through several universities as a professor, and is now working as a social worker. He states this was not his fault. Instead, it was because as a PHD student he debunked a popular Pro-Israel book by a distinguished professor by saying that she misused her citations.  

There is probably over a 100,000 documents the Israeli Government released about the so called ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, and countless others have said that there were huge amounts of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians done. This theory is popular, the people who say it are distinguished.

I state that this theory shouldn’t be believed. Why? Because the Israeli Government says it’s not true. Another reason is because like Noam Chomsky points out it would be the end of someone(s)’s career to look through those 100s of thousands of documents and debunk the theory by saying that these people misquoted the Declassified Documents by the Israeli Government, and as far as I am concerned no one has tried to disprove the theory through that means.

From The Jeiwish Heritage Museum

                      The following is from Jewish Life a Century Ago: 1880-1930

 There were 3 different cases containing Jewish memorabilia from their involvement with Socialism, Zionism, and Liberalism.

1.      The plaque about their involvement with this Socialism said Jews had their own Socialist Party called Bund. Bund imagined a society in where men and women can live in dignity and security as Jews and Workers.

2.      The plaque about their involvement with Zionism explained why certain Jews supported Zionism, and it was so they could grow independently, increase Jewish identity, and get away from anti-Semitism

3.      The plaque about their involvement with Liberalism explained how those Jews did not see a conflict between being a loyal citizen to their country and being a proud Jew

Secessionists And The Constitution

Secessionists argued something called the “compact theory” which stated that when the constitution was made up it gave each state the right to leave the union whenever it wanted to. This was due to the constitution saying that each state is independent to do what it wants.  The secessionists argued that this gave them the right to leave the Union. Lincoln says that this is countered by other parts of the constitution, such as the part that says “to form a more perfect Union[1]. Another retort used by Lincoln is the saying “a government of the people, for the people, by the people”, which would mean according to Lincoln that a majority of the people in the country would have to agree to the dissolution of the union in order for it to be legal.

When Lincoln said that in order for the secessionists to constitutionally leave the union all of the states would have to agree on letting them leave. The north would have to allow the south to leave which they would never do. Some secessionists argued that a majority of the state had to agree to secede, not a majority of the union. If they were right then when Lincoln got elected South Carolina would be able to leave. Lincoln said otherwise. He said that a majority of the union would have to agree on letting certain states leave the union.

            He also invoked the fourth amendment of the constitution to say that not only is what secessionists are doing unconstitutional because the northern voters didn’t vote for secession, but also because the secessionists got votes from the southern states for secession in unfair, coercive, etcetera ways.

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[1] American Political Though 6^th Edition: First inaugural Address, page 270

Why Truman Supported Israel

When President Truman acknowledged Israel, and established diplomatic relations with them he did so from deeply held personal beliefs, but mostly because he had to cave in due to the response to an organized petition campaign by 33 state legislatures, 40 state governors, a Congressional majority, and millions of Americans who urged him to do so. The methodology used to see if a state’s action supports pluralism by checking the correspondence between public opinion and policy outcomes shows that Truman’s backing of Israel in this case is due to the state acting in a pluralist fashion. Another proof that this was pluralistic is that the group that was most influential was also the best organized, and had the strongest preferences. The reasons why these assumptions that these actions were pluralistic is because it is illogical for the average student to believe this was not representative of public opinion, or that this was not the best organized group with the strongest preferences at that time.

 

This paragraph will show an alternative to the pluralist argument for why America accepted Israel as a Jewish State, and one that has the policy of ‘Aliyah.’ It will do this by showing a scenario in which the policies were enacted due to the views of the elite. The American media was very supportive of the Jewish terrorist groups when it came to them being against the British. There were many Hollywood moguls and American professional athletes that supported these terrorists. An example of this is when “A rising young star named Marlon Brando volunteered for the lead in "A Flag is Born," a pro-Irgun play authored by Hollywood's leading screenwriter, Ben Hecht, which was staged throughout the U.S. during 1946-1947.” Since the mainstream media, and elites who have a huge impact on popular culture were so supportive of these terrorist groups around the time of Israel’s declaration of independence it makes sense that America would recognize Israel as a country. This is because according to power elite theory politicians base their policies of how the media portrays them, and in the case of elites who have a huge impact on popular culture by getting favors such as endorsements. The fact that the mass media and these elites were in support of these terrorist groups makes it illogical that they would not be strongly in support of a ‘Jewish State’ and ‘Aliyah.’