City Human Rights Commissioner Patricia L. Gatling officially opened a new field office in Staten Island on September 24, 2003. The Staten Island Community Service Center is located at 60 Bay Street in the St. George section of Staten Island and becomes the first office in that borough in the Commission’s 48-year history. The office also marks the first time a staff attorney has been assigned to one of the Commission’s field offices. The Commission now has a Community Service Center in each borough.

The new Community Service Center’s staff includes its Director Roy Pingel, Deputy Director Alexander Korkhov, staff attorney Paul Labossiere, and two Human Rights Specialists and a support staff member.

At the official opening, Commissioner Gatling pointed out that the new office will be used to educate, mediate and enforce the strongest anti-bias laws in the country. Commissioner Gatling said, “Our message is a simple one: Discrimination will not be tolerated in our City.”

The Staten Island Community Service Center is open from Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. to provide the many services the Commission offers. They include: the intake and investigation of discrimination complaints in employment, housing, public accommodations and bias-related harassment; Human Rights and Conflict Resolution workshops in school and after school settings; Community Mediation; Peer Mediation training in high schools; Equal Access (disability access) investigation and intervention; Immigrant Employment Rights training; and Mortgage Foreclosure and Pre-Purchase Counseling to avert predatory lending practices.

The Staten Island Community Service Center’s Director Roy Pingel offered the following remarks at a recent meeting held by the Commission:

During its first forty-eight years of existence, the Commission established field offices in every borough except Staten Island. That situation recently changed when Commissioner Gatling opened the Staten Island Community Service Center.

I want to thank the Commissioner for her leadership in creating this office and express my appreciation to all of you who were able to attend the opening and make it such a successful event. The new office is a short distance from the ferry, the Staten Island Railway and most bus routes serving the Island. Please visit us.

The Commission was warmly welcomed to the Island by a large and diverse group of elected officials, clergy, community leaders, public and private institutions and community-based organizations. I would just like to give special thanks for their presence and support to Borough President James Molinaro, Councilman Michael McMahon, Assemblyman John Lavelle, Assemblyman Matthew Mirones, Rev. Dr. Victor Brown of Mt. Sinai United Christian Church, Rabbi Chaim Segal of the New Springfield Jewish Community Center, community activist Debi Rose, and Eric Adams of a Hundred Blacks in Law Enforcement.

The wide range of people and affiliations at the event is a testament to the variety of individuals and groups that our staff was already collaborating with prior to the office actually opening. The opening of the office itself was the culmination of an eighteen-month planning process that included extensive community outreach. In September, when a brief increase of bias-related incidents occurred, we were ready to open not as a reaction to it but as a result of a planning process that had already recognized the critical need for an office and permanent presence on the Island.

In April of 2002, after working a number of years in Brooklyn, Commissioner Gatling asked me to begin laying the groundwork for a Staten Island office. Based on previous community organizing experience, I devised a community survey and analysis to identify and interview community and institutional leaders. A demographic analysis was conducted using census data, Department of City Planning population and land use reports, maps and other publications.

We met with members of the local community boards as well as NYPD commanding officers and their community affairs officers. We also met with civic associations, immigrant groups, community-based organizations, advocacy groups, business people, and City agency heads and developed a number of contacts and resources.

Much of our success in being able to “hit the ground running” on opening day is due to the team we assembled – some of the Commission’s most knowledgeable and experienced. Alex Korkhov, our Deputy Director, is a long-time Staten Island resident with extensive knowledge of the City’s expansive Russian community. He is multi-lingual and is fluent in Russian. Human Rights Specialist David Lopez has provided assistance to community-based organizations for years and has conducted many bilingual informational workshops in English and Spanish. Human Rights Specialist Mark Heron also has extensive experience working in schools and conducting predatory lending counseling to prevent foreclosures. Komla Ganu, who recently left the Commission to teach, offered important technical assistance to emerging organizations and assisted in our outreach effort to African groups, especially the large Liberian community.

With the presence of staff attorney Paul Labossiere, the Staten Island office is the first of the Commission’s Community Service Centers to handle the intake and investigation of complaints. Paul is fluent in Spanish, French and Creole and speaks Japanese.

Staten Island is undergoing profoundly significant population changes. It is the least diverse of any borough yet the most rapidly diversifying of any. During the last decade it was the fastest growing county in the state. From the 1990 to the 2000 census, it grew by over 17 percent. It now has over 448,000 residents. The last census reported that the borough was 69% White as compared to 90% in 1980. The North Shore, Community Board 1, is 50% nonwhite and Latino.

Since 1990, the Hispanic population has increased by 77%, much more than in any other borough. The third largest ethnic group following the Italian and Irish communities is the Puerto Rican comunity. The Mexican population has increased by 428% from 1990 to 2000, and that’s just the official count. The African American population increased by 41% over the last decade, far more than in any other borough. One out of every four Blacks on the Island is from Africa and the largest Liberian community outside of Liberia is right here on Staten Island. Asians have increased by 51%, and Arabs by 58%. During the last three years the Russian population has experienced major growth on the South Shore of the Island.

Since coming to Staten Island eighteen months ago, we have worked with numerous groups and individuals to respond to some of the tensions often associated with rapid growth and diversification. Below are just a few of the issues we have been involved in:

• We collaborated with Rev. Terry Troia and other community leaders from El Centro de Hospitalidad, Project Hospitality, an association of day laborers, the Port Richmond Board of Trade, the local civic association, the Latino Civic Association and St. Mary of the Assumption Church to address intergroup tensions following the death of a day laborer. We have also begun to develop a workers center for day laborers.
  
• We joined with these same groups and others to meet at St. Philips Baptist Church when Mexican residents were targeted for robberies but were afraid to report the crimes to the police. Those meetings resulted in the creation of the Port Richmond Anti-Violence Task Force, which has met with the police and is achieving results.
  
• We assisted members of the Russian community in organizing the Russian American Council of Staten Island to help voice their community concerns after they stated that they had encountered ethnic harassment.
  
• Through referrals from local clergy members and the Staten Island NAACP, we are working with residents to address various issues of employment discrimination and harassment.
  
• We are working with members of the Chinese and Indian communities over their concerns of possible incidents of bias-related harassment.
  
• We are active participants at the Staten Island Housing Court information table.
  
• We are working closely with members of the MS Society, American Brotherhood for the Russian Disabled and other disability rights groups to provide wheelchair accessibility to stores and other facilities.
  
• We recently met with school administrators about instituting our school and peer mediation programs.
  
• We assisted Roza Promotions-African Immigrant & Refugee Services and its Executive Director Rufus Arkoi in forming an African immigrant coalition to address immigrant rights issues.
  
• Last year during Ramadan, when Muslim women and children were being verbally harassed at a shopping mall, we worked with the Arab American Association of New York and the mall’s management and security to make sure the harassment ended before violence erupted.
  
• We continue to conduct Human Rights Law and immigrant workers rights presentations at community centers and meetings and recently participated in a diversity celebration at Wagner College.

This is some of the work we were already doing when the Staten Island Community Service Center opened. The future of this Service Center is based on building upon the work we have already started and we look forward to continuing that work and assisting the development of an island-wide immigrant rights coalition and a Staten Island anti-violence network that includes middle and high school students.

There are some individuals who will always resist change but with rigorous education, public information and outreach, this change can be exciting and positive. Our office has opened at a timely moment in Staten Island’s development. Having many different peoples and cultures here holds the potential for dynamic social, cultural and economic benefits to the borough residents, institutions and businesses. The Commission is already playing a critical role in helping this development to happen in a fair, peaceful way, sooner rather than later.