General Lee Avenue on Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn (photo: Gettty)
Every Soldier, Sailor, Marine, and Airman from New York City and Long Island conducts their enlistment at the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) on Fort Hamilton Army Base, located on the southeast coast of Brooklyn. Many recruits show up to Fort Hamilton unaware of the fact that the main drag on the base is named after confederate General Robert E. Lee.
As if it weren’t embarrassing enough that a street on Fort Hamilton was named after the General in Chief of confederate forces in the Civil War, the MEPS facility is located on the corner of General Lee and White Avenue.
The central problem is two-fold: not only are Confederate leaders overrepresented on military bases (since, ostensibly, there aren’t any confederates left), but people of color are underrepresented in the names of bases across the country. The military should not only be a place where service members are free from systemic racism, but also a place where the people honored on bases — including their avenues — should reflect the backgrounds of the service members themselves. The time for us to rename Brooklyn’s General Lee Avenue is now.
We can only speculate about the mindset of the people who decided to place New York’s gateway to the military on what is likely the most racist-sounding intersection in the five boroughs. What we are left with are the reactions of recruits of all races who pass through the intersection on a daily basis. I witnessed these reactions first hand as a recruiter in the U.S. Army from 2014 to 2018.
Idling cars with government licence plates fill the MEPS parking lot before sunrise on a typical day there. Recruits eventually line up to prepare for a day filled with paperwork and physical examinations to ensure that they are fit for duty. Occasionally, one of these queued volunteers will ask their recruiter about the street sign at the intersection closest to MEPS.
Most of the curious recruits — many of whom are Black — pause to contemplate the situation, followed by the common refrain of “that’s messed up.” Some will shake their heads with furrowed brows, completely at a loss for words as they stare at the posted name of General Lee.
Black veterans, who have more liberty to speak their minds once outside the ranks, have called Confederate memorials a “slap in the face” that “contribute to lower performance.”
I used to explain to my recruits that Lee had been stationed at Fort Hamilton during his days as a Captain in the Union Army. Lee served there in the 1840s as an engineer, long before his defection to the confederacy.
The recruits’ outward disgust would eventually dissipate as they turned their focus to the enlistment process. To this day, I wonder how many of these recruits internalized their frustration about Lee and White. Their reactions are completely valid, of course. The Army was choosing respect for white-supremacist rebels over respect for the dignity of service members of color, not to mention all those who fought for the Union in the Civil War and their loved ones.
The street names at that intersection are particularly insensitive to Black servicemembers, who are overrepresented within the military’s ranks compared to the general population. Black men are 60% more represented in the U.S. Military than their white counterparts, according to a report by the Brookings Institution. That same report shows that the 22-million-plus Black women in the United States are over three times as likely to serve in the Armed Forces as white women. And the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 24.3% of New York City residents are Black.
Confederate symbols garnered increased scrutiny in 2015 after a white supremacist murdered nine congregants of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. For a time, opponents of Confederate memorials had to contend with President Donald Trump, who actively defended such memorials in the name of “history and culture.”
While a plaque commemorating a tree planted by Robert E. Lee was removed from an off-post church near Fort Hamilton in 2017, General Lee Avenue kept its name. It turned out that changing the road’s name would literally require an act of Congress.
But Congress did eventually take action on this issue. Section 370 of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act established a “commission on the naming of items of the Department of Defense that commemorate the Confederate States of America or any person who served voluntarily with the Confederate States of America,” which is commonly referred to as the “Naming Commission.”
The bipartisan commission is tasked with working with local communities to “develop a plan to remove names, symbols, displays, monuments, or paraphernalia that commemorate the Confederate States of America.”
It is important to note that certain items exist outside of the purview of the commission. Suggestive names — such as White Avenue — fall outside of the commission’s mandate because the road is not named after an individual from the Confederacy. Still, as a street on a federal military base that is named after a Confederate rebel, General Lee Avenue is fair game.
The Naming Commission is currently working on renaming military bases, collaborating with neighboring communities to come up with replacement names for bases such as Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Rucker in Alabama. But the commission’s initial focus is on nine bases in the South, according to commission chair and retired Navy Admiral Michelle Howard.
Influential officials in New York, such as Mayor Bill de Blasio and Mayor-elect Eric Adams, must immediately reach out to Adm. Howard to ensure that Fort Hamilton is up for review when the commission expands its proceedings. A successful renaming campaign would be an easy win for any elected official who takes it on, or, as we say in the military, “free chicken.”
Finding a replacement name for General Lee Avenue should involve community input, much like the renaming proceedings that are occurring across the nation this year. The list of Medal of Honor recipients connected to New York provides plenty of potential candidates to replace Lee. Whatever name the commission settles on, it will undoubtedly give new recruits the honorable welcome to the U.S. military that they deserve.
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Stephen Bragale is a U.S. Army veteran and an undergraduate student at Fordham University, majoring in English and Political Science.
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Former Assemblymember Robert Rodriguez, middle (photo: @_rjayrodriguez)
How might Assemblymember Robert Rodriguez’s resignation lead to Puerto Ricans losing the seat for which they have fought so long? Let me explain.
Last week, as a who’s who of New York elected officials descended on the island of Puerto Rico, Governor Kathy Hochul was preparing her continued push to revamp state government, attempting along the way the diversification of the Empire State’s governmental representatives.
On Thursday, 1,600 miles away from New York and under the hot Caribbean sun in Borinquen, Hochul announced the appointment of Assemblymember Rodriguez of East Harlem to the position of Secretary of State. Rodriguez becomes the fifth consecutive Latino to be appointed to the position.
Rodriguez’s appointment will set off a royal rumble, with numerous individuals already declaring their intentions to succeed him in the Assembly. Rodriguez’s seat is one that has significant historical importance for Latino politics in New York.
It was in 1937 that the first Latino to win elected office in New York, the Puerto Rican Oscar Garcia Rivera, occupied this very seat in East Harlem. (East Harlem would come to be known as a place of firsts for Latino political representation. Tony Mendez would become the first Latino Democratic District Leader in 1957. And his daughter-in-law, Olga Mendez, would become the first Puerto Rican woman in the nation to win a seat in a state legislature.)
By the time Garcia Rivera was elected to the State Assembly, East Harlem had become the hub for new Puerto Rican migrants arriving in New York. To be sure, East Harlem was not the initial destination for the first major wave of Puerto Rican migrants. That distinction belonged to Brooklyn, with many Puerto Ricans arriving in Williamsburg and the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a result of the neighborhoods’ proximity to the New York City waterways. Puerto Ricans eventually made East Harlem their hub and in time it was first there that Latinos’ base of political operations and eventual electoral successes took place. The sheer number of Puerto Ricans that filled the streets of East Harlem led to its unofficial name change to “El Barrio,” as it continues to be known today.
Even before the election of Garcia Rivera, Puerto Ricans had become a sought-after voting bloc in East Harlem. Fiorello La Guardia, before his election to the mayoralty, represented East Harlem in Congress. His foresight and close observation of the demographic changes engulfing his neighborhood led La Guardia to foresee the powerful bloc Puerto Ricans would eventually become. His protégé and successor, Vito Marcantonio, also recognized the importance of the Puerto Rican presence and heavily courted their vote and support. Marcantonio became Boricuas’ darling for ensuring that proper constituent services (including hiring Puerto Rican, Spanish-speaking staff) be made available to the newcomers. He also championed Puerto Rican independence as East Harlem’s congressman.
By 1937, Puerto Ricans had become a powerful force in East Harlem, not only propelling Marcantonio to victory but electing one of their own—Garcia Rivera. The continued rise in the Puerto Rican population led other racial groups to fear they would lose political power. As a result of these other groups banding together, Garcia Rivera lost his position some years later.
Through the decades, gerrymandered districts largely prevented Puerto Ricans in East Harlem from winning significant elected offices. But then in 1962 (over twenty years after Garcia Rivera), the Puerto Rican Carlos Rios won the East Harlem Assembly seat, only to be outdone by reapportionment a few years later. It wasn’t until Angelo Del Toro won this seat in 1974 that Puerto Ricans cemented their hold on it and in East Harlem politics more broadly for decades to come.
Del Toro proved to be a canny and successful Assemblyman, holding on to his seat for 20 years until his untimely death in 1994. In that time, he was appointed chair of the social services committee and then the education committee in the State Assembly. Del Toro was perhaps the first Latino to be appointed to prestigious chairmanships in the state legislature.
Just two years before Del Toro’s death, the ambitious, young attorney Nelson Denis attempted to dethrone the powerful Del Toro machine in East Harlem. Denis, with a young 34-year-old Mike Nieves as the consultant guiding the campaign, took on Del Toro and almost beat the 20-year incumbent in the 1994 primary. Del Toro’s death a year later spurred a special election, and Denis having been bounced off the ballot opened the path for another young East Harlem leader to win the seat. Francisco Diaz, Jr., who at the time served on the local community board, served for one year, until Denis defeated him in the 1996 Democratic primary.
Adam Clayton Powell, after having served in the City Council for some years, took on the now incumbent Nelson Denis four years later and went on to defeat him handily. Powell served as the East Harlem Assemblyman for 10 years. When he decided not to run for re-election in 2010, the path was open for Robert Rodriguez to win the coveted East Harlem seat. Rodriguez, whose father served in the City Council for a number of years, went into the race with name recognition and a record of community service, serving as chair of the local community board before his electoral victory. He has kept his seat for a decade and will leave office with an impressive record of legislative accomplishments.
With Rodriguez’s tenure, Puerto Ricans have held on to this Assembly seat for almost 50 consecutive years. So I return to my opening question: Could Rodriguez’s upcoming resignation lead to Puerto Ricans losing the seat for which they have fought so long?
Similar to the drastic demographic changes in East Harlem that Puerto Ricans initiated in the 1920s, one that saw a shift from a largely Italian-dominated community to a Puerto Rican one, a significant demographic reality seems to be engulfing East Harlem today. Like other Latino neighborhoods in the city, East Harlem is suffering from years of gentrification, which has caused the unfortunate displacement of many Puerto Rican families. To be sure, gentrification is not the only factor leading to a decrease in the Puerto Rican population in East Harlem, but it is a significant one.
These demographic changes now seem to be having an electoral consequence. Among all registered voters in East Harlem, whites are now just 3,000 shy of reaching the same voting bloc size as African-American voters. There are currently 20,006 registered white voters in El Barrio, almost a 50% increase within the last 15 years. Latinos, mostly Puerto Ricans, come in at 34,232.
Perhaps more significant is the fact that white voters seem to be voting in greater numbers. For instance, the past June primary saw a whopping 1,000-vote increase from the previous primary in 2020 among white voters, with whites coming in just 300 votes shy of the total Latino vote in East Harlem. Truth be told, the apparent significance of this increase is as much a matter of low voter turnout among Latinos as it is the number of white voters in East Harlem. Nevertheless, the increase of white voters in East Harlem cannot be discounted when we consider the potential dynamics that may be at play in with Rodriguez out of the picture.
The Black vote in East Harlem has historically been a significant one. And Blacks continue to play an important part in East Harlem elections. The significant presence of Blacks in East Harlem has always had the potential of pitting one group against the other. Fortunately, Blacks and Latinos in East Harlem have, for the most part, managed to work together for decades, as can be seen by the alliances made through the leadership of officials like Charles Rangel, Keith Wright, Bill Perkins, and others. More recently, newer Black leaders in East Harlem, like local leader Nina Saxon, have intentionally built alliances between these communities.
Nevertheless, because of their sizable presence in East Harlem, Blacks can also play a role in Puerto Ricans losing this Assembly seat. Several African-Americans have already expressed interest in vying for the soon-to-be vacated seat.
Much is at stake for Puerto Ricans in East Harlem. Will more than a half century of Latino representational struggle soon come to a head in East Harlem? We shall know before long.
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Eli Valentin is an adjunct lecturer at Union Theological Seminary. He writes regular columns for Gotham Gazette, largely focused on Latino politics in New York City, and is a frequent guest political analyst at Univision NY. On Twitter @EliValentinNY.
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Eli Valentin is a political analyst and author of the forthcoming book, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Political Life. On Twitter @EliValentinNY.
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Voting on the line (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
Last Tuesday night was full of stunners — a nailbiter in New Jersey, a rout in Virginia, a sweep on Long Island — but no electoral result shocked me more than New York’s failure to pass ballot proposals 3 and 4.
New York voters had an opportunity to broaden voting access by striking some of the most suppressive clauses in the state constitution. The measures would have eliminated the constitution’s bans on registering to vote within ten days of an election and on voting absentee for any reason (rather than restricting absentee ballots to those who are traveling or have a medical condition that prevents them from appearing at the polls).
More simply, proposal 3 would have permitted passage of same-day voter registration, so that New Yorkers who become interested in an election close to its date can still participate; and proposal 4 would have allowed any New York voter to cast a mail ballot just because they prefer the convenience of voting from home — on their own schedule — over going in person to a polling place.
Same-day registration and no-excuse absentee voting are among the country’s most common-sense and common voting protocols: 34 states allow anyone to vote by mail and 20 offer same-day registration. Yet when the results came in, New Yorkers had rejected these measures by double-digit margins.
The excelsior state’s failure to keep up on ballot access and competent election administration should no longer be surprising. Still, as a voter protection professional and democracy advocate, I remain shocked by our misguidedness.
Wednesday morning quarterbacks have rightfully criticized Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs for deciding that the right dollar amount to invest in these measures, passed by two consecutive classes of the Legislature, was zero. Jacobs explained that the lack of a party-funded ad campaign in support was due to lawmakers not asking for it — an unacceptable answer for a lack of proactive investment in electorate expansion.
However, fault lies far beyond the top leadership of the state party. Beyond making tepid statements in favor, lawmakers also failed to stump for this rare opportunity to reshape the state constitution in a more pro-voter direction. Democratic politicians who were happy to vocally choose sides in the Buffalo mayor’s race stayed relatively mum on the ballot measures.
The mistakes started earlier: Democrats in Albany bundled improvements to registration and absentee voting rules with proposal 1, a polarizing step to reform redistricting conjoined with several other changes. That measure would have shifted the Legislature’s threshold for passing its own maps from a supermajority to a simple majority — helping the in-party control the process.
This threat activated Republicans and Conservatives wholeheartedly against the package, with state GOP Chair Nick Langworthy leading a “Just Say No” campaign that included stops around the state and Conservatives making an investment of $3 million to oppose the measures. No on 1, 3, and 4 signs sprang up statewide, complemented by a barrage of incendiary ads.
In addition to galvanizing the opposition, this bundling muddied the clarity of support for the clearly pro-voter proposals 3 and 4. Advocacy groups like the League of Women Voters and Common Cause took opposing stances on proposal 1; their consensus on 3 and 4 was overshadowed by the fully united interests supporting the status quo.
This faceplanting is par for the course for democracy in New York. In June, the New York Board of Elections mismanaged the ranked-choice voting process; worse, progressive leaders who should have been standing up for its benefits of increased participation and representativeness instead cast doubt on it.
Last year, upstate administrators badly bungled vote-counting in the razor-thin Congressional rematch between Claudia Tenney and Anthony Brindisi for the 22nd House district, while the city botched distribution of absentee ballots.
By now it’s redundant to point out that New York’s Board of Elections system is patronage-addled and inefficient. Worse, though, is the lack of legislative energy behind reform — and the absence of clarion argumentation in favor of improvement from party leaders far beyond Jay Jacobs.
There are some bright spots. State Senator Zellnor Myrie has spearheaded a set of hearings about how to improve the state’s election administration and Senator Liz Krueger is carrying a bill to professionalize the Board of Elections. Since the ouster of the “IDC” in 2018, a unified Democratic state legislature — riding a wave of insurgent energy — began playing catch-up on voting laws, introducing early voting, provisions for voters to cure minor errors on their absentee ballots, and automatic voting registration (coming in 2023). But these minor steps forward and green shoots of reform only throw into relief how much more New York could accomplish with more pro-voter energy in the upper echelons of state power.
It’s time for a real democracy movement in New York. The Governor, leaders in the Senate and Assembly, the Democratic Party statewide — yes, ideally under a new chair — and advocacy groups must pull together and strategize about how to finally make our elections live up to our declared ideals of inclusivity and progress.
Judging by administrative mismanagement, the failure of these ballot proposals, and our persistently low voter turnout, our needs far outpace the solutions that have been proposed so far. In addition to overhauling the Board of Elections system and rerunning these failed constitutional changes, we should add another that moves all elections to higher turnout even-numbered years.
We cannot let the failures of this fall, last June, and last November be repeated. Nationally, democracy is under threat and voting access is under siege.
Here at home, every election that is mismanaged — with voters deprived of greater options for when to register and how to vote — gives New Yorkers another reason to distrust the democratic process. The stakes are far too high to let that happen any longer.
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Ryder Kessler, a member of Manhattan’s Community Board 2, served as the Maine Democratic Party’s 2020 Voter Protection Director for Joe Biden and down-ballot Democrats. On Twitter @ryderkessler.
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