One of our neighbors, the amazing writer Troy Lewis – https://www.gasmoneybook.com/bio-encore – forwarded us a powerful video from The People for the American Way entitled Defend the Black Vote:
2020 V.O.T.E !
Whose Land?
There is a great new map out that attempts to show the where the First People of North America lived pre-1492. The difficulty of representing the fluidity of boundaries is, of course, present here, but we are at least presented with fact that the United States was not an unoccupied space, ready for frictionless colonization.
In the screenshot below you can see how our region was the site of a dense, tightly intertwined network of cultural and linguistic groups.
Getting closer in, the island of Mannahatta was inhabited and used by two groups. The indigenous nation which fished, farmed, hunted, and lived on northern Mannahatta – in what is now Harlem – was the Wappinger Munsee Lenape
And the language spoken here before the Dutch arrived was Montauk huluniixsuwaakan, a variant of Munsee.
To see the full map which covers North American and Australia, and parts of other regions, click here: https://native-land.ca/
CB11 is collecting your opinions on what the city should budget for our community. Here is a quick Google Form for you to fill out. HNBA has already submitted a larger statement, but you can offer your own thoughts/ideas below:
From the beginning we need to acknowledge that the idea of Harlem being ‘established’ is a Eurocentric and colonial concept that has been repeatedly used to overwrite the histories of indigenous Americans. And, for the Lenape people who inhabited Manahatta for centuries before Henry Hudson passed by searching for a route to the orient, the area we call Harlem was a seasonal hunting and fishing ground.
On this Welikia Project screenshot, you can see our part of Manhattan as it was in 1609 before the direct contact with Europeans:
And in more detail, here is Marcus Garvey Park – a treed hill with flatlands nearby:
It was, in fact, those grassy areas where Harlem is now centered, that attracted the Dutch settlers – there was less forest clearance necessary to plant crops. Indeed a number of farms were established in Harlem during the early years of Dutch colonial rule and then abandoned after hostilities with the Lenape and other First People. Eventually, in 1658, Peter Stuyvesant
at the session of the director-general and council held at Fort Amsterdam in New Netherland, the 4th of March 1658, established ‘Nieuwe Haarlem‘.
NYPD Crime Response Time Still Lags Three Months Post-Protest
The City reports that:
NYPD response times to incidents remain snagged three months after protests against police spurred long delays — while other emergency responders are getting to the scene faster than before the coronavirus took hold.
That’s the conclusion of THE CITY’s comparison of medical, fire and police response times so far in 2020, a year defined by sudden and intense demands on those rushing to incidents.
Starting in late March and running through mid-May, the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a jump in ambulance calls. Then anti-racism protests that peaked in mid June put the Police Department to the test.
Data from the 911 call system shows that the delays have affected every type of NYPD call, including what police call “critical crime in progress” — encompassing armed violent incidents, robberies and burglaries.
Responses to those incidents — measured from the first call to the arrival of the first unit — took an average of 8 minutes and 5 seconds in the last four weeks of August 2020, compared with 6 minutes and 49 seconds during the same period a year earlier.
