Tag: New York City

From Rikers To Santa Rita: Close The Death Camps!

January 27, 2022/25th Sh’vat 5782, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps, where so many of our ancestors were incarcerated and enslaved, raped and robbed, maimed and murdered.

We are an anonymous collective of Jewish New Yorkers who are striking this day, across the five boroughs of NYC/across occupied Lenapehoking, in solidarity with the hunger strikers at Rikers Island and with all who are resisting this genocidal regime. This is a regime which took the lives of 15 fellow New Yorkers last year alone – a number which has continued to rise in the new year. Add that to the 44+ incarcerated people across New York State who perished after becoming infected with COVID in custody. We know a death camp when we see one, and Rikers Island is a death camp.

Blaming The Victims—Not The System—For Bronx Fire Deaths

Was it the space heater on the third floor? The open door on the 15th floor? The faulty fire alarms that went off frequently? The nonexistent sprinkler system? Colonel Mustard with the candlestick in the library?

As local and national corporate media covered the devastating fire in the Bronx that killed 17 people on January 9, two culprits were somehow never on the list of what and who was responsible: the landlord and the city’s Housing, Preservation and Development (HPD) department, which is responsible for making sure landlords comply with housing codes. Always under suspicion were the tenants themselves, who were implicitly blamed throughout the coverage.

Journalism Landlords Media New York City

New York’s Eviction Moratorium Ends Today

New York’s pandemic eviction moratorium expires today; it began in March 2020 when then-governor Andrew Cuomo ordered a temporary ban on eviction proceedings in response to eviction protests and calls for action to protect tenants. Hundreds of thousands of households across the state owe back rent and now face eviction. Forty-one percent of these households include children, and 72 percent of the affected renters are people of color. According to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, there have been 81,530 eviction filings in New York City alone since March 2020. Many are now set to proceed amidst a new Covid surge and sub-freezing temperatures.

After Cuomo’s executive order, the Covid-19 Emergency Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Act was enacted in December 2020, putting a temporary stay on eviction proceedings if tenants filed a form demonstrating they had suffered pandemic-related financial hardship.

COVID-19 Evictions Housing New York City

High Schoolers Walk Out Demanding Remote Learning During COVID Surge

Students at several high schools in New York City coordinated a walkout from classes on Tuesday to call for remote learning as they protest what they say are unsafe learning conditions inside school buildings as COVID cases surged just as the spring semester began last week.

A campaign mounted by students and activists across some of New York’s best-known high schools – including Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech and Stuyvesant – led to a walkout shortly before noon on Tuesday.

While precise numbers were not immediately available, organizers estimated hundreds of students participated, with about 400 students walking out at Brooklyn Tech alone.

COVID-19 New York City Public schools Student Activism

Brooklyn Teachers Organize Sickout

Inside the school, they just made the vaccine available for 11-year-olds, so not a lot of the sixth graders are vaccinated. Seventh and eighth grade have had access for a little bit longer. Broadly speaking, Covid is one of those things where they believe whatever their parents tell them. I’ve heard offhand comments and conspiracy theory claims about the vaccine and why they have to get it. They’ve gotten used to masks and prefer coming to school over remote, but they’re worried about it — there’s a kind of storm cloud feeling about Covid. One student who lost a parent to it just stopped coming to school during the surge.

For us teachers, it’s always at the front of our minds, teachers who are worried about how school will work, but the majority are worried about their physical health. No one at the top seems to be caring.

COVID-19 New York City PPE Teachers

NYC Public High School Student: ‘The Situation Is Beyond Control’

As the Omicron variant continues to surge, despite 90,132 new positive cases reported in New York on Saturday and one in three Covid-19 tests coming back positive in New York City, schools have been forced to stay open with insufficient safety measures as many students, and staff continue to test positive. Eleven members of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) Solidarity Caucus filed a lawsuit seeking mandatory remote learning until all students and workers can be tested, but Mayor Eric Adams continues to insist that schools must stay open at all costs, and even that schools are the safest place for students to be. Students and teachers are being forced to return to extremely unsafe conditions so that parents can go back to work and the economy can go “back to normal.”

COVID-19 Education New York City Public Health

NYC Enacts Law Allowing Over 800,000 Immigrants To Vote In Local Elections

A New York City law granting more than 800,000 lawful permanent residents the right to vote in local elections took effect Sunday after the recently elected mayor, Democrat Eric Adams, declined to veto it.

The New York City Council had voted 33-14—with two abstentions—for the measure to allow noncitizens who have resided in the city for at least 30 days to vote for mayor, council members, and other municipal offices beginning next year.

“The New York City Council is making history,” declared Ydanis Rodríguez, the former council member who sponsored the bill, last month. “New York City must be seen as a shining example for other progressive cities to follow.”

Rodríguez—an immigrant and naturalized citizen from the Dominican Republic who is now the city’s Department of Transportation commissioner—added Sunday that “we build a stronger democracy when we include the voices of immigrants.”

Immigrants Local Elections New York City Voting

The Radical Legacy Of New York’s Winter Rent Strike

From 26 December 1907 to 9 January 1908, 10,000 tenants, predominantly Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe living in New York City’s Lower East Side, took part in a historic rent strike. During an economic depression causing mass unemployment and grinding poverty, landlords tried to hike rents by thirty-three percent. With their cry to ‘fight the landlord as they had the Czar’, the tenants won a partial victory, with rents significantly reduced for 2,000 households.

The movement established a tradition of militant working-class housing campaigns that eventually contributed to winning vital rent controls that still protect millions of the city’s tenants today. But as the Covid crisis continues, New York City renters are again organising against rapacious landlordism.

Housing Landlords New York City Rent Strike

Improvements For NYC’s Delivery Workers’ Safety And Working Conditions To Start In January

A slate of city laws for delivery workers is set to kick in the new year and will roll out in stages, commencing in January with more oversight of the delivery apps and increased transparency for the more than 65,000 delivery workers in New York City.

Starting next month, delivery apps must be licensed by the city to operate in the five boroughs. By January 24th, licensed apps that take customer orders directly will be required to notify delivery workers how much each customer tips for each delivery, and the total pay and tips for the previous day. The city will now require that restaurants provide the delivery workers with better access to restrooms.

Gig Economy Gig Workers New York City Worker Rights and Jobs

Former Hunger Strikers Reflect On Their Experiences

The huelga de hambre has been used for thousands of years. It has won many struggles,” said Ana Ramirez, 42, who fasted for 24 days this spring to demand that undocumented people and other excluded workers in New York receive stimulus and unemployment money. “Esther the reina won a battle with the hunger strike.”

Ramirez is referring to Queen Esther of the Old Testament’s Book of Esther. The queen and her supporters fasted for three days in advance of going to ask her husband, Persian King Ahasuerus, for permission to have her enemies — who were trying to wipe out all Jews in the empire — killed. She prevailed. Mahatma Gandhi used the hunger strike. So too Cesar Chavez. South African political prisoners hastened the end of the apartheid era with their hunger strike.

Hunger Strike New York City Taxi Drivers Worker Rights

How NYC Taxi Drivers Took On Predatory Lenders And Won

On November 3, New York City reached an agreement with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA), the union fighting to relieve drivers of thousands of dollars in debt they owe for medallions, the physical permits to operate taxis. According to the NYTWA, the average debt owed on medallions by taxi drivers is $600,000.

“Today marks a new dawn, a new beginning for a workforce that has struggled through so much crisis and loss,” said Bhairavi Desai, Executive Director of NYTWA, in a statement. “Today, we can say owner-drivers have won real debt relief and can begin to get their lives back. Drivers will no longer be at risk of losing their homes, and no longer be held captive to debt beyond their lifetime.”

Hunger Strike New York City Taxi Drivers Transportation Worker Rights and Jobs

Postal Banking Test In The Bronx Yields No Customers

New York City – When the United States Postal Service launched a test program in September allowing people with business or payroll checks to get them loaded onto gift cards at four neighborhood post offices, it was seen as a primitive precursor to a postal banking system. But in order for the test to be successful and mature into a pilot, it has to actually be, well, tested.

According to postal employees at Baychester Station in the Bronx, one of four locations nationwide where the test is being carried out, not a single business or payroll check transaction was made between September 13, when the test launched, and October 31. Some union leaders who support the postal banking concept have become frustrated by the selection of Baychester, and the lack of muscle for the project from the USPS.

Louis DeJoy New York City Postal Banking US Postal Service

What The NYC Taxi Drivers On A Hunger Strike Won

In early November, after 46 days of picketing and 15 days of hunger strike, members of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance won what they deserved all along: a measure of relief from the vast debts incurred when the inflated value of their city-issued medallions crashed in recent years. Under a three-way agreement among the NYTWA, the de Blasio administration, and the city’s largest medallion lender, drivers — who owe, on average, $550,000 each — will see their debt written down to $170,000 and amortized so that monthly payments don’t exceed $1,122. Most important, the city will guarantee each of these rescue loans in the event of default.

It was only fair that the city agree to back the loans

Hunger Strike New York City Taxi Drivers Worker Rights and Jobs

Elections And The Illusion Of Black Political Power

Sadly, the hard work of politics has been subordinated to elections. Black politics are diminished in a system that creates a white people’s party and a black people’s party. Keeping republicans, the white party, out of power is seen as the end all and be all of political action. When the democrats are represented by Black office holders the deception is magnified. The demonization of even a little bit of progressive talk is a sign that the system lives in fear that someone may come along who will actually fight for change. A mass movement is an existential threat.

Black Politics Democrats Electoral Politics New York City

The Second-Largest Strike In The US Is Happening In New York City

Last week, Columbia students marched into the classroom of the university’s president, Lee Bollinger. (They like to call him PrezBo.) The class he was teaching at the time? “Freedom of Speech and Press,” according to the Columbia Spectator, which also noted that Bollinger left through the side door.

It was another skirmish in a conflict that has pitted the school against a group made up primarily of unionized undergraduate and graduate teaching and research assistants. On Wednesday at 12:01 a.m., these student workers went on strike. According to an ongoing count kept by labor reporter Jonah Furman, it is the second-largest such action happening in the United States right now, second only to the dramatic John Deere strike.

Education New York City Strike Unions

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