Day: October 29, 2024

In the wake of an isolating global pandemic and amidst rising political tensions, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit is stepping up to confront the “loneliness crisis” in a city that’s home to an estimated one million people who live alone.

Baltic Street Wellness Solutions will host its Second Annual Symposium, “Unlocking the Power of Community: Addressing Loneliness,” at BRIC Media Arts Center on Wednesday, Nov. 6. The event will bring together mental health experts, advocates and community members to explore solutions to combat isolation and strengthen community bonds across the Big Apple.

“As the largest peer-led organization in New York State, addressing loneliness is one of the cornerstones of the work we do,” said Deputy Director of Programs Mark Clarke. “We wanted to have the conversation, especially after COVID, about how people can tackle loneliness in its many forms.”

Loneliness is something everyone experiences differently, Clarke stressed, so he and his team are working to ensure that the symposium addresses the issue on a multitude of levels.

“We wanted to create a safe space and talk about loneliness and how we can address it,” he told Brooklyn Paper.

The all-day event will spotlight keynote speaker Kevin Hines, a mental health advocate, award-winning filmmaker, and one of the few individuals to survive a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge. Hines will share his story of resilience and ongoing mental health journey, offering insights for those grappling with similar challenges.

Other speakers, including Baltic Street CEO Taina Martinez-Laing and Len Statham of the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, will explore how technology, peer support, and innovative outreach can create connections in a divided world.

Founded over two decades ago, Baltic Street Wellness Solutions is dedicated to providing mental health support and advocacy services to underserved communities in New York City. The Downtown Brooklyn nonprofit focuses on empowering individuals facing challenges such as addiction, mental health diagnoses, and socioeconomic difficulties, offering resources and programs that promote wellness, recovery, and community engagement.

For more information on Baltic Street Wellness Solutions, or the upcoming symposium, visit balticstreet.org.

Dan Osborn spent the year criticizing Donald Trump in his quest to flip Nebraska’s reliably red Senate seat. But in the final days of his campaign, the independent candidate is suddenly embracing the former president—even promising to help him build a border wall.

“I’m where President Trump is on corruption, China, the border. If Trump needs help building the wall, well, I’m pretty handy,” Osborn says in a TV ad released in late October.

Osborn, a union leader, in the ad casts his Trump-supporting opponent, Republican senator Deb Fischer, as among the “career politicians” who “tried to stop Trump, just like they’re trying to stop me.”

In a second ad, self-described Trump voters likewise claim that “Osborn’s with Trump on China, the border, and draining the swamp” and that Fischer “has more in common with Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump.”

Osborn’s sudden self-proclaimed alignment with the former president comes as polls show his race with Fischer tightening to a 1-point deficit in a state where Trump is widely popular and enjoys a more than 16-point lead over Vice President Kamala Harris, according to FiveThirtyEight. Osborn has already acknowledged that he has to “peel off some conservatives” to win an election that could determine which party controls the Senate.

“He obviously needs Trump voters to win,” said Alex Conant, a GOP consultant with Firehouse Strategies. “He is only going to win if he significantly outperforms Harris. Blurring the lines between him and the Republican candidate can help him appeal to Trump voters.”

Derek Oden, Fischer’s campaign manager, dismissed Osborn’s latest advertised claims.

“If Dan Osborn wants to help President Trump build a border wall, why is Dan voting for Kamala Harris and supporting amnesty for illegals?” Oden said. “Dan is lying to Nebraskans, just like he’s lying about being an independent.”

Osborn’s ads mark a drastic turn after spending months criticizing Trump. The New York Times described Osborn as “befuddled” on how to talk about the presidential election during an interview. He ultimately distanced himself from both Trump and President Joe Biden, describing them as “old” and “incompetent.”

“There’s a good chance I won’t vote for president,” Osborn told the paper in February.

In an April podcast appearance, he likewise mused whether Trump and Biden were really “the best our country can come up with.”

In June, he said he had repudiated Trump altogether. The former president “lost Osborn for good” after Trump criticized John McCain ahead of the 2016 election, the Fremont Tribune reported in June following an interview with the Senate candidate. Osborn also told the Nebraska newspaper that Trump’s 2016 presidential debate appearances were “embarrassing” and said he was “not happy with either of our choices.”

Osborn’s support for a border wall also marks a shift in talking points. Last month, he told Semafor that at least some illegal immigrants should be able to get Social Security cards. In a follow-up interview with an Omaha channel, Osborn said he believes illegal immigrants should have a “clear path … to become documented or become legal status.”

Throughout his campaign to win over deep-red Nebraska, Osborn has portrayed himself as an independent, an image he has tried to hammer hard in the final stretch. But his campaign has deep ties to liberals and progressives. While acknowledging in an audio recording obtained by the Washington Examiner that he needed to win over conservatives, Osborn also professed to “love” socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.).

One ad supporting Osborn described him as a “lifelong independent,” but the candidate told the Times he was a Democrat until 2016. The Washington, D.C.-based PAC that funded the spot, Retire Career Politicians, has been bankrolled by left-wing dark money groups, including the Sixteen Thirty Fund.

And of nearly 200 donors who recently contributed more than $1,000, adding up to almost $400,000, just 6 were Nebraskans. Many lived in Washington, D.C., California, and Massachusetts. Saikat Chakrabarti, a former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and cofounder of Justice Democrats, also contributed $6,600, the maximum allowed.

Early on in his campaign, Osborn retained the consulting firm Bread and Roses, which shares a name with a Democratic Socialists of America caucus. The firm is managed by former staffers for Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and Reps. Cori Bush (D., Mo.) and Ro Khanna (D., Calif.).

Osborn’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The post Nebraska Senate Candidate Dan Osborn Called Trump ‘Embarrassing’ and ‘Incompetent.’ Now He Wants To Help Build the Border Wall. appeared first on .

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As Kamala Harris circled in on a major speech to make her historic campaign’s final argument, one venue seemed as obvious as it was potent: the launching pad for the failed insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021—perhaps the most obvious illustration of the real threats posed by sending former President Donald Trump back to the White House.

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So on Tuesday evening, just one week before voters render their verdict on a presidential campaign as ubiquitous as it is exhausting, Harris will take the stage on the 52-acre lawn that stands between the White House and the Washington Monument, also known as the Ellipse. While she is not expected to speak solely about democracy or the threat Trump poses to it, that message will be impossible to miss as Harris addresses thousands in person and many more watching across the country from the very spot where Trump urged his legions to push Congress to ignore his electoral failure and keep him in power. It was an ugly, unprecedented moment in American history that ended with nine dead, about 150 law enforcement officials injured, and hundreds more traumatized. 

And it’s not hard to imagine how Trump might respond to such a blatant provocation. The visual of Harris speaking from the hallowed ground where Presidents have lit national Christmas trees and Menorahs alike should quietly remind voters that Trump’s speech was not a normal culmination of any White House term, and that the self-serving thinking behind it could be the norm if he’s allowed back into power. The moment will no doubt trigger Trump, or at the very least many of his surrogates, to once again defend his own actions on Jan. 6 and those of his supporters, more than 1,500 of whom have been charged related to that day, including felony cases against 571 individuals, according to the Department of Justice. That’s exactly the message Democrats want Trump to be emphasizing in the week before Election Day.

And putting Jan. 6 aside, the setting of the speech, with the White House itself serving as a backdrop, could also inspire voters to imagine what a President from a younger generation might unleash if given the chance. The core of this argument is one that is finding receptive audiences, especially in states where voters might not love Harris but are susceptible to the suggestion that the United States needs to move past the chaos of the Trump years.

The broad outline for the event is based on an account from a senior Harris campaign official, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive planning around a speech that still is not completely closed to tweaks.

It’s been apparent for weeks that Harris was increasingly honing her message around the choice voters face between her campaign vision and that of Trump, whose attempt to return to power is as fueled by grievances over Jan. 6 as his desire to avoid any culpability for it and other criminal probes, all or most of which are likely to collapse should he regain presidential powers. On its own, the either-or choice is a compelling argument for those voters who expect Presidents to follow the rules they’re charged with enforcing. It’s why the Harris campaign has been coming back to the idea that the race is actually between a prosecutor in Harris and a felon in Trump.

And yet this reality remains: roughly 3-in-4 Republicans told pollsters at the third anniversary in January that it’s time to move on, including 4-in-5 Trump supporters. In some corners of the GOP, those in jails or prisons for actions related to Jan. 6—including those who attacked law enforcement with weapons—are martyrs to a rigged political system. In fact, Trump has raised money for their legal defense funds and at rallies plays a low-fi recording of inmates singing the National Anthem as a protest against their detentions. In normal times, such an embrace of lawlessness would be disqualifying for the GOP that prides itself on law-and-order hardlines, but this is not the Republican Party of ol’.

As voters see Harris making an intentional return to what some consider the scene of the crime, it could emphasize the criminal scrutiny Trump will still face if he fails to grasp the shield of a second term as President. After Trump has spent more than a year painting the pile of prosecutions against him as politically motivated, it’s Harris’ turn to make the explicit case that the American voters might be Trump’s true sentencing jury.

It’s sure to be an effective two-fold message at the end of a campaign that has shown Harris‘ knack for tapping symbolic settings to convey larger points. (I’m thinking of Friday’s dystopian warning on abortion staged in Texas, where a strict abortion ban is in place.) But there’s no telling how Trump’s apologists might do with this move, especially given how Trump has convinced so, so many people that he is actually a victim of a corrupt justice system.

Yet, in many ways, Trump’s own orbit has spent recent weeks walking into the traps laid by Harris and her allies. It was most obvious during their lone debate, when Harris sprang one set piece after another to embarrass her rival. Yet at Trump’s rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden, Trump’s campaign trapped themselves by inviting speakers who leaned into lewd and racist comments. So far, the former President is unwilling to do the bare minimum to demonstrate he rejects those hateful remarks. 

As Trump has shown so many times since he launched the first of his three presidential nominations since 2015, it’s seldom a good bet to think he can shelve his ego in service of a bigger prize. It’s why he did not call off the mob back in 2021, why he did not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration in a break of basic decorum days later, and continues to work overtime to undermine faith in democracy itself. It’s just a given at this point that Harris’s choice of setting for perhaps the biggest speech of her campaign is assuredly going to get under Trump’s skin. Harris advisers say it’ll be a tactic that will find daily repetition in the swing states for the final week, with the goal of bringing out Trump’s worst impulses. If history serves, he won’t be able to resist.

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An affordable housing lottery is now available for seniors at a new eight-story development on Winthrop Street in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, which has replaced an old wood-frame house with a spacious yard.

Located at 250 Winthrop Street, the complex features a total of 49 units, with 27 designated for the lottery. These units are reserved for households of one to three individuals earning an average of 80 percent of Area Median Income, ranging from $53,589 to $111,840 annually, and must include at least one member aged 62 or older, according to the listing.

Twelve of the 27 units are studio apartments for $1,483 a month and 15 are one-bedrooms for $1,552.

The building, designed by P. Georgopouls Architects PC, includes bike storage lockers, a rooftop terrace, elevator, laundry room, air conditioning, and package lockers. (Some of the amenities require an extra fee.) The building is smoke free and tenants have to pay for electricity, which includes the heat, hot water, and stove.

While renderings show the building with a dark blue facade and white framed windows, photos on PropertyShark and StreetEasy show the facade is off-white with yellow-framed windows. The ground floor, which also contains apartments and a vehicle entryway, contrasts with the building with a black corrugated finish.

The boxy dwelling steps down from eight stories on the western side to six stories on the eastern one. Next door at 254 Winthrop Street is a matching four-story building designed by the same architect and owned by the same developer. That building contains seven market-rate units, according to permits, with two-bedrooms listed from $2,695 a month on StreetEasy.

The units in both buildings appear to have light gray walls with black baseboards and doors. Throughout the apartment, finishes are in white and black with some contrasting yellow details, such as in shelving and panels.

Prior to housing the two new developments, the sites at 250 and 254 Winthrop Street (formerly 248 Winthrop Street) held a two-story wood and brick house that was surrounded by a large outdoor space. The house was purchased by Virginia R Jones and Estefan Stephans in 1984, city records show, and Jones is listed as the manager behind the LLC that still owns the site. The property was transferred from Jones to Bless Winthrop LLC in 2021.

In 2021, the city issued a demolition permit for the wood-framed house. The same year it issued permits for the eight-story and four-story new buildings.

Bless Winthrop LLC applied for the city’s Privately Financed Senior Housing Program, which allows additional building height if a percentage of units are designated to seniors earning 80% of AMI, which is why the 27 units are included in the housing lottery. Without the additional height granted through the program, the building could have reached around four or five stories.

According to the listing, the building is also expected to qualify for the city’s recently extended 421-a tax abatement.

The Weeksville Place lottery closes Dec. 17. To apply, visit the listing on New York City’s Housing Connect website.

This story first appeared on Brooklyn Paper’s sister site Brownstoner.