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.”