Community: Journal of Power Politics and Democracy in Hell's Kitchen

By Mary Clark

In Mary Clark's fifteen-year journey through New York City politics, she walked the volatile streets to the halls of power, and experienced the triumphs and defeats of the Hell’s Kitchen community as it fought "development fever." In the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic was at its height. Homeless families were placed in midtown hotels, which resembled refugee camps. Crime associated with the illegal drug trade threatened one of Manhattan's oldest communities. Meanwhile, ambitious politicians vied for dominance behind the scenes. She had a grassroots view of the fall of Ed Koch, a working relationship with David Dinkins, and saw the rise of Rudolph Giuliani.

"Community" is a memoir of local democracy in action, with its genuinely virtuous aims and outcomes, its frustrations and machinations. In it, the author shows a constructive approach in contrast to the usual power games.

Three years into her years as a community activist, she met James R. McManus, Democratic district leader and head of the last Tammany Hall club in New York City. In a twist of irony, the “radical liberal” found with the McManus Club the opportunity to have the most productive time of her life. The neighborhood is famous for its wild side, but is also the home of generations of families, immigrants, and aspiring actors and artists.

There is a fire in Hell’s Kitchen, and you are invited to sit by its light and hear in its flames a prayer of hope, a song of love, and a cautionary tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mary Clark
• Release date: Feb 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005319373

Mary Clark

Mary Clark spent her formative years in Florida where she was infused with awe and respect for the natural world. She was also aware of the lives of migrant workers, segregation, and the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. She graduated from Rutgers-Newark College of Arts and Sciences. In 1975, she moved to New York City and worked in the arts programs of St. Clement's Church in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. For many years she worked for community organizations and founded a community newspaper.She is the author of Tally: An Intuitive Life (All Things That Matter Press); Community: Journal of Power Politics and Democracy in Hell's Kitchen; Into The Fire: A Poet's Journey through Hell's Kitchen; the poetry novel, Children of Light (Ten Penny Players' BardPress), and Covenant: Growing Up in Florida's Lost Paradise. In her latest novel, Passages, a young aspiring writer explores sex, gender, fame, poverty, and love in 1970s New York City.

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Community

Journal of Power Politics and Democracy in Hell’s Kitchen

Mary Clark

Revised Edition 2023

Photographs by or in possession of Mary Clark

© 2020 by Mary Clark

Thank you respecting the author by purchasing this book. All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced, or transmitted in any form electronically, mechanically, or by photocopying, recording, or otherwise, including through information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book, or the facilitation of such, without the author’s permission are prohibited. The only exception is the use of brief quotations in printed or digital reviews.

Table of Contents

Disclaimer

Characters

Photographs

Prologue

Part 1

Chapter 1, 1981, From the Arts to Politics

Chapter 2, 1982, Ruled by Folklore

Chapter 3, 1983, Warriors of Another Sort

Chapter 4, 1984, Speak Out

Chapter 5, 1985, Community Work

Chapter 6, 1986, Dreamers and Schemers

Chapter 7, 1987, Democracy in America

Chapter 8, 1988, Keeping Pace

Chapter 9, 1989, Contracts and Campaigns

Chapter 10, 1990, The Holland Proposal

Chapter 11, 1991, Crisis Intervention

Part 2

Chapter 12, 1992, In the End, A Beginning

Chapter 13, 1993, Progress and Grief

Chapter 14, 1994, Real West Side Stories

Chapter 15, 1995, Strategy

Chapter 16, 1996, B’way, Times Sq., HK

Chapter 17, 1997, Save Our Neighborhood

Chapter 18, 1998, Home

Epilogue

Postscript

Acknowledgements

Author Biography

Disclaimer

This memoir is based on diaries and documents of the time and on memory of long-past events. My memory ranges, as I found in my conversations with people who shared events with me and from documents in my possession or found online, from highly accurate to more selective and to only impressions. The timeline of events may not be entirely accurate.

To the best of my ability, I tried to pare away at the interfering noise to the core facts of my conversations and the people and events described. Many are recorded in my diaries. Other thoughts occurred at the time of writing this book. They shed light on my state of mind and are part of the story.

I have placed some of the conversations in quotes although they were not recorded in my writing or in any other form at the time. I believe I have come close to the meaning both literal and figurative of the dialogues and am able to attribute them to the speakers. Subsequent statements by the speakers which I remember well or were recorded in my diaries or appeared in publications often lend veracity to my recall. In some cases, dialogue was recorded in my writing at the time. In other cases, specific conversations remain vivid in my memory. The same is true for certain but not all pivotal events.

Terms for people with disabilities, among others describing race and ethnicity, have changed since the 1980s and 90s. Often I have used contemporaneous terms for the purpose of rendering an accurate depiction of the times.

This is a book about my personal experiences, and not meant to reveal the personal stories of anyone else. I have endeavored to avoid personal incidents and facts about others as much as possible. Exceptions pertain to those with whom I had a personal relationship and, even then, I favored the side of privacy whenever possible.

Characters

Main Characters

Demetrios Jim Condeelis, Clinton Planning Council, Community Board 4

James R. Jim McManus, McManus Midtown Democratic Association

Kathleen Mandeville, St. Clement’s Church

Carlos Manzano, McManus Midtown Democratic Association

Alexandra Alex Palmer, West 46th Street Block Association

J. Watkins Watty Strouss, West 46th Street Block Association

Persons of Interest

John Adams, attorney, CARE

Mary Brendle, Community Board 4, writer

John Calhoun, Hartley House

Mary D’Elia, Community Board 4, McManus Midtown Democratic Association, CARE

David Dinkins, Manhattan Borough Pres., Mayor, NYC

Aston Glaves, Project FIND

John Glynn, Clinton Preservation Local Development Corporation (LDC).

Joseph Restuccia, Clinton Housing Development Company (CHDC)

Joseph Walsh, McManus Midtown Democratic Association, Civitas

Photographs

Chapter 1 – Part of Arnold Belkin mural in Mathews-Palmer Playground

Chapter 2 – Mary with her first cat, St. Clement’s Church steps, West 46th Street

Chapter 3 – Alexandra Palmer, Watty Strouss, and others at a picnic on Pier 84

Chapter 4 – Jim Condeelis and Mary Clark at the Dallas, Texas Art Museum

Chapter 5 – David Dinkins, Ruth Messinger, campaign bus on Ninth Avenue

Chapter 6 – Cecilia Riveros

Chapter 7 – Jim McManus and Bernard Cohen at the Democratic Club

Chapter 8 – Donald Cooper, Alex Palmer, and Mary Clark at St. Clement’s Church

Chapter 9 –Nicholas Laird and Jackie Macklin at CCS office, West 49th Street, and Graffiti artist in May Mathews Playground, and Mary D’Elia and Jim Condeelis

Chapter 10 – Ninth Avenue International Food Festival May 1990

Chapter 11 – West 46th Street Block Association Christmas Party

Chapter 12 – Denise Spillane, Carlos Manzano, Jim McManus, Mary Clark at 1992 Democratic National Convention

Chapter 13 – Donald Trump speaking at May Mathews Playground, June 1993

Chapter 14 – Rudy Giuliani and Jim McManus, and Jim McManus and Ruth Messinger

Chapter 15 – Jim Condeelis and John Adams, and Jim McManus and Sophie Gerson

Chapter 16 – Blizzard January 1996 on Ninth Avenue, and Sylvia Gould at Eighth Avenue McDonalds playing piano

Chapter 17 – Mary Clark on her bicycle on West 46th Street

Prologue

When I was a poor graduate student living in a hotel room in Times Square, New York’s City’s famous crossroads of the world, my boyfriend and I used to walk and talk, walk and argue, walk and makeup up and down Broadway. We liked to stroll in a little neighborhood west of the hotel, passing a tower being built and open to the rain, and a greasy spoon on the corner—we were heading to the river. On hot summer evenings, we made our way over tarred railroad ties onto a crumbling pier, the smell of distant lands in the breeze. Nearby, a father and son fishing. People talking quietly. The city like thunder behind us.

Although we were moving in opposite directions, we were both crossing boundaries. As we walked back into the shining city, I heard the echo of love and rage in the streets of that neighborhood, felt the heat of a seething energy and a wild spirit called to me.

There’s a fire in Hell’s Kitchen and it’s raging along the borderline.

Part I

Chapter 1 1981 From the Arts to Politics

Jumping from the Times Square platform to the A train, I began a journey of changing states of mind and time and place. Midtown’s skyscrapers and Hell’s Kitchen tenements streamed behind me as the train picked up speed, time suspended, and upon arrival, I found myself on Greenwich Village’s quiet, cobbled streets. Present, past, and future rearranged, one world segueing to another, in a form of reincarnation.

I was heading to a meeting of a new alliance of literary groups, with hopes of sharing funds and resources, a beacon of an idealistic future.

Wind gusted in narrow lanes of colonial and Henry Jamesian townhomes. Clutching wayward papers, I searched for the address of the new alliance’s meeting with Congressman Theodore (Ted) Weiss who represented Manhattan’s West Side. At the time I was running the Poetry Festival at St. Clement’s Church, an Episcopal church at 423 West 46th Street in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.

Several members of the literary group intercepted me as I stepped off the newly installed elevator, warning me they wanted the meeting to be non-controversial and non-adversarial. They knew I had been working with other poets to protest the funding decisions of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

I was shy and could not imagine causing any trouble. At the same time, I was troubled in a variety of personal and social ways, and on this occasion by the minimal funding for Native American, Asian, and African American writers, and no funding at all that year for multi-cultural presses.

This meeting was meant to impress the congressman about our new organization and its goals and not to introduce complaints.

All well and good. I listened to the praises being sent the congressman’s way. This was how organizations were funded, but I was frustrated we were holding back on the real issues. He seemed interested in more than he was hearing.

I spoke up and said that minority people felt left out of arts funding, that they would be cut out completely by the Reagan administration, and what could be done about it? What was he going to do about it?

I probably sounded more harassing than I realized. I didn’t want to at all. My heart was pounding, voice catching. How will I ever run an organization if I’m so timid? And, I worried, did I antagonize someone I hoped would be sympathetic?

The members who had spoken to me earlier glared at me, and I heard them whispering that I should be dropped from the group.

Ted Weiss asked me to send him information. He was concerned about this and would look into it. He said the NEA was responsive to criticism and the problem was the make-up of the panels.

As he was leaving, I handed him a large manila envelope. When I came to the door of the meeting room, I saw him at the elevator and was amazed to see him smile at me. Not a big smile, a kind of acknowledgment.

I knew I was in trouble with the group and wanted to get out of there. One of the people who had spoken to me was the head of NYSCA and I might have blown our funding for next year.

I sent Congressman Ted Weiss a four-page letter and received a response in mid-February, saying the same things and that he knows every effort is made to be fair and equitable. He mentioned the composition of the panels again.

I was disappointed. Just another politician. Kind of cute, but just another . . . I don’t know if he’s a hypocrite, a liar, or a dreamer.

I saw him at a poetry reading held on a subway platform by Richard Spiegel who had started the Poetry Festival at St. Clement’s before moving on with his wife, Barbara Fisher, to run another literary program. I could have spoken to him, but I didn’t know what to say. He seemed to want to speak to me.

*

In February, a phone call from the vicar sent me running to the church. The Fire Department was there! I thought I’d find the church burning and all my hopes up in smoke.

The church was standing as it always had, but as I raced up the front steps I saw a notice pinned to the doors. The building was closed.

An inspection had uncovered multiple fire hazards. The vicar said the state couldn’t close the church, but it could close its two theaters to the public. How could we make money to support the church? The rental of the upstairs theater was the main source of income.

A fire truck was parked outside. The Reverend Martha Blacklock held a church service beside the fire engine, blessing it in peaceful protest. The theater and poetry programs were in limbo.

After our initial shock and anger we sprang into action. The church and the arts programs must survive. It was the minister’s life work and ours in the arts as well. We filled a dumpster with lumber and furniture from the sub-basement, relocated the machine shop to the first floor, and started raising funds to install a fire safety system.

*

At another event on the West Side in April, Paula Weiss (no relation she said) of Ted Weiss’ staff greeted me. Paula had been at the literary group’s meeting where I spoke up and recognized me.

Ted Weiss said, You’re the one who gave me the envelope at the ALO meeting.

I spoke to him, but I was rather drunk on the wine at the reception, not having had much to eat all day. Walking home in the rain, I let myself get drenched to shock myself sober.

Another day, on my way to St. Clement’s from my Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotel in the upper West 80s, I stopped at Ted Weiss’ office. Paula said I could talk to him, and going down the hall, I found him in an office sitting behind a desk stacked with papers.

I told him I’d been walking, it was a beautiful day, and he said he’d like to be out there. I had stopped to look at what was playing at Lincoln Center. We talked about the symphony and poetry.

I said, There’s a poet named Ted Weiss.

I know. And there’s a jazz trumpet player.

I smiled, trying to imagine him playing a trumpet.

I’m not either one of them.

He loved the theater, wanted to see a show on Broadway. I knew more about what was on Off-Off Broadway.

A man knocked on the door. He had to get back to work, looked at the pile of papers on his desk, made a face. I have to read these.

After that, from time to time, I dropped by, and when he was in, would talk to him. Brief visits, maybe five minutes. We always talked about the arts. Not politics. Although I did compliment him one time for his speech about the Reagan budget cuts, alone on the House floor, and he said, the voice in the wilderness or something like that.

You have to do it, I said. We have to stand up for what we believe in, or it’s all over.

On The Block in Hell’s Kitchen

When I came to St. Clement’s, I was seeking poetry, but also purpose. I wanted to create tangible things in collaboration with other people. Spending time on the church steps, I began to meet people who lived in the neighborhood.

St. Clement’s chose me as its liaison to the West 46th Street Block Association. Meetings were held down the street on the first floor of Hartley House, a former settlement house. The hall resembled a large arts and crafts room, which it was during the day.

West 46th Street was lined with five-story brick tenements, solid brownstones, and a large playground mid-block. Many blocks in the area were like this, although the playground was an exception; the neighborhood had few parks. Behind the buildings were small backyards, and some had courtyards and backhouses.

On the 300 block of West 46th Street, a House of Prostitution was in operation. Across the upper floor windowsills of that building the women had placed a row of brightly colored high heels.

Pastor Dale Hansen of St. Luke’s Lutheran showed us a protest petition from that block, also known as Restaurant Row, signed by the restaurant owners and residents. The West 46th Street Block Association decided to start its own petition and add letters to Hansen’s in support.

Walter Doran, a large man going loose in all directions, standing at the back, kept calling out, Point of Order. He proposed that someone go to the Community Board meeting Wednesday night to present this situation to them and ask for their support.

He was volunteered. I planned to go to that meeting, so I would see the Walt show again.

A year before, at a block association meeting, I had noticed a tall woman with hair the color of copper filaments talking with a small group across the room. She had a presence that enveloped the people around her in a warm soft-red aura, the fire of resilience, edgy yet modest, a peculiar blend that suited Hell’s Kitchen.

I asked J. Watkins Watty Strouss, a vestry member at St. Clement’s, Who is that?

Alex Palmer, he said. Alexandra Palmer.

Alex spoke about the playground down the block: how many trees were damaged, benches in need of repair, children’s play equipment broken. May Mathews Playground was mid-block between Ninth and Tenth Avenues and cut through from West 45th to 46th Streets.

In the lobby afterward, I saw her talking with several people. I was thinking that the word timid is in the word intimidating when she smiled at me.

I left, walking back to the church to sit on the steps.

Alex came along and stopped to talk. Would you like to get a cup of tea?

I nodded, and suggested, We could sit out here.

On our way to the corner store, I asked her about the playground.

I’m a volunteer, she said. I’ve been trying for years to get a Parks Worker to organize activities in the park. Basketball and handball tournaments, and educational and artistic events. A Recreation Worker could show the movies on Friday nights in the summer.

Who does it now?

I do. Alex did a child’s skip.

I laughed. She did it again. We skipped and hopped a few times, laughing at ourselves.

Parks used to do it, she said, but they stopped. I thought it was so much fun for the kids, I bought a projector. I asked Parks where they got the films.

We bought tea at the corner and walked back to the church steps.

Alex said Officer B. held the first handball tournament in the playground back in the mid-1970s. It was the police versus the neighborhood kids. I think most of the kids were in gangs.

Hot dog, shish-ke-bab, and pretzel vendors pushed their carts across Ninth Avenue, doused the coals and dumped them smoking into the gutter, folded their umbrellas and stored their carts in a shed behind the corner bar.

I’m locking the park in a little while. Alex checked her watch.

You lock the park?

Every night, she said. Ever since we had to put up a fence with gates. She told me the Parks Department and the block association worked on putting up the fence, and the gates on West 45th and 46th Streets were locked at night because thieves were using the park to sort through suitcases, purses, and shopping bags they stole from people in Times Square and Broadway crowds, and from cars belonging to theatergoers parked along the side streets. They took what they wanted and left the rest. It was a big mess. They were also using it as a shortcut to get away. At night, the pimps and prostitutes hung out there. The pimps played basketball. She mimed dribbling a basketball. Sometimes they plugged their radios into the lamppost and turned up the volume. They shouted at the prostitutes. The women screamed back. The noise kept people awake all night.

I’ll help you, I said.

Once a year, Alex had lunch with the Parks Commissioner. New safety mats were installed, holes filled, the unique play train refurbished and painted in bright colors. The handball court’s cracks were filled, the wall repainted, and special care given to the lines before the annual tournament.

She organized a group of neighbors to scrape the problem areas in the fence and repaint them with rust-resistant paint provided by the Parks Department. She and other women, mothers and aunts and sisters of the children, washed down the picnic tables, benches, train, swings, and other surfaces with bleach.

A row of plane trees and other trees in the upper section added shade and a touch of elegance to the asphalt and concrete park.

I followed Alex around as she surveyed the condition of the playground. Potholes in the asphalt, rusted places in the fencing, broken locks, on and off again bathrooms in the Comfort Station, and old play equipment.

*

Summer in the playground. Children skated up and down the ramp between the children’s play area and the basketball courts or cavorted in the umbrella-like spray from the in-ground sprinkler. Stephen, Lillian, Carlito, and a semicircle of children formed around the bench, all trying to sit next to Alex. Hovering at the edge of the crowd was a boy with a winsome smile and a slight limp.

Alex raised her hand. Come sit down.

Grudgingly, the other kids made room for him.

Hi, I’m Mary.

He shook my hand. Primi.

Primmy?

Pree - mee, he said. Primitivo.

How old are you?

Nine, he said.

You’re new around here.

I been here about a month.

I’ve seen you. I realized I had seen him in the park with the other kids, pushed to the outside, never picked to play basketball or handball.

Alex treated everyone at the corner store, keeping Primi close to her all the way. Back at the playground, the kids went to play, taking Primi with them. He tried to mix with them, caught a basketball in both hands up near his face, then cast it back like a rock.

He’s got a lazy eye, Alex said. I asked the optometrist on Ninth Avenue about it and he said he’d do an exam for free.

Some of the kids were assessing him for the possibility of pretending to be his friend in Alex’s presence versus beating him up later. But they knew better. Alex knew everyone and she would find out who was responsible. So, it was kid gloves for Primi.

After I locked the park last night, Alex told me, I decided to go to the corner for milk. I saw him sleeping on the doorstep of his building.

Wasn’t it raining last night?

It started to rain as I was locking up. I asked him why he was outside. He said his father wasn’t home yet so he couldn't get in.

He doesn’t have a key?

His father won’t give him one and their buzzer is broken. Alex reached to retrieve a loose handball. I rang the super. He didn’t answer. I kept ringing and ringing until he came out and let us in.

With a laugh, she threw the ball back. He lives on the top floor. I knocked on the door. A strange man opened it. It wasn’t Primi’s father. I asked Primi if he knew the man and he said no.

Weren’t you afraid to let him go in?

Primi said he wasn’t afraid. I saw a man sleeping on a mattress on the floor. I asked Primi where his bed was. He said that was his bed, that mattress.

You know his father?

I’ve seen him in Times Square with prostitutes.

He’s a pimp.

I think he sells drugs, too. I saw him this morning when I was on my way to work. He was coming home. He said he wasn’t able to get home last night and let Primi in.

Alex uncapped her coffee.

What about his mother?

Primi hasn’t seen her for years.

On my way out, I threw my blue and white coffee cup with the classical Greek motif in the wire basket by the gate. Here’s a modern motif: everybody uses, everybody loses.

A few days later, Alex pointed Primi’s father out to me. Tall, well-built, dressed to blend in, walking east with an all-business attitude. That evening, I walked to Times Square. Alex had an idea where Primi’s father worked at night, one of the little hotels on the east side of Times Square. I thought it was unlikely I would find him, but as I approached the hotel, I saw him come out into the neon light. He was dressed in a tailored suit and a cocky hat. I walked up to him, he stopped, looked impassively at me.

You have to give Primi a key, I said.

No, he’ll lose it. I’ve tried that.

We could keep it, I said.

He shook his head.

Alex says she was thinking he could put the key on a string and wear it around his neck.

He said nothing.

I walked away.

The next day, he gave Alex the key.

In the morning, Alex unlocked the park gates and swung them back along the fence at the West 46th Street entrance, crossed the playground and did the same on the West 45th Street side. In the evening about 11 p.m., she closed and locked the gates.

I accompanied her, after we spent the evening on the church steps. The safety lights came on after dark, illuminating the basketball court where two neighborhood teenagers had been killed in what became known as the Capeman Murders. Late one night, two teenage boys coming home from a movie in Times Square walked through the playground and met another boy and one of the boy’s girlfriends. They were sitting on a bench when a youth gang, the Vampires, swept into the park.

Stories were told of what brought the Vampires to West 46th Street at midnight on August 29, 1959. They might have been looking for the Nordics, a rival gang, possibly to avenge insults traded between the Latino Vampires and members of the white gang, or to expand their West 70s and 80s territory south into Hell’s Kitchen. Local people said the gang was not looking for a rumble, but for a local boy who was holding drugs. As they rolled into the park, the Vampires shouted, Where’s Frenchy?

Earlier that evening, it had rained and the children playing in the park went home, and neighbors said that included the young boy who was holding drugs for his older brother.

The leader of the Vampires, Salvador Agron, known as the Capeman for his crimson-lined black cloak, lived on the Lower East Side with his mother; he spent much of his time on the street, not going to school and finding food in garbage cans. Antonio Luis Hernandez, who came from the Bronx, was called the Umbrella Man because he used an umbrella with a sharpened point as his weapon of choice.

Realizing the Nordics had failed to appear or that the person they were looking for was not there, they turned their fury on the boys sitting on the benches. The gang members held one of the boys while Agron stabbed him with a twelve-inch Mexican dagger. Robert Young, 16, managed to make it across the street to 447 where he died, slumped against the doorway. Anthony Krzesinski, also stabbed, and who like Young lived on West 47th Street, ran to 445 West 46th Street, where he fell, saying, I’m hurt. Get me upstairs. He bled to death before help could arrive. Edward Reimer, of Ninth Avenue, was knifed and stomped and taken to St. Clare’s Hospital in critical condition. He survived his injuries.

More than one hundred residents formed a semicircle around the buildings where the two teenagers lay dead.

Within days, spurred into action by the violence by and against young people, local civic and religious leaders met at Hartley House to discuss the needs of youth and the neighborhood. They formed at first the Clinton Planning Committee, which became the Clinton Planning Council, and within weeks the new group began to act.

The interplay between the names, Hell’s Kitchen and Clinton, was about power and identity. Clinton was said to have been started by developers who wanted a classier name, but the Hell’s Kitchen name had spread from its origins a few blocks south of West 42nd Street to the area above, and that was accelerated by the effort to name it Clinton.

Above the basketball courts a large mural on the adjacent tenement’s wall showed a man and woman walking and holding signs accompanied by a boy with a book and a girl with a bouquet of flowers. They were surrounded by high rises and cranes on one side, a model of lower-rise buildings and a man holding another man with a hypodermic needle in his arm on the other. Drugs. Developers. The twin demons of Hell’s Kitchen.

The largest sign read: We The People Demand Control of Our Communities.

As I crossed the park, I saw Venus, the Evening Star.

Make a wish, Alex said.

Smiling, I wished for her success with the playground, for a place of peace and purpose, an oasis of hope and love really, in this world.

That night, the police sat outside in a cruiser while Alex and I locked the playground. She thanked them for waiting. The kids followed her to the church steps, with Cecilia, a young girl of ten or eleven, shy and unpredictable, hanging on her arm.

Primi ran ahead, calling up to our friend Don Cooper from the sidewalk outside his apartment. Hooper. Hooooper!

Don poked his head out his second-floor apartment window and waved. Hooper?

Hooper, we called up to him.

Love it, he said. Hooper the Stooper.

While the kids played inside on the church stairs and in the hallway, Don, Alex, and I sat and talked until after midnight.

*

Primi was on the street all day, but he should be in school. On the street he was going to get into trouble.

I called Ruth Messinger’s office, our City Council member, and spoke to her aide, Gale Brewer. I told her about Primi and that we wanted to get him into school, but we weren’t his family.

She said to take him to the local school, and we didn’t have to be his parents or family.

When Alex was able to get a day off from work, she and I took Primi to the local elementary school, PS (Public School) 51 on West 45th just past Tenth Avenue, a brick building that looked like it was going to tumble down anytime. She had called the principal and made an appointment.

The principal was busy, we were told, we’d have to wait. And Primi had to wait outside.

In the hall?

Outside the school.

What?

Fortunately, the principal came in. We followed him into the office, but he said Primi couldn’t come with us. He had to sit in a classroom across the hall.

In his office, we told him about Primi. He seemed disinterested or preoccupied, but when Alex mentioned Primi’s lazy eye, he said, It’s not our responsibility. He needs to go to Special Education.

But can’t you take him in and then transfer him?

I have my hands full here, he said. I can’t take anyone else in.

Where do we go to get him into Special Education?

He said his secretary would tell us. You’ll have to leave now. I’m busy, he said, and as we followed him out, he said to us or his secretary, I can’t be bothered.

At the classroom doorway I motioned to Primi to leave with us.

Outside, Alex was angry and near tears.

I tried to think what to do. We can take him into the church, I said.

Alex left us at the church and went back to work. I took Primi into the front office, spoke to Anita Khanzadian, the theater director. She and I agreed to alternate babysitting him during the day.

I called Gale Brewer and told her what happened.

He should have taken him in, she said, and that legally, a school must take in a child.

Really? So, he wasn’t only rude, he broke the law.

A week or so later, Alex got off work again and we took Primi to a school in Chelsea, the neighborhood south of Hell’s Kitchen. The people at that school were welcoming and cheerful. They found his aunt and uncle in Harlem. The uncle, a cab driver, spent some time in a local crash pad for cabbies. One night I walked up and down Ninth with Primi searching for it, and when we came to West 45th Primi turned onto it towards Eighth Avenue; I followed him, and soon we saw a light from an open doorway in a basement. A man called out to him, and Primi raced down the steps.

Then one day the aunt and uncle came to take Primi to their home. Alex had convinced a neighbor to give her an old bike, chained to his fire escape for years, which she had refurbished for Primi. She and I stood on the church steps as they drove by in a convertible with Primi and next to him in the back seat the bike with a wheel in the air.

Community Tour

I dropped by Ted Weiss’ office and hung out with Paula Weiss. She said the office was planning the annual Community Tour. Ted Weiss would be meeting people on the street in his district. I told her friends of mine were holding a book fair and poetry reading at the Bank Street Pier on the day of their tour.

We’ll make that one of our stops, she said.

At the next visit, I waltzed down the hall to visit Ted Weiss. I heard someone ask, Who is that?

When I came back, Paula looking sheepish and perhaps also amused, introduced me to Norma Herman, who I understood to be the chief of staff. She was annoyed with me, so I was annoyed with her.

She wanted to know what I wanted or needed. I said I would like to do some volunteer work, if there was anything . . .

She gave me her number and told me to call her the next week.

June 4th was my first day of volunteer work for Ted Weiss’ office. Paula Weiss greeted me and asked the receptionist to look for the press list. (She rummaged for a long time before she found it.) Paula and I waited in her cubbyhole to the left of the receptionist’s desk, and she introduced me to Norman, a young man who worked there. She was buying him a Chinese dinner for his graduation.

Thank you, he said, very much. But I have to pick it up, right?

She laughed. You see how well-trained these people are, Mary? No, she said, they’ll deliver it.

She said to him that he didn’t have to come on the Saturday tour if he didn’t want to. He said he’d much rather go to the beach. She said they had enough people.

Norma Herman finally came in from lunch and gave me a list which I saw had no telephone numbers on the second and third pages and said so. She gave me just the first page, saying it was a year old. I dialed some numbers and got the new numbers and, in some cases, new editors and associate editors.

The Villager’s editor wasn’t in—he was graduating! I had a nice talk with Mary Poppenfuss, the editor of the Westsider. I told her I got the Chelsea-Clinton News at St. Clement’s (and I was a volunteer for today at Ted Weiss’ office) and I liked the paper.

Do you have any suggestions for improving the paper? she asked.

No, I said, not now, not off the top of my head.

I called the Village Voice, Soho News, Times, Post, Daily News (editor was gone for the day), NBC-TV, CBS-TV, AP ( said to call between 7:30 am and 3:30 pm; it was after 4), UPI (said he was working on a murder story; also didn’t have time to look through his mail), Our Town, Columbia Spectator (no answer), New Yorker, Talk of the Town editor, a woman, sounded nice, pleasant, Heights Inwood, Riverdale Press, Amsterdam News (the political reporter a real character, who said I have the weekends off, I only work Monday to Friday, no thanks. Norma smiled and said, yes, I thought he’d say that). I asked for each paper’s assignment editor and then introduced myself and asked if they’d received the press releases on Weiss’ tour of his district on June 6, Saturday, with the list of stops, and if they were interested in covering it, the stops in their areas, interviewing him or the constituents who came to ask questions, send photographers? Got no commitments.

Norma said that was usual. They don’t want to tell you whether they’re going to cover an event, even if they are. She said, What’s the matter? You look a little forlorn.

I wish I’d had enough time to get to the radio stations.

She said that’s okay, they get the information from the wire services and the wire services have it, because we hand-delivered it yesterday.

I talked to Paula again, about the last Community Board meeting, and she asked about the Ron Delsener Pier 84 concert vote, saying she usually stayed for the whole meeting.

I think they voted for it, but I’m not always sure what’s happening at those meetings.

She said, Yes, it’s not always easy to follow.

I showed her the piece about the Poetry Festival in the Voice Centerfold that the poets themselves had done. That’s what I’d really like to do, you know, press, and I don’t know how they did it.

Neither do we, she said.

On Saturday, June 6th, Paula said, The girls will ride in one car. The boys will ride in the other car.

We piled into a brown station wagon with a sign on top saying Congressman Ted Weiss in white letters on a red background with a border of white stars. We stopped at a pastry shop where Paula bought a big box of donuts. While we drove to the first stop, which was not far away at West 72nd Street, she told stories, political stories, and Norma and the other woman started laughing. I didn’t know the people she was talking about, except some of the elected officials by name, and then she told a story where it didn’t matter who they were, it was funny, and I laughed too. By the time we got to 72nd Street, we were laughing so hard we could barely get out of the car. Ted Weiss was on the corner in his suit while we were practically rolling on the sidewalk.

When Ed Wallace, who was a city councilman, showed up, Paula said, We’re riding with Ed.

A reporter from the Chelsea-Clinton News-Westsider was in the front with Wallace, Paula and I were in the back.

Trying to take the West Side Highway to Chelsea, bypassing my neighborhood of Clinton (Hell’s Kitchen) I noticed, Ed Wallace drove up a ramp and at the top we saw the cars were backed up. He did a U-turn and come back down the ramp, saying, if we get in an accident, at least we’ll get some press for Ted.

Paula told him I lived in an SRO in the West 80s and he told us that he’d just lost a rent case in court that involved SROs and it would affect people like me adversely. Paula volunteered me to help Ed Wallace in his race.

Mary knows a lot of non-political people, Paula said, and they listen to her. (I didn’t know a lot of people and was fairly sure no one listened to me.)

At 24th and Ninth Avenue, City Councilwoman Carol Greitzer showed up. She and Ed Wallace left for a meeting at Stuyvesant Town. Paula said we had to stop for ice cream. We already had a sugar high from the donuts, so I was amazed at this, but it was a hot summer day.

Ted was on the sidewalk alone and I went to stand nearby. I think the male staffers were across the street. He turned to me and said, I don’t really like to do this. I’m kind of shy.

I stared at him. You’re a congressman. You’re supposed to like meeting people.

One young man stopped. That’s my congressman? Thirty years in New York and I never saw my congressman! That’s really him?

Later, in the shade of an awning, Norma or Paula said, We’re getting more people than we usually do.

Leaving Chelsea, I saw a car following us with two sober-looking men in suits. A little red light on the hood.

The last stop was the Bank Street Pier where Richard and Barbara were holding the book fair and poetry reading. The pier was an asphalt slab built out over the Hudson River.

We pulled up in the station wagon and Paula said, Do you see any of your friends here?

All my friends, I said, laughing.

Once out of the car, she said, Maybe you could introduce Ted to some of your friends.

Sure, I said. First I want to run over and say hello to some of them and I’ll be right back.

She gave me a strange look. I said hello to Barbara since Rich was reading. When I came back toward the car, I saw Ted Weiss coming. He smiled at me. I introduced him to Barbara and then Rich finished reading and came over and they said hello.

Another poet was reading, so I waited to ask Rich if Ted could speak. I looked to one side and saw Norma Herman, and she said, Do you think you could ask your friend to let him say a few words?

I said to Rich, Can you introduce him, just to let people know he’s here.

Rich nodded yes, and in a minute, he introduced Ted Weiss, who went up on the platform. While he was speaking, I saw some friends in the farthest group away, all sitting on logs.

Talking to them, I suddenly noticed the poet Cornelius Eady and his wife sitting there.

Oh, he said, smiling, I thought I was invisible.

I sat next to him. Ted Weiss finished speaking and shortly afterward, he was standing not far away, no one between us.

I said impulsively, Don’t just stand there. Come meet people. Don’t be shy. And I took him by the arm and introduced him to Louis Rivera, who was the head of the Small Press Book Fair when it was held at Martin Luther King High School.

Oh yes, Ted said.

Barbara was nearby and said he should know her and Richard from being the recipient of their material about dealing with the NEA.

I was talking to Louis when I heard Ted say, Hi, Jim, to someone and they shook hands, a flash near me.

Paula tapped me on the shoulder from behind and I started. I just wanted to say thank you, she said.

I went for cokes at a vendor cart for me and another poet, and when I came back, the car was gone, and the security car was pulling out of its parking space.

All in all, a good day.

∞

In mid-June, I walked to Lincoln Center to meet a friend, and afterward, about 5 p.m., I went to Ted Weiss’ office. Paula was in, and we gabbed about the Parks Department, St. Clement’s, Abbie Hoffman and Veritas. Veritas was a drug rehab halfway house; she knew the head of it. I had been talking to their P.R. person. St. Clement’s vicar was away again. The head of the vestry told me to rent space if I could, the church needed money. I rented the upstairs space to Abbie Hoffman and Veritas for a TV press conference.

We talked about the Jim Smith for Mayor campaign I was working on, and how we were doing our petitioning on the subway and around subway stops. It was a great way to see the city.

I told her, I saw your photo in the Park River Independent Democratic Club.

I was the district leader there for years, she said. She explained the city was divided into election districts, usually one block or so, and assembly districts which had about 90 e.d.’s, and congressional districts with about 300 election districts. Each assembly district has a district leader. She said, Like McManus is your district leader."

She meant for the St. Clement’s area. McManus was a name I had seldom heard; he was part of the old Hell’s Kitchen, the old-time political machine, a curiosity. A year or so before I had looked inside a restaurant on Ninth at 43rd Street, having been told McManus and his club met there. White tablecloths, a highly polished bar, and on a higher level in the back, in dim light, a handful of men in suits sat around a table playing cards. This was the picture I expected of a corrupt, but irrelevant person. Surely, he was not important in modern times.

There’s one male and one female district leader, she said, They’re responsible for getting out the vote in their districts and running the clubs.

This was fascinating and I filed it away.

I said, I’m trying to get St. Clement’s to hire me as a community worker.

Does St. Clement’s have the money to do that?

No, I said. We can’t pay our bills at the end of this month. For the first time in six years.

She shook her head.

I told her I was on SSI Disability.

You use your SSI money well, she said.

That