Guest columnist:  Byron A. Gaspard is our RIRA Vice President of Cultural, Educational and Social Services. He is a Board Certified Clinical Psychologist in private family practice. He has extensive prior experience as a Substance Abuse Treatment Counselor and Vocational Rehabilitation Specialist in both the public and private sectors. He is a member of the Capital Planning and Development Committee of the RIOC Board of Directors and a Counselor at the PS/IS 217 Beacon School Program. He also serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Manhattan, where he is active in parish affairs.

I have lived on Roosevelt Island for a little over 13 months. A baby to most of the residents here. During my relatively short stay, I have experienced a variety of attitudes, behavior patterns, and agendas; some obvious and others more hidden. I see Roosevelt Island as potentially one of the greatest communities anywhere. However, for this to become a reality, we need to weed out the high levels of political and economic self-interest which are so self-defeating and which, in my opinion, stagnate the growth of our community here on Roosevelt Island.

This small piece of land is a Mecca of cultural, racial, sociological, political and economic diversity. To some extent, that has also been our Achilles heel; all too easily exploited by self-interested agendas and the selfish, mindless "development" of our community, and sometimes by just plain old racial and economic discrimination and hatred.

However, I would like to take a break from this for a moment to talk about a group of seniors on Roosevelt Island, especially in Eastwood, who unselfishly decided on their own to honor six members of the Eastwood Building Committee for their successful efforts against the proposed rent increases requested by Management. On Sunday evening, April 18, Ms. Dolores Green and her wonderful committee organized a scrumptious dinner by retired chef, Mr. Lu, for the following honorees: Fay and Ron Vass, Harold Devine, Vicki Feinmel and Margaret and Byron Gaspard. If any of us had any woes in life, Mr. Lu's menu of barbecue ribs, broccoli with beef slices, shrimps and rice created a wonderful avoidance-mechanism for at least that evening. We humbly thank the seniors for that wonderful experience.

On that particular night, that group of positive and grateful seniors reminded me of the advantages of positive efforts and how they can set a more favorable standard when we work together. Now let's get back to my opening statements.

Let's talk about what I interpret as mindlessness and selfishness. RIOC proposes to take our most valuable real estate, land that has been designated as parkland, and develop and build a twin-tower luxury hotel and conference center. Diane Wilson and her developers, if they and RIOC have their way, will turn our mini-schools into half- million-dollar condominiums without any advance compensation to the owners/and/or management or to our residents whose views will be blocked or altered. RIOC, though presumably well intentioned, are giving outside developers great opportunities to provide facilities to the rich while throwing our middle class community a bone. I consider that mindless and irresponsible. I don't want to get into RIOC bashing. There is too much of that. Instead I would rather focus on the positive. The things we can do. Example. Getting more involved in our community. That includes everybody - youth, parents, singles, professionals, black, white, yellow, green (if it exists). This is our community. This is not RIOC's community.

Ms. Nellie Velez recently stated to me that we need to focus on those immediate quality-of-life issues that affect us every day. For example Public Safety, or the lack thereof. Ron Vass of the Eastwood committee points at our need to renegotiate Public Safety's contract. I agree and support him on that. When was the last time sidewalks were cleaned on the Eastwood side? When are adequate security cameras going to be placed in Eastwood, and who of any reliability is going to monitor them?

Are we waiting for a few people to continue working their buns off while we sit, wait, observe and complain? Passive aggression is not going to build our community. Racial discrimination and/or hatred is not going to build our community. Isolated groups of people socially, economically and politically divided will not build our community. We need you at meetings: Town Meetings. Everybody. We need your letters to the New York State Assembly, to your Congresswoman and to our Senate Representatives.

Bashing behind closed doors is not the answer. Well-focused and planned action is. Let us respect each other more and learn from our cultural differences. Dolores Green, president of RISA, stated she is on a cultural quest: that we should make a firm effort to be aware of each other's cultural differences in this community. In the end we may find that we are not very different at all.