Rally with Friends of Sixth Street Community Center
Friday, June 12th 5 p.m. at Sixth Street Community Center
638 East 6th Street between Avenues B & C Manhattan
Friends of Sixth Street
Sixth Street Board Chair Calls Police on Picket – Friends’ First Amendment Rights Upheld!
Sixth Street Board Chair Amikole Maraesa and her authoritarian board have repeatedly called the police on Howard Brandstein and Friends of Sixth Street Community Center beginning with their unjust firing of Brandstein and the hostile takeover of the Center on April 8th.
Once again on September 19th, Maraesa called the police on Friends of Sixth Street who were holding a picket outside Flower Power, where her Shea Butter products are sold, calling her and her board out on their firings of longtime staff, shutdown of Center programs and sabotage of community land trust low-income housing.
Incredibly, Maraesa offered the police a justification for shutting down the Friends’ picket by citing the recent take down of Tonight Show host Jimmy Kimmel as a precedent! His show was suspended at the behest of the Trump administration. Video above of Maraesa’s sidewalk interchange with the NYPD.
The police, for once upholding the Constitution, firmly rejected Maraesa’s twisted logic and her effort to remove the picketes from the sidewalk.
Friends of Sixth Street is planning another picket for this Saturday, September 27th (details to follow).
Board Withdraws Sixth Street Community Center from 10 Year Membership in Coalition to Protect Chinatown and LES to Further Evade Community Accountability
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
Friends of Sixth Street Hold Picket Outside Workplace of Center Board Chair
A picket was held outside the workplace of Amikole Maraesa on September 2nd where she sells her Amikole Shea Butter products.
Maraesa is the Board Chair of Sixth Street Community Center. She has led the scheme to dismantle the Center’s community programs and fire its longtime staff. In April, using the police, she and her corrupt board forced out Howard Brandstein, Sixth Street Co-founder and Executive Director for 35 years.
In August, she fired Alfred Robertson, Sixth Street Facilities Director for almost 25 years along with maintenance staff who are longtime block residents.
Not only has Maraesa destroyed the livelihoods of these staff but she and the four-person board have wrecked Sixth Street’s long running programs for youth, community organizing and housing justice.
Their reckless actions sabotaged $300,000 in funding for community projects including a planning grant for community land trust low-income housing.
In their power grab last February, Maraesa and her board, with no input from the staff or community, secretly changed the Center’s bylaws to reduce the required minimum number of members from 7 to 3 and eliminated the Board Advisory Committee. Prior to that, they removed Mitchel Cohen from the board who was the lone board member opposing their hostile takeover.
PRESS CONFERENCE WED., JULY 16TH: LOWER EAST SIDE COMMUNITY RALLIES TO DEFEND SIXTH STREET CENTER FROM HOSTILE BOARD TAKEOVER – COMPLAINT FILED WITH AG
Please join us Wednesday, July 16th at 12 noon in front of Sixth Street. Details below!
MEDIA ALERT
LOWER EAST SIDE COMMUNITY RALLIES TO DEFEND BELOVED SIXTH STREET CENTER FROM HOSTILE BOARD TAKEOVER – COMPLAINT TO BE FILED WITH NEW YORK STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL; DEMANDS REINSTATEMENT OF LONG-TIME EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR HOWARD BRANDSTEIN
Press Conference: Wednesday, July 16ᵗʰ at 12 noon
Outside Sixth Street Community Center, 638 East 6ᵗʰ Street between Avenues B & C, Manhattan
Friends of Sixth Street Community Center on the Lower East Side will hold a press conference on Wednesday, July 16ᵗʰ at 12 noon to announce the filing of a complaint to the New York State Attorney General alleging serious violations of the nonprofit Sixth Street Community Center’s board, whose decisions have severely impacted the Center’s mission, funding and operational initiatives. In April, the Sixth Street board, without notice, fired the Center’s Executive Director of 35 years, Howard Brandstein, going so far as to call the NYPD to remove him from the premises. Earlier in January, Brandstein filed a complaint against the board with the New York State Division of Human Rights following a year of the board’s ceaseless harassment and threats against him.
Actions by the Center’s current four-member board go against the very history of the building itself – a former synagogue gifted in 1980 for the development of the new Community Center – as a way of keeping progressive politics and programs continuing long into the future; a legacy from one generation to the next.
Under Brandstein’s leadership, the Center has been a key leader in the fight to protect the Lower East Side and East Village community against displacement and provide essential programs and services to community residents. Over the past three years, Brandstein raised $2.4 million for the Center. Most recently, he spearheaded efforts to build low-income housing through a Community Land Trust and supported NYCHA residents organizing against privatization. With his firing, the board has dismantled the Center’s critical work fighting displacement and sabotaged a $100,000 Community Land Trust planning grant.
Friends of Sixth Street Community Center began organizing in January of this year in response to threats to the Community Center’s mission and programming by the board. In February, in order to consolidate its unaccountable power and control of the Community Center, the board changed the Center’s bylaws to reduce the required number of members from seven to three and eliminated the advisory committee mandated by the earlier bylaws.
Text of the complaint being filed with the New York State Attorney General includes this introduction:
“On behalf of Friends of Sixth Street Community Center, a coalition of over 150 community members and longtime supporters, we submit this urgent complaint regarding egregious governance failures, financial malfeasance, retaliatory practices, and operational misconduct at the Sixth Street Community Center, Inc. A cornerstone of the Lower East Side for nearly 50 years, the Center is now at serious risk due to the reckless actions of its current Board of Directors.
The recent unjust termination of Executive Director Howard Brandstein—a co-founder and visionary leader of the Center—has exposed a pattern of gross negligence, ethical violations, and breaches of fiduciary duty by the Board. Without immediate intervention, the Center’s financial stability, physical assets, and community trust will be irreparably harmed.”
Friends of Sixth Street Community Center
POSTPONED: Press Conference June 16: Friends of Sixth St Community Center Address Ouster of Longtime Exec Director, NYS AG Complaint
Due to inclement weather, the press conference has been postponed. New date to be announced soon.
MEDIA ALERT
Press Conference: FRIENDS OF SIXTH STREET COMMUNITY CENTER ADDRESS OUSTER OF FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND CITE BOARD’S OPERATIONAL AND FINANCIAL MISCONDUCT; COMPLAINT TO BE FILED WITH NEW YORK STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL — MONDAY, June 16th
Friends of Sixth Street Community Center on the Lower East Side will hold a press conference on Monday, June 16th at 12 noon to announce the filing of a complaint to the New York State Attorney General alleging serious violations of the nonprofit Sixth Street Community Center’s board, whose decisions have severely impacted the Center’s mission, funding and operational initiatives. In April, the Sixth Street board, without notice, fired the Center’s Executive Director of 35 years, Howard Brandstein, going so far as to call the NYPD to remove him from the premises after a midnight lock out. His possessions were seized and Sixth Street archives were trashed. Earlier in January, Mr. Brandstein filed a complaint against the board with the New York State Division of Human Rights following a year of the board’s ceaseless harassment and threats against him.
Actions by the Center’s current four-member board go against the very history of the building itself — a former synagogue gifted for the development of the new Community Center as a way for keeping progressive politics and programs continuing long into the future — a legacy from one generation to the next. The nonprofit’s current board has acted in a detrimental financial and operational manner impacting children, teen and food-based programs, preventing numerous low-income people from accessing them, and withholding funds earmarked for operational expenses including Mr. Brandstein’s salary. Board members refuse to fundraise for the Center and with the firing of Mr. Brandstein sabotaged a $100,000 community land trust planning grant to develop low-income housing, a project spearheaded by him. Over the past three years, Mr. Brandstein raised $2.25 million for the Center.
Friends of Sixth Street Community Center began organizing in January of this year in response to the threats to the Community Center’s mission and programming by the board. In February, to consolidate its unaccountable power, the board changed the Center’s bylaws to reduce the required number of members from seven to three and eliminated the advisory committee mandated by the earlier bylaws.
Friends of Sixth Street Community Center will also be announcing new community members who will serve on the Board-in-Exile.
Text of the complaint being filed with the New York State Attorney General includes this introduction:
“On behalf of Friends of Sixth Street Community Center (“Friends”), a coalition of over 150 community members, organizations, and longtime supporters, we submit this urgent complaint regarding egregious governance failures, financial malfeasance, retaliatory practices, and operational misconduct at the Sixth Street Community Center, Inc. A cornerstone of the Lower East Side for nearly 50 years, the Center — a lovingly restored former synagogue that was gifted in 1980 for progressive programming in the community — is now at serious risk due to the reckless actions of its current Board of Directors (the “Board”).
The recent unjust termination of Executive Director Howard Brandstein—a co-founder and visionary leader of the Center—has exposed a pattern of gross negligence, ethical violations, and breaches of fiduciary duty by the Board. Without immediate intervention, the Center’s financial stability, physical assets, and community trust will be irreparably harmed.”
The full text of the complaint and any further information can be sent upon request.
Friends of Sixth Street Community Center PRESS CONFERENCE
MONDAY, JUNE 16TH 12 noon
Outside Sixth Street Community Center
638 East 6th Street between Avenues B & C, Manhattan
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Friends of Sixth Street Community Center Table at Loisada Festival Sunday
Pictures from the neighborhood’s popular Loisada Festival Sunday, May 25th where Friends of Sixth Street Community Center tabled, handed out flyers and talked to neighbors about the ongoing situation at Sixth Street Community Center and efforts to reclaim it and reinstate Howard Brandstein (pictured with the Friends).
