The Manhattan Times

From the start the Uptown Arts Stroll has been about more than art.

by Robert Shapiro, first vice president of sales, Massey Knakal Realty Services

A sense of optimism has begun to return to the New York City real estate investment property market as transactional activity has been steadily rising quarter by quarter. Although this overall trend is being felt in neighborhoods all over the city, nowhere is this more prevalent than in Northern Manhattan (East & West Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood). With over $116,000,000 in sales consisting of 35 transactions in the first quarter of 2010, it is clear that Northern Manhattan is experiencing one of the sharpest rebounds in activity.

by Debra Lee Santos

10 am - May 21st, 2010

I explained to a friend last night that he wasn’t “exactly” my uncle – no, he had married into this illustrious family; he had not been born a brother to either of my parents. I said this as a way of making things clear, of distinguishing between the nearly 25 aunts and uncles I do have by way of lineage, blood and birth, as opposed to the nearly as many wonderful women and men who have chosen to marry them, bear and raise my cousins and more, and do the work of living.

As the immigration issue heats up in Washington, the Arizona State Legislature recently passed shockingly regressive legislation that requires state police officers to “in the course of any contact with an alleged perpetrator” establish immigration status. The law also makes it a state crime to live in or travel through Arizona illegally. Essentially, the Arizona State Legislature has declared open season on racial profiling. Not since the repealing of the Jim Crow Laws due to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 has a policy in the United States been so racially divisive.

Dear President Obama,

We, the undersigned community leaders, activists and elected officials from northern Manhattan in New York City are deeply disappointed by your decision to commit an additional 30,000 troops and 30 billion dollars to the longstanding Afghanistan conflict.  We believe that our view accurately reflects the sentiments of the great majority of the residents of our community.

As soon as Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070 into law last Friday, many of New York’s elected officials and immigration advocates were condemning the law.

To the editor,

I am writing to enlist your readers in a common cause to defend our Constitution. The provisions of the Arizona immigration law signed into law Friday by Gov. Jan Brewer are not only mean-spirited but also suffer from a number of unconstitutional defects.

Editor’s Note: The following is Community Board 12’s response to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed 2011 budget.

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the mayor’s proposed preliminary budget for fiscal year 2011. Community Board 12, Manhattan seeks city funding and the City Council’s political support for its longstanding and as ‑ yet unmet needs repeatedly articulated in our capital and expense budget requests, year after year. We hope that we will finally obtain definitive and affirmative responses to our requests.

Dear Governor Paterson:

This letter is to respectfully request your immediate attention to the new law that will go into effect on July 1st when Puerto Rican birth certificates will be invalid.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

The following letters are from Boy Scouts in Troop 529 who are working on their Citizenship Merit Badge.