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222 19. Crown Heights Riot Leid and Cooper recognized a political change that would profoundly shape New York City politics for future decades. The duo’s understanding of the city councilmanic phenomenon affirmed the Cooper-Leid genius. They saw that story and pursued it when the mainstream media missed or ignored it. Big media institutions like the New York Times could not miss the obvious.In 1981,Beverly Morris of Brooklyn,with encouragement from the NewYork Civil Liberties Union,sued the city Board of Estimate in the local courts. Morris, a white woman and a union negotiator, said the board violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution because its representation was not proportionate to the population.1 Brooklyn, the most populous borough with more than two million residents, had the same representation—one vote from its borough president—as Staten Island,the least populous borough with 400,000 residents and one vote from its borough president. The other board members were the mayor, whose choices were worth two votes, the city council president, comptroller, and borough presidents from Manhattan, Bronx, and Queens. The eight-member board, which had nine votes, awarded all city contracts, managed city property, and played the key role in formulating the city budget—at that time about $25 billion. The trial court found in favor of Morris, and the court of appeals affirmed her case.The City of NewYork appealed to the U.S.Supreme Court in the case that was named Board of Estimate of City of New York v. Morris. In a six-to-three ruling, justice Byron White’s majority opinion said the city board wielded substantial legislative power and was thus required to comply with the equal protection clause. Three of the justices in the minority concurred with the majority but differed with the results. The high court made New York City rewrite its city charter. That meant eliminating the Board of Estimate and transferring many of its powers to the mayor.2 Other powers and responsibilities were transferred to the city council and a Procurement Policy Board. Furthermore, the number of city council districts expanded from 35 to 51 members, and the new landscape was expected to reflect the profound demographic changes that had occurred in the five boroughs from 1980 to 1990. Cooper and Leid recognized that Crown Heights Riot 223 an expanded city council would be more than blacker and browner; the expanded council would foster intraracial and ethnic competition. During the 1991 election, two blacks were elected to what were socalled Caribbean district seats. Una Clarke, an immigrant from Jamaica, won the Fortieth District seat in Brooklyn, and Lloyd Henry, a native of Belize, won in the Forty-fifth District. What was understood under the surface and not understood or reported by the mainstream press (or the leading minority press,for that matter) was the Haitian factor: when would that sizable community gain enough power to demand, then take, one of those seats? Their power became apparent in the 1990s when they demonstrated against U.S.-government AIDS stigmatization. Haitians protested as writers redistricted the boundaries of councilmanic districts with more representatives but less real estate. Leid and Cooper had reporters such as Caribbean editor Hugh Hamilton relentlessly pursue the story.3 The young writers (Atwell, Kenton Kirby, Farhan Haq, Matoski, and Hamilton, the “elder” of those reporters at age thirty) were eager to learn. That was part of what the City Sun was able to do: young people had opportunities to make their marks amid the energy in the newsroom. The City Sun employed nonlinear processes to decide what to cover. Leid and Cooper provided leadership that led reporters to believe they could generate ideas that would lead to collaborative decision making. Traditional newspaper convention, with a 10 a.m. news meeting, or a boss telling a writer,“I have an assignment for you,” was not the standard practice at the paper.4 For most of the young reporters, the City Sun was their first job in media. The dailies (the Daily News, the Post, the Times, and Newsday) generally required a minimum of five years’ experience, and many reporters worked for at least two news outlets before they could compete for places at these metropolitan papers. At the rival weekly the Amsterdam News, the editorial staff was older and unionized like those at the dailies. City Sun reporters were younger and eager for opportunities to compete with the establishment media on big stories...

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