WASHINGTON, June 7 (RIA Novosti) – If you ever happen to drive down a small street in New York City named Samuel Dickstein Plaza, you will be moving in the shadows of a controversial piece of US-Soviet spy history.
Susan LaRosa is hoping to change that. To say the least, the marketing professional is not a fan of Dickstein, a former representative in the US Congress from 1923 to 1944, and later, a New York Supreme Court Justice.
“He was a seated congressman while he was on the take and he sold secrets to the Russians, not for any ideological reasons but just to make money,” LaRosa said in an interview with RIA Novosti.
“I was absolutely shocked, I was stunned,” she said.
Dickstein lived near the street in question in New York’s Lower Manhattan. It was named after him in 1963, long after his death in 1954 and long before documents discovered in Moscow showed the Russian security service had paid him $1250 per month for information from 1937 to 1940.
His Dickstein Resolution led to the formation of a special House investigative committee to probe “un-American activities,” which targeted Nazi sympathizers and suspected communists.
“My God, who knew?” said Edward Sadowsky, a former city councilman who voted for the street name designation, in an interview with The New York Times.
LaRosa began her crusade to change the name in 2010, shortly after she went to work for the Henry Street Settlement, a nonprofit organization that provides a wide host of social services for low income and needy groups.
It overlooks Samuel Dickstein Plaza, which – at least in LaRosa’s way of thinking – would be far more appropriately named for Lillian Wald, who founded the Henry Street Settlement in 1893, is credited with building New York City’s first children’s playground, and, as far as anyone knows, was not a Soviet spy.
LaRosa plans to spend the weekend writing a petition to that effect to the local community board, which can then make recommendations to the city council.
“I just think we should honor Lillian Wald rather than this greedy guy Samuel Dickstein, this former congressman who was on the take,” she said.
