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http://www.africafocus.org/docs22/migr2201.php
AfricaFocus Bulletin
“This is the heart of the problem. If housing vulnerable people is an asset
class – not a social good, or a human right – then generating returns for
investors will always be in a zero-sum relationship with providing safe
housing for those people. Landlords will always be in the middle; and when
they’re taking sides, as they must in housing for profit, investors will
always win.” - Annia Ciezadlo
The article by Annia Ciezadlo, writing in The Guardian about the Bronx fire that killed 19 people earlier this month, continues like this:
Touray Tower in the Bronx, as the apartment building that burned was known in the neighborhood, and Trump Tower in Manhattan are in different asset classes of real estate. Yet another class, but only a walk away from Trump Tower, is the residence of Rick Gropper, the real estate developer who is the principal owner of the Camber Group that manages Touray Tower and sits on an advisory board for Mayor Eric Adams.
Mid-Manhattan is a preferred location for foreign investment in real estate often used for money laundering, while the real estate market in the Bronx and northern Manhattan focuses on “affordable housing” for working families in New York, where immigrant communities are often concentrated.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a summary article on the Bronx fire from the Quartz Africa Weekly Brief, a publication I highly recommend.
But the best detailed coverage has been in the New York Times:
https://tinyurl.com/BronxFire-Gambia for a search and for a compilation of PDFs shared on Google drive for AfricaFocus subscribers, click here.
Other sources I found helpful for this AfricaFocus Bulletin include:
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on issues related to migration, visit http://www.africafocus.org/migrexp.php.
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on the USA and Africa, visit http://www.africafocus.org/country/usa-africa.php
For ongoing coverage of USA/Africa relations, visit https://allafrica.com/usafrica/ and
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As mentioned in a message to readers in October (https://mailchi.mp/igc/new-directions), and as you will have noticed, I am publishing the Bulletin less frequently on the web and by Mailchimp email. But I am exploring new ways to reach out through other online media to continue sharing my reading and reflections with wider audiences.
If you use Facebook or Twitter or read books, I invite you to visit these sites:
AfricaFocus now has over 10,000 followers. How many people it reaches is unpredictable (only Facebook knows really). As we all know, Facebook is not anybody's friend and its goal is profit, although it has made some still largely token efforts to respond to recent critiques and whistlebrower leaks. But it does have the widest audience of any social media around the world, with almost 2.9 billion users. See https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/. The latest AfricaFocus post also automatically appears on the home page of http://www.africafocus.org.
Twitter's 400 million users worldwide are much fewer than Facebook's, almost
at the bottom of the comparative list in the link above. but its users are
heavily concentrated among journalists, policy analysts, and policy makers
themselves. So it is more useful than Facebook in reaching decision-makers or
influencers. However, its culture can be every more toxic to the user, and the
pace is unbearable if you use twitter's own interface. However, it can be
managed if you only follow a few others who have content you are interested
in. And you can visit the link even if you are yourself not signed up for
Twitter.
The only way I can tolerate using it myself in by not going to http://twitter.com directly and seeing the torrent of irrelevant clutter they send you, but by using another twitter product (https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/) which enables you to curate exactly what you see, including priority accounts you choose to follow closely as well as specialized lists on a particular topic as well as sites that retweet your tweets. I have created a custom list that I follow on tax justice,and another on the Sudan.
By turning off notifications to your screen or your email, you can choose when
to check tweetdeck and make better use of your time. I've been doing this
more lately for AfricaFocus, and AfricaFocus now has almost 700 twitter
followers.
This is of far more interest to me personally than twitter, and I spend hours each day reading books while I probably spend less than 15 to 20 minutes total in a day on twitter (email and the web are probably 5 to 6 hours a day)..
Bookshop.org is a not-for-profit B-Corporation which is dedicated to
supporting independent bookshops around the United States. It's not yet
international, although they have set up stores in the UK and Spain. In
addition to raising almost $18.7 million for independent bookstores in their
first two years, they pay 10% of the list price of each book they sell to
“affiliates” that create their own shops on the site. Anyone can be an
affiliate, from book stores to publishers to NGOs to individuals who simply
like to recommend books to their friends.
One of my recent lists was featured on the home page of Bookshop.org on January 18.
I haven't earned much money from it yet (about $140), but the main point in any case is publicizing books that I think people might be interested in and/or should read. I obviously haven't read all the books I list, but I have read a fair number, and if so I have noted my opinion in an annotation (otherwise just quoting a review or the publisher's description.
Another list I recently created noted ten of the best books that I read in 2021.
In 2020 and 2021 I have also given particular attention to writing articles for other publications, often co-authored with others. These include responsiblestatecraft.org, fpif.org, and https://africasacountry.com. I have also written or edited on a number of the web pages and posts at https://www.us-africabridgebuilding.org.
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By Alexander Onukwue
Published January 11, 2022
https://qz.com/africa/2111679/many-of-the-new-york-building-fire-victims-were-gambian/?utm_term=mucp
An apartment building fire that killed at least 17 people in the Bronx borough
of New York on Sunday (Jan. 9) has left members of the city’s Gambian
community in shock.
Three children and two parents were from one family, the Dukurays, who lived
on the top floor of the 19-story Twin Parks North West building. The fire was
caused by a faulty space heater on the third floor, city officials said. Smoke
traveled upstairs through a malfunctioning open doorway, making it difficult
for many residents who left their apartments to escape.
Built in 1972 and praised as an affordable housing experiment, the building
did not have a sprinkler system—a legal requirement—nor did it have outdoor
fire escapes, according to the New York Times.
“This is very unfortunate, and I think I dare say that the majority of the
victims apparently have their roots from Gambia,” Dawda Fadera, the Gambia’s
ambassador to the US, said at a news conference held by New York City mayor
Eric Adams. “Our country is currently in a state of shock.”
A GoFundMe fundraiser by the Gambian Youth Organization, whose office is
located close to Twin Parks, had an initial target of $200,000 but has passed
$700,000 after at least 15,000 donations, at time of writing.
The outpouring of support shows the closeness of the community of Gambians
within the Bronx. Immigration from the small west African country of 2 million
people to the US became popular during the late 1980’s. They gravitate to
existing tight-knit communities in cities like Chicago and New York, and form
family ties around shared cultures like Gambian jollof rice on Ramadan nights,
and regular worship at the neighborhood mosques.
“This building is the cornerstone for us in this community,” Haji Dukuray, a
61-year old relative of the deceased family of five, said of Twin Parks. The
community also includes Malians, and people from other African countries.
The Bronx fire is one of the first tests of leadership for Eric Adams, who
visited Ghana for a spiritual retreat in December ahead of the start of his
tenure on Jan. 1. A former police captain, he said the fire was one of New
York’s deadliest in modern times and wants to know how it could have been
prevented from becoming fatal.
Some of the problems with the Twin Parks building have begun to emerge in the
wake of the incident.
Residents say the building’s doors are faulty, creating a situation where they
stay open unless someone deliberately closes them. Also, space heaters are a
fire risk because the building’s heating just wasn’t functioning well enough
to keep residents warm. “If you don’t use a space heater then you use your
oven,” a resident told the New York Post.
Adams said New York City laws required doors to close automatically, and fire
marshals will investigate. He also wants to run public service announcements
that, he says, should help people prevent future tragedies: “We’re going to
double down on the closing the door PSA that I knew as a child, and we want
other generations to understand that.”
For victims’ families, however, the feeling is a struggle between heartbreak,
disbelief, and anxiety. Some residents are still missing, and the first step
towards closure is for relatives to receive their bodies for immediate burial
in accordance with Muslim rites.
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with
a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter. For an archive of previous Bulletins,
see http://www.africafocus.org,
Current links to books on AfricaFocus go to the non-profit bookshop.org, which supports independent bookshores and also provides commissions to affiliates such as AfricaFocus.
AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
write to this address to suggest material for inclusion. For more
information about reposted material, please contact directly the
original source mentioned. To subscribe to receive future bulletins by email,
click here.
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