Crystal Rand and Mae Hmo, minority students at Park East, a predominantly Hispanic high school in East Harlem. (Photo by Paolo Lorenzana)

In the cafeteria of Harlem Renaissance High School on East 128th Street, students at four tables chatter over snacks before their morning classes. But 16-year-old Brooke Dominguez, a junior, eats with her mother and baby sister. In a room where most students are African-Americans, Dominguez also has the lightest skin: a faint trace of mocha, like the froth on a café au lait.

Reflecting the primarily black population of Harlem, more than 50 percent of Harlem Renaissance’s 231 students are African-American; nearly all the rest are Hispanic. Just one percent identify as “other” and their experiences as a tiny minority in uptown schools go largely overlooked.

Dominguez is one of two students in the school who identify themselves as being of mixed race.

Tiffany Brand, Dominguez’s mother and the secretary of the school parents’ association, is Caucasian — rosy-cheeked with dove grey eyes and hair the color of a wheat field. She left her native Nebraska on a whim, following a college roommate to New York City, where she met Brooke’s father, who is African-American and Hispanic.

The family lived on the Upper West Side, then moved to the Bronx. It wasn’t until Dominguez entered the sixth grade, at Frederick Douglass Academy II on West 114th Street, that she felt alienated because of her race.

“I was the one with the lightest skin in the school,” says Dominguez. “There was a welcome assembly where the principal talked about the student population — how many blacks and Hispanics there were. Then they were talking about those who were something else. They used me as an example.”

“I was shocked,” Brand says about her daughter’s being singled out on her first day of middle school. “Why would you talk about that at an assembly? The principal was rambling, talking about the school’s ethnic roots and it’s like he was telling all other races, ‘You get out.’”

Dominguez soon became withdrawn at school. “They would try to pick on me,” she says. “I was quiet and more go with the flow. Those kids were crazy. I didn’t like anyone in that school.” Classmates invited her to “go to the staircase” and cut class, she recalls; some sixth graders also smoked and drank alcohol. Dominguez responded by spending most of her time with neighborhood friends and focusing on her schoolwork.

Not only did she become ostracized for her diligence, but also for her color. “When we took a class picture, they’d point out I was the lightest one,” Dominguez says. “She don’t belong here,” a classmate pointed out with amusement.

“I never worried about putting her in a predominantly black school because I was never prejudiced,” her mother says. “If Frederick Douglass saw what was happening, he’d be rolling in his grave. I took her out of that school.”

“I imagine that white students, like any small minority in a large majority, will feel many of the same things,” says Bill Crain, a developmental psychologist at City College of New York in Hamilton Heights. ”Emotionally, there would be some problems. They’ll feel isolation and feel different.”

Brooke Dominguez, whose mother is white and father is African-American, experienced discrimination at her predominantly black middle school

During forums at City College, where Crain, who is white, teaches classes that are mostly African-Americans, preference for the majority has been raised as an issue. “I’ve had white students complain that I wasn’t calling on them enough in class,” says Crain. “‘You’re just trying to favor the black kids,’” students would tell him.

“Those issues come up — favoritism,” Crain says. “All this occurs in the broader context in which whites have the power…I guess any minority feels more sensitive to discrimination.”

Minority students in high school may feel even more strain from racial tension. “In the teenage years, you’re worried about your identity,” Crain says. “I think it would be more acute and anxiety-producing for the teenager. There’s cliques — what clique are you going to get into if you’re a white kid?”

Despite the struggles, there can be benefits to being the ethnic odd one out in school. “They may feel different and odd for a while, but if they hang in there, they come out a mature, more advanced individual who has a broader perspective,” says Crain, who invokes a sociological study done decades ago by Robert Park. “His thesis was that those people who grow up in two different cultures become more intellectually and culturally sophisticated,” Crain said. “I would think that there could be some really positive effects to having two cultures.”

Perhaps reflecting the changing demographics of upper Manhattan, some schools are seeing a bit more ethnic and racial diversity. At Park East High School on East 105th Street, more than 60 percent of the 258 students are Hispanic and 30 percent are African-American. However,“this year, there are more nationalities,” says Xiomara Rodriguez, the parent coordinator. “There are two students that are Arabic and two Indians. We have four white students. Last year, there were just two.”

The unease a minority student experiences in a classroom where the faces — and culture — are unfamiliar can be temporary, Rodriguez says. “There are a few students that are assigned here by the district,” she says. “They come to the school with the mentality of transferring, but sometimes, they get used to the school and they change their minds and stay.”

Freshman Crystal Rand, for instance, was reluctant to enroll at Park East High after she completed middle school at a Catholic school in the Bronx. “I thought it wasn’t going to be the right school for me. I just felt scared,” says Rand, whose pale face and chestnut hair distinguish her in a hallway of darker students. “The school was kind of small for me. I wanted to be in a school that was big, where no one knew me.”

But the school’s size proved an advantage to Rand, especially with new ethnicities mottling the palette in recent years. “My old school was more Spanish but here, there’s a little more diversity,” says Rand, who considers two Asians and a Hispanic student her closest friends. “I remember when I first came to Harlem in summer camp, I was probably 10 years old at the time. It was kind of hard because people were still kind of racist. But here, everybody knows you for who you are — race and everything.”

David Deng, a Chinese-American student at Park East High (Photo by Paolo Lorenzana)

David Deng, 17, a senior who is Chinese, says: “Everyone saw me and, ‘Oh, it’s the Asian kid.’” He selected Park East High, after graduating from a middle school in Grammercy Park, because of its A grade from the Department of Education.

“My first friend here, who’s Dominican, came up to me on the second day and we’re best friends now,” he says. “Freshman year, I was the only Asian here. It went from being Puerto Rican, Dominican and black to more whites and Asians, like a normal high school in New York City.”

Smiling widely, Rand adds, “Since I’ve been here, I’ve gotten into hip-hop and all that. It’s influenced the way I speak. I speak with a bit more slang than I used to.”

Deng agrees. “I now know cultures of Dominicans and Puerto Ricans — what they do, eat, and all that fun stuff like rap and bachata, the Spanish dance music they’re always talking about.” As a result of his experience, entering one of the predominantly white colleges he applied to is less daunting. “I’ll get used to it,” he says. “Asians are still a minority but because of this school, I can make friends with every different race — people I wouldn’t even talk to when I was in middle school.”

Such people might include Shane De la Cruz, a dark-skinned Dominican senior, who wasn’t exposed to ethnicities other than black or Hispanic when he began high school at Park East. But by his senior year, his group of mostly Dominican friends now includes Deng. Other Asian students tend to cling toone another, De la Cruz said, ” but he isn’t how the other Asians are. He was talking, joking around. I’m the type of guy who’s always playing around so I started talking to him. I wouldn’t say we’re good friends but we’re friends.”

At Frederick Douglass Academy II, cultures are also converging. Two years ago, Owei Owusu-Afriyie replaced the principal in charge when Brooke Dominguez was the resident “white girl” amid an African-American majority.

“You know, there’s a reality for students and then there’s the adult perception of the students’ reality,” Afriyie says, told of the former student’s experience. “I may not perceive it, but that doesn’t mean that that’s not a tension that a child feels.”

But with a recent influx of West Africans and the emergence of new minorities among the school’s 419 students, Afriyie has given ethnic integration more emphasis. He introduced a buddy system for new students from different cultures and launched Summer Bridge, a three-week program to foster unity among incoming students.

“They build what we call a scholar identity,” he says. “It doesn’t mean you’re denying where you’re coming from, but you’re participating with others in the creation of another type of experience — what it means to be an FDA II scholar.

“A lot of times, the students’ interactions with cultures is via TV, not face to face,” he points out. “The whole idea of coming to school is to learn about other people and interact with people of different cultures. That’s one thing we’ve been working on — having more celebrations of diversity in this school.”

Afriyie speculates that technology has made students more sophisticated about classmates outside their own ethnicities. “It’s the Facebook culture,” he says. “Social media closes the gap of what children are liking in other countries and what children are liking here. They have a common entry point that’s helping bridge culture.”

As gentrification increases uptown, the integration of minorities into predominantly black or Hispanic schools is likely to increase cultural interplay.

“There are more white people coming in,” says Yvette McKenzie, the parent coordinator at Frederick Douglass Academy in West Harlem. “This location is predominantly black until recently. People have come to our school because it’s a safe place. We don’t have metal detectors or bars on the windows. We also have AP classes in the ninth grade so, of course, parents like their kids to come here.”

Afriyie agrees. “The neighborhood’s changing,” he says. “You’re having a lot of different things that are going to change the ethnic makeup of the school. I think that’s only going to be a good thing.”

Getting Out and Staying Out founder Mark Goldsmith works late into the night in his East Harlem office, planning a seminar for young ex-offenders. (Photo by Sarah McNaughton.)

On a rainy Wednesday night, six young ex-convicts sit in the basement of an East Harlem storefront, eating slices of pepperoni and sausage pizza. Except for the sounds of chewing, the room is silent, the young men shifting in their chairs and avoiding eye contact until Mark Goldsmith walks in, takes a seat beneath a poster of Muhammed Ali and begins his seminar: “How to be Successful in School and Work.”

Goldsmith, known here as Mr. G., introduces a hypothetical situation: “There’s a hot party in Brooklyn tonight, best-looking women in town, you’re on the guest list. I’ll pick you up outside Yankee stadium at 10:30,” Goldsmith says. The guys who have heard this one before smile; the ones who haven’t look at the floor.

“Now, you know what I have in my car. I don’t go anywhere without a weapon. Never. I don’t go anywhere without some drugs that I can sell,” he says. The guys chuckle. “But this is the hottest party of the year and you’re on the guest list. So are you coming with me or what?”

“Hell yeah,” says the youngest man.

Goldsmith groans. “You don’t want to miss the party, but you ain’t going in my car,” he says. “What happens if we go one block and I got a blinking light and the cop pulls us over? Guess what, we’re going to Rikers.”

Goldsmith later says he’s sick of hearing people complain about being unlucky or tricked into bad situations. “The idea that they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time is getting tiresome,” he says. “It’s bullshit.”

A retired cosmetics executive, Goldsmith, who is 75,  spends most of his time with ex-convicts. After 35 years in business, he switched to working with and for people with whom he ostensibly has little in common: poor young men with damaged families, criminal records and no plans for the future.

Six years ago he founded Getting Out and Staying Out, a non-profit program working to keep New York City’s young men out of prison for good. Recidivism rates — the proportion of people who return to prison within three years of their release – hovers above 60 percent nationally, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. In New York City, reports the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, the rate is about half that.  Recidivism for men enrolled in what’s informally called GOSO, Goldsmith says, stays in the range of 15 to 17 percent.

Sitting in his East Harlem office across the street from a dollar store, Goldsmith still looks dressed for Wall Street: pressed navy slacks and jacket, crisp collared shirt, red silk tie. He’s a community advocate trapped in a marketing executive’s wardrobe. When he’s in his element—speaking to ex-cons from Rikers Island about succeeding in school and work—he curses like a D-list celebrity. He’s not shy about saying he believes drugs should be legalized. “I deal with reality,” he often says.

His involvement began in 2002 when Goldsmith, already retired, agreed to participate in a Principal for a Day program organized by the non-profit group Public Education Needs Civic Involvement in Learning, or PENCIL.

Always looking for a challenge, Goldsmith asked to be assigned to a struggling school. “I was a bit of a wise guy,” he admits. “I thought I was going to get East New York or South Bronx, but I ended up getting Rikers Island. So off to Rikers Island I went,” he goes on, “and I had a terrific day.”

Goldsmith requested a return to Rikers the next year, then founded GOSO in 2004, using a Starbucks at 39^th and Madison as his office for almost two years before moving to this storefront on 116th Street in East Harlem.

His wife, Arlene, founded and directs New Alternatives for Children, which supports medically fragile children and their families, so Goldsmith knew what a non-profit needed. Development was slow and he wasn’t used to limited funding, but he was determined to make GOSO a success because he saw a little of himself in the Rikers inmates.

“When I was 18, 19 and 20, I didn’t have a clue,” he recalls. “All my friends were finishing four-year schools and going off to professional schools” while he dropped out of Penn State and joined the Navy for two years, then arrived in New York harbor and decided he’d found home. “I know what it’s like to be looked at as a truant or a troublemaker versus someone who is performing,” he says.

He finished his undergraduate work at New York University and earned an MBA from Baruch College before landing a job with Pfizer, the pharmaceutical firm.

He and Arlene, married for 50 years now, had twins—a boy and a girl—in 1967. She says Goldsmith was a great father,  something that informs the way he runs GOSO now. “I think he’s translated that fatherhood experience into helping these young guys who’ve never had a father figure,” she says.

Goldsmith says many of the Rikers guys do look at him like a father, or grandfather. “When they leave this office at night, they’ll say, ‘Home safe, Mr. G,’ and they mean it,” he says. “They hope I don’t get shot, because where they’re going they could get shot.”

GOSO begins its work while inmates are still in Rikers or an upstate prison. Mentors visit or correspond with them frequently, encouraging them to focus on school and on developing a plan for when they’re released. Participants who excel at academics receive full scholarships to Ohio University’s College Program for the Incarcerated; for inmates who don’t receive a degree before they leave prison, the first goal is to obtain a GED, then find a job.

But while education and employment are important parts of the program, as in many others across the country, GOSO also helps participants with such basic life skills as building healthy relationships and managing stress. On the first day participants walk into the office, sometimes just hours after leaving Rikers, they sit down with a mentor and create a new resume, find housing and make appointments for psychological and health services.

GOSO works with men ages 16 to 24.  They’re required to complete a full curriculum of seminars, including Goldsmith’s success seminar and others focusing on financial planning, interviewing skills, legal rights, self marketing and fatherhood. The successful businesspeople Goldsmith has recruited for the board of directors also serve as mentors and help participants find work.

Even after six years—during which the program moved to a real office, hired six employees, helped more than 3,000 inmates and raised an annual budget of about $1 million from grants, donations and prizes—Goldsmith still organizes nearly every aspect of GOSO. He even makes the “success bags” each participant receives on his first day: alarm clock, notebooks, pencils, condoms and a monthly Metro card.

Sara Hobel, executive director of the Horticultural Society of New York, hired four GOSO participants last year to join the society’s “Green Team” of 40, which builds and maintains gardens and plantings for non-profit organizations across the five boroughs.

“It was great,” she says of the experience. “In fact, two of the guys were some of our absolute best workers.” She’s looking forward to hiring more GOSO grads when the society’s projects pick up again in the spring.

The Horticultural Society has worked with Rikers inmates before on the island’s large garden, but Hobel says GOSO offers something unique. “The one thing about repeat offenders, and young offenders in particular, is that there is no one answer. There are so many layers when you look at why are you there, and how did you get to this place, and how are we going to get you out,” she says.  Unlike “a lot of cookie-cutter, well-intentioned programs out there,” GOSO tries to customize its assistance to each incarcerated or released man.

The guys eating pizza in the basement are lucky and they know it. GOSO is an exclusive program that only enrolls several hundred inmates each year as compared to the usual thousands at other reentry programs. But GOSO is important, says JoAnne Page, president and CEO of the Fortune Society, one of the nation’s more prominent reentry programs, serving around 3,000 prisoners annually.

“While our programs have helped tens of thousands of men and women stay out of prison and find a new, crime-free path, there is still a pressing and growing need for more services,” Page says. “Getting Out and Staying Out is part of the non-profit community helping to fill this need.”

At Rikers, Goldsmith says, “a big question always comes up: Why am I doing this? They’re very suspect. Why aren’t I out driving a Rolls-Royce and playing golf?” he says. “They’re very concerned about why I am spending my time with them. Deep down they consider themselves worthless and stupid, which I know they are neither.”

But it’s still a tough road. In the GOSO basement, the guys are discussing their talents and where their strengths could take them professionally, listing interests in writing, math, athletics and computers. One participant who has been with GOSO for several years is training to become a paramedic; another is interested in songwriting.

When Goldsmith asks the group to think of three people in their lives who are supportive, most of them can hardly come up with one or two. Several look at Goldsmith shyly and say, “You.”

This isn’t a surprise. The family is often the main problem, Goldsmith says, and most of these young men have had multiple relatives serving prison terms.

“Going to jail is something they are aware of the day they become aware of society. Some of them fully expect from the get-go to end up there,” he says, frowning. “There’s a combination of ending up there and not living a long life, which means they aren’t future-oriented.”

One of the older and quieter guys at the seminar says this is only his second time at the office, but that he’s been a part of the program for his five years on Rikers. This was his first seminar, and he loved it.

“He’s cool as shit,” he says of Goldsmith. “I didn’t know he cursed that much. Makes him more down to earth.”

After the seminar, the men say goodbye and Goldsmith rushes to pack up and leave in time to get to a dinner party. As he flutters around the room, one man returns to tell Goldsmith he thinks he lost his Metro card.

“How much is it to get on the subway these days? I don’t even know,” Goldsmith says.

“Four-fifty for both ways,” the man replies.

“Four-fifty?” Goldsmith‘s eyes widen. He reaches into his wallet and pulls out a five.

“Thanks, Mr. G.,” the young man says, pocketing the bill as he walks out into the rain. “Home safe.”

Harold House and Michael Perry prepare their youngest son, Isaiah, 2, for bed in their one-bedroom apartment. (Photo by Sarah Tan)

When Harold House comes home, he steps directly into his family’s kitchen, and then into the living room. He only has to move a few feet further to go to bed. House and his girlfriend, Michael Perry, live with their two children, a toddler and a teenage son, in a cramped one-bedroom on 172^nd Street in Washington Heights. Three months ago when Perry’s two other children also lived with them and slept on the living room floor, their situation was even worse. The family applied for a larger space in a public housing complex, but Perry has been on the Housing Authority’s waiting list for 11 years without being placed.

The New York City Housing Authority owns about 53,000 apartments in Manhattan. Yet with a citywide vacancy rate per year below one percent, a family typically waits from three to five years — and sometimes up to eight — before being placed. Housing Authority buildings are  99.3 percent occupied in Manhattan and the wait list continues to grow. In October, the waiting list for public housing in the borough reached 49,000 applicants.

The Housing Authority ranks and places applicants on two scales, a “working families” income measure and a determination of need. The House-Perry family has been designated as need-based, but given the lowest priority, N5, which includes families who are overcrowded, involuntarily displaced or living in substandard housing. The highest priority goes to those who are homeless, disabled or abused. The Housing Authority currently also gives priority to working families, a category that House and Perry cannot apply for because House, 49, works off the books and Perry, 33, is unemployed.

Though House and Perry say they are thankful that they still have a roof over their heads when others don’t, they still want public housing because they struggle to pay their $890 monthly rent on House’s minimum-wage salary. In public housing, rent is adjusted to be about a third of a family’s monthly income and the average rent is $400.

House and Perry attempt to make the most of the limited space they have. A visitor who enters encounters, in quick succession, their freezer, their cat and then a wall of filing cabinets that the family uses to store extra mattresses for their other children when they visit.

House and Perry and their two-year-old son sleep on a queen-sized bed that seems far too large for the space it occupies in the living room.

They’ve yielded the only bedroom to their teenage son, Darren – but it also functions as a makeshift laundry room. Instead of teen posters decorating his walls, the family laundry hangs around his dresser and bed. Shirts, pants and socks arranged in layers dry on bars by the window and hooks by the door.

Though House’s family has not been designated as high-needs, which might have sped the process along, Perry still has no explanation for why they’ve languished on the list for over a decade. She said she has recently renewed their application.

“Every time I tell somebody I’m on the waiting list and they ask how long I’ve been waiting, I say11 years and they say ‘What?’” Perry said. “How long do I really have to wait? What’s going on? I would really like to know.”

Long waits are not a new concept for those on public housing lists, however. Though the city Housing Authority has stated that wait times “range from a couple of years to many more years,” Senior Housing Policy Analyst Victor Bach of the Community Service Society said it isn’t uncommon for his organization to see clients who’ve waited upwards of eight years.

“It’s dreadful that 130,000 families are on the waiting list,” Bach said, referring to citywide statistics. “There is a working family preference and also there are space problems. If there’s a large family applying, it’s a longer wait to find an appropriate-sized unit.”

In addition, some families face extended waits because housing applications are only valid for three years, the Office of the Public Advocate said. After that time elapses, applicants must reapply.

“From the letters that we receive, they would seem to suggest that people on the waitlist for housing aren’t notified as well,” said Karthik Ganapathy, a spokesman for the advocate’s office. “Not only are they not given status updates periodically, they usually have to call in for updates.”

Thus far, Perry has had two placement interviews with the Housing Authority in those 11 years, but neither brought results. Two years ago, she changed her borough placement priority to Staten Island because she’d heard people were placed faster there; that switch hasn’t led to anything either.

“Sometimes I feel like I should just take my children and go into a shelter,” Perry said. “I don’t know what to do.” Moving to a shelter could move her application higher in the pile.

Meanwhile, “it’s cramped. It’s horrible. My son is going to be 17, that’s the reason he has the bedroom, because he needs his own space, he’s at that age,” Perry said. “But you can’t have certain stuff. I would love to have a couch, but I can’t have a couch because there’s no room. We can’t all walk through the hallway together; one of us has to go into the bathroom if another person needs to go by. We try to make the most of it, but it’s always something.”

House added that their cramped situation also isolates them. “We don’t have a living room,” he said of the way they’ve had to arrange their space. “It’s so embarrassing, you can’t invite no one over because they come into the living room and right there they see your bed. Nobody’s supposed to look at your bed.”

House and his youngest son in the bedroom which also functions as the family's laundry room. (Photo by Sarah Tan)

In comparison to the homeless or disabled, both House and Perry acknowledge that their situation may not merit immediate public housing placement. But eventually, they feel, they deserve a place if they need one.

“I can understand that if I was waiting two years or three years, O.K, I understand those people should go first,” House said. “But it’s been 11 years. You want me to be handicapped by the time I get housing? I probably will be.”

At this point, House and Perry feel stuck. Earlier this year, when the landlord threatened to evict them because they couldn’t pay their rent, Perry was able to get assistance from the Family Eviction Prevention Supplement. The couple has considered moving out of the city altogether, but that would be difficult given their low income and the fact that they have no relatives elsewhere, House said.

Nonetheless, he remained hopeful.

“Sometimes it takes so long , but keep praying, keep hoping,” House said. “Somebody or something will come sooner or later.”

Custodian Anthony Rodriguez stands outside the building where the murder took place. Officer Vrachimes peers out (Photo by Yumna Mohamed)

A 22-year-old woman was arrested for murder today, suspected of stabbing a man to death at her Washington Heights apartment before dawn, police said.

Antoine Scott, 24, was found with stab wounds to his chest around 2:30 a.m. He was taken to Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.

Neighbors said the woman, Kelly Lopez-Roldan, was pregnant with twins and had a relationship with Scott. “I just heard he was at his baby mama’s house,” said neighbor Jason Tomas, 19, pointing to the building at 450 W. 164th St. where the murder took place.

Anthony Rodriguez, the building’s custodian, believed the murder stemmed from domestic violence. “The couple was always fighting, about three times a week,” he said. “From what I hear, there have been noise complaints about the couple.”

In Scott’s apartment on East 111^th  Street and Third Avenue, a woman who identified herself as his sister called him a “good, loving person.”

Scott’s neighbor Chanel, who asked that her last name not be used, said she believed the woman in custody was Scott’s girlfriend. “I don’t know if he has any kids right now, but I know he was expecting twins with the woman who murdered him,” she said.

Joel Aquino, 23, who lives in Washington Heights near the murder site, said he was not surprised by the violence. “This is the second time. A few years ago two guys got shot and they blocked off this whole block,” he said.

Officer Vrachimes, securing the building today, said the case is still under investigation and that residents know more than the police at this point.

“I guess he hit her too hard this time,” Rodriguez said.

Melissa Mark-Viverito's office in East Harlem offers pamphlets in English, Spanish and Chinese. (Photo by Sarah Tan)

The number of Asian-Americans in East Harlem is growing, census data shows, as residents continue to leave Manhattan’s Chinatown, no longer home to the highest number of Chinese-born New Yorkers.

Chinatown’s Chinese population dropped nearly 20 percent from 2000, with almost 6,000 residents finding new neighborhoods.

During the same time period, East Harlem’s total Asian population reached 3 percent, according to the 2010 census. Asian residents increased from 520 to 1,766 — a 239 percent increase.

Preston Tan, Asian community liaison for Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito, said both older adults and young families are moving into the area. “They’re all coming here for the same reasons, though: public housing that’s offered up here, cheaper rents and larger spaces for family,” Tan said.

He recently met a Chinese family who had moved into Franklin Plaza and has kids in high school. He’s also met families with children who attend elementary school.

“The Asian population up in Franklin Plaza wasn’t that much in the 1990s, but now through word of mouth, they’re saying there’s cheap rent. The environment is not that bad and people sign up and wait over six to 10 years,” Tan said.

Most of the newcomers have immigrated  from Guangdong and Fujian provinces and Taiwan; a majority are Cantonese and Mandarin speakers.

The Chinese-American Planning Council, Inc., a large Asian social service organization, has been helping Chinese communities for five decades. “For individuals that come in, we provide a variety of services, especially for immigrants that are new to the country,” said Eileen Ooi, a development associate.

The Council assists with anything from job searches to after-school programs and food stamp assistance. “I would think if they move to a neighborhood where stores don’t offer services in Chinese, it would be a problem,” said Ooi of new residents.

In addition to East Harlem, Flushing and parts of Brooklyn have also seen an influx of Chinese-Americans.

But Joseph Pereria, director of the CUNY Center for Urban Research, cautioned,”Don’t expect Harlem to become the next Chinatown overnight.  The numbers are so small.”

Read more about a neighborhood adapting to a growing Chinese population here.

Jose Pimentel appeared in court on November 20, but not yesterday. (Photo: AP)

Jose Pimentel, the 27-year-old Muslim convert of Dominican origin who was arrested  November 19 for planning an alleged terrorist attack, waived his right to appear in court for a scheduled hearing yesterday.  He has been charged with multiple felonies, including explosive intent, conspiracy, criminal possession of weapons and supporting acts of terrorism.

Pimentel was scheduled to appear in New York Criminal Court at 2:15.  However, as his new attorney, Lori Cohen, had predicted in a phone interview last week, “Nothing is going to happen Monday.”

Of the 96 cases listed on Judge Frank Nervo’s docket, Pimentel’s case had attracted the most attention; reporters were lined up,  ready for action, when Cohen left the courtroom to consult with her client. She returned to announce, “The defendant has agreed to waive his presence in court.”

The grand jury action was postponed until January 9. Typically, a person arrested on felony charges cannot be detained without an indictment or hearing for more than six days, but in Pimentel’s case the defense and prosecution agreed to an extension.

“I don’t think he wanted to come to court,” Cohen later told reporters.

Last week, Cohen said she had taken on the case, after a Legal Aid lawyer had a conflict of interest, because, “I’m a criminal attorney. This is what I do.”  She said she had no idea how long a trial might take, but believed that her client could receive a fair trial despite potential biases against Muslims.  She declined to estimate how long discovery would last. “The process will take a while,” she said.

Asked whether Pimentel’s mother’s apology to New Yorkers had made her job harder, Cohen replied, “His mother said what she said. I don’t control her.”

Pimentel, arrested in Washington Heights with a bomb almost ready, the police said, has been held on Riker’s Island without bail.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office could not be reached for comment.

Carmen Sosa, mother of suspected terrorist Jose Pimentel, speaks to the media outside her apartment on West 137th Street (Photo by Lucy Pawle)

Fighting back tears, Carmen Sosa apologized today for her son’s alleged actions. “I didn’t raise him that way,” she said of Jose Pimentel, 27, arrested Saturday on terrorism charges. “He changed.”

Speaking in the hallway outside the apartment they shared on West 137^th Street, where he was arrested, Sosa said she was “very disappointed in my son.”  Police said Pimentel, an unemployed U.S. citizen of Dominican origin and apparently influenced by the jihadi writings of Anwar al-Awlaki, was plotting to bomb U.S. military personnel, police cars and precinct houses and uptown post offices.

Sosa explained that Pimentel began reading the Koran in 2001 and said his increasing radicalization had prompted her, two years ago, to move him back to New York from Schenectady, N.Y., where he had been living at her other home.  “I brought him here because I didn’t like the way he was acting,” she said.

Shock and disbelief were the primary uptown reactions to Saturday’s arrest.

Harlem and Washington Heights neighbors who knew Pimentel, reportedly under police surveillance since 2009, said he spent his days sitting alone outside the apartment building, smoking cigarettes.

“He seemed nice,” said Simon Islam, 36, who moved into the building five months ago with his wife and daughters. “He used to talk to everyone when they came in and out the building, but he was very quiet. He just used to smoke,” Islam said.

Juan Rey, whose mother lives in the building, described Pimentel as “a nice guy who used to open the door for people when they were carrying their groceries.”

David Rodriguez, who’d known Pimentel for a year, said he “never saw the look of terrorism in him.” Expressing astonishment at the arrest, he said Pimentel “could have blown the whole building up and no one would have known“ that he was the bomber. “His own grandmother wouldn’t know.” He described Pimentel as a regular guy in sweatpants and sweaters. “I never saw him praying; he wore regular clothes,” Rodriguez said. “I just can’t believe it.”

Pimentel sometimes welcomed Islam with “As-Salamu Alaykum” – a traditional Muslim greeting – and had explained to him how he’d converted to Islam from Catholicism. “He said he converted six or seven years ago,” Islam said. “Once I was drinking here with friends and cousins, and he pointed and said, ‘No, no. It’s not good.’”

But around the corner at Nadal1Deli, employee Mohammed “Alex” Alohdd pointed out that Pimentel didn’t fast during Ramadan. “He called himself a Muslim, but he wasn’t a proper Muslim,” Alohddi said. “I’ve known him for three years but I didn’t like him that much. I just didn’t feel good with him. He used to ask people outside for cigarettes.”

Senator Adriano Espaillat, Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez and Assemblyman Guillermo Morales at a press conference outside the 34th Precinct on Monday (Photo by Lucy Pawle)

At the Islamic Cultural Center of New York on East 96th Street, where Pimentel visited, according to his mother, Imam Omar Abu Namous echoed Aloddi’s sentiments. “These circumstances, that he used to come to this mosque, are only coincidences, and have no relationship whatsoever with his activities,” the imam said. He hadn’t  heard of the arrest and didn’t recognize Pimentel’s name, but said that if Pimentel had confided in a fellow parishioner, “they would have informed me and I would have informed the government.”

Emphasizing his opposition to fundamentalist ideology, the imam described the Islamic Cultural Center as fostering peace. He worried that Pimentel’s arrest would spark Islamophobia. “People have a deep misunderstanding about Islam,” Abu Namous.

At the Home Depot in the Bronx where Pimentel allegedly bought the components to make pipe bombs, an employee who identified himself only as Carlito said that staff are trained to spot suspicious customers. “We look for certain products and if they’re buying them in one cart, it raises a red flag,” he said. But the supplies that Pimentel used – PVC piping, bleach and chlorine among others – are inexpensive, everyday items, Carlito said. “Nothing like this has happened at this store, not that I know of,” said Carlito.

At Hamilton Grange Station, a post office on West 146^th Street, sales and services employee Michelle Williams couldn’t believe what had happened. “I’m a little scared and I was surprised that it was in this neighborhood,” she said, “I didn’t think they would target post offices.”

Local politicians were swift to praise the police department’s actions. At a press conference outside the 34^th Precinct, State Senator Adriano Espaillat talked of the dangers that young people face online. “It shows the Internet should be policed,” he said. He denied that terrorists were specifically recruiting Hispanics, but added, “This is outrageous and we must be vigilant.”

City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez said that if found guilty, Pimentel “should be condemned by the full force of the law.” Though most families work hard to raise children “with strong values, for them be able to contribute to our city,” he said, “we need to work tight and we need to work hard,” to prevent such incidents from recurring.

At Pimentel’s arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court last night, his attorney Joseph Zablocki said he believed the case against his client is not “nearly as strong as people believe.”

Terror Suspect Jose Pimentel (NYPD/DNAinfo)

A Washington Heights man was arrested yesterday on terrorism charges. Jose Pimentel, 27, was charged with plotting to detonate bombs in New York, targeting police patrol cars and post offices in upper Manhattan and U.S. armed forces members returning from abroad, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced Sunday evening.

Under surveillance since 2009, Pimentel was arrested in his West 147th Street apartment at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday when police feared that a device might soon explode.  “We thought it was best to act quickly and take him into custody,” Kelly said at a news conference. Pimentel had also been living on West 137^th Street with his mother and uncle, according to DNAinfo.com, but was allegedly assembling the bombs at the other apartment.

Pimentel, who also used the name Muhammad Yusuf, was an unemployed “lone wolf” who harbored an anti-American grudge but acted alone, Bloomberg said. He represents “the exact kind of threat FBI Director Robert Mueller warned about, as American military and intelligence agencies have eroded Al Quaeda’s ability to launch large-scale attacks,” said the mayor.

A follower of radical cleric Anwar al-Awalki, Pimentel began his plot in August but became more energized after al-Awalki’s death in a U.S. airstrike in Yemen in September, the commissioner said. “Based on statements of people who observed him, his actions became a lot more intense after September 30^th,” making his friends “nervous,” Kelly said.

On his website TrueIslam1, Pimentel identified himself with terrorist organizations and radical jihadism, Bloomberg said. A search of the website shows links to articles titled “Why Allah Decrees Wars and Catastrophes” and “Make A Bomb in The Kitchen of Your Mom’s Home.”

Pimentel learnt to build bombs from “Inspire,” Al-Qaeda’s online magazine, and planned to test their effectiveness “by planting them in mailboxes and detonating them,” Kelly said. Buying the necessary ingredients from Home Depot and other stores, Pimentel made sure not to buy too many purchases at once or in one store, Kelly said, to “avoid raising red flags.”

Pimentel said that once his campaign began, “the public would know there were mujahidin in the city ready to wage jihad,” Kelly reported.

Mayor Bloomberg said the arrest “protected us from something that could have killed a lot of people,”

A native of the Dominican Republic and a United States citizen, Pimentel spent most of his life in Manhattan, but had recently returned from Schenectady, New York, where he lived with his wife from whom he is now separated or divorced, said Kelly.

This is the 14th attempted terrorist attack in New York since 2001, Bloomberg said.  The city keeps 1000 police officers working on counterterrorism daily.

Calling New York “an iconic city,” the mayor went on to describe it as “a city that people would want to take away our freedoms gravitate to and focus on.”

Pimentel, charged under state laws, faces 15 years to life in prison if he’s found guilty, with a maximum sentence of 25 years to life, according to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr.

Paul Sawdoski holds up orange peel, a/k/a aleuria aurantia, on a mushroom walk in Inwood Hill Park. (Photo by Lina Zeldovich)

Inwood Hill Park may be hiding fungi species not yet discovered, says Paul Sadowski, a member of the New York Mycological Society, who led about 50 mushroom enthusiasts on a recent discovery tour.

Kids, adults and grandparents poked under heaps of dry leaves, lifted old wood and examined decomposing stumps to spot mold and mushrooms, some poisonous, some edible, others medicinal.  Among the familiar false turkey tail (stereum ostrea) and poison puffballs (scleroderma citrinum,) the group found a picturesque blue specimen Sadowski hadn’t seen before. His “Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms” identified the blue lace as byssocorticium atrovirens.

Unlike trees and flowers that grow in the same location every season, fungi spores may remain dormant, producing what scientists call a “fruiting body” only every few years.  “They sit there waiting for a good moment,” Sadowski explains. “You can have a mushroom that sends a fruiting body every 20 years, so if you don’t catch it, you have to wait for another 20 years. Some fungi you just don’t see very often.”

Byssocorticium atrovirens. (Photo by Lina Zeldovich)

Other examples like yellow root (phanerochaete chrysobriza) and deadly galerina (galerina autumnalus) are more common.

Anita Ragusa, who has taken several mushroom walks, says they’re like treasure hunts. She took an interest in mushrooms when she found one in a flower pot in her apartment. “I wanted to know what it was,” she says. “I started Googling it, but I couldn’t figure it out.”

Jessie Mathisen,  a science tutor, came to the walk because she liked the topic.  “I got excited when they identified slime balls,” she says. “I’m teaching about slime molds in one of my classes.”

Sadowski became interested in mushrooms about 20 years ago when he worked with composer John Cage reproducing music sheets. Feeling overwhelmed by his work, he looked for a hobby and took a mushroom class with Gary Lincoff at the New York Botanical Garden.

“I was always fond of walking into the woods and I needed to keep my mind engaged and going,” Sadowski says.  “I find the mushrooms I don’t know more interesting than mushrooms I do know.  It’s like doing puzzles.”

Sadowski was asked to give tours in Inwood Hill Park three years ago.  “I didn’t know Inwood at all and I found quite a diversity of the wood fungi here,” he says. “Last year I found a few edibles.”

“Fungi grow and make their home in their food,” Sadowski says, explaining that different mushrooms form different relationship with their hosts. In a symbiotic relationship, fungi, a network of microscopic threads, envelop the tree roots, helping to bring water from further away while trees feed mushrooms sugar, which fungi can’t produce.

However, some mushrooms are pathogens: they grow under the bark of the tree, essentially strangling it by cutting off its capillary system. There also are saprophytes, which live on dead organic matter such as broken twigs and stumps.

“For the most part, trees that are subject to fungi invasion are already weakened,” Sadowski says. “Fungi are opportunistic, not aggressive – almost like people.”

While Western culture sees mushrooms as either edible or poisonous, other cultures value them for medicinal qualities. The Japanese shitake and mytake are immune strengtheners, and mushrooms found in Chinese hot and sour soup can lower blood pressure, Sadowski says.

“We found a few ling chih or varnish shelf, which looks like a shelf,” he says. “They are very common in our area and they are ground up and used as a tea.  Another one used as a tea is chaga, which grows on birch trees and looks like a big charred canker.”

The New York Mycological Society plans a 10-year survey to identify varieties of the local fungi.

“We are going to see an interesting list form,” says Sadowski. “It will help scientists understand our ecosystems better.”

To see more species found in Inwood Hill Park, click on the photo gallery below.

The DAS Fitness Center in Inwood introduces a new approach to self-defense. (Photo by Ines Perez)

Metal chains rattled in unison following deep thuds against a punching bag. Incomprehensible shouting – short, precise, order-like – floated up the steep staircase of a gym on Academy Street.

The D.A.S. Fitness Center in Inwood opened in June as a boxing center that also offered karate classes for children. This fall, however, the club has added another course to its repertoire: self-defense.

The rise in crime, particularly violence against women, has caused major concern to Washington Heights and Inwood residents. The number of rapes in the 33rd and 34th Precincts combined has increased 27.9 percent in 2011, compared to this point last year.

“It’s a problem that, if not fixed, it will get uglier,” Rafael Santiago, 32, one of the center’s owners, said in Spanish. He was approached by Luz Bermudez, 34th Precinct Community Council vice president, who was interested in setting up courses.

Bermudez worked with the local nonprofit UNIDOS Coalition, which focuses on the needs and problems of Inwood’s youth.

Taught by Kyoshi Nathan Ingram, chairman and founder of the Deadly Art of Survival Karate Federation, the classes take a new approach to self-defense. “In a real world it’s not like the movies,” Ingram explained, adding that when attackers strike, they do so with whatever they get their hands on.

What sets this program apart, Santiago said, is that it teaches women to also make use of whatever is at hand – water bottles, umbrellas, purses, even keys – to defend themselves. “Sometimes self-defense is running,” he added.

Women also learn to look out for potential dangers by being alert.

Yolanda Rivas, 51, leaves her house at 6:30 every morning and heads to her job downtown. She said the class had helped her stay aware of her  surroundings, especially when it’s dark outside, early in the morning or late at night.

“I look from side to side, sometimes I would turn around to see if there is a person behind me,” Rivas said. “They taught me to be aware that something could happen, to always be prepared.”

She gave up using her iPod when walking in the street alone and stopped answering phone calls or texts. “Now, I always say, ‘I will call you back when I get home,’ so I can stay focused.”

The growing number of attacks hasn’t stopped Rivas from going out. But she has learned to be extra-cautious.

“When I go out with my girls, I have the driver that I know pick us up,” she said. “And then he drives to drop us off and he waits to see us go inside the building.”

A major concern for young women has been the burgeoning nightlife scene of restaurants, clubs and lounges along 207th and Dyckman streets. Men drive to the area and hang out on the streets, blasting their music, drinking and becoming aggressive, said Elisa Suarez, 23, who carries pepper spray in her purse “just in case.”

While Bermudez focused on teaching women how to physically defend themselves, other organizations and advocacy groups seek broader solutions to the problem.

“Women should take self-defense classes but we should also look to reduce domestic violence,” said Angelo Ortiz, UNIDOS youth problems director.

“People who commit the crimes are usually young adults; they are between 18 and 25 years old,” he said, adding that in his opinion, their generation has not been properly socialized.

Growing up in a household where verbal and physical abuse have become part of the daily routine can have a huge impact on future relationships. “They grow up in this environment and think it’s normal,” explained Ortiz.

He also cited economic factors. “Our unemployment rates are high; people feel desperate and feel like they don’t have anything to lose.”

Ortiz and his team also work on quality-of-life issues that some believe can increase crime. “All over Inwood, there are posters of half-naked women advertising vodka and partying,” Ortiz said. “Young men keep on seeing it around them and think of women as sexual objects.”

Local leaders and residents have requested more police officers in the 33rd and 34th precincts. Ortiz said that major pedestrian routes, like those near subway stations from 181st Street to 207th Street, are particularly dangerous and that the police should increase foot patrols to safeguard  women traveling to and from work.

“We need more police in the community, but we also need cameras and emergency phones,” Bermudez said. “Sometimes, young women don’t understand the dangers of the world we live in and my goal is to teach them about it.”