Phyllis Eckhaus

Trained as a lawyer and social scientist, Phyllis Eckhaus has written for numerous publications, including Newsday, The Nation, Alternet, and In These Times, where she was a contributing editor. She lives in New York City.

Can we have an affordable city that preserves our heritage?

On a sunny 81 degree Saturday, inside a windowless room in a new 31 story glass and steel tower, historic preservationists wrestled with a key question: how can they use preservation to advance affordable housing? Given our “build, baby, build” moment that question might seem out-of-touch or cringey, but the March 29th conference at New

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Dealing with the First Presbyterian Church’s slaveholding legacy

If nations were born with original sin, America’s would be slavery. When Thomas Jefferson penned our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, declaring it “self-evident” that “all men are created equal,” he was, like George Washington and other founders, a slave owner. Indeed, during the Revolutionary War, while American revolutionaries waxed eloquent about freedom from

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Saying NO to the city of Yes: Council Member Chris Marte on truly affordable housing

When the City of Yes—a voluminous 1,386 page set of zoning text amendments—was approved by the City Council 31-20 in December, all but one of the 20 dissenting votes against the proposal came from council members from the outer boroughs. They voiced fears the Mayoral initiative, which was marketed as an affordable housing proposal, would

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New map to detail history of slavery in our neighborhoods

Slavery in New York? For many New Yorkers, accustomed to associating slavery with Southern plantations, the fact that slavery existed in our city is a shocking surprise. Yet for much of the 17th and 18th centuries, New York boasted the largest urban slave population in mainland North America. Enslaved people made up one-fifth the population.

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