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suddenly snapped into my mind in part it was because i was caught off guard that vito with whom i had never before exchanged two words knew who i was without my even introducing myself certainly i was aware that quite a few people read the brooklyn optimist and that i have made no secret of my opposition to mr lopez s iron fisted rule of our borough but i was surprised to discover that vito is apparently one of my loyal readers what really made me hold my tongue however was that i realized in the course of my split second reflection that vito s accusation was misplaced i don t hate the kings county democratic party in fact i love it why else would i have spent long hours over the last couple of years exposing in my blog our elected officials confounding and often corrupt machinations why else would i have run successfully to represent my swath of greenpoint as a county committee member in the brooklyn democratic party why else would i have proudly joined gerald esposito in his city council campaign to purge our party of do nothing machine candidates like diana reyna and maritza davila and bring about real change in brooklyn why else would i have spent priceless hours away from my lovely wife and baby to fight to reform brooklyn politics it is because i hold the core belief that dissent in the face of injustice and inequity is the foundation of our democracy or as our great senator robert kennedy put it the sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country from time to time i get letters from readers questioning how i can call myself an optimist while at the same time detailing so many causes for cynicism invariably i respond that it is my unwavering conviction that no matter how bleak new york politics may be that somehow some way together we can fix it and restore integrity to city hall and albany that truly makes me an optimist it is a sad old game of party bosses to insist that blind fealty to their rule is the only way to pledge allegiance to one s party but what vito lopez calls hate i call hope by casting light upon our party s darkness i do not aim to destroy our party but to demand that our party be better contrary to popular belief the kings county democratic party doesn t belong to vito lopez it belongs to you and me it is not just our right to assert our leadership of our party it is our duty once again i differ to the eloquence of senator robert kennedy we know full well the faults of our democracy the handicaps of freedom the inconvenience of dissent but i know of no american who would not rather be a servant in the imperfect house of freedom than be a master of all the empires of tyranny well perhaps that s not true about mr lopez but certainly it s true about me posted by about the optimist at 11 29 am 2 comments labels brooklyn optimist diana reyna gerald esposito greenpoint kings county democratic party maritza davila morgan pehme robert kennedy seneca club vito lopez thursday june 4 2009 obama power gives rise to recession fair the optimist is proud to be friends with ellen enders one of greenpoint s brightest neighborhood activists and a driving force behind the recession survival fair also one of the funniest people on earth ellen conceived the recession survival fair along with some of her fellow alumni of the brooklyn for barack juggernaut who wanted to do more than just pay lip service to the president s call for service the recession survival fair will be a non partisan community service event to assist brooklyn and new york city residents in tackling the challenges springing from the economic recession attendees will have free access to important information and professional help on a range of relevant topics including healthcare food and nutrition job search debt and personal finance and tenants rights and foreclosure who doesn t need at least one of those things these days here s your chance to get all of them for free on top of that dkms the world s largest bone marrow donor center will also be conducting a drive for potential donor matches all help will be provided free of charge although participants will also be invited to offer their own expertise to the community in exchange this event gets the optimist s absolute highest stamp of approval and makes him feel warm and fuzzy all over this is really bringing change to brooklyn here s the 4 ws who brooklyn for barack 718 757 8572 in association with the stuyvesant heights parents association what recession survival fair to provide professional info and help to brooklyn and new york city residents hurt by the economic recession when saturday june 6 11 a m to 4 p m where mount lebanon baptist church 230 decatur st near lewis ave in bed stuy brooklyn and an h how subway a c to utica ave bus b15 to bainbridge street b25 b26 to lewis avenue b43 b46 to macdonough street posted by about the optimist at 1 54 pm 1 comment labels bed stuy brit in brooklyn brooklyn for barack dkms ellen enders mount lebanon baptist church recession survival fair stuyvesant heights parents association friday may 29 2009 the responsibility of the blogger while america may boast the best paid bloggers it certainly doesn t have the most important that distinction goes to bloggers like hao wu of china who was imprisoned for 140 days for writing about subversive subjects online and omid reza mirsayafi a 29 year old cultural blogger who died under mysterious circumstances in an iranian jail after being sentenced to two years for insulting the supreme guide ayatollah khomeini these so called cyberdissidents weren t writing fiery polemics online calling for the overthrow of their country quite to the contrary they dared to write the truth about their oppressive governments usually couched in satire to tone down the sting of their reporting they knew full well the danger of writing what their newspapers were afraid or forbidden to print but they understood that it was their responsibility to their country the international community and themselves to use the most powerful mode of communication in the world to expose injustice and call for change while we can breathe a sigh of relief that america is not a tyrannical state like china or iran we should not be so quick to pat ourselves on the back according to reporters without borders 2008 analysis the united states ranks a dismal 36th among the world s nations for freedom of the press and the efforts made by the authorities to respect and ensure respect for this freedom america s ranking ties it with bosnia and herzegovina cape verde south africa spain and taiwan and sets us behind considerably behind countries like namibia tied for 23 latvia tied for 7 and luxembourg tied for 1 some may dismiss this ranking as another shameful legacy of the bush years but we are almost certain to once again tumble lower on this list under the obama administration as the nation s newspapers quickly perish and the few surviving news sources fall victim to both devastating newsroom cutbacks and media consolidation however while it may well be too late to save our newspapers it is not too late to save journalism that s where bloggers come in at this year s brooklyn blogfest hundreds of bloggers from new york city came together to discuss why we blog some bloggers said their motivation was self expression others wanted to focus on an interest and jake dobkin founder of the gothamist got the strongest response by offering strategies to make money from blogging unfortunately all of these reasons are tantamount to teaching a student how to write great poetry and then telling that student they should use their newfound gift to get a job writing greeting cards what is extraordinary about the blogfest is that it brings together hundreds of passionate thoughtful observant and talented writers and photographers who are concerned for their communities and the welfare of the people around them what is a failure of the event is that the bloggers are never told that together we outnumber the reporters at the new york times and if we were all worked together as citizen journalists we could rival its worldwide influence hao wu and omid reza mirsayafi understood intuitively the responsibility of blogging they realized that blogging is a force so powerful that it can even stand up to big brother information discussion investigation these are the core foundational components of democracy blogging is the most extraordinary tool in the history of media because it is the only weapon that truly levels the playing field between the haves and the have nots and lets independent reporters write on a platform as accessible to the public as the largest television network as yesterday article s how politicians and their publicists took over the press from the true news blog made clear the death of newspapers and the shrinking of america s media has allowed politicians developers unscrupulous ceos and their ilk to spin scheme and steal with impunity the only recourse the citizens of this country have is to speak out wherever there is silence and ask questions whenever the explanations we are given are inadequate blog about the shady building going up on your block blog about how your local elected official never returns your calls blog about the sorry state of your child s school write the stories that are unwritten and write the stories that have already been written better if you do so your fellow bloggers will follow your lead and eventually all of us might have the information we need to really know what s going on in our world posted by about the optimist at 12 10 pm 2 comments labels ayatollah khomeini big brother blogger brooklyn blogfest 2009 hao wu jake dobkin luxembourg omid reza mirsayafi true news from changenyc org tuesday march 24 2009 council candidate steve levin bored by nydia unenthused by reform though the optimist used his post yesterday to sneak over the pulaski bridge from his home in greenpoint and weigh in on queens politics rest assured dear readers that doesn t mean he has stopped paying attention to the important affairs of his own community quite to the contrary the optimist has been keeping careful watch on the council race to succeed david yassky that s why david michaelson s account of this weekend s central brooklyn independent democrats cbid annual dinner was of particular interest to him the following is an excerpt from michaelson s a k a mole333 account of the event in which he describes council candidate steve levin s reaction to our congresswoman nydia velazquez s speech about the excitment of the new obama administration if you ve never heard levin s name you may have nonetheless seen him joined at the hip to his boss vito lopez personally every time i see levin who is in his late 20s he strikes me as a person who has sacrificed his youth to the cold calculating cynicism of old age i ll let you decide for yourself here s mole an interesting side note was that steve levin vito lopez s candidate for the 33rd city council district where i have endorsed jo anne simon was in attendence i was across the room from him during nydia s speech on helping small businesses and on the thrill of being a democat with obama as president i was struck at how bored and unenthusiastic he seemed on these subjects i had heard that despite being vito lopez s pick for the seat he was a nice decent guy yet there he was looking like a teenager someone had dragged to a political event bored and surly he would pointedly not clap or clap sarcastically while everyone else was enthusiastically applauding nydia and obama what was up with him then i realized it was the fact that he was vito lopez s kid and vito lopez hates nydia velazquez you d think levin would prefer at a reform democrat event like cbid s dinner to show he is not so intimately linked to the corrupt vito lopez but instead he chose to emphasize that vito s petty grudges are his petty grudges either that or he just had indigestion but the impression he made was not a good one at a moment when the rest of the crowd was quite enthusiastic as progressives and as democrats posted by about the optimist at 12 21 pm 1 comment labels central brooklyn independent democrats david michaelson david yassky jo anne simon mole333 nydia velazquez steve levin vito lopez monday march 23 2009 mclaughlin monserrate and seminerio where s the outrage this morning i read a quote in the union newspaper the chief that made me mad brian mclaughlin was a colleague and a close friend said united federation of teachers president randi weingarten and this is a sad day for him his family and the labor movement for those of you who don t know brian mclaughlin he is the former queens assemblyman and new york city afl cio central labor council president who plead guilty on march 7th to federal racketeering charges so that instead of facing 30 years in prison he ll likely only end up with 8 to 10 mclaughlin s crimes were particularly despicable he ripped off 2 2 million from union members and city taxpayers to spend on stuff like a luxury house on long island a mercedes benz and country club fees he even plundered money from a little league set up for the children of union members to quote the same chief article when mclaughlin learned that one of his corrupt confederates had spent 2 800 on equipment for the kids rather than stealing it all mclaughlin lashed out a ll that fucking money he s fucking spending on other stuff that ain t his money that s mine nice guy huh you d think so from the tone of randi weingarten s aforementioned quote in the chief weingarten makes it sound like mclaughlin was a good person who somehow lost his way and carelessly fell into bilking little leaguers i wonder if she would publicly express the same messianic compassion for bernard madoff now the intention of this post is not to criticize weingarten she is merely representative of a political power structure that hardly ever breaks rank to criticize its members even when they are deserving of our utmost scorn and contempt how bad does an elected official have to be to provoke criticism from their colleagues these days it seems like that there s no crime a politician can commit that is so heinous that their party s leaders bother to condemn them take congressman joe crowley the head of the queens democratic party crowley was one of the congressmen who expressed moral outrage last week at a i g execs for receiving millions in bonuses surely if crowley could muster so much anger over legal bonuses he must have blown his top when he learned his longtime friend brian mclaughlin had admitted to stealing over two million bucks from innocent people what was crowley s comment on mclaughlin s crimes over two weeks after mclaughlin s guilty plea he still hasn t made one and why hasn t the press demanded one but then again neither has any other elected official from queens or any citywide politician for that matter what about the...