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Setting Foundation of Mayoral Campaign Platform, Eric Adams Releases 106 Ideas for City’s Future


eric adams bhpl

Eric Adams (photo: Erica Sherman/Brooklyn BP's Office)


Eric Adams doesn’t just want to fix the problems created by the coronavirus pandemic but the historic inequities that have existed in the city long before it. In a sweeping new sketch of his vision for New York City released Sunday, Adams, the Brooklyn borough president who is running for mayor in the June Democratic primary to replace term-limited Mayor Bill de Blasio, offers more than 100 ideas to rebuild and improve the city and to rid its government of the many inefficiencies that he blames for causing social injustices.   

Adams’ plan, titled “100+ Steps Forward for NYC,” lays out 106 proposals, including 20 “big step” ideas, that he will enact or advocate if he becomes mayor. Each one is followed by a brief description or short set of bullet points, with Adams promising in the introduction of the plan to release more detailed policy papers in the months ahead.

The “steps forward” include data-driven solutions for providing better city services, tax increases on the wealthy to generate revenue, a city hiring freeze and other agency mandates to create budget savings, police reforms, public safety measures, economic boosters, and solutions for housing, healthcare, hunger, and homelessness. Adams wants schools to be open year-round, green roofs on every city building, affordable childcare for every parent, and a Bus Rapid Transit system, among many other offerings in the newly-released agenda.

Most of the proposals do not come with dollar figures attached and many have broad, ambitious goals that require the detail Adams is promising to release in the near future. Some cannot be achieved under the mayor’s sole authority but require partnership from the City Council or state government. And several of the proposals build on a recovery plan that Adams released in June of last year out of the borough president’s office.

“The next mayor will take office one year from this week--but New Yorkers should not have to wait that long for a clear vision of a better future for their city,” Adams said in a statement. “As a lifelong New Yorker who faced the same hardships many New Yorkers are facing now, I know what our city needs to recover and come back stronger than ever. For far too long, our City government’s ineffectiveness and inattention to serious problems has led to great injustices, holding our city back from reaching its true potential. With these 100-plus steps and our other detailed plans to come, we will finally deliver on New York’s promise of opportunity and prosperity for all.”

The core of Adams’ campaign message is about leadership as management, and one he has been stressing since he started to discuss his mayoral campaign years ago. He promises to create a smarter and more efficient city government with greater agency coordination and real-time performance monitoring with metrics visible to the public. It’s one of the many big ticket items in the plan: he pledged to create a single data platform that could help create a more proactive government and save billions of dollars. He would also assign each agency a public performance score that is regularly updated. And New Yorkers would be able to apply for all city services and public benefits through a centralized portal called MyCity, helping to streamline city bureaucracy.

Adams’ focus on such a governing strategy comes from his experience in the NYPD, where he worked for more than two decades before being elected a state senator then borough president. Adams was part of the police department in the 1990s when it developed the CompStat system for data-driven accountability and a more proactive approach to policing the city. He has said repeatedly he wants to implement that type of approach across city agencies, something he says should have happened long ago.

Recognizing the fiscal challenges presented by the coronavirus, which led to a massive drop in city tax revenue, Adams proposed saving $1.5 billion over two years by refusing to make any new hires as the municipal workforce reduces through attrition. He would also mandate a standing Program to Eliminate the Gap (PEG) to cut agency spending by 3-5% each year, overseen by a new Efficiency Czar who would also audit agencies and evaluate large city contracts (work that is already done by the separately-elected city comptroller). To fill the city’s coffers, among other measures, he proposes raising $1-2 billion each year by imposing a “recovery share” on income tax for individuals making more than $5 million a year. The tax increase, which would need state approval, would be phased out after two years.

With the coronavirus having disproportionately impacted low-income communities of color, already prone to worse health care and outcomes, Adams intends to revamp the city’s approach to public health, another issue he has focused on for years.

Adams’ 100+ steps plan says that under his leadership the city would provide social services at city hospitals, provide housing assistance to indigent patients, expand preventative health services, create a unified citywide hospitals network, and standardize health care costs across the city.

Chiefly and more urgently, Adams wants to ensure a successful program to vaccinate New Yorkers against the coronavirus and would use the successful network built under the city’s Census outreach program to achieve that goal, he says.  

As a former NYPD captain, public safety is a top priority for Adams. He has shown a more moderate approach to police reform than some of the other Democratic candidates in the race, stressing the need for better policing but not at the expense of a proactive and appropriately aggressive NYPD.

Adams’ new plan says he would save $500 million by civilianizing parts of the police department and cutting overtime costs, investing those funds in the city’s community-based Crisis Management System instead. He also has a targeted plan for gun violence, a response to the large spikes in shootings and murders seen in 2020. Adams would reinstitute the anti-crime unit disbanded by NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea into a new anti-gun unit while also increasing funds towards the Crisis Management System, which funds local activists to work in communities to quell gang conflict and keep guns out of the hands of young people. He also proposed a tri-state commission to prevent illegal guns from being brought into the city. 

As much as Adams wants to ensure the city is safe, he is also intent on reforming the NYPD, a chief concern for every mayoral candidate following the Black Lives Matter protests last year against police brutality after the death of Minnesota resident George Floyd in police custody, and other such incidents around the country, including some in New York City.

Adams’ plan would increase the number of Black and Hispanic officers within the police department and train NYPD supervisors in executive leadership academies outside the department. He would also publicly release a list of police officers with records of complaints and violent incidents that are being monitored by the department. Under his plan, community boards and precinct councils will be able to approve and even veto the appointment of precinct commanders and community affairs officers. 

Adams has been a business-friendly borough president and it’s an approach he will continue as mayor, he has said. He proposes giving businesses that pay the Commercial Rent Tax a tax break for two years, expanding the Relocation Employment Assistance Program and establishing “tax-free Tuesdays” to encourage people to shop at stores in person by waiving sales tax. He would also cut down bureaucratic hurdles for small businesses and eliminate all filing and registration fees. And he wants to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income workers. 

In his new agenda he promises to create a citywide job training and placement program, create jobs by investing in green infrastructure, and to extend the Summer Youth Employment Program to the entire year. His plan would also help households without bank accounts get access to banking while providing incentives to community-based banks in low-income neighborhoods. 

He also reiterates his support for allowing legal permanent residents and non-citizens with work authorization to vote in municipal elections. 

On housing, Adams would break from the approach that has defined Mayor de Blasio’s tenure. Adams would focus rezonings for more housing density on wealthier neighborhoods and also eliminate the policy of community preference for affordable housing, something experts say would help desegregate the city. He wants to convert city office buildings into fully affordable housing and change zoning rules to allow hotels and private office buildings to convert to housing. His plan would also raise $8 billion for public housing by selling air rights over properties owned by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). 

His most significant proposal on education is also likely to be the most controversial. Adams wants to institute a full-year school year, and though his plan states it would create more flexibility for parents, it offers few details. He would give homeless families local preference for schools and prioritize capital funds to low-performing communities. He also promises to provide childcare for all parents who cannot afford it, though he does not provide a cost estimate or income threshold.  

As Mayor de Blasio’s plan to improve the city’s bus system has been too limited to significantly address the problems at hand with slow speeds and traffic congestion, Adams vowed to create a Bus Rapid Transit system and build more busways across the city. He would also build a citywide network of electric bikes and scooters and invest city funds in expanding bike share programs, the new plan says. 

Adams pledged strong action on climate change including by retrofitting city buildings and installing solar panels on all of them, establishing a citywide organics collection program (which was recently scrapped by de Blasio), speeding up the conversion of the city’s bus fleet to electric vehicles, and creating a green economy curriculum for city schools. 

Adams is among those considered “top-tier” candidates in the very crowded and diverse mayoral primary, which will take place in June and include the implementation of ranked-choice voting for the first time.

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Kathryn Garcia Talks Trash


Kathryn Garcia sanitation garbage trash

Kathryn Garcia (photo via the Department of Sanitation)


This could be the election that flips an old maxim on its head: we may soon find out that there are many different Democratic ways to pick up the trash.

While garbage probably won’t be among the top issues most voters care about when electing the next mayor of New York City, what better opportunity for a real conversation about how the city handles its trash and recycling than having the recently-departed sanitation commissioner among the candidates vying for the city’s top job.

Kathryn Garcia, who after six years in the post left her job as head of the city’s Department of Sanitation in September to run for mayor in this year’s election, is always ready to talk trash, and she recently previewed her vision for the future of how the city deals with its garbage in an interview with Gotham Gazette, while promising a full plan soon.

But Garcia’s not making it the centerpiece of her campaign. In the early going, she has been most focused on pitching her overall management credentials — she’s also been interim chair of the city’s public housing authority and the city’s emergency “food czar,” among other government roles — and her plans for the city’s recovery from COVID-19, dealing with climate change, and housing. Her initial campaign platform also touches on policing, transit, and education, and there are elements of waste management mentioned in her climate and resiliency plan.

And that’s the thing about handling the city’s incredible amount of trash: it’s an overlapping issue with not only climate, but public health and street safety, transit, use of public space, and more. It’s also an important part of the economy and city government spending, of course — the sanitation department accounts for roughly $1.7 billion in this year's municipal budget.

“Yes, you can expect a comprehensive trash plan in the coming weeks,” Garcia, a Democrat, recently told Gotham Gazette, “that will cover EPR [extended producer responsibility], curbside organics recycling, compost facilities, clean curbs and containerization, and waste reduction.”

“New York City had the country's largest food scraps collection program before our budget was slashed; we will bring it back immediately,” she said of a budgeting decision by Mayor Bill de Blasio, the term-limited Democrat, and her plans if elected to replace him. “We can't get to zero waste without it. We will also open compost facilities in every borough, including on Rikers island, to increase in-city processing capacity.”

While de Blasio cut the city’s burgeoning curbside organics recycling pickup program in this fiscal year’s budget, the city does currently have roughly 100 drop-off composting sites across the five boroughs. The de Blasio administration has stalled in efforts to meet sweeping goals to reduce the city's millions of tons of annual waste output and significantly increase its recycling, as detailed in an exhaustive series by Politico New York published last year.

Garcia says that while she is interested in pursuing a variety of waste management reforms to restore or build on portions of her record she’s proud of, her main focus is “waste reduction.”

“We will do the analysis of pay as you throw that this administration refused to allow us to do,” she said. “And we will aggressively pursue EPR so that the product manufacturers are responsible for the end of life of those items.”

To encourage more recycling, which Garcia noted has recently been “up significantly” on “traditional materials,” she believes the city “should increase the fine” for not recycling recyclable materials. “It is $25 now,” she said. “That seems a little bit low in my mind to be an incentive not to be just throwing materials that could have value into the regular garbage. But the real next turn is organic waste.”

“I definitely want to mandate organics [recycling],” Garcia said in a separate video interview with Gotham Gazette and Manhattan Neighborhood Network that will air and be available online later this month. “I think it's time to do that. But we also need to make sure that we are getting it distributed completely around the city.”

“I want to take big leaps and the difference I will bring to the table is commitment and follow through,” she added when asked further questions by email. “It takes many months of consistency to build a new program and we need to offer services equitably for every single neighborhood.”

The other new program Garcia got moving while at sanitation, albeit much later than her critics would have liked, and says she wants to expand if elected mayor is “containerization,” or using sealed bins to collect trash and recycling instead of having mountains of full garbage bags all over city sidewalks. The containers can then be emptied by matching garbage trucks, cutting down not only on trash bags on sidewalks, but rat access, smell, and grueling lifting by sanitation workers. Containerization can also help free up sidewalk space and limit intrusions into bike lanes — containers can at times even help create protected bike lanes — and be especially helpful to those with strollers or mobility challenges.

Garcia helped launch the “clean curbs” pilot program last year, and though it was delayed by the covid crisis it is now moving ahead, starting with commercial landlords and business improvement districts that volunteer to participate and are accepted into the program, which comes with several requirements.

“So absolutely do we want to look at containerization particularly for commercial strips with residential above,” she said during the video interview when asked about getting all the bags of garbage off city sidewalks. “Because that we think could be effective. We need to do some more work with communities about whether or not we could containerize residential because the question is where is the container located. But in terms of new buildings they should all have containers in them and they should be inside the building so that it's not on the street and not creating, sort of, the walls of material.”

Garcia was referring to the passage of “rules to ensure all new large construction will require containerization,” for example, “in a loading dock.”

“I would love to take it in that direction,” she said when asked if widespread containerization of trash and recycling is her vision, “but I need to understand better if I actually thought it could work. And when we've looked at stuff from Europe, we have so much more volume that fitting that volume into a container that isn't enormous is really the tricky part of this.”

“But,” she stressed, “the key to getting garbage off our streets is to really approach the problem by focusing on waste reduction.”

The conversations did not touch on corner waste basket pick-up, another program within sanitation that recently saw significant budget cuts, some of which were restored amid widespread complaints of overflowing trash cans, that Garcia objected to and criticized in her resignation letter.

Garcia is also proud that during her tenure the de Blasio administration came to an agreement with the City Council on a new law to revamp the private trash hauling industry, rationalizing the market and cutting down on truck trips and therefore emissions.

For the public fleet, Garcia is pledging to move to electric sanitation trucks, as well as electric city buses and school buses.

Along with the pace and design of the initial containerization pilot, Garcia’s call to electrify the city’s garbage trucks is among the points where she has received some criticism. Questions have been raised as to why the city’s container pilot is requiring private entities to provide the bins instead of the city quickly investing in standardized containers and the trucks to match.

Darren Goldner, an organizer around climate and ecosocialism issues, argues that the city has moved far too slowly on containerization and that Garcia should now be proposing to move quickly toward the models seen across Europe while also “shifting from heavy trucks to light trucks” instead of focusing on electrifying the department fleet, which he called “greenwashing.”

The heavy trucks, Goldner says, are “terrible for the climate,” especially when paired with its current pick-up system instead of utilizing consolidated containerization.

Garcia’s focus, he says, should be “updating DSNY's core function: inefficient door-to-door sidewalk collection with outdated, inefficient heavy trucks.”

Goldner and the rest of the Ecosocialist Working Group of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America is developing a 2021 platform around climate and related issues, including waste management, which they will be pushing candidates for city offices to adopt. Meanwhile, Garcia is working on her trash plan, which could help spur other candidates in the crowded mayoral field to take a substantive dumpster dive.

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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
     

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In First Two Mayoral Campaign Plans, Maya Wiley Takes on Preventing Gun Violence and Evictions


Maya Wiley campaign launch brooklyn

Maya Wiley at her campaign launch (photo: Gotham Gazette)


Democratic mayoral candidate Maya Wiley released her first two detailed policy plans last month, and they focus on two pressing issues in New York City: preventing gun violence and evictions. While shootings and murders spiked in 2020 in New York City, as they did in many other cities across the country, residential evictions would have as well if not for preventative government measures — namely an eviction moratorium, which New York State recently extended through at least April for those who have experienced financial hardship due to the pandemic.

Wiley, a civil rights attorney and advocate who served as counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio from 2014 to 2016 and then as chair of the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board for police misconduct, is running in the Democratic primary to succeed the term-limited mayor, part of a large, diverse, and growing field of candidates hoping to prevail in June and go on to the fall general election.

Wiley’s gun violence and eviction plans emphasize reducing disparities for New Yorkers of color and helping people struggling because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The gun violence plan de-emphasizes the role of the police, including by shifting funds away from the police department, and centers the roles of community input and government investment. Wiley draws clear lines between gun violence and other problems, chiefly joblessness.

“We must invite residents of impacted communities to participate in the development of solutions that work,” says the gun violence prevention plan, which features Wiley’s ideas for what she calls a participatory justice fund and Citywide Safe Corridors, a program in which adults supervise students as they walk between school and a train or bus station.

“All New Yorkers should feel secure in their homes and the City has an obligation to ensure this security,” Wiley’s plan for ending evictions says. The plan includes using $251 million in federal housing aid to the city for a citywide rent and tax relief program and expanding legal counsel for people facing eviction.

Her proposals both cite potential funding sources, including the NYPD’s budget, aid from the federal and state governments, and new taxes on the wealthy, but do not give estimated overall costs. Neither plan gives numerical goals, though Wiley does use the term “ending” as the target for evictions.

The plans both say that in the coming weeks and months, Wiley will release detailed plans for housing, policing, and jobs. She is in the process of holding what her campaign calls “people’s assemblies” where Wiley and her team are gathering New Yorkers to discuss what they want from their next mayor.

Preventing Gun Violence
In 2020, shooting incidents in the city doubled over the prior year and murders increased by more than 40%, according to the NYPD, though the roughly 450 murders in 2020 were fewer than the city experienced in 2011 and many years prior. Still, there were fewer than 300 murders in the city in both 2017 and 2018.

Wiley’s approach to solving the issue of gun violence, which predominantly and disproportionately impacts communities of color in the city, emphasizes localized resources and efforts, mental health care, and social mobility. She has taken to saying that her vision includes “putting the public back in public safety,” meaning ensuring that communities are helping to design efforts toward more safety and less violence.

Wiley relates 2020’s surge in gun violence to the inequalities that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed. In addition to catching and dying from the coronavirus at disproportionate rates, New Yorkers of color “have also been hardest hit economically, losing jobs hours and wages, driving stress, trauma and hunger,” the plan points out. “Recent research has shown that gun violence is driven by a lack of social mobility, also called ‘the social determinants of health.’”

Her plan, therefore, focuses on improving employment opportunities and mental health resources while having community members play a role in deciding what solutions work best for them and carrying them out. “We cannot meaningfully talk about reducing and addressing gun violence until we grapple with the tragic conundrum that many times, especially in Black and Brown communities and especially among folks with disabilities, the only recourse people are given to respond to incidents of gun violence are police officers who too often make them less safe,” the plan says, in one of its few mentions of the NYPD beyond removing funds from the department.

Among Wiley’s key policy proposals within the gun violence prevention plan is a “participatory justice fund” that works similarly to participatory budgeting. The $18 million fund would allow communities to develop and choose the violence prevention strategies most appropriate for them, like job training or bringing in negotiators to settle disputes, using money taken from the budget of the NYPD, which is roughly $6 billion annually for operating expenses.

“The participatory justice fund would allocate funds to communities identified by their rates of gun violence and support a democratic process to support existing and new programs that have proven track records or promising evaluation,” the plan says. “This process will also allow impacted communities to identify and develop proposals to reduce gun violence– transforming potential perpetrators into community investors and shareholders of public safety.” Most of these impacted communities, the plan points out, are in the Bronx and Brooklyn.

Including people who have experienced gun violence personally is not only a part of Wiley’s participatory justice fund but also part of her plan to expand therapeutic programs for middle school students, high school students, and adults to reduce gun violence. Notably, Wiley does not mention the problem of gangs and crews, which Mayor de Blasio and the NYPD regularly cite as major factors in the city’s gun violence.

These therapeutic programs would have staff from communities affected by gun violence and would target “individuals with the highest risk [of being involved in gun violence] and need.” “Outreach staff from affected communities” would be responsible for recruiting for the programs.

The program would include mentorship, cognitive behavioral therapy, and motivational interviewing, and people would receive stipends or other incentives to participate. In addition to cognitive behavioral therapy, Wiley also plans to expand dialectical behavioral therapy in schools to help students who have experienced trauma.

As mayor, Wiley would expand community-based and hospital-based “violence interruption” to public health facilities in communities that experience the most gun violence. Violence interruption programs send credible community messengers — often people who have experienced gun violence themselves, at times as perpetrators — to talk with those who have been victims or shooters, or who appear on the verge of getting involved in gangs or other activity that at times leads to involvement in gun violence.

The therapy programs and the violence interruption programs would be funded by money taken from the NYPD and/or Department of Correction and gained through asset forfeiture, the plan says. Wiley also expects the programs to in part pay for themselves because public hospitals would not have to treat as many shooting victims.

Wiley proposes using currently existing workforce development and education programs to create and expand job placements for young adults in communities that experience high rates of gun violence. “This will include doubling the number of slots allocated to youth at risk of involvement with violence in the Summer Youth Employment Program, resulting in 10,000 slots designated for young people at highest risk of being involved in gun violence,” the plan says.

The plan also includes ideas for increasing school safety and youth supervision. Wiley believes school safety should emphasize “a holistic commitment to supporting the well-being of students” rather than relying on discipline and police intervention.

“We will create student support teams that help identify students at risk who need support to manage trauma, bullying, difficulties at home, learning differences and other conditions that can produce inappropriate and dangerous behaviors,” the plan says. “We will expand school guidance counselors and social workers so that every school has these capacities on student support teams, along with teachers, administrators and School Safety Agents, whose position descriptions, training and role will be appropriate to a student support model.”

As mayor, Wiley would also launch “Citywide Safe Corridors,” a program in which community-based organizations “staff street routes from mass transport to high-need schools to provide an extra level of community/adult supervision and guidance” so that fights and robberies don’t occur before and after school. She does not say how many of these she envisions, but notes they would be deployed near “high-need schools” and “potential hotspots for violence.”

Wiley’s gun violence prevention plan, issued December 2, says she “will soon be releasing my full policing plan” and “In order to address gun violence, we need a jobs plan. In the coming months, I will be introducing proposals aimed at getting New Yorkers back to work at good, well-paying and stable jobs.”

'Ending Evictions'
Wiley’s platform to “end evictions” includes supporting an eviction moratorium, expanding legal counsel for those facing eviction, rapidly rehousing those who are evicted, and helping small landlords. 

“We have a homeless crisis that’s a historic one in size and it’s because we need to understand it as an eviction crisis,” Wiley said at a forum about housing earlier in December, not long before she released her plan. Her eviction plan, released December 23, says, “In the coming weeks, we will roll out an ambitious housing plan that looks at these and other housing issues holistically. We must combat deep structural problems with structural solutions and be prepared to respond immediately.”

According to the eviction plan, Wiley doesn’t think the recently passed federal stimulus package, which included $600 stimulus checks to qualifying U.S. residents and an extension on the federal eviction moratorium until January 31, did enough to help those suffering financially because of the COVID-19 pandemic. She supports a long-term moratorium on evictions rather than a “patchwork of temporary eviction moratoriums” that she thinks simply delay an eviction crisis rather than preventing one.

Her plan includes fighting for a stronger eviction moratorium “long enough to ensure that we have averted an eviction crisis that will trigger a massive homelessness stemming from this pandemic.” On December 29, a week after Wiley released her plan, New York banned evictions until May for tenants who can show that they have endured a COVID-19-related hardship — a move that Wiley commended in a statement.

“My eviction plan would build off this legislation,” she said in the statement. “We should create a rapid rehousing program designed to prevent the eviction crisis caused by the pandemic and strengthen tenant protections by increasing legal representation. We also need to address the looming issue of owed back rent once the moratorium is lifted.”

Wiley supports current City Council legislation that would expand the city’s landmark right to counsel law to all tenants facing eviction who make less than 400% of the federal poverty line.

As mayor, she would create a partnership with local law schools and pro-bono legal partners where attorneys represent tenants, the plan says. “The program will provide legal counsel at the building level in cases where a significant number of tenants are facing eviction,” it states.

A Wiley administration would create a citywide rent and tax relief program in which small and nonprofit landlords who comply with the eviction moratorium and tenant protections receive relief for back rent owed to them. This program would be funded with the $251 million designated in the recent federal stimulus package for rental assistance in New York City. Landlords who give tenants the right to renew their leases with limited rent increases would also be eligible for property tax deferment.

Landlords would be considered for this program based on already-existing filings and application processes so that those who cannot navigate a bureaucratic maze are not excluded. For additional application requirements that do exist, the government would provide technical assistance, according to the plan.

The plan includes details for “rapid rehousing” of people evicted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Wiley supports “State action on application fees, security deposit relief for families at 400% of the Federal Poverty Line, and property tax forgiveness for landlords who voluntarily waive these expenses.”

Wiley’s administration would also partner with community organizations to provide housing counseling, case management, and financial planning services for people seeking housing. It would also launch a grant program, funded with help from the federal and state governments, to financially assist people with security deposits, application fees, and other housing-related costs.

The above “rapid rehousing” measures are mentioned alongside Wiley’s promise of “an ambitious housing plan” to come.

Her eviction-related policies depend on federal and state funding, though she also believes ending evictions will save the city money that it would otherwise spend providing shelter to homeless people, an expense currently in the billions each year.

Wiley also hopes to create new tax revenue sources to help fund these proposals. These may include, the plan says, “a pied a terre tax, a vacancy tax, a mansion tax, and a stock transfer tax.” These taxes would mostly fall on the very wealthy and need approval from the state capital.

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by Lauren Hakimi, Gotham Gazette
   

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Ben Max contributed to this article.



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