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                                    DV TFAM I 17MTU A M M -* A *> M - i l A J. XOver fifty members of Brooklyn anti-nuclear organizations marched across the Brooklyn Bridge on October 28 to join in the rally on Wall Street in Manhattan to protest investments in nuclear energy.The steady falling rain was no deterrent to the high spirited crowd who chanted %u201c two, four, six, eight, we don%u2019t want to radiate.%u201d They sang songs and held their banners high, but the rain wreaked havoc with the signs. \Reap the Horrors of Your Prosperity%u201d was one of the few signs that lasted all the way from Montague Street to lower Manhattan.The North Brooklyn Mobilization for Survival had arranged the march and also an anti-nuclear forum held in St. Ann%u2019s Church on Montague Street last Friday. Roy Doremus, who heads the North Brooklyn Mobilization group said he was enthusiastic about the support received from organizations such as the West Brooklynand he is trying to sign up more organizations for a similar large spring demonstration.The films and discussion at St. Ann's were to organize people for the Sunday march and the Monday demonstration on Wall Street. Residents who passed the Church were asked by leafletters to come in. Some who attended, asked questions about nuclear power of the Scientific Task Force of the Mobilization of Survival and the War Resisters' League and they were asked to write their Congressmen or to join the anti-nuclear groups in Brooklyn.Groups people were encouraged to join arc: North BrooklynMobilization for Survival (MOBE) which meets at 129 Columbia Heights, 843-9879; the Brooklyn Anti-Nuke Group of Park Slope (BANG); the Brooklyn SHAD Alliance and the Midwood Environmental Group. Demonstrators march from Montague Street over theto join Wall Street anti-nuclear rally, (occhiogrosso Photo)Brooklyn Bridge on October 28Brooklynites March On Wall StreetVolunteers Plan To Clean Lake In Prospect ParkBY LINUS GELBERPlans are in the offing for fixing up the Vale of Cashmere in Prospect Park without any cost to the city, say officials of the volunteer organization Friends of Prospect Park. The group hopes to raise as much as $10,000 from donations, banks and businesses for the dredging, cleaning andreftnishing of the pond in the Vale as well as for replanting many of the grassy slopes surrounding the Pond, to restore what Bill Novak of the Friends of Prospect Park calls %u201c one of the most exquisite areas of the park.%u201dWhile actual footwork for raising the money won%u2019t begin until the Friends start their annual membership drive in January, the preliminary designs have already been hammered out. Estimates given the group by the Blandford Land Clearing Corp. put costs for dredging and repairs for the pond itself and its retaining wall, damaged by water currents, at $4500, and the relaying of the clay bottom of the pond at another $4500.Contract Let For Arch RepairBY IRENE VAN SLYKEA $431,000 contract for major renovation work on the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch at Grand Army Plaza has been awarded to Thomason Industries, a Long Island firm. Joseph Bresnan, Director of Historic Parks of the City%u2019s Parks Department, said that the project will restore the Civil War monument to its %u201c original state,%u201d and that the Department would like the Arch %u201c safe, clean and in excellent condition%u201d so that the potential for bringing in visitors will be there.The contract calls for cleaning of the statuary and applying preservatives; repointing and waterproofing of the masonry and reconstruction and water proofing of the roof and skylights. Inside the Arch, theinterior will be repaired and plastered, the iron staircase restored and new lighting installed.Pigeonproofing of the monument will be one of the aims of the renovation project according to Bresnan. Pigeon droppings and debris have clogged the drains, and the acidity of the material has ruined the stonework and weakened the Winged Victory statue atop the Arch until it toppled over during a 1976 October storm. The Winged Victory Statue has been in storage ever since but will be replaced in her chariot next year.Pigeon proofing will mean applying preservatives to the masonry and statues and installing wire mesh in some of the birds%u2019 favorite roosting places.Some of the work will be startedbefore the winter, such as taking down some of the statues for cleaning and applying preservatives, reports Bresnan, but most of it will be done next year.Last October 20 John Muir of the Prospect Park Environmental Center led a tour of 75 people through the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch with an eye to possible future tours. As to the potential for future tours Bresnan noted that six Urban Park Rangers went along to guide visitors and provide for their safety, and that trying to get manning %u201c is very expensive.%u201d But, he continued, the Parks Department after the completion of the renovation would like to see the potential for visitors to the monument .War On Prostitutes Goes OnBY LINUS GELBERBorough President Howard Golden and leaders of the Brooklyn South Police Command and the 78th Precinct in a meeting on Oct. 23 reaffirmed both their intentions and their efforts to rid the walks of Boerum Hill of what residents claim is an extensive and preponderous prostitution problem. The meeting came on the heels of an attack on Joseph Mohbat and his wife by two women on October 20; Mohbat has been a leader in the fight to rid the area of prostitutes.After meeting with criminal court judges last week and police heads this week, local residents have watched the efforts of a police sweep to remove courtesans from the streets. Over the summer, members o f the Becrurr. uin Association (BHA) had protested against prostitution in front of the Bethlehem Lutheran Church, at Third Avenue and Pacific Street, but much of the solicitation quietlyreturned to the area after a flurry of police activity pushed it away.Gina Holmes, Press Secretary to the Borough President, termed the constant back-and-forth between police and prostitutes %u201c practically a war,%u201d and said that the predominent feeling at Borough Hall was that %u201c we can%u2019t let them take ovfer a newly-stabilizing neighborhood like Boerum Hill%u2014 we have to do something about it.%u201dPolice, good to their word, have strictly patrolled the area over the past several days making numerous arrests, using both squad car runs and undercover crews. One police officer from the 78th precinct reported making 19 arrests in one evening, and said that the courts, taking part in the crackdown, had handed out five-day jail sentencesiMP!C%u00b0d of t raHit inn al finr*<;given for prostitution and loitering charges.Recognizing that such a concerted effort can%u2019 t last forever, Holmes said that the patrols wouldbe re-evaluated in late November, %u201c unless something drastic or wonderful happens in the meantime.%u201dLocal resident Joe Mohbat, a member of the BHA who has been outspoken about the prostitution problem and attended the meetings with Golden as a BHA representative, has also pointed to what he claims are four cathouses operating on Pacific Street between Fourth and Flatbush as posing a major part of the trouble. Holmes says the four houses, all owned by Clarence Taliaferro of Fayval Realty, and also all kept ostensibly vacant, arc being watched and have been reported to the police for them to handle as they will, to \situat ion.%u201dMohbat was attacked last weekhie \\%u00bb;i fr* Hv t\\v<\\ nrOQt it 111armed with broken beer bottles and heavy purses, although no one was seriously hurt.Novak additionally hopes that some $900 can be raised along with enough volunteer bodies to plant the area immediate area with rhododendrons, azaleas and other flowering plants.Many of the problems in the pool stem from the water supply system, which channels water into the southern end and then drains it out nearby, allowing the fluid in the northern crescent to stagnate and fill with silt from water runoff and rainfall. As the pond chokes with topsoil sturdy water weeds, called phragnites, clog any drainage that might go on ordinarily. %u201c Over the years, eight to twelve inches of soil has accumulated in the pool,%u201d Novak estimates. The firm bed of soil allows the phragnites, or swamp reeds, to develop a strong, complex root system which Novak says is %u201c very frustrating to those of us who spent many hours in the water trying to pull it out.%u201dPark officials that have met with Novak and other representatives have been \about the renovations, says Novak, while remaining %u201c sensitive about outoutspoken criticisms o f the Parks Department.%u201d He reports that some officials have felt the Friends' priorities are misplaced, and that they should be raising money for supplies instead of individual projects, but the group remains firm in its concept.%u201c I hope that every aspect of the w'ork on the Vale can proceed according to the highest professional standards,\la, also of the Friends of Prospect Park, in a recent letter to Brooklyn Parks Director George Sahr. %u201c Should anything less be tolerated in the greatest natural landscape city park in America?%u201dNovak does foresee some trouble in raising the necessary money to donate the repairs, but feels that all will turn out well with a dash of perseverance. %u201c I%u2019m all fired up by this,\%u201c And the moncy--Although it does seem like a lot--really isn%u2019t all that much, in the long run.%u201d Anyone interested in the project should write to Friends of Prospect Park, 94 Park Place, 11217.BUG%u2019S CinderellaProgramBY LEBBY HAYMANIn front of a Brooklyn Union Gas branch at 260 Flatbush, 40 picketers chanted %u201c Brooklyn Union we say no, the Brownstone Movement%u2019s got to go,%u201d interspersing that theme with numerous other protest chants about the Ku Klux Klan, %u201c urban removal%u201d , %u201c stop the killer cops%u201d , and more. The white demonstrators, many of them from Park Slope, were brought together by the Moncada Library, a lending library and political organization housed at Fifth Avenue and 9th Street in the Slope.The group, which has allied itself with several organizations including the National Black Human Rights Campaign, believes that the Cinderella program, Brooklyn Union Gas%u2019 s project to support rehabilitation of key buildings in the periphery of brownstone neighborhoods, represents corporate support for %u201c genocide against Third World people%u201d .According to a member of the group which runs the library, Marcy Schulman, Park Slope is the site of a struggle between the white middle class on the one hand, and blacks and Puerto Ricans on the other, over who will dominate the neighborhood. Shulman says thatProtestedwhites have allied themselves with the police, in order to drive Third World people out of what was a %u201c well grounded black and Puerto Rican community.%u201dShulman describes the purpose of the group as the uniting of white people whd oppose %u201c white supremacy%u201d and are prepared to fight the Ku Klux Klan, which the group asserts is having a %u201c reemergence%u201d in Park Slope. The demonstration supported, in chants, signs, and speeches, the efforts of the Republic of New Africa (RNA) to claim five states in the south of the U.S. for black people, and a planned march on the United Nations on Nov. 5th by the National Black Human Rights Coalition, charging the U.S. with %u201c genocide being committed against African people born in the United States.%u201d The group also opposes the campaign to provide police with bullet-proof vests.Shulman says that the library,which is open Tuesday and Thursday, from 3-7, Saturday from 1-5, and Sundays from 6-9, conducts a program ot classes about tiie struggle against white supremacy. Those interested can call 499-2767 for information.November 1,1979, The PHOENIX, Page 3
                                
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