Letters to the editor

Volume One, Issue 27, March 23 - 29, 2007

All for one, once and for all

To The Editor:
Re “The making of a NYC real estate legend” (news article, March 16):

Blessings on Ed Hamilton for writing and Chelsea Now for publishing the March 16 article on Daniel Peckham, a true Chelsea, Manhattan and New York City tenant hero. The well-researched and skillfully narrated story portrays, in context and accurately, Daniel Peckham the person, the tenant, the man who contends with a painful disability and a very toxic landlord.

My friend and the friend of many people in the neighborhood, Trisha Roach, who died of cancer in September 2003, was a neighbor of Mr. Peckham as a longtime tenant at 244 W. 21st St. When I spoke with her sister Anne Hunter (a Legal Aid attorney) in September 2006, she commented that, had Trisha lived, the landlord, Larry Tauber, would not have succeeded in driving the other six tenants from the eight-unit building.

I ask everyone who lives in Chelsea (including good landlords, but excepting bad landlords) to join in spirit and in substantial action with the late Trisha and the vital Daniel to defeat greedy real-estate speculators who use false demolition plans and other dirty tricks to eject people—especially the elderly, persons with disabilities and other vulnerable tenants—from their longtime or lifetime homes.

Journalist Hamilton rightly exposed Kristen Lombardi, of the Village Voice, to be a writer of slanderous drivel who knows and/or cares nothing about the plight of rent-stabilized tenants in a “hot” housing market. (That journalist should not be confused with Chris Lombardi, a female journalist who now is a staff writer for Chelsea Now.)

We can be glad that Housing Conservation Coordinators (located in Clinton) has supported Mr. Peckham with legal representation. We can hope that Chelsea Housing Group, Chelsea Coalition on Housing, and Tenants and Neighbors will be able to organize more support for him, and for the tenants at 246 W. 21st St., also owned by Tauber.

For those who missed the March 16 article, I quote Daniel Peckham’s words: “ . . . I am attached to my home here in Chelsea.

Yoga isn’t about letting people walk all over you. The Bhagavad Gita teaches that you have to stand up for what is right. If you know about wrongdoing and you don’t do anything about it, you are as guilty as those doing it.”

Kathy Casey

Down on Rudy

To The Editor:
Re “A guide to Rudy’s Downtown record” (editorial, March 16):

Your editorial on Rudy Giuliani’s downtown record and presidential ambitions left out what may be the most telling episode of all: his preposterous 2001 campaign for an “emergency extension” that would allow him to remain in office past the end of his elective term. This from a former U.S. Attorney and Associate Attorney General.

I don’t see how anyone who believes in the idea of government by law could ever pull the lever for a guy like Rudy.

Rob Buchanan

G.T.S. in defense of itself

To The Editor:
Re “Churlish churchmen in Chelsea and beyond” (talking point, March 16):

Kathy Casey’s “Talking Point” contains a number of misstatements that I would like to correct. Contrary to Ms. Casey’s assertion, the General Theological Seminary spent more than seven years exploring alternative solutions to its deferred maintenance and economic challenges, a fact that has been repeatedly discussed at the many public meetings in which we have participated over the last year and a half. Over the course of these discussions, the seminary disseminated more than two dozen reports and documents about its finances and the state of its buildings. Even a casual Internet search reveals that much of this information is public and has been reported in the pages of The Villager and Chelsea Now, but this fact is not reflected in Ms. Casey’s essay.

Ms. Casey baselessly accuses the Seminary of “not wasting any thought” on our church’s new Presiding Bishop when, in fact, Bishop Schori has been a welcome visitor to G.T.S. and even taped a nationally televised interview in the Seminary’s Chapel on the eve of becoming Presiding Bishop. She is a trustee of the Seminary and has been honored by our students for Women’s History Month—in fact, she will be returning here to preach next week. Ms Casey also mentions Bishop Gene Robinson, elected our church’s first openly gay bishop, but omits that Bishop Robinson is a graduate and former trustee of the Seminary and has given his public support to our plan for Ninth Avenue. Concerning the “defections by whole dioceses” as a result of the church’s progressive stand—again, the facts are that only one diocese out of more than 100, and only 50 parishes out of nearly 8,000, have left our church.

Ms. Casey characterizes the Seminary’s efforts as an attempt to preserve “ideologies, attitudes, perquisites and influence.” For the record, guests who stay at the Seminary’s homeless shelter or those who receive clothing from our student-operated clothes closet are not confronted with ideology or attitudes. Neither are the many visitors who enjoy our beautiful gardens or attend our public events. This accusation has no basis in fact.

“Talking Points” is obviously a forum for opinions, but as former Senator Patrick Moynihan famously said, “People may be entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.”

Bruce Parker
Parker is director of communications for the General Theological Seminary