87 Lander Street Bitches!!! I left Newburgh when i was a kid... last time i went bac I seen 7 memorials in one day!...
http://www.youtube.com/...
On May 21, 2009 at 07:26 AM, ambient1 said:
Will the last person to leave Newburgh please light the fuse.
http://forums.recordonline.com/...
Ever since 9/11 I have a horrible masochistic habit. I sleep with CNN on, all night long. There is no telling the damage to my psyche during the past eight years. I often wake in the middle of the night when my subconscious hears a key word, half of me always on alert. So, on Wednesday night what I heard in my sleep was "terrorist plot...Newburgh" and I opened my eyes and woke my husband. Pretty scary stuff, buildings targetted in Riverdale, missiles for planes at Stewart Airport which is about five minutes from my home. And yet, due to my training in the Bush Years, my intuition was telling me something just wasn't adding up.
So the next morning I head off to school where I work in the Newburgh Enlarged City School District. I stop briefly on the way to my classroom to discuss the event with a teacher who doesn't torture herself with the evening news, and she and I agree that we're kind of unimpressed with a bust of people who don't have the connections or the means to actually carry out a terrorist attack without the help of the same people busting them. I remember the guy who asked for shoes sometime ago when another bust like this happened. http://www.latimes.com/... We discuss the situation and mutually lament that the city we're trying so hard to educate kids in will have another problem to contend with.
So I've got this in my heart to start the day. The very next issue I have is that I need to contact a family to discuss getting help for one of my students. Mom has been trying really hard to have some issues that are keeping her from learning addressed but her medical insurance won't cover the tests that she needs. I try calling her to set up an appointment but she doesn't answer.
The little girl I'm calling about approaches my desk and says, "I know why my mom isn't answering the phone. The FBI gave one of my relatives a fake bomb and he tried to blow something up with it." Just like that, verbatim. I ask her to sit down for a minute to buy some time to think. Then I call her back to my desk and ask her who she'd told this to. She says, "I told the kids at breakfast, but they didn't care." I tell her not to tell anyone else. Then, I add, "In this country everyone is innocent until proven guilty." My God, I have so much more to tell this little girl.
I've kept this a secret with the exception of alerting my administrator in the event that any of the kids at breakfast really did care enough to go home and share it with their families. I won't be a part of terrorist-mania about this. I just won't. Neither will my city, apparently. While people all around the world are viewing the "terror cell" Newburgh Four walking the perp walk, people here in Newburgh are just shaking their heads.
Here's the story, in brief "townie" talk, for those who haven't followed it. In 2002 a Pakistani guy was caught helping people who spoke his language cheat on their DMV permit tests. He worked at the DMV as a translator. This, being the heinous crime that it is, enabled the FBI to make him a deal he couldn't refuse to help them terrorist-shop throughout New York. He made a couple of busts by hanging around mosques and convinced two guys in upstate New York/Albany area to help him "launder money" to buy some fake WMD. He recently tried to set up a sting in Wappingers in the Hudson Valley but the members of the Mosque called him on being a government agent and sent him packing. As a reader of our local newspaper commented recently, "Duh, if someone is trying to sell you a bomb guys, it's probably the FBI." In the same month, June of 2007 he started hanging around a mosque in Newburgh.
The elders of the mosque suspected that he was with the FBI. There were a few recent converts, all had rap sheets, all were drug users, who began hanging out with him. He would approach them in the parking lot, offer money, take them to our local Denny's, terrorist hot-spot, and I imagine he coaxed them with Grand Slam Breakfasts, but the paper says it was Rice and Beans. He reportedly asked them to join "his team."
So the "leader" of the cell, after playing baseball with his stepson nearby the senior center he volunteers at, rolls himself a bone and gets in the car with our DMV bandit last Wednesday evening. Joining him, reportedly, is a schizophrenic from Haiti that was reportedly too insane to be deported (but not enough to keep him from getting dumped into Newburgh), who lived in an apartment where the police discovered bottles of urine and raw chicken strewn about....and at least one other Newburgh resident. They arrested the fourth guy but haven't explained how he's involved. The other two of the Newburgh four have the same last name but aren't related. One came back to Newburgh from college in N.Y.C. to take care of his little brother who was dying of cancer, he worked at a local steakhouse. You'd have to be from Newburgh to understand why coming back to "The Burgh" after getting out would mess you up. All that I've read about the other guy is that his lawyer says he's been a cocaine addict since he was a teenager. The Pakistani DMV bandit drives them, for unknown reasons, to the Bronx, an hour or so away, to blow up a synagogue even though there are several right in Newburgh, they lay out the fake WMD, and there you have it.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...
http://www.recordonline.com/...
The next day I'm listening to an eight year old tell me that the FBI gave her relative a fake bomb. Can you imagine having that in your head at age eight? Then I think about the Iraqi kids who knew they were dying, or saw their relatives dying for fake bombs and I really hate all of us for this death-drama-game we have played and allowed to be played with children looking on. I decide the title for this diary.
Yesterday the phone calls started coming in to our house. We go one from relatives in Mississippi who I'm sure believe I'm continuing to brainwash their son, now to minimize the terrorists threat. That's the only "taker" on the FBI saved the world again story though. My friend from a nearby town where mostly white-folks live got a call from her husband on-tour in Germany when the arrest went down. Within a few hours they were of the opinion that the FBI had gone out and arrested some "idiots." My son, just in from college, said, "What, did they pull out a map and say, where can we find the poorest most f'ed up place to get some pretend terrorists?" Even my Republican dad, who likes Obama but still calls him "Your President" had this to say: "If this is what the FBI is doing, can you imagine what else they have and have not done?" General consensus in Orange and Rockland County, polling my friends and family: "What a joke."
I'm really writing today to tell you about Newburgh though. It would be nice if the FBI did some real work here. Maybe they could find our missing tax revenue, or explain the recent lay-off of teachers and school tax decrease, even though our district took the Federal Stimulus Package. Maybe they could look into the gang-ridden streets in which our youth is murdering one another but our police won't walk the beat anymore. Maybe they could patrol the high school where shots were fired within yards of the school this year but the police wouldn't station a car. Maybe they could keep kids walking down the street safe. My daughter's friend was stabbed in the heart last month for an Ipod. Now that they've kept us safe from "terrorists" with fake WMD, will they replace our leadership and rebuild our city?
Yesterday I watched a Newburgh City Council Meeting on television. I heard the elders of the East Side of Newburgh ask the council for help. I heard them ask what happened to funding for Youth programs that were promised to Newburgh. I couldn't help but feel the same sinking feeling I did at the Board of Education meeting I recently attended when I heard that the SAVE room teachers who deal with behavior problems in school would be laid off, along with school psychologists, along with the school's support services for unwed teen mothers, which gives them the opportunity to stay in school. I think about the Powerpoint my school just gave in which we were told that we were diproportionately classifying the African American school children we have as "emotionally disturbed." Then I thought about the eight year old boy I tried to get services for last year who spent the entire schoolday, most days, tearing his pencils apart into piles of shredded wood, who told me he couldn't do his homework because he was too busy cleaning the cages of the pitbulls he shared his bedroom with, who robbed students and teachers of any electronic device he could and knew how to strip them within minutes...no counselling for him. If the numbers are too high, than the emotional disturbances simply do not exist. We don't even have any program in place in our schools to combat the gangs that have taken over the streets of Newburgh, that literally have territory inside the walls of our high school. My son sent me a link to this video done by a rapper about Newburgh. What hope is there for a town that embraces its crime statistics like this? http://www.youtube.com/...
If you want to understand what I'm up against in Newburgh, watch the video, yeah, they said even the kids will "cap" (kill) you there, you didn't imagine it. I'm not only teaching kids that I'm trying to keep out of gangs, I'm teaching kids whose parents have made them a way of life, who live in a community in which they are seen as heros. Read the comments carefully.
We needed the FBI to come here and give these kids more reason to mistrust the law? Really? For years New York State has been dumping its criminals into the city of Newburgh, as if we didn't have enough crime here already. The county has dumped its sex offenders here to live amongst these children:
According to state officials, there are seven sex offenders under parole supervision, three of them Level Three.
The other 13, who are either sex offenders who finished their sentences and relocated to Newburgh or are under county probation supervision, are required to report to Newburgh police every three months.
There are four sex offenders with outstanding arrest warrants for failing to report, but none of the 68 has been convicted for a sexual offense since residing in Newburgh, Bloom said.
http://archive.recordonline.com/...
The city of New York cleaned its streets and sent everyone they picked up to nearby Camp Laguardia (where the current "ringleader" of the "terrorist cell" held residence, and where his girlfriend currently works.)
Residents and local officials in the towns of Blooming Grove and Chester have long complained that Camp LaGuardia is a dumping ground for some of the city's most violent homeless criminals, bussed here on a daily basis.
During a lengthy Eyewitness News investigation, we found several fugitive felons at the camp in violation of a promise by the city not to let that happen.
http://abclocal.go.com/...
The idea that the city of Newburgh is supposed to be upset, remorseful, or somehow frightened by the recent FBI sting here is ridiculous. Then again, maybe nobody cares what the city of Newburgh thinks about this at all.
Newburgh, once the "Jewel of the Hudson" was taken down largely by racial prejudice and idiocy, which culminated in disaster beginning in 1961:
Newburgh was faced with an immigration of families from the South "who have no visible means of support," which compounded an already overcrowded city with dilapidated housing (Ritz 32). Mitchell asked, "why should a city like Newburgh be the receiving point for a horde of citizens seeking a new way of life when we are literally bursting at the seams with crowded slums and already high caseloads..."
Mitchell believed that the city's liberal welfare policies encouraged black immigration from the South. He believed welfare recipients should work for their monthly checks and that many welfare recipients were cheating the system. Translating his philosophy into law, Mitchell drew up the 22-point Newburgh Plan, of which the City Council adopted 13. Among these provisions designed to discourage cheating and make the poor earn their payments (which is why it was referred to as "workfare") are:
"All able-bodied males on relief of any kind who are capable of working are to be assigned to the chief of building maintenance for work assignment on a 40-hour week."
All mothers of illegitimate children are to be advised that should they have any more children out of wedlock they shall be cut off from relief."
"All recipients who are not disabled, blind, [non]-ambulatory or otherwise incapacitated shall report to the Department of Public Welfare monthly for a conference regarding the status of their case."
The State Supreme Court struck down 12 of the points, but allowed number 13, which required recipients to report to the welfare department for a conference and to receive their check. The controversy scarred Newburgh and potentially hurt its reputation, which in turn probably reduced its level of Federal redevelopment funding (Hinkle). Newburgh 's woes made national news when it became the subject of an hour-long NBC documentary in 1961.
Eventually Mitchell would resign, and the city would pick up the pieces as best as it could. The Republican city council continued its mission to do something about the "slums" of Water Street, which meant urban renewal. The guiding document for this and other urban renewal efforts were outlined in the 1967-1969 Comprehensive Development Plan for the City of Newburgh, funded primarily by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (Hinkle). The plan attributed Newburgh's decline since 1930 to obsolete street design and antiquated buildings. The solution for promoting economic development would be to physically remove these impediments. The city's streets, which were designed to accommodate trolley cars, horses, and pedestrians, deterred people with cars from navigated through the city streets. Also, its commercial buildings and housing were too old and contributed to the blight.
The plan was also laced with racial prejudice, blaming its problems on its increasing number of non-white migrants. The plan states: "unless the remaining white man non-Puerto Rican and his money can be encouraged to stay and additional large numbers of such persons reenter the eastern portion of Newburgh, it will go almost entirely black and Puerto Rican." Unfortunately most of the residents of the renewal area were not white.
Executing the plan's recommendations meant leveling almost the entire waterfront and commercial district, Water Street, and most of the housing that was built before 1890 (which comprised most of the city's housing stock). In its place, the city had grandiose visions of a shopping area, convention center, government complex, and international port. Among the positive suggestions in the plan were construction of low- and middle-income housing units and a push for regionalism to correct the inequities in investment and tax revenues created by suburban growth (Hinkle).
When all was said and done, the city completely razed
http://www.firststepsdesign.com/...
Now, put that all in a pot and stir it with its recent national notoriety. Mix in the attitude of people in the surrounding county,
On May 21, 2009 at 07:26 AM, ambient1 said:
Will the last person to leave Newburgh please light the fuse.
Newburgh has really come a long way in the past 50 years. Welfare is a wonderful thing.
http://forums.recordonline.com/...
Add to it the fact that terrorist-shopping isn't the only kind of recruiting going on in Newburgh. My kids went to Newburgh Free Academy. Even though I had "opted out" of their information being shared with military recruiters, a huge truck pulled up to the high school in 2005 and my son was offered the opportunity to play a video game and receive gifts in exchange for his name and address for the army recruiters there. When I checked to see if the same truck had gone to the more affluent Cornwall High School, just a few miles from Newburgh, I found that it hadn't. My daughter accidentally filled out a form in her Spanish class that she thought was for college recruitment. I contacted the school about this after a military recruiter called my home. This, despite the fact that recruiters are not supposed to be allowed into classrooms. The principal never even bothererd to return my phone call. I know of a friend of my kids who comes from a very troubled home. The recruiters hounded her night and day,spoke against her family, got this young lady to enlist and shipped her off to Iraq. I once argued with a guidance counsellor about the recruiter's disproportionate to other schools presence at our high school and she said, "You don't understand, this is all these kids have." When I was a substitute several years back at one of our elementary schools I noticed the presence of a military "volunteer" dressed in uniform who daily took the kids from different classrooms outside for a "walk" around their building. I saw him line the kids up and get them to walk while chanting...left, left, left, right left..with him singing other things over their chants. The military has done its shopping here as well.
So I ask the FBI, and the government, now that we've got ourselves fake WMD and a terrorist cell, is it time for Operation Newburgh Freedom? Will you come in and rebuild our city after you replace our leadership? Will you win the heart and mind of my eight year old student? Congratulations on harnessing the insanity and despair of our city. Once everyone is done congratulating themselves, will any of you consider what to do about the crippling poverty, corruption and racism that is destroying our nation from the inside out? At the very least, can we get a color-alert code?
Just sitting in the city of Newburgh, simmering in the stirred pot.
UPDATE: Deoliver wrote a great diary Friday night about elements I've covered here. Read it for more information:
http://www.dailykos.com/...