Mike Nelson

The City Council has voted down a proposal to co-name four blocks of a street in Brooklyn after black nationalist Sonny Carson. The vote was 15 for and 25 against, with seven abstentions. Notable votes: Bill De Blasio, who worked on David Dinkins' mayoral campaign with Carson, voted no. Oliver Koppell, who voted no, said "we are not voting on the civil rights movement." Mathieu Eugene, in one of his first votes, abstained. Mike Nelson of Brooklyn voted no, and retold a story of how Carson came into the classroom where she was teaching and said he didn't want a white Jew teaching his children.

Here are some of the union members who joined Rep. Jerry Nadler, Council members David Yassky and Mike Nelson and Working Families Party Executive Director Dan Cantor on the City Hall steps today to protest a draft proposal from the city to close the Red Hook Container Terminal, where 633 people work.

Nadler, who I'll venture to say is as knowledgeable as any elected official in the country about the shipping industry, said the end of the terminal could mean the end of New York's relevance as a port city.

From a statement:

"This type of myopia and short-term economic planning will only mean fewer jobs for New York City, a less dominant shipping industry, more vehicular traffic and congestion, and rising transportation costs for all of us. Absent a Brooklyn container port, we would be entirely dependent on the ports located on the other side of the Kill Van Kull. This must not happen."

-- Azi Paybarah

We had been wondering why so many politicos from the deep south of Brooklyn had endorsed Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. State Senators Carl Kruger and Martin Golden and City Council Members Lew Fidler and Mike Nelson all wrote letters of support last summer to the M.T.A.

We wondered, are these guys all for it because their constituents are going to get some of the jobs targeted to "the community" that the arena complex is supposed to help? Or do they just happen to have a lot of Nets fans living there?

Then we hit upon a map for the 59th Assembly district, which is governed by the Thomas Jefferson Club, the Democratic clubhouse whence Bruce Bender sprang. Bender worked for Ed Koch, Peter Vallone and now Forest City Ratner, as the executive vice president for community and government affairs. He does all the outreach to politicos from, among other places, the deep south of Brooklyn.

The 59th A.D. includes Canarsie, Mill Basin, Bergen Beach and Flatlands--exactly the neighborhoods that Messers. Kruger, Golden, Fidler and Nelson represent. Bender is, in other words, quite the homeboy

-Matthew Schuerman