New York City (NYC)

As Good As It Gets? Hard Lessons From NYC Contracts

June 27, 2014 Mark Brenner, www.labornotes.org Educate! Inequality, Labor, New York City (NYC), Taxes, Unions

New York City teachers and transit workers just ratified contracts that will define what’s possible for the 250,000 city workers still in negotiations. The deals show how little juice is left for public sector unions trying to deliver using traditional tools at the bargaining table or in the political arena. If these are the limits in a union stronghold like New York—where one in four workers is a union member and 70 percent of the public sector is organized—the news isn’t good for conventional strategies elsewhere. What can be done better? To avoid a collision course with taxpayers, public sector unions need to upend the bipartisan consensus and put raising taxes back on the table. To achieve that, they’ll have to make an aggressive case to voters that strong public services, and the workers who provide them, are worth it—and that corporations and the super-rich should pay the tab. They’ll also have to challenge politicians, especially Democrats, who’ve made their peace with austerity.

New York City Preparing To Expand Restorative Justice Programs

June 25, 2014 Jackie Schechter, www.ny.chalkbeat.org Create! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Education, New York City (NYC), Restorative Justice

The city is poised to dramatically expand restorative justice programs aimed at improving school climate and rethinking school discipline next year. The head of the Department of Education’s Office of Safety and Youth Development verbally committed to provide new support for restorative justice programs at a May meeting about school discipline issues, according to two attendees. Though few details of the expansion have been finalized, the agreement represents the administration’s first step toward enacting discipline policy changes that Chancellor Carmen Fariña and Mayor Bill de Blasio have both called for. On Friday, a department spokeswoman said officials had been consulting with a number of organizations focused on school discipline, including Dignity in Schools. The New York chapter has been meeting monthly with the safety office to create a plan that would begin in January 2015, according to Elana Eisen-Markowitz, a teacher at the Urban Assembly Bronx Academy of Letters who attended the May meeting.

Leveling The Playing Field For Worker Cooperatives

June 25, 2014 AbScher, www.truth-out.org Create! Cooperatives, New York City (NYC), Poverty, Worker's Rights

A quiet revolution is rumbling through New York's municipal offices as they retool to support the creation of worker cooperatives as a way to fight poverty. Spurred by the powerful example of immigrant-owned cleaning cooperatives and the longstanding example of Cooperative Home Care Associates in the Bronx - the largest worker cooperative in the country - progressive city council members are allying with a new network of worker cooperatives, community based organizations that incubated immigrant-owned coops and the influential Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies to figure out how the city can encourage this still-tiny economic sector. Once fully in place, New York City will be a national leader in providing municipal support for these democratic enterprises. The pace of change is dizzying. In January, the federation released a short report arguing that worker coops help improve traditionally low-wage jobs by channeling the enterprises' profits directly to their worker members, improving their lives in tangible ways. Then in February, Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo, chairwoman of the Committee on Community Development, held a hearing which put staff from the city's Small Business Services and Economic Development Agency in the hot seat about how they were promoting worker cooperatives.

NYC’s Top Cop Defends Racist Policing At Israeli Conference

May 30, 2014 Rania Khalek, www.electronicintifada.net Educate! Democracy, Israel, New York (NY), New York City (NYC), NYC, Police, Racism

On 13 May, New York Police Department commissioner Bill Bratton delivered the keynote address at Israel’s first ever National Conference on Personal Security in Jersusalem. Accompanied by NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence John Miller (formerly a CBS senior news correspondent), Bratton also met with Yohanan Danino, the Inspector General of the Israeli police, and Yoram Cohen, director of Israel’s notorious Shin Bet secret police. In his 30-minute speech, which can be viewed in the above video, Bratton offered a uniquely revisionist history of American policing and proposed a dystopian vision for a future in which Israel is held up as a model for law enforcement worldwide. “World’s strongest democracies” “We are fortunate in the United States and Israel to live in the world’s two strongest democracies,” declared Bratton, kicking off his speech with the mythology and pandering we’ve come to expect from US officials visiting Israel. Bratton went on to offer an odd interpretation of how a democracy functions. “In a democracy,” he said, “the first obligation of government is public safety.” This may come as a surprise to those who were under the impression that the government’s most essential role in a democracy is to ensure the civil and human rights of the people it represents.

Latin American Indigenous Women Hold NYC Tribunal

May 28, 2014 Hajer Naili, www.womensenews.org Resist! Indigenous Rights, Latin America, New York City (NYC), Women's Rights

At the tribunal, she calls herself Angelica Narvaez, which is not her real name. She is 17, from Mexico and says she is being bullied at school, being called names. "Indian, short, black and savage," Narvaez told a gathering here last week, with her voice breaking and her translator in tears. "They hit me on my head too," said Narvaez, adding that neither the teachers nor anyone else at the school has done anything to protect her. Across the street from the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, taking place here from May 12 through May 23, indigenous women from Latin America are staging public tribunals to denounce and publicize the violence and discrimination they suffer. Narvaez was one of a dozen indigenous women from Guatemala, Mexico and Nicaragua who gathered on May 15 at the Church Center for the United Nations to tell their stories and emphasize the lack of response or protection from authorities. "One of the main problems is the type of systems we have," Rose Cunningham told Women's eNews in an interview at the New York event last week. "The justice system doesn't really work for us. We have a lot of discrimination."

Occupy Livestreamer Settles With NYPD For $55,000

April 25, 2014 Josh Boss, www.nydailynews.com Resist! New York (NY), New York City (NYC), NYC, Occupy, Police abuse

Josh Boss, 26, says Thomas Purtell, an assistant chief and Patrol Borough Manhattan South commander at the time of the 2011 arrest, tackled him while shouting, 'Don’t resist!' Boss sued alleging false arrest, excessive force and nerve damage to his wrists from handcuffs . A Brooklyn man arrested by a top NYPD cop while live-streaming an Occupy Wall Street march with his cell phone has settled with the city for $55,000, he told the Daily News Thursday. Josh Boss, 26, says Thomas Purtell, an assistant chief and Patrol Borough Manhattan South commander at the time of the 2011 arrest, tackled him and roughed him up while shouting, “Don’t resist!” Boss’s disorderly conduct charge was ultimately dismissed — and he sued alleging false arrest, excessive force and nerve damage to his wrists from handcuffs. He turned around and sacked me,” the Bushwick man said in an exclusive interview with The News. “I was standing in the crosswalk … I was definitely not resisting. I had a 250-pound officer on me with his knee on my face and neck.”

Parents & Educators Protest Eviction Of Special Needs Students For Charter Schools

April 9, 2014 Lauren McCauley, www.commondreams.org Resist! Education, New York (NY), New York City (NYC), NYC

Parents and public school advocates staged a dramatic protest outside the New York City Department of Education on Tuesday against a bid, backed by Governor Andrew Cuomo and financed by Wall Street lobbyists, to evict special needs students in order to make room for charter school expansion. The demonstration is the most recent development in the battle against corporate education reform in the city, where "strong-arm" tactics by Cuomo and the charter school lobby have overriden an attempt by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to curb the growth of privately-funded charters. Calling out Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the Success Academy charter chain, the demonstrators blasted her for "strong arming" the expansion of her charter schools, adding that she is "stealing classrooms from 102 special needs students." On March 31, New York legislators approved a budget deal that provides New York City charter schools with "some of the most sweeping protections in the nation," the New York Times reported last week.

Structural Racism in NYC School System

March 14, 2014 Rebecca Klein, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! New York (NY), New York City (NYC), NYC, Racism, Student Activism

It seems New York City’s specialized schools continue to have a problem when it comes to admitting minority students. According to city's Department of Education data released this week, of the 5,096 eighth graders offered a spot to one of New York City’s eight exam-based specialized high schools for the 2014-2015 school year, only 11 percent are black or Hispanic, per education outlet Chalkbeat New York. At the same time, more than 70 percent of the city’s eighth graders are black or Hispanic, the outlet reports.

Banner Drop on Brooklyn Bridge Calls out Cuomo

March 14, 2014 Doyle Murphy, www.nydailynews.com Resist! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Government, New York (NY), New York City (NYC), NYC

The group behind the stealth signposting, Money Out of Politics, is trying to goad Gov. Cuomo to follow through on his promises to revamp the state’s campaign finance laws. “He’s really at a crossroads, deciding whether he’s going to fight for the little guy — people who can’t afford to give big campaign contributions, or is he going to sell us out and keep the center of political power in the monied interests?” said Matthew Edge, the group’s founder, who lives in Berne, N.Y., near Albany. Edge and his cohorts have been crisscrossing the state for nearly two weeks, slapping up signs in conspicuous — and even iconic — locations as they go. They plan to hit all 62 counties by the time they’re done. Queens and Kings counties were numbers 37 and 38, he said. Cuomo has launched an ad campaign to promote campaign finance changes including matching funds for statewide races, but Edge fears he’ll back off when challenged by big-money boosters. “We’re raising the stakes,” said Edge, who said he has been trying to dampen the influence of big-money donors for a decade. “If he extends the political capital and keeps fair elections in the budget, he’ll be a hero. If he doesn’t, people are going to know about it.”

Bad Deals With Wall Street Are Costing NYC $1 Billion Annually

December 3, 2013 Phyllis Furman, www.nydailynews.com Educate! New York (NY), New York City (NYC), NYC, Wall Street

Wall Street has put the squeeze on the city to the tune of $1 billion, a report due out Tuesday claims. As much as $723 million worth of unnecessary fees and bad deals, coupled with $300 million in bank subsidies should be rejiggered, says a study from a new left-leaning coalition called New Day, New York Coalition. "New York City could be saving $1 billion annually just by changing the way it does business with Wall Street," one of the report's authors, Connie Razza, director of strategic research initiatives at the Center for Popular Democracy, told the Daily News.

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