Bronx school exposes kids to careers in the construction trades
Joyce Pulphus, principal of Bronx Design & Construction Academy (BDCA) welcomed parents, alumni, and prospective students to the school’s second annual Career and Technical Education (CTE) fair on Friday, March 31.
“This is an opportunity, the CTE Fair is our opportunity to show you our greatness,” Pulphus boasted. The fair was a chance to show that BDCA is more than just a regular high school; Pulphus said it was an opportunity to prove that her high school “is a gem within the Bronx community.”
Outsiders were welcomed into the school and got to see the classrooms, or CTE shops, where students work every day. These CTE shops are where ninth through 12th graders learn trade skills like architectural engineering, HVAC engineering, carpentry technology, electrical engineering, and plumbing technology.
The school’s carpentry class is a huge room which holds two large houses. And every year, Kenneth Milani, BDCA’s physical education teacher explained, students use one of the houses as a model while they coordinate with the architecture class to design and construct a replica house––from the ground up. Once the house is finished, students in the electrical and plumbing classes come in and add their expertise to the job.
All of the work is done to city code, noted Jeffrey Smalls, the CEO of Smalls Electrical Construction, Inc. “We had a city inspector come three years ago to make sure that everything within the building would be fine, and they passed,” Smalls, who was one of the co-founders of the BDCA in 2009, told the AmNews.
At one point, BDCA had been threatened with closure. But community members held rallies and gathered more than 6,000 signatures to fight to keep it open. Thalia Panton, the vice president of workforce development with the Transportation Diversity Council (TDC) also came to tour the CTE fair. The TDC was another founding partner of BDCA: Panton said her organization helps bring resources to the schools’ students.
“It’s always been a trade school, for 70 years. But when they were shutting it down, under Bloomberg, that’s when they jumped in, and they said they needed to keep a trade school in the Bronx,” Milani said.
According to plumbing teacher Denise Montes, “One of the benefits the students get from coming to this school, and the different skills that they learn in the 10th and 11th and 12th grades, is that by the time they graduate, if they successfully complete all their credits and pass their final exams, they graduate with something called a CTE endorsement. That gives them two years of work experience that they could apply to city exams.”
Being able to qualify for the plumber’s helper exam, Montes said, means that 18-year-old students graduating from BDCA could potentially find employment where they could earn more than $50 an hour.
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DWELL: 465 WEST 144TH STREET TOWNHOUSE
Harlem Bespoke: After selling for $1.9 million back in 2020 during the start of the pandemic, Number 465 West 144th Street in Hamilton Heights is now back on the market for a cool $2.5 million. So what is different this time around? The listing mentions that everything is in a multi-family layout and a Certificate of No Harrassment in place so an SRO situation might have been the case in the past. With that said, that would mean the next owner can start with changing the layout right away and there lies the new value of the apparent fixer-upper. As previously mentioned, this is one of the rarely available landmark townhouses on the block of West 144th Street between Convent and Amsterdam Avenue which is one of our favorite blocks in all of the city. More details and photos can be found on Streeteasy: LINK
LISTEN: LIVE JAZZ NIGHT AT LUCILLE’S
Harlem Bespoke: Live music lovers can check out the jazz vibes at Lucille’s on Macomb Place by 150th Street every Thursday evening starting at 8:00PM with dinner or drink service. The charming corner space in Central Harlem has a very current 70’s mood to it which doubles as a cozy coffee spot during the day but also makes for a lovely evening out when cocktails are served up at the bar. With things starting to open up back in the city, Lucille’s is definitely one of the places to check out for a chill night out. More details on Lucille’s can be found in our past post: LINK
Community comes together to mark anniversary of MLK’s assassination
The People’s Organization for Progress was set to host their annual protest to observe the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Tuesday, April 4. Organizers named their event the “March For Justice, Equality, and Peace.” Participants met at the new Martin Luther King Memorial Monument at 495 Martin Luther King Blvd. by the new Essex County Building.
The protest centered on police brutality, voting rights, world peace, housing justice, worker rights and living wage jobs, environmental justice, and more. Police brutality, especially in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, was especially spotlighted with the family survivors of a number of recent cases in the area participating prominently.
“We are marching on April 4 to draw attention to police brutality in New Jersey, as well as the rest of the nation,” said chairperson Lawrence Hamm. “We [marched] to demand justice for Najee Seabrooks, Bernard Placide Jr., Carl Dorsey, Major Gulia Dale III, the Rodwell/Spivey Brothers, and many other victims in this state and across the country.”
The King statue in front of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Justice Building, near the corner of Springfield Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, was surrounded by participants with hopes of drawing attention to the fact that the social, economic, and political issues that King confronted during his lifetime are still present today, and it is our duty to continue his fight.
Marchers demanded full implementation of the state’s Amistad Law, which requires teaching African American history in all public schools.
For more information about the People’s Organization for Progress, call 973-801-0001.
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America’s Gun Epidemic is the Problem, Not Transgender People
The far right wants to distort the recent horrific Nashville shooting into a story about violence and transgender people. We should strongly rebuff those efforts as a blatantly offensive sleight of hand that fundamentally ignores reality and seeks to undermine our collective humanity.
Last week, on Monday, March 27, our nation experienced another tragic mass shooting that senselessly took six lives at a covenant school in Nashville. Unfortunately, the right-wing disinformation machine has executed an all-too-familiar strategy of turning conversations regarding gun safety into an opportunity to perpetuate hatred toward marginalized groups. Channeling hate into a political strategy will only result in more gun-related deaths.
After unconfirmed reports that the perpetrator of the Nashville shooting identified as transgender, a flood of anti-transgender rhetoric began, with transphobic comments coming from across the spectrum. Across the conservative media spectrum, outlets went to pains to immediately brand the suspect as a “trans shooter.”
To give you a sense of the insanity, former President Donald Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) have both speculated that hormone therapy was driving the shooter’s apparent rage, despite there being no evidence that the shooter was on hormone therapy.
The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., said the media was ignoring “a clear epidemic of trans or non-binary mass shooters,” although he presented nothing to support that claim.
The comments demonizing transgender people are perhaps the most cynical in a long line of distraction techniques to avoid the underlying discussion of America’s gun epidemic—the one that is happening regardless of the identity of the shooter.
But let’s remember that facts matter. There have been at least 130 mass shootings this year alone. The vast majority of mass shootings in the United States are perpetrated by cisgender men, and transgender people are dramatically more likely to be victims of violent crime, not perpetrators. Most concerning, incidents of violence against transgender people are on the rise across this country.
The attacks on transgender people are part of a much broader and insidious campaign. Since the beginning of the year, more than 400 anti-LGBTQ pieces of legislation have been introduced in state legislatures nationwide as part of a national strategy to enshrine discrimination into law. Much of the legislation focuses on restricting healthcare access, visibility in the education system, and freedom of public expression. Within the LGBTQ community, transgender people are the most vulnerable, which makes these attacks all the more heartbreaking. Transgender people are our siblings, our family.
As a Black man who is also gay, I have lived my life being seen as “other” to many. In my life, I have learned that my greatest power is my ability to stand up for others. In my roles in the private sector, government, and not-for-profit sectors and now as the president & CEO of the Global Black Economic Forum, I have always believed that we must rise above the shrill pitch of fear and embrace the “human” in our communities.
For some, it is all too easy to look past the demonization of transgender people, because they are not transgender. But we cannot allow that to happen. We must stand together against campaigns to erase any of us. Let’s not forget: When they come for “them” today, they will come for “us” tomorrow, using the same strategy of fear and distortion.
Far too often, Black people face microaggressions and dog-whistle politics. We know the coded language, we know what it means, and we have always called it out. In today’s political environment, the dog whistle is a bullhorn of explicit bigotry.
We deserve better: a national conversation about gun policy driven by facts, not fear, and more empathy for the transgender community, who are a part of our collective human community. The vast majority of Americans want action, not more demonization. Let’s stand up for better.
Alphonso David is president & CEO of the Global Black Economic Forum. He previously served as chief counsel to the governor of New York and as an adjunct professor of law at the Fordham University Law School and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
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