Suits and betrayal in Chinatown

"It's so hurtful, it's just wrong!" said a Chinatown community "leader" to another Chinatown non profit director. They exchange mutual gestures of dismay.

Were they deploring restaurant management stealing hard-working waiters' tips? Complaining about a landlord allowing illegal conditions in his building so he could call the Dept of Buildings and evict all the renters overnight without any due process? Or the proposed legislation to exact punishing fines on street vendors for setting up in an illegal space instead of merely having the police ask them to move?

None of those moral crimes. They were deploring a labor organization calling a councilmember "racist." That's what upsets the suits in Chinatown.

White collar crime doesn't receive this kind of shock and dismay. A restaurant manager, donning a suit of clean and pristine pride for a photo op, stands next to a councilmember also in a suit, endorsed by the legitimacy of politics, governance and "leadership." They each lend the other its public display of respectability, shaking hands. Owning and controlling, they have nothing to complain or howl about, nothing ugly to say, nothing to taint the picture, nothing but smiles. And all the suits around are pleased.

But stealing tips -- stealing from low-wage workers who have no alternatives -- is nothing to smile about. It's vastly worse than calling a councilmember "racist."

The suit, like the semiotic neighborhood, is all about selling itself and selling out. It prides itself on its success at whoring itself, as if this were the only game worth playing.

There is no recognition among the respectable that labor stands at the bottom of the social scale, with little support, funding or clout. They have their voices and their unity, and that's just about all. To be heard, they've got to be more than loud in quantity of decibells. They've got to be loud in quality -- shocking, offensive, disturbing and disruptive, otherwise they are invisible. The cry of "racist!" whether true or not, is an honest, sincere, genuine and authentic cry about true management abuses and real living needs.

Forgive me for ranting on this, but I'm disgusted -- and I want those leaders to know that I'm disgusted -- by such displays of shock and dismay over labor tactics. In your comfortable easy chair, imagine yourself lying on the third level of a bunk bed, your only living room. Then imagine who respects your voice. Then, when you next hear "racist" yelled by labor, maybe, true or not, you'll cheer them for simply being heard.

Suits purport to be smart; suits purport to be educated. Then suits should know well the deep disparities of this world and should expect labor tactics to be loud and ugly. Here's how the game is played, and everyone knows it: power, in its echo chamber, will not listen to the disempowered unless the disempowered offend them. Then power deplores the disempowered for being offensive. I have no respect for anyone who deplores labor tactics.

I don't practice labor tactics -- I don't have the courage for it. But I recognize that, truthful or not, it gets justice. There would never have been a Chinatown Working Group were it not for the protests of Chinatown labor which included a lot of name-calling.

It's a shame, though no surprise, that in this upside-down and morally corrupt world, justice should have to be pitted against truth. But truth is merely information; justice is lived. Justice first, then truth will arrive in time. Without justice, truth will remain dressed in suits.

See also in this series:
Semiotic neighborhoods vs the authentic and anti-fragile: prestige and its deceptions and betrayals
Prestige and distortion in Chinatown
The Mobility Dilemma and the Clearinghouse Effect
Authenticity in the East Village

Should be interesting:

A rare opportunity to learn the labor perspective in Chinatown. And Peter Kwong is an authority on Chinatown. Sunday, Jan. 10, 3pm, 345 Grand Street at Chinese Staff and Workers Association.

Division

[Cross-posted at http://chinatownforchinatown.wordpress.com/]

There are two sides debating in the Chinatown Working Group. Some want to see more tourists in Chinatown to support business. Developers, financiers, some business owners, the Business Improvement District, for example, sit on this side and arts purveyors as well. On the other side stand the labor and tenant adovocates who want business to serve the local residents. You might ask, why not have both, local services and toursim?

If only the sustainable market forces were balanced. But they’re not. Gentrification is an opportunistic tide that, once it gains an entry, will flood the locality resistlessly. To use urban planning to help the juggernaut of monopolistic market forces is unnecessary. The empowered need no help.

In any economy, there are vulnerable sectors even among the most sustainable. Local services are actually highly sustainable since local residents have consistent, reliable purchasing needs. You see those needs reflected in the streets of Chinatown. As long as the community remains, the local services will be sustainable.

Although they are highly sustainable, local services are also highly vulnerable to attack from giant outside capital which has more resources, government connections and mobility. Ironically, the least vulnerable — giant capital, developers, big businesses, chain stores — are also the least reliable because they are mobile and least tied to the locality. Like a corporation that protects itself in bad times by laying off labor, giant corporations are most capable of protecting themselves at the expense of the locality, whereas small local servers depend on the locals.

Tourism is closely tied to development and big capital — high prices and upscale values that can be marketed to upscale spending. Local services, especially in Chinatown, depend on low prices and high volume. If giant capital gains a foothold, commercial rents will rise, replacing local services, and  gentrification will displace the community, killing the viability of any remaining local services. It’s a snowball effect.

This is not to say there shouldn’t be tourism in Chinatown. There’s always been tourism in Chinatown back all the way to the 19th century. But here’s the paradox of tourism: people come to Chinatown not to see a spectacle staged for them but to experience Chinatown as it is, a lively working community, culturally distinct from the rest of New York because it serves its own. Cater too much to the tourist, and you lose the Chinatown that tourists come for. You’d then have to market Chinatown as a brand, constantly hoping that that brand doesn’t go out of fashion. Chinatown business becomes the slave of an outside community that it has no control over, and it turns a community with businesses in it into a business with no community in it.

In planning, as everywhere, there are empowered sectors that need no help, and disempowered groups that need support. Were it not for the 1% predators, the 99% disempowered would be fully sustainable. That’s why planning should always keep as its goal protecting the disempowered and avoiding giving ground to giant capital.

New blog "Chinatown for Chinatown: a discussion board"

I started a blog about Chinatown planning called "Chinatown for Chinatown"
http://chinatownforchinatown.wordpress.com/

I've avoided blogging about Chinatown while I was involved with a Chinatown planning group. It's not the kiss-and-tell aspect -- I believe in transparency. But journalism gives the writer an unfair advantage within the group. It can bias the process or coerce it. But the Chinatown Working Group has mostly concluded its discussions, now waiting for its planning consultant to come up with recommendations to the group. So I can write as an outside observer.

I've asked several local voices and urban planners to post as regular guest bloggers. I'm hoping to see an open, broad discussion that will be of help to the planning consultants as they dig into the issues and challenges that Chinatown faces.

CB3 priorities

Our Community Board has sent around a notice asking for help in getting themselves more funding. But CB3 did not send around a notice announcing the Chinatown Town Hall, an extremely important community event held in CB3's district.

It has been eleven months that the Chinatown Working Group has been meeting, yet CB3 has not sent even a single notice of even one meeting. I get my notices of Chinatown Working Group meetings from CB2, even though I live in CB3's district and the Town Hall was held in CB3's district.

No doubt the community boards need funding to accomplish their goals. But those goals must include the entire community, not just the sector of the community that makes the CB look good or that is friendly to the CB.

Advertising the Chinatown process would have improved CB3's image. Continuing to undermine the process by not sending out notices will just earn CB3 more enmity. I hope CB3 will rethink its approach to the Chinatown Working Group and begin sending notices of the meetings through their e-mail list. Then I might be happy to advocate for more CB funding.

Upcoming

1) Urge Albany to pass new rent laws before the end of the session June 22
2) Town Hall on the future of Chinatown, June 1

Urge Albany to pass new rent laws before the end of the session June 22
The key phone numbers are:
Gov. Paterson: 212-681-4580
Majority Leader Smith- 212-298-55-85
Housing Committee Chair Espada-518-455-3395

Phone numbers for other holdouts -- if you know anyone in these districts, ask them to call to urge their state senator to vote for the ten bills now before the Senate:

Jeffrey Klein(D) -1-800-718-2039 -34th Distict Bronx/Westchester
(ThrogsNeck, Weschester Sq. Morris Park, Pelham Parkway,
Eastchester-Bronx, New Rochelle, Mount Vernon, Eastchester-Westchester,
North Riverdale, Woodlawn, Norwood, Belmont Park

Carl Kruger(D)-718-743-8610-27th District Brooklyn(Midwood,
Gravesend, Flatlands, Sheepshead Bay, Ocen Parkway, Mapleton)

Martin Golden(R)-718-238-6044- 22nd District Brooklyn ( Bayridge,
Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst, Bath Beach, Gravesend, Ocean Parkway South,
Sheepshead Bay, Gerritson Beach)

Martin Malave Dilan(D)-718-573-1726-17th District Booklyn
(Williamsberg, East Williamsberg, Greenpoint, Bushwick, Clinton Hill,
Wyckoff Heights, Broadway Junction, Highland Park, Cypress Hills)

Diane Savino (D) 718-333-0311- 23rd Distict Brooklyn/Staten Island
(Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, Coney Island, Grasmere, Rosebank, Grymes Hill,
Clifton, Stapleton, New Brighton, Livingston, Port Richmond)

Craig Johnson(D)-516-746-5923 7th District Nassau County( Great Neck,
Port Washington, Floral Park, Bellrose, Mineola, Carle Place


Chinatown Town Hall flyer:

TOWN HALL: The Future of Chinatown
Hosted by the Chinatown Working Group

Monday, June 1
6:30 p.m.
PS 124
40 Division street
Between Bowery and Manhattan Bridge
Translator will be available.
(Please see attached flyers in English and Chinese.)

The Chinatown Working Group Town Hall will cover a number issues regarding the future of Chinatown including jobs, affordable housing, traffic, parking, parks, funding schools and concerns about history and culture. Help decide the future of Chinatown!

The Chinatown Working Group is a newly formed democratic and open community-based planning initiative on the future of Chinatown. Our goal is to support the community's residents, workers, businesses and visitors. Chinatown Working Group's members are Chinatown's stakeholders -- LIKE YOU!


English Flyer: http://www.chinatownworkinggroup.org/cwg%20town%20hall%20flyer%20EnglishJune1.pdf
Chinese Flyer: http://www.chinatownworkinggroup.org/cwg%20town%20hall%20flyer%20ChineseJune%201.pdf
CWG Web Site: http://www.chinatownworkinggroup.org

The cultural strength of immigration

I don't know of any successful anti-gentrification policy measure. Turning Greenwich Village into a historic district saved the buildings from demolition, but didn't save the neighborhood from gentrification. Zoning might help Chinatown if it could bring locally-hiring manufacturing jobs into the neighborhood.

Affordable housing construction has been a success in Chinatown. Unfortunately, the city's current affordable housing programs bring more luxury housing than affordable housing, and very little of the affordable housing is low-income affordable.

One organic social factor has prevented gentrification of several New York communities. Neighborhoods that continue to receive new working-class immigrants and retain them tend to keep their cultural character and resist gentrification. Chinatown has that in its favor.

But many local residents and business owners have interests that do not prioritize new immigrant needs.

The issues before the Working Group are both complex and difficult, and I haven't seen them fully hashed out. The CWG principles are all well-intentioned, but there has been no definitive analysis explaining how to get from principle to practice.

Hunter College's Urban Studies Department is producing a study of Chinatown which I hope will address these issues and conflicts. The consequences of policies need to be fleshed out clearly on paper so that all parties know what is at stake. Right now the teams seem too splintered and narrowly focused. It might be helpful for an outside, disinterested academic institution to consider the consequences of each possible policy decision.

Chinatown arch

I guess everyone involved in Chinatown affairs has an opinion on whether Chinatown should build a gateway arch. I guess knowing a few of those opinions is a sure mark of contact with Chinatown discussions. Perhaps there already is a gateway arch in Chinatown. It is intellectual and interactive, and you don't know that you have walked through it until you find yourself on the other side of it. Chinatown's gateway arch is a discussion: the discussion of the arch. Once you find that you have an opinion on it, you suddenly discover that you've walked into a place you hadn't been before, or if you'd been, you hadn't quite seen it from this angle.
:-)

People disagree on where this arch -- I mean the physical one, now -- should be located and what it should look like. The benefits of proximity to the arch might unfairly favor near businesses over far, and there's little agreement on whether Chinatown's image should recall old-country traditions or the uniqueness of the new or both. There's even disagreement whether it will be good for Chinatown at all: all the dying Chinatowns in the US have arches; Manhattan's live Chinatown alone doesn't. If it aint broke...

Of the proposals I've heard, one of Wellington Chen's is most appealing and smartest: a hologram arch. It would create a tourist attraction that will draw commerce to Chinatown, won't consume space and could even span the entirety of Chinatown itself, encompassing all its locations. I can imagine that such a hologram arch -- maybe even a transforming hologram taking traditional features and melding into modern features in turn melding into futuristic possibilities, with elements drawn from the whole immigrant history of Chinatown: African, German, Irish, Jewish and Italian -- I can imagine that as a worldwide tourist attraction. It would be a financial bonanza for Chinatown, feeding cash every day in perpetuity, like the Eiffel Tower, as Wellington likes to say. It's an irresistible proposal.

But I have qualms about tourism. It's not monolithic, tourism. Tourists who come to Chinatown for Chinatown's authentic living character are different from tourists who come to see an urban technological marvel. The latter expect to eat American fare, preferably MacDonalds, but Wendy's will do too. They might venture into a local restaurant, but only if the menu isn't too threatening. I'm fine with Empire State Building tourists at the Empire State Building, or Statue of Liberty tourists at the ferry -- there are no neighborhoods to destroy there. Chinatown has to consider which tourists it wants and how to get them.

If the goal is to attract tourists to Chinatown for its authentic living character, and not for a convenient concentration of MacDonaldses and Wendy'ses and a handful of Americanized "Chinese" restaurants, why have any arch at all? How does an arch enhance the lived character of the place?

I feel the lack of a symbol for Manhattan's Chinatown. Is there one? Its landmarks are urban and American -- rows of tenements built for Irish, Italians and Jews, a park with a Calvert Vaux pavilion, a bridge entry with a grand and grimy Beaux Arts Carrere & Hastings entrance, a bank designed to match the classical Beaux Arts bridge, minus the grime. There's Confucius and there's Lin Ze Xu, but neither one is specifically Manhattan's Chinatown nor expresses the relation of Chinatown to Manhattan. Kim Lau comes closer and should be better known, but to try to make it better known would be a task akin to lecturing a class of students who just want to get out and play.

The most distinctive image of Chinatown for me is the bright chaos of flying banners posted along Pell Street. They are a favorite among photographers. Flickr is rife with Pell Street shots. Go look. It says so much about Chinatown: that it is lively, busy, commercial, bright, welcoming, distinct from the rest of the city yet distinctively urban and New York in character.

All the most memorable images of Chinatown are of its streets and streetlife. It has no Chrysler Building, or Upper West Side grand hotels or Upper East Side marble museums, or East Village Tower of Toys (and now the EV has lost that too) or lamppost mosaics, or Greenwich Village townhouses. It does have roast ducks in picture windows, sunday-in-the-park ensembles of erhu, flute and yangqin surrounded by trees, their low branches hung with the cages of exotic song birds, and a narrow, winding street dour in its presence and darker in its past.

The discussion of the arch seems like a red herring to me. The image of Chinatown surely should be sought in what Chinatown is, not in creating what it isn't or conforming it to other places. If character shall be destiny, that creation or conformity can only lead away from the true path. But what do I know? I'm an outsider.

Maybe the funds for the arch should be devoted to finding an image for Chinatown drawn from Chinatown itself. A fauvist silkscreen of Pell Street banners?

Instead of a Chinatown arch...













jBlough flickr

...Chinatown banners.

Gentrification and Chinatown

The Chinatown Working Group has addressed itself well to a variety of interests and issues, but has not adequately, clearly, fully and definitively discussed the ten ton elephant in the room: there's a tension within Chinatown's future between promoting a thriving Chinatown and preserving its character; the danger of gentrifying Chinatown out of existence.

Chinatown gentrification is already evident in rising commercial and residential rents. The Chinatown Working Group can help to direct gentrification, control it or increase it. A lot depends on who attends their meetings.

The CWG understanding of and position with regard to gentrification is, I think, the most important first task before it. Without an unambiguous stance on gentrification, without clearing the air of the conflicting interests that have a stake in gentrification for or against, I don't see how the group can move forward coherently.

If there's a town hall, I'd like to see it address the effects of the gentrification that is coming to Chinatown --

on business
(increased commercial rents are tough on local business, gentrified neighborhoods attract big-capital businesses from outside that locals can't compete with and that alter the character of the neighborhood),

on jobs
(gentrification does not necessarily mean more jobs and gentrified jobs are not necessarily opportunities for local residents),

on residential character and affordability
(higher rents bring increased landlord harassment and change in residential character),

on immigrant housing and opportunities
(gentrified neighborhoods do not accommodate new working-class immigrants, and it is likely that the character of Chinatown immigration protects Manhattan's Chinatown from the sterility that has affected Chinatowns everywhere else in the US).

The Chinatown Working Group Town Hall

The Chinatown Working Group plans to hold a Town Hall meeting on the future of Chinatown and its self-determination, hoping to attract more of the local grassroots into the process. I don't see how it'll work. If the grassroots don't attend the meetings now, which are all open and public, what will attract them to a Town Hall based on the same broad mission?

Maybe if they chalk all the sidewalks of Chinatown De La Vega-style with

唐人街的 未來:
誰將決定?
Chinatown Working Group

People come out for specific issues that affect them. If a Town Hall addressing some such specific issue can offer steps toward problem resolution, the Working Group will acquire a following in the community.

To draw the broad range of the grassroots, they'd have to hold several town halls each on a different issue, and in each case offer the hope of effective change so that attendees don't leave discouraged with the process. Finding those issues is a challenge.

Alternatively, the Working Group can present a range of proposals. Proposals always spark controversy.

I am afraid that if a town hall on "The Future of Chinatown and its Self-Determination" fails to attract any but the usual suspects who already attend Working Group meetings, it will serve only to discourage the Working Group itself.

A sure solution: install a series of really huge, ugly pieces of temporary art in central locations where they obstruct pedestrian traffic. Place the title prominently on them: "The Future of Chinatown -- Chinatown's Self-Determination" and the sponsor: "Chinatown Working Group." Then the only problem for the town hall on Chinatown's Self-Determination will be finding a venue large enough for the crowd.

Years ago my landlord placed an alarm on the door to our roof. Some recalcitrant tenant set it off three nights in a row, keeping everyone in the building up all night. I announced a tenants association meeting and got 100% attendance with only two days' notice.

Chinatown working teams

I've been to three meetings of Chinatown Working Group 'teams' (euphemism for "committee," word that stifles all hope). Pleurisy, the devil's own invention, prevented me from attending a fourth team.

The cultural preservation team and the affordability team devoted their time to discussion, raising important issues and observing the challenges to resolving them. Wisely, no decisions were made. Instead, the teams took their first meeting as an opportunity to gain a sense of the group and a sense of direction.

The zoning team, by contrast, immediately drew up and voted on a list of desiderata without first gaining any sense of group direction. The result was a laundry list of items some of which seem to me to conflict, if not contradict one another.

I noticed that Chinatown residents participated fully at the cultural and especially at the affordability team, where the discussion seemed to me deepest. Chinatown residents participated least in the disappointing zoning team discussion. Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned there.

Full disclosure: I don't live in Chinatown (though I work there) and I did participate in the discussions.

The argument for bringing in outside meddlers seems to rest on the diversity and lack of consensus within Chinatown. Several members of the cultural team cited plans for a Chinatown arch that have gone nowhere although the City Council long ago designated funds for it, the moral being, you can't even get consensus in Chinatown on a free arch.

Hell, I don't know whether this whole enterpise will succeed, but I wouldn't be discouraged by an unbuilt arch! It may seem a paltry and easy task, but building an arch is actually just the kind of project that courts controversy: it's public, symbolic, supplies no need directly yet can favor one area over another and alters the experience of the common space for everyone in a seemingly gratuitous, authoritarian, paternalistic way. Of course it hasn't been built!

Not all projects court controversy. Creating and supporting a space for a cultural center, for example, supplies a need directly and daily, doesn't have to be seen by any but those who use and love it and doesn't force anyone to accept its symbolism, if it has any symbolism; it provides without taking. Where's the controversy?

Ah, Chinatown leaders sound like East Village activists: "it can't be done here, we're too factious." Well, if pessimistic complaints must precede accomplishment, so be it. I have confidence in this process...if only we outsiders can listen more and talk less.

Chinatown report

The Chatham Redesign Task Force met Monday, focusing on the many weaknesses of the city's plan. The whole redesign twists tortuously around a tiny piece of state park (the few feet of the memorial arch) in the middle of the square for no other reason than the city thinks it would take too long for the state to move it. The city can't wait: they've got to reroute traffic for the upcoming Brooklyn Bridge repair project.

In other words, this is a rush job dressed up as planning, and Chinatown pays.

Chatham Square is a mess as it is; the redesign will create another mess. SNAFU. Re-opening Park Row, which would solve everything, does not seem to be on the table.

The Chinatown Working Group, on a happier note, continues with a remarkably open process that has already attracted twenty-five local organizations as members. They are looking for more participation. All the local electeds attend, though not allowed membership. To give a sense of CWG scope, here's a list of the teams they've created:

Historical and Cultural Preservation (28 volunteers)
Affordability [housing] (24 volunteers)
Zoning (22 volunteers)
Economic Development/Revitalization (21 volunteers)
Immigrant Affairs/Services (13 volunteers)
Parking, Transportation & Circulation (11 volunteers)
Education & Schools (7 volunteers)
Parks, Open Space & Recreation (7 volunteers)
Security/Park Row (3 volunteers)

Upcoming local meetings

Of meetings in the new year, maybe the most important is the Chinatown Working Group's at which they will set their agenda for the future and elect their leadership. More urgent is the Chatham Square Redesign Task Force. It should bring a strong showing of community voices opposed to the plan the city is ready to implement.

Liquor license applications are down by about 30%, but there are still 20 applicants, many of them restaurants upgrading to a full liquor license, including European Union. See the complete list below.

CB3's Housing Committee will consider three properties south of Houston on Orchard and Rivington applying for construction renewals and extensions.

And CB3's zoning committee will revisit (?) the rezoning south of Houston (Essex to Chrystie), and will consider the Seward Park Renewal area.

1. Chinatown Working Group, Mon Jan 5, 4-6, 191-193 Canal @ Mott.
2. CB3 Zoning Committee, Mon Jan 5, 6:30, 184 Eldridge.
3. CB3 Liquor Licensing Committee, Mon Jan 12, 6:30, 200 E 5.
4. CB3 Chatham Redesign Task Force, Mon Jan 12, 6:30, 33 Bowery @ Bayard
5. CB3 Housing Committee, Tues Jan 20, 6:30, 333 Bowery.

Agenda for the liquor licensing and sidewalk cafe licensing committee:
Renewal with Complaint History
1. Kaleidoscope Restaurant, 212 E 10th St (rw)
2. Winebar, 65 2nd Ave (sidewalk cafe)
Applications within Resolution Areas
3. European Union, 235 E 4th St (up/op)
4. Eat Pisode, 123 Ludlow St (rw)
5. 171 Ave A Food, 171 Ave A (rw)
6. Bruno Jamais, 179 Ludlow St (op)
7. Kuma Inn, 113 Ludlow St (rw)
Alterations/Transfers/Upgrades
8. Castleblade, 17 Clinton St (up/op)
9. NY Restaurant Supplies, 29 3rd Ave (alt/reduction of size of restaurant)
10. Ford Grey, 175 Ludlow St (trans/op)
11. Maradona, 188 Allen St (up/op)
12. Ballaro, 77 2nd Ave (trans/rw)
New Liquor License Applications
13. Eastville Comedy Club, 85 E 4th St (op)
14. Sun Shine 27, 46 Bowery (rw)
15. Noodle King, 19 Henry St (rw)
16. Ken's Asian Taste, 40 Bowery (rw)
17. Cafe Khufu, 61 E 3rd St (rw)
18. Upright Citizens Brigade, 155 E 3rd St (tw)
19. Saigon NYC, 85 Orchard St (rw)
20. Thai Bodhi Tree, 58 3rd Ave (rw)

Chinatown Working Group

The Chinatown Working Group met last night. I attended with qualms but left mostly encouraged.

Rather than narrow its focus and hand-pick its membership to speed the process along, the CWG has opted for principles of openness, inclusion and breadth. Narrow focus and selectivity are conducive to speed but also to controversy, as we saw in the EV/LES rezoning. So far, the CWG has not been unwieldy or slow.

The Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the LES, the group that led the opposition to the EV/LES rezoning, is not attending the CWG meetings, but its influence is felt in the mission statement and the orientation of the Group and even the fact of its existence: I doubt this Working Group would have been convened at this time and in this way were it not for the Coalition's vigorous, organized and highly public opposition to the EV/LES rezoning.

Judging by their proposed mission and governance structure, the Chinatown Working Group is characterized by

Openness
All Chinatown groups are asked to participate. Organizations alone will be allowed a vote in the Group, but individuals are being encouraged to form organizations of their own in order to broaden the voting membership and representation at the ground level. My initial concern that developers' interests would insinuate themselves into the proceedings are somewhat allayed by this structure. And encouraging the formation of local grassroots organizations is a good idea in itself.

Outreach
Such openness requires broad and equitable outreach, which appears to be a Group priority. CB1 and CB2 have been advertising meetings for some time. I expect CB3 will soon join CB1 and CB2 in announcing the meetings, since most of Chinatown is in CB3.

Inclusive vision
The Group is looking at the broadest implications of its work. Whatever the final boundaries of the area of study, the Group is already looking beyond the narrowest confines of current Chinatown both geographically and temporally with a long-sighted view towards the future.

Breadth of scope
The Group will not confine itself to zoning alone, but will consider comprehensive planning. From their draft mission statement: "truly affordable housing, cultural and historic preservation, economic revitalization, open space. public infrastructure, residential and business displacement, and zoning."

(I expressed my concern that "economic revitalization" not be made a cover for outside commercial or development interests to displace Chinatown's existing commerce and residents. The words "commercial stability" may be added to the mission alongside "economic revitalization." The desire to bring manufacturing into Chinatown -- an important basis for community sustainability unfortunately disappearing from the city -- may also find more explicit expression in the mission statement.)

Participation
So far, I see a well-run Group with plenty of talent. All the local electeds have been participating even though they will not have a vote under the proposed governance structure. Community groups are being offered a voting voice in order to encourage broad and regular participation. But participation is a political commitment and many attending are still wary. I imagine they will want to see the Group's direction before throwing in their lot with this initiative. They may prefer to attend as critics than participate only to become targets of criticism. It'll be a challenge.

The Group leadership wants to begin working on real issues as soon as it can, attracting participation as it demonstrates is goals and effectiveness. It also hopes to attract participation by its openness. Both strategies are well taken.

The Group meets again Jan 5 to vote on its mission statement and governance structure. Meanwhile it is considering the boundaries of its "study area."

They are looking for a regular meeting place that can seat at least sixty. If you have any leads, let me know and I'll pass it on. Meetings are held on the first Monday of the month, 4-6pm.