Coalition to Protect Chinatown & LES

Walking Tour - Not For Sale: A Roadmap to Stop Displacement in Chinatown and the LES. Sunday, May 15, 2022, 3:30pm

Tour-Not For Sale: A Roadmap to Stop Displacement in Chinatown and the LES A walking tour of interests points based on the Chinatown Working Group Plan

We have sent a letter to NYPD 5 Precinct regarding their recent harassment and criminalization of Chinese workers who have been protesting against MOCA and its board co-chair Jonathan Chu's racism and displacement in Chinatown. We gave 5th Precinct two week's time to respond. See below.

April 24, 2022

Paul J Zangrilli
Deputy Inspector
19 Elizabeth St
New York, NY 10013

Dear Deputy Inspector Zangrilli,

This is the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side. We have protested for more than a year against the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) for its support of building a new jail in Chinatown, and its board co-chair Jonathan Chu for displacing Jing Fong Restaurant. During our weekly picket line in front of MOCA, the laid-off Jing Fong workers and supporters play drums to express their anger and determination to protect the community from displacement.

This past week has been shocking to us. As we exercised our First Amendment rights, you sent Detective Vincent Cheung three times to harass us by confiscating our drums and a folding table and threatening us with summons and criminal charges. In all three times, nearly all picketers were Chinese. During his harassment, Detective Cheung asked the Chinese workers for ID and began to write summons, but then tore up the summons when the English-speaking picketers showed up and interrogated the validity of the charge.

You should be ashamed of such racist intimidation and criminalization against Chinese immigrants. We demand you:
-Stop harassing the Chinese workers and the community who protest peacefully
-Discipline Detective Vincent Cheung who carried out the racist act
-Return the drums and the table confiscated from the protest
-Apologize to the community for your racism and support of displacement

We hope to hear from you and see the demands met in two weeks.

Sincerely,

Coalition to Protect Chinatown and LES

cc:
Mayor Eric Adams
NYPD
Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams
Manhattan Borough President Mark D. Levine
City Council Member Christopher Marte
State Senator Brian Kavanagh
State Assembly Member Yuh-Line Niou
State Senator Brian Kavanagh

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

The communities of Chinatown, Lower East Side and all of Council District 1 have come together to make history by electing Christopher Marte, the only candidate running on an anti-displacement platform in the district, to be our next City Councilmember. He won over 40% of first choice votes, far exceeding the establishment candidates who ran on their legacy of pro-developer policies. The combined total of Gigi Li (Councilmember Chin’s Chief of Staff) and Jenny Low (Speaker Corey Johnson’s Director of Administrative Services) still fell far short of Marte’s strong total, and as results continue to come in, his lead is only expected to increase.

The election result sends a strong and clear message: people across races and ethnicities in every corner of our district overwhelmingly reject the City’s displacement agenda! This is the result of our communities uniting to organize against luxury high-rises and the displacement of tenants, workers and small businesses. It is a mandate that people want protections like the Chinatown Working Group plan, a core policy of Marte’s campaign, to stop big real estate from destroying our neighborhoods. This is a victory for all of us, whether you have fought for years with growing confidence and determination, or are new to this fight, and joining us with energy and conviction!

Hope to see you at Friday’s press conference to celebrate our community’s victory!

Time: 7/2 Friday at 12pm

Location: 183 Centre St (in front of Eastbank)

* The Jing Fong workers’ picket line at Eastbank this weekend on 7/4 is moving to 7/2, 12-2pm

- The Coalition to Protect Chinatown & the Lower East Side

This City Council election, the Chinatown and the Lower East Side communities have spoken: Chris Marte is taking a decisive lead in the first choice votes, far exceeding all the other candidates, and is expected to win after the rank choice votes are counted.

This is a clear mandate that our communities reject business as usual. We are fed up of being told that we couldn’t stop the luxury megatowers from going up, and that it’s “too ambitious” for Chinatown and LES to have equal protection as the East Village that stops luxury high-rises and discourages real estate speculation. We are sick and tired of seeing Councilmember Chin and Mayor de Blasio collude with big developers and bad landlords to destroy good jobs, existing affordable housing and the environment. We are disgusted by the City that pits one neighborhood against the other and intensifies racial violence.

We never gave up when we encountered setbacks. We were not intimidated by facing off against our enemies in big real estate and their political representatives, which so many assumed were too powerful to overcome. If anything, they made us more united and determined to turn the tide, and we made it. This is a victory of tenants, workers, and small businesses across racial boundaries. And we are prepared, more than ever, to push for the Chinatown Working Group Rezoning Plan. This election result shows that when our communities come together to fight the City’s displacement agenda, we win.

Join us and be part of the change that’s coming!

ANNOUNCING THE CHINATOWN WORKING GROUP PLAN WEEK OF ACTION

*Monday 5/10, 12pm (eastbank 183 centre st)
CWG + SoHo/NoHo Against City’s Agenda Press Conference

*Tuesday 5/11, 2-4pm (smith houses, 21 st. james place)
NYCHA walkthrough with Jonathan Gardenhire + Chris Marte

*Wednesday 5/12, 4-6pm (east river park @ 6th st)
Tabling Session with East River Park Action

*Thursday, 5/13, 7pm (zoom)
Meet & Greet with City Council Candidate Chris Marte

*Friday 5/14, 10am (zoom)
Phone zap! Ask the mayor to support the CWG Plan!

*Friday 5/14, 5-6pm (59 henry @ market st)
AAD + Citygroup Architecture Collective local zoning tour

*Sunday 5/16 12-2pm (eastbank 183 centre st)
Picket Line with unionized Jing Fong Workers

*Monday 5/17, 6:30-7:30pm (zoom)
End of week CWG virtual town hall + info session

We sent out an open letter today to Mayor Bill de Blasio demanding he intervene to stop the forced closure of Jing Fong Restaurant and stop displacement in Chinatown:

Dear Mayor de Blasio,

The announcement of the closure of Chinatown’s iconic Jing Fong Restaurant has sent a shock wave in the community and beyond. Workers are losing their jobs and small businesses would lose faith in surviving the pandemic. Many are wondering if Chinatown can continue to exist with Jing Fong Restaurant, the heart of Chinatown, shut down.

Such a bleak prospect is caused directly by its landlord, Alex Chu and Jonathan Chu. The Chu family is the biggest landlord in Chinatown and the owner of Eastbank. Alex Chu and Jonathan Chu have benefited from Jing Fong’s business all these years, but during the pandemic when the business has gone down, they are heartlessly trying to use rent to force the restaurant to close.

You have come out against anti-Asian violence. The closure of Jing Fong Restaurant is having a serious impact on Chinatown. Isn’t this also violence against the Chinese community? Therefore, we call on you to immediately step in and take a stand to save Jing Fong and Chinatown from being destroyed by big developers and landlords like the Chu family:

1. stop the Chu family's eviction of Jing Fong Restaurant
2. stop the new jail and instead use the resource to fund Chinatown recovery
3. lower the rent and property tax to save Chinatown businesses
4. pass the Chinatown Working Group plan to protect the whole Chinatown and the Lower East Side from displacement.

Sincerely,

Zishun Ning
The Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side
[email protected]
(347) 845-8187

cc:
Corey Johnson, NYC Council Speaker
Jumaane Williams, NYC Public Advocate
Gale Brewer, Manhattan Borough President
Margaret Chin, NYC Council Member
Yuh-Line Niou, NYS Assembly Member
Brian Kavanagh, NY State Senator

STATEMENT ON TWO BRIDGES APPELLATE COURT RULING

We are disappointed that the Appellate Court overturned the community’s victory by connecting it to the City Council’s case, which does not address the City’s violation of zoning law. But we are not discouraged in our fight against the four luxury towers in Two Bridges.

We remember when four years ago, Councilmember Margaret Chin told us these out-of-scale towers were a done deal and there was nothing to be done to stop them. We were able to find out that the City violated its zoning law to approve the towers that would significantly displace the community and damage the neighborhood environment. We have stood up to our Councilmember, our Speaker, and our Borough President when they filed a phony lawsuit, which sought to approve the towers through another process and actually undermined our chances at victory in the court. We have stood up to Mayor de Blasio and his displacement agenda funded by these developers. We have stood up to groups that try to divide the community with misinformation. Our strategy to stop the towers has never singularly relied on the court, because we do not expect the City to stand up to developers. Our victories in delaying the towers have been won by the thousands of people we have done outreach to and brought into our fight.

The community gathered over 5,000 signatures not just in support of our lawsuit, but in support of the immediate passage of the entire Chinatown Working Group Plan. The Lower East Side and Chinatown deserve the protection granted to the East Village, and now this demand is even more urgent as we see the passage of the Plan as the only way to stop these towers, and all future towers that might cause displacement, permanently. We are currently exploring our next steps for legal action, but every day we continue to organize and fight against displacement and for the full plan.

Last year, our community won an injunction in court against the four out-of-scale luxury towers proposed in Two Bridges, proving that Mayor de Blasio violated the City’s own zoning law and temporarily stopping their construction. Two weeks ago, the communities of Chinatown and the Lower East Side and allies from across the city held a successful virtual rally against the mayor’s attempt to overturn our victory, and to galvanize support for passing the full Chinatown Working Group Rezoning Plan (CWG) to protect the neighborhood from overdevelopment.

However, recently there has been a disturbing flyer of misinformation circulated in the Two Bridges neighborhood and the adjacent NYCHA buildings, which claims that, “According to the current rules, the towers are legally allowed to be built in the future.” This is a blatant attempt to defend the City’s illegal approval of the towers when the community’s LESON (Lower East Side Organized Neighbors) lawsuit is still going on! It implies that the City has done nothing wrong and we should let them get away with destroying our community with luxury overdevelopment. Unsurprisingly, the flyer comes from supporters of Council Member Margaret Chin, who has been spreading the same lie for years while trying to approve the towers through the City Council’s land use process.

The flyer also asks the community to support the so-called “Two Bridges Community Plan” that sets a height limit on development in ONLY the Two Bridges area. It purposefully leaves out that this so-called “community plan” is a small part of the much more comprehensive CWG plan that protects all of Chinatown and the Lower East Side, including NYCHA. Despite claiming this plan “was created by and for residents,” it conveniently ignores how the CWG plan was originally created.

In 2008, the City passed the racist East Village Rezoning that set a height limit on new development in the mostly White, middle-class East Village, but excluded Chinatown and the Lower East Side, communities made up of predominantly working-class Chinese, Black and Latino people. Without protection against speculation, luxury developments have poured into our neighborhood, driving up rents and real estate tax, displacing tenants, workers and small businesses. We came together to create the CWG plan with the goal of having the same protection as the East Village, and to not let the City pit communities against each other. In 2015, the plan was rejected by Mayor de Blasio, who represents the interests of big developers, and who later went on to greenlight the Two Bridges towers.

Proponents of the so-called “Two Bridges Community Plan” are actually helping the City to repeat what it did in 2008: protecting one small piece of the area and leaving the rest of the community vulnerable to displacement. Without any action to pass the rest of the CWG plan, their message is: Two Bridges matters most, screw the rest of you. This is what Mayor de Blasio and the big developers want to see: communities that are too divided to hold the City accountable for its displacement agenda.

We will not be fooled by these lackeys of corrupt politicians into seeing our neighbors as enemies and Chin and de Blasio as our friends. Our fight against the Two Bridges towers and for equal protection has shown that only through unifying all of Chinatown and the Lower East Side are we able to take control over the future of our communities. United we stand, divided we fall. Let’s reject the City and its supporters’ misleading and divisive narrative, and instead, join forces to demand the City pass the full CWG plan!

For more information about the CWG plan, visit: chinatownworkinggroup.com

Thank you to all who joined our rally yesterday, our 3rd annual MLK Day action. We will continue to fight for our community. !

Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side hold MLK day rally | amNewYork Members of the Lower Manhattan community held a rally to announce their day in court to continue the fight against the construction of the Two Bridges Luxury