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Opinion

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


gov cuomo womensrepro

(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


sanitation g3

(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.

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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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