42 OCTOBER 10, 2019 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
CB 5 shames the borough at shelter meeting
The borough of Queens was
disgraced by its own sons
and daughters at a Community
Board 5 public hearing Monday
night where a mob mentality
and bigoted anti-homeless vitriol
infected nearly 1,000 citizens.
Just a week earlier, CB5 District
Manager Gary Giordano said he was
hoping to have a calm and respectful
hearing but opponents of a proposed
homeless shelter in Glendale
began heckling during a moment of
silence for the four homeless men
who were beaten to death over the
weekend in Chinatown.
Things quickly turned uglier
when CB5 member Crystal Wolfe, a
Maspeth resident who authored a
comprehensive book on the homeless
called “Our Invisible Neighbors,”
which dispelled some of the
misconceptions that surround New
York City’s homeless crisis.
Wolfe was compelled to write the
book after witnessing the nightly
protests against the city’s plan to
convert the Maspeth Holiday Inn
Express into a homeless shelter in
2017.
EDITORIAL
More than 1,000 residents attended the heated Community Board 5 hearing reagrding the proposed homeless
shelter in Glendale. Photo: Max Parrott/QNS
She was shouted down by the
crowd as she tried to debunk what
she deemed to be misinformation —
shouted down by many of the same
people who inspired her to write
the book in the first place.
Raquel Namuche, an organizer
with the Ridgewood Tenants Union
implored the crowd to work together
to fight City Hall to build “housing
for those that need it.” The blowback
from the mob was so intense,
Namuche’s own mother moved
forward to protect her, before police
escorted her group from the
auditorium.
The meeting cratered even
further when a woman named
Isabella from Astoria stepped to
the microphone and brought the
crowd to cheers when she said, “I do
not care about the homeless. I feel
sorry, but I don’t want them in my
backyard. They are a ticking time
bomb. I hope somebody’s going to
burn the place down.”
That was when Assistant Commissioner
of Government Affairs Matt
Borden put his foot down from the
stage.
“You can’t threaten to bomb a shelter
where there are people living,”
he said. “I refuse to accept a New
Yorker would say that.”
But she did, and the exchange
went viral on social media bringing
shame to a borough that fought
so hard for decades to dispel its
Archie Bunker image made famous
in “All in the Family”, the 70s sitcom
created by Norman Lear. So many
Queens residents watch the racist
rantings of Bunker today and say
that’s not us, not these days.
Make them watch video clips of
the CB5 meeting and they will have
to admit, Archie Bunker still lives on
in the borough’s DNA. Isabella and
the mob that did the shouting, ironically
inside the auditorium at Christ
the King, proved it to be true.
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