By Herb Boyd
A Town Hall luncheon meeting at Silvia’s, in Harlem on Saturday, May 10, was sponsored by the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce, featuring a report by Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who had just returned from Mexico. As Lloyd Williams, president and CEO of the GHCC, told an assembly of city notables, the luncheon was the first in a series of meetings planned this year, including The State of Congress; State of State; and State of the City. If the succeeding sessions are anything like its inaugural, a storehouse of important information will be dispensed.
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Even before Rep. Espaillat began his nearly 90-minute-long speech, Williams explained that Rucker Park had joined the Morris-Jamel Mansion, Hamilton Grange, and the U.S Grant Memorial as historic sites. “Along with the congressman’s office,” he said, “we’ve reached out to the NBA because hundreds of the NBA players have performed in the Rucker tournament over the years.” At the table of dignitaries was former basketball great Bob McCullough, commissioner of Rucker Park and the Rucker Pro League for over 60 years. Seated nearby was Karl Rodney, publisher of the Carib News.
After thanking Williams for his introduction, Espaillat began his discussion by noting the condition of two undocumented parents and their four U.S. born children who had been deported to Mexico. “One of the children has brain cancer, and she needs daily and weekly treatment. Her older teenage brother has a heart condition. So, if you think for a moment that the mass deportation plan is about a hardened criminal that committed a crime and probably should be deported back to where they came from, well, that’s not what all this is about at all. This is about any of us.”
The representative also commented on the arrest of Mayor Ras Baraka and three members of Congress, “will show you that this goes beyond…the expected response of somebody who may have broken the law,” he added. As for constitutional matters, he observed that “Dissent is patriotic; it’s the hardcore… the spinal cord of democracy. If you don’t have the ability to dissent, to have a different opinion than someone else, then democracy crumbles.”
He said, “What the Mayor of Newark and the members of Congress were doing yesterday was saying, you need to get permits and you need to get everything right before you open up a detention center in Jersey that will house over a thousand people. So that will be the processing center for the northeast massive deportation plan.”
There are three pathways in the state of affairs in America, the congressman stated: One is the legal, where the courtroom has jurisdiction; the second path is legislative and budgetary, and the third is the public. “I represent 780,000 people, and 500,000 of them are Medicaid recipients. 18,000 are Medicare recipients. So 618,000 plus maybe another ten, fifteen out of 780,000 people I represent are either on Medicaid or Medicare,” he said. “And you know why? Because the cost of healthcare is so expensive that you can’t get a Cadillac plan because it’s just going to hurt you in your pocket. It’s going to be $22,500, to 18 hundred dollars a month. You just can’t make it happen.”
Espaillat devoted considerable time to the accomplishments of his predecessor, former Congressman Charles Rangel, and the creation of the Rangel Center at City College, which must have pleased Vincent Boudreau, the school’s president, who was in attendance. “There is an agreement now made between the Rangel Center and the labor unions who traditionally have not always been on the same page with our communities…where they are now going to be one of the training centers for the apprenticeships.”
There was a barrage of questions about the importance of Harlem as a transportation hub, artificial intelligence, education, arts and culture, as well as the future of the Hispanic Caucus that he helms in Congress. He indicated that the various caucuses had been betrayed by Democrats “at the last vote in the budget,” that one of those in attendance had indicated.
Questions were still lingering as he took his leave and he answered only one more from a reporter who asked his opinion of the new Pope. “I think he’s for the poor, the hungry and he’s going to be following in the footsteps of Pope Francis and Leo the Thirteenth and maybe as long ago as Leo the first.” This first Leo defied Attila the Hun, and let’s see if Leo XIV will be a significant counterweight to Trump and take a similar stand against a menace.
