Jay Small, Community Organizer With Strong Ties To Flatbush, Dies at 71

Jay Small, whose lengthy career as an agitator and community organizer took him from the streets of Flatbush to the midtown Garment Center to the factories of Chicago, has died.

Small died on February 13th at a rehabilitation center in Flatbush after complications from diabetes, Tom Robbins reported in City Limits. He was 71.

Small had an “an ever-garrulous and upbeat presence,” Robbins writes.

Small’s activism began early. He joined a chapter of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) while a student at Erasmus High School, and was later expelled from Brooklyn College for participating in a sit-in on behalf of black and latino students.

After stints as a factory worker in the midtown Garment Center and in Chicago, Small went on to become a leader in the community housing movement in New York City.

While serving as executive director of the Flatbush East Development Corporation, Small “helped pressure banks to keep their doors open for local neighborhood lending, and helped tenants organize against bad landlords,” Robbins writes.

Small also led the citywide Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development from 1992 to 1998. And he helped to form a political action committee to “give tenants and community residents greater political clout,” Robbins reports.

Even in the last hours of his life, Robbins says, Small was speaking excitedly about presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who like Small, was a leftist from Brooklyn. Small leaves behind his wife, Carol Smolenski, two daughters and a grandchild.

To learn more about Jay Small’s legacy, read his obituary in City Limits.