New York University law school was the scene yesterday afternoon for a four-hour presentation of the first-ever “New York Times Company Nonprofit Excellence Awards,” which, so far as we can tell from an insert in yesterday’s Times, was backed by the JPMorgan Chase Foundation and by Mayor Bloomberg, who wrote a letter hailing “four outstanding organizations” as “deserving honorees” who “exemplify our belief that success is most meaningful when shared with others.”

Well, hold your applause. One of the “deserving honorees” is none other than an outfit called “Families United for Racial and Economic Equality,” an organization so left-wing that its Web site boasts that it held “a protest at Hillary Clinton’s residence” to complain about her support for welfare reform. It’s not just Senator Clinton that Families United for Racial and Economic Equality is protesting, but just about any non-communist American politician. The Web site boasts that the group “helped lead the organizing of the march against the Republican National Convention in NYC,” surely a cause with which JPMorgan Chase, the New York Times, and Mayor Bloomberg want to associate themselves.

Mr. Bloomberg himself has been targeted by the group. Its Web site reports that in November of 2003, members of the group spent an hour and a half yelling and singing outside Mr. Bloomberg’s residence in protest of his insistence that able-bodied welfare recipients work. The protesters wanted the city to cover carfare and childcare while the welfare recipients went to “job training” or other educational activities other than actual work.

A brochure for Families United for Racial and Economic Equality includes the claim that “as the economy worsens under Bush’s reign,” funding has become “scarce.” Not so scarce, apparently, that the New York Times Company, abetted by JPMorgan Chase and the mayor, don’t want to shovel $5,000 of prize money in the organization’s direction for “excellence in meeting emerging issues or serving emerging communities.” The brochure also reports that new members of the group are subject to a “three-month intensive political education,” including sessions on “The Local & Global Economy: Why the Rich Get Richer & the Poor Get Poorer.”

The Web site of Families United for Racial and Economic Equality explains that its top priority campaign at the moment is blocking “the Mayor’s Downtown Brooklyn Plan,” which, it says, threatens to ensure that “one more Black urban Downtown, rich in history and culture, will fall prey to gentrification.” It says it wants to prevent the creation of another Metrotech, a downtown Brooklyn development it says consists of “high-end office space for financial services companies with a dismal record of employing local residents.” Maybe they were talking about JPMorgan Chase, which has offices in Metrotech.

A “global philanthropy executive” with JPMorgan Chase, Kimberly Davis, said her bank, in backing the awards, didn’t intend to take a position on the gentrification of downtown Brooklyn, but just wanted to recognize nonprofit leadership and management. The president of the New York Times Company Foundation, Jack Rosenthal, who is a terrific fellow, said the award recipients weren’t judged on their content but on how well they fulfilled their missions.

No doubt it’s a fine idea to help the city’s non-profits improve their management skills and techniques, and how the New York Times and JPMorgan Chase executives choose to spend their time and money is between them and their shareholders. But surely Mr. Bloomberg, who speaks for all the city’s taxpayers, is shrewd enough to realize the contradictions inherent in his joining capitalists in doling out an award to a group whose goal is to obstruct his welfare and economic-development agenda. It’s an agenda, after all, that, if realized, would do far more to improve the lives of the city’s residents of all incomes than would yet another motley protest outside Senator Clinton’s house or outside the mayor’s. This is the kind of thing one would think the mayor would want to figure out before he launches any campaign for the presidency.