Community Board 1 Honors Fantastic Four

A salute to real local heroes’ long-term contributions

At Brooklyn Community Board 1’s (Bk CB1) February 13 Public Hearing and Board Meeting, citations were awarded to Jan Peterson, Marie Leanza, Marty Needelman, and posthumously to Teresa “Tish” Cianciotta.  All of the honorees have served on Bk CB1’s board.  Bk CB1 Chair Dealice Fuller and NYC Council Members Jennifer Gutierrez and Lincoln Restler were among those who paid tribute to these four.

Jan Peterson arrived in Williamsburg over fifty years ago as a social worker focused on a mission to reduce poverty. She led a War on Poverty program at the School Settlement House (120 Jackson Street), and then relocated to where she met Elizabeth Speranza who had formed an informal block association with many of the neighborhood women.  Jan helped consolidate the Conselyea Street Block Association (CSBA) into an official organization. Soon after, Jan co-founded the National Congress of Neighborhood Women (NCNW), which formed “to empowering poor and working-class women to become community leaders, to give them a voice, and to raise their consciousness of their own power so they would be better able to define and solve problems facing their communities,” states the Neighborhood Women website.  Jan also led the Huairou Commission, a UN chartered International effort to empower women and neighborhoods to create affordable housing and build community.  She is a member of Bk CB1.

Marie Leanza has been a community organizer for more than 48 years. It all began when she took a job with St. Nicks Alliance.  At St. Nicks Alliance, she helped prevent displacement by organizing tenants and testifying in court on their behalf to prevent evictions from buildings that had been abandoned by the landlord.  While working for this organization, she discovered that the local banks weren’t investing in the community, and they would deny mortgages to neighbors for questionable reasons.  Marie organized community members and visited bank branches with people who had been denied mortgages to confront the banks as to the reasons they were denied.  This resulted in some mortgages being granted. Another group Marie organized, called The Building Survival Fund, met with bank leadership and convinced them to contribute to this fund.  The fund would be distributed as a loan (without interest) to tenant associations who petitioned for assistance and agreed to pay the loan back.  As a member of the Conselyea Street Block Association, Marie helped fight to keep 211 Ainslie Street for community use instead of being turned into another high-rent building. This building remains home to Small World Early Childhood Center and Swinging Sixties Senior Center, in addition it continues to serve as a community town hall in hosting Bk CB1’s public hearings and other meetings and events. She continues to speak up and fight when she sees obstacles in the way of others’ wellbeing.  Marie is also a current member of the Bk CB1 Board.

Martin Needelman grew up in the working class Jewishneighborhood of East New York.  After graduating from law school, he became an AmeriCorps VISTA Attorney and was assigned to the Southside Community Mission in Brooklyn, a community-based organization that provides legal and social services to immigrants, senior citizens, youth, and the homeless. It was here that he worked extensively with Williamsburg Legal Services, a precursor to Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A (BKA).  He was hired as a staff attorney for this firm in 1971 and continued his career there eventually becoming its executive director.  He also made Williamsburg’s Southside his home in 1971.  Martin has consistently been on the frontlines advocating for tenant’s rights and affordable housing. 

Teresa “Tish” Cianciotta worked for former NYS Assembly Member Joe Lentol as his special assistant for many years.  Her dedication to make the community a better place was a motivating force throughout most of her life.  She recently passed away in late November 2023. Tish was a member of Brooklyn Community Board 1 for over 41 years, and was a founding member of the Greenpoint Renaissance Enterprise Corp (GREC) and Concerned Citizens of Withers Street with her husband Guido. As part of the latter group, she helped to beautify the World War I memorial, Memorial Gore.  As a member of GREC she fought for decades to win NYC approval of the final plan for the Greenpoint Hospital campus that will create over 500 new affordable rental apartments (110 for seniors), maintain a high-quality 200-bed shelter on the campus, and include new community facilities. That dream became a reality, when City approval was granted in 2018. The development, Kingsland Commons, broke ground on the first building, the Barbara Kleinman Men’s Shelter, in December 2022. The new shelter is expected to be completed in October 2025.