QNS The name of Merrick Boulevard in Queens was taken from the word
“Meroke” mean oyster bed. So a portion of it in St. Albans was
appropriately renamed Saturday for what admirers say is the “pearl of
the community,” in honor of the Rev. Dr. Floyd H. Flake. (Blech, what a write up)
Nearly a thousand residents and city elected officials jammed the
streets near his beloved church, the Greater Allen African Methodist
Episcopal (A.M.E.) Cathedral, on Oct. 3 for the dedication.
Elected officials and the community fully supported the renaming of
the street “Floyd H. Flake Boulevard,” passed by the City Council and
signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio to honor the former Congressman and civil
rights activist. Saturday’s huge ceremony was full of speeches by top
leaders and filled with the pomp of powerful gospel music and dancing
that is the hallmark of his 23,000-member church.
A marching band led a long white limousine with his family to the open
field where he was accompanied by his wife Margaret Elaine McCollins and
his four children — his two sons Robert Rasheed, Harold Hasan and his
two daughters Aliya and Nailah Flake-Brown — who held his arm right up
to his seat.
The city is broke and taxpayer money was set aside for a ostentatious and undeserved parade for and lionization of a crooked politician. Also a ceremony of collective democrat establishment cognitive dissonance.
And don't forget that this city approved gathering was arranged and happened as schools and restaurants are closing in districts where covid cases rose and there's the arrogant defiant Floyd walking around with his mask under his nose and then off in close proximity with his adoring allies and fans.
Disgusting.
Update:
A commentator of a recent post brought up a story that makes this street renaming in the honor of Floyd more unjustified and reprehensible. Two men were involved in teenage sex trafficking, holding two girls hostage and pimping them out in a senior citizen residential building tied to the Allen Church where this dedication took place that was attended by the current mayor of New York City and New York State attorney general and the minority leader of the U.S. Senate.
Queens Chronicle
Two Queens men have been arrested in separate cases in which they are
accused of kidnapping teenage girls and forcing them to work as
prostitutes.
According to the office of Queens District Attorney
Richard Brown, Joseph Gilbert, 24, of St. Albans was indicted on an
87-count complaint charging him with holding a 15-year-old girl at a
senior housing complex, which has been identified by the Daily News as
the Greater Allen Cathedral Senior Residence.
Gilbert was charged
with first- and second-degree kidnapping, compelling prostitution, sex
trafficking, second-degree promoting prostitution, second- and
third-degree assault, third-degree rape, third-degree criminal sexual
act and endangering the welfare of a child.
Brown
added that Gilbert is accused of threatening and beating the girl, and
allegedly forcing her to take drugs to stay awake in order to bring in
more money.
Church officials did not respond to a request for comment prior to the Chronicle’s deadline.
In
a separate case, Reagan Conception, 28, of Jamaica, was arraigned on
June 2 on a 76-count indictment accusing him of kidnapping and raping a
14-year-old girl and forcing her to work as a prostitute between
September and November of last year.
Conception was charged with
first- and second-degree kidnapping, first- and second-degree rape,
first- and second-degree criminal sexual act, sex trafficking,
compelling prostitution, first-, second- and third-degree promoting
prostitution, second- and third-degree assault and endangering the
welfare of a child.
“I want to stress that prostitution is not a
victimless crime and that sex trafficking is an incessant act of
brutality and degradation,” Brown said in a statement issued last
Friday. “This teenage girl was finally freed but she will have to live
with this horrible experience for the rest of her life.”
I repeat, disgusting.
