http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbQwouZs-5c

Nearly 100 students protested scheduled tuition hikes at City University of New York’s Brooklyn College on May 2 outside of President Karen Gould’s office on the second floor of Boylan Hall, according to student activists. CUNY security officers arrested two of the protesters, and brought them to the 70th precinct.

The students, riding on the crest of post-May Day and Occupy sentiment, were upset with the projected 15 percent annual tuition increase of $300 year for the next five years, adding up to $1,500 cumulatively. Student protesters argued that the hikes will add to the debt and financial burden of this already largely working class student body.

“We have started to mobilize the students against this injustice,” said Saar Shemesh, 20, who is receiving her B.A. in Visual Politics and Social Change at Brooklyn College.

Wednesday’s protest became tense, say student activists, who contend that CUNY security officials used undue force, including taking a cane from a disabled woman, and barring incoming students’ access to classes.

Administrators say that heightened security was necessary, because students were causing an unnecessary disruption and actually blocking access to not only the president’s office, but to classrooms on that day.

The students entered Boylan Hall from the quad, where they were demonstrating earlier, after a banner was unfurled from one of the building’s windows.

“It seemed like it was a coordinated action,” said Jeremy Thompson, spokesman for Brooklyn College, who heard the commotion from his office when the students rushed into the building. He adding that the language was peaceful initially, but later turned profane. “That’s when the area was cleared out.”

Thompson wanted to dispel what he called myths about the heightened security that day. Although he recognized that some students without valid ID’s were not allowed in, he maintained that neither batons nor pepper spray were used on the protesters, and that the cane was only temporarily confiscated as the disabled woman was being removed from a sit-in in front of the president’s office. He added that she was assisted by a faculty member down the stairs as she was escorted out of the building.

“The NYPD was not present, either,” Thompson added. However, having been informed by social media of the planned demonstration, the police were waiting outside of the campus gates in the event of the situation escalating.

Currently, full-time undergrad students who are in-state residents pay about $4,105, before fees, per semester. The CUNY network colleges used to be free. Between 1970 and 1975, CUNY admitted any student in New York with a high school diploma who passed the entrance exams without charging tuition.

But now, protesters like Shemesh say that the university is denying its majority working class students a future education. “In five years, a huge majority will not be able to get an education,” she said.

Spokesman Thompson says that about 60 percent of Brooklyn College’s student body, who he describes as working to middle class, receive some form of aid.

“We do whatever possible to support our students,” Thompson assured, citing recent additional private funding acquired for student scholarships. “Tuition increases are never something we want to implement and find it unfortunate that students have to shoulder the burden.” Thompson said.

The Brooklyn Lens webcast for the week of March 30, 2012.

Gbenga Akinnagbe plays Chris Partlow, one of the drug henchman in HBO

Even celebrities can get arrested, especially if they are repeat protesters. Gbenga Akinnagbe, the Brooklyn native who plays Chris Partlow in the HBO series The Wire, has been a leading activist in the Stop and Frisk movement. And he’s building a rap sheet.

“It was a very interesting day,” Akinnagbe said recently  about the time last fall that he was arrested and charged, along with 36 others, with a violation and misdemeanor for protesting Stop and Frisk. That was Nov. 1, 2011, in Brownsville, the 73^rd Precinct. Akinnagbe was also among the activists arrested on Oct. 21 for protesting Stop and Frisk in Harlem.

Like so many Brooklyn residents of color, Akinnagbe believes he is subject to the NYPD’s policy of Stop and Frisk due to the color of his skin. He is calling for a broad-based convergence of movements to protest New York City’s random stop policy, which statistics show disproportionately involves men of color, particularly in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

In 2011, a total of 684,330 New Yorkers were stopped by the police. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, 86 percent of those were without cause—a 14 percent increase from 2010. Since the N.Y.P.D. began publishing its Stop and Frisk data in 2005, the statistics show that 85 percent of those stopped by the police are black and Latino. Those groups make up 59 percent of the city’s population.

“Aside from the fact that stop and frisk targets people who look like me, even if it didn’t I couldn’t support arresting someone who did not commit a crime,” Akinnagbe said. That, he said, includes any minority group. “Whether it’s Muslims, whether it’s blacks,” he said, “basically we justify it until it happens to us. We react out of fear.”

At the protests, Akinagbe lends support to people who don’t have the clout of celebrity—people like Kenny Jean. Tall and bespectacled, Jean is a 26-year-old African-American from Brooklyn, who turned out November 25^th for a stop and frisk protest in front of the 103^rd Precinct in Jamaica. He said he has been stopped multiple times by the police, and  described one stop in particular. It happened last year in Brooklyn:“A friend and I were coming out of a store when an undercover cop pulled up. He got out and pointed the gun on us.” Jean and his friend were stopped because of suspected marijuana possession.

“We were picked up for two dime bags,” Jean added. “By the time we were charged, it became a whole Ziploc bag.” Jean claims the public defender assigned to his case wanted to get him through the system as quickly as possible. “The legal aid made us plead guilty,” he said, an experience which he says impelled Jean to join the 150 other activists and community members to demonstrate against Stop and Frisk on the sixth anniversary of the shooting of Sean Bell, killed by NYPD officers the morning before his wedding on Nov. 25, 2006 in Queens.

“I came in solidarity, because of a systematic problem going on far too long, where the police occupy us like it’s a different country,” Jean said. “Sean Bell is a name on a long list. That’s why I’m out here.” Jean added that many African-Americans have good reason to not want to confront the police at a protest. Jean emphasized that he believes many cops are good ones. “But we have to hold Ray Kelly accountable for training police to act like an occupation force,” he said.

The leading criteria for a stop: being in a neighborhood that is considered a “statistical ‘hotspot’ of criminal activity,” according to a report, “Analysis of Racial Disparities in the New York Police Department’s Stop, Question, and Frisk Practices” supported by the New York City Police Foundation. The low-income neighborhoods Jackson Heights in Queens, which has a high Latino population, and Brownsville, Brooklyn, which has a high African-American population, have the highest incidence rates of Stop and Frisk in New York City.

Supporters of Stop and Frisk point to the murder of Zurana Horton, 34,who was killed in Brownsville by a rooftop sniper on Oct. 21, while picking her daughter up from school, as an example of what unchecked gun violence can lead to. They say that Stop and Frisk is an effective deterrent against gun violence in such neighborhoods, and can save lives. Advocates also stress that the practice has been deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio in 1968, as long as “reasonable grounds” for a pat down exist.

Opponents, however, contend that “reasonable grounds” is too arbitrary and that Stop and Frisk not only violates Fourth Amendment protections against police searches based on conjecture, but sanctions racial profiling in practice. And critics argue that Stop-and-Frisk does not even fulfill its purported mission of preventing gun violence.

Jeffrey Fagan, Professor of Law and Public Health at Columbia University, found that Stop and Frisk does not recover many street weapons at all when he analyzed the 2008 police statistics for the Center for Constitutional Rights, showing that over all races, weapons were only seized at 0.15 out of every 100 stops.

Akinnagbe welcomes the convergence of the Occupy and Stop Stop and Frisk movements, where people “aren’t just concerned with their class and their race.” The actor encourages his fans to get involved however they can, with a sense of urgency.

Residents gathered in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Not only did the festivities bring the Chinese-American community together, but it also provided an economic boost for local vendors.

It will be the Islanders first preseason game and the match-up will take place just four days after the Barclays Center opens it’s doors in Brooklyn this fall.

Read more at: http://online.wsj.com/article/AP7ba7694f45dc45398b2cc1ab6fed89ea.html

Bernard McClain in his Bed-Stuy home. Photo by Claudia del Castillo

It’s not hard to guess Bernard McClain had something to do with the performing arts. He is tall, standing at 6 feet 2 inches. He speaks with a resonating voice and moves elegantly along the corridor of the Bed-Stuy apartment where he lives with his wife and two children.

Observing his manner, you might not be surprised to learn he trained as a classical dancer, and led a life full of adventure for more than a decade travelling around the world. The surprise is that a man with his air of success and prosperity, and a college graduate, has been unemployed for the past four years.

His story not be typical, but he’s one of the tens of thousands in the city who are unemployed. He’s a stay at home father who is coming back to the labor market just as the country tries to shake the worst economic situation in decades, after he voluntarily quit his job to be with his family. But even with an education, experience and talent, Bernard can’t find a job.

Now, at 54, he is searching for work in a new field, but dance is his first love. His first connection with dance happened when he was just sixteen, growing up in Pasadena, Southern California. He walked into a room he thought was empty and saw a Black man, dressed in a red leotard, guiding the steps of about a hundred girls, all of them eager to follow him.

“I was standing there and thought, God, if one guy can have so much control over all of these ladies, I should try it out,” he said.

He started taking classes at a dance studio in South Pasadena, California, where he was told he had a natural facility for dance, even though he was too tall for classical ballet. “I had good legs and good feet,” he said.

Ballet became an important part of his life, and his talent began to flourish. At 19, he began training with Phillip Fuller, at his studio in South Pasadena. It wasn’t long until another teacher, who took his talent even further, discovered him.

Arthur Mitchell, founder of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, the first African American classical ballet company, wanted Bernard in his troupe and brought him to New York City.

At 22, dancing professionally under Mitchell’s guidance, Bernard began travelling all over the world. Stamps from Australia and the countries of Europe filled his passport. At one point he had been outside the United States for 26 weeks. His income, about $35,000, was good for a dancer at the time.

McClain during his dancing days. Courtesy photo.

For a young man, having that kind of life is a dream come true. Bernard sums up his life of dance and travel as “the best experience I ever had, seeing new places and meeting new people.”

But dancing is most often a short-lived profession. Dancing was taking a toll on his body, and in 1991 he retired.

“Your legs and hips take the strain. Your legs in ballet turn out, when they’re designed to be in parallel. Your ankles and inner thigh are always turned out, because you show off your body,” he said. “It’s a vain profession, because it focuses on the body and showing it off, but I would have never done anything else.”

Through dancing he met his wife. She had a briefer career at the DTH. Her build, muscular and strong, was better suited for track competition. She quit dancing. They dated, then married in 1993 and had two children, a daughter, now 11, and a son, now 8.

She went to medical school at Johns Hopkins, specializing in gynecology and obstetrics, and worked at Beth Israel Hospital, before securing her private practice. And while she went to Medicine school, Bernard had a series of jobs that moved him farther from dance.

Between 1991 and 1993, he was a personal trainer at a sports club. Then, in the same year, he worked as an usher at Radio City Music Hall, promoted to house manager in 1994, and worked there for six years. After that, he was at the United Nations, catering and learning about food and wine. He then secured a job as a suite attendant in Madison Square Garden, catering to the people in the most expensive boxes.

In 2007 his wife asked Bernard to quit his job. The children were still quite young and she was making more than enough to sustain the household.

He wakes up at 5 a.m. to get his children ready for school, and lets his wife sleep a little more. The children are ready at 8 a.m, and he takes them to school. The rest of the day he spends grocery shopping, cooking and taking care of his mother-in-law. She owns a couple of buildings along the street, including the one he and his family live in, and there are always things to be fixed.

“My skills in other areas have gotten better,” he says. “Plumbing, drywall. And it’s better to do a job yourself. If something needs to get fixed, it’s less expensive than hiring someone. You just have to buy the materials.”

Bernard feels it’s time to find a full-time job again: his children are old enough to walk to school by themselves, and he wants a change of scenery.

“I’m getting ready to go back to work. I need to have my own income. It can be boring, having a routine: you want to do more. And it’s just a guilty feeling for a man. I feel the need to pay a bill.”

He’s applying for a job at the Brooklyn Nets Arena, one that will allow him to do the kind of work he enjoyed at Madison Square Garden. He wants a job that will be flexible on his time so he can spend time with his children.

McClain is a determined man, and his future looks bright. Even though nobody can tell what will happen tomorrow.

You would not know it was Election Day at Zuccotti Park Tuesday. There are no American flags swaying in the wind, nor are there posters declaring their support of candidates.

Few people saw value in casting ballots.

“It’s not going to come down to my opinion,” said Alec Courtnui, a baker before joining the protests who now shines shoes to make money. “I always vote for the lesser of two evils. The last time I voted was in 2008, and it was for Obama. He was handed a really hard task, and he’s doing the best he can.”

He was not alone among protestors for whom the idea of change through the elective process has lost its appeal.

“It’s not going to make a difference unless we make a third party,” said Julio Rolon, who flew from his native Puerto Rico to New York to take part in the occupation. “America colonizes countries like El Salvador with the dollar, and I’m here to fight against colonization, especially the U.S. imperialism. As Puerto Ricans, we can’t vote for the U.S. presidential elections but the president can come to Puerto Rico and do his fundraising there. The voting booth is the coffin for the elections.”

At Zuccotti Park, there are no political posters. Instead there are rainbow flags with peace signs. People hold large pieces of cardboard covered with their life stories. The boards also list their needs and demands. “Spanish is going to be the first language of this country in a few years,” Rolon told a passing woman.

Still, a few of the protestors did think voting matters.

“It usually does. Our country was founded on this notion,” said Karen Huffman, a resident of East Village.  She is knitting scarves for her fellow protestors. “I’m a very informed voter and I’ve worked for the voting board as well. The problem is that most people are watching Fox News and reality TV and so they’re not getting much news. There was nothing about Election Day in the paper today. It was all about Kim Kardashian, Hermain Cain, and Michael Jackson.” Huffman voted last November. “I may still vote tonight though,” she said.

Anoush, a Manhattan based writer who refuses to give her last name, had just voted and wanted to keep her choices to herself. “I think it’s very important to vote,” she said. “I think young people should be asked to vote and in return they should get free concert tickets for Beyonce after that, because every vote can make a difference,” she said.

Joey McMinnin, of Staten Island, also thinks it is necessary to vote. “I’m still going to exercise my right to vote,” he said. “However, I’m mostly concerned with environmental issues and not really political ones. I’ve always voted.”

Still, most people interviewed at the park saw little benefit in casting a ballot.

“I think most elections are not true democracy and there’s not much choice,” said Jen Waller.

Some admitted they have not voted in years, having lost their faith in government. “I don’t vote anymore and I can’t tell you the last time I voted,” said Patrick Cooper with a laugh. Even those who cannot vote due to their legal status do not think they are missing out on much.

“Everything is mobbed by the 1% and it’s their machine,” said Recai Iskander, a Turk who has been a permanent resident in the city for 11 years. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t vote.”

“The one commonality is people like beer, and they like to know how to brew beer,” Mabin says. “As much as we call them competitions, a lot of it is affirmation that you’re doing it correctly.”

Mabin, who has a slight beer gut and a reddish-orange beard, and Thomas, who sports colorful tattoos on his exposed, lanky arms, met at a party a few years ago through a mutual friend of Mabin’s girlfriend. The two got lost in conversation, each happy to find a fellow beer nerd. They looked up to find that the party had ended, so they grabbed another pint and got back into it. After the party, the two stayed in touch and kicked around the idea of home brewing. Mabin, who’s 29 years old and specializes in geographic information system technology, started making beer in college from kits. His job helps support his brewing. His shelves are littered with books about food and beer, from Julia Child’s My Life in France to the simple, instructional text The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. Thomas, 29 and an associate producer at HBO, had never brewed. Mabin, whose jovial laugh and warm presence make any guest feel at home, decided one day to make the dream a reality: he bought the basic brewing equipment and called Thomas to tell him about their new hobby, and that he now owed him $200.

Mabin and Thomas realized they didn’t need a lot of equipment to make beer they wanted to drink: one or two massive steel pots, some five-gallon paint buckets to store the fermenting, a fridge to keep the kegs cool, a few other knick-knacks. Their first beer was good, not great, but the novice brewers were seduced. Today, they experiment with styles and ingredients and rarely repeat the same recipe. Mabin and Thomas have “brew days” on the weekends at Mabin’s apartment that has a distinctly country cottage kitchen feel and invite friends to join, including Bill Ryder, a fellow home brewer.

“The thing that hooks you is that you’ll create this beer that’s better than any beer you’ve ever had commercially,” Ryder says. “Because you made it.”

Thomas’s love for beer is rooted in history and a connection with places he’s visited and places he wishes he’d known. In a recent brew, for example, he added a few vanilla beans he’d picked up in South Africa. He’s a treasure trove of information about beer processes and talked energetically about a three-year blend of Lambic-style sour beers, a beer specific to Belgium. He pulled the lid off a paint bucket filled to the brim with a fermenting Lambic beer and stuck his nose close to smell the sweetish sour aroma. Process entrances Mabin as well, but he’s passionate about food and drink because his father was a restaurant manager, and he grew up surrounded by people who loved to drink and be merry.

“We were making beer because it was cool,” Mabin says. His appreciation for beer and its place in history grew after he moved up to New York City and began tasting different styles. “The history of it became this fascinating side to go along with the complexity of the flavors. What about the original region it was brewed in that allowed it to happen?” Both Mabin and Thomas have full time jobs and devote many of their weekends to brewing and beer tasting.

At the Boston Brewing Company, in Boston, MA, some of the employees who make Samuel Adams beer during the day go home to craft their own beers at night. Tour manager Seth Adams started brewing in college, like Mabin, after his roommate brought home a starter kit and suggested they give it a try. “When we tasted the recipe, it wasn’t bad,” Adams says. “It wasn’t the best beer in the world, but it was enough to keep me interested.”

The magic of home brewing, as Adams describes it, is in the infinite possibilities for recipes, styles and, frankly, curious results. If one recipe with pine needles doesn’t work— an ingredient Adams tried once that yielded a beer he described as “interesting” —then another with sage might, or tomatoes, another Adams experiment.

Adams threw parties to share his beer in college. He also kept a customized fridge — outfitted with a hole so the door could stay closed while people poured beer — out back that was always stocked with a keg of his homemade beer. Even though he doesn’t often repeat the same recipes, Adams wants feedback on his beers. “I personally always solicit honest feedback, even if it’s bad,” Adams says. The criticism doesn’t faze him. “I want to know if I’m doing a good job at what I’m working hard at.”

That excitement about making a successful first batch of beer is shared by Steve Hindy, the founder of Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg, who was mesmerized by home brewing while he was reporting for The Associated Press and hanging out with American diplomats in the Middle East. The diplomats, who’d been traveling in Saudi Arabia where alcohol is prohibited, were stationed in Egypt and craving a good drink. They wouldn’t settle for what passed as beer there; they wanted something with craft and with artistry, and so they brewed their own. They made it look simple, and Hindy was hooked.

His first experience home brewing back in the States was a disaster, though. Half the bottles broke when Hindy tried to cap them. “Our kitchen was a mess,” he says. “My wife was horrified. We had to keep the kids out of the kitchen because there was glass everywhere. So that first brew didn’t work out too well.” But Hindy persisted, and his home brews quickly became popular in his building and even at Newsday, where he then worked.

The biggest problem Hindy faced with those first batches of beer was battling his own impatience. He found the temptation to peek inside the barrel and test out his creation to be overwhelming. “One of the problems you have home brewing is you tend to be so eager to taste the beer,” Hindy says. “You sometimes serve it before it it’s really smoothed out, so it doesn’t ferment out. It doesn’t taste great.”

The 25-person beer tour that came knocking on Mabin’s front door wasn’t unprecedented. Mabin was used to hosting parties for a couple dozen people. Whenever he and Thomas brew a batch of beer too robust or overpowering to finish themselves, they share it with friends. At Mabin and his girlfriend’s housewarming party in March, 40 people crammed into their roughly 900-square-foot apartment. In a small pantry off his kitchen, a place most people would stash dried macaroni and pudding cups, Mabin set up his beer gear. Somehow, 12 people packed together into the already-crowded brew pantry.

“It’s kind of never ending,” Thomas says, as the group recounted the housewarming, a crawfish boil they hosted in the summer and other recent beer parties. “My girlfriend kind of rolls her eyes, cause we have stuff all the time. It’s a meetup. It’s somebody’s party. It’s a very tight knit community.”

Just after 6 p.m., Mabin opened the door of his apartment to let in his guests. Beer tourist Blake Baumgarten, a burly, bald-headed man out from Sacramento to visit friends, likened the home brew tour to wine tasting, but without the pretense. He preferred drinking craft beers in the cramped quarters of New York City, which he described as “down-to-earth,” to sipping wine in the wide open vineyards of California. There was no pretension in home brewing; at the second stop on the tour, the brewers had walked around barefoot pouring beer for the tourists. Home brewing is about making good beer, a feat so simple even novice brewers can do it, like Hindy when he first came back from Egypt. “I don’t understand why the actual multimillion dollar brewing companies can’t make good beer,” Baumgarten says.

Guests sampled four of Mabin and Thomas’s brews, a variety of styles ranging from a light Belgian wheat to a robust English porter. A few of them mingled with their newfound beer friends or pulled up chairs around the mahogany coffee table in the living room. Mabin and his girlfriend played the perfect hosts. She had baked homemade shortbread and they had set the table with pita corners and hummus that Mabin had made. Guests picked at the snacks, but were more interested in the beer and returned to the brew closet to sample different varieties. A family that had come on the beer tour laughed loudly and a little drunkenly as they filed out of Mabin’s apartment saying: “A family that drinks together stays together.”

Soon, most of the party left or went down the street to a bar called Pacific Standard. A few stragglers remained, coming back to Mabin and Thomas’s kegs for a second, third and fourth taste, particularly of the duo’s porter-style brew. It seemed they’d found some new fans of their beer. Since the guests arrived, the brewroom door had been open and they had filed in to check out the modest brewing equipment and to refill their glasses. On a whole most people seemed to like the beer, but Baumgarten had let slip earlier that he’d preferred the first two stops. By that point in the night though, the tour had ended and neither Mabin nor Thomas would have been offended. They were just happy to share.