Community Boards began over 60 years ago in response to agitation by leaders like Jane Jacobs, who demanded that communities have a say in determining their futures, and to challenge the “conventional wisdom” of planners like Robert Moses to flatten neighborhoods and displace their most vulnerable. 

Now, however, sadly too often Community Boards are stacked with the same pro-deregulation ideologues who want to return us to the day when only developers and their friends in elected office got to decide how our city and our neighborhoods could change or grow. 

That’s why YOU should join your local Community Board — to give voice to your local community on a huge range of development and preservation issues, as well as education, safety, health, and provision of services. Applications for Manhattan community boards are now open until Friday, February 27, 5 pm.