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Chinese Tycoon To Feed 1,000 Poor Americans In Charity Dinner

June 21, 2014 Russia Today, www.rt.com , , ,
China’s recycling tycoon Chen Guangbiao placed ads in the US media inviting one thousand poor Americans for a dinner worth $1 million in New York on June 25. The philanthropist also said that he will give out US$300 to each guest after the meal. The billionaire placed a full-page advertisement in Monday’s New York Times and a half-page advertisement in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, the South China Post reported. The ad in Chinese and English, designed by Chen himself, said that the event will be held on June 25 at the Loeb Boathouse Central Park in New York. The eccentric tycoon said that he wanted to send a message to Americans that rich Chinese are “not all crazy spenders on luxury goods,” as cited by the South China Post. “At the same time, there are many wealthy Chinese billionaires but most of them gained their wealth from market speculation and colluding with government officials while destroying the environment,” Chen said. “I can’t bear the sight of it, because all they do is splurge on luxury goods, gambling and prostitution and very few of them sincerely live up their social responsibility.”

Why I’m Speaking Out Against Comcast Merger

June 18, 2014 Mary Alice Crim, www.freepress.net , ,
Free Press has more than 750,000 members — more than 50,000 of whom live in New York State — which is why I’m traveling to Albany this Wednesday to offer public comments at a hearing on the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. If approved, this deal would create a media behemoth with unmatched power to raise prices, squash competition and reshape the future of the Internet — for the worse. Comcast is the nation’s No. 1 cable and Internet provider and Time Warner Cable is the No. 2 cable provider. They regularly come in dead last in customer-service surveys. In fact, Comcast was recently named the worst company in America — for the second time — in a Consumerist poll. A larger Comcast would lead to even less consumer choice, even less diversity and much higher cable bills (Comcast’s fees for basic cable in some cities rose 68 percent from 2009–2013).

Fight For 15 In NYC Just Got A Lot More Promising And Complicated

June 14, 2014 William Blueher and James Hoff, www.truth-out.org , ,
Bill de Blasio's role in helping Andrew Cuomo attain the endorsement of the Working Families Party has opened up a space for a more vigorous and radical discussion of a minimum wage for NYC. In politics, the greatest opportunities often present themselves amid the least promising of circumstances. The New York Working Families Party's (WFP) scandalous and much decried endorsement of Governor Andrew Cuomo on June 1 is but one example of how, out of the chaos of internal conflict, opportunities for more radical change can become possible. Though the WFP endorsement was a shameful capitulation to the politics of business as usual, it very well may have opened up a new front in the fight to raise the minimum wage in New York City. Though Cuomo had several times expressed opposition to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's longstanding plans to increase the city's minimum wage, the mayor's last minute role in securing the endorsement of the WFP for Cuomo seems to have changed the ground of that debate, and it is looking increasingly likely that Cuomo may now be more open to allowing the city to set its own minimum wage above the state level - with caveats, of course. By just how much and when the minimum wage (currently an insultingly low $8 an hour) might be increased remains to be seen, but it is clear that lawmakers in New York City and Albany, including de Blasio, are feeling the heat of the grassroots minimum wage movement that has been sprouting up in cities across the country - most notably in Seattle, which recently passed legislation increasing that city's minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Activists Rally Outside David Koch’s NY Home

June 7, 2014 Jodie Gummow, www.alternet.org , , , ,
“America Has a Koch Problem!” That was the hard-hitting theme of a block party protest hosted by New York activists and concerned citizens outside David Koch’s Park Avenue apartment on Thursday night, aimed at exposing the Koch Brothers' extremist right-wing political agenda. A Facebook campaign launched prior to the protest called upon those who were “tired of our democracy being sold to the highest bidder” to stage an intervention to address America’s growing Koch problem undermining democracy in America. At the demonstration which was crawling with police, handouts of 2014 political candidates who have taken money from the Koch Brothers were distributed along with pamphlets revealing how the Koch funded group, Americans for Prosperity, plan to spend $125 million on this election to benefit conservative candidates and have flooded the airwaves with misleading campaigns in states with key Senate races. Darius Gordon, organizer of Citizens Action explained to AlterNet that the more people who became aware of the Koch brothers extremist right-wing agenda, including running campaigns to raise taxes on clean energy and do away with the minimum wage, the greater the opportunity to rise up and challenge it. “We’re here today to protest against the Koch Brothers and let them know democracy is not for sale. They cannot buy our elections, they cannot buy our elected officials and we’re here to protest against that. This is a democracy! We want to educate and inform the people of New York about exactly what is going on for those who are not aware and ensure that our leaders are doing things democratically by stressing the message that our elections cannot be bought," he said.

NYC’s Top Cop Defends Racist Policing At Israeli Conference

May 30, 2014 Rania Khalek, www.electronicintifada.net , , , , , ,
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.

The Rise Of The Progressive City

May 29, 2014 Michelle Goldberg, www.alternet.org , , , ,
As the gears of federal government have ground to a halt, a new energy has been rocking the foundations of our urban centers. From Atlanta to Seattle and points in between, cities have begun seizing the initiative, transforming themselves into laboratories for progressive innovation. Cities Rising is The Nation’s chronicle of those urban experiments. * * * The Bush years were grim for progressives, but they did offer one small consolation: the hope that if only a smart and decent person could ascend to the White House, our politics could be repaired. Now, after years of destructive austerity and hopeless stalemate, that faith is dead. People on the left will debate where to lay the blame, but few will disagree that our federal institutions seem utterly unequal to the challenges of a country still reeling from economic crisis. Indeed, our national politics are so deformed that it’s hard even to imagine the steps necessary to fix things. Last year, The Boston Globe ran an award-winning series, “Broken City,” about the entropy in Washington. The final piece noted that potential remedies for the country’s problems are met with “almost complete indifference in Washington, the world’s capital of gridlock, even when alternative, perhaps better, ways are already at work, some in plain sight.”

Drones Coming To NYPD?

May 21, 2014 Azi Paybarah, www.capitalnewyork.com ,
At a City Council hearing on the police department's proposed budget today, police commissioner Bill Bratton expressed some limited support for the use of unmanned aerial vehicles. “I'm supportive of the concept of drones,” Bratton told the council, in a response to a question from Councilman Corey Johnson of Manhattan. Bratton said he supported drones for public safety and anti-terrorism efforts, and said they are "something we actively keep looking at.” John Miller, the department's deputy commissioner for intelligence and anti-terrorism, echoed Bratton's interest. “We’re not there yet,” Miller said, adding it is “something we will continue to look at.” “The issue of drones has been looked at, in terms of what’s on the market, what’s available,” and “what would be the reasonable purposes” for using them, Miller said. “We have no drones, we don’t use any drones, haven’t deployed any drones," Miller added. "However, as the [Federal Aviation Administration] struggles with the emergences of drones as a law enforcement tool … it’s something we will continue to look at.”

De Blasio Quietly Adds Hundreds Of Millions For Charters

May 19, 2014 Sally Goldenberg, www.capitalnewyork.com , ,
When Mayor Bill de Blasio held a news conference on Monday touting his recent educational budget commitments, he highlighted additional money he will spend on arts programs ($20 million), after-school activities for middle schools ($145 million) and his signature proposal, universal pre-kindergarten ($300 million). He did not mention the multi-million-dollar boost for charter schools. Tucked in a 291-page document related to the Fiscal Year 2015 budget he unveiled on May 8 are two increases to charter schools: $26.9 million for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, and an extra $219.7 million for next year. Those figures reflect spikes from the preliminary fiscal plan he unveiled in February. That brings the total amount his administration plans to spend on charters in FY2015 to nearly $1.3 billion, up from $1.06 billion this year. His budget spokeswoman, Amy Spitalnick, attributed the growing cost to higher tuition and expanded enrollment in both fiscal years, in part due to the mayor's decision to allow 14 charters approved under his predecessor to move into existing public schools next year. Since the preliminary budget was released on Feb. 12, enrollment in the city's 183 charters has increased by 1,073 students for FY2014 and 4,487 students for FY2015, Spitalnick said.

Fighting The Big Apple’s Big Inequality Problem

May 8, 2014 Sarah Jaffe, www.inthesetimes.com , ,
New York City can sometimes feel like ground zero for the battle over inequality. Up until a few months ago, its mayor was one of the world's richest men; it is home to Wall Street and movie stars, and it seems as though every oligarch from every country in the world has an apartment here. Here, too, are the millions of working people who make the city run, and all too many of those working people are barely making enough to get by. In her introduction to the new book New Labor in New York, out now from Cornell University Press, sociologist Ruth Milkman points out that while New York has the nation's highest union density, the city also has one of the highest levels of income inequality among large cities. It is against this background that worker centers and other forms of non-union labor organizing have flourished, won victories, hit setbacks and managed to grow. And it is against that background that Milkman and her colleague Ed Ott, both professors at the City University of New York's Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, decided to teach a course that would ask students at the Murphy Institute and the CUNY Graduate Center to write an in-depth profile of one worker center or labor organization and its innovations. After two semesters of field research, study, and collaborative workshopping, these profiles were collected into the book. Taken together, they make up a valuable resource for evaluating today's labor organizing, its successes and failures.

Occupy Livestreamer Settles With NYPD For $55,000

April 25, 2014 Josh Boss, www.nydailynews.com , , , ,
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 , , ,
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.

Wave Of Action Re-Energizes New York Activism

April 8, 2014 John Zangas, www.dcmediagroup.us ,
In spite of raw and rainy weather, several hundred activists participated in Wave of Action events last weekend in New York. April 4 kicked off a three-month period of heightened activism, which Wave of Action’s website describes as “people throughout the world…protesting corruption, rallying around solutions and taking part in alternative systems.” Here are some highlights from New York’s Wave: Harlem: The Robin Hood Tax campaign demonstrated outside Congressman Rangel’s office. “The Robin Hood Tax would raise hundreds of billions of dollars every year for people in our communities,” said Michael Tikili, an organizer with the Health Global Action Project. The Robin Hood Tax, also known as the Inclusive Prosperity Act (HR1579) sponsored by Rep. Keith Ellison, proposes a fee on speculative financial trades on Wall Street. “With those resources we could commit to Dr. King’s dream with the real revenue we need for jobs, living wages, healthcare and equal access to education,” said Tikili.

Occupy Activist Cecily McMillan Is On Trial

March 28, 2014 Betsy Kim, www.thevillager.com , ,
In a potential blow to the case of Occupy Wall Street protester Cecily McMillan, State Supreme Court Justice Ronald Zweibel last week refused to allow review of the personnel file of Grantley Bovell, the officer involved in her arrest. The 25-year-old New School graduate student is charged with felony assault of a police officer, stemming from the six-month anniversary of the O.W.S. protests in Zuccotti Park. If convicted in a trial scheduled for April 7, McMillan could face up to seven years in prison. Photos following her arrest indicate she was severely bruised, including above her right breast. Speaking on March 17, Attorney Martin Stolar, of the National Lawyers Guild’s New York City chapter, who is representing McMillan, said that Officer Bovell grabbed McMillan’s right breast from behind, and that, in response, McMillan threw up her elbow, hitting his cheekbone.

Rally in NYC for Fossil Fuel Divestment

March 28, 2014 Staff, www.facebook.com , ,
On Thursday, over 130 New Yorkers rallied to deliver 11,000 petitions to Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, calling on him to divest New York State from fossil fuels. At $160 billion, New York's Common Retirement Fund is the third largest pension plan in the country, and it's heavily invested in the fossil fuel industry. Comptroller DiNapoli has the power to divest New York State from fossil fuels. Divestment has the power to rein in the fossil fuel industry and support our transition to a clean energy economy. It's the smart thing to do and the right thing to do -- for both the pension fund and the planet.

Vigil For Political Prisoners and Movement Martyrs

March 27, 2014 Anon, www.waveofaction.org , ,
Join local peace activists as they join the World Wide Wave of Action with a candle light vigil & silent night march from Foley Square to the NY Veterans Memorial to raise awareness about those killed & imprisoned during the on going non-violent struggle for justice for all. Gather at Foley Square starting at 6:30 PM for sunset kick off of speakers & a know your rights presentation. The evening will end at the New York City Veterans Memorial at 55 Water Street will a candle light vigil & an informal community share on those lost to the system.
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