Photos by Stacie Joy
Friends, neighbors and community members gathered around the Tompkins Square Park holiday tree this morning to share memories, stories and music honoring a longtime community leader and the founder of the Park's annual holiday tree-lighting tradition.
Albert Fabozzi recently passed away at age 85 after a short illness.
He started the Tompkins holiday tree lighting in 1992, following the death of his longtime partner, Glenn Barnett, from an AIDS-related illness.
What began as a memorial to Barnett and others lost in the AIDS crisis became a lasting neighborhood tradition.
Speakers included Tom Birchard (below) of Veselka and Sam Shipman, Barnett's nephew. Chris Tanner also performed as Mama Cass Elliot, singing "Make Your Own Kind of Music," one of Fabozzi's favorite songs.
1 comment:
Albert Fabozzi was DIRTY.
Appointed by real estate developer shill Antonio Pagan as "head" of "community" board three, Fabozzi was run as a spoiler "candidate" against Margarita Lopez after long-term city councilmember Miriam Friedlander "lost" an interim election to Pagan two years earlier when a corrupt ninth precinct kop mis-reported vote totals in favor of Pagan by approximately 90 votes. Fabozzi's attempt failed.
Along with cretins and misfits like Krystyna Piorkowska, Howard Hemsley, Steven Vincent, Susan Leelike, all of whom enjoyed low-income housing, Fabozzi was an active member of Pagan's "Tompkins Square Neighborhood Coalition," operating out of the apartment of real estate attorney Samuel Turvey at 131 Avenue B, a former residence for homeless men across the street from Tompkins Square Park, that had been operated by a group known as Everything For Everybody. Turvey bought his way into that building after he flipped his "low-income" designated apartment on East Third Street through his connection with real estate maggot Donald Capoccia, who, through his connection with Pagan, acquired city-owned community gardens that he destroyed in order to create inferior quality "market rate" housing throughout the Lower East Side and in Harlem.
In a nutshell, during critical years when we could have had built a united community organization to STOP gentrifiers and to preserve affordable housing here, Fabozzi's "Coalition" used "quality of life" issues to divide the community against itself, enabling real estate maggots and monied transients to get their grips on our community.
Among other transgressions, working with corrupt-as-fuck NYS Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, who was indicted and later died in jail, Fabozzi's "Coalition" assisted in the removal of untold tens of thousands of rent-stabilized low-income apartments and buildings from the city's housing stock.
We are still living with the results of the irreversable damage caused by Fabozzi's "Coalition" to this day.
The Fabozzi xmas tree that was planted in our park by the "Coalition" that is largely responsible for paving the way for the gentrification that has made it next to impossible for small businesses and low-income residents to survive in our community is a huge FUCK YOU to us all who lived through those times and who have long memories.
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