A few blocks away and 40 years after she became a tenant organizer at Walt Whitman Houses, Cynthia Butts – “Ms. Fort Greene,” as she likes to be called — has suddenly become a star of a musical comedy.

She is one of the 18 cast members on the stage of the Irondale Center in the Foundry Theatre’s spirited revival — more an inspired adaptation — of “Pins and Needles,” a musical revue from the 1930’s that has its own astonishing backstage story.

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This week, a story in the Fort Greene Patch reported that the new Red Apple supermarket, which is scheduled to open in September, might not provide the jobs that local residents were hoping for, because unionized workers who were laid off from other Red Apple-owned markets would get the first shot at the jobs.

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“We are just appalled, we are furious, at what’s going on right now,” said Celina Lynch of Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE), a Brooklyn-based group organizing low-income families, mainly in communities of color. “The working class is not reaping the rewards like we should be. When you have a strong middle class, you have a strong economy – but the way the system is being run right now, it seems like it’s only catering to the big corporations. So we are here to support the working class and the middle class.”"

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Approximately one million people in Brooklyn are employed, but many of their jobs do not pay very well. Nearly one in five people in the workforce toil in the retail and service sector. These jobs typically pay at or just above the minimum wage. But the cost of living in Brooklyn and throughout New York City continues to skyrocket—it has nearly tripled since the 1980s.

So Brooklyn is now seeing record growth in the number of working poor residents and households. According to the city’s Center for Economic Opportunity, 23.4 percent of Brooklyn’s population currently lives below poverty level. And a whopping 15.2 percent of Brooklyn’s population makes less than $15,000 annually. Read more »

If there was ever any doubt, the supermarket chain Red Apple Group now knows that the residents of Ingersoll, Farragut, and Whitman housing developments will demand a grocery store that is committed to their communities. Thursday’s forum on a plan for a new 12,000-square-foot Red Apple Supermarket on Myrtle Avenue at Ashland drew over 100 potential patrons to the Ingersoll Community Center. Many had strong ideas about what separates a high-quality establishment from a shoddy one, and they weren’t shy about telling Red Apple executives that they expect a store that they can be proud of — or else. Read more »