The following is correspondence between the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side and the Sixth Street Community Center Board between August 1st and September 4, 2025.
August 1st, 2025 Letter from Coalition to Protect Chinatown and LES to Sixth Street Community Center Board:
To the Board of Sixth Street Community Center:
This is the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side. We are writing to you to express our concern about the recent firing of long-time Executive Director Howard Brandstein and to urge you to resolve the matter as soon as possible.
We are deeply disturbed by the firing and lockout of Howard from Sixth Street Community Center. Howard is well respected in our community for fighting displacement. His track record of community organizing and coalition building goes back decades. Under Howard’s leadership, Sixth Street Community Center has been an important community space and an active member of the Coalition. Together, we unified Chinatown, Lower East Side, SoHo, NoHo, Little Italy and the broader lower Manhattan to stop the City and big real estate’s displacement agenda.
After investigation, including speaking to both Friends of Sixth Street and a member of the SSCC board, we’ve come to the conclusion that the current board of SSCC was unjust to Howard and threatens the important anti-displacement work of SSCC that Howard and other community members have spent decades to build up. Your violent and unjustified treatment of Howard, including calling police on him, changing the lock and denying him access to his office, and trashing his belongings to the dumpster, is having a negative impact on the broader anti-displacement movement. It is a blatant attack on Howard and SSCC’s dedicated effort in serving and unifying people across identities to protect our community against displacement.
Based on the above, we urge you: in the interest of the community, come to the resolution by meeting the demands put out by Friends of Sixth Street Community Center. The demands are: the reinstatement of Howard Brandstein as Executive Director and mediation with the board to address issues of transparency and community accountability. If you cannot commit to meeting these demands by August 15, 2025, the Coalition will vote on the issue of removing the SSCC as a member organization.
Feel free to reach out to us should you have any questions.
Best,
Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side
August 15, 2025 Response from Sixth Street Community Center Board Chair Amikole Maraesa
To Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side,
The Board of Sixth Street Community Center acknowledges your email and is responding as follows:
While we would have been open to meeting to discuss the challenges and leadership issues the center faces and exploring paths forward, this ultimatum has given us no choice but to resign from the coalition.
One of our board members met with some coalition representatives informally to raise concerns about the impacts of recent protests and press conferences on our youth programs. Multiple of these actions, including ones that coalition members attended on July 16, 2025 included attendees banging and pushing on doors of the center while young students were attending summer programs inside. The youth programs, an essential part of Sixth Streets service to our community have had to relocate away from the center on at least three occasions to avoid the spectacle of adult protesters shouting, chanting, and harassing parents as school aged children attend their activities.
Instead of showing any concern for the well-being of these youngest community members, or seeking to understand other sides of this conflict, the coalition has rather joined a partisan and one-sided campaign for reinstating Howard at all costs. They have given us an ultimatum on extremely short 2 weeks notice and directly blasted the disagreement to elected officials. Based on these actions, we cannot assume there will be any good faith compromise with this group and we must resign our position within it.
Thank you,
Amikole, President
Sixth Street Community Center Board of Directors
September 4, 2025 Letter from Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side in response to Amikole/Sixth Street Community Center Board
To Board of Sixth Street Community Center,
Your letter fails to address any of the issues raised in the previous email. Many other groups and individuals including NYCHA tenant associations and residents have also spoken out against the Sixth Street Community Center Board’s actions undermining community anti-displacement efforts and low-income housing development. The board’s action calling the police to physically remove Howard Brandstein, a respected community leader and activist, from the premises and tossing in the garbage archives, books, documents and his personal possessions is an affront to our entire community. Over 1,500 people have signed an online petition at change.org/reinstatehoward We have also received the letter attached from 12 former Sixth Street staff calling for Howard’s reinstatement and the resignation of the board. Further, we have now learned that the Sixth Street board- which has never raised any funds for the Community Center- has escalated its attacks on workers and the community with the firing of longtime Facilities Director Alfred Robertson and other community staff.
Instead of listening to the many voices calling for the return of the Community Center, you send a diversionary response using children as a shield for your destructive actions. Your false depiction of community rallies that, in fact, were all extraordinarily peaceful also fails to mention that parents in the Sixth Street youth program have themselves spoken out at these rallies in opposition to your actions, and some have withdrawn their children because of the board’s actions hostile to the community.
We call on the Sixth Street board to cease its divisive conduct and destructive actions and restore Howard, Alfred and the other community workers to their positions.
While you are no longer a member of the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the LES, be advised that as a not-for-profit organization, Sixth Street Community Center is still responsible and accountable to the broader LES community. With that obligation in mind, we urge you to respect the voices of the community and meet the demands of the Friends of Sixth Street.
Best,
Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side