Matt Metzgar
October 16, 2024
To my fellow eco-urbanites and whoever it may concern !
I’ve known Howard for 34 years, both as an activist and organizer of social events, and as a professional carpenter.
My first encounter with Mr. Brandstein was in the early 1990’s, when Mayor David Dinkins, and then mayor Rudolph Giuliani were attempting to dislodge the low-income inhabitants of 5 buildings on E13th St. I was busy collecting letters from neighborhood churches, community centers and assorted CB3 (Community Board) figures who might support us. Howard was immediately helpful with an excellent letter on Sixth Street Community Center stationary which praised and supported our housing efforts as a worthy example of people-power affordable housing. It was apparent to me that Howard had an instinctual organic understanding of the importance of human solidarity. I remember thinking at the time that it was almost too good to be true.
Over the years I deepened my appreciation of him, witnessing how he never turned any neighborhood entity away, if they needed a space to hold a meeting, a good-cause benefit, or a family event. I have had numerous opportunities to see this quality of Howard’s. One may regard it archaically as the quality of “probity”; the willingness at every turn to simply be good to others, take their concerns and issues seriously, yet within an overarching and all-embracing vision of humanity and ecological, green movement philosophy. His attention was nothing if not generous, and was always an invitation and a challenge, to participate in this or that dimension of community activism, and toward a vision of community solidarity– never preachy–which vividly expressed itself in the old synagogue building people often just regarded as “6th Street”.
Through the years it consistently amazed me: Howard’s steadfast vision was something of a singular institution in the East Village, and everyone just knew it without expressing it, for the reason that Howard was too humble to make his personal qualities the center of anything, let alone the center of the Center. What was clear was: for the most part Sixth Street existed only because of Howard’s humble, yet superlative dedication and social organizing. This included some incredible grant writing skills (with all the assiduous attention required to be up on trends). It was so obvious that without Howard (and of course the wonderfully complimentary skills of his institutional partner Annette), Sixth Street Community Center would have had no hope of flowering into the future, through the tribulations of NYC politics and economy. I have often been haunted by the thought that some real-estate developer’s foot would fall to beset Sixth Street with insurmountable problems leading to its demise.
Howard was always fair and equitable with professional tradespeople. When they realized I worked in a woodshop, he and Annette hired me to do work on the Organic Cafe. From then on, whenever I would walk in to say hi or request to use the bathroom, Annette and Howard might be holding court at the very tables I cut the corners off of. “It’s more ergonomic, Matt !”, Annette said once. Such an easy job for me, but it came with hilariously endless compliments, and apparent gratitude that I did the job right. Later, I bartered my skills fastening the “picture-molding” up along the walls in the main space (plus $200) to hang art for an event I was organizing. After Hurricane Sandy did some damage to the beautiful old stain glass windows on the top floor, Howard fielded a grant and hired me to restore one of them. He paid fairly, and on time. There were other things I worked on, and if the conditions of a job needed re-negotiating, he acted in good faith that YOU were being fair.
I could go on about how many times I’ve needed a social space–for a memorial, for a benefit to raise money for Louisiana victims of the Exxon Valdez disaster, for a beloved journalist who was travelling to an important revolutionary hot-spot that “main-stream news” wasn’t covering– whatever! As long as it enriched lives somehow, and contributed toward true awareness and social solidarity –Howard was always there.
I am forever grateful for that. I have benefited personally from Howard’s awesome generosity, and I know I am one of hundreds of people that feel this way.–Matt Metzgar