Yesterday, something amazing happened in New York City. John Liu rode a rainbow coalition to win the runoff for Comptroller and in November he'll become the first Asian-American ever elected to citywide office.
And Bill de Blasio, who just 6 months ago was an inspiring but little-known progressive hero, won the contest for Public Advocate against a much better known opponent.
These were hard fought victories. Bill and John spent months crisscrossing the city, talking to people in every borough and nearly every neighborhood about the issues that matter to middle- and working-class people. They each built broad coalitions: neighborhood leaders, union members, tenant activists, advocates for the homeless, and just good old-fashioned civic-minded citizens.
Turnout wasn't high. But those who did come to the polls cared deeply about the future of our city. New York has big challenges ahead. The affordable housing crisis. Rising unemployment. Every day, New Yorkers grapple with a city they love but fear they can no longer afford to call home.
There's a lot of work to do. But today, we have two new progressive leaders who will work to find solutions to the problems our city faces. I know I speak for thousands of Working Families Party members when I say that we are thrilled to have played a part in their victories. We look forward to working with them in the never-ending project to build a society based on democracy, equality and solidarity.
Thanks for all your hard work.
P.S. The press noticed too. The New York Times this morning said: "The Working Families Party, once derided as a rag-tag collection of Brooklyn progressives, is now the pre-eminent political force in New York City politics."
From an email authored by Dan Cantor, WFP Executive Director.
It's time, once again, to bring you the news that is not yet news.
For those not yet aware, there will be a climate change conference in New York City next week, conducted under the auspices of the United Nations.
The 100 world leaders who will be participating in the conference will be arriving on Monday, and if you're in New York City the same day, you have a chance to participate in a not-to-be-forgotten "welcome event" and pranking opportunity.
Follow along and I'll tell you how to get involved-and if you do, they'll even send you home with a lovely parting gift.
"One of the things that makes Republicans furious about our current president is their idea that Obama is always apologizing for America's biggest mistakes. Unlike President Bush. Who was one of America's biggest mistakes."
For the first time, America has a community organizer in the White House. What if we put a whole slate of community organizers in City Hall?
That's what the Working Families Party is fighting to accomplish this year. After Barack Obama's inspiring victory, the WFP searched throughout NYC for the next generation of City Council candidates who, like our President, got their start organizing in the communities they're now running to represent.
The people we've found will blow you away. Their stories represent the best of New York City. Their values embody everything the Working Families Party stands for.
With the September 15 primary elections just six weeks away, we want you to meet a few of the candidates who make up our "Community Organizer Slate." Electing this new generation of leaders will shift the balance of power in City Government away from real estate moguls and Wall Street tycoons -- and back to working families.
But they need your help to get to City Hall. Read the brief introductions below and click to find out how you can get more involved in their campaigns:
As promised earlier today, we're liveblogging from the Working Families Party's Mayoral Forum, at the Hotel Trades Council Union Hall in midtown Manhattan. We'll be joined by two leading Democratic candidates, Bill Thompson and Tony Avella, and the incumbent Michael Bloomberg. If you have any questions, comments or thoughts for us, please let us know in the comments, and we'll try to reflect those interests in our coverage.
7:55 Thompson finishing up. They all handled themselves respectably. People are ready for dinner in back. Is it a standing O for Bill or for the food line?
Thanks to Charles, Levitan and crew for welcoming blogging and getting wi-fi back up.
And thank you, WFP, for planning this forum a 3-minute walk from Rudy's...it is Drinking Liberally night (and we're late!). Come on out to keep the conversation going. -jk
7:50 From Thompson's case for his electability: "This is not 2005. The economy was booming, people liked where they were. This is 2009, the economy is failing, people are scared and want change in City Hall." -jb
7:48 To the final question, from Dan Cantor, about convincing WFP Thompson could beat the Bloomberg behemoth, Thompson just had the first laugh-out-loud line of the night: "I'll quote someone who said, 'Rich guys don't always win.'"...which was Bloomberg's defense of spending $100 million on the campaign just 40 minutes ago.
A second reference to Obama too... -jk
7:47 Judging by this forum, one line that is going to be used against Bloomberg consistently is that hat his response to every economic question is "But we love the rich." Oh, and "Why is Michael Bloomberg willing to run on the Republican line if he doesn't believe in parties?" -jb
7:46 Uh-oh, Bill...people in the backroom are starting to eat. You're competing with food!
Good answer on the pride of running on party lines...and asking "Can anyone imagine Barack Obama on the Republican line?" got some laughs. -jk
7:44 By the way, we're not the only ones watching. Public Advocate candidate just made this his Facebook status update: "is not impressed that the Mayor said at the WFP forum that calling 311 is a solution for tenants facing eviction from their home. Wrong answer!" (He's a WFP endorsed candidate) -jk
Later today, the Working Families Party will be hosting a Mayoral Forum for the two leading Democratic candidates, Bill Thompson and Tony Avella, and the incumbent Michael Bloomberg.
President Obama's got an awful lot on his plate. Sadly, it's all lousy leftovers from the previous administration: rotten bailouts, curdled wars, moldy policies. Is there any room for grass-fed, grassroots-led reform?
The eat-better-brigade's hoping our new Commander in Chief will be "the prize delivery guy...delivering fresh, steaming change in 30 minutes or less" as Raj Patel put it in a speech last Friday at the Farming For The Future conference in Pennsylvania. Patel bemoaned the monocrop monarchy that rules from our school cafeterias to our diners and dining rooms. He ended with the rousing declaration that we are "not consumers of democracy, we are its proprietors."
Who's minding the store, though? Will Obama even attempt to emancipate eaters from the military industrial complex cabal that helped Big Ag give small farms the boot? Our government's policies have played a scandalously large role in exiling wholesome, unprocessed, uncontaminated foods to the fringes of our culture.
Justin Krebs is on it. For those of you who don't know what this is about, it's a power grab by the city's wealthy elite (aided of course by its journalistic establishment).
Imagine if affairs in Iraq took a negative turn, or -- the worst case scenario -- there was a threat, or even attack, here at home, and President Bush announced that since he's the best "War President" we've got, he thought we should postpone the elections until things got better.
What would we do? We'd laugh him out of office faster than New Yorkers turned on "America's Mayor" Rudy Giuliani, when he suggested delaying the '01 elections shortly after the 9/11 attacks.
The afternoon sun had begun to fade, but the Bryant park trees twinkled, offering a sense of shelter, comfort, peace, away from the bustle of sidewalks, the glaring of glass high in the sky towering over the beating nucleus ,Midtown Manhattan.
A conversation carries on by phone, the New Yorker, questions, listens and learns about a friend's trip up north to a city many miles away.
"It went well," said the friend, on assignment in New England, where he'd given a speech, seeking to explain a campaign of tolerance to a younger generation.
"Great" came the response from Midtown from under the trees that twinkled, as he propped his feet on his bicycle, after a job interview, before beginning the journey down 5th Avenue to his soon to be former home in New York's east village.
After saying goodbye, he walked his bike to 42nd street, hopped on, thinking about the chat, passed the public library, then pedaled down the hill on 5th avenue.
Up ahead, a man with no legs, his back muscles pronounced, triceps bulging, pioneered ahead of the cyclist.
The cyclists wondered, how or where the man's legs went missing, what had happened. At the same time, he felt worry, a ping of sad, but still, admiring the man's athletic defiance, his resilience, a wonder to behold, whizzing past cars, faster than the cyclist, much like the city where he now rode, a place where despite constant obstacles, the strong survive, endure and persevere, here too, the strong may shine.
But, after losing sight of the legless man, after passing the tourists with their sensible shorts and striped shirts making their way to the architectural majesty that is the Empire State Building, the cyclist came upon a familiar site, a church he'd passed many times.
In fact, it was at this spot, on the last Sunday in June, members of the Congregation, passed out cups of water, to participants in a parade, that some would rather avoid.
But on this day, there was no parade, no congregants with water, and for whatever reason, he noticed the ribbons.
They hang on the iron gating surrounding the old church, the Church of the collegiate, a building erected in 1854, a congregation chartered in 1696 by William III, king of England as the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, now called the Marble Collegiate Church.
The ribbons, golds, blues, and greens represented something, unclear at first, perhaps a memorial, perhaps another symbol of war a testament of death, perhaps renewal, perhaps all, but it turned out, they represented prayers.
Gold, the more common color, represents prayers for the families and friends of the thousands of Americans lost in the Iraq war.
Blue for those Iraqis scores killed in the violence that devastated a nation.
Green, were for prayers of peace.
While observing, a family of three, what appeared to be tourists, all wearing baseball caps, the father nokia around his kneck, the mom with a digital, both took photos of the site, as the New Yorkers glided by. On the sidewalks, some glanced, others pausing briefly, all the while, cars, cabs and cyclists whizzed by, perhaps on their way to dinner, drinks, maybe even coming from a job interview, perhaps in a conversation about tolerance, love, joy, sadness or perhaps too, tragedy.
Among the family of three, a small boy, no more than ten, touched, held and appeared to read some of the ribbons.
Captain Mark Pane, age 32.
Lance Corporal Bradely L Parker, age 19.
Sgt Pamela G. Osborne, age 38 and hundreds perhaps thousands more.
In addition to a green baseball cap, the small boy wore a bright orange T-Shirt with the dove's foot peace symbol occupying the shirt's face, a simple request, never a simple answer.
From afar, the child tourist's face at least appeared in this moment, to offer pause, maybe hope, hope that someday, ribbons will only be used for things good, like apple pies, rose competitions, or a giant pumpkin.
It brings tears when ribbons hanging from an old iron fence just blocks from the Empire State building represent prayers for precious souls, souls taken so unfairly, so early. It's not fair that they can no longer participate in conversations about tolerance while sitting under trees amidst buildings that touch the sky. Those ribbons remind everyone that there are millions of broken hearts across the world thanks to the horror that the un-necessary human behavior war is.
On a small, plaque, in front of the increasingly weathered blues, golds and greens, a message from Marble Collegiate's Senior Minister, Arthur Calandro.
In it, he recalled attending a Quaker meeting after the first Gulf War in Iraq.
He said that of all the comments he heard that day, the one he remembered came from a man around his own age.
"I know how to protest war, but I don't know how to make peace," the Quaker said.
The message says that it seems that man at the Quaker meeting speaks for most of the world. The message went on to say we "continue to pray daily- we pray for the wounded-we pray for the day war is no longer an option.
Later, as observations of this fading New York afternoon on Fifth Avenue continued, a gentleman approached, and offered, "you know they (the church) have a website."
It turned out, the man was a New York City teacher, a man probably in his late 30's, soft spoken, kind, his knowledge of New York history obviously grand.
He shared an interesting fact, that this, the Marble Collegiate Church, is in fact, oldest place of worship of the Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of the City of New York
"That explains the New Netherland enshrined on the stone," noted the cyclist.
"Yes," he confirmed.
He then shared that on Staten Island, there was a place called Richmond Town, a place that was full of history, a time capsule dating back to the 1600's where on some buildings one could still see holes from the bullets from the days of its founding, holes from the Revolutionary war.
But, perhaps, here on Fifth Avenue, as passers by, protected from the outside not by trees but by IPODS, Blackberries, the shelters of cabs, the indiscriminate bustling to and fro on our ways to places, drinks, dinners, new jobs, new lives, on our collective way to a new era in our nation's journey through time, despite those holes on Staten Island, despite the painful hole inside our own impressive skyline, there are holes even greater, and there are reminders everywhere, no matter where we are, that those are the holes in the hearts of those who lost someone, a Mother, A Father, daughter, son, lover and those are the holes that are all the more greater than anything history has to offer.
It is our pain and we are sharing it.
We human beings must someday figure out how to make peace.
Cross-posted at The Albany Project and The Daily Gotham.
Blogpac endorsed candidate Paul Newell, in his Campaign to unseat Speaker Sheldon Silver in the Democratic primary for New York's 64th Assembly District, is holding a fundraiser brunch at Little Giant in the Lower East Side. And we are inviting you all to come!
The brunch is Saturday, July 19 from 2pm to 4pm.
Ticket price is $75 and can be purchased through our Actblue page. Please purchase tickets before the July 11th filing deadline.
No one here likes the "three men in a room" system, and Paul is New Yorkers' best chance at breaking down that door. Help defeat Sheldon Silver, the man who takes money from taxpayers to give to b/millionaire developers to build $2 million per unit condos.
If Lou Dobbs could wave a magic wand and make all those pesky undocumented workers disappear, he'd do it in a heartbeat. And while that might be a triumph for law and order, it would also be kind of a hollow victory--pretty soon our empty stomachs would begin rumbling, and we'd be grumbling:
Who's going to pick our produce?
Who's going to pluck our poultry?
Who's going to chop up and stir-fry our chicken and broccoli?
Who's going to deliver it to our door?
Millions of illegal immigrants make enormous sacrifices-leaving behind loved ones and paying smugglers a fortune--to come to the U.S. and work long hours for low pay doing lousy jobs. You probably don't give that a whole lot of thought when you dial the Chinese restaurant down the block to order your won ton soup and lo mein.
Filmmakers Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou are out to change that with Take Out, a day-in-the-life saga about one of those guys you grab your bag of food from and hand a dollar to before you shut the door and forget his face. The film opened last Friday at the Quad Cinema in New York City, where Take Out takes place, and illuminates the lives of an ignored but integral segment of our population.
Take Out stars Charles Jang as Ming Ding, an illegal Chinese deliveryman who pedals his way through a drizzly day made more dismal still by ruthless loan sharks. Ming's morning starts with a bruising wake-up call from his debtors, who barge in to the cramped apartment he shares with umpteen other immigrants and demand that he come up with $800 in interest on the massive debt he owes his smugglers by the end of the day.
Also Posted at Political Cortex:
Cody Lyon
So, when seeking to challenge his Obama friend, he asked him about the lopsided Clinton victory in West Virginia and the other wins in Pennsylvania and places like Ohio, places in America where progressives have work to do and trust to win, where aggressive attempts to prove to the economically disenfranchised or higher education denied and affordable universal health care starved people that government can do good things for people, the Obama supporter cut deep.
We just couldn't let the week pass without posting this - this past Saturday, Living Liberally celebrated its 2nd annual celebration & fundraiser in New York City. And while we were fortunate enough to be joined in person by some incredible guests such as Congressman Jerry Nadler and State Senator Eric Schneiderman, we had another very special guest via video:
Howard Dean's video congratulations is part of a very big month for our chapters and our supporters - you can expect more videos like that one in the next few weeks, and here's why:
Yes, there's gloating galore in our Mac-happy household over the news that "even the briefest exposure to the Apple logo may make you behave more creatively," according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. No wonder we are just bursting with ideas that our cramped Manhattan apartment can barely contain; we've got more Macs per capita than you'll find anywhere outside of an Apple store. (My Mac consultant husband) Matt would put one in the bathroom if I let him, which I won't, because that's my one tech-free haven in our hyper-wired world.
The study, conducted by researchers at Duke University and the University of Waterloo, Canada, found that even a split-second glimpse of the iconic Apple logo is enough to inspire folks to "think different":
The team conducted an experiment in which 341 university students completed what they believed was a visual acuity task, during which either the Apple or IBM logo was flashed so quickly that they were unaware they had been exposed to the brand logo. The participants then completed a task designed to evaluate how creative they were, listing all of the uses for a brick that they could imagine beyond building a wall.
People who were exposed to the Apple logo generated significantly more unusual uses for the brick compared with those who were primed with the IBM logo, the researchers said. In addition, the unusual uses the Apple-primed participants generated were rated as more creative by independent judges.
As Duke professor Tanya Chartrand noted, "Apple has worked for many years to develop a brand character associated with nonconformity, innovation and creativity." IBM's logo, on the other hand, conveys an image to consumers that is "traditional, smart and responsible," i.e., safe and dull.
Apples have a long tradition of tempting mankind to flout convention-just ask Adam and Eve. And don't forget Johnny Appleseed, who was running around literally sowing the seeds of the conservation movement a couple hundred years ago, before voluntary simplicity and animal rights were even trendy.
The Beatles beat Steve Jobs by a few years, too, leading to a branding battle between Apple Corp. and Apple Inc., which rocked our collective world with their revolutionary music and machines, respectively.
That lawsuit was settled last year, but now Apple's gone and picked another fight, this time with the Big Apple, which unveiled a new apple logo for its GreeNYC campaign to inspire New Yorkers "to walk, bike and unplug appliances when not in use," as the New York Times reports.
Apple is reportedly concerned that the supposed similarity between the two logos could create "consumer confusion resulting in damage and injury." But as the Times notes, the two apples are decidedly distinctive varieties. Yeah, they're both apples, but New York City's hasn't had a bite taken out of it, and it's green, whereas Apple's trademark logo has evolved from its hippy-dippy rainbow phase into the more minimalist black/white spectrum.
Steve Jobs is reportedly worried that GreeNYC's logo is going to lead to "dilution of the distinctiveness" of the Apple brand. Will people really confuse the two logos? I doubt it, but I'd be happy if they did; after all, if just flashing folks with an image of an apple is enough to encourage our brains to be more receptive to new ideas, it can only boost GreeNYC's prospects for encouraging conservation. It seems only fair that the fruit that got us evicted from Eden in the first place should help us find our way back.
It's not often that liberals in positions of authority have the opportunity to exercise power. But as it happens, the New York City Council, a very progressive group of politicians that starves for attention against an outsized mayorship, has such an opportunity. The short story is that Rudy Giuliani basically killed a bunch of firefighters by awarding a no-bid contract to Motorola for radios that didn't work. As a result, the firefighters didn't have the equipment they needed on 9/11, and lots of them died.
Why did Rudy make this decision? Eric Gioia on the city council has the ability to find out.
Mark your calendars: tonight at 7pm is the next step toward bringing New York City's home child care providers into the same union as New York City's public school teachers.
For many New York City families, their child's first teacher is one of the 28,000 home child care providers caring for kids today. Home child care providers take care of kids from low-income families in pre-school and after-school settings, helping them with reading and learning colors and numbers.
But home child care providers aren't protected by a union. Their average salary is $19,000 a year in New York City with no pension, no health insurance and no paid sick days. That makes home child care providers among the lowest-paid workers in the region. Something needs to be done to make sure they get the respect and wages they deserve.
[This post was written by UFT President Randi Weingarten and crossposted from Edwize and Eduwonk, where it originally appeared.]
We hear a lot these days about what I call "3-D reform," - data-driven decision making and about using tests to improve teaching and learning. Sadly, in this respect, too often, testing has replaced instruction; data has replaced professional judgment; compliance has replaced excellence; and so-called leadership has replaced teacher professionalism.
What is really happening is that more than ever there is this industrial techno-centric view of teachers as interchangeable cogs in an education enterprise. This approach rewards their compliance above their creativity, and results in the denigration of teachers and disregard for their contributions to learning.
Cross-Posted from Take A Stand - My Home Blog - Please feel free to comment or bookmark over at my home blog, it's new.
There's only one thing better than seeing Barack Obama speak: Seeing him speak twice. So yesterday I took off work and passed up a day's pay, grabbed my little white button, and headed out to New York city for a decidedly good day.
Barack spoke in NYC at the SEIU local union hall in Manhattan at 2pm, and then later at the Marriot in NYC at 5pm to a standing room only crowd of thousands at $25 a ticket. I volunteered, and it was a wonderful experience.
Ugh, I hate dealing with stupid and clumsy smear campaigns, but it's got to be done. This ignorant article is being circulated among right-wing bloggers purporting to find deep questions about Spitzer's campaign operation.
Just since the first of this year, Spitzer 2010 has taken in $5.6 million and spent $4.2 million on a campaign that doesn't officially start for at least two years. Among the largest reported Spitzer 2010 expenditures to date are payments totaling $3,161,112 to Global Strategy Group, a media consultant group, for "TV ads."
The wingnuts are asking why, if Spitzer is up for reelection in 2010, would he be collecting money this early. The answer takes a passing familiarity with New York politics; Spitzer spent $3 million plus in an ad war with SEIU over health care plans. The wingnutosphere has woken up and finally started grabbing onto the toenail clippings of this scandal, milking every last headline in what is rapidly becoming a show trial. Meanwhile, Spitzer keeps doing stuff like allocating more money for affordable housing and working to enroll more kids in the health plus program. Ack, these right-wing freaks are just awful.
Meanwhile, the wingnuts are also out to get the New York Times's excellent Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse, concocting a fake scandal about her not wanting to appear on C-Span. This one's much stupider than the Spitzer smear. Spitzer's problems are at least a result of his administration's own mistakes, both ethical and political. This is just Linda Greenhouse not being told that C-Span was going to film a panel, and when she arrived at that panel, saying she would not be as comfortable expressing herself to a nationally televised audience as an intimate group of journalism professors. That's literally the 'controversy'. Slate has a rundown, as does the AEJMC forum.
I know and like Greenhouse and I like her reporting. She's accurate and passionate, which is probably why the right is going after her. Anyway, it's just important to get it on the record that she's being unfairly attacked.
Again, right-wing smear campaigns are really really irritating, often because the accusations are so stupid as to make them hard to rebut. You mean there was a controversy about C-Span cameras? No, there had to be more, right? No, in fact, there is nothing else here, except a right-wing witchhunt. Ack, these people are just freaks.
Yesterday, something amazing happened in New York City. John Liu rode a rainbow coalition to win the runoff for Comptroller and in November he'll become the first Asian-American ever elected to citywide office.
Turnout wasn't high. But those who did come to the polls cared deeply about the future of our city. New York has big challenges ahead. The affordable housing crisis. Rising unemployment. Every day, New Yorkers grapple with a city they love but fear they can no longer afford to call home.
