Chapter 7 Lina
LINA
When Lina and Tyrell reached the school on Blake Avenue for HPD’s community planning meeting, there were already a fair number of people gathered.
Entering the school gymnasium, she recognized staff from the family health center and a few tenant leaders.
Yet the longer she looked around the gym, the more she wondered: Who were all these others?
“My name is Lina Rodriguez Armstrong. I’m a retired art teacher. I’ve lived in Brownsville since I was eleven years old, and I’ll do anything for my people.”
Next was Ms. Radcliff, who sat on the Community Education Council; Mr. Hernandez, the owner of an appliance store on Pitkin; and a French man who turned out to be the CEO for Bernard & Co., the real estate company behind the new condominium on Eastern Parkway.
And, by an unfortunate coincidence: Mrs. Jameson, the neighbor who had refused to speak to Lina for months.
They were about the same age but rarely saw eye to eye.
That past June, they had argued at the Seventy-Third Precinct community council meeting, and right in front of the cops, Mrs. Jameson had called Lina a “crazy radical lesbian police abolitionist.” Lina had not denied it—she’d tried to make it into a teachable moment for the community members.
At their table, she could see Mrs. Jameson’s left hand trembling like a mouse squirming in a trap.
With her right hand, she struggled to hold the left one still.
She’s still sitting in the hospital chair, Lina thought to herself.
Lina had experienced enough grief to recognize it right away.
Mrs. Jameson had lost her grandson ten years earlier, but the wound remained fresh.
She probably demanded maximum policing for the same reason Lina demanded a community land trust: remorse.
The Parks Department girl explained that the group’s first task would be to use smiley-face stickers to label the map of Brownsville with the neighborhood’s “assets”—places, things, or resources that were already proving beneficial to the community.
Lina laughed aloud. “You better give me my own sheet of stickers.”
She stuck one smack in the middle of the neighborhood, at the Betsy Head Park pool.
“Also, the Brownsville Recreation Center. It started as the Brownsville Boys Club. I got my first job there as a summer camp counselor… Oh!” She threw down three more stickers. “The barbershops, because those are community centers too—counseling centers for our young men.”
And Elite Salon on Pitkin, which used to be Motor City Salon back in the eighties, she thought. Back then, Lina would stop outside the window and press her nose to the glass just to look at Nellie: a goddess with her updo and white platform shoes. But this was an asset too personal to explain.
The other participants placed stickers on the libraries, the Nehemiah homes, and the charter school. Then it occurred to Lina that huge chunks of the neighborhood’s east side remained sticker-less.
She plonked some smileys down on Brownsville Houses, Van Dyke Houses, Tilden Houses, Marcus Garvey Village, Langston Hughes Houses, Howard Houses, and the others. “With the gentrification, we need NYCHA more than ever.”
Next, she was thinking about all the kinds of things that happened without a place marker, that just happened in the street.
All the cars decked in West Indian flags that zoomed past on Labor Day, blasting reggae and soca.
Preachers on sidewalk podiums. Barbecue parties.
The laughter in courtyards, on sidewalks. The way folks took care of one another.
Mrs. Jameson laid a sticker on the precinct.
Lina resisted the urge to remove it, though she doubted Giuliani himself would have called the Seventy-Third an asset.
It had been routine, in the ’90s, for Brownsville’s cops to shake down drug dealers, split the cash, then resell the booty to other narcos.
When the Parks Department girl asked the group to identify “deficits,” Lina sighed. She grabbed a Post-it and wrote, 40 Years Vacant Lot—Should Be Cultural Center/LGBTQ Youth Center, and stuck it to her lot on Livonia Avenue.
“We have an idea for this site and we’re prepared to talk about it,” Lina said, taking the flash drive out of her pocket.
The others at the table noted that Pitkin Avenue had too many salons and pawnshops and needed greater retail diversity. “We have more methadone clinics than fresh food grocers!” Ms. Radcliff exclaimed.
There were also playgrounds that needed fixing, basketball courts without hoops, the ever-postponed 3 to the L connection, broken streetlights, and of course the gas issue at 287 Blake, all of which Lina agreed needed attention—but why did they need to itemize these things when they were already in the community board needs list every year?
And now she was starting to wonder, was there going to be a chance to play the PowerPoint?
The Parks Department girl didn’t know what to do with Lina’s PowerPoint, so Lina went looking for Olivia and Andrew. At the HPD resource table, another white boy in khakis said Olivia and Andrew weren’t in attendance and that, no, there was no projector available.
“Well, that’s a problem,” said Lina.
“I’m sorry if there was a miscommunication.”
“I guess I’ll have to give my presentation without it, then.”
“Time is pretty tight, but we can definitely consider making presentations part of the next community meeting.”
He volunteered to take Lina’s PowerPoint back to his office for the agency’s review. Biting her tongue, Lina resigned herself to this, and they walked over to the tables at the gym’s entrance so he could stick the flash drive into his laptop.
“Are you a resident of Brownsville?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
“That’s great. Do you work in Brownsville as well?”
“I’m retired,” she stated, though there was no such thing as retirement when you were a community activist.
After he’d copied the PowerPoint and handed back the drive, Lina returned to her table, but she was ready to leave.
They’d told her to share her ideas, make this a democratic process, and then they’d stuffed a pacifier in her mouth.
It was in moments like this that she did feel crazy. That the doubt crept in. Why even try?
While her tablemates discussed the best height for new buildings in the neighborhood, Lina thought again about Mr. Wong. He must have made the big bucks, more than he’d ever made running a Chinese restaurant, she thought. He probably took it and moved to Florida.
How he lived with himself, she had no idea.
After the meeting was over and as she was waiting in the hallway for Tyrell, a girl scooted up to her, someone she’d never seen before.
The young woman had a long black ponytail, an olive complexion—might have been Arab or Filipino, but she wasn’t from Brownsville.
At first, Lina thought she was another representative from the city come to make a promise she couldn’t keep, but then the girl surprised her.
“Hi, I’m Sadie—I’m a reporter for New Gotham. I was wondering if you’d be willing to share your opinion of the meeting?”
“Oh. You’re that New Gotham reporter.”
In Lina’s humble opinion, that article on the mayor’s press conference hadn’t qualified as journalism. Where was the history of the struggle? Where were the hard-hitting questions for the mayor about his timeline, the resources for his plan?
“I’m not talking to the press today.”
“It will only take a second,” the girl pleaded. “I really need the perspective of residents in this piece.”
Lina turned and walked toward the exit of the school.
She couldn’t recall how many times she’d agreed to interviews, but she could count on one hand how many times it had helped.
If they’d paid Lina every time they misspelled her name or mischaracterized what she’d said, she would probably be a rich lady by now.
She’d have built the cultural center on her own dime.
The girl, however, followed Lina right down the steps of the school.
“Off the record?” she begged.
Lina considered it. She didn’t know if she could trust the reporter, but she also didn’t want her just copying and pasting the city’s press release.
“Okay. If we’re off, off, off the record, I’ll tell you this. We prepared a presentation, and they didn’t let us share it. Do they want to hear from residents, or do they just want to make it seem that way?”
The girl nodded and scribbled madly.
“I’ve been saying this for fifty years. Brownsville should be its own nation. Brownsville as a people should run the schools, run the Seventy-Third Precinct, and we should decide what gets built.”
The girl probably knew nothing about the strike of ’68.
While Lina was trying to decide if she had the energy to provide context, Tyrell emerged from the school doors.
He was, of course, excited that Lina had commented to a reporter—he was always pushing their “media strategy.” He’d even set up a Facebook account for Lina, though she’d refused to be introduced to “Twitter” and “Instagram.” At her age, one was good enough.
“Ms. Lina, you should give her the presentation, get the Livonia cultural center out to the public.”
Lina gave him the side-eye. Tyrell had been pleased to see a nice description of BYTE in that New Gotham piece. He turned to the girl.
“I know we met. Your name again?”
“Sadie Chin.”
“Sadie, glad to see you here. As I’m sure Ms. Lina was telling you, we’ve got our own vision for an empty lot in the community. They didn’t let us present it, but you can get it out to the public for us.”
“I absolutely can! And I’m happy to get the mayor’s office on the record about it!”
Tyrell puppy-dog-eyed Lina until she sighed, removed the flash drive from her pocket, and dropped it in Tyrell’s palm. He passed it right to Sadie.
“You have to promise to read every part,” said Lina. “No misquoting.”
The reporter nodded eagerly, then kneeled on the steps of the school, whipped out her shining MacBook, and plugged in the flash drive. Lina shook her head.
“You better be careful with that laptop, mami.”
The child was na?ve as hell. Who could say what would come of this collaboration? She and Tyrell would just have to wait and see.