| Proponents of
Chinatown Jailscraper Try to
Mollify Opponents with Pork Buns
& Drawings
by
Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book
Substack
CHINATOWN,
Aug 7 – Many residents of
NYC's Chinatown have long
opposed the "jail-scraper"
planned for Baxter Street.
On August
7, the jail's proponents tried
to get buy-in at an event in
the ornate Surrogates
Courthouse on the corner of
Centre and Chambers Street,
handing out pork buns from Mei
Lai Wah bakery (Golden Unicorn
was on the program but nowhere
to be seen) and displaying
drawings of prisoners' meeting
rooms looking like airports.
Many
attendees weren't buying it.
One man asked the architects
how they could live with their
conscience (the question was
deemed too personal). Another
woman noted that in current
NYC jails, there are
blindspots where inmates are
beaten up and worse
off-camera.
A mere two
blocks away is the empty MCC,
with its Jeffrey Epstein echo.
Previously, Inner
City Press asked: How will the
empty Federal jail in Lower
Manhattan be used? NYC Mayor
Eric Adams in 2023 floated the
idea of using it to house
migrants. Inner City Press
asked Legal Aid about the
idea, which they roundly
criticized.
On June 12,
then-NYC Comptroller candidate
Justin Brannan campaigned in
Chinatown's Confucius Plaza,
two blocks from the still
empty Metropolitan
Correctional Center. He was
asked about closing the Rikers
Island jail and said he
continues to favor the
closure.
But, he
said, the idea of reopening
the MCC for state prisoners
"makes a lot of sense," rather
than devoting the now empty
lot on Baxter Street to the
so-called Chinatown
Jailscraper.
Brannon
lost the primary to Mark
Levine, despite Brannan's
endorsements from Bernie
Sanders. Inner City Press has
asked Zohran Mamdani about the
jailscraper (YouTube here),
as well as Eric Adams before
him. Now, the pork buns.
Brannan in Chinatown 6/12/25by
Russell Werner Lee
The
event moved on to other
questions, and heckling by a
Brooklyn constituent who seems
to follow Brannan around (to
his credit, Brannan seemed to
largely accept this exercise
of the First Amendment). Inner
City Press was there until,
afterward, Brannan began a
foot-tour of Chinatown.... Now
to where?
Watch this
site
***
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