Harlem-based community advocacy group Voices of the Everyday People (VOTE People) will announce a challenge to the City's proposed rezoning of 125th Street on Tuesday, April 1 at 9 am at City Hall.

The announcement will come as the Zoning Subcommittee of the City Council's Land Use Committee will hold a public hearing (at 9:30) and consider the proposal.

Come out to oppose the rezoning -- a proposal that would evict a community, destroy a history, erase a culture by paving the way for "luxury development" without protection for long-time cultural institutions, businesses and residents.

Be there at 9 to support VOTE People and the fight to save Harlem. Hang around 'til 9:30 and testify at the hearing!

VOTE People's position paper on the rezoning is available at: www.votepeople.net.

If you've read Corinne's liveblog of yesterday's Marketplace of Ideas Event on fighting against predatory mortgage lending then you know there was some really interesting discussion.

Now you can watch video clips from it too.

Senator Schumer announces his new lending bill:

and Councilman James Sander's responds to Mayor Bloomberg's assertion that the government can not address the mortgage loan crisis:

This past Wednesday, City Council Member Darlene Mealy submitted Resolution 961, which calls on the state Board of Elections to "promptly commission the development of a Precinct Based Optical Scan voting system that would comply with New York State voting system standards, which would be owned entirely by the State of New York."

Five years after passage of HAVA, New York remains the only state that hasn't done anything about it. Fortunately, we can learn from the mistakes of others; three states, at least, are throwing out their new computerized DREs in favor of a paper-ballot, optical scan (PBOS) system.

The current stumbling block is that under New York law all software running a new voting system must be put into escrow, including firmware and operating systems -- and practically every voting system on the market uses Windows. Naturally, Microsoft doesn't want to make their OS available to anyone.

So what can be done?