Beans of Production
- The Starbucks near the Myrtle-Wyckoff station (3-29 Wyckoff Ave.) hosted a ‘Solidarity Sip-In’ the first Saturday this month in support of their unionization effort. Hazel, one of the employee-organizers, tells us: “Management is spreading rumors about me, which is fun… It must mean we’re fighting for something that’s worth it.” Hazel mentioned safety and payment issues among the staff’s concerns. “I should be able to pay my bills.”
- More recently, per Hazel, the vote had been “postponed indefinitely” due to the employer’s “scorched earth union busting tactics,” calling this “very disappointing, but not surprising when you’re dealing with the biggest violator of labor law in modern history!”
- Since the first Starbucks location in Buffalo unionized in 2021, over 600 other stores have joined, including four in Brooklyn, with workers often facing retaliation from both local management and from Starbucks corporate.
- Elsewhere in Brooklyn, workers picketed outside Ouma’s Bakery in PLG, after being forced to sign NDAs concerning issues like “rat poop everywhere” and “pipes carrying toilet water exposed right where the baker makes the items,” per a report in News 12.
- “It’s owners who have the means [to attack] workers they know do not,” said one worker.
What is Going On with the Brooklyn Democratic Party?
- It’s “Trench Warfare” in Brooklyn, according to a report by Jessy Edwards in Hell Gate, which portrays cornered, scandal-ridden establishment Dems fighting against reformers led by a group called the New Kings Democrats, over a handful of elected district leader positions in the party. Per Edwards, party establishment figures are behind “an unprecedented number of legal challenges that are designed to knock their district leader candidates off of the ballot.”
- Meanwhile, in Queens, the DSA-endorsed lawyer David Orkin, had challenged incumbent, and former Adams lackey, Jenifer Rajkumar on having enough valid signatures to be on the ballot for her spot representing the 38th Assembly District in Albany. Orkin claimed the Rajkumar campaign falsified signatures of Orkin’s own neighbors; Orkin’s lawsuit has since been thrown out, though his team promise to appeal.
Protests at Palestine Land Sale in Midwood
- Gabriele Holtermann in Brooklyn Paper documented the nauseating “The Great Israeli Real Estate Event,” held over in Midwood, near Brooklyn College. There, tempers flared, pepper spray and eggs were unleashed, and arrests were made at protests over a “touring real estate expo” remarketing occupied Palestinian land as “Anglo” property opportunities.
Eryka Caldwell Memorial
- Last week, the local trans community held a vigil for Eryka Caldwell, ten days after she was murdered by her boyfriend in their Bushwick apartment, per Samantha Allen in Them. Allen quotes vigil organizer Melissa Butterfield as saying, “I know it hit others in the community because we feel like Bushwick is a relatively safe place.”
Drain Gang
- The mayor showed up in the neighborhood to help unclog some storm drains after the May 20th downpour that flooded Knickerbocker and seemingly swept a woman in pink to her doom, per one viral video.
- Earlier this year, Mamdani pledged $108 million to upgrade the city’s storm drains; of course last year, Councilwoman Sandy Nurse secured the bag to the tune of $390 million to improve Bushwick’s sewer system, though that project won’t begin until 2029.
BKMag Exposes BK Mirage
- Scott Enman’s continuing coverage of the Brooklyn Mirage in BKMag has extended to a recent chronicle of the club’s fall into bureaucratic chaos, an unpayable $100 million loan, and help from various Eric Adams cronies.
- BKMag itself originally founded by 2000s Williamsburg guy Daniel Stedman, whose company faced its own scandal in 2018 with a slew of reports over unpaid workers, resulting in the collapse of the mag and the once prominent Northside Music Festival.
- The festival remains dead, but the magazine was sold and relaunched by sprinkles salesman Michael Bassick as more of a ‘branded experience’ deal, and are now owned by billionaire Nets owner Joe Tsai, his wife Clara Wu Tsai, with 15% owned by Julia Koch, widow of the late oil billionaire David Koch, part of a larger “Brooklyn” media brand that also owns the Brooklyn Nets and the more popular, these day, New York Liberty.
A Month in Your Local Surveillance State:
- As of May 8th, Meta has decrypted Facebook and Instagram messages, so remember to keep those DMs limited to topics like what a cool guy Kash Patel is and things of that nature.
- MSG security chief John Eversol used the full force of the MSG surveillance apparatus to stalk and harass a trans Knicks fan, at one point compiling an 18 page report of her movements over the course of a single game.
- It all makes sense if you remember that you don’t hate Palantir CEO Alex Karp enough.
Brian Jones Kraft is a writer who has been living in Bushwick for over a decade and a half. He has previously written extensively about the legacy of Andrew Cuomo, David Dinkins and that mural on the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Evergreen.
Top photo taken by Dan Hintz.
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