In our latest news, NYUFASP is celebrating a huge victory in its suit against the City, and author Barbara Winslow has finally released her long-awaited book about Shirley Chisholm.
After a long, tense wait, Justice Donna Mills released a verdict on January 7th, ruling that the city acted illegally when it gave three out of four parcels of parkland to NYU for its 2031 expansion plan in July of 2012. A coalition of Village residents, NYU faculty members (NYUFASP) and elected officials launched an Article 78 lawsuit against the city after the plan’s approval, arguing, among other things, that the City had violated the law when it wrongfully granted NYU the use of the land involved. The $6 billion expansion plan is scheduled to last for 20 years, calls for 1.9 million square feet of new buildings in the heart of the Village, is totally unnecessary, and will crush the Village. The judge ruled that three out of the four parcels of green space were “impliedly” parks, and that the city had acted against the public trust doctrine by seizing these public lands and awarding them to a private entity without going through the proper process of parkland alienation. This is a huge victory, and a turning point in the battle to stop the plan.
On Friday, January 10th, Barbara Winslow had a book launch party for her new book, Shirley Chisholm: Catalyst for Change. The book is a new biography of one of the most important figures in American history – and, in particular, the history of women and women of color in this country – Shirley Chisholm. She was the first African-American woman elected to Congress and the first to run for President. Way ahead of her time, Ms. Chisholm’s concerns still resonate today – equal pay, access to education, universal child care – and on and on.
There has been no modern or definitive biography of Ms. Chisholm written to date; the last one was 40 years ago. The new book is much more in depth, and contains many interesting new insights and interviews – in fact, it is the only book published that covers the later part of Ms. Chisholm’s life.
The author, Barbara Winslow, is a professor of Women’s Studies at Brooklyn College, and is responsible for starting and running the Shirley Chisholm Project/Brooklyn Women’s Activism at Brooklyn College. The Project has catalogued many of Ms. Chisholm’s original materials, and there are amazing oral histories/accounts from people who actually knew/worked with Ms. Chisholm, or were influenced by her legacy, like Anita Hill, Gloria Steinem, Donna Brazile, Joyce Bolden, Patricia Schroeder, and former NYC Mayor David Dinkins.