Barron vows to rename street next weekend
by michael rundle / metro new york
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JUN 11, 2007
CITY HALL. A plan to rename Gates Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant “Sonny Abubadika Carson Avenue” will go ahead this weekend, Councilman Charles Barron said yesterday, regardless of whether the City Council approves or not.
At a renaming ceremony, to be held June 16 at 4 p.m., he said, street signs will be altered along four blocks to include Carson’s name.
“We’re just putting the name up,” Barron said.
On the steps of City Hall, Barron also denounced Speaker Christine Quinn for her part in removing Carson’s name from a list of 52 proposed street name changes, and Councilman Leroy Comrie from abstaining from voting on the issue.
“The most divisive act in the history of the City Council occurred because of Speaker Christine Quinn,” Barron said. “Race rules at City Hall.”
Quinn has said Carson was too divisive a figure for a street renaming.
Barron’s chief of staff, Viola Plummer, who has been at the center of the confrontation after she was overheard by reporters calling for the “assassination” of Comrie’s political career, rejected the notion that she had ever threatened Comrie with violence, but said she stood by her attack.
“Be crystal clear,” she said. “My intent is to destroy, assassinate Leroy Comrie’s political career in this city.”