That was my fat face on Channel 7's Eyewitness News last night.

Kelly Richardson of Eyewitness News (NYC-ABC Channel 7) interviewed me yesterday on the matter of the selling of Stuyvesant. This after I received a flurry of links to the New York Times article that discusses the sell, estimated at $5billion dollars.

Ms. Richardson made really good use of some of the points I discussed with her :

• Since Insignia took over management of the buildings five years ago, it has shut out tenants from any decision making on how the company will proceed developing the largest swath of housing in Manhattan.
• Insignia also has used the weakness of the area's zoning board to wield this piece of Manhattan as 'private property' and not hold Town Hall meetings to discuss the possible impact selling of the property would have on the neighborhood and New York City.
• Last but not least, Peter Cooper and Stuyvesant Town were developed to maintain the working and middle classes in New York City. There is a sense of betrayal of how the city has allowed MetLife and Insignia to go on without impunity to treat what should be city, and hence our land, as a private fiefdom.

Rudolph Giuliani changed the dynmics of how the city interacted with the owners of this piece of New York City. Since the days of his administration, "laissez-faire" has come to mean let MetLife do whatever they want because it is their property. Both Rudolph Guiliani and Michael Bloomberg have treated New York City from 14th Street to 20th Street and from 1st Avenue to Avenue C as if they were exempt from the democratic process of the city. MetLife, aided and abbetted by the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations, has been able to wield "private property rights" over this slice of New York and treat it like a fiefdom that exists outside of the interests of the citizens of New York.

But it's not only the Republicans who've been remiss. I have a bone to pick with Eva Moskowitz.

Eva Moskowitz in her years as city council member did absolutely nothing to ensure the interests of the city were taken at a higher stake than the interests of MetLife. On the contrary, the woman had no understanding whatsoever of the demographic dynmics of the place. To her this was a white, middle class and mostly senior-aged enclave.

Which is why those pictures included in the New York Times article were so effing wrong.

Every year she would be up for election, Ms. Moskowitz would park herself at the corner of 16th Street and First Avenue --the only times you'd see her around this part of town. And what would the woman do? She would shake the hand of every white person and coming into the place. If you were a white senior citizen, she'd act like she had hit the jackpot.

I live on that side of Stuy-Town and so I did a little experiment. I told my husband, who is white, to come out with me to the street and walk by her. I also told my interracial friends to do the same --all of which happen to be black woman/white man couples. Guess who got the hand-shake and who didn't?

It was more insulting to me because one time I saw her talking to my friend's baby-sitter who was white. And I still walked by her with my kids, ever so slowly, and she still would not address me. To her, I was just another black nanny.

What made it worse was that I had voted this woman into office because she was a woman with a resume that represented me. Eva Moskowitz became everything I hate about white american feminists who have not a clue of class, ethnicity or race. Since that first time she treated me like my kids' nanny, I voted against. I will continue to do so if she ever runs for office again.

Back to Stuyvesant Town.

Rumors have it that if the apartments are converted to condos, they would not be valued at anything less than half or three quarters of a million dollars. Those are the 'special' resident prices, not market prices.

The minimum in cash a middle class family would have to buy their apartment would be fifty to seventy thousand dollars in cash. When was the last time you had that much money in the bank?

Anybody who wants a crash course on how money trumps citizens rights in New York ought to study the history of Stuyvesant Town. It didn't use to be like this but the shift happened in the 1990s and it's in looking back at what happened here during that decade that people would get a clearer picture of why Giuliani and Bloomberg have fought hard to drive the middle class away from Manhattan.

And I am being very specific.

Their plan has never been to rid New York City of the middle class. They just want to keep it in the outer boroughs. Manhattan, on the other hand, is a prized piece of real estate with a lot of multi-billion dollar development potential. They would first have to get rid of people like you and me to make it a fait accompli.

In their urban development minds, Manhattan and the coastal areas facing it ought to be luxury and corporate real estate. Hence Williamsburg. Hence Atlantic Yards.

There is no place or space for the middle class and needless to say the working poor in Manhattan and its environs. Which is why I have always questioned the hotness of Manhattan's real estate market.

It is no secret that MetLife warehoused hundreds of apartments during the 1980s and 90's while they lobbied to get rid of rent stabilization laws. Stuyvesant Town is the perfect example of how demand for housing in New York City is inflated and enhanced by those who control inventory not those who demand it.

It wasn't always like this.

When Mark and I moved in here in 1994, we were part of a new wave of renters. Almost of the people I know who moved in here at that time are colored. And by that, I don't just mean Filipino (which seemed to be the only 'ethnics' accepted before the 80s). Puerto Ricans, Africans, African Americans : Middle class colored people were accepted in droves into these buildings during the 1990s.

Then Insignia took over and everything changed.

Most people that come into the apartments now are white and affluent. There have been young middle class people (white, of course) coming in at discounted rates for the first year. Then their leases get adjusted to the actual market price of the apartment plus there yearly increase. A guy across my hall moved out because his rent was increased 35%. Just like that.

And the situation has gotten worse since they've rented out a huge inventory of apartments to New York University. It is not clear what the transient nature of the New York University rentals will do to rent stabilized buildings. It was never discussed in Town Hall meetings. It was never brough to people's attention until the deal was done.

Which is why when one of my friends working for the administration said the rumor within their offices is that the properties have been secretely sold, I was shocked. How could MetLife get away with selling this piece of Manhattan land without any involvement whatsoever from the citizens of New York City, but more importantly, the citizens of this part of Manhattan?

I want to believe that something that could change the demographics of Manhattan and rid it of its middle class was not done in the cloak of secrecy. I want to believe we still have a democratic process that will protect citizens over corporate interests.

Unfortunately my friend was right as to the secret deal with NYU. He also was the first to sound the alarm on the rumors of a sell.

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