Live Blog: Inside Iran: What’s Next?

On Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

“One thing that is important to note is that Ahmadinejad doesn’t make the forein policy in Iran. His realm of power is domestic.” – Laura Secor.

Live Blog: Inside Iran: What’s Next?

ON STUDENT MOVEMENTS/ VOTING IN IRAN:

(from L to R, Profesor Lonnie Isabel, Journalists Laura Secor and Roozbeh Mirebrahmi)

Laura Secor said she saw a poll that cited the fact that about 70 % of Iranians want democracy. On the student movement in Iran, according to Secor, in some cases they got more radical than the reformists.

Roozbeh Mirebrahmi said that the student movement has a long history in Iran, but that it has some flaws. “We have too many student activists who believe in communism…” He also said that women’s activists are becoming more and more important in Iran.

A question from a graduate student, Shuka Kalantari asks: “In relation to what you just said Roozbeh, one of the main qualms about these activists groups is that they are too segmented. I’ve heard people say that if the women’s groups and the student groups could unite it could be more effective for change. Do you think that’s possible?

The question was answered by Laura Secor. “Women’s activists are staying that they have more support from young men. The women’s activists that I talk to, all of them came out of the student movement. There is a relationship between these groups.”

Live Blog: Inside Iran: What’s Next?

Roozbeh Mirebrahmi said the current election wasn’t interesting for him. He said that everyone knew which groups could go the parliament and which groups could not go. “The majority in parliament will be a conservative group,” said Mirebrahmi, “There is not really an election in Iran.”

“The reformist enemy in Iran is the people.”

Live Blog: “Inside Iran: What’s Next?”

Laura Secor : “Most of the people I spoke to (about the Iranian elections) said they were there to show their loyalty to the government… It seemed to me that the people who feel invested in the political system at this time… are people who are already supporters of the government… a year ago I was in the same places and I saw people debating to me about choices and democracy…”

Live Blog: “Inside Iran: What’s Next?”

About 40 people are gathering at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism tonight to hear journalists Laura Secor and Roozbeh Mirebrahmi speak about Iran. The event has drawn a mix of students, professors and many people from off campus. The event is being moderated by CUNY’s own Professor Lonnie Isabel.

Professor Lonnie Isabel kicks things off by announcing that a recent poll lists “America’s top enemies” as Iran, Iraq and China.

The speakers today will be Laura Secor and Roozbeh Mirebrahmi, they are two journalists who have both covered Iran.

Laura Secor speaks of her recent trip to Iran, saying she experienced the “monopoly of power” in Iran. She said there was a small number of reformists running in the most recent election in Iran.

And Then There Was One

by Joshua Cinelli

Nelson Perez, Sr. will most likely not experience a golden parachute retirement. The once patriarch of a $5 million a year family run policy ring throughout four New York City boroughs may instead spend his twilight years behind bars.
The business 69-year-old Perez allegedly ran was a numbers game, an illegal lottery based out of over 100 policy stores, mostly grocery stores and beauty salons. The indictment for enterprise corruption charges in essence that Perez served as the CEO in “both tactical and strategic decisions regarding the operation of the illegal policy enterprise.”

Every other family member and employee of the 24 members of the Perez Gambling Organization arrested three years ago, including his son, his girlfriend and her sons, have entered pleas to lesser charges. Some are scheduled to testify as witnesses.
There were no family members in the spacious court on the seventh floor of the Bronx Courthouse. Instead the silver haired and bespectacled Perez sat at a table by himself wearing headphones with his interpreter a few feet away waiting for the court to resume. One got the feeling he was enjoying the slow process of the judicial system, considerably more than the 12 jurors.
Retired Detective Michael Young plodded through his testimony of numbers: license plates, phones, faxes, addresses and of course the policy numbers. Painstakingly Young explained the difference between the NY Lotto and the illegal bolita or “little ball.” Young said the attraction of the illegal version is one can bet whatever amount they wish and it’s tax-free. Also, the odds are slightly greater, in that the “straight”-three numbers in a row, would pay 600-1. The winning three numbers are composed of the last number of the total bets placed at various horse tracks for the win, place and show payout amounts.

“It was very slow,” Young said. “We had to build it up from nothing.” The investigation began on an anonymous tip in the summer of 2002. On the first day of observation they followed a runner from policy stores to policy banks. After two years of surveillance, wiretaps, fax tracking and undercover operations, there were 40 patterns listed in connection with the charge of enterprise corruption. If Perez was conscious of the tightening noose of the Bronx District Attorney’s Rackets Bureau’s investigation, it did not show. In one recorded conversation he directed a colleague to read to him the amounts of the prizes owed to several policy locations.
Behind the desk of the Assistant District Attorney, Rachel Singer, were 28 boxes containing a fraction of the phone records and transcripts of conversations. The investigators said it was a “well-run, sophisticated citywide operation” in which the employees were paid a fixed salary and given vacation time. In a recorded conversation, Nelson Perez Jr. complained that his father believed because the employees were under his employment that he could treat them badly.

At the time of the arrest the Perezes were bringing in $400,000 a month making the statement of Chief Douglas Ziegler to the New York Times somewhat nonsensical, “No one knew about them except the people in the community.” Policy rings in the United States date back before 1860 and are especially prevalent in poorer communities.

Justice Martin Marcus, who is overseeing the case, is no stranger to crime rackets. He worked in the New York State Organized Crime Task Force from 1981 until 1990 during the mob crackdown. When asked why the case had taken three years to come to trial, Marcus smiled and said, “You have to ask the lawyers. The cases just come to me.”

In ‘04 Bronx District Attorney Robert T. Johnson announced the arrests as the “largest policy ring we’ve seen in decades.” Which was true until the next summer when the police indicted 24 people in a $10 million a year policy ring through an undercover investigation known as “Operation Numbers’ Up.”

Nelson Perez is perhaps familiar with that particular number. He and he alone.

Catching up with Tyrone Thomas

Some musicians get paid, others get recognition. Tyrone Thomas, drummer, singer and founder of the funk group The Whole Darn Family, has experienced just touches of both.

If you don’t recognize The Whole Darn family’s name, you might recognize the bass line from their 1976 hit, “7 Minutes of Funk” —which has been sampled by hip hop artists Jay Z & Foxy Brown, Q-Tip, Faith Evans, EPMD and many more. Though Thomas wrote and arranged the now classic breakbeat, he lost the rights to most of the royalties. “I had 100 percent of the publishing taken away from me, and I had 50 percent of the writer’s taken away from me by a manager I trusted to handle the paperwork.” said Thomas.

But Thomas isn’t bitter. He said he’s honored that his song has become one of the most sampled in hip hop history. “I’m thrilled, I’m happy, I’m elated,” he said. “I wanted to reach out to Jay Z to see if maybe he wanted to hear some of my other stuff, you know,” said Thomas. “It never happened, but hey, I’m still living, Jay Z is still living, we might still get together.”

Thomas hails from Richmond, VA, where he started singing in his first group at the age of 10, opening shows for most of the big soul acts of the ’60s. He taught himself to play the drums, and performed with various artists including Patti Labelle, before founding his own band.

We caught up with him for an interview at his apartment in the Bronx in early December, and then met him at the 77th street subway station where he sang old soul classics for straphangers.

Tina Thomas, 25, from Illinois is a younger fan of The Whole Darn Family. She discovered them while sifting through her Dad’s soul collection. “I used to sneak and listen to his records,” said Thomas (who is not related to Tyrone) “During one of my ’sneak attacks,’ I came across the Whole Darn Family and. it just got in my soul! It was so infectious,” she said.

Nowadays Thomas runs his own label Butah Beat records, so he can control the profit he makes– following the trend of many artists to go independent with their music production. But Thomas said that’s not the only reason he ventured out on his own. “When you get older, record labels don’t like to touch you,” he said, “…so I said, let me get my own label, build my own studio, and I did.”

- Allison Veronica Esposito & Mathew R. Warren

World Aids Day: Quilt panels come to the Bronx

Remember the Memorial Aids Quilt? In 1987 it was comprised of 1,920 panels spread over the National Mall in Washington D.C. Now it is the largest ongoing art project in the world, and is divided into 12 foot square display panels that travel all over the country. Each square is dedicated to someone who died from AIDS. There are now more than 44,000 squares, and the panels are displayed across the country each year for World AIDS Day, reminding us of the continuing devastation of the disease.

The Art Gallery at Lehman College in the Bronx will display 2 of those 12 foot panels until December 6th. The gallery is just a short walk from the train.

Kudos to the tireless Cindy Kreisberg and her Health Center for their efforts to promote health awareness, and to the members of the Rainbow Alliance chapter at CUNY Lehman who keep quilting to remind others of the AIDS crisis.

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Bryant Park Back in Business

By Joe Filippazzo, Danny Teigman, Tyler Mitter and Vinita Singla

Bryant Park was a maze of boxes and bubble wrap in preparation for The Shops’ debut.

Band saws and hammers serenaded an ice rink full of smiling families as vendors built the Holiday Shops at Bryant Park today. The sixth annual showcase of boutiques, which begins this Saturday, will be open until Dec. 30.

This year vendors will be housed in small green shops huddled around the Pond – the city’s only free ice-skating rink and seasonal rendezvous. And with four days to go, crews scrambled to construct and stock a mini outdoor mall.

Across the sidewalk from her booth, Advah Shani’s two assistants crouched on the gravel, dipping long pieces of torn newspaper into two buckets filled halfway with a water-flour-glue mixture: papier-mâché. They wrapped the gooey strips around chicken wire shaped like tree branches. When the booth opens Saturday, painted metal butterflies and heart-shaped hanging sculptures will spin from the branches in the wind.

Another vendor, Martha Almeida and her daughter, Maria, also busily prepared their 6 feet by 12 feet boutique to stock handmade purses, T-shirts and other holiday trinkets.

“Basically hand craftsmanship is really wished for in a market like this,” Almeida said, “the customer can find unique pieces.”

Martha and Maria Almeida set up their shop, Bluet, the day before opening.

Although the Broadway stagehand strike concerned her, Almeida remained confident that tourists – approximately 50 percent of her business – would still come to shop.

“You also have a lot of customers who work in offices around the area,” she said.

Maria, 25, wearing plaid pants and blue T-shirt spotted with white paint, said the Bryant Park event is a great opportunity for struggling local artists to gain notoriety. The Almeidas, like most of the park’s temporary shopkeepers, hope to make $50,000 in the next six weeks.

The event, which began in 2002 with 70 vendors presenting their wares in plain green and white tents, has evolved into a more welcoming and entertaining holiday experience in New York, said Frank DiPrisco, the event’s executive director. “The shops are meant to be a collection of local artisans with products in every price range, from all parts of the world,” DiPrisco said.

One local artisan, Cake Borrira, who has been selling ornaments she bought online for the last six years, acknowledges the difficulties of setting up shop in a park “This is a product people buy,” Borrira said, “but we have to worry about the weather. Sometimes it rains. Sometimes it snows.” On a slow business day, Borrira sells 200 pieces from $14 to $24 each, she said. On good days, it’s more than 4000.

Fluffy teddy bear ornaments, adorned with hats and candy-caned patterned scarves, hang from a white, plastic chain wrapped around a red and white stripped pole. But Borrira, her 65-year-old father and hundreds of others still have a lot of work to do before Saturday.

“It’s kind of an adventure,” said Mariusz Zak, a construction worker for the shops.

When asked how he would feel on opening day Zak’s response was measured but excited. “I’m kind of a backstage guy,” he said. “I feel comfortable when everything works.”