Council Member Donovan Richards, the author (photo: Jeff Reed/City Council)
The lack of coronavirus testing sites in poor communities and particularly communities of color is costing black and brown New Yorkers their lives. There is no clearer example of institutional racism than the different infection and mortality rates during this crisis. It is a scar on our nation and our city. In areas of New York City that already experience the highest rates of asthma, diabetes, and other underlying conditions, this virus has already proven to be a death sentence.
Furthermore, it is people of color who are the essential workers keeping society going in this incredibly challenging time. But as the state and city grapple in the near future with restarting the economy, communities of color already starved for capital because of institutional insidiousness will rebound at a slower pace and face greater challenges.
Proactive measures such as identifying those who have the coronavirus but are asymptomatic and those who are free of the virus will prove critical in flattening the curve in the hardest hit areas of our city and giving us a fighting chance. Every country that has managed this crisis has done so with mass testing. This is step one in rebounding. We must contain the virus to stop the spread, and monitor the virus to turn the corner.
This is why leaders throughout our city are calling on the de Blasio administration to immediately ramp up testing, and it must be done in communities of color first given that so many of our neighbors are those who’ve been commuting to work while so many others stay home.
How is it that neighborhoods from Corona to Southeast Queens to the Rockaways have not one testing site?
We know who has found it is easy to get tested. The wealthy and well-connected, professional athletes, TV personalities, and many others, but sadly average Americans risk their health waiting in line for the limited testing available to less powerful New Yorkers.
We live in the epicenter and we are not testing. The outrage has no words. It is a scandal and it is costing us lives. Imagine if the epicenter were only in Manhattan? We would be testing door-to-door, with federal, state, and city focus unlike what we’ve seen.
Your socio-economic status shouldn’t determine whether you have access to a COVID-19 test. Frankly it shouldn’t determine the quality of your health care. But the reality right now is the difference between life and death.
And while I won’t pretend to be an expert who knows all the solutions for how to defeat COVID-19, I don’t have to be to look at the places that have successfully contained the virus and know what essential steps seem clear. New York should look to Taiwan and Germany, for example, and move quickly to emulate them.
Their successes have largely hinged on effective testing and tracking strategies. The more micro-data we have as a city, the better our chances of defeating COVID-19.
This is why universal testing for all must be taken more seriously by the de Blasio administration. So far the mayor has been reluctant to expand testing, because of a limited supply coupled with his belief that more testing will increase the spread of the virus in neighborhoods due to more symptomatic people traveling outside the home. The argument doesn’t hold up well when hospitals are being overwhelmed by people rightfully showing up at their doors begging to be tested. If you don’t believe me try visiting Elmhurst, Jamaica, or St. John’s Hospitals, among others.
The administration’s wishful thinking and calls for social distancing won’t stem the tide for black and brown communities, who often don’t have the luxury of isolating in a separate bedroom from other family members.
For those of us who grew up or are growing up now in a one-bedroom apartment with several family members in limited space, it isn’t hard to understand that everyone in many households have been compromised when an infected person is instructed to just go or stay home.
This especially endangers our vulnerable seniors, and this is why we must know who is infected but asymptomatic immediately. This can only be achieved through testing.
The bottom line is that without universal testing for all, this pandemic will be slow to recede tremendously in the most vulnerable corners of our city. And while I recognize that the federal government has been a complete failure, I want to see the city and the state do more. It’s good to hear the mayor and governor say widespread testing will be key to reopening schools and businesses, but we need more testing now in our communities of color.
The racial and ethnic data finally released by the de Blasio administration this week showed terrible if unsurprising disproportionate impact in communities of color, and the response from the mayor was welcome but late and short of what is needed. Black and brown communities need testing now.
In the face of the damning racial and ethnic data released by the city and state on Wednesday, the governor’s Thursday announcement that new testing sites in communities of color, including two in Queens, will open next week is welcome, though they will be by appointment only.
Resources such as access to food and rental assistance must also be concentrated in underserved communities. Anything less is not an option, if we want to successfully flatten the curve and save the lives of every New Yorker in our city.
Eventually, when the smoke clears and our city returns to any semblance of normalcy, there will be no shortage of public hearings and legislative packages passed at all levels of government. The government must be focused on demographic data and increase spending to improve the quality of life in low-income communities now and in the aftermath of this crisis.
Otherwise, the city will be incapable of ever stopping the spread of any virus that finds itself in the so-called progressive capital of the world. Because as the old saying goes, when America gets a cold, communities of color get pneumonia.
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City Council Member Donovan Richards represents parts of Queens. On Twitter @DRichards13.
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Young people are again in highly precarious positions as the economy crumbles (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)
If we have learned anything from the Great Recession just a decade ago, it’s that young adult generations that enter the labor market in an economic downturn are at a serious disadvantage, impacting their ability to successfully launch a career and reach financial security and self-sufficiency like the generations before them. Members of the Millennial generation, people who came of age during the Great Recession, make 20 percent less in wages and have a net wealth that’s half as much as their Baby Boomer parents.
Although it’s important not to pile on the fear, hysteria, and unknown brought on by the new coronavirus, COVID-19, it’s equally critical that we are diligently participating in and watchdogging how policymakers respond to the economic fallout from the global pandemic -- with nearly 10 million Americans filing for unemployment insurance in just a two-week period and nearly 60 percent of Americans fearing they will lose their jobs. This is especially true as officials at all levels of government put forward major New Deal-style investments and policy reforms that can shape what the future looks like for generations to come.
Without a radically new approach to level the playing field for today’s younger generation, the fear of generational inequality will become a reality in a post-coronavirus economy.
What is most concerning about the new economic downturn is that prior to COVID-19, the economy was not actually working for everyone, which means any efforts led by policymakers in a recovery should be careful not to focus on reverting to the pre-coronavirus status quo, which was driving greater inequality across the United States. Nine of the ten most-held jobs in the state, collectively held by 1.7 million New Yorkers, pay less than $32,000 a year, leaving many New Yorkers especially vulnerable to the immediate and long-term economic fallout wrought by the coronavirus.
Homeownership rates in New York have also steadily declined, raising questions about the financial well-being of families, especially younger families that represent the future of our state.
Unfortunately, New Yorkers largely lack the necessary skills that could attract industries with good jobs as 42 percent of New Yorkers have a high school diploma or less in school achievement. More than 2 million New Yorkers have some college credits but not a degree, likely leaving them with debt and nothing to show for it. These realities are worrisome considering that by 2027 70 percent of jobs are estimated to require some type of postsecondary education or training, and we know that the more education and training you have, the higher your earning potential is.
For young adults, prior to COVID-19, the statewide unemployment rate, those without a job but actively looking for work, was 20.7 percent for 16- to 19-year-olds and 11.6 percent for 20- to 24-year-olds, a troubling trend in the wrong direction, since we know that early work experience increases earning potential and better prepares rising generations to enter an increasingly competitive labor force. Yet career and technical education and work-based learning in the K–12 system is largely treated as a nice-to-have, even as the economy has continued to make clear it's a must have.
In New York City, a recent analysis done for JobsFirstNYC by The Community Service Society of New York found that 16 percent of 18-30-year-olds were out-of-school and out-of-work, a number likely to balloon as unemployment continues to skyrocket in the coronavirus fallout. What’s more is that younger New Yorkers are leaving in droves, while the population continues to grow older, raising questions about what New York’s economy and labor force will eventually look like.
As Annie Lowery, a reporter at The Atlantic, points out in her sobering article “The Great Affordability Crisis Breaking America,” the costs associated with college, housing, child care, and health care are rising significantly faster than wages, further hardening growing inequality across the country and especially in places with higher costs of living already, like New York.
Long story short is that despite record growth with a bullish stock market, high GDP, and low unemployment, the economy was simply not working for the majority of Americans. All of these realities provide us with a baseline understanding of the deep and growing inequalities that existed prior to the unraveling economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The question is what does a post-coronavirus economy look like and how do we begin to rebuild the American Compact for rising generations?
To start, our elected leaders at every level need to adopt a new paradigm of radical equity that rebuilds the economy, and with it our approach to education and workforce development. One that is future-focused on realizing shared economic prosperity by reviving a steadily fading middle class. This new paradigm must also explicitly renew the broken promise made to rising generations who, with the economic fallout of COVID-19, will almost certainly have experienced significant disadvantages as they launch their adult life in a deep recession.
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Kevin Stump is Senior Vice President at JobsFirstNYC and co-chair of the Invest In Skills NY coalition. On Twitter @KevinStump, @JobsFirstNYC & #InvestInSkillsNY.
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Major questions about voting during coronavirus hang in the balance (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)
As the American people hunker down under a patchwork of evolving emergency orders and health directives, our communities are grappling with extraordinary circumstances disrupting and reorienting our lives and the economy. To flatten the curve of community spread during the increasingly deadly COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Cuomo has placed New York on PAUSE; Health officials have issued stay-at-home and social distancing directives; schools, playgrounds, and non-essential facilities are closed. Further restrictions may be imposed. The duration uncertain.
But when it comes to the fate of civil rights during states of emergency, historically the paradigm is less uncertain—there is an irresistible tendency across the globe for authorities to suspend the normal order in the name of imminent, amorphous threats of unknown duration, leading to the incremental curtailment of freedoms that we take for granted (like unfettered travel, transportation, assembly, and enterprise to name a few). The new normal makes prioritization of due process seem quaint, but it is even more critical when the exigencies of the moment impose security measures that inadvertently raise old voter-access hurdles to new, perhaps insurmountable heights.
In this case we can dispense with skepticism over the emergency itself. The pandemic is most certainly real. But already, COVID-19 has scrambled our democratic process. The Democratic National Committee has postponed its convention as 15 states are postponing 2020 primaries and some are adjusting voting policies so residents aren’t forced to choose between safety and casting a ballot. That’s the goal.
Now that Governor Cuomo has postponed New York’s April presidential primary and several special elections until June, and gone even further to implement universal absentee ballot access by executive order due to the coronavirus concerns, there is a timely opportunity to rebalance and calibrate reasonable access to civil rights for the moment we are in—a perpetual state of emergency during pivotal 2020 elections. To do so, policymakers in Albany and administrators at the State Board of Elections and our 58 county boards are grappling with at least three significant voter access questions.
First, what changes will need to be made to the traditional election day footprint, from polling place siting and layouts to staffing, to comply with public health directives that will continue to evolve? Second, is there a feasible, fair, and secure way to expand and scale New York’s traditionally limited vote-by-mail program as an alternative to voting in person? And third, what role should New York’s new nine-day early voting period play in calibrating this balance between public safety and voter access?
As counties prepare for consolidated June primaries and the 2020 general election, they do so amid much uncertainty about the trajectory and time-horizon of the COVID-19 pandemic. Will this all be a distant memory by late June? Will the pandemic be with us in November, depressing turnout and spreading even further, as occurred in the 1918 midterms?
Without the benefit of hindsight, policy-makers must plan for a circumstance where it may be impossible to staff or unwise to deploy the traditional sprawling election day footprint, with voters assigned to one of thousands of polling places across the state, many of which are sited in facilities deemed too dangerous or vulnerable to be open to the public today, and based on siting schematics and occupancy assumptions unworkable under the public health directives currently in place.
While we are eager to embrace modern, tech-based approaches to our antiquated voting laws that would obviate much of this conversation, mobile voting is in its infancy and comes with documented and unresolved security pitfalls while perpetuating the digital divide in our communities. Moreover, without any infrastructure in place, it could be folly to roll out an entirely new and untested system now. So what tools are actually available during the present emergency?
To prepare, the State Board of Elections should develop and issue a continuity guidance, to be implemented as needed, that outlines and directs the tools counties should use to maintain access, protect public health, and responsibly reduce the election day footprint.
First and foremost, local administrators must embrace early voting and the vote-by-mail alternatives available as the principle means for shifting turnout density away from Election Day.
However, New York has a longstanding culture of Election Day voting and is not equipped to entirely jettison that model now. Given that reality, county boards will need to reassess siting plans and have the flexibility to consolidate and reallocate election districts, polling places, and resources, with timely notice of the changes provided to impacted voters. In some cases, alternative sites will be needed so counties can relocate polling places away from the most vulnerable facilities. Boards should adjust traditional staffing plans to account for less poll worker recruitment and apply any resources saved to boosting absentee and early voting processing capacity.
As sites are evaluated through this lens, resident voters of impacted facilities must be proactively offered viable alternatives to vote. Cleaning and preventive measures should comport with the CDC Guidance on preventing transmission at polling places, including the spacing and cleaning of equipment and high-touch areas, the use of protective gear by poll workers and provision of hand sanitizer and single-use instruments to voters. The U.S. Election Advisory Commission has also issued cleaning guidance for election equipment.
With regard to expanding and scaling vote-by-mail, the governor's new executive order is a great start, but the state Legislature should return to Albany this spring and codify a public health exception. In March the governor had signaled his approval for such an expansion in his Executive Order 202.2 as a result of COVID-19 concerns. The order permitted any voter to vote by mail “due to the prevalence and community spread of COVID-19” such that “temporary illness...shall include the potential for contraction of the COVID-19 virus” and made accommodations to streamline the application process slightly by allowing voters to apply by email or fax.
In anticipation of conducting 2020 elections in this manner, the bipartisan leadership of the Erie County Board of Elections modified its absentee ballot request form, but uniformity here is highly preferable. Beyond merely extending and expanding this order, policymakers and boards need to use this time well to responsibly address several voting rights concerns and administrative feasibility issues.
To expand vote-by-mail opportunities effectively and fairly, the State should cover the costs of return postage for applications and ballots so voters are not forced to buy stamps. Because New Yorkers have not traditionally voted by mail, they should be invited and encouraged to do so for the duration of the COVID-19 emergency. From there, things get more complicated.
Policymakers in New York have been exploring the feasibility and legality of providing every voter with an absentee ballot without the need for a request, as five states do. But those systems were built and scaled up over time, require significant state resources and advanced planning, and are not a panacea embraced by all communities. Indeed, the Brennan Center for Justice argues that “in-person voting options consistent with public health must also be maintained.”
At a minimum, the county boards should be directed to include notice about a vote-by-mail alternative ahead of each election event. Administrators should streamline ballot requests, a multistep process that often involves two or more snail-mail exchanges. To do so, boards should mail registered voters a postage-prepaid application form with a notice about the upcoming election as well as a link or QR code to permit submission of requests online as an alternative. These methods may permit boards to extend the deadline to request a ballot, and all completed ballots should be counted so long as they substantially comply with formalities and are postmarked by election day, dropped off at polling places, or curbside at the BOE and other convenient locations. Envelopes should be self-adhesive or voters could be instructed not to lick them.
Under such an approach, inactive and recently-purged voters should be sent the mailer as well, along with an affidavit (provisional) ballot if they do apply. Careful, health-based accommodations will be needed for ballot delivery to facilities housing vulnerable residents.
Other traditional voter protection considerations, like safeguards for persons with disabilities and language assistance for New York’s diverse communities take on new dimensions as more New Yorkers vote by mail, as does the absence of a tracking system for mail ballots and ballot requests. These are not new or hypothetical concerns; boards need to work hand-in-hand with the Post Office to address them.
For many reasons, expanding vote-by-mail represents part of the 2020 equation for shifting turnout density away from Election Day, along with early voting. Fortunately, New York’s early voting law took effect in 2019 and will be available to all voters across the state for nine days this June and this fall, for at least 60 hours. Most counties allow voters to cast a ballot at any site. Localities can always provide more early voting locations and hours than the law requires, and in 2019 eighteen localities large and small, urban and rural, red, blue, and purple did so for the convenience of more than a quarter-million New Yorkers who voted early. Let’s build on that success.
Long before there was COVID-19, it was obvious to most New Yorkers that directing millions of us to an assigned poll site on the single Election Day was poor policy that placed undue stress on administrators while creating hardship and disincentive for voters. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy provided another reason to avoid placing all our democratic eggs in one basket.
Enter COVID-19, and the withering arguments against early voting—against de-densifying crowded Election Day poll sites by spreading voter turnout across time and space seem ridiculous. And yet there is concern that some administrators who were lukewarm about early voting to begin with may refuse to lean into these programs now, and instead attempt to contract them.
As daunting as some of these challenges may seem, few of them are actually new. What is new is the public health emergency, the directives to social distance, and the widespread consensus in favor of remedial actions like those discussed here. Moving in this direction would increase access, fairness, uniformity, and predictability for voters, administrators, campaigns, and officials.
Doing so now, well in advance of upcoming contests, will provide administrators with as much lead time as possible to plan and scale up capacity for increased vote-by-mail processing; will provide campaigns with clear rules before they finalize voter mobilization and turnout strategies; and will allow community-based organizations to educate the public about the changes. Together we can protect public health and exercise our rights, but the time for the State to act is now.
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City Council Member Ben Kallos represents parts of Manhattan. Jarret Berg is the co-founder of Vote Early NY. On Twitter @BenKallos & @JarretBerg.
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