May Day reborn!

By Libero Della Piana

International Workers Day - was, of course, born in the U.S.A. But while the Haymarket events occurred in Chicago, the largest and perhaps best known May Day celebrations in the U.S. were historically in New York City. Unions, workers, their families and more traditionally marched together to honor working people.

This year, New York's historic May Day celebrations will be reborn with a mass march and rally organized by the labor and immigrant rights movements. An alliance of over 30 city and regional organizations is calling for "Labor and Immigrant Rights and Jobs for All." The demands are based on the AFL-CIO's five-point jobs program and immigrant rights demands.

A recent panel of labor leaders at the Left Forum discussed May Day historically and the plans for May Day 2010.

Ed Ott, former Executive Director of the New York City Central Labor Council spoke from the panel, saying, "this project will help rebuild the working-class left in the city." He noted that there are several protests on May 1, but argued, "this particular expression is the regrouping of some particular unions to reclaim a presence on May Day."

This emerging alliance is reclaiming May Day from years of neglect. McCarthyism, the decline of the left, and the identification of May Day with sectarian groups (true and not) had whittled New York ‘s May Day celebrations down to a small but spirited gathering by the dawn of the 21st Century.

Then in 2006, something happened.

Immigrant rights movements in the U.S. had for several years used the occasion of May Day to demonstrate for immigrant rights, but in that year millions of immigrant families poured out on May 1 around the U.S. calling urgently for immigrant rights, workers rights and amnesty. New York was no exception. May Day received a new breath of life.

This year perhaps begins a full recovery. Saturday, May 1, the march will assemble in Manhattan's Foley Square on Worth Street between Centre and Lafayette Streets. The March route will pass Wall Street, home to the country and world's largest banking and finance institutions, which many participants see as the source of the current economic and jobs crisis-and end in Battery Park.

Another panelist, Bhairavi Desai of the New York City Taxi Workers Alliance said, "It is really important to see organized labor and the immigrant rights movement come together with our economy in the state it's in." Taxi workers, domestic workers and many other immigrant workers are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act and face particularly difficult challenges at the workplace and elsewhere.

Some of the sponsors of the May day events include, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, District Council 37 AFSCME, Transport Workers Union Local 100, Domestic Workers United, United Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 210, New York City Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (UFCW), Labor Left Project and many more.

In closing the panel presentation, Ed Ott spurred the audience into action, saying, "Every working-class activist should try to build this effort."

For more information or to volunteer, contact Jason Green with the Alliance for Labor & Immigrants Rights & Jobs for All at Jason@advancegroup.com or 212-239-7323

No need for MTA's draconian cuts!

By Dan Margolis
New York State Communist Party

Once again the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is threatening New Yorkers by making draconian cuts to bus and subway service, this time especially for students and seniors. One loses track of how many times the authority has done this over the past few years. While the MTA board usually backs down from the most horrific of its planned abuse of New Yorkers, each time there are at least some cuts, either fare increases or service reductions - or both.

This time is both similar to, and different from, the previous go-arounds. What is different is that the proposed service reductions are even worse than past "doomsday" scenarios. What is the same is that no cuts or fare increases are actually necessary.
Big cuts proposed

New Yorkers are already reeling from fare hikes and service cuts, but now the MTA wants to do more. In December the board voted to axe the W and Z trains, as well as 21 bus routes. They've agreed to cut the number of trains per hour on all the other lines. At night, trains are slotted to run only once every 30 minutes.

But perhaps most egregious of all is the treatment of students and seniors. Under the new rules, students will no longer get free or reduced fare Metrocards, meaning that New York will become one of the only cities in the country that doesn't bother to give its students a way to get to school. This undermines the basic democratic right to an equal education for all (a right that has never been fully realized in this country, and, to the extent that it has been achieved at all, has been severely eroded over the past few decades).
Effects on young people

In this city's school system, young people apply to high schools. That is, they try to get into the best high schools in the city, either a "flagship" school like Stuyvesant or the Bronx School of Science, or a school that specializes in a certain field. A lower-income student who excels at his or her coursework in predominantly African American East New York can apply to Stuyvesant, and, if accepted, receive a stellar education. The questions have to arise: Why can't all of our city schools be as good as Stuyvesant? What about the fact that schools in poorer areas, where students are mainly racially and nationally oppressed, are invariably worse off economically than those in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods? Yes there is, at least, the possibility of applying to and getting into a top-notch school. But getting into a school means nothing if you can't actually get there. Without the free Metrocards, that student in East New York, along with his or her family, will have to decide: Spend the money ($4.50 per day, $22.50 per week, about $90 per month) to get to Stuyvesant, or forego the opportunity and go to the local school. In an area where more than one in five people live in poverty, that extra $90 amounts to a significant monthly wage reduction and is simply impossible.
Unequal impact

This will affect all working people, but the racist dimensions cannot be ignored: African Americans and Latinos will be disproportionally affected. The same goes for seniors, who will have their Access-a-Ride service cut.

Currently, seniors can call Access-a-Ride and get picked up from their home and brought where they need to go. This system has been riddled with problems - talk to any city senior and listen to the stories of incredibly long wait times - but, once again, we have an "at least" situation: at least seniors were able to get around. Now, Access-a-Ride service will be trimmed, and our older residents will be picked up and brought only to the closest accessible subway station. Hopefully their destination subway station won't be an inaccessible one (without an elevator or escalator)! Since most stations are non-accessible, areas around these stations will simply become no-go areas for our older population.

What kind of city treats its younger and older generations like this?
Solutions

The public has learned not to trust the MTA, a shadowy authority known for keeping at least two sets of books. But even if it is true that there is a $383 million deficit in the MTA's budget, there are ways to fix the problem without these abominable cuts.
City Council's plan

The newly elected City Council, more progressive than the old, has started a campaign against the cuts, and has put forward a realistic plan to alleviate a huge portion of the deficit. The plan is as follows:

• Reallocate 10 percent of direct stimulus aid to MTA operating expenses (this should generate about $91.5 million)
• Use budgeted PAYGO capital funds for operating ($50 million)
• Reallocate 10 percent of additional stimulus transit aid via state to operating expenses ($30 million).

This plan is, of course, not perfect. Allocating money away from the capital fund, which is used for new projects, such as the Second Avenue subway line, is harmful. It holds up important projects, and would stop the creation of jobs that such projects bring about. This is important, and can't be overlooked. Nonetheless, the situation is extreme.

If the City Council plan is the best we can win for now, it has to be supported. But we New Yorkers should, while supporting that, be fighting for something more as well.
Giveaways to the rich

As the People's World reported earlier, the MTA has made numerous sweetheart deals with developers, most notably around the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn (itself a miserable debacle pushed by Mayor Bloomberg). That project represents a giveaway of hundreds of millions of dollars to a private developer.

We should demand that this deal be canceled.

Why should some private business be given tens of millions to make hundreds of millions, while our brothers and sisters, especially the oldest and youngest, are made to suffer?
Put the burden on those who can afford it

We should demand that the Fair Share Tax, won only recently, not be allowed to sunset, and that it be increased. Instead of essentially taxing students' families a huge percentage of their income by cutting the reduced-fare Metrocard, why not tax the wealthiest few, those who can afford it, directly? For the same reason, there should be another surcharge on the wealthiest New Yorkers.

The fight is not over. We have until June before these cuts are scheduled to go into effect. On our side is the City Council, tens of thousands of students who are organizing, a number of state senators and Assembly members, Transport Workers Union Local 100 (which itself would share a special pain if these cuts go through) - in short, the vast majority of New Yorkers.

We can stop these cuts and put the whole progressive movement in a better position. The question is how big of a victory we can achieve.

City students on Facebook, in the streets over MTA cuts

Public high school students, as well as teachers and parents, are organizing in new ways against a proposal by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city's buses and trains, to take away free-and reduced-price Metrocards currently issued to students.

"Yeah, this is insanely crazy," reads a message from high school student Aleize Jarrett-via Facebook. "I go to school from Bronx to Brooklyn everyday, two fares per day. I don't want to spend $4.50 or whatever just to get to school. It's already worse, since teacher's jobs are getting cut."

People from across the city are in a rage, but young people have taken the lead in organizing. A number of new Facebook groups have sprung up in the past few weeks, including one, "Protest the MTA getting rid of STUDENT METROCARDS," which currently has nearly 100,000 members.

Out of that group, one successful protest of 200 students has already taken place and more are planned.

"The student organizing has been incredibly impressive," Working Families Party spokesperson Dan Levitan told the World. "You've got students using the tools that they use every day in their own life to really organize a rapid response."

"They've used the tools that connect to them to organize themselves," Levitan continued. "They had a protest with hundreds of people that was put together in just a couple of days."

The WFP is fighting the cuts via a more traditional route, through a petition drive. Launched in December, it already has about 10,000 signatures.

Levitan noted that, were the changes to go through, there would be a huge disparity between city students and those in the rest of the state, where, like in the rest of the country, students are picked up by yellow buses and brought to school for free.

While cutting free rides for students has drawn the most attention, the MTA is also drawing riders' ire by pushing other cuts: two subway lines and dozens of bus routes are also on the chopping block.

After a demonstration, New York City Council speaker Christine Quinn called the cuts "a slap in the face to hard working people across our city."

Also slated to go are services for the disabled and the elderly.

"They're going to significantly scale back Access-a-Ride for the disabled. Right now you can call Access-a-Ride and they'll take you basically anywhere you want to go. Under the new thing, they'll just take you to the nearest accessible subway station, and then it's just like, ‘good luck.'"

The MTA voted on the cuts in December, but they aren't slated to take effect until June, giving New Yorkers time to organize.

The students are planning another demonstration on January 11, and the city council is vowing to continue the fight, starting with their own petition drive.

Levitan says that he is optimistic: "This fight continues, and as it gets closer to the time when these cuts get implemented, I think you're going to see that really take off."

By Dan Margolis

NYC transit cuts byproducts of giveaways to the rich

Once again, city straphangers are being threatened by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which claims that it is out of money and has to cut service on the city's bus and subway lines-again. But the MTA is giving hundreds of millions of dollars to big developers, say critics; still others see the cuts as a political ploy.

This morning the authority's board approved sweeping cuts, aimed at filling a deficit of nearly $400 million, affecting just about every rider in the city. All services are set to be scaled back, with less trains and buses, especially during non-peak hours. In addition, two entire subway lines-the W and the Z-are to be eliminated, as well as numerous bus lines.

Most controversial, however, is a plan to eliminate reduced price and free fares for city students. While in most cities across the country, students rely on big yellow buses to pick them up and drop them off at school, local students often have to take a train or bus to a school in a far-off area. Consequently, many students will be left without transportation to or from school

At a hearing before the MTA's board voted this morning, City Council member Charles Barron asked, "You sit here and bring anxieties to young children. What do you want them to do? Jump the turnstiles and turn them into criminals?"

Bill Thompson, the city's comptroller said in a statement before the vote that the board's move would unfairly harm students. "The MTA has a duty to exhaust all possible options before these cuts are considered," he said. "I urge all the members of the MTA Board to vote ‘No' at tomorrow's meeting."

The MTA leadership argued that it needs to save money after Albany cut $143 million in funding, and payroll taxes earmarked for transit were to bring in $100 million less than expected. They also blamed the workers who operate the system themselves, arguing that money awarded to employees would add to the debt.

But it's not overly generous benefits for the workers that is putting the MTA into the red, said Council Member Letitia James, D-Brooklyn, but giveaways to rich developers.

Forest City Ratner, a multi-billion dollar developer that has found hundreds of millions of dollars in public money to finance a private for-profit project called Atlantic Yards has also benefited greatly from the MTA-they are selling the Vanderbilt Yards, in Brooklyn, to Ratner for $100 million, but accepting a down payment of only $20 million and allowing the developer to pay the rest over more than two decades.

"Forest City Ratner should pay the $100 million owed now for the purchase of the Vanderbilt Yards," James said.

James further explained that "for unclear reasons" the MTA, when it decided to sell the property, worked exclusively with Ratner and sold the property well under value. "unclear" seems to be code for "shady," as many believe that the whole project is a shady deal between developers and the city. The MTA board itself is dominated by big developers and their representatives.

In fact, another company, Extell, actually offered the MTA a full $50 million per year more than Ratner, and offered to pay up front.

"Had the MTA accepted a higher bidder," James said, "they would have received their funds upfront and their current budgetary gap could have been cut almost in half."

"Cancel the deal," she continued, noting that the property has actually been valued at $271.5 million.

"Something simply doesn't sit right with the community about the preferential treatment that Forest City Chairman Bruce Ratner has received from the MTA. Now it appears as though MTA customers and specifically our youth - the future of the City-may pay dearly to support the project of a multi million dollar developer that the community doesn't want to begin with," said Council Member James.

New Yorkers are clearly enraged by these cuts, which are on top of cuts earlier in the year, and a fare increase, and another fare increase, of 7.5 percent, is scheduled for 2011. While the board has voted on the newest round of cuts, none are scheduled to take place until June. In that time, New Yorkers, including elected officials and transit workers themselves, are likely to rally support to undo the recent round of cuts.

By Dan Margolis