Three grim tales from the Big Apple

Three news items in my inbox today paint a grim picture about the prospects for working-class families in the Big Apple.

The first was something that might have appeared in The Onion.

Turns out that New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to charge rent at the city's homeless shelters. (That's right: they are homeless because they can't afford rent, and the city wants to charge them ... rent!)

This would include families with children, who make up 70-plus percent of the shelter population, which adds up to thousands of homeless kids.

The second article was about the fight to retain the student MetroCard program (for subway and bus rides).

This program provides more than half a million students with free or half-fare passes. If it is eliminated, a family of four could end up paying an extra $2,300 a year to send their kids to school.

Although the proposal to eliminate student MetroCards originally came from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Gov. David Paterson, at this point it's the Bloomberg administration that is refusing to pay the city's share of the cost - a share that it has not increased in 15 years.

According to the Working Families Party, "When asked if he would do his part to help students, the mayor's response was, 'It's the state's fault.'" WFP is running two online petition campaigns, one calling on the State Senate to prevent the city from charging rent at the shelters, and the other, aimed at the City Council, calling for funding the MetroCard program.

The third article that caught my eye concerned a report that 43 percent of Manhattan's elementary and middle schools face severe - and growing - space shortages. Just one example illustrates the seriousness of the problem: P.S. 199, which has three fifth grade classes and eight kindergarten classes.

Meanwhile, school construction is frozen, and both the city and state budgets contain cuts in funding for education.

Are there solutions to the budget crises? One idea that's been around forever - raising taxes on the rich - is coming up, in all kinds of quarters.

Last week, City Comptroller John Liu said that Gov. Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg were wrong to rule out tax increases on bonuses to employees of banks and financial companies that received federal bailout funds.

Ranked third or fourth richest city in the world, New York has a choice: will it tell its young generation that it cannot provide shelter, or classrooms, or even transportation to school? Or will it tell the high rollers, whose bonuses in 2009 reached $20.3 billion (a 17 percent increase over 2008), to pay a larger share?

By Elena Mora

MTA public hearing in Brooklyn erupts in a fit of rage

By John Pietaro
Photo by Matthew Weinstein

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority's recent public hearing on proposed cuts to the city's transit system was the site of considerable rage, with angry protest by the many students on hand as well as a series of others who offered bristling testimony.

Brooklynites converged on the Brooklyn Museum, where the hearing was held, to speak back to members of the MTA board, positioned on a dais atop the stage. Many in the crowd commented on the bizarre racial make-up of the MTA representatives: an almost entirely white group in this highly diverse borough. Crown Heights, where the museum is located, is populated primarily by African-American and Afro-Caribbean peoples. Of the 15 or so board members was only one African-American man. The imbalance onstage heightened the irritation of many in the audience who see the MTA's plan as "balancing their budget on the backs of the working class."

The Authority plans to make drastic service cuts on a wide variety of bus and train schedules, including the wholesale abolition of certain bus and train lines entirely. Further, there are plans to make cuts in transportation for the elderly and those living with disabilities. Both senior citizens and members of the disabled community were well-represented, with quite a few speakers from both groups offering strong, indeed, intense testimony about the nature of these cuts and their effects on their lives. Several speakers aid that their advocacy organizations were filing suits claiming Americans with Disabilities Act violations..

But the constituency greatest represented in the auditorium were high school students, who came with an array of placards and banners that they waved throughout the rows and draped over the balcony overlooking the hall. The students, sitting throughout the auditorium, were from with a variety organizations. Many came on their own, having seen advertisements for the hearings hanging in the subways or, more commonly, on Facebook. The youth offered brazen responses to the few on the dais who offered any kind of comment, right down to boos and hisses at the board members' introductions.

One of the major irritants of the evening was the MTA's insistence on having elected officials speak first, although every person wishing to voice their opinion had to sign in and were given a slot according to the time of their arrival at the Museum. Most of the comments from politicians were filled with important facts and figures-and this crowd had not the patience to sit through it. A number of the elected officials took note, and made a point of wondering aloud why the students weren't allowed to speak sooner.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz's testimony received its share of negative response, mainly due to his support of the controversial Atlantic Yards construction projects..

At one point a young woman appeared suddenly behind the public testimony microphone and attempted to make a plea on behalf of the students'; unfortunately, she had, in frustration, cut into the line in front of another speaker. With raucous support from the amassed youth she spoke of the students' right to an education. However, as she had not registered to speak, the moderator cut her off.

When several police officers approached to remove her from the microphone, many in the crowd erupted; and, as the officers escorted the young woman away, they rushed the area. A phalanx of cops, both in plainclothes and in uniform appeared suddenly, inspiring the students and several others to stand and run to the corner of the hall where the police gathered, offering shouts of fury about the "puppets" on stage and the system governing the entire proceeding. Running from all corners of the auditorium, the police chased down and grabbed the most vocal protestors before physically escorting them out.

By the time the incident was over, the audience was considerably thinned. One of the speakers offering testimony who identified himself as a retired transit worker lambasted the panel for their part in the "abuse" and "brutality" of the young woman.

For the record, this reporter offered the following testimony to the MTA board:

We are living in an era which for most of us is the worst economic crisis of our lives. Looking up at this tailored, racially imbalanced and very comfortable looking MTA Board, I stand before you as one of the thousands and thousands of New Yorkers who are unemployed. I lost my job 6 months ago and have spent every day in this period searching for work. For me, like so many others, reasonable access to the subways and buses to get to the Department of Labor's Unemployment Office, or much more so--to Manhattan to make wider contact with employers--is essential. Your proposed service cuts are a slap in the face to our dignity. This is an insult to the promise of our future.

Now in addition to hurting the jobless of this city and hurting the workers who make New York run, you are proposing to rob transit workers of their jobs. What you are doing is creating a wider unemployed population---and you are pocketing the profits. On behalf of all of these people here today, let me ask you: HOW WILL YOU SLEEP?

Class war in NYC transit

In a pre-spring offensive against 38,000 transit workers and a riding public of millions, Jay Walder, chair of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city's subways, buses and commuter rail, has announced 1,000 layoffs. He vowed "an aggressive overhaul of MTA operations." Workers likely to be axed by Walder include 450 station agents. The MTA also targeted school children, who for generations have gotten subsidized transit bus passes.

Two days later, transit workers, teachers, riders, communities and their allies fired the first shot in the counteroffensive - on the issue of student Metrocards. Transport Workers Local 100 President John Samuelsen joined Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, in denouncing the government's "upside down" priorities - where Wall Street bankers are given bailouts that turn into bonuses and school children are told they can't have passes to ride to school.

Samuelsen declared, "Along with our jobs, student Metrocards are in the MTA's crosshairs. If the cards were discontinued, public education in New York City would cease to be free, devastating hundreds of thousands of families with extra costs of as much as $2,600 per year. Defending student Metrocards is part of our multi-pronged fight against cuts in mass transit."

Recession is not the only cause of the MTA deficit. No layer of New York State's government has acted responsibly on MTA finances. In 1994-1995 Mayor Giuliani and Gov. Pataki, obsessed with cutting taxes for the rich and services for working people, slashed subsidies to the MTA. To fill the gap, the MTA went to Wall Street and borrowed billions at high interest rates. The bills have come due. The MTA must allocate a huge part of its current operating revenue to service its debt. This puts pressure on other big components of the operating budget: service levels and workers' wages and benefits. Also, with a severe recession, the taxes that help finance the MTA - besides the farebox - are underperforming. Finally, the bailout of the MTA last spring by the state government - paid for by a modest payroll tax - has come partly unraveled. Legislators and finance officials in the outer counties of the MTA region are fighting the new payroll tax.

The way the MTA aims to solve the crisis deserves to be called class war, with winners and losers. The main winner is Wall Street, which gets billions from the swollen debt-service. Next, real estate and construction moguls who feed off a $5 billion a year MTA capital (construction and repair) budget. Losers? The workers won't get the wages and benefits they are legally and morally entitled to. Riders, mostly working people, will lose in service cuts and higher fares. The MTA financing system will grow more regressive. Already, it is one of the most farebox-dependent in the country.

The mass transit crisis is a national crisis. Transit labor is under siege in cities across the country. State and national governments need to be pushed. In New York State, some are calling for a greater tax on the rich, and an expansion of the Fair Share Tax reform that was passed about a year ago. Unfortunately, Gov. David Paterson is in favor of allowing the whole law to sunset.

Emergency funding for operating subsidies also has to come from the federal government. Leaders from the Amalgamated Transit Union, TWU, the International Association of Machinists and the Service Employees International Union are putting together a political strategy. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is already arguing for the more generous use of stimulus money and "jobs bill" money to keep transit systems afloat. The MTA, reflecting big banking, construction, real estate and engineering interests, will oppose any federal aid that doesn't go to those interests.

It's class war in transit. The skirmishing has begun.

By Thomas Kenny