Youth Summer Jobs
Every year, advocates for youth in the city must go begging for money to support the Summer Youth Employment Program. After several rallies this year in Albany and at City Hall, as well as constant pressure from community groups like the Neighborhood Family Services Coalition and United Neighborhood Houses who together sponsor the Campaign for Summer Jobs, Governor George Pataki agreed in mid-June to release $25 million from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funding to be used for summer jobs for teens.
Sixty percent ($15 million) of that sum would go to New York City's Summer Youth Employment Program and counties around the state would receive the rest. State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver announced the governor's decision, crediting the state legislature, advocacy groups, and the teens that showed up for the rallies. Everyone was pleased.
And then something went wrong.
The governor's bill allocating the TANF money had other items attached to it that didn't go over with the legislature, so it was sent back and another bill was submitted. This one was approved by the senate, but by then the assembly had recessed for the summer, and the bill never passed. Both sides are blaming the other, but it is the teenagers who will suffer the consequences.
"It is possible that the state may fritter away $25 million" said Susan Stamler from United Neighborhood Houses of New York. "The governor could step in and pay for it out of the general funds and get the money back in the fall." That is the only way to save the situation, according to Stamler. If the governor doesn't act, the money disappears.
Most affected by the loss of these jobs would be younger teens, explained Stamler. "Eighteen- and nineteen-year olds can still go to places like McDonald's and get a job. But the fourteen-year old kids won't be able to do that. They will be shut out of the job market this summer."
What would really satisfy Stamler and the Campaign for Summer Jobs is not just action to preserve the money for this summer and the 13,000 jobs for NYC teens that it represents -- although she is hoping the governor will come through -- but what she and other advocates for youth summer employment are really looking for is a permanent stand-alone program that would fund 40,000 summer jobs for NYC adolescents every year without the need to scrap for last minute deals and handouts.
Funding for the city's Summer Youth Employment Program comes from various sources this year: $16.2 million from the city (initially the mayor budgeted $6.2 million and then added an additional $10 million), $11 million from the federal Workforce Investment Act (participating youth must be enrolled in the program year-round), and the last minute and elusive $15 million from the state.
If all of the money is released and contractors are able to act swiftly to fill the positions, 40,000 New York City kids, ages 14-19, will be employed at minimum wage jobs this summer for a seven week period from June 30th to August 15th, giving them the opportunity to earn a paycheck, while gaining work experience and learning new skills.
Kids Count
The 2003 KIDS COUNT Data Book was released in June by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and New York has improved in seven out of ten indicators of child well-being, including reduced infant and child mortality rates, adolescent death rates (cut in half), teen birth rates, and a decreasing number of children without health insurance (although ten percent of children in the state still do not have health insurance). New York also scored better than the national average in all of these categories as well as in our immunization rate for children under two years of age.
Child well-being in New York declined, however, in three major areas: low birth weight babies are on the rise, as is the teen high school drop-out rate, and the percentage of children living in poverty is greater here than it was in 1990. In the latter category, New York is also higher than the country as a whole for children living in extreme poverty (family income below 50 percent of poverty level), ranking 43 (with 1 being the best). We ranked 47 out of 50 for children living in female-headed households and the median income for all New York families with children is lower than the U. S. average.
New York State is failing in two out of four categories for reducing the hardships of poverty: 41 percent of households eligible for food stamps are not receiving them (in the city that number is 51 percent), and almost 70 percent of low income households are paying more than one-third of their income for housing.
Our overall rating compared to the other 50 states is 27, with 1 being the best (Minnesota, New Hampshire, Utah, New Jersey, and Iowa hold the top five slots for overall child well-being).
Asian-American Children and Poverty
Nearly one in four Asian-American children (24 percent) live in poverty in New York City. This is higher than the average poverty rate for all children across the country (17 percent), as well as higher than the average for all Asian American children nationally (14 percent). Based on an analysis of new census data by the Asian American Federation of New York (AAFNY), this news may finally dash the misconception that all Asian American families are affluent and self-sufficient.
Worst hit by poverty are Vietnamese (40 percent), Bangladeshi (39 percent) and Pakistani children (34 percent), followed by Chinese (27 percent) and Indian children (23 percent). By borough, Asian-American families living in Brooklyn are the hardest hit (34 percent), followed by Manhattan (30 percent), and the Bronx (29 percent); Queens fares the best (18 percent). By neighborhood, Manhattan's Chinatown has an alarming 40 percent poverty rate for its children.
City services often underserve impoverished Asian-American families, according to Asian American Federation of New York, and there is a great need for programs that will bridge language and cultural barriers, stimulate employment, and offer child care.
June was, appropriately enough, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. And while it was the 34th such celebration in New York City commemorating the Stonewall Riots against police harassment in 1969, the community has arguably never had more to celebrate.
On June 26, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Texas "homosexual conduct" law was unconstitutional and overturned the court's 1986 Bowers decision that gave the states the rights to ban consensual adult sexual activity. Earlier in the month, the Ontario high court ruled-effective immediately-that same-sex couples were entitled to marry. The Canadian government decided not to appeal the decision and proposed legislation to equalize marriage rights across the nation.
While these two enormous lesbian and gay rights advances were national and international in scope, they were both connected to advocates who live here in New York. And while New York has made some strides of its own in the 34 years since Stonewall, the sweeping nature of these advances hold the very real prospect of completing the long struggle of gay people toward legal equality here.
The lead attorney in for the plaintiffs in the United States Supreme Court case, Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, was Ruth Harlow of the New York-based Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. Lambda and the American Civil Liberties Union had chipped away at many state sodomy statutes over the years, including helping to overturn New York's sodomy law in 1980, but those decisions were based on state constitutions, leaving 13 states with sodomy laws, most in the deep South.
It was Kevin Cathcart, the longtime executive director of Lambda, who decided that it was time to bring suit in federal court to challenge the Texas law in an effort to overturn the 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision, a 5-4 opinion that held that gay claims to privacy in sexual relations were "facetious, at best." Winning would mean invalidating all the remaining sodomy laws and establishing a foundation in federal law to equal rights for gay people.
Cathcart's judgment paid off in spades with Justice Anthony Kennedy's sweeping decision that we saw announced across the cover of the New York Times the next day in a rare banner headline. (The more conservative New York Post tried to bury the story on page 26.) Professor Arthur Leonard of New York Law School called it "a Magna Carta for gay Americans," in the Gay City News.
Of course, not everyone was thrilled with the decision. Religious conservatives nationwide were said to be "white hot" with fury over the court's move. But local religious conservatives were not nearly so outspoken. Even the New York-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which often speaks out against gay rights measures that it feels will infringe on Catholic rights, did not quibble with decriminalizing private consensual sexual behavior. But their president, William Donahue, told the Daily News, "What happens between two consenting adults behind closed doors is their own business. But it would be a mistake for [gays] to hyperventilate about their next victory."
Justice Antonin Scalia did come close to hyperventilation about the court's majority opinion. In an angry dissent, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas, he said, "What justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising the 'liberty projected by the constitution'?"
Which brings us to the revolution in the Canadian marriage laws. Ontario, and soon the whole nation if Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has his way, is the first place that American same-sex couples can go to get legally married. Holland, which equalized the marriage laws in 2000, and Belgium which just did this past month, have residency requirements. Some gay Americans have already gone just across the border to marry. A forum was scheduled July 2 at 7 PM at New York's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center (208 West 13th Street in Manhattan) to guide New Yorkers in the Canadian process.
New York gay couples have been trying to get the City Clerk to issue them marriage licenses since the early 1970s when the Gay Activists Alliance would stage sit-ins at the Marriage Bureau. But the issue did not accelerate in the world's consciousness until 1996 when New York's Evan Wolfson, then an attorney for Lambda Legal, won the right for two Hawaiian gay couples to marry. That lower court victory was eventually stopped by a referendum in Hawaii, but it led to the Congress enacting the Defense of Marriage Act to ban federal recognition of same-sex marriages and gave the states the right to ban recognition of legal same-sex marriages performed in other states. Thirty-seven states have done so, though no state has recognized same sex marriages. (Vermont has come closest with a civil union law that gives Vermont gay couples the rights of married couples. Eight-five percent of those joined under the law in Vermont are from out of state. They return to their states having to fight for the legitimacy of their relationships.)
New York State is one of thirteen states that has not enacted a ban on the recognition of same-sex marriages. While the state does not have a gender-specific marriage law, the Department of Health interpreted it to limit marriage to a man and a woman. But since New York and every other state have always recognized those married in Canada, it is an open question as to how same-sex couples married in Canada will fare here. There is legislation pending in Albany that would open marriage to gay couples and another bill that would close it.
New York has a legal tradition of recognizing the marriages of couples from elsewhere who were married in a way that New York itself does not perform, such as common law marriages. In a case involving St. Vincent's Hospital in New York, a state judge has allowed a man who had obtained a civil union in Vermont the right to sue over the alleged wrongful death of his spouse (the word used in the Vermont law).
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has yet to weigh in on how same-sex couples married in Canada should be regarded legally in New York. These couples will be in a bind until the legal issues are resolved. They may incur liability if they represent themselves as married and if they don't. A period of mess and uncertainly is ahead of them, including the fact that they can only divorce if they live in Canada for a year (unless a New York court chooses to dissolve their marriages.)
New York City enacted a law last year recognizing domestic partnerships, civil unions, and same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, but that has been interpreted to mean that these couples do not have to register as domestic partners here in the city to get the benefits of domestic partnership.
The Supreme Court's ruling in the Texas case, acknowledging the "liberty" rights of gay people, that has given heart to same-sex marriage advocates, even though the majority made clear that it wasn't opening marriage to gay couples. Alan Van Capelle, director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, the New York gay lobby group, told me for Gay City News that the decision "changes the entire landscape in New York. It refocuses us on the marriage issue" which he said "isn't about 'if' but about 'when.'" Only one week before in the wake of the Canada developments, Van Capelle was hedging about the viability of same-sex marriage in New York. But more aggressive groups like Marriage Equality/New York have been pushing it for five years now.
Attorney Evan Wolfson now heads a national group called Freedom to Marry, based in New York, which is aiding state organizations fighting for equal marriage rights. The breakthrough in the United States may come as early as this month in neighboring Massachusetts where gay plaintiffs await the ruling of the state's high court. And a similar New Jersey case, being argued by Lambda, is going through the legal preliminaries there.
While the marriage issue is unresolved in New York, the state did get rid of one of the last vestiges of anti-gay language in its laws last month by dropping the terms "sodomy" and "deviant sexual intercourse" in its rape laws. These terms were not just deemed to be archaic and anti-gay, but stigmatizing for the rape survivor.
And all is not finished in New York City by any means as far as gay advocates are concerned. Speaker Gifford Miller held a press conference in late June to call upon the mayor and governor to get the quasi independent state/city authorities to provide the same kind of domestic partner benefits that are afforded to other city and state employees.
Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly "Gay USA" on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (34 on Time-Warner; 107 on RCN) on Thursdays at 11 PM.
New York police officers killed two unarmed black people in May and there has yet to be rioting in the streets or even mass demonstrations as the black and civil rights communities wait and see whether police and governmental authorities will either produce credible investigations or turn the matters over to special prosecutors.
Alberta Spruill, 57 and African American, died of a heart attack May 16th after Special Operations police, acting on a bad tip that the apartment contained munitions, tossed a stun grenade into her Harlem apartment as she dressed for work, handcuffing her even after finding no guns in the place. The medical examiner's office has ruled the death a homicide, but blame has yet to be assigned. Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly have apologized for the incident and acknowledged the obvious, that something was terribly wrong with this raid. Bloomberg's response has been noted to be in stark contrast to that of his predecessor in police misconduct cases. Rudy Giuliani almost always sided with the police, exacerbating racial tensions.
The head of the unit that conducts no-knock searches, Deputy Chief Thomas Purtell, has been transferred to the Housing Bureau, but he has not been charged with any malfeasance. Capt. David Driscoll, the Harlem precinct's commander, was transferred to Brooklyn in the wake of the botched raid.
Peter Vallone, Jr., chair of the City Council Public Safety Committee plans hearings on these police procedures on June 12. He told the Daily News, "We want to look into what went wrong. And we really want to make sure that this never happens again." Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, the story said, is asking those who have been subjected to mistaken raids on their homes to call (800) 728-1550 and to appear at a hearing on June 5 at 10:30 AM at her Municipal Building office at 1 Centre Street on the 19th floor South.
There are many unanswered questions in this case, where the police seem to have acted legally in that they obtained a warrant. Why was such an unreliable source used? Shouldn't there be a better system in place to screen sources? Why wasn't the apartment put under surveillance to verify the tip that it was being used for illegal purposes? Why wasn't the most rudimentary investigation done into who actually occupied the apartment, a trustworthy city worker and grandmother?
But the elephant in the room of this case is race. Is it conceivable that police would have conducted the raid in this way in a white neighborhood?
Similar issues surround the case of Ousmane Zongo, 38, the black immigrant from Burkima Faso who was killed by a police officer, Bryan Conroy, at a West Chelsea storage facility where he worked. The officer alleged to a supervisor that Zongo, who repaired African art in one of the storage spaces, lunged for his gun. Conroy shot him four times. He has yet to speak to either the District Attorney's office or police investigators. The Rev. Al Sharpton says that he has spoken to a witness to the incident who only wants to speak with an independent investigator. The witness, according to Newsday, is an "undocumented immigrant fearful of being deported."
Several hundred demonstrators, mostly West African immigrants, demonstrated on May 28th outside the W. 27th Street storage facility where Zongo was killed. Their rallying cry was for Governor George Pataki to appoint a special prosecutor in the case. Michael Hardy, a lawyer for the Zongo family who is associated with Sharpton's National Action Network, said, "There needs to be no question of impartiality in this investigation. The police department and the district attorney may need to be prosecuted."
Sidique Abou-Bakarr Wai, president of the United African Congress addressed the crowd, insisting, "It is not about black rights, it is about human rights." When he said, "Zongo did not fight with a police officer," the West
African demonstrators chanted, "Never! Never!" "Africans don't fight," Wai said. "We are a law abiding people. We don't have a quarrel with the police, but with vigilante officers."
Civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel was also on hand at the rally. "We have been here before," he said, recalling Patrick Dorismond and Amadou Diallo, "another unarmed New Yorker shot dead because of police force. The names change, but the issues are the same: 1) Whether the shooting was justified, 2) Will the truth be discovered and disclosed? and 3) Will there be systemic change in regard to police procedures. The civil rights community wants the truth and the truth is difficult to obtain in these cases. We learned years ago that police cannot investigate police. And the District Attorney's office, because they rely on the testimony of police, has a built-in conflict of interest." He, too, said that a special prosecutor was critical in this case. And he feels that Mayor Bloomberg needs to be educated about the history of these kinds of cases if he is willing to trust the police to investigate themselves.
Zongo, who had intended to return to his native land to be reunited with his wife and children, "was a peaceable man," said Mohammed Dibassy, president of the African Arts Center where Zongo worked and a leader of the Malian Association USA. "We are a peaceful people, but we want solutions. We want justice to be done."
After seeing the cops who killed Diallo acquitted of all wrongdoing in an Albany court, these West Africans are not willing to see this case handled by the same people. Masses of New York civic leaders were arrested outside police headquarters to push for the arrests of the officers who killed Diallo, only to see the case moved upstate. This time, they want a special prosecutor.
Council Resolution to Protect Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
More than 100 civil liberties advocates gathered on the steps of City Hall on May 28 to herald the introduction of a resolution in the New York City Council to call upon the United States to repeal provisions of the USA Patriot Act that "pose a direct threat to the constitutional protections afforded individual freedoms." If passed, New York would join 115 other American cities in petitioning the Congress and the President to restore civil liberties trimmed by the post-9/11 act.
"September 11th shook the city and country to its core," said Donna Lieberman, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, part of the New York Bill of Rights Defense Committee, "but we must be free as well as safe." She cited such infringements as "relentless snooping on our private lives, diminished right of courts to protect us, undermining the right to due process and counsel," and assaults on freedom of speech. If New York adopts the resolution, it will double the population covered by jurisdictions who have passed similar petitions.
Councilmember Bill Perkins is the chief sponsor of the resolution. Councilmember Charles Barron, another sponsor, said that this resolution joins one in the Council calling for the repeal of the Patriot Act. Councilmember Margarita Lopez said that Congressman Jose Serrano (D-Bronx) had urged the New York City Council delegation that went to Washington last month to help in pushing the Congress to reform the Patriot Act. She said that immigrant people are "disappearing" in this country under the Act the way dissenters disappeared in Latin America in the 1970s.
Councilmember David Yassky said, "I honor the men and women in our armed forces, but over history, what makes us strong is not military might, but our commitment to freedom and individual liberty."
Pat Perry, who lost her son, John, a police officer, on September 11, 2001, said that John "strongly supported the Bill of Rights and would be here today" if he were alive. Playwright Tony Kushner said, "It is not surprising that an administration that believes they can create democracy unilaterally through military action believes it can secure democracy here at home by decimating the Bill of Rights."
Bishop Paul Moore, Religious and Civil Rights Leader, Dies at 83
The Rt. Reverend Paul Moore, Jr., Episcopal Bishop of New York from 1972-89, died on May 1st after a long bout with cancer. He was 83. I paid tribute to Moore in the pages of the Gay City News for his leadership in the city on the rights of women and gay people. In a town where many religious leaders come down on the more conservative side of issues, Moore was an outspoken champion of the poor, downtrodden, and disenfranchised. When his time as head of the Diocese of New York was up, he worked on more international causes rather than upstage his successor at St. John the Divine Cathedral, including a leading role in securing justice for the people of East Timor. But his home base was Greenwich Village and he continued to be a force for human rights in his beloved city. Despite fourteen years out of office, his funeral was packed in the largest cathedral in the world on 112th St. and Amsterdam Av.
Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly "Gay USA" on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (57 on Time-Warner; 109 on RCN) on Thursdays at 11 PM.