Controversy overshadowed a sunny evening of celebrating Puerto Rican culture. <\/p>\n
Community members gathered on Thursday for the NYC Puerto Rican Heritage Reception at Pacha New York in Williamsburg, which is located at the former site of Brooklyn Mirage. <\/p>\n
Organizers said it was a last-minute venue change after the Mamdani administration cancelled the group\u2019s usual event at Gracie Mansion. <\/p>\n
\u201cHis home is our home, just like our home is his home,\u201d said organizer Martha Flores-Vazquez. \u201cSo, he\u2019s living in public housing. [Gracie Mansion is] our home. Our taxpayer dollars pay for that, so there\u2019s no reason in the world why anybody should be uninvited.\u201d <\/p>\n
Flores-Vazquez said they\u2019ve held their annual celebration at Gracie Mansion for more than three decades. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf [Mamdani is] not smart enough to do it, then we have to do it ourselves,\u201d said Flores-Vazquez. <\/p>\n
The mayor\u2019s office declined News 12\u2019s request for comment. <\/p>\n
However, a source close to planning the festivities at Gracie Mansion told News 12 on Thursday that the event was not cancelled, and that an invite-only celebration is scheduled for Friday afternoon. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe luncheon came after the Puerto Ricans felt disrespected, and it\u2019s the mayor\u2019s way of cleaning it up,\u201d said Flores-Vazquez. \u201cBut our way of making things right is to be here [at Pacha New York] and to honor and celebrate our people.\u201d <\/p>\n
Despite the dispute, about 200 people showed up to enjoy Puerto Rican food and fun. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Controversy overshadowed a sunny evening of celebrating Puerto Rican culture. Community members gathered on Thursday for the NYC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-264210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}