Leslie Lin enjoys learning English so much that she has never studied so hard in her life.
A retired music teacher from Taiwan, Lin is a permanent resident of the United States who decided to settle down in Flushing, Queens just a year ago. Before that, she had spent five years traveling between Taiwan and New York every six month in order to maintain her green card. Learning English is one of the main reasons she says she decided to settle down.
“I didn’t get a chance to study overseas when I was young,” Lin said. “Now I am enjoying it so much that I never miss a class”.
Lin, currently taking ESL course at the Flushing Public Library, is one of countless immigrants trying to learn English in their new adopted home in New York.
Now, Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott announced that the city would spend $1.8 million for a new initiative called the Immigrant Family Literacy Program, which will fund English classes, as well as legal services for immigrants and workers.. The initiative won immediate applause from immigrants. But many said it is not enough.
“It’s great that the city is providing money to fund those classes,” said Lin, who attends five hours of classes at the Flushing Public Library. “But whenever there is a new class, the line is so long and they put a lot of people on the waiting list.” She was informed two months after the class began that she finally got a slot because someone dropped out.
But not many immigrants are as lucky as Lin, who has a pension. To many immigrants, being able to speak English means a better job, better opportunities for their children -- a better life.
“Some of my neighbors could not even tell the difference between the â€W’ and â€M’ on the parking sign and they end up getting tickets,” said Lin. “English is the primary language here. If many people can’t speak it, it will eventually bring down the overall competitiveness of the country.”
According to the Immigrant Family Literacy Alliance, an umbrella group of immigrant social service providers, components of immigrant family literacy may include ESL classes, basic adult education, GED preparation, parenting classes, activities for parents and children together and so on.
A recent Department of City Planning study showed that a record-high 2.9 million of New Yorkers are foreign-born, constituting 38 percent of the city’s population. Many social services organizations said the demand is far greater than what the funding could provide.
“We’ll take whatever we get, but we could always use more,” said Elyse Rudolph, executive director of the Literacy Assistance Center. “Immigration has always been one of the major forces behind this city’s vitality.” She added that there are more than a million children and adults in need of help in English but the mayor’s new funding, combining an additional $900,000 in private funding, could only provide for about 1,000 families.
Some immigrant support groups say the new initiative is long overdue and call for a substantial increase.
“As Mayor Bloomberg’s first and only immigrant funding initiative since he came into office, it dramatically falls short of what is needed both in terms of the dollars and in the scope of services it funds,” said Chung-Wha Hong, deputy director of New York Immigration Coalition. The coalition is urging the mayor and the City Council to provide $10 million in the city budget to meet the need.
Meanwhile, some community leaders call for more classes that would fit the working immigrants’ schedule so they can fully take advantage of them.
“At current funding levels, tens of thousands of immigrants are turned away from English classes because community groups do not have the resources to offer enough classes, especially the evening and weekend classes that working immigrants need,” said Ana Maria Archila, executive director of Latin American Integration Center in Woodside, Queens.
While many immigrants come here to pursue a better economic future, some are also looking to find a sense of belonging.
Regina Kim, a housewife originally from Korea who attended English class in Queens, said learning English also offers some comfort and connection to American society.
“We immigrants are not going anywhere,” said Kim, who arrived 15 years ago with little English skill. “Now I can read books and watch television. It makes me happy.”
A native of Taipei, Taiwan, Larry Tung is a frequent contributor to the Citizen. Â
• C. Virginia Fields: A Mayor Needs to Listen |
On April 6, 2005, the four Democratic candidates for mayor - Gifford Miller, C. Virginia Fields, Fernando Ferrer, and Anthony Weiner - spoke at the Greater Voices mayoral forum, organized by several gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender groups in the city. The following is an edited transcript of the candidate’s opening remarks and a sample of some of the questions from the audience.
This is an exciting year and an exciting opportunity because we have a chance here in New York City to do something important for our entire country. You know, we’ve forgotten what it’s like to have a mayor in New York who’s a real progressive leader for urban areas in our country in general. Like many of you, I got on buses to swing states, went to phone banks and called Florida and Ohio, and was disappointed with the results of the last election. But I don’t know how we can expect to win Ohio if we can’t win back the most Democratic city in the United States of America.
We have a chance this year to send a clear message that we’re going to force this country to deal with urban issues, because the mayor of the City of New York is the urban leader in our country. Until we have a Democratic, progressive mayor, we’re never going to have conversations about how we educate kids in urban areas, about how we make sure that we protect cities from foreign attack, and about how we deal with equal rights for gays and lesbians and civil rights issues generally. We’re never going to have that conversation because the mayor of the City of New York for the last 12 years has been apologizing for policies and practices that have bankrupted not just New York City, but urban areas all over the country. When I go all over the city and I talk to people, I see people looking for new leadership and here at home and around our country.
This mayor is making the wrong choices for our city’s future. He has chosen to focus all of his political energies and billions of taxpayer dollars on the construction of a football stadium that we don’t want and we don’t need. He could be putting that capital, both political and financial, into building schools and protecting subway service, and building the affordable housing we need.
It’s the wrong choice to have focused all of these energies and to have shoved this sweetheart deal through, when the right choice is an open and competitive process that would yield billions of dollars for the MTA, and when the right choice is to build housing and commercial developments on that site.
He’s been making the wrong choice on our schools, choosing to focus on bureaucratic reshuffling instead of the fundamentals that we know work in education. I think the best thing that this mayor has done is get control of our schools system. The best. And the worst thing that he has done is squander that control. After more than three years, we have not only the right, but the responsibility to hold him accountable for those results.
What are the results? Attendance is down. Test scores are off. Parents are more disconnected that ever. Teachers are leaving the system in droves. Violence is an increasing problem. And it’s because he’s focusing his time and his energy on the wrong things and mismanaging the things that he’s focusing on.
What’s the right choice? It’s actually not as complicated as this mayor and his chancellor sometimes suggest. We know what works in education. It’s actually pretty simple. Think about it: smaller class sizes, more quality teachers, safer schools, and stronger after-school programs. That’s it. If we focus on those four things, combined with the Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision, which creates the opportunity for a real leap forward, we can truly improve our schools and make this a city of opportunity for our children.
This is a mayor who has focused on the wrong choices on jobs, declaring victory on unemployment. I hear him go all over the city and say, “We’re doing great; unemployment has never been so low,” at the same time that he and I and you all know that 49 percent of [male] African Americans in the city, and 43 percent of [male] Latinos in the city don’t have jobs. What’s the right choice? The right choice is to focus on job training for the formerly incarcerated, programs to keep kids in schools, and give capital and training support for entrepreneurs and community scholars. That’s what the City Council has done under my leadership.
This mayor has made the wrong choices on LGBT rights. He has chosen to spend almost four years ducking the issue of gay marriage, telling us that his personal opinion doesn’t matter. He’s mayor of the City of New York, and he says his personal opinion on the central struggle for civil rights for LGBT New Yorkers and Americans doesn’t matter.
Now we finally got a court decision that many of us fought for here in New York, and he tells us his personal opinion. And it turns out he’s right; his personal opinion didn’t matter. Because once he tells us what his personal opinion is, he uses the weight of his office and my and your taxpayer dollars to go into court, and fight against equal rights for New Yorkers. He actually submitted papers in which he compared gay civil marriages to allowing marriages between uncles and nephews. It’s outrageous. What’s the right choice? The right choice is to stand up and fight for equal rights for New Yorkers.
I have been for gay marriage since I ran for office for the first time in January of 1996. More than a year ago, I stood on the steps of City Hall with many of you and called upon the mayor to issue marriage licenses immediately. The right choice is to issue those marriage licenses, to stand up and say, “The equal protection laws of the State of New York applies to LGBT New Yorkers, and I, as mayor - if you choose me, if I’m so fortunate to be elected - will issue those marriage licenses immediately, because it’s the right thing to do.
And finally, this mayor has made the wrong choice, over and over and over again, choosing to roll over to a president and to a governor who do not have the city’s best interests at heart, instead of choosing to stand up and keep fighting for our fair share. When this mayor came into office, we were sending $20 billion more to Washington than we got back every year. And now, more than three years later, we’re sending $24 billion more to Washington than we get back every year. He took a situation that nobody thought could get any worse, and made it worse.
What’s so frustrating to me about this, is that I know that this can change. It has to change. Think about it. We live in the most powerful city in the world. New York City has the most powerful business community, the most powerful labor community, and the most powerful political donors. We’re the most powerful city in the world and we have to act like we’re powerless because we’re paralyzed by a lack of leadership.
What’s required is for somebody to roll up their sleeves and bring together those powerful business, labor, and political leaders, with our delegations, and say, “Enough is enough. I am the leader of the City of New York, and we are going to change this together.” And if we did, if we could get some of that, if we weren’t starting $24 billion behind, think what we could accomplish as a city.
Now, we know that the mayor has made the wrong choices, but I’m not going to talk to you about his wrong choices, I’m going to talk to you about the right choices that I’ve laid out. How do you know that I’ll make those right choices, because I’m asking you to support me for mayor? You know I’ll make the right choices as mayor because I’ve already been making the right choices as Speaker.
As Speaker of the New York City Council for the last three and a half years I’ve brought together the most diverse legislature in the country, behind great goals that people said could never be accomplished, during the toughest time this city has ever faced and accomplished them.
I’ve passed the first city Earned Income Tax Credit that helped lift 700,000 people from poverty toward prosperity.
I passed the first real living wage law that helped 50,000 people whose jobs were created by city tax dollars provide for their families.
I’ve passed the first real lead paint legislation in the history of our city or anywhere else in this country that will protect children without driving the cost of housing through the roof. This was something everyone said couldn’t be done.
And over and over again, I’ve stood up for principles and progressive values I believe in, passing the equal benefits law over this mayor’s veto, the Dignity for All Students act, the first transgender civil rights act, the only domestic partnership recognition act in the country that recognizes other jurisdictions’ marriages, civil unions, domestic partnerships. Through the toughest budgets we have ever faced, I have found money to fund LGBT groups that are doing extraordinary work all over the city. I have also put the rest of our values and principles in place: putting education first, fighting back the mayor’s cuts for education, protecting our senior centers and child health clinics from closure, and still doing it in a fiscally responsible way.
And if you elect me as mayor, I’ll continue to make those right choices for our city’s future. I know we can do this. I know we can. We don’t have to settle. We can have a mayor who will stand up and fight for every community in the city, no less the LGBT community. And I can only do it with your help. I can’t do it alone. And so I’m here to ask you to support me for mayor, but also to ask you to get involved. This is our city. I love this city. I know you love this city. We can make it better. We can make it more just. We can make it stronger. But we can only do it together.
QUESTION: Mr. Speaker, there are only 30 city-funded beds for LGBT homeless youth; I want to know what the city can do to provide for these kids. Will you commit yourself to increasing funds in this year’s budget and what other steps can you take?
Miller: Good question and an important issue. As speaker, I have certainly fought hard to increase funding for groups that address the concerns of LGBT homeless youth. Certainly, there is a considerable population whose needs are not being met, and I will seek to ways in the budget to increase funding for those needs.
QUESTION: There was a gay bashing up in the Bronx a few weeks ago. As mayor, what can you do to address this problem?
Miller: As speaker of the council, I have repeatedly supported funding for organizations that deal with violence against LGBT people. My staff also works closely with the police department on these incidents.
More broadly, we have to make this a city that banishes that sort of hatred and bigotry. We need a mayor who not only supports the concept of equality for all New Yorkers, but provides leadership to address it. Ultimately, gay bashing comes from bigotry. That why it is so offensive that the mayor spent four years saying that his opinion on gay marriage doesn’t matter. It marginalizes the community and the struggle.
The mayor of the City of New York is required to have an opinion on everything! You can’t even imagine the variety of things the mayor of New York is required to have an opinion on - and this is the one on which the mayor says, “My personal opinion isn’t important.” That’s wrong. And it creates an environment where it is OK to overlook bigotry, to overlook discrimination.
We live in a society that systematically discriminates against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. LGBT New Yorkers and LGBT Americans do not have the same rights that everyone else has. As long as we accept this and say “it would be nice if we could extend equal rights to all Americans and all New Yorkers,” then we support an environment where some New Yorkers don’t have the same value as others.
QUESTION: Once a month, Union Square Park becomes a war zone with a massive police presence surrounding the park and arresting people on bicycles. Will you end the existing NYPD/Bloomberg policy and work with Critical Mass they way they used to before the Republican Convention?
Miller: People have a right to ride a bike in this city, but they have to abide by the laws. We used to make it possible for people to march and do all things across the city before this mayor took office and the RNC came to the city. I was critical at the time and continued to be critical of the way the mayor welcomed the Republican National Convention but did not seem to understand that he had the responsibility to welcome those whose views were not on display at Madison Square Garden. It was OK for people to go to a Dave Matthews Band in Central Park, so it ought to have been OK to have protestors exercise their First Amendment rights in Central Park. We have to have a police department that works with groups to accomplish the kinds of activities connected to that.
Other Candidates Speeches:
• C. Virginia Fields: A Mayor Needs to Listen
• Fernando Ferrer: Human Rights For All
• Anthony Weiner: Democrats With a Big and Small “D”
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• Gifford Miller: The Right Choices for the City's Future |
On April 6, 2005, the four Democratic candidates for mayor - Gifford Miller, C. Virginia Fields, Fernando Ferrer, and Anthony Weiner - spoke at the Greater Voices mayoral forum, organized by several gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender groups in the city. The following is an edited transcript of the candidate’s opening remarks and a sample of some of the questions from the audience.
It was looking forward to this forum and saying hello to people with whom I have been working for over 20 years. It has been 22 years since I first cast my vote [for gay rights legislation] in the City Council. It was the first landmark piece of legislation, guaranteeing lesbians and gays civil rights and human rights. After that I have talked to the issues of HIV and AIDS treatment and prevention. [I have worked] to take the fight out of the press releases and into the Board of Education, into our hospitals and non-profit organizations, to stand up for domestic partnerships, to stand up for marriage equality. I left the City Council in 1987 to become Bronx borough president, but my activism did not stop there. I was proud to sit on the first LGBT task force in the borough, to fund the first Lavender Center in the borough, and to help organize the first gay pride parade down the Grand Concourse, which I led as the grand marshall.
Sometimes people have told me over the years, “You don’t make an awful lot about your record.” Well I don’t think you deserve gold stars for doing the right thing.
I know what it is to come from a community that does not enjoy its full civil and human rights and have them denied from time to time. I know what it is to sit in the City Council and hear others try to make false distinctions between the someone else’s civil rights and their own. There is no distinction. If you believe in human rights, you believe in human rights. There is no gold star for that. You do what you must do, forge the coalitions that you must.
Whether it’s a discharge motion, or the extension of domestic partnership rights to those you do business with the city, or the rights of the transgendered - for me it fits into same category. You cannot believe in some human rights and not for all.
There was a tragic murder that took place in the city a few weeks ago. Rashawn Brazell was not only murdered, but dismembered, simply because he was gay. It is a stark and sobering reminder to all of us, that while this can happen in this city, we can’t stop talking about human rights. I won’t say anything more about that particular murder, but I will say the following. There are some who say, “I can’t do this, because we are not prepared for it,” but I do believe that people who believe fervently in human rights make the world ready for them.
That is what I tried to do as the borough president of the Bronx for 15 years - make the Bronx ready. You have to make people ready for human rights, and I prefer to lead on that issue rather than follow.
QUESTION: In March 1986, the gay rights bill passed out of committee by a vote of 5 to 1. On March 20, it passed [the full council] by 23 to 9 to 3. It was a historic vote, and it took 16 years to get that bill through. You did not sponsor the bill. There were 15 sponsors and you would not sponsor it. I would like that addressed.
Second, [in May 1986] there was a bill introduced into the City Council that decimated the gay rights bill in terms of housing. Ruth Messinger was quoted as saying that that bill would make our community into second-class citizens. You were one of the people who voted to weaken the gay rights bill. Ed Koch vetoed that bill and it didn’t become law. I would like you to explain that vote.
Last, our enemy number one is [Bronx State Senator] Ruben Diaz, Sr. and last year you did cable TV commercials in support of his State Senate campaign. Can you explain that one?
Ferrer: Let me take the third one first because that is the easiest one to address. When it is between him and a former criminal defendant [Pedro Espada Jr.] who was charged with ripping off poor people and especially individuals with AIDS in the Bronx - it was easy for me! It was easy for me! Choices are seldom perfect, but you make them.
To get back to 1986, I am so delighted that you mentioned it. But you failed to mention that was on the General Welfare Committee [that voted in favor of it] and you failed to mention that I debated the bill in spite of having my sexuality questioned and threats of fire bombing on my house. But I proudly debated and voted for that bill in 1986, because, as I said then and today, you can’t be for some human rights and not all.
As for your second question. Just so we all know what this question is all about, it concerns a side agreement to that landmark anti-discrimination law that I helped pass 19 years ago. That amendment was part of a keeping together a fragile coalition that we needed in order make that law a law. I want to call your attention to an editorial in the New York Times on May 3, 1986 that said exactly that. I have a copy here, and I will quote “a fragile coalition for passage was thus preserved.” Choices aren’t only perfect, but I am proud to have played a role not only in the coalition, but preserving that coalition.
If this about a record that goes back 22 years, then that is more than most people have spent in public service. I have been at this fight a long time. And I am serious about making progress on human rights. And if you are serious about making progress, you have to focus on what matters. And those are things I have been working on beginning 22 years ago.
I know what it is like to be the target of bigots. I recognize it every time I shave in the morning. I know what it is like to get late night phone calls threatening you and your family’s safety in your own home and requiring police protection. Despite that, I would do it again gladly in a second.
Q: I work in social services with LGBT homeless youth. We only have 22 emergency beds in the city and 15 to 20 transitional beds. But the city funds a very large Catholic organization where our youth are harassed physically, sexually, and verbally. They would rather sleep on the train than go to this provider. If you become mayor, how would you help this population?
Ferrer: Today, homelessness in general is approaching the record numbers we saw in 1986 and 1987. It’s approaching what we saw during the Great Depression in this city. As I said when I was borough president and Mayor Dinkins had a commission to discuss homelessness, we can’t treat homelessness and homeless individuals and families as one amorphous blob.
People have different needs and different reasons for being homeless in the first place. LGBT youth need to be supported. You can’t put them in the same facilities as so many others because it will only compound their problems and compromise their safety. The city owes them more.
I believe in differentiated and supportive housing. By the way, it isn’t only LGBT youth who are at risk at the Franklin Avenue Armory. It’s everyone. There are a great number of people who refuse shelter, not because they are not crazy, but they fear for their safety. This city isn’t doing enough to keep them safe and secure. As mayor, you can count on me.
Q: I would like for you to clarify your characterization of the Amadou Diallo case? It is my simple interpretation that it was a sort of retreating from your original position that it was a criminal matter but that now it is civil.
Ferrer: First of all, it was no retreat. Second, in spite of what you might read in some newspapers in daily circulation that have a point of view - one of them especially has a point of view and it is far right of anyone in this room - I acknowledged already that I used some careless words and I have taken responsibility for that.
But I also acknowledged in the same remarks before police audiences and civilian audiences that the reason I got arrested with cuffs behind my back, was because I believe that divisive policies by the police commissioner and the mayor contributed to the police failures that night. The extension of the Street Crimes Unit and all of the other things that we know happened on Wheeler Avenue that night. And I have addressed those issues.
I have come here to talk about the things that New Yorkers really need to focus on - full human and civil rights, decent and affordable housing, good schools without excuses, the gargantuan waste of our money for a West Side Stadium when we should be dealing with the crisis of affordability in this city.
And while we are talking about the police, there are 6,000 fewer police in our ranks today than at the end of 2000, and we’re wondering if this city will be ready to face the next problem - God forbid we should face it at all. Those are the things we need to talk about in this city.
Q: Follow up question on police. I submit that we are wasting huge amounts of money on the last Friday of every month with the police surrounding Union Square Park…. Will you change the existing policy of the mayor and police commissioner in working with the group Critical Mass?
Ferrer: I think the theory of preemption is as bankrupt in New York as it has proved to be in Iraq.
Other Candidates Speeches:
• Gifford Miller: The Right Choices for the City's Future
• C. Virginia Fields: A Mayor Needs to Listen
• Anthony Weiner: Democrats With a Big and Small “D”
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