Columnists: Leonard Greene

Latest Columns

• Jewish gal shows up IOC with a gold salute to Munich 11

  It wasn’t a gloved-fist salute from the medal stand, but Jewish-American gymnast Aly Raisman made quite a statement yesterday by winning a gold medal and invoking the memory of the Israeli athletes killed 40 years ago...   August 08, 2012

  From National

• Silence the guns

  We are tired. We’re tired of gunfire that makes the streets feel like some lawless stretch of Somalia where warlords rule without fear. We’re tired of the random violence that turns pickup basketball games into bull...   August 02, 2012

  From Local

• New Yorkers tired of violence

  We are tired. We’re tired of gunfire that makes the streets feel like some lawless stretch of Somalia where warlords rule without fear. We’re tired of the random violence that turns pickup basketball games into bull...   August 01, 2012

  From Local

• Jitters but few answers amid the wave of violence

  Every round of gunfire that echoes in the city’s streets these days is a grim reminder of what life was like here 30 years ago. And every New Yorker has a different theory about how to handle the wave of violence that’s...   July 09, 2012

  From Brooklyn

• Racial arsonist burned by his own fire

  Message to Charles Barron: You just weren’t fit for prime time. That bashing-white- folks stuff might play on Pitkin Avenue, but under the big lights of Washington, where powerbrokers make big decisions about municipal...   June 27, 2012

  From Brooklyn

• Gangs of old NY

  Although her grandfather was larger than life, Margaret Johnson has spent most of her adult years desperately searching for details about him. But Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson was a very private man, which is what you had...   June 07, 2012

  From Manhattan

• ‘Today is my mother’s day’

  Tyshene Mungo didn’t celebrate Mother’s Day on Sunday like everybody else. She had to wait another day until she got to court. “Today is my Mother’s Day,” Mungo said yesterday as she stared down the heartless thug who...   May 15, 2012

  From Manhattan

• What Gil passed on

  In my house growing up, “Like It Is” with Gil Noble was as much a part of my Sunday as church and the NFL. Where else could we see interviews with Harry Belafonte or in-depth reports about voting rights and police...   April 13, 2012

  From Oped Columnists

• Mets fans running on empty

  The cool thing about Citi Field is that there are so many things to do. You can walk around and sample the various fare, reflect on baseball history in the Jackie Robinson Rotunda or play a game of whiffle ball in the...   April 06, 2012

  From Local

• Trayvon Martin tragedy brings focus to 'the talk' for black parents

  My father didn’t live long enough to have “the talk” with me, and when it fell in my mother’s lap, she completely botched the task. I’m not talking about that talk.  I’m talking about the other talk, the painful...   March 30, 2012

  From National

• Special bond of daughters

  There’s something about daughters. They bounce back up as quickly as our sons, but it tears us up inside to watch them fall. So, when someone’s little girls are looking out at us from the cover of a glossy funeral...   January 06, 2012

  From Manhattan

• A shocked enclave's anguished search for answers

  David Friedman peered down the block where a little lost boy breathed his last breath, and said out loud what everyone else had only been thinking.   "He's a Jew," Friedman said yesterday of Levi Aron, the man accused...   July 15, 2011

  From Brooklyn

• 'Heavens also cry' for angel

  About an hour before the saddest event ever in Bor ough Park, the sky dark ened to a deep shade of purple and filled the streets with rain.   Already, a thick crowd was filling the street outside Congregation Heichel...   July 14, 2011

  From Brooklyn

• Volunteers & faith fuel search

  On 15th Avenue in Borough Park yesterday, far below the police helicopters that hovered in the sky, Rabbi Lazer Fogel moved the car seat in the back of his minivan to make room for a group of strangers.   One by one,...   July 13, 2011

  From Brooklyn

• Sadness will always tinge the celebration

  They thought it would be easier to come back now that the devil was dead.   And even though they cheered and applauded, and went to Ground Zero yesterday to personally thank the president of the United States for...   May 06, 2011

  From Manhattan

• 'Percy made everyone feel like he was somebody'

  Charles Rangel was walk ing along 125th Street, past the drugstores and shopping centers some said would never be, when a woman stopped him, crying uncontrollably over the death of Percy Sutton.   "Did you know Percy?...   January 07, 2010

  From Local

• DAVE'S DOWNFALL ALL BUMBLING, NO BIGOTRY

  LET'S be clear about a few things.   When anxious white cops kill their black colleagues in the line of duty without ever losing so much as a day's pay, that is a serious racial problem.   When a black man is...   August 23, 2009

  From News

• SO MUCH SOUL GONE BUT FOREVER YOUNG

  WEEKS before the final curtain fell on Michael Jackson's remarkable life, I noticed a startling similarity among some of my favorite artists that went far beyond the musical genre.   As I scrolled through my iPod...   June 28, 2009

  From News

• BIAS STILL KILLS IN OUR LAND OF PROGRESS

  FOR husband and father Omar Edwards, life must have been looking pretty good as his day came to an end.  He had survived another shift - not always a given for a cop in New York. He had gotten off early, which meant...   May 31, 2009

  From Regional

• BLACK PREZ CAN PACK A POLITICAL PUNCH

  ALONG with making history 100 years ago as the first black heavyweight champ, Jack Johnson made enemies as the nation's first black pop-culture icon.   At a time when blacks made the newspapers only as perpetrators...   April 02, 2009

  From News

• YES, LIFE IS GOOD AMID THE TURMOIL

  WASHINGTON - Life is good.   I saw a glistening sun over a city filled with promise in a nation bursting with pride. And even though the January air slapped my face and numbed my fingers and made my feet ache where I...   January 21, 2009

  From News

• NEW HOPE FOR KING'S MEMORIAL

  WASHINGTON - On the bank of a shal low basin, in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, lies a sloping plot of land where hope springs eternal.   Here, ambition endures. Here, the pride takes shape.   Just a few...   January 19, 2009

  From News

• ALL ABOARD FOR A REAL THRILL RIDE

  ABOARD THE OBAMA EXPRESS - Ashar Kennedy could hardly put his thoughts into words as he scooped ice for a passenger as the train rumbled out of Philadelphia's 30th Street Station.   The Amtrak employee was running...   January 18, 2009

  From News

• A DAY IN THE PROMISED LAND

  WHEN the roar rose up over Harlem Tues day night at the news of Barack Obama's monumental victory, I immediately thought of my mother - who didn't live long enough to see this wonderful day.   I remembered the...   November 06, 2008

  From Oped Columnists

• RAGGEDY MAN'S SWEET OLD TUNE BETTER THAN EVER

  THE last time he pressed his lips together to play that special song, Paul Hawthorne was a trombone player in a US Army band.   His uniform was pressed.   His shoes had a high gloss.   His instrument was shining...   November 05, 2008

  From News

• THE CHANGE THAT WAS GONNA COME IS HERE

  LET the record show that a profound change swept over America on the 28th day of the eighth month of an astounding year in this country's history.   It was at that moment, with cheers rising beyond the Rocky...   August 29, 2008

  From News

• TERRIFYING ECHOES OF DR. KING NOW HAUNT OUR HOPES

  DENVER - We always knew it was a possibility from the day he announced he was chasing history and threw his hat into the ring. What black man ever led a movement without the threat of death?   Some days, it's hard to...   August 27, 2008

  From News

• BAM DODGES PASSION TRAP

  Barack Obama saw it coming.   When the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee got a question on what he thought about Wednesday's US Supreme Court decision outlawing executions of people convicted of raping...   June 27, 2008

  From Oped Columnists

• HOPE LIFTED, ONLY TO BE SENT FALLING

  OUR chests swell with pride each time Barack Obama speaks of hope. He could be president, we tell ourselves - the change Sam Cooke sang can soon be real.   Then there's a reality check, and it smacks us in the face.  ...   April 26, 2008

  From News