The Flushing Remonstrance made a rare visit yesterday to the old neighborhood.Precursor of the Constitution Goes on Display in Queens
Relatively little known, this 1657 appeal by some 30 Flushing farmers for freedom to practice their Quaker religion goes on display to the public today in the library at 41-17 Main Street, at Kissena Boulevard. The unveiling will mark the beginning of an abundance of festivities celebrating the 350th anniversary of this precursor to the Constitution.
20 comments:
I've always wondered about whether the Founders knew of the Flushing Remonstrance. Did its existence sway them in writing the "freedom of religion" clause in the Bill of Rights or was that sentiment independently arrived at? Was the Remonstrance an historical fluke?
George, I've wondered the same thing. In any event, I'm going to jump off the Q44 tonight and take a peek.
is it translated into korean?
not that they give a shit about the history of the nieghborhood they ruined.
Correction:
Actually it was the Taiwanese.... not the Koreans
(begining with that notorious criminal/developer
Tommy Huang) and the Fukienese/Chinese
(from the mainland) that first began to turn Flushing
into the low class over saturated over priced
dump that exists today.
Korean businesses are located mainly on Union St. between Northern B'vd & (west side) 39th Ave.....
and further east along Northern Blv'd out to the city line!
The venerable Bowne House....
associated with the Flushing Remonstrance.....
is in the process of being turned over to
the ownership of NYC.
It should have become
a national (federally controlled) historic landmark
on a par with the Statue of Liberty.
It was, after all,
the birthplace of religious freedom.
Lord knows what will happen to it now
under the city's "protection".
Thank you John Liu
and the Bowne House Historical Society
for going along with this decision.
Maybe now Liu can convince the city
to sell off about 10 feet
of the Bowne House's front lawn
to the Suzuki Corp's adjacent in fill project.
After all, they contributed money
to his political campaign !
Maybe then, they can finally get
a certificate of occupancy
for their long vacant building !
H-m-m-m.....
maybe that was the plan all along....
and that's why C.M. Johnny
was pushing for city ownership!
All of you who think the Taiwanese, Koreans and John Liu control Flushing are paranoid.
Everyone knows it's the Albanians.
The Remonstrance was not written due to high principles (people do not conduct their lives like that) but under the Hobbsian concept 'I will protect your rights which forces you to protect mine.'
Hart was no more Quaker than his cat.
The Dutch soon realized that Gov. Stuyvesant's
autocratic restriction on religious freedom
was bad for business in the new world!
If you persecute a Quaker, Jew or Turk etc......
he's not likely to buy any of your goods is he ?
So audacious Peter was promptly "dressed down"
and the former oppressive measures
were rescinded.
So it came to be.....
"At least men's consciences
ought to remain free".
religious freedom is a great thing, except for that giant green teddy bear down below. It would be okay for that to be banned.
Wow, it didn't take long for a nice post like this to devolve into simple-minded bigotry and racism.
It didn't take long for Flushing to become a slum either. Hey, did you know that Tommy Huang was the original block-buster in Flushing?
Tommy Huang sounds like a first wave thug to me after reading the New York Times link that was provided.
You should all read it....very informative !
I wonder......
did one of the Taiwanese tongs
set up Tommy as their gangster "bad boy" to crack things open for them in the new world?
The idea that Manes might have been MURDERED (not a suicide)
for (maybe) knowing too much
by one of the old world tong/ societies.....
doesn't seem so far fetched.
H-m-m-m-m !
P.S.
How come there's no mention of a father in the Times article... only Huang's mother ?
In Asian culture the MALE sex is always considered more important than the female!
Could Tommy (biologically speaking)
be illegitimate ?
We already know that he's a bastard
when it comes to law breaking !
"It didn't take long for Flushing to become a slum either. Hey, did you know that Tommy Huang was the original block-buster in Flushing?"
Hey anon, did you even read the whole article you cited? It says Flushing was a slum before Tommy Huang. Tommy has ethical issues and you may not like Flushing, but it is in no way a slum. Times change -- no community looks like it did in 1960.
Landmarked communities do.
So you want to landmark Flushing?
The last time the document was on view in the Flushing library I attempted to take a photo of the exhibit containing it.....without flash....of course.
A guard promptly said..."no photos".
I promptly shot back...."this is a public library".....
went over to the desk clerk and asked her to get
then director Gary Strong on the phone.
I was able to take my photo for the QHS archives
with no further problems ensuing.
Flushing was NOT A SLUM before Huang.
That's a load of PR spin
that the likes of Myra Baird Herce
(Downtown Flushing Development Corp),
Manes, CB#7, Kent Realty
(did I leave anyone out ?)
was spreading around town like horse shit
on a field!
These are lies and we all know about it.
Businesses that were started
after the end of WWII were closing
because their owners reached retirement age.
What our vested, bigoted Flushing "fathers"
were afraid of was that BLACKS
might take over the town.....or at least
open up some of their own businesses.
And that was a definite NO NO.
Who was it that once said,
"We don't want the wrong element" here?
And WHO ,exactly, was she referring to ?
Bingo.....you've guessed it !
And so Manes imported the Taiwanese
to artificially inflate the value of real estate
so that African Americans wouldn't stand a chance.
NOTE:
Not covered in this article were the trips to Taiwan
taken by....wasn it Manes, Ackerman,
CB#7 members etc. ?
H-m-m-m-m.....highly suspect!
Did some Taiwanese nationals give campaign contributions (forbidden under federal law)
to some local pols ?
Apparently.....we'll never know.
But we can surmise
that there was a "back door" to city hall.
Suggested reading list:
"City For Sale" by Wayne Barret & Jack Neufield
It picks up where the New York Times article left off.
It's a very informative read!
Actually there were at least
14 individual submissions to the LPC
on sites that were worthy of landmarking
in Flushing about 18years ago.
They were deliberately ignored
and passed over !
Most have since been torn down.
(Including an Underground Railroad site
with a tunnel connecting 3 cottages).
Nobody wanted to "offend the Asians"
by putting restrictions on over development !
Now you've got a real mono-cultural ghetto....
high priced.....though it may be.
Cut the crap Ms. H.
Nobody's buying it !
At least we had....
fewer whore houses,
illegal gambling operations,
human trafficking, smuggling,
selling of counterfeit goods,
vermin, filth, stench, gangs,
robberies, murders, extortion
in the "olden days".....
whew.....I'm out of breath....
the list is longer !
We also had A TOWN....
now we have a speculative investment
in its place !
Whether it be Flushing or Fresh Meadows or Bayside or where ever in this borough, the Asians have be moving in for many years. The reason is that all of the children of the Italians and the Jewish people who lived here for many decades split, evacuated, turned there backs on their neighborhood; like those formative years meant nothing to them. I am talking about the baby boomers mostly. Typically they moved Nassau and Suffolk, the traffic Ghetto ( I despise them for leaving). I still live here and I long for the days that NYC was still an American City. The Asians however are not to be blamed. The people who evacuated; our brothers, friends, and cousins who just split and killed a great culture without passing it on. They are the ones to be blamed.
I live in Fresh Meadows, and I can tell you that 20 years ago Flushing proper was becoming a total freaking DUMP and anyone who denies it is full of CRAP. The Asians resurrected the property value of that area and that is the truth. It is a lousy culture to live in if you remember the past (like I do) but that is because the culture was NOT PASSED ON.
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