New York City restaurateur JJ Johnson serves as a voice for change
Chef and restaurateur JJ Johnson has long been an outspoken ambassador of Black culinary culture, but as the coronavirus pandemic swept the world and a reignited social justice movement swept the country, he has also become a voice for change in American restaurant culture.
A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and author of the award-winning cookbook “Between Harlem and Heaven: Afro-Asian-American Cooking for Big Nights, Weeknights, and Every Day,” Johnson first gained critical acclaim as chef of The Cecil Steakhouse in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem, where he introduced his customers to a cuisine that reflected his own Caribbean heritage as well as the connections between the foodways of West Africa, Asia and the Americas.
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West Harlem residents were promised an equitable vaccination plan. There are no vaccination sites in their neighborhood
West Harlem residents were promised an equitable vaccination plan. There are no vaccination sites in their neighborhood Olivia Treynor / Senior Staff Photographer West Harlem residents have no access to vaccination sites within Community Board 9 despite Mayor De Blasio’s promise of vaccine equity.
In December, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to prioritize neighborhoods that had historically suffered from racial inequity, such as West Harlem, in the city’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan. Just over one month later, with the vaccine rollout underway, residents claim that the city has not made good on that pledge, as Manhattan Community Board 9 still does not have a single vaccination site.
It’s become fashionable over the last decade or so for city and state politicians to bemoan the pitiful financial state and ever-deteriorating physical condition of the New York City Housing Authority, where arcane bureaucracy and decades of federal disinvestment have left 175,000 apartments and the 400,000 people in them at the mercy of leaks, lead, mold, vermin, broken boilers, broken elevators and broken entry doors.