For Immediate Release
Contact: Imani Henry 646-820-6039
Protest Commenced Sunday Outside of Alicia Glen’s UWS Home
Demanding Her Immediate Resignation as Deputy Mayor
#HowAliciaStoleTheCity #WantedforDisplacement #AllWeWantForXmasIsHousing #ByeAlicia
BAN Videos : Shot and Edited by Nadeem Salaam and Tom Knight
Alicia Glen Wants To Displace Us , Fa LaLa La La La La https://youtu.be/Ms2wLl4p1tw
All I Want for the Holidays is Housing: https://youtu.be/cKf7VKZIlvw
Silent Night, Flashing Lights :https://youtu.be/lX2Kt5N9wJo
NEW YORK – For the second year in a row, dozens of residents gathered outside the home of Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen during the height of the holiday season to demand she step down. Armed with anti-gentrification carols and santa hats the residents, representing the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens, gathered to demand Glen’s resignation and a moratorium on the mayor’s housing plan, Housing NY, which centers on 15 upzonings in communities of color, and the effective subsidization of luxury development that’s largely unaffordable to long-time tenants. As Deputy Mayor of Housing, Glen took lead on developing Housing NY, and oversees its implementation.
“Although Alicia Glen isn’t a household name in our city, millions of New Yorkers have felt the devastating impact of her housing policies. In a moment where we see record-breaking homelessness in New York City, Glen, a former Goldman Sachs executive and the current Deputy Mayor of Housing and Economic Development, displays wanton disregard for those displaced, and continues to exclusively push the interests of greedy developers. She is a corrupt agent, firmly in the pocket of various special interests, and she needs to be dismissed from city government. We reject her attempts to superficially co-opt the language of progress and feminism, while her policies endanger the most vulnerable in our society. Alicia Glen must resign!” said Maya Shoukri, of the Brooklyn Anti-Gentrification Network.
Protesters say that Glen refuses to acknowledge the demonstrated effects gentrification has had and continues to have on communities of color and low-to-moderate income communities; namely widespread rent burden, increased police harassment, rampant displacement, and a rising homelessness crisis.
“It is the responsibility of NYC’s administration to protect the rights of all of its residents and work to level the playing field on injustice. This administration cannot continue to promote gentrification and displacement and further marginalize communities of color, who have been fighting to address long legacies of systemic oppression and disinvestment, while espousing the rhetoric of justice. There is nothing innovative about gentrification and displacement and additionally, in the face of climate change, exposes a lack of vision and commitment to a just future,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, Executive Director of UPROSE.
With shelter numbers reaching nearly 70,000 and the well-documented relationship between rezoning, speculation, rising prices and displacement, residents on Sunday wanted to make it clear that Alicia Glen is dangerously unfit for the position she holds and must step down.
“Alicia Glen says she wishes the city had more money to invest in housing but for many years homeless rights advocates such as Picture the Homeless have been pushing the city to redirect the millions of dollars being pumped to the shelter system into the creation of low-income housing. One such victory came just this week, when Mayor de Blasio announced the city will convert cluster sites, private apartments currently housing homeless families, into affordable housing by allowing nonprofit agencies to purchase these apartments and using eminent domain if landlords don’t cooperate. These are the types of strategies advocates have long called on the city to use and if solving the housing crisis is genuinely a priority for Alicia Glen and the mayor, the city would up the ante and truly go after landlords and developers who want us gone from our communities so they can raise the rents!” said Raquel Namuche of Queens Is Not For Sale.
Residents on Sunday chanted “Alicia Glen, how do you pay your rent?” a chant in direct reference to the exposés last year regarding donations made to the de Blasio administration in exchange for meetings with Glen to get their projects approved. As the NY Daily News reported, “During the 15-month period, her schedule shows about half of her meetings or calls with non-City Hall employees—95—were with 42 individuals who had hosted fund-raisers, gathered campaign donations for de Blasio or given to the mayor’s non-profit, the now-defunct Campaign for One New York.” Residents at the demonstration on Sunday stated that it is impossible for Glen and the de Blasio administration to represent the needs of low-income New Yorkers with this type of behavior.
“Everyday New Yorkers are not given the same level of access to this administration as the for-profit developers. This imbalance of access has resulted in housing policies that drastically benefit the profits of developers while New Yorkers, who have contributed generations of taxes, labor, and love into this city, are being displaced daily. There must be accountability and transparency so that we know we are being given the best deal for all of New York not just the best deals for the pockets of developers,” said Anna Burnham, Brooklyn resident and housing organizer.
The protest was well-received by those passing by, and Glen’s neighbors were eager to hear about the ways she has contributed to the affordability crisis in NYC. The action came shortly after Glen’s boss, Mayor de Blasio, was re-elected for a second term. It was important to protesters to make clear that de Blasio’s re-election doesn’t signal complacency or local support for the mayor’s housing plan.
“Alicia Glen enjoys the privilege of living in the community she grew up in while serving as the architect of so many New Yorkers’ displacement. And we, the residents of New York are paying for it figuratively and literally! We want to be afforded the same privilege that she is, the right to stay in the neighborhood that we have grown up in, invested in and been nourished by. Something tells me, that if developers were coming into her neighborhood and disguising the removal of she and her neighbors as a plan to create more affordable housing, she would not be so accepting of this so-called inevitable change” said Zakiyah Sayyed, Brooklyn Anti-Gentrification Network.
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BANgentrification 