NYC NOW - April 29, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

The NYPD is investigating two separate shootings in Brooklyn and Queens that left two men dead over the weekend. In other news, Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer says the onetime movie mogul is in the hospital. This happened soon after the New York Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 rape conviction. Also, New York City Mayor Eric Adams is defending his refusal to restore funding to the city’s public libraries despite better-than-expected tax revenues. Plus, WNYC’s Community Partnerships Desk is highlighting community treasures across the five boroughs, like a space in Brooklyn devoted to showcasing Black women and Black non-binary writers. Finally, for National Poetry Month, WNYC is playing poems from our listeners. Here’s one from Stacey Khan in Crown Heights.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Monday, April 29th. Here's the midday news from Lance Lucky. The NYPD is investigating two separate shootings in Brooklyn and Queens that left two men dead over the weekend. Police say they found 24-year-old Dekwon Buckley in East Flatbush near 54th Street and Church Avenue around 9 p.m. Saturday. Police took two people in for questioning but made no immediate arrests. The NYPD says another man was shot to death in South Ozone Park around 1 a.m. today near 117th Street in Rockaway Avenue. He's not been publicly identified and no arrests have been made. Harvey Weinstein's lawyer says the

one-time movie mogul is in the hospital after the New York Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 rape conviction. Attorney Arthur Idala says Weinstein is a Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan after his arrival to the city's jails Friday. The day before, the court vacated his conviction after deciding a trial judge allowed jurors to hear too much evidence not directly related to the charges Weinstein faced. The 72-year-old is undergoing a series of tests for some medical conditions he's faced while incarcerated, including cardiac issues, diabetes, sleep apnea, and eye problems. Mayor Adams is defending his refusal to restore funding to the city's public libraries despite better than expected tax revenues. Speaking on MSNBC this morning,

Adam says his administration is still negotiating the city's next budget with the city Council. We all know the importance of libraries. This is part of this negotiation process. The mayor released a $112 billion executive budget proposal last week. It reverses previous cuts he made to services, including police sanitation and schools. Libraries have historically been on the chopping block as part of annual budget negotiations between the mayor and council members. The final budget agreement is due June 30th. 78 now, maybe 84 this afternoon with a chance of showers and scattered thunderstorms later. Stay close. There's more after the break.

On WNYC, I'm Michael Hill. Ever been to a space that feels like a home away from home? Maybe it's the coffee shop around the corner or the dog park where everyone knows your and your pub's name. WNYC's Community Partnership's desk is highlighting some of these treasures across the five boroughs. We pay a visit to a space in Brooklyn devoted to showcasing black women and black non-binary writers while working to foster a deeper sense of community.

My name is Ola Aki Moho, and I am the creator and director of the Free Black Woman's Library in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The Free Black Woman's Library is in a renovated storefront. It's not very big, but it is very sweet and cozy and clean. We have over 5,000 books written by Black Women and Black Non-Binary Films. We have a beautiful backyard garden where we grow herbs and flowers. The idea is to really expand people's minds around what black womanhood is and even what blackness is. My name is Renee Lloyd. I'm 23. I moved here for school. There aren't a lot of black people at my school.

And so I just wanted to find the black community that I had back at home. This space has already made it easy for me to build community. I actually just met a girl who also goes to my school. And we were just talking about how, oh my gosh, you were the first black person from the new school that I have, like, talked to. My name is Cam Bayo. My first time I was here, I came of a friend. And Ola was just immediately very welcoming. And I knew that I could come back here to experience warmth, compassion, understanding.

I remember there was this one time. It had been a while since I had come, but had some issues with my roommate and just needed a space where I could exist. And I came here and, like, cried with Ola. It felt very caring, and it felt like what community should be. Voices from the Free Black Women's Library in Bedstide, Brooklyn, one of New York City's many neighborhood gems.

It's Poetry Month, the last couple of days of it, today, and tomorrow, and we're playing your poems on the end. as you've been hearing, our theme is local this year, the nearby places that matter to you, and what's happening there? Listener, Stacey Khan, lives in Crown Heights, but grew up in Staten Island. She sent us this poem called On Being Forgotten.

It's not the Alice Austin house pressed up against the skyline or the ferry boat gliding like an iron flame through the bay. It's the, I drive through your borough to get somewhere elseness, most zero in on. But never mind that Wu-Tang shirt you're wearing, or the grandma restaurant you've walked to on Hyatt Street where the host and the chef, the nona of the night, come to your table to ask how your food was,

a bottle of Grandpa Chacha in hand. Or that new restaurant, the Times wrote up, where they also make sure you feel at home and cook dishes that melt into every part of you. Never mind all of that. It's easy to forget when there's a pressing punchline, an assumption to be made, which is not to say this daughter of the ship graveyard,

the no subway, the plastered over dump does not see the flaws. I move to the other side of the Verrazano after all. And yet I can't decide if I want the lines of the forgotten borough to be redrawn, to reshape it into something everyone stops laughing at, even if they've never visited, even if they know all the words to cream but couldn't name a single neighborhood, or if I'd like to embrace the forgottenness of the forgotten borough

and keep its treasures to myself. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. Also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back this evening.