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Jay Small - In Memoriam
The community development movement lost a leader when Jay Small, ANHD's Executive Director from 1992 - 1998, passed away on February 12th in Flatbush, a stone's throw away from where he was born. Jay took over the stewardship of ANHD after organizing in both Williamsburg with St Nick's, and then in East Flatbush with Flatbush East CDC.
The community development movement lost a leader when Jay Small, ANHD's Executive Director from 1992 - 1998, passed away on February 12th in Flatbush, a stone's throw away from where he was born.
Jay took over the stewardship of ANHD after organizing in both Williamsburg with St Nick's, and then in East Flatbush with Flatbush East CDC. He was deeply committed to the housing movement and its connection to larger social justice initiatives in the City and world-wide.
Journalist Tom Robbins captured the spirit of Jay's life of activism in a February 15th City Limits article. Among Jay's accomplishments was setting up the Pipeline fuel co-op at St Nick's that provided sizeable unencumbered income for the organization, particularly their tenant and community organizing efforts. Jay was most brilliant in fusing his theoretical education and articulating a vision of a new and just society- all while simultaneously improving the lives of both tenants and the working classes. Jay made his ideology alive and playful, and kept the board at ANHD connected to the unity of theory and practice. He was a confirmed "Statist" and expected the best from Government and its representatives. A scholar as well as an activist, Jay made the most of his participation in the Revson Fellowship for the Future of the City of New York, taking classes with the best radical thinkers at Columbia University. Jay was also a graduate of the Pratt Center Internship for Community Development.
He not only pushed his colleagues to a more class oriented theory of understanding of community development, but thoroughly enjoyed the more mundane subjects of accounting, organizational management, and real estate development.
"Jay was funny, funny, funny and handsome --that joyful Marxist. It was always a pleasure to be in his company; he wore his humanity on his sleeve, always ready to share his warmth, the twinkle in his eye and a sly joke. I was proud to have considered him a friend," said Kali N'doye, then an organizer in Bedford Stuyvesant with the African Islamic Mission.
Jay embodied a sometimes enigmatic relationship to his health. Despite his health challenges, he found the most heartfelt and genuine ways to being a loving father to his two daughters Molly and Hannah as well his love and soul mate Carol Smolensky. Jay was full of life and modeled an authentic way of being in our troubled world. Viva Jay and his remarkable flair for the imaginable! A life full of praxis, and so much more.
There will be a memorial for Jay this Sunday, February 21st, from 12 noon to 3 p.m. at Shapeshifter Lap, 18 Whitwell Place (between Carroll & 1st Streets, between 3rd & 4th Avenues in Gowanus)
By guest bloggers Steven Flax, Wendy Fleischer and Katie Hanner