Wendy's (photo: @jjbers)
When the country’s largest fast food companies were pressured to step up to combat sexual violence, forced labor, and other human rights abuses in their supply chain, they all eventually agreed — except one.
After years of pressure, Wendy’s still refuses to follow its peers and join the Fair Food Program to protect farmworkers and uphold their human rights. But the movement to get Wendy’s to take this basic step is gaining momentum. It’s time for the New York City Council to pass a resolution introduced over a year ago calling on Wendy's to join the program as a necessary support for farmworkers' lives.
The City Council resolution is part of a campaign that has included years of organizing and work by people across New York and around the country — farmworkers, consumers, activists, students, religious leaders — standing against the power imbalance between major corporations and farmworkers and the abuses that can result. The campaign has included a consumer boycott, and protests including a five-day hunger strike and march in Manhattan.
Even investors are getting on board: in April, a group representing $1 trillion in assets under management, including the Office of the New York City Comptroller, released a letter amplifying the campaign's demands and drawing attention to the widely-publicized failures to protect worker safety throughout Wendy’s supply chain. Convened by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, these investors emphasized the dire conditions farmworkers have faced nationwide during the global pandemic, and the Fair Food Program’s unique binding and enforceable COVID-19 safety protocols on farms within the Program, directly challenging the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on Brown and Black essential workers.
Activists and investors alike can see that the conditions faced by agricultural workers do not reflect our values. Many workers face poverty, sexual harassment, and forced labor. Around the time the resolution was introduced to the City Council, the Council’s Women's Caucus outlined its support, calling particular attention to the ways that farmworkers face gender-based violence. Caucus members described how sexual violence “has been a scourge in U.S. agriculture for decades with a staggering 80 percent of women farmworkers reporting having experienced sexual harassment and assault on the job.”
Both the investors’ and the Women’s Caucus letters are addressed to Nelson Peltz, who is both the Wendy’s Board Chairman and Chairman of Trian Partners, a hedge fund that is Wendy’s largest institutional shareholder and is based in New York City. A resolution from the City Council is essential in order to send a strong, united message to the corporate entity that holds the key to enacting this necessary change.
These conditions have also attracted the attention of religious leaders, including rabbis from T’ruah, a rabbinic human rights organization from which I draw moral strength, and whose members have marched alongside workers as they demand fair conditions. New York religious leaders representing a cross section of faiths have also come out in support of the resolution. Many faith traditions, including my Jewish faith tradition, call on us to seek justice and fight for human rights for all. In a letter published shortly after this resolution was introduced, New York’s religious leaders said it plainly: “Farmworkers deserve work with dignity.”
The Fair Food Program delivers that dignity. The Program was created a decade ago by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a worker-based human rights organization. The program brings together farmworkers, consumers, major food retailers and growers to create a 21st Century agricultural industry that no longer tolerates inhumane conditions and low wages for agriculture workers. Participating growers meet strict standards developed by farmworkers themselves — including the right to work free from sexual assault and harassment, safe working conditions including shade, water, and clean bathrooms in the fields, worker-to-worker education, the ability to report violations of their rights without retaliation, access to breaks, and safe transportation to work.
The standards are upheld by an independent monitor that conducts regular audits and manages complaint investigation and resolution, ensuring growers are following the rules. If the monitor finds violations, growers risk being expelled from the program. In turn, participating buyers – large food retailers including Wendy’s main competitors, such as McDonald’s and Burger King – sign legally binding Fair Food Agreements that commit them to buying from certified growers. Each group benefits. Workers receive protection and fairer wages, growers get a stable workforce and distinguish their products from competitors, and retailers prevent abuses in their supply chain and uphold their stated corporate social responsibility values.
These ideas don’t just look good on paper, they get results. Since the Fair Food Program launched in 2011, farmworkers have received more than $36 million in pay bonuses thanks to the Fair Food Premium paid by Participating Buyers. Close to 75,000 farmworkers have been educated on their rights, and over 300,000 workers have received “Know Your Rights” education booklets. Additionally, the independent monitor has recovered over $400,000 for workers in funds they were owed. More than 9,000 audit findings have been addressed by corrective action measures. Most fundamentally, workers now are protected when they call out injustices they face in the fields.
Already, major food companies such as McDonald’s, Subway, Burger King, Chipotle, Walmart, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and Yum! Brands (the parent company of KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut) participate in the program. Wendy’s absence on this list is notable – and unacceptable.
Wendy’s wants the smiling face on its logo to convey friendliness and quality. Those who know better understand that behind that smile is a corporate structure that stands alone among its peers in rejecting common sense protections for workers in its supply chain. It is time for Wendy’s to do its part to protect the vulnerable and working class, and the New York City Council should act swiftly to send a message to Wendy’s about how much New York values human dignity and worth.
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Ruth Messinger, former Manhattan borough president, is global ambassador for American Jewish World Service and the social justice activist-in-residence at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan.
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Letitia James, the author, celebrating the likely women's Council majority (photo: @21in21NYC)
New York’s biggest strength – by far – is its diversity. New Yorkers speak more than 700 languages, represent hundreds of countries, and span every level of socio-economic status. We’re every color, every religion, and every identity. Our communities thrive when we lean into our diverse cultures, ensuring voices from all corners of our city are heard and represented. Unfortunately, our City Council has historically failed to achieve that.
For a city with a population that is more than 50% women, there is no excuse for not having that same proportion represented in local government. Inclusive leadership leads to inclusive policies, and the most diverse city in the world needs a government that reflects all that we are and represent.
We are finally poised to achieve that goal, with a majority of women well-positioned to take over the New York City Council for the first time in history. If elected in November, this new class of City Council members will take office in January and finally mirror the pluralism and diverse cultures of the city it will represent.
Over the past two decades, the number of women in the City Council decreased dramatically. Out of 51 Council seats, only five women were non-term-limited incumbents set to remain in office in 2022. Our city government was failing to reflect the heterogeneity of the five boroughs. Yet, when faced with higher stakes than ever before, New Yorkers responded resolutely, voting for women across the board.
This election reaffirms what we already knew: it is in everyone’s best interest to direct attention, assistance, and support to female candidates, and increase the representation of women in local government. The work of organizations like 21 in ’21, co-founded by former City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and former City Council Member Elizabeth Crowley, is vital in this effort. As we now know, when given proper resources, these organizations, and the candidates they support, are overwhelmingly successful.
Now, after years of organizing and advocacy, our City Council will look more like New York.
We are set to see the first Muslim woman, the first South Asians, the first openly gay Black woman, the first Korean woman, and the first queer Jewish woman elected this November to the City Council. What’s more, we will see more Council members who are mothers than in years past, and a historic increase in the number of Latino/Afro-Latino, Black, and Asian City Council members. More historically oppressed individuals and communities are claiming their seats at the decision-making table, and New York is all the better for it.
We are watching transformative change in action. This past year shined a new light on the deep-rooted injustices in our city, state, and nation, and the experiences of these new, diverse Council members will provide us with fresh perspectives that will help us tackle the most pressing issues. From COVID-19 to safer streets to small business recovery, creating a stronger and more sustainable economy, and more, every issue is a woman’s issue, and deserves a woman’s focus.
As I witness this historic shift, I am filled with admiration and respect for those who saw the problems of the city and have dedicated themselves to fixing them through public service. As a former City Council member, the first female Attorney General of New York, and the first Black woman elected statewide here, I am intimately familiar with the hurdles that these women have overcome and will continue to face throughout their careers.
Win or lose, running for office is an incredible feat, and I encourage all of those who were not victorious this time to keep trying. Although we have yet to elect a woman mayor, it is an achievement in-and-of-itself that two of the three leading candidates in the Democratic mayoral primary were women. It’s the first time that’s happened for New York City, but it certainly won’t be the last.
Our City Council may soon reflect the diversity and multiculturalism of New York City, but our fight is not yet finished. Let this be a stepping-stone on which we base our future efforts for representation and justice for all.
This year, New Yorkers reaffirmed their support for strong and diverse female candidates. The slogans we’ve chanted for years are finally becoming our reality. When women run, women do win, and so do all of our communities.
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Letitia James is the Attorney General of New York. On Twitter @TishJames.
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Fast food drinks (photo: @brraveheart)
A fast-food combo meal, perfect for lunch in a New York minute, right? Not so fast. A recent study of fast-food chain restaurants found that the default drink size included with combo meals at most restaurants contains more than an entire day’s worth of added sugars.
With New Yorkers resorting to fast food out of convenience or necessity due to limited access to healthier options, it becomes an issue of public health and equity to ensure that every consumer has the information they need to make informed decisions about the food that they put in their bodies. Excessive salt warnings are already in place in New York City, why not the same for added sugars?
That is why the New York City Council must pass Intro. 1326, a bill that would require chain restaurants to post an added sugar warning icon on food and drink items that contain more than a day’s worth of added sugars. Consumers are currently in the dark about the amount of added sugars in made-to-order food and fountain drinks. Thus, it is essential that all menu items (not just prepackaged items) receive an added sugar warning icon when they contain excessive amounts of sugar. There is no more powerful tool than information and this bill puts the power back in the hands of consumers to make informed choices.
Studies show the deep importance of this issue to personal and public health.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) found that most medium-size fountain colas pack in more than 1.5 days’ worth of added sugars. Ordering a large cola? Two days’ worth. Perhaps most concerning, all of the “kid” sized drinks exceeded daily added sugar recommendations for 1- to 3-year-olds. The convenience of a combo meal or quick takeout from fast-food chains comes at a steep price to our health.
In conjunction with its study of soda offerings at fast-food restaurants, CSPI conducted a poll in New York State and found overwhelming support across diverse groups for added sugar warning icons, similar to the salt warning icons already required in New York City. Eighty-five percent (85%) of New York City residents support warnings in chain restaurants on food and drink items that contain more than a day’s worth of added sugars.
New York City has been at the forefront in empowering people with information to make the best health decisions for themselves and their families. We were the first city in the United States to adopt sodium warning labels in 2015.
Since then, the evidence has continued to mount about the harmful consequences of a diet high in added sugars, especially for children. Nearly half of our elementary school children do not have a healthy weight. More troubling, 20% of kindergarten students and 25% of Head Start students have obesity, putting them at risk for Type 2 diabetes.
We know how challenging the last 16 months have been for our restaurants, and we must continue to find ways to ensure that our small businesses are able to recover stronger. This bill is not designed to put unreasonable strain on our small businesses and restaurants. It is just one of the many tools we need to implement to reduce disparate health outcomes and chronic disease in our city.
There are many health and food equity issues that must be addressed in the coming years as we recover from this pandemic, and this is just one small step forward. Consumers want and deserve transparency from restaurants when it comes to making decisions about their health. Let’s give it to them.
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New York City Council Member Mark Levine represents District 7 and is Chair of the Council’s Health Committee. Lesley Kroupa, JD, MS, RD is the Interim Policy Director of the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education & Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University. On Twitter @MarkLevineNYC & @LesleyKroupa.
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Delivery (photo: Emil Cohen/City Council)
Small restaurants have always been the lifeblood of New York City, and as we struggle to emerge from the devastation of the past year, the New York City Council is right to support these crucial businesses. The sweeping shift we saw in restaurant regulation in 2020 saved New York City dining as we know it, including expanded outdoor dining, reducing permit requirements, and (most enjoyably) allowing drinks to go. But this legislative effort has taken an unappetizing turn with the Council’s latest set of proposals, serving up your data as the main course.
Last month, the New York City Council held a hearing on Intro. 2311, a bill that would force delivery apps to share your data with restaurants. Even as professional privacy advocates, we were torn about whether to speak out against the move. That’s because, at the end of the day, we’d side with our local pizza joint over the likes of Grubhub every time. But as well-intentioned as this bill may be, the details are concerning.
Sharing a customer’s name, phone number, e-mail address, delivery address, and the contents of their order is easy for a single meal, but it gets a lot harder for a city that orders thousands of deliveries every hour. But what happens to that data next is the concerning part.
Under the new law, restaurants would be able to use that information however they want. If they want to advertise you lunch specials, that doesn’t sound too bad. But if they want to sell that data to credit firms, insurers, and your boss, then this all starts to sound very, very creepy.
Simply put, this is heading in the wrong direction. We should be limiting the way that the delivery apps can monetize our data, rather than inviting every restaurant we order from to do the same. And while the terms of service with delivery apps are usually problematic, this law would wipe away what few rights consumers have under these contracts.
It may seem harmless enough to put this information in the hands of your local takeout place, but just wait for the feeding frenzy of data brokers who step in to buy up the information. Times are still tough for many restaurants, and even pre-pandemic a lot of them struggled to keep the lights on. Can we really expect them to say “no” when the data firms start offering them a lifeline? We should give restaurants every financial support we can, but not if it comes at the cost of increased spam, identity theft, and stalking.
This is what data brokers do, they buy up our information wherever they can and then sell it to the highest bidder, damning the consequences. And there is no reason to let our data be siphoned off from delivery apps, especially when there are so many other steps that the Council can be taking to help small restaurants.
Intro. 2311 was introduced as part of a seven-bill restaurant rescue package. Other measures include a new “food establishment surcharge,” a suspension of sidewalk café fees, and termination of personal liability on commercial leases. Helping restaurant owners know they won’t go bankrupt if they lose their business does far more to help than handing out our delivery data.
If the Council does insist on data portability, they need to mandate privacy protections and a ban on data resale. If we want this data to benefit small businesses, we need to make sure that no one else can buy or steal it from them. Above all, New York should continue to push for protections against having any of our data misused when it falls in the wrong hands.
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Albert Fox Cahn is the founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.), a New York–based civil rights and privacy group, and a fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project and the Engelberg Center for Innovation Law & Policy at New York University School of Law. On Twitter @FoxCahn & @StopSpyingNY.
Levy is a communications intern at S.T.O.P. and a rising senior at Tulane University.
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Council Member Rose, back left, is the author (photo: John McCarten/City Council)
We Staten Islanders pride ourselves on being a borough that cares for our own, often railing against the “forgotten borough syndrome” and always taking on the powers that be seeking our fair share.
During the early days of the pandemic, we begged, pleaded, and fought to get PPE for residents, family, friends, first responders, and essential workers to protect them from the scourge of COVID-19 — the highly contagious and deadly disease that has ravaged our city.
Back in the early days of the pandemic people were on ventilators and there weren’t enough to go around. We didn’t really know how to treat COVID-19 and were ill-equipped to address the devastating number of cases. Heck, we weren’t even sure if masks and hand-sanitizer were an adequate defense.
Funeral homes were overwhelmed by the number of deceased people, so much so that they had to send our loved ones to the Brooklyn Army Terminal or rent refrigerated trucks to hold our precious departed until they could be given a proper burial or cremation.
Remember how it felt to not be able to see our loved ones even for brief visits, missing grandma and grandpa, grandchildren, boyfriends, girlfriends, cousins, friends, and more. Remember what it was like to miss celebrations, weddings, birthdays, graduations, proms, religious celebrations and church services, sporting events, and even just going to the store or having lunch with a friend. Maybe some of you even missed going to work in an office or other job site.
And what parent doesn’t remember the horrors of remote learning!
If none of this impacted you and your sensibilities, the scarcity of toilet paper and Lysol certainly elevated your fear and anxiety level.
To remember the worst of our pandemic experiences should arouse us to take the necessary action to eradicate this disease and live our lives. Taking the covid vaccine moves us closer to that possibility.
City health officials said recently that in all of New York City, the one place where you’re most likely to catch COVID-19 is Staten Island. We must not accept that as the status quo.
Getting vaccinated is not a political issue nor is it one of government overreach. It is about health and safety — for you, for your loved ones, for your communities, for our borough, and for our city.
COVID-19 merely poses another challenge, and we on Staten Island are very used to overcoming challenges. Our resilience in the face of challenge motivated us to unselfishly put our personal feelings aside and help our friends, family, and neighbors in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. All of us came together for the greater good of others then, and I’m asking now that you view getting vaccinated through that same lens of unselfish caring for others.
Please get vaccinated!
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Deborah Rose is the New York City Council Member, District 49, representing parts of Staten Island. On Twitter @CMDebiRose.
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Eric Adams with Ruben Diaz Jr, Ydanis Rodriguez, and others (photo: @ydanis)
The Democratic mayoral primary is finally over. Over too is the ranked-choice vote counting process. We know enough for a preliminary analysis of how many Latinos voted and how, though those numbers will need to be fine-tuned after results have been certified and voter information updated.
Here is what we know right now: In a crowded field, Eric Adams earned the greatest chunk of the Latino vote, especially in the Bronx, the only Latino-majority borough in the City of New York. It appears that Adams won over 50% of the first-choice votes in the election districts with the highest number of Latino voters. That’s an impressive feat considering that there were 13 candidates vying for the Democratic nomination, including one Latina (Dianne Morales) and another candidate with a Latino surname (Kathryn Garcia). Though the obvious second choice for many Latinos might have been Morales or Garcia, in fact, election night results show they voted overwhelmingly for Maya Wiley (again, in terms of first-rank votes, we will eventually seek how all the ranked ballots turned out).
Adams’ performance among Latinos in other boroughs was not as decisive as in the Bronx, though he garnered at least a third of the first-rank votes in election districts with high Latino concentrations and won most of them. Take the 72nd Assembly District in Washington Heights: there, Adams earned almost 33% of first-place votes, the most of any candidate. Wiley received a quarter of the first-place vote in this overwhelmingly Latino district. Of course, this is the home district of Congressional Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who eventually endorsed Adams, and City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, who was a strong supporter from early in the campaign.
This same Adams-Wiley dynamic is evident in majority Latino election districts in Brooklyn (Cypress Hills, and parts of Bushwick, East New York, and Williamsburg), Manhattan (East Harlem, the Lower East Side, and Washington Heights), and Queens (Corona, East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights).
Why was Adams’ performance among Latinos decisive in the Bronx and not as impressive in the other boroughs? Here are my hunches.
On one hand, Adams earned critical endorsements in the condado de la Salsa. Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., Rep. Espaillat (whose district covers Upper Manhattan and much of the West Bronx), Assemblymember José Rivera, City Council Member Rafael Salamanca, and former Borough President Fernando Ferrer all endorsed Adams. (Congressional Rep. Ritchie Torres announced Adams as his second pick after Andrew Yang.)
Were the Diaz Jr. and Espaillat endorsements a key moment for Latino voter preference in the Bronx—besides Adams’ own campaign operations and the independent expenditure support there, of course? And what was the full impact of Espaillat’s nod? Remember that in the past he has not only given his name to candidates but has also lent them his well-oiled campaign apparatus. The most obvious example of this was Oswald Feliz’s victory in the special election to succeed Torres in the City Council.
One must also evaluate the potential significance of Adams’ message of public safety. Presumably sensible and just public safety enforcement is a message that resonates with Latinos more than acknowledged. Since much of the violent crime occurs in Black and Brown neighborhoods, increasingly in the Bronx, this is hardly surprising. Adams also spoke clearly to key issues like the struggles for small business owners and the quality of the city's public schools, which are both high on the list for many Latino voters, and pledged to address them.
There are many reasons why Eric Adams earned the biggest chunk of the Latino vote, the largest share coming from the Bronx. Latinos formed an essential part of the coalition Adams needed to move him past the Democratic primary and into the general election in November.
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Eli Valentin is a political analyst and author of the forthcoming book, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Political Life. On Twitter @EliValentinNY.
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Mayor de Blasio makes a climate announcement (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography)
In 2019, New York City passed some of the most progressive climate legislation in the country. Local Law 97 requires 50,000 large buildings to slash their carbon output en route to cutting emissions 40% by 2030. Yet if the passage of the law suggested that the city would be putting people and the planet before the typical monied powers that be (real estate, the utilities, and others), the latest city report on the law’s actual implementation — co-commissioned and funded by Con Edison and National Grid — certainly suggests otherwise.
Let us be clear up front: no climate study commissioned and funded by billion-dollar corporations that treat vital energy as a plaything for shareholders and not a basic human right can be taken the least bit seriously. Con Edison and National Grid are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Their participation makes the study a non-starter for real planning.
The fact that the city nonetheless calls its partnership with the companies “groundbreaking” and “historic” should disturb us greatly. These are companies that, in the past few years alone, have spent millions lobbying against climate legislation and renewable energy; neglected critical infrastructure, intentionally blacked out low-income neighborhoods, and inflated gas demand for the sake of profit; held ratepayers hostage as bargaining chips; used outdated statistics on methane in their own manipulative emissions reporting; and, most recently, indulged in bribery schemes—and all while charging New Yorkers the second highest municipal energy rates in the country. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, this isn’t a “groundbreaking” partnership so much as a stupid one.
The report’s trick is to present its proposed “pathways” to carbon neutrality as though they’d been chosen because they’re possible, not because they’re profitable. Take, for example, the inclusion of gas-based solutions as a key component of all three pathways—itself a disastrous proposition. At no point does the report mention that National Grid’s business model in New York City relies almost exclusively on gas, since it doesn’t provide electricity in the area. Were all of its customers to electrify their heating and cooking, billions of dollars in gas distribution assets would become stranded.
The report’s absurd task thus becomes how to save those gas assets while at the same time making meaningful reductions in gas emissions. That this is impossible is laid bare by the report’s tortured attempt to frame renewable natural gas and hydrogen gas blends as the emissions-reducing saviors of the gas system even as the authors repeatedly allude to the unlikelihood of these solutions coming to fruition. They have bet the house on a technocratic solution that clearly isn’t one.
As the report puts it elsewhere: fossil gas use would be reduced across all pathways, but only to the degree to which these “greener” gases are available. To be available, they would require massive new pipelines to carry RNG from factory farms into the city, commodity costs dropping precipitously, and precious renewable electricity being diverted into the production of costly “green hydrogen” just to keep gas assets from becoming stranded. All of this, in turn, would likely force low-income gas customers to shoulder more and more of the costs of maintaining increasingly obsolete infrastructure as affluent customers abandon it to electrify.
The report even leaves open the possibility of adding more pipelines and gas, conveniently sidestepping the mayor’s Executive Order 52, which bans any increase in the city’s supply of fossil fuels, by claiming that the order was issued after the report was researched. One can only speculate that this was to leave open the possibility of creating an exception for “green” gas blends in some forsaken future.
“Reimagining the role of existing infrastructure,” the report calls it elsewhere. Manipulative nonsense. If the city needs to reimagine anything, it is the monopoly utilities themselves. Yet we can likely only expect more concessions to these corporate giants in the near future. In the ongoing rate negotiations with National Grid, for instance, the city has so far done the bare minimum to reject a proposal (supported by Governor Cuomo’s feckless Department of Public Safety) that would raise New Yorkers’ gas bills to pay for more fossil fuel infrastructure we don’t need, failing to use its substantial influence to ensure that New Yorkers truly are protected.
The NY Build Public Renewables Act (NYBPRA), introduced in Albany in the spring but stymied so far by fossil fuel-friendly lawmakers, would offer another path forward. It would begin the work of replacing our corporate energy providers with a democratically-controlled, publicly-owned utility that would answer to New Yorkers, not shareholders, while foregoing profits for the sake of 100% renewable electricity and tens of thousands of green union jobs, among other things.
We’ll keep fighting for NYBPRA, because we know that the only way to truly solve the climate crisis is to end the corporate control of our ecological future. Until the city understands that as well, we’ll have to settle for gas-friendly compromises that get us nowhere.
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Kim Fraczek is the director of Sane Energy Project. Robert Wood is a member of the NYC-DSA Ecosocialist Working Group.
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Father and son and longtime Crown Heights residents after voting
The New York City 2021 Democratic primaries saw Brooklyn's hotly-contested 35th City Council district swing in favor of community organizer Crystal Hudson, who bested tenant activist Michael Hollingsworth by eight points. This district includes Prospect Heights, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, parts of Bedford–Stuyvesant and Crown Heights. All of these neighborhoods have been devoured by gentrification in recent years.
Primary voter turnout in the district was high, about 35%, easily surpassing city-wide average turnout of about 25%. And while you might think that this level of civic engagement is a good thing, leftists close to the Hollingsworth campaign, like the Democratic Socialists of America and the Crown Heights Tenants Union, would disagree — because those voters were Chassidic Jews.
In the aftermath of the primaries, which Hollingsworth lost by about 2,400 votes, progressive rage was directed at the Lubavitch community of Crown Heights, whose massive turnout exceeded Hudson's margin of victory, while also garnering some 4,500 votes for Eric Adams' mayoral campaign. Social media has since been dripping with insults toward Crown Heights Jews as fake Democrats, accusing Hudson of nefarious backroom dealmaking, and reviving antisemitic Jewish conspiracy tropes of bygone centuries.
The message, overall, is clear: the Chassidic community had no business getting involved here. A terrible electoral injustice was committed when these people had the absolute chutzpah to cast votes for the representation of their neighborhood. Had this backlash been directed at any other ethnic group, the news media and others would have commenced a weeks-long focus on the bigotry.
In truth, the secret to Hudson's success is fairly mundane: good campaigning. She took the time to get to know the Lubavitch community, for whom Crown Heights has served as the spiritual and cultural epicenter since World War 2. Hudson nurtured a running conversation with Jewish leaders and institutions, while Hollingsworth was remarkable in declining dialog with one of the very communities he sought to represent in the City Council. Furthermore, Hollingsworth's inflammatory position against Israel during its conflict with Hamas, contrasted with his silence on anti-Jewish street violence, spoke volumes to Jewish voters.
The Lubavitch community of Crown Heights had been, over the years, politically ambivalent. Had Hollingsworth not antagonized them, causing a huge spike in their turnout, many would likely have stayed home and history might have played out differently.
The fuel behind the Hollingsworth campaign was an endorsement by the radical DSA, which offered up a base of mostly white, leftist activists — the same gentrifiers who’ve contributed mightily to the insane housing costs Hollingsworth decries. Instead of good politics, his campaign opted for rhetorical bomb-throwing and marginalized a sizable Jewish enclave with over 80 years of history in the district. Hollingsworth’s alliance with DSA won the vote of yuppies and mostly young, white newcomers to the district, while Hudson won long-time residents: working class, Black, and Chassidic Jewish families.
So, according to leftist internet rage, voter turnout is not always good. While socialists usually purport to be on the side of the people, post-election tantrums indicate this may only be true of certain people. In conditions of higher voter turnout, ideological grandstanding, class warfare, and ethnic antagonism weren't enough to thwart a neighborhood that simply voted for a representative who cared about representing everyone.
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Rabbi Yaacov Behrman is founder of the Jewish Future Alliance and a lifelong resident of Crown Heights. On Twitter @ChabadLubavitch.
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Mayor de Blasio handing out food (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
Human services workers are the unsung heroes of the COVID-19 response, and the new city budget has failed them.
Many New Yorkers may not know that most social services are delivered by nonprofit
organizations under city and state government contracts that consistently set poverty level wages for workers.
Throughout the pandemic, when we heard about lines wrapping around the block outside of
food pantries, childcare being provided for hospital workers, and home-delivered meals
programs being created, we didn’t often hear about the nonprofit human services providers
who stepped up to meet these needs.
At Urban Pathways, our frontline staff showed up to ensure our residential facilities were clean and sanitized, and to ensure our residents’ well-being. We continued to conduct street outreach and opened 60 additional stabilization beds to bring New Yorkers experiencing street homelessness inside to safety. Human services workers risked their own health and that of their families to show up for New Yorkers in need.
To recognize their immeasurable contributions during the pandemic, we and our partners across the human services sector asked the City Council and Mayor de Blasio to include $48 million for a 3% Cost of Living Adjustment for the workforce (a drop in the bucket of a $98.7 billion
budget), and to begin the rightsizing of wages for those doing this work far below a living wage. A COLA is the least that could be done for our essential workforce, and we hoped it would act as a first step in moving towards a broader plan for raising low wages and achieving wage equity.
Disappointingly, Mayor de Blasio and the City Council failed to meet this call. The final fiscal year 2022 New York City Budget passed on June 30 does not include a human services COLA nor does it address wage equity. Instead, the city provided $24 million for a one-time bonus. While better than nothing, it is not the sustained investment in the workforce that is truly needed and will not help workers meet increased costs for food, rent, and other basic necessities. The continuous failure to invest in human services workers puts nonprofits at risk of no longer being able to serve communities, as we see employees exiting our workforce for higher paying opportunities and due to high levels of burnout.
This administration and City Council had an opportunity to leave a legacy by setting the stage
for addressing the long-held and long-overlooked inequities in the human services sector. They
had an opportunity to promote racial and gender equity by raising wages for a workforce primarily composed of people of color and women, and of which 85% of the frontline workers
most exposed to COVID-19 identified as Black, African-American, Hispanic, or Latino. Instead, they gave our workforce a pat on the back and invited them to a parade.
We thank those City Council members who supported our COLA ask and are seeking to address wage equity in the human services workforce through legislative means. And we look forward to working with the next administration and City Council to finally address these issues head on. It’s frankly hurtful that the city failed to address wage equity. If not following this past
tumultuous year, where both the critical nature of human services and the extreme racial
inequities present in our city were burst open, then when?
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Nicole McVinua, Director of Policy at Urban Pathways. On Twitter @UrbanPathwaysNY.
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The mayor and schools chancellor at a school (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
The next Mayor of New York City will need to ensure that communities hit hardest by COVID-19 can not only recover, but achieve greater economic security and prosperity in the future.
Recovery after covid and the creation of green, healthy schools for all go together.
As part of the full re-opening of the public school system, city government should prioritize installing HVAC systems and solar energy in every school. Doing so will enhance air quality, education, and health while creating career-orientated union jobs for New Yorkers.
Improving air quality control through HVAC systems will be crucial, especially as questions remain about the durability of vaccines against new variants of COVID-19. Poor air quality not only impacts student and staff health, but it can also undermine learning by negatively affecting student attendance, comfort, and performance.
This work must begin in Mayor de Blasio’s final months, but it will fall to the next mayoral administration to sustain investments in HVAC systems and solar energy at public schools, especially in low-income communities of color most impacted by COVID-19 and the climate crisis.
Across the five boroughs, K-12 public schools account for one-quarter of all city-owned buildings, and they are also among the biggest climate polluters.
Investing in HVAC systems and solar energy will create good-paying jobs and careers in clean energy while enabling all public schools to become net-zero schools in the coming years and help the city dramatically reduce its climate pollution.
One key place to look for a model of Green, Healthy Schools is Staten Island. Indeed, PS 62 on Staten Island is a proven, successful model of a net-zero public school that can and should be replicated in communities across New York City. Created in partnership with IBEW Local 3, the PS 62 building has solar panels on the roof and its south facing walls to take advantage of sunlight throughout the day, allowing the building to maximize the solar energy it can collect.
The Climate Works for All coalition recently developed a Green, Healthy Schools action plan that estimates installing HVAC systems and solar energy in every public school would cost $1.5 billion.
Mayor de Blasio should begin the process of investing this $1.5 billion before he leaves office and connect this investment specifically to the reopening of schools. Such action would put the next mayoral administration in a strong position to finish the job.
The public funds to create net-zero schools are available right now. The Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) – the city agency in charge of energy management – has already allocated $3.8 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy measures for public buildings over ten years in the capital budget. But allocation is not the same as active investment. This $3.8 billion needs to be invested. The recommended investment of $1.5 billion in solar panels and HVAC systems should be accompanied by an additional $2.3 billion investment in energy efficiency projects on other public city-owned buildings.
These investments totaling $3.8 billion will help ensure the city aggressively reduces climate pollution under the next mayoral administration while getting New Yorkers back to work.
By investing in Green, Healthy Schools, the city would establish a real pipeline of well-paid, career-orientated jobs for both new-entry workers and other New Yorkers transitioning into the clean energy industry. The creation of net-zero schools for all will enable the city to tackle the climate crisis, covid recovery, and safe reopening of schools simultaneously.
In New York City, the clean energy economy of the future should not be driven by short-term, low-skill, dead-end jobs. Instead, it should be full of good-paying, union jobs with family supporting wages and benefits. Now is the time for the city to begin to make this vision a reality through an investment in HVAC systems and solar panels for every public school in the city.
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Maritza Silva-Farrell is Executive Director of ALIGN. Christopher Erikson is Business Manager of IBEW Local 3. On Twitter @MaritzaSf, @alignny, & @IBEWLocalUnion3.
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Voters voting (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
The latest local election debacle -- another botched effort by the New York City Board of Elections (BOE) -- is simply inexcusable. A structural overhaul to the BOE is necessary to create an accountable and transparent 21st century agency and restore voters’ faith in the city’s election system.
Nearly every election for decades has been plagued with problems: untrained poll workers, delays in poll site openings, coordinators who don’t know how to close down the poll at night, poll workers who are abusive to voters, botched absentee ballots, registered voters being wiped from the rolls, and most recently inexcusable delays and inaccurate balloting results.
To understand how we got into this mess, let’s examine the origins of this structure. Our state Constitution requires that county Boards of Elections are governed by a two-party structure. Each county and each New York City borough selects a Democrat and a Republican to serve as BOE commissioners. This bipartisan structure was created to prevent corruption, theoretically motivating the parties to act as a check and a balance to one another. This form of bipartisanship probably looked good on paper once upon a time, but it has become a recipe for dysfunction.
Over the past decades, county leaders from both parties have used the BOE as a dumping ground of sorts for their family, friends, or political allies. Here’s the challenge: some such “patronage” employees are terrific workers – smart, skillset aligned, with rock-solid work ethic. Yet there are also too many employees who are merely party loyalists, or friends and family of those with political influence, whose skills and work ethic do not align well with the Board’s formidable responsibilities. The well-documented culture of nepotism and favoritism has created a largely untrained workforce without the necessary skills, education, or initiative. A system can absorb only so many unskilled and unmotivated workers before it malfunctions.
Neither New York City nor its voters are well-served when patronage and ineptitude are the pervasive norm. It would be easy to blame one person or one party or one practice. It’s much bigger than that. The system needs a complete overhaul.
During the decade I served as Democratic District Leader, I repeatedly witnessed election problems up close, and called for reform along with many others, testifying numerous times at city and state hearings. In fact, back in 2013, a New York City Department of Investigation report recommended professionalizing the Board into an independent, nonpartisan structure. Instead, with each election, ineptitude manages to further erode the public’s confidence.
Last year, I called for a professionally-managed, nonpartisan structure for the New York City Board of Elections. To date, there has been no comprehensive review of our election laws, our constitutional mandates, nor the policies, practices, and procedures followed by county Boards of Elections. The New York City BOE is not alone in its dysfunction, but its level of dysfunction seems to be on steroids. For that reason, I’m calling for the New York State Legislature to establish a Joint Legislative Task Force charged with conducting a comprehensive analysis with recommendations for action. The City of New York must become a vocal and active partner in these reform efforts, and the City Council should require that proposed BOE commissioners, which the Council approves, have qualifications beyond mere party support before authorizing their appointment.
We need a Joint Legislative Task Force that investigates both the structure of our Boards of Elections as well as the policies and procedures that have led to the current state of affairs; studies the various models for conducting fair, reliable, modern elections in a digital age; and makes actionable recommendations to the Legislature to fundamentally restructure the way we conduct elections in New York. Our democracy requires nothing less.
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Jo Anne Simon is a state Assemblymember for District 52, a former Democratic District Leader (2004-2014), and a current candidate for Brooklyn Borough President. On Twitter @JoAnneSimonBK52.
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