Residents Respond To Zoning Map
In what is rapidly becoming a regular feature, here are some of the most striking comments about the new map from the latest hearing. Lest there be any concern that positive comments are being ignored, rest assured: there weren’t any. Not a single one of the dozens of speakers at the Feb. 11 meeting spoke in favor of the map.
“It is embarrassing, it is disgusting, and it is an act of institutionalized racism…I hope when you go home and you look at your children and your grandchildren that you’re proud of what you’re doing.”
-Jill Williams, Village of Hempstead
“This map is a snow job bigger than what we saw on Friday [Feb. 8], and this process has been a sham.”
-Mimi Pierre Johnson, Elmont
“The instruction to draw the map ‘blind to incumbency’…is that in writing?”
-Claudia Borecky, Merrick
“What we see here is a microcosm of what’s sucking the life out of Nassau County and out of the country.”
-Henry Boitel, Rockville Centre
“I feel qualified to comment on this map by dint of a course I just finished— in stand-up comedy. It’s laughable, or it would be if it weren’t so deadly serious.”
-Judith Epstein, Port Washington
“The county is broke; why put the county in the position where they’re going to lose millions of dollars in a lawsuit?
-Wayne Hall, Village of Hempstead
“When you look at proposed districts like District 16, can you actually in good faith, tell us, and tell everyone in this room, that this is not simply gerrymander?”
-Daniel Altschuler, Long Island Civic Engagement Table
“I was born on the lower waters of the Mississippi; I moved to New York, running away from the same thing that I see going on here.”
-Josie Green, Hempstead
