Results tagged “sonnycarson”

Councilman Charles Barron, who is a frequent lightning rod for controversy in New York's City Council, was involved in a five-car smash up in Brooklyn last night. The accident occurred in the councilman's district of East New York on Linden Boulevard and Van Siclen Avenue late last night as Barron was driving home. Barron's car was struck in a chain reaction started by an SUV striking a livery cab attempting to turn at an intersection. Barron is humorously quoted in the New York Post saying that he wasn't afraid because he has so much to live for: "I just braced myself and I said, 'I can't have anything happen to me because [Mayor] Bloomberg and [Council Speaker] Christine Quinn would miss me so." The former Black Panther has butted heads with Mayor Bloomberg over the unauthorized renaming of a Brooklyn street after radical Sonny Carson, and with Speaker Quinn over the dismissal of one of his staffers for making a perceived death threat against another council member.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is seeking the dismissal of a civil suit against her filed by Council Member Charles Barron's former chief of staff Viola Plummer. Quinn gave Plummer the boot when the councilman's aide refused to sign a pledge to compose herself while the City Council was in session.

No more naming streets like Joey Ramone Place, Peter Jennings Way, Bob Marley Boulevard, or Jerry Orbach Way. If one City Council member gets his way, the commemorative naming of streets would stop because it's too much of a time waster for the council. James Oddo, the council's minority leader from Staten Island, wants to give the Department of Transportation the authority to approve new street names. Currently, the City Council has to approve the names after they are approved by local community boards. We find it shocking that a politician wants to give away power.

When you're a public employee who threatens a City Councilman with assassination, the logical step would be to A) apologize B) lay low and hope people forget about the incident C) accept a temporary suspension D) sue the city for $1 million. Charles Barron's chief of staff Viola Plummer is going with the latter choice and suing New York City for "severe mental anguish and emotional distress." Mind you, this is for an incident that began when she threatened to have a man killed for voting the wrong way in the City Council. Plummer was then suspended from city employment for six weeks by Quinn, initiating the lawsuit.

Despite having been defeated in a City Council vote, where his chief of staff heckled Council Speaker Christine Quinn and threatened a black councilman with assassination, Councilman Charles Barron renamed a street in Brooklyn "Sonny Abubadika Carson Avenue" anyway, declaring that the renaming "is official whether they [presumably the city] take that sign down or not." Sonny Carson's name was struck from a list of people who would get honorary street signs earlier this spring. Council Speaker Quinn felt he was too divisive a figure in the city's history. This sparked a City Hall battle that frayed nerves and invoked additional police protection.

Photograph by dietrich on Flickr

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A home invasion robbery in Queens, an attempted abduction on 4th Avenue & 17th Street in Brooklyn, and a possible electrical shock at Broad and Bridge Streets in Manhattan
• Trees rejoice: Phone books are getting thinner because so many people have cell phones nowadays - with 1,796 pages, the 2007 Verizon white pages for Manhattan are the smallest EVER.
• A-Rod lashes out at paparazzi following him in Chicago
• Those free Shakespeare in the Park tickets mean waiting in line at dawn...
• ...and getting first dibs on Sarah Jessica Parker's "affordable" (read: cheap) clothing line means waiting since 11PM last night, when they could have been watching Sex and the City re-runs
• If someone in Vermont can be arrested for making faces at a police dog, we're sure it'll happen in NYC at some point
• Architecture styles of Dallas and Hong Kong on the Upper West Side? Ugh.
• The Politicker asks City Council member Tom White how he would have voted on the Sonny Carson street naming, had he not conveniently had a doctor's appointment on the day of the vote.

As if the whole failed Sonny Carson street naming proposal brouhaha needed more wackiness! Today, The New York Sun takes a look at City Councilman Charles Barron's chief of staff, Viola Plummer. During the Sonny Carson street naming debate, Plummer heckled City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and later threatened an assassination "on" another member, Leroy Comrie, who abstained from voting. Barron had laughed the incident off as political squabbling between political opponents, but one couldn't help be reminded of the assassination of Brooklyn Councilman James Davis in 1994

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn struck Sonny Carson's name from a list of of New Yorkers to be honored with a street named after them because she thought the political activist was too divisive a figure. Carson was a proponent of black economic empowerment and was distemperate in his views of other New York groups (e.g., whites, Jews, Koreans). Councilman Charles Barron, who shares Carson's past as a radical activist, thought Carson's exclusion from the list was more divisive than anything Carson had ever done, and indeed, voting on an amendment Wednesday to re-add his name split almost entirely down racial lines and the session was extremely acrimonious.

Things got heated in the City Council yesterday as former Black Panther and Council Member Charles Barron squared off against Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who had removed the name of Sonny Carson from a list of people to be honored with having streets named after them. Sonny Carson was an activist who railed against Korean grocers and, not wanting to limit himself to an accusation of anti-Semitism, said he was anti-white in general. Quinn feels that Carson was a divisive figure in New York's history and Barron thinks he was an important individual who united his community.

Mayor Bloomberg spent Memorial Day at a number of different events in Queens and spoke about a number of issues:

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: shots fired early this evening on Blake Ave. in Brooklyn, a homicide/suicide on 225th St. in Queens this afternoon, and a sexual assault early this morning on West 120th St. in Manhattan.
• City Council Speaker Christine Quinn wants black activist Sonny Carson stricken from the list of nominees for proposed street names because she thinks he was divisive and anti-white. Former Black Panther and current Brooklyn Council Member Charles Barron disagrees with the exclusion, noting that Brooklyn is full of streets named after racists and slaveholders, and calls Carson a hero.
• City Council members will vote on a proposal to restrict the growth of pedicabs in the city the day after Earth Day (Sunday the 22nd). Opponents hope the proximity of the two events will sway Council Members in favor of the pedicabs.
• The founder of the Zone Chefs diet service plead guilty along with several mobsters of running a boiler-room stock scheme designed to thin investors' wallets.
• Mayor Bloomberg reactivated a portion of the Staten Island Railroad in order to shift waste transfer from New York to New Jersey away from trucks and towards rail transport.
• Rep. Jerrold Nadler and City Councilwoman Gale Brewer are two more politicians who wrote letters in support of a class trip to Cuba, that wasn't actually a school event and that no one knew anything about at the time.
• Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff says the plan for a Santiago Calatrava-designed gondola is still in the works. The elaborate cable car system would transport passengers to and from Manhattan and Brooklyn via Governors Island.
• Despite pouring boiling water all over his victim to destroy DNA evidence, the Washington Hamilton Heights rapist did leave some at the scene and the police are in possession of it.
• The Tom Cruise-hosted fund-raiser to support a 9/11 rescue worker detoxification program isn't until tomorrow, but the City Council has already issued a proclamation honoring the late Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard for contributing his vitamin and sauna therapy program to the world.