In November 2021, after her re-election to the New York City Council, after
more than four years of her betraying her constituents, we found ourselves again stuck with career politician Carlina Rivera and control of District Two by Rivera’s clubhouse bosses at CODA [“COalition for District Alternative”]

In 2017, Rivera “ran” for the City Council seat held by fellow CODA member Rosie Mendez, who had to vacate her seat due to term limits. Mendez got the seat held by CODA’s Marguarita Lopez, who also had to vacate due to term limits. Mendez got an extra four year term when, in 2008,billionaire Mayor Bloomberg paid off council members to go for it, voting 29-22 against the will of voters, who voted TWICE, in 1993 and in 1996, for no more than two four year terms for New York City politicians. Mendez got three terms before limits of two terms were restored in 2010. For the 2017 election, Mendez simply switched seats with Rivera, who as Mendez' "legislative director," had been “District Leader” in the 74th Assembly District for CODA.

CODA CODA CODA!

Rivera’s 2021 “victory” speech was typical politician hogwash. She spoke of “progress” but her only “progress” has been to facilitate gentrification on the Lower East Side. Her constituents ask WHAT Rivera and CODA have done about what she called “fighting for workers’ rights and dignity, increased access to culturally humble healthcare, safer and more livable streets for our communities, robust climate resiliency in all five boroughs, the protection and expansion of affordable housing"?

Here’s what they HAVE done: Among many other transgressions and betrayals, the three CODA clubhouse politicians, from Margarita Lopez to Rosie Mendez to Carlina Rivera, who have consecutively held the City Council seat “representing” District Two on the Lower East Side since real estate vulture puppet Antonio Pagàn had to vacate his seat in 1997 due to term limits, have sacrificed our community gardens by cutting deals with Pagàn’s real estate partner Donald Capoccia, handing him garden lots in order for him to build “market rate” and “luxury” apartments on those sites, have been silent while Bloomberg wiped out zoning restrictions, leading to hyper-gentrification with record overbuilding of “luxury” and “market rate” housing throughout the city, including posing for a photo-op at the Astor Place cube at the same moment that long-term residents of a row of middle-income apartment houses along 11th Street, across from Webster Hall, were being evicted in order to make way for a new much taller “Moxy” luxury hotel to be built on the site, have approved Mayor DeBlasio’s absurd “Tech Hub” project on East 14th Street that includes up-zoning on surrounding streets, leading to more demolitions of middle-income housing in historic buildings and have supported DeBlasio’s Governors Island bonanza for real estate developers to create an island for the filthy rich there.

DESTRUCTION OF EAST RIVER PARK
Rivera and CODA also supported the ecologically criminal plan pushed by DeBlasio to DESTROY a large portion of East River Park, which had been renovated after more than 10 years, at a cost of millions of dollars, in order to acquire $1.45 billion in federal funding before the availability of those funds expired. [See SHADOW #62 for what was behind the destruction of East River Park - Ed.] Thousands of old-growth trees in the park were wiped out in the final months of DeBlasio’s term at the end of 2021. Most of East River Park is now closed off to and unusable by area residents who do not have a country home to get away to, as do politicians who pretend to “represent” the Lower East Side.

Rivera backed DeBlasio's Easr River Park destruction, though their constituents made it CLEAR that they did NOT support the outgoing lame-duck mayor’s absurd plan for the park, which was shoved down our throats with NO public hearings, input, review or oversight.

It is clear to those with EYES that the “new and improved East River Park” being touted by Rivera and DeBlasio, who was out of office just two months after destroying the park, leaving us with his mess, will be re-configured and designed for incoming monied transients attracted to the soon-to-be former NYC-owned housing projects along Avenue D and the FDR Drive that will be renovated into “luxury” apartments that Rivera and her CODA crew are getting privatized by a group of developers, who include none other than Antonio Pagàn’s partner in crime: DONALD CAPOCCIA.

To that end [as reported in SHADOW #61], they have already handed Capoccia a large chunk of Campos Plaza, located at 12th Street and Avenue C, where he has been creating market-rate units where poor residents used to live. According to their plan, by the time the new East River Park is finished, most, if not all, residents of city housing projects on the Lower East Side will be replaced by a more “desirable” demographic.

From what we have seen, there has been NO difference between Antonio Pagàn’s DAC [Democratic Action Club] political club and Rivera’s CODA political club, since the latter was formed in 1992, as an “alternative” to DAC. BOTH clubs well served their gentrifier real estate masters, as well as mayors who work for developers and banksters, and BOTH have been rewarded handsomely for selling their souls and betraying their fellow New Yorkers.

RIVERA ASPIRES TO HIGHER OFFICE
In June 2022, just seven months after winning re-election to the City Council, Rivera announced that she is now running for Congress in the 2022 election for a seat in the newly-redrawn and newly-created 10th Congressional District, though Rivera and her husband, former “community” board three [CB3] chairperson, coffee shop owner and current Bank of America attorney, James (“Jamie”) Rogers, who reside at 245 East 25th Street, do not live in the new district, as required.

During her 2017 run for the City Council, it was revealed that Rivera and Rogers were living in a federally-subsidized Section 8 apartment designated for low-income tenants and families at 210 Stanton Street, though Rivera was receiving more than $40,000 annually “working for” Rosie Mendez and Rogers was collecting rent on an apartment at 568 Grand Street that he bought for $320,000 in 2012. They finally moved out in June 2021.

In an outrageous example of gerry-mandering, the new 10th Congressional District covers all of Manhattan below14th Street, including the East and West Villages, Soho and Noho, the Lower East Side, Chinatown, Battery Park City, the Financial District, and a western chunk of Brooklyn, including Gowanus, Park Slope, Red Hook, Sunset Park, Borough Park and more.

Ironically, until July 19, 2022, among the 17 other candidates competing with Rivera for the new Congressional seat. was none other than Rivera’s strange political bedfellow and co-conspirator in the destruction of East River Park: former mayor, failed gubernatorial and presidential candidate and career gentrifier Bill DeBlasio! As with his other failed campaigns for higher office, polls showed him badly trailing the other candidates before he quit. On Twitter, DeBlasio said it was clear that “people are looking for another option.” No kidding, Bill!

While DeBlasio is DONE politically, his pockets lined with $500,000 money received from “donors,” Rivera has nothing to lose by running for Congress, as she has her City Council seat to fall back on if she does not win. Is THAT why voters re-elected her in 2021?

MONEY PAID IN ADVANCE FOR SERVICES TO BE RENDERED?
As of July 2022, Rivera raised more than $400,000 in her attempt to get the new Congressional seat, almost all of which has been “donated” by businesses and individuals who are investing in a new member of Congress in a new Congressional district. The $400,000 that has been revealed in Rivera’s public filings obtained by The SHADOW does not include funds and other “donations” that have not been made public.

A list of Rivera’s “donors,” many of whom have publicly “given” the maximum-permitted $2,900, reads like a Who’s Who of real estate “consultants,” “lobbyists,” attorneys and law firms, “financial advisers,” investment bankers, sales and “property asset management” firms, liquor permit attorneys, owners of restaurants and bars (including Scott Sartiano, owner of Zero Bond, a private club where Mayor Eric Adams has been seen socializing with Wall Street banksters), architects, engineers, construction companies and real estate developers, as well as firms that specialize in “government affairs,” “public affairs,” “government relations,” “public relations,” “government consulting,” “election campaign financing,” “professional fund raising,” and “financial services.”

Among Rivera’s more notorious “campaign contributors” are:

• Alistair Economakis, the Greek shipping fortune heir who mass-evicted all tenants from 45-47 East Third Street in 2009, so that he could create a six story private mansion for himself.

• Victor Papa, president of Two Bridges Neighborhood Council [TBNC], which, in 2013, in violation of its charter, sold a large land parcel located at 250 South Street, to Extell Development, known for constructing “too-tall” towers throughout the city, for a cool $52 million. That site, entrusted to TBNC by the city of New York, along with adjacent sites, were long ago designated for housing for elderly and handicapped persons of low-income in perpetuity. Now called “One Manhattan Square,” 250 South Street has become an 80-story, 823-foot tower containing 815 condominium units. [See SHADOW #62 for the full story - Ed.] TBNC has since been offering additional sites for more such mega-projects. Though Extel’s future South Street projects have the full support of City Councilmember Margaret Chin, and of CODA’s City Council members, only pending lawsuits have so far stopped more such towers from being built there.

• And, of course, there’s DONALD CAPOCCIA, who “gave” the maximum “donation,” for whom Rivera and CODA have done so much already.

Rivera’s fellow politicians have also given her money, including: former NYS Assemblyman Ruben Diaz, Jr, former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, current Assemblymember Marcos Crespo, City Councilmember Margaret Chin and City Council attorney Jason Otano. She even got a “donation” from "Community" Board Three “district manager” Susan Stetzer, whose job at CB3 depends on Rivera and other CODA members keeping the City Council seat for District Two.

YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO

The primary election for the newly-created Congressional seat is on August 23, 2022. The winner of that primary is expected to be a “sure win” in the general election to be held on November 8, 2022. Those of us with long memories urge voters to avoid rewarding either Rivera or DeBlasio, whether they are engaged in the pursuit of a current or a future political seat, for their betrayals and corruption. Both have had wonderful opportunities during their terms in office to bring about meaningful positive changes in our city of inequity, but Rivera and DeBlasio are career politicians who have chosen to do NOTHING for us, but so MUCH for themselves and for their gentrifier “donors.”