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Criminal Justice Reforms Will Not Make Enough Progress If We Don’t Also Change the Criminal Court


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(photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


While momentum is building for the New York State Legislature to pass long-overdue bills directed at bail, discovery, and speedy trial reforms that promise to make the Criminal Court fairer, will these pieces of legislation do more than make a brutal, racist machine slightly less brutal?

New York’s insidious reliance on money bail is now widely condemned and proposals for reform abound. Some have suggested eliminating cash bail except for certain designated charges. In other words, pre-trial freedom should not depend on the size of your bank account, that is unless you are charged with certain crimes. Others want to eliminate cash bail but allow for preventive detention so that in certain situations a person could be remanded -- held without even the possibility of posting bail -- based on predictions of future dangerousness.

Usually in the legislative mix is a risk assessment tool that most people believe has racial bias baked into its core no matter how hard proponents try to disaggregate. And in place of release on one’s own recognizance -- simply being released and told to return to court on another day -- is a menu of supervised release, GPS monitoring, and other types of surveillance that expand the net of governmental control and intrusion over those hauled into Criminal Court for charges minor and serious alike.    

New York’s ironically named discovery laws have rightfully been compared to a blindfold. Stories are legion of people forced to engage in plea bargaining and the crucial decision of whether to run the risk of a trial without knowing the evidence against them. Proposed reforms all dictate that the accused must have access to discovery much earlier in the process.

However, the crisis of discovery is not limited to when documents are provided to the defense. It is also a matter of what documents are provided. Some jurisdictions allow for the defense to depose the prosecution’s witnesses. In New York, the accused gets reports filled out by police officers that merely summarize what witnesses had to say. Some jurisdictions require that the complaint that informs the accused of the nature of the charges must specify the facts that support the legality of the stop and arrest, as well as facts that detail evidence of guilt.

In New York, the complaint is a template usually devoid of any details. One critical piece of discovery is the initial interview between prosecutor and arresting officer that takes place within hours of the arrest. In New York, the defense is entitled to the prosecutor’s de minimis notes from that interview. That interview should be taped, with the officer under oath, and provided to the defense at the accused’s initial appearance before a judge.  

Yet even if the new laws addressed all the concerns raised above, what needs to change is the Criminal Court itself, a heretofore intractable behemoth that grinds up everything and everyone in its path. Much as prison abolition has moved from the impossible to the imaginable, so, too, should talk of abolishing the present incarnation of the Criminal Court.

The New York City Criminal Court has proven impervious to change. During the 1980s crack-cocaine epidemic, tens of thousands of drug-related arrests flooded the court. The court absorbed them all without as much as a hiccup. More recently, with Broken Windows, or quality-of-life, policing, the courts have been inundated with hundreds of thousands of misdemeanor cases. Again, the court took them all in without missing a beat.  

No matter what the input, or whatever legislative reforms are enacted, the Criminal Court continues to do exactly what it is designed to do -- push cases, get pleas, and move the calendar with scant concern about the constitutionality of the arrest or the sufficiency of the evidence of guilt.  

While no one can or should gainsay the importance of the proposed reforms to bail, discovery, and speedy trial, it is the Criminal Court itself that needs reform.

The court’s method, or lack thereof, of adjudicating cases has not changed since its current incarnation in 1962. It has long been appropriately referred to as an assembly line marked by a lack of adversarial litigation, as people are processed in ways that more resemble the Department of Motor Vehicles than anyone’s conception of a court.  

All the discovery in the world may not stop judges from threatening the accused with a maximum sentence if they have the temerity to insist on their right to a trial, or prosecutors from making “one time only” plea offers, or revoking offers if the accused seeks to challenge the lawfulness of their arrest.

It is about time for the Criminal Court to be evaluated on how well it enforces constitutional rights.

The stop-and-frisk federal class action in Floyd v. City of New York exposed rampant search and seizure violations. How has the Criminal Court addressed that reality? The court in Floyd also found an equal protection violation as stop-and-frisk was disproportionately inflicted on people of color. Spend just a few hours in any of the city’s criminal courts and you will see the unabashed manifestation of similarly race-based policing as 95% of defendants are people of color. What is the Criminal Court response to that reality?

There is as well the accused’s right to due process, to basic, fundamental fairness. Due process is hardly the phrase that comes to mind when you spend any time in the Criminal Court.

To be clear, bail, discovery, and speedy trial laws must be reformed. Fewer people will be held in pretrial detention, fewer people will remain in the dark about the nature of the evidence they face, and fewer people will have an interminable wait for a trial. What remains to be seen is whether these changes will transform the Criminal Court from a guardian of assembly-line justice to an enforcer of constitutional rights.

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Steven Zeidman is a professor of law at CUNY School of Law. On Twitter @SteveZeidman.

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A Fairer New York City Requires Salary Parity for the Early Childhood Workforce


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(photo: Rob Bennett/Mayor's Office)


At his State of the City address, Mayor de Blasio pointed to the expansion of universal prekindergarten for New York City four-year-olds and the expansion of 3-K as an integral part of his administration’s commitment to making New York City “the fairest big city in the country.”

While listening to the mayor’s speech – and the attention he paid to the success of universal pre-K and the new 3-K expansion – child advocates and educators in the audience found ourselves wanting to shout out ‘Salary parity now!’

To date, the cornerstone of the city’s ambitious early education efforts has been these extensions of public schooling to four- and three-year-olds. Enrollment in universal pre-K for four-year-olds is up over 350 percent since the mayor took office and 94 percent of universal pre-K classrooms are meeting nationally recognized standards for positive classroom conditions and child outcomes. The mayor pointed out in his address, “Pre-K and 3-K classrooms are jumpstarting children’s education and putting thousands of dollars in parents' pockets at the same time.”

For the children and families who benefit from these programs, there is no doubt that such progress is meaningful.

Yet, the ability to fully celebrate this important milestone is tarnished by the mayor’s failure to achieve salary fairness for early educators.

Those of us who have been championing the mayor’s early education proposals for years, even prior to his days in the City Council, and who have forcefully advocated to help secure the state resources necessary to make universal pre-K a reality feel betrayed.

We are forced to ask again and again, why hasn’t the de Blasio administration secured salary parity for the early childhood workforce?  

In 2014 the de Blasio administration launched universal prekindergarten and engaged over 1,000 community-based organizations (CBOs) with a history of providing high-quality child care and preschool services to the city’s poorest children, with the opportunity to offer pre-K. These organizations operate separately from K-12, public Department of Education (DOE) schools. Their workers are represented by different unions and some workers have no representation. Because these CBOs provide more than half of all UPK classrooms citywide, they have had and continue to play a critical role in the de Blasio administration’s most well-regarded achievement — one through which he seeks to acquire a national reputation.

Importantly, the CBOs are not only responsible for the majority of universal pre-K classrooms in New York City, they also offer working parents programming for longer hours than their counterparts at DOE schools. The teachers and staff in CBOs often work into evenings and through summer months when most DOE classrooms are shuttered or teachers are on vacation. Yet, despite longer days and year-round work, CBO early educators earn far less than their DOE peers.

CBO early educators that hold a bachelor’s degree earn a starting salary of just over $42,000 and those with a master’s degree earn a starting salary of nearly $48,000; compared to starting salaries of nearly $58,000 and just over $65,000 for prekindergarten teachers with bachelor’s or master’s degrees, respectively, at DOE schools based on an updated salary progression that goes into effect this month.

Salary disparities widen over time as CBO early educators typically see their salaries rise by approximately $2,800 over the course of eight years; whereas DOE early educators see their annual pay rise by $20,000 during the same period.  

In the mayor’s recently-released 2020 preliminary budget, funding for various education initiatives would see increases – including a $25 million increase from last year to expand universal 3-K to two new districts for next school year. The preliminary budget also makes a $316 million investment in new collective bargaining costs related to United Federation of Teachers (UFT) teacher salaries in 2020, an investment that grows to $829 million annually in the out-years of the budget plan.

There is no investment in the mayor’s budget in pay parity for the workforce in community-based organizations.

Because compensation levels are so unequal, turnover rates are high in CBO pre-K and 3-K. The Day Care Council of New York reports that half of CBOs lost teachers to the DOE in the first year of universal pre-K alone. As turnover issues persist, many pre-K students in CBOs find their learning environments destabilized at some point during the year.

So, one should ask: how can we in good conscience celebrate the success of universal pre-K and new 3-K expansion efforts while early educators in CBOs earn $15,000 to $35,000 less than their DOE peers?

We also know that women of color are the primary victims of this profound inequity in compensation. There is no mistake that the achievement of salary parity, for them, would be life-altering. Just think what an increase of $15,000 to $35,000 in salary would mean to their pocketbooks and their own capacity to address their household needs.

Furthermore, parity would bring program stability to CBOs and the early education system overall, benefitting children and parents who rely on these programs.

Finally, in July of this year, DOE will acquire responsibility for all contracted early education programs, family day care, and child care centers, currently overseen by the Administration for Children’s Services. In preparation for that transition, the DOE is about to rebid the entire early education system this winter with the goal of having new contracts in place for infant and toddler care, Head Start, and universal prekindergarten and 3-K by 2020. Indeed, the transition has been touted by the DOE as an opportunity to build a seamless early education system for New York City’s children from birth to five years of age.

Mayor de Blasio is seeking to solidify his place as a progressive rising star of national importance by pointing to New York City’s continued progress on early education as illustrative of how to make big cities fairer. It is critical that he brings true fairness to the city’s early education workforce and makes salary parity a reality. There is no greater opportunity to ensure that the city’s children are prepared for school success than by equitably compensating the workforce that supports and nurtures their growth.

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Jennifer March, PhD., is the executive director of Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York. On Twitter @JenMarchCCC and @CCCNewYork.

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To Close Achievement Gap, Give Legal Status to Undocumented Parents of Citizen Children


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(Photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


Latino Americans now number close to 60 million and a significant share of the 18 million children therein have persistent achievement shortcomings. Unfortunately, Latinos are seen primarily through the lens of competing immigration narratives.

Conservatives claim that they threaten American society: criminal activities, overuse of social services, and adverse effects on native-born workers, particularly less-educated black men. By contrast, pro–immigration activists point to positive examples, particularly successful young people in the DACA program. They also downplay social service costs as simply a first-generation experience and adverse employment effects as isolated to a small group of workers.

Each of these narratives has some truth but neither looks seriously at the academic obstacles Latino youth face.

Latino-white fourth-grade achievement gaps are substantial. Latino children are twice as likely as white children to be below basic achievement levels and less than half as likely to attain the proficiency level or better. Moreover, these gaps are unchanged as children age and some studies find that it is just as large for second- and third-generation Latino children.

There are a host of factors that influence this achievement gap. One is the impact of illegal immigration. Piecing together two data sources (here and here), I estimate that among Mexican- and Central-American U.S. immigrants, 45 percent of children are either undocumented or citizens but living in a household with at least one undocumented family member; and they represented 34 percent of all Latino children in the country.  

Given these mixed family situations, threats of deportation influence the Latino-white achievement gap. Researchers estimate that Latino school attendance declines by 10 percent when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has partnerships with local police, and these declines are concentrated among elementary school students. This may explain the high chronic absentee rates of elementary school children in the Bronx.

By contrast, as a result of President Obama’s DACA program, high school graduation rates increased by 15 percent and college attendance by 25 percent.

Undocumented parents are also in some instances less able to advocate for their children’s educational needs. Given the problems with the traditional public schools in many poor communities, black parents successfully shift their children to the charter school sector to a much greater degree than Latino parents. Whereas there are 78 percent more Latino than black students in New York City public schools, there are 40 percent more black than Latino students in its charter schools. This and other similar issues may explain why children with undocumented parents score lower on assessment exams that those with authorized parents, even after controlling for a number of variables; and children gained more than one year of schooling when their parents were able to obtained legal status.

There are of course other factors that influence the achievement gap. In 2017, the Latino poverty rate was 16 percent, double the white rate and only slightly below the black rate. In addition, English language deficiencies hinder educational achievement. An additional explanation is that despite their own limited economic circumstances, many Latinos focus on giving aid to their more impoverished family members in their home countries.

As a result, remittances from the U.S. to Mexico and Central America dwarf those to other countries. In 2016, they were at record levels. This focus puts added pressure on Latino youth, particularly boys, to gain employment as soon as possible, constraining educational attainment.

In 2017, among those 25 and older, only 19.8 percent of Latino men compared to 43.2 percent of white men had at least an associate degree. Not surprisingly, the average hourly wage of Latino men was 32.5 percent below white men’s wage rate. Economic Policy Institute researchers Maria Mora and Alberto Davila reported that including adjustments for differences in educational attainment and age, the wage gap declined to 14.9 percent. This remaining gap is virtually eliminated if we then adjust for lower Latino academic test scores that are linked to weaker schools attended and low-earning occupations entered.

What can be done? Certainly we should seriously consider legalizing undocumented parents of citizen children.

In addition, providing more occupational programs may be effective in responding to the employment goals of young men in Latino communities. As Kenneth Adams, the director of workforce development at Bronx Community College has documented, given the high failure rate in Bronx community college academic programs, this may be an effective strategy.

We must move efforts to reduce the Latino-white achievement gap to the forefront of policy discussions regardless of any fear that it would strengthen anti-immigrant forces.

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Robert Cherry is Stern Professor at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center.

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My Vision for the Role of Public Advocate: David Eisenbach


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(photo: Eisenbach for Public Advocate Campaign)


Right now, as communities across the city are organizing against displacement, we need a New York City Public Advocate who unifies and advocates for them in the struggle to save their homes and small businesses. I am not a politician who serves real estate developers and makes deals with corporations like Amazon that displace hard-working New Yorkers. I teach American history at Columbia University and running for Public Advocate on the platform to Fight Big Real Estate and Save Our Small Businesses.

I will be a real Public Advocate, and I hope to have your vote on February 26.

I have a long record of fighting for communities against Mayor-of-the-1% Bill de Blasio and the big developers he represents, like the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY). In Chinatown and the Lower East Side, I joined the fight to keep the residents of 83-85 Bowery in their homes. I pledged to stop the mega-towers in the Lower East Side waterfront. I have joined the battle to save Elizabeth Street Garden from being turned into a tower.

In Inwood and East Harlem, I fought against de Blasio’s pro-developer rezoning plans. In Queens, I support organizations opposing the Amazon deal in Long Island City and bike lanes on Skillman Avenue in Sunnyside. In Brooklyn, I am working with Crown Heights community groups to stop the rezoning to build towers that could cast shadows over the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I marched with working people, tenants, small business owners and grassroots organizations from the Lower East Side to City Hall, demanding de Blasio:

1. Stop city agencies from evicting tenants on behalf of landlords to deny the tenants’ rights of due process.

2. Stop selling public land (including NYCHA) and end the 421-a tax exemption.

3. End the city’s pro-developer rezonings, and instead pass community-led rezoning plans that put people first and protect workers, tenants, small businesses, and schools -- like the Chinatown Working Group (CWG) plan.

I am the founder and president of Friends of Small Business Job Survival Act (SBJSA) a citywide coalition of small business activists dedicated to passing the historic bill. I have worked with business leaders and chambers of commerce who serve communities across the city to fight to pass this act. If passed, this act will give small business owners the right to 10-year leases and an arbitration process to negotiate lease renewal. SBJSA will stop the extortion of small business owners by landlords.

The fight for our small businesses is a fight for our communities, and real affordability and diversity of New York. For 33 years REBNY successfully stopped the SBJSA but this year thanks to my leadership we are about to pass it. Passing SBJSA and defeating REBNY is the greatest David and Goliath story since Jane Jacobs stopped Robert Moses. Seeing communities standing up against big real estate, I believe that we can win this fight.

It’s not a coincidence that New York City has record homelessness and displacement under a mayor mired in pay-to-play corruption scandals. De Blasio is a puppet of his real estate donors who have launched a ‘displacement-replacement‘ agenda: displace long-time residents and replace them with high-income individuals employed by big corporations like Amazon.

In this special election on February 26, New Yorkers have an opportunity to elect a Public Advocate who will stand up to the mayor’s corruption and big real estate’s displacement agenda and fight for our communities. I am the candidate to do just that.

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David Eisenbach is a history professor at Columbia University and a candidate for New York City Public Advocate. On Twitter @Eisenbach4NY.

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How New York Can Become a Real Democracy: Re-Center Race as Legislative Progress Continues


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(photo: Governor's Office)


For decades, the phrase “three men in a room” has been used to capture how the leadership of New York state government (the governor, the state Assembly speaker and the state Senate majority leader) in Albany decides in back-room negotiations what legislation lives or dies. Finally, this year, state government can remake itself much closer to the image of true democracy. Leaders in the Assembly and Senate, Carl Heastie and Andrea Stewart-Cousins, are for the first time both African-American, and one is a woman.

This is an undeniably exciting moment, but it is also a moment fraught with uncertainty and real questions about what it means to have a truly inclusive democracy, one that reflects a multiracial society and advances solutions to benefit all, not just a select few.

While it is Democrats who are leading the charge on voting and campaign finance reforms – issues at the very heart of democracy – both parties have participated in, and benefited from, a system run on corporate money and machine politics. That system consists of a very small, very wealthy, and very white donor class that occupies the place that democracy should.

Recently passed reforms such as early voting and changes to the “LLC loophole,” which limits the amount of money powerful individuals and companies can contribute to candidates, are game-changers for New York. Still, much of the hard work of disentangling the deep, white roots of money from politics remains, work that must be done in order to have a true democracy in New York. In particular, automatic voter registration and public financing of elections are essential to achieving this goal. But there’s more.

In the public discourse on many issues, the flag of economic equality flies high. What has been less talked about is the systematic exclusion and oppression of communities of color as a direct result of our current system. Democracy reforms are not just about good governance, they are about giving people of color access to the political power from which they are all too often excluded. Race has become a footnote in a discussion when it should be the headline, for the simple reason that we cannot achieve a truly inclusive democracy if we do not start by acknowledging who has been excluded and why.

A recent column on the housing crisis by State Senator Zellnor Myrie and Jonathan Westin, executive director of New York Communities for Change, centers the impact of money on the most basic and essential of goods – shelter.  

“For the real estate industry, these donations [to candidates] are a calculated investment to protect and expand their soaring profits,” they wrote in The Daily News. “Albany returns the favor by granting favorable tax breaks for developers and blocking meaningful action on the rent laws, which protect millions of tenants and families.”

At Community Voices Heard, a member-led, multiracial organization working to secure racial, social, and economic justice for all New Yorkers, we know the consequences of this relationship are far too real. In 2018, we organized tenants in Ossining, New York, to enact the Emergency Tenant Protection Act (ETPA). ETPA provided tenant protections for more than 2,000 residents. Just a year later, the mayor and village council have proposed repealing ETPA without offering an alternative proposal, a troubling development for the residents fighting against a profit-driven industry to stay in their homes. Without strong leadership in Albany to protect tenants, battles like these will become an endless war.

Legislation to mitigate climate change tells a similar story. As is well known, the fossil fuel industry ranks among the top political campaign contributors and spends enormously on lobbying as well. The impact of a toxic environment is not being borne equally. According to The Nation, studies show that the majority of people living near hazardous waste sites are people of color. According to the same article, in cases where communities filed complaints with the Environmental Protection Agency alleging a violation of their civil rights, 95 percent of the claims were denied. In New York, one can see similar trends in the decades of negligence and mismanagement of public housing under the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) or the city’s response to Hurricane Sandy.

In recognition of this, the Climate and Community Protection Act, re-introduced this session by Assemblymember Steven Englebright and Senator Todd Kaminsky, contains provisions aimed specifically at ensuring an equitable transition to renewable energy, including allocating 40 percent of funding to frontline and historically disadvantaged communities. This approach, which both acknowledges racial inequity and ensures that it informs policy-making, is an important step in the fight for an inclusive democracy and should serve as an example for advocates and lawmakers alike.

Business as usual in Albany has often meant that lawmakers, lobbyists, experts, and advocates are quick to embrace a “race-neutral” dialogue when talking about the momentous issues at stake: voting, climate, housing, healthcare, jobs, and more. But it is worth remembering that these issues were core tenets of the Civil Rights Movement. The weeks ahead present both a challenge and an opportunity: to disrupt the normal discourse, to be explicit about racial inequities, and to fight for policies that can build a truly inclusive democracy.

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Afua Atta-Mensah is Executive Director of Community Voices Heard. On Twitter @AfuaAttaMensah & @CVHaction.

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Public Higher Education for New Yorkers Is Under Serious Threat


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(photo: CUNY Office of Communications)


New Yorkers should be proud that the City University of New York leads the nation in offering low-income students the opportunity to enter the middle class. CUNY is a powerful engine of social mobility.  

But that engine is at risk of breaking down unless our elected officials change course. Years of systemic underinvestment in educational opportunities for students of color – starting well before they reach university - means that students are increasingly unprepared for the global economy at the same time that their professors are stretched incredibly thin trying to make ends meet.

My wife and I are both adjuncts – like the majority of professors who are teaching CUNY students - at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. We each make about $3,500 a course, the average wage for adjuncts at CUNY. When you factor in time for grading, student conferences, and planning, this compensation comes to not much more than minimum wage.

We now have an 8-month old daughter and despite reducing our household expenses to the bare necessities and taking on side gigs (like driving for Uber), our total debt just keeps growing. We can’t afford childcare that is available at the college we teach at and so we are presently applying for subsidized childcare elsewhere. I am sharing these intimate details because these are the kinds of circumstances CUNY adjuncts are grappling with all around this expensive city.

My wife and I – and all the other adjuncts we know – love teaching. We want to be there for our John Jay students, the next generation of police officers, emergency personnel, and legal professionals who will go on to provide public safety, justice, and aid for our beloved City.

I routinely meet adjunct professors who are juggling four, five, and six courses not simply because they love teaching, but because they are trying to combine the wages of a number of low-paid courses in order to pay the rent. But others I speak to have given up and are leaving the college teaching profession at the first better-paid alternative.

Other universities manage to pay their professors – both full-time and adjunct – a decent wage. But not CUNY.

Adjuncts at the University of Connecticut start at $4,700 per course. At Rutgers in New Jersey the starting pay for an adjunct is $5,200, while at Penn State it is $6,100. Nearby private colleges pay adjuncts even more. At Fordham, they start at $7,000. At Barnard they will soon earn $10,000 per course.

Our full-time CUNY colleagues are underpaid as well, with average salaries well below peer institutions like Pace, the University of Connecticut and Rutgers.

All of this means that it’s harder to attract good teachers – right as CUNY is desperately trying to improve the faculty diversity at the University. And it means that teachers have less time to spend on their students – as they’re pushed to take on side jobs to make ends meet.

Per-student state support for CUNY’s senior colleges has decreased 18% over the last 10 years when you adjust  for inflation. In that time, tuition has skyrocketed.

It would not take billions to make real change: $350 million, a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in subsidies our elected officials are prepared to offer Amazon, would ensure that CUNY remains accessible while continuing to reduce inequality and fight poverty.  

CUNY and its graduates have given so much to New York City. But if politicians continue to starve public higher education and the people who make it work, the CUNY economic miracle will not be there for future generations.

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Sami Disu is an adjunct professor at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

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Creating a Single-Payer Health Care System That Works for All New Yorkers


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(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


In November, New Yorkers voted for a united government in Albany with a resounding directive: fix our broken healthcare system. Those election results are directly linked to the financial strain New Yorkers are facing as they struggle to choose between paying for their medication, premiums, long-term care, and basic needs, such as food or housing.

The high costs of healthcare in our state have devastated hundreds of thousands of New York families by bankrupting those who are underinsured or forcing them to forgo treatment due to the financial burden it usually causes. According to the Campaign for New York Health, approximately 1 million New Yorkers still do not have health insurance; 20,000 New Yorkers have died due to their lack of coverage in the last ten years; and millions more would be bankrupt if faced with a medical emergency under their current health care plan.

The New York Health Act (NYHA) is the only option on the table that would provide comprehensive healthcare coverage to all New Yorkers. It would extend coverage to those that currently have no access while providing quality and comprehensive care to New Yorkers who have been traditionally underinsured.

This year, we are going one step further. We are introducing a version of the NYHA that aims to close an additional gap in our healthcare system by integrating long-term care coverage into the legislation. This shift in policy will address our state’s long-term care crisis and meet the healthcare needs of seniors, people with disabilities, as well as countless family caregivers, who are primarily women, for generations to come.

The benefits of including long-term care in the NYHA will not only be felt by those who will now be able to afford assisted living, nursing home care, or home health care, but it will also have a rippling effect on our economy. In the Northwest Bronx, where we both live and work, thousands of home health aides, care workers, and unpaid caregivers have to withstand low wages, few benefits, and not enough investment in training and retention services. The current system is financially debilitating to families, those who require care, and the workforce that is tasked with administering care, all of whom are predominantly women struggling to provide for their loved ones. For instance, nationally, Latinx family caregivers spend 44% of their annual income providing caregiving services, while African-American family caregivers spend 34% of their income.

A healthcare system that guarantees long-term care coverage would help ease the financial burden of thousands of families across our state while dramatically improving the system for those who receive and provide care. According to a study recently released by the RAND Corporation, even with the addition of long-term care, the NYHA would cost less than what is being spent under the current healthcare system. It is simply the most fiscally responsible step to take.

The majority of New Yorkers have spoken loud and clear. They are demanding a healthcare system that works for them and not for the most powerful corporations. This new version of the NYHA and our new leadership in Albany bring us one-step closer to making healthcare a right and not a privilege for all New Yorkers.

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State Senator Gustavo Rivera is the Senate sponsor of the New York Health Act. Karla Lawrence is a direct care worker specializing in gerontology and long-term care; she is a member of 1199 SEIU and the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and a leader in the New York Caring Majority.

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Trump’s State of the Union, Kavanaugh’s Dissent, and the Coordinated Attempt to Ban All Safe, Legal Abortion


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(photo: Governor's office)


Last week, new Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh showed his true colors when it comes to access to safe, legal abortion. His dissent in the Louisiana case completely disregarded legal precedent and revealed his hostility to Roe v. Wade and subsequent Supreme Court cases upholding the law.

Earlier in the week, President Trump used the highest office in the country to continue his misinformed, divisive brand of extremist politics, including by fear-mongering about abortion law in New York. This is not a drill: our constitutional right to abortion is under attack like never before.

There has been a coordinated campaign by anti-abortion extremists to misinform and in fact outright lie about New York’s Reproductive Health Act and what it does. They are falsely citing this bill to promote reckless nationwide restrictions that would leave millions across the country without access to safe, legal abortion.

The anti-abortion minority’s claims about abortion care in New York specifically and the United States more generally are patently false and are solely designed to lie to Americans in order to prevent more progressive legislation protecting abortion rights from being passed in other states. This is a calculated and orchestrated movement built on false facts and fear mongering.

At Planned Parenthood of New York City (PPNYC), we worked with partners and supporters for more than a decade to ensure that, regardless of what happens in Congress or the Supreme Court, New Yorkers — and those from outside New York who we may need to serve in the future — will have access to the abortion care they have today and will need in the future.

The attacks on the Reproductive Health Act aren’t actually about later abortions — they are about slowing progress on protecting abortion rights at the state level and ultimately outlawing abortion in the United States entirely.

Poll after poll shows that the majority of Americans believe that abortion must remain legal and accessible in the United States. Yet, extreme politicians in the overwhelming minority continue to try to control the conversation with lies about abortion care and those who need access to that care every day. States across the country continue to pass hundreds of laws that restrict people’s ability to receive abortion care.

Yet, here in New York, we were able to pass legislation that would protect, not erode, abortion care, and that is what is at the heart of the most recent attacks — fear that voters and elected officials are fully understanding this extreme anti-abortion strategy and working to reverse it.

New York State legalized abortion back in 1970, three years before the U.S. Supreme Court did so nationally through Roe v. Wade, and New Yorkers consistently supported abortion access in the succeeding years. However, the state failed to update its abortion law, leaving providers and patients without full protection. New York advocates lobbied for over a decade to mirror Roe in state law only to hit a conservative roadblock in the state Senate. On January 22, 2019, this long-overdue legislation was finally enacted into law.

The RHA accomplishes three important things. It makes sure that the federal abortion rights we currently have are protected in New York law in the event that they are lost at the national level — and it’s clear this law came just in the nick of time. The RHA brings the protections of Roe into state law by ensuring that New Yorkers can access needed care throughout pregnancy when their health or life is endangered, or their pregnancy is not viable.

It also recognizes that abortion is health care, not a crime, by moving the regulation of abortion care into the public health law where it belongs. And it clarifies that trained health care providers acting within their scope of practice can provide abortion care. This ensures that more New Yorkers have access to early and safe abortion care.

Across New York City and the country, we at Planned Parenthood will continue to provide high-quality abortion care and fight to ensure that abortion remains safe and legal. We believe deeply in the right of all people — no matter who they are, where they live, or what they earn — to make their own personal decisions about their health, their families, and their paths in life, without political interference.

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Laura McQuade is President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of New York City. On Twitter @PPNYCAction.

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Justice for New York City’s Private Sector Sanitation Workers


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(photo: @NYCSanitation)


Racial segregation is still thought of as a southern issue, but sadly New Yorkers continue to face glaring examples of racial inequity in our own backyards, like the commercial sanitation industry.

A generation ago, the private carters provided middle-class jobs to a mostly white workforce. But in the years since, the industry has become mostly black and brown, and wages have dropped. A half-century after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the end of Jim Crow segregation, African-Americans remain at the bottom of the economic ladder across the country.

On average, black families have less than one-tenth the household wealth of white families, and African-American men’s wages are less than three-quarters of white men’s wages. The gap is similar for Latino-Americans. Many of New York’s commercial sanitation workers have been involved with the criminal justice system, and are forced to settle for lower-paying and more dangerous work. Yet again: black work is undervalued, and black workers are underpaid.

These underpaid, undervalued workers tough it out in often deadly working conditions. New York City’s private sanitation workers, numbering close to 2,000, cross the city each night picking up trash and recycling at the city’s office buildings, restaurants, and shops. Because 90 different companies compete for business in this industry, stops are often far apart, and workers travel from borough to borough each night, making hundreds of pickups. The typical shift is more than 12 hours long, but can sometimes be as much as 18 hours, with six-day workweeks.

The hours would be bad enough on their own, but the private carting industry is notorious for dangerous and unsafe practices. A majority of the industry’s trucks that were inspected over the last two years were ordered off the road for major problems like bad brakes or bald tires. Crashes are increasing, as well.

One worker, a Guinean immigrant named Mouctar Diallo, died in 2017 when he was run over by the truck he was working on. Diallo had started working in the industry as a teenager and was paid less than $80 a night. His company kept him off the books, without any of the protections he was legally entitled to. When he died on the job, the company said they did not know who he was. The media reported that he was a “daredevil homeless man,” much to the horror of his mother.

It’s hard to imagine any of this happening if Diallo had been a white man, instead of a black immigrant, in a city whose proud history of welcoming immigrants is etched into its very skyline, with the Statue of Liberty’s torch a shining beacon to those “yearning to breathe free.”

New York City must live up to its historic reputation as a welcoming haven for all, including people of color and immigrants. And just as we did in the past, we need to do better by workers who do our least-valued, and yet most important, jobs.

And when New York’s underpaid, undervalued black and brown workers head home to catch what sleep they can to recover from their dangerous and unforgiving jobs, they encounter environmental racism, too.

Most of the private waste facilities, where trash is dumped before being shipped to landfills and incinerators outside the city, are located in three primarily black and brown communities: the South Bronx, North Brooklyn, and Southeast Queens. These neighborhoods get far more than their fair share of garbage truck traffic and diesel pollution, and they have the high asthma rates to show for it. A study by community activists found that at one particularly polluted South Bronx corner, a private sanitation truck passes every 24 seconds.

The entire industry needs systemic reform.

Last fall, the New York City Department of Sanitation announced a plan to clean up private sanitation, by dividing the city into zones and limiting the number of carters operating in each zone. The plan will cut truck traffic while allowing the city to set aggressive labor and environmental standards for the first time. It’s a good start, but our leaders can go even farther to truly protect these workers.

First, the commercial sanitation system should mirror the more efficient and professional system for residential collection, with one carter responsible for each zone and one truck picking up trash on each block. That will result in the largest reductions in garbage truck traffic on our neighborhood streets. Second, the policy should mandate fair wages for workers in the industry, so nefarious private carters cannot undercut the competition simply by paying their workers less. When the City Council takes up the legislation this spring to put the waste zone policy into action, it should pass the strongest plan possible.

The private carting companies, predictably, have resorted to fear-mongering about job losses. In reality, the policy is expected to create jobs while also transforming this work into the good jobs our community deserves. When Los Angeles enacted a similar program, it created 900 jobs for local residents.

We are two years away from the next citywide election, when politicians will come to the black community looking for our vote to put them over the top. They have the opportunity now to show us that they support our working families.

***
Minister Kirsten John Foy is President & Chief Executive Servant at The Arc of Justice. Sean Campbell is President of Teamsters Local 813. On Twitter @KirstenJohnFoy & @Local813.

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Historic New York Voting Reforms Must Be Funded, and Followed by More Changes to Improve Our Democracy


gov cuomo votes

(photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Office of the Governor)


On January 14, the New York State Assembly and Senate made their mark on New York voting history. After over 100 years without meaningful reform, legislators passed six bills that will significantly increase voter access to the polls and the reach of their voices. On January 25, Governor Cuomo codified this historic expansion and signed those bills into law. Important legislative priorities such as early voting, pre-registration of 16- and 17-year-olds, registration portability, and the consolidation of our state and federal primaries are now state law. Our legislators also took a significant step toward changing our constitution to allow for same-day registration and no-excuse absentee voting by mail.

It is important to note amidst the celebration of grassroots and advocacy groups who have been fighting for these reforms that our work, and the work of our representatives, is not complete. Transformative reforms such as automatic voter registration, the restoration of the voting rights for people on parole, establishing a universal right to vote, and shortening the deadline to change party affiliation were starkly absent from the legislation passed. Many of these common sense reforms are long overdue.

Our elected representatives have received well-deserved praise for taking decisive action in the process of bringing New York’s voting laws into the 21st century by prioritizing and passing legislation that was stymied for far too long. However, not only is there more to do, but New York is once again faced with the unfortunate and unnecessary lack of transparency that has become synonymous with state government in Albany.

Voting reform has the exciting potential to bring more people into the democratic process. But New York will not be a leader in democracy until the process of governing embodies openness, accountability, and greater participation. Reform must not stop with the passage of the aforementioned voting legislation, but requires inclusion of the once-honored legislative processes of hearings, debate, and public comment. Our elected representatives, as they consider and take further action, should seek out the voices of their constituents.

New Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins says their work is not done, and so we too must continue to work and hold our representatives accountable until no one is left behind and New York is the embodiment of a democracy we can all be proud of.

As the chief executive of New York State, and the keeper of the state budget, Governor Cuomo is now tasked with implementation and ensuring new reforms are appropriately funded. It is concerning that his proposed executive budget lacks specific funding allocated for early voting. Just last year, Cuomo, in the face of intransigence and hostility in the state Senate, allocated $7 million for early voting in the executive budget. When this year provided with passed legislation to sign and implement, why would the governor not designate funding specifically for early voting in his budget?  

Cuomo states that the cost of early voting will be covered by the consolidation of the federal and state primaries combined with the new sales tax revenue to be collected from the elimination of the internet tax advantage. Neither of these revenue streams will be available to county Boards of Elections in time to fund early voting in 2019. It is puzzling why now, at this historic moment, the governor would withhold designated funding for a reform he supports and for which he allocated money only a year ago.

During his “First 100 Days” speech given in December, Cuomo criticized the federal government's attempts to disenfranchise voters, and stated that "we have to do the exact opposite and improve our democracy.” The reality is that to improve our democracy after over a century of inaction, it is going to take money. And to prove a commitment to the reforms being passed by the Legislature, the same reforms he himself has called for throughout his tenure, the governor must commit real dollars for implementation this year.

The governor and the leadership of the Assembly and Senate must stand true to their promises and ensure these reforms are appropriately implemented and adequately funded. Now is the time for clear, decisive action. It is not the time for unfunded promises, backroom deals, or excuses. Do not give us reform in name only. There must be a line item in the budget to specifically and sufficiently fund early voting.

All interested parties should work together to make sure the counties are provided with funding and support so that they are prepared for these changes and voters can take advantage of them seamlessly. Voting reform advocates statewide will continue to fight so that we the people can access our most fundamental right to vote. We believe in our elected representatives and we know they can get this done.

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Nicole Hunt is on the executive committee of Brooklyn Voters Alliance, a grassroots group dedicated to strengthening democracy in New York State. On Twitter @msnicolemh @bkvoters.

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Making the Queens District Attorney a Partner in Justice for Workers


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Melinda Katz, the author, center (photo: @queensbpkatz)


New York City and our nation as a whole are at an important moment in history. As Republicans in Washington threaten rights and pass bigoted legislation, local leaders need to take a stand and fight back on a broad range of issues, because the reforms and legal protections we need will not come for those who wait, they will come from those who demand them.

As I run to be the next Queens District Attorney, I am releasing the first of a series of policy papers discussing pressing issues facing our borough. In the coming weeks and months, I will lay out my plans for addressing immigrant rights, racial disparities in our justice system, domestic violence, women’s rights, the use of seized assets, and more. Today we need to consider how the District Attorney can better protect worker rights.

For generations, Queens has been home to working- and middle-class families, as well as different waves of immigrants pursuing the American Dream. People here work hard to give their families new opportunities, but there are also bosses who seek to cheat these families or bump up their profits by putting workers in harm’s way. We need our next District Attorney to put a new focus on these crimes against workers, bringing justice for those who have been victimized for too long.

The current Economic Crimes Bureau in the Queens DA’s office states that its traditional role is protecting employers from embezzlement by employees. I believe there must be resources also devoted to addressing the extensive theft in the opposite direction: employers stealing wages from workers. New York’s workers lose over a billion dollars a year due to wage theft, as their hard-earned dollars are illegally stolen and put into the pockets of employers, with the largest number of victims in the construction, restaurant, janitorial, and home care fields.

While some workers are robbed of their paychecks, others are robbed of their lives and well-being. Workers, especially construction workers, are injured and even killed on the job far too frequently, often as a result of employer negligence. These workplace safety violations often go unreported, and after an accident, evidence of wrongdoing can disappear if not gathered quickly. Currently, the DA waits for the city to make determinations before getting involved, leaving far too many workers unprotected and far too many negligent employers unaccountable.

Historically, crimes against workers would only result in a fine or civil action, but it’s time to recognize that white collar crime has no moral high ground over other crimes: if you steal from workers, you are as guilty as someone who holds up a liquor store. If you injure workers due to negligence, you are no better than a thug who beats someone up on the street.

I will bring criminal prosecutions against those who commit these crimes against workers, and I will make sure we have the evidence to build winning cases. Instead of waiting for the city, I will assign an Assistant District Attorney with an expertise in the construction industry to every major workplace accident or fatality. I will pursue legal action against employers that knowingly put construction workers or others at risk, and individuals who commit wage theft. And I will reach out to workers and community leaders to make sure that no one is victimized because they don’t know their rights and are left vulnerable to these crimes.

To achieve this, I will establish a Worker Protection Bureau in the Queens DA office to investigate and prosecute workers’ rights violations. Specifically, my office will take a more hands-on approach to investigating workplace injuries, prosecuting workplace violations and wage thefts, and creating protections for immigrants.

Queens is known as the World’s Borough and has a rich and thriving immigrant community. Unfortunately, immigrant workers are most likely to be targeted and many are reluctant to come forward for fear of having their immigrant status threatened. As part of my Worker Protection Bureau, I will have a multilingual team doing proactive outreach to workers, while guaranteeing that no one will be subject to arrest for reporting workplace violations. I will also hire a specific liaison to undocumented workers so that there is better dialogue among the District Attorney’s office, undocumented workers, and organizations working with undocumented workers.   

All workers are entitled to a safe workplace where they earn fair wages and are treated with respect. As Queens District Attorney, I will take an active role in ensuring workers’ rights are protected.

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Melinda Katz is the Queens Borough President and a candidate in the Democratic primary for Queens District Attorney. On Twitter @MelindaKatz.

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