For more than 31 years I’ve admired Sen.Cordell Cleare. A dedicated community activist, for most of that period she worked diligently as Bill Perkins’ chief of staff, both during his terms in the city council, and during a 10 year interval he served before she did, as Harlem’s State Senator.
As independent as Michelle Obama, Cleare is as frank and fearless as Jasmine Crockett. Similar to both, she too has a great style sense and a hilarious sense of humor. Is this what makes her so effective? No. That’s her tireless advocacy for her constituents, the community of her lifetime-home, in Harlem. Commendably, she is a fierce defender of those most in need of protection.
Cleare got started in politics as the instigator of Perkins’ historic lead paint law. Learning that her late son Jordan Emmanuel Nieves had ingested sweet-tasting lead paint chips in her apartment, she organized other mothers to lobby for a law to compel negligent landlords to deal with removing and mitigating this widespread health threat. Working on behalf of the powerful real estate industry, Mayor Mike Bloomberg was her staunch opponent. He claimed that such a law would bankrupt property owners. Overriding his veto and raising funds to litigate a court challenge the mayor refused to defend, made for an arduous, time consuming battle. But empowered by her faith, and hired by Perkins, with the lives of her son and other New York children in jeopardy, an outraged Cleare was invincible and they won.
The mother of four sons, Cleare has always been a proponent of enhanced schools—that’s public schools, open to all, as opposed to charter schools, picking and choosing at will and expelling students at risk of lowering test score results. As an opponent of gentrification and displacement and proponent of truly affordable housing, Cleare is determined to utilize city landmarks designation as a mechanism that gives working class tenants greater control of where they live. She campaigned to extend landmarks protection for the historic Lenox Terrace apartment complex, which since completion in 1958 has been home to area luminaries like Charlie Rangel and Miles Davis.
Passed in the senate, but not the assembly, so far, Cleare has not been successful enacting what many urban planners, housing advocates and preservationists hail as her most audacious bill yet. It would require that rent stabilized housing lost due to fire, natural disaster, acts of God, war or eminent domain, be replaced in any new construction on the same parcel. Seen as a temporary setback, this failure has hardly deterred her zeal to reform the law to better serve residents.
Credit: Michael Henry Adams
Currently Cleare is reviewing stymied plans to build affordable housing on the site of the former Lincoln Correctional Facility, facing Central Park on Cathedral Parkway. It’s not lost on her that this dignified building was built in 1914 as the Young Women’s Hebrew Association. Serving in the 1950s as the New Lincoln School, it was next consigned to become a prison (1976-2019). Not a city landmark, it has been determined to be eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, hence eligible for the generous Federal Historic Investment Tax Credit. This funding source has been essential for the successful redevelopment of projects like the Boys and Girls Club of Harlem and the Apollo Theater.
A most formidable weapon Cleare relies on that maximizes favorable outcomes, is coalition building. “It was perhaps the most invaluable lesson she gained from working with [Perkins],” said Valerie Jo Bradley, a friend of Cleare and the president of Save Harlem Now! “[Perkins] would work with anyone to get what he needed to help Harlem. And [Cleare] is like that too.”
Certainly there were signs present at Sunday’s elegant fundraising fete to benefit Senator Cleare’s work, of her superb skills of cordial collaboration. At its core was a group of concerned women of color. Newly appointed to the Aging Committee, Cleare explained how a poster featuring her with Pamela Green Perkins, Perkins’ widow, is about to be unveiled at Times Square. “It’s meant to raise awareness about Alzheimer’s disease, which crippled Bill and cut short his life. It shows us participating in last Fall’s Alzheimer’s Walk,” said Cleare.
Well attended, the reception was hosted by Peggy Shepard of West Harlem Environmental Action (WEACT) and her husband Charles Loveday. The couple live in a commodious, meticulously restored neo-Classical row house in the Hamilton Heights Historic District. A few doors away, a nearly identical house being renovated as WEACT’s new headquarters, just a few years ago, was scheduled for demolition by the city.
Having just passed both houses of New York’s statehouse, Cleare’s Malcolm X Plaza Subway, and Harlem Renaissance Cultural District, are finally the law of the land. Among others, both were formulated and realized with the help of West Harlem Preservation Organization officer and Harlem OneStop founder, Yuin Chin and Bradley of Save Harlem Now! Extending from 110th St. on the south, the Hudson River on the west, 155th St. on the north and 5th Ave. on the east, both the subway renaming and the cultural district await funds to enhance education said Cleare. “So that local children, their families and visitors learn more about the most important Black neighborhood there ever was. What we have accomplished here, sometimes with our hands tied behind our backs, is unbelievable. It’s our history and American history. And neither we will nor our requirements, will be overlooked or ignored. That’s my job at the heart of it!”