Some Jamaica garbage cleaned, some not

Here are some before and after photos of 5 places that have recently be cleaned up, some after the NY1 4-part series on the Jamaica Garbage Problem. My sources tell me that a few of the horrendous places around the Sutphin Blvd/107th St area were also cleaned up. The before/after photos attached are:

1. Notorious apartment building at 168-07 89th Ave. Although I have a photo of the side of the building, where there is even more garbage than from the day that the building was filmed.




2. House (which according to DOB is a 1 family house but has three meters on the side) at 168-15 89th Ave. The garbage is all removed, but still has the refrigerator with doors attached (illegal) and an industrial container of some liquid.








3. Empty lot at 91-26 175th Street, which had tons of garbage and a collapsed fence.




4. Empty Lot at 170-19 89th Ave (although the sides of the fence are all falling down and has been reported to DOB).


5. Empty lot at 169-23 90th Ave (corner of 170th St & 90th Ave). Although sidewalk which is in poor condition has not been fixed even though I reported it twice, last year and this year to DOB).






It is obviously that many of these places, which have been like this for a very long time, only got cleaned-up due to Ruschell Boone's great 4-part Jamaica garbage series that aired on NY1. All of you folks "got booned" and a very hard slap of reality in the face. Some of the politicians came out to speak in the series (but where have they been all this time on this horrendous issue affecting the quality of life in Jamaica. Why does it take the media exposing an issue for them to come out and say something, when they should have been speaking out about this and coming up with solutions a long time ago. It is our elected officials' jobs to make sure our community is properly taken care of, especially when there is an issue such as the garbage problem which has been going on for years. It is also the community as a whole who has the responsibility as well but it is our elected leaders who need to be held accountable just as President Obama held himself accountable for the Benghazi incident. That is what makes a leader a true responsible leader, one who holds himself or herself accountable. If you look up the word leader the following appear:

1. Any person or thing that leads.
2. One who goes first.
3. A person or thing that leads in a certain field in terms of excellence, success, etc.

I feel that our present and past Jamaica elected officials have not shown the true meaning of the word leader. All one has to do it take a look at Jamaica for the last couple of decades to realize that very little leadership has taken place.

As I walked to the gym on Saturday morning, where ever I walked, I saw empty liquor bottles, cups, cans, small bags of garbage and dog shit all over the place. And who is doing this, well, of course the low class ghetto people and the low class third world immigrants (which some of you do not like when I say this, GET OVER IT). I also went to Forest Hills that morning, a community that has a very diverse population, but I did not see the conditions there that exist in Jamaica. Why, well one is very little to no low class ghetto/low third world immigrants there, notice I said LOW CLASS. Also their elected leaders and the community as a whole make sure the conditions there do not become like Jamaica, they take a vested interest in their community unlike many in Jamaica and they will not tolerate that type of behavior and you will be called out on that and elected officials will be held accountable. I was talking to an individual who lives in Forest Hills and is very familiar with Queens and Jamaica. I was telling him that I live in Jamaica and the problems we are having there especially with garbage. Know what his response was. "I would never live in Jamaica, it is filled with ghetto people, low class middle easterners, Pakistanis, Bengalis, (insert the n word here) and young females popping out babies left and right. They do not care about their community and never will. The whole place needs to be torn down and started all over again." Want to know his race................African American.

Well wake up and face reality, because it is these low class people who are causing the problem along with a lack of good leadership in our current and past elected officials, who have done very little to nothing in regards to this issue, along with some of our city agencies and community boards that have unfortunately been dragging their feet too long on this problem. My question: if you all have been doing your jobs and doing them properly, why has this been going on for so long? Why is the garbage problem getting continually worse? Why are property owners of vacant lots, abandoned homes, filthy apartment buildings, dirty businesses and homes doing the same things over and over again with very little consequences to them. The majority of these property owners do not even live in our community but yet they are one of the main causes of this issue and they seem to be getting away with it on a daily basis. Where is the enforcement, why are not laws changed to make it is extremely difficult for property owners to continue this, why aren't zoning laws changed to see that one or two family homes are not destroyed so that some low class third world immigrant with money can put up some shit hole apartment building that looks like one from his shit hole country and then fill it with low class people who do not give a shit while the owner, who lives in another community, is laughing all the way to the bank because he got over on the Jamaica leaders and pretty much fucked over the community.

What we have here is a very dire extreme situation which needs very extreme actions to take care of this. For instance, many of the body shop places are parking cars all over the neighborhood with For Sale written all over the windows, some without license plates and all without inspections stickers. Some are even covered in gray tarp. Many litter blocks of streets. Well last week one of those vehicles, with F/S and a phone number written all over the windows (which by the way is illegal) and no inspection sticker (which is also illegal) was parked in my block taking up a parking space for someone who actually needed it. A police officer told me that they cannot give a ticket if it does not have a plate and then by the time a tow truck comes to tow it, they have already moved it. Well I guess some angry individual who is tired of all the crap going on, broke off completely the windshield wipers, put key marks all over and then placed a sign on it, "You are not welcomed in this community". Guess what, I bet they do not park anywhere in my neighborhoods area again.

See, we do not need kind words or we do not need to "educate them" (hell if they do not know now they will never know), we do not need the powers to be sticking their heads in the sand or saying we have a wonderful group of diverse people so let's sing Kumbayah and put on our rose colored glasses. NO NO NO, what we need is extreme action and people speaking the truth and getting things done. But for some of you the truth is a very bitter pill to swallow.

Well, open your mouth and say AH and shove that pill all the way down, because the situation is not going to get better by doing the same old methods over and over again, which is pretty much little to nothing.

The few photos show what can happen, but we are far from winning this battle for people of quality, for the people who own property and take care of it, the people who have a vested interest in their community, the people who actually care what goes on, the people who no longer want to tolerate this bullshit, the people who want to spend money in their community but do not since there are very little businesses of quality here. It seems no one in power is speaking on our behalf and they seem to have forgot about us, but yet are willing to say with a smile, "We have such a diverse population". Well that is just fine and dandy if the diverse population is bringing something to the table instead of trashing and tearing down our neighborhoods.

The total neglect of Jamaica by our past and present elected officials, city agencies and community boards for decades is a total disgrace. Jamaica was once a great and magnificent place to live with a very rich history, but you have all, along with the low class people, helped to turn it into a shit hole by your actions or lack of actions. Jamaica still has the potential to be turned around with the right leadership and it should. Jamaica is close to several modes of transportation, 3 subways (E,F & J), the LIRR and every major highway. Our community has the most landmarked buildings in all of Queens, over 15, including the magnificent former Lowes Valencia Theatre (one of the 4 NY Lowes Wonder Theatre, now home of the Tabernacle Church of Prayer, and the only one still completely intact), King Mansion (home of Rufus King, one of the signers of the Constitution), J. Kurtz & Sons Store Builder (Applebees is on the 2nd floor) and the Jamaica Savings Bank to name just a few. We have many arts venues, including Jamaica Center for the Performing Arts (located in a landmarked building, the Queens Register of Titles and Deeds Building), Afrikan Poetry Theatre, York College Performing Arts Center and the Black Spectrum Theatre. The biggest thing that you never hear talked about is all the jazz greats who called Jamaica their home, a list of some of the greatest, Ella Fitzgerald, Fats Waller, John Coltrane, Count Basie, Lena Horne and Milt Hinton, just to name a few. They lived in the landmark historic district of St. Albans. But you would never know. There are no jazz clubs or jazz venues here and very few memorials to these giants of jazz. There once was a mural on the northern side of Linden Boulevard as it passes under the Long Island Railroad which depicted many of the jazz and entertainment giants who resided here. But due to years of neglect it faded and chipped and was replaced by a totally different mural in 2004. How could you so-called leaders let such a mural showing the great history of Jamaica just fade away. A total disgrace and you all are to blame for it. So when you say you are dealing with the problem, no you are not, because this would have never happened if you were actually doing something. Any other community in the country who has such a rich history has taken so much advantage of this and make their community a destination, but no you have all contributed to the decline of Jamaica, so please do not tell me you are doing something. I still dare any of you elected officials to have an open forum debate with myself and community activist Pamela Hazel to discuss what you have all done and why Jamaica has been neglected for decades.

The above paragraph about the rich history of Jamaica and how it has been pretty much been discarded and replaced by litter, dirty abandoned lots and houses, destruction of beautiful homes to be replaced with shitty third world apartment buildings, Jamaica Avenue littered with cheap, shitty looking stores with horrible customer service, a total lack of quality eateries and GARBAGE, GARBAGE and more GARBAGE makes me very sad and very angry, especially since so little has been done. So go ahead and get pissed off about the way I talk, what I call people, how I speak to elected officials, how some of you have called me a racist-bigot-redneck-George Zimmerman type and so, well FUCK YOU because you are to blame for the destruction of Jamaica. When you begin to actually do something, make changes, then I will show you respect, but in the meantime you do not get a damn ounce of respect from me, especially the Shirley Huntleys of the community. May her crooked ass rot in prison for what she has done. For those who have told me to clean up my language because no one should be subjected to that, that you want off the email, FUCK YOU. We the people of Jamaica should not have to be subjected to all the garbage piled everywhere, the health risks it brings, the destruction of our community and having to live in a barbaric environment, because you have been too busy padding your pockets and doing very little to help the community that you are supposed to represent.

If it were not for people like myself and Pamela Hazel, Jamaica would have never had a 4-part series on the garbage problem, would never have WPIX or newspapers come out and do stories on this issue. Because people like some of you do not want to see the truth exposed in the media and want the same old status quo and do not want to be held accountable. Well people like myself, Pamela Hazel and others are bringing this issue to public attention and we are actually doing something to help clean-up our community and we are not going to back down. You want a revolution, well you are going to get one, whether you like it or not. You have turned Jamaica into the Wild Wild West where anything goes and now is the time for this bullshit to stop. It is funny how some of you criticize me for my language or what I call people, but yet you obviously have no problem letting the Jamaica people live in filth. You have a problem of me calling some of these people low class ghetto people, but you certainly have no problem with all of us living in a ghetto. So who is really the vulgar one here.

So take the truth pill, no matter how bitter it is going down, if you really want to see reality and do something. Otherwise Jamaica will stay in this sorry state for more decades and eventually the people who actually care will have moved on and then you are really left with a ghetto and no hope.

Joe Moretti
Jamaica, NY 11432