Stop Columbia
Expansion!
Columbia wants
to bulldoze and rezone 125th Street to 133rd
and beyond. Columbia University is
aggressively acquiring the places where we
shop, work and live. All they want is to
displace our low income residential
community to instead bringing in affluent
students and faculty. They also want to
build bio-tech labs that place at risk the
health and safety of a residential
community. The Columbia University expansion
means the eviction and the destruction of
the historic community of Harlem and the
damaging of the surrounding neighborhoods.
Columbia
University has a well established history of
displacing residents in West Harlem, a
community of immigrants and low income
residents with low levels of connection to
mainstream legal and financial institutions.
These residents lack the experience and
resources to confront the forces that
undermine their community. The cumulative
effect of these factors creates a vulnerable
community that lacks access to information
and resources. This is why the Mirabal
Sisters Cultural and Community Center
started organizing tenants to address our
community’s housing crisis. The next step
was to join the Coalition to Preserve
Community which brings together groups and
individual dedicated to promoting the
vitality and diversity of our neighborhoods
and to preserving the residential character
of our community.
Columbia
University has already started to harass
business owners in order to acquire their
properties and has threatened to use eminent
domain which also affects the long time
residents that already have a chance at
ownership by converting their building to a
low-income home-ownership cooperative under
the city’s Tenant Interim Lease –TIL-
program. The employments of skilled workers,
as the auto mechanics at 3251 Broadway, are
also jeopardized.
Columbia
University intends to construct biotech labs
(including BLS-3) in which scientist could
experiment with dangerous and potentially
deadly agents such as Avian Flu, Sars, and
the Plague. These agents ate transmitted by
air, highly contagious and can cause serious
health problems. If an accident happens in
the lab, or while the agents are transported
through our streets, many of us would be
exposed to contamination, illness and
possibly death. Can Columbia be trusted? In
2002 the Environmental Protection Agency
fined Columbia $797,029 for violating
federal environmental laws including storing
hazardous waste in open, unmarked
containers.
Our organization support
community Board 9’s 197A which protects
longtime residents and businesses by ruling
out eminent domain; it also protects
existing housing and creates new affordable
housing; in addition, it creates jobs with a
future for local residents; it establishes
“zero waste” environmental zone; it calls on
institution to set aside remaining rent
regulated for long term residents; it
creates a special use district in which
available space is shared; and it respects
architectural and historical integrity of
the area. To date, the Center have met with
representatives from Community District 9,
and held meetings with elected officials.
The Center created and distributed thousands
of educational brochures to community
members in English and Spanish, picketed in
front of and participated in a rally on the
campus, held numerous meetings with tenant
associations to inform them about the
potential impact on the neighborhood and
organized community members to express their
concerns with the expansion at public
meetings.
For more information please visit:
www.stopcolumbia.org
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