This Week's Stories
GG's quick takes on recent NYC news


Week of 27 August 2001:

The New Labor Day
Some two million people are expected at Brooklyn's Eastern Parkway on Labor Day Monday for West Indian American Day Carnival, the largest ethnic festival in New York. Now in its 34th year, the festival has come to overshadow whatever celebrations remain from organized labor. Indeed, the official union-sponsored Labor Day Parade is no longer even on Labor Day. It will be held this year on Fifth Avenue the following Saturday morning, September 8, with what is surely to be far less attendance or attention than the festivities in Brooklyn on the actual Labor Day. In that, there is something more than just a metaphor. The New York labor movement, by far the largest, richest and most influential in America, is nevertheless nothing of what it once was. The city has the highest percentage of union members in the country, nearly double the national average, but for all that, only 25 percent of New York workers are in a union. By contrast, about 40 percent of all New Yorkers are foreign born.

Union organizers, looking at the dominance of new immigrants in the city, have taken steps to adjust to the new reality. While once unions saw immigrants as the enemy, threatening hard-won benefits by their willingness to work for cheap, now many see the new immigrants as the best opportunity to revive the labor movement. The New York City Central Labor Council has created the Commission on the Dignity of Immigrants to help lobby for a change to a more pro-immigrant federal immigration policy, and to push locally for such things as more English classes. Various unions are focusing their efforts on unionizing new New Yorkers, such as Mexican-American grocery-store workers and the mostly South Asian car-service drivers. That the stores where the Mexicans work are owned by Korean-Americans, and the car service companies are often owned by new Russian immigrants, just shows how complicated the new New York has become.

Brooklyn Machine Loses
Despite strenuous efforts by the Brooklyn Democratic organization to keep the voters from having a choice of candidates for Brooklyn district attorney (see Campaign Tangle 6), Brooklyn lawyer Sandra Roper has won her appeal to get on the ballot. The state's top court, the Court of Appeals, yesterday upheld a lower court ruling that petitions filed on her behalf were valid. This means that current Brooklyn district attorney Charles Hynes will face an opponent in the Democratic primary for the first time since he was elected to office 12 years ago.

Second Debate
It was, according to Mark Green, their 90th appearance together, "simultaneously or sequentially," though this debate among Fernando Ferrer, Mark Green, Alan Hevesi and Peter Vallone was joined by George Spitz, a retired public auditor. Alan Hevesi defended his ethics against the week-long attack by Mayor Rudy Giuliani, saying he was being smeared. His opponents, especially Fernando Ferrer and Peter Vallone, all supported his reputation for integrity, though Green did attack Hevesi for bickering with the mayor, and for arranging a business meeting for a campaign contributor, something Green said he has never done. Hevesi for his part criticized Green for not having sufficient experience in dealing with budgets or as a manager.

On a question of how to reduce traffic congestion, all four of the major candidates (minus George Spitz) said one answer is the building of the Second Avenue subway. Ferrer also suggested "congestion pricing" on bridges, Green speed bumps, red-light cameras, and car-free Central and Prospect Parks, Hevesi mentioned extension of the number 7 line to the West Side, the building of a rail freight rail under the harbor to substitute for truck traffic, and the extensive use of ferries.

On education, Vallone and Green both said they want to abolish the Board of Education, Fernando Ferrer said he wanted to increase teacher's salaries by 30 percent, which he would pay for by savings within the Board of Education, all supported smaller class sizes.

In answer to the very first question, none said they would let the squeegee men come back, though George Spitz said he would get them help. The full transcript is on Searchlight on Campaign 2001

On The Ballot
The Mayor's Charter Revision Commission has voted to put five propositions on the November 6 ballot. One would require that teachers and other Board of Education employees immediately report to the police any crimes or suspected crimes observed in schools. The others would make permanent agencies that Mayor Rudolph Giuliani created by executive order: the Administration for Children's Services, the Human Rights Commission; the Office of Immigrant Affairs and Language Services; a combined Health and Mental Health Department, and the Office of Emergency Management. If voters approve these propositions, the next mayor would be unable to get rid of these agencies without either a new referendum or approval from the City Council.

Voter Guide
The Campaign Finance Board's Voter Guide, which has been mailed out to every household in New York City with a registered voter, is now also online.

NYC History
New Yorkers never cared much for history. History was for losers, as New-York Historical Society President Kenneth Jackson explains; New York was always about the future. This began changing when the destruction of Pennsylvania Station led to the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission in the 1960's. It has changed even more in the past few years. There has been a rise in popularity of city museums whose focus is city history. Works of history about the city sell briskly, especially Jackson's Encyclopedia of New York and Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace, which won a Pulitzer. The first 12 hours of the PBS documentary "New York" were seen by 20 million people, and the last two episodes will be shown in a few weeks. Still, what New York historians and history buffs say remains missing, according to an article in the Times, is a single center "that would cover the full story of New York.offering the visitors the big picture all in one place." That is why some are reviving the idea of merging the New-York Historical Society, founded in 1804, and the Museum of the City of New York, founded in 1923. The city first studied the idea in 1995. "We thought there was a lot of merit to the idea, and we still do," say a spokeswoman for the Department of Cultural Affairs. The museum, which is soon to move into the renovated Tweed Courthouse near City Hall, rejected the idea. "They're independent organizations, and we can't force them to merge." But the heads of the society and the museum recently have begun talking to one another, discussing such ways of cooperating as the mounting of joint exhibitions.

Top Tourist Spots
The three most popular tourist spots in New York, according to the city's tourist bureau, are Times Square, Wall Street and 125th Street in Harlem.

Louima Leaving
Abner Louima, New York's symbol of police brutality, is quietly arranging his exit out of the city for a new home in South Florida, according to the Daily News. Sources said Louima, 34, who lives in Brooklyn, closed on a house in Florida last week.

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