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

Health care's human face highlighted

Eric de la Cruz wasn't poor. In many ways, his future was bright: He had a girlfriend, Noelle, whom he planned to marry. He was in college and worked part time at a small graphic design company-a company not large enough to afford to offer health insurance to its workers.

The Obama administration, along with countless others, including health care activists and the labor movement, have done a great deal to highlight the plight of middle class Americans who are working but still have no health insurance-people like Eric.

Just over five years ago, after visiting several doctors, Eric was told that he had a serious heart ailment that was curable-by a transplant.

"He wanted to do things that all 22-year-olds were doing," his sister, Veronica de la Cruz, a well-known news journalist who worked as a CNN anchor for five years, told a rally for health care reform organized by MoveOn and others. "He wanted to hang out with his friends. Instead, my brother was stuck worrying about how he was going to get help, because his life depended on it."

Eric began calling insurance company after insurance company-and was denied by each one, because of his "pre-existing condition." But Eric was lucky enough to have a sister who loved him and who was a public presence. She began talking about Eric's condition-online, on Twitter, everywhere-and others took note. Many people, who became "Eric's Twitter Army," sent money. Celebrities, his sister said, took notice. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails sold high-price backstage passes to concerts to raise money for Eric.

They raised $1 million, enough to cover the cost of a heart transplant.

Even with a million dollars in hand, UCLA still refused Eric. They said he needed supplemental insurance. "That's the joke," Veronica de la Cruz said. "You can't get supplemental medical insurance if you have a pre-existing medical condition."

After calling numerous transplant centers, de la Cruz was able to find a single facility to take her brother on, but to no avail.

Through tears, de la Cruz told the group, "They said, ‘You got here two years too late. We're basically working against the clock. Eric is basically already in the grave, and we're going to have to dig him out.'"

It was too late. After five years, and after raising more than $1 million, and rallying hundreds of people or more, Eric succumbed to his illness. "Despite all those miracles that were happening, it wasn't enough to outweigh the damage that time waiting for insurance had done," his sister told the rally.

De la Cruz founded an organization, Eric's Law, aimed at health reform. She wants to stop what happened to Eric from happening to others. That's why, she said, she was at the rally, and that's why she supports a health reform with a strong public option.

In an ironic twist, Eric died on July 4, 2009, the same day that Americans celebrate love of country.

"We also know that in this country that we love," Tim Foley, of NYC for Change, told the rally, "122 deaths happen each day that simply wouldn't happen in any other industrialized nation in the world. 122 Americans die each day, and that is unacceptable."

New York's senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, both Democrats, sent representatives to the rally, which took place in neon glow Times Square. Both vowed to continue the fight for health care reform with a not-for-profit option, and implored others to keep fighting. Gillibrand vowed to ensure that the anti-woman Stupak language in the House bill would be defeated.

The rally was part of a larger mobilization to demand that the Senate enact health care reform with a strong. In the four outer boroughs rallies took place, as well in as in hundreds of cities and towns across the United States.

The rally in Times Square was somber, but optimistic as well.

"I went into medicine because I believe that healthcare is a right, not a privilege," said Manisha A. Sharma, MD, of the National Physicians Alliance. "We have never been closer to health insurance reform as a basic civil human right. We are at the home stretch. We have already made change. Call your member of Congress, call your Senator. After 100 years, we can make history."

"If you had a child who was gay, would you deny him or her of following their heart?" -- Letter to a state senator

Friends and comrades,

Communist Party USA member Gabe Falsetta sent the letter below to State Sen. Joe Addabbo, a Democrat who voted the wrong way when the State Senate made the reprehensible mistake of killing a bill that would have allowed gay marriage.

Dear Senator Addabbo,

I’m writing to you today to express my deep disappointment in you vote against the gay marriage bill.

Let me say from the outset that I helped in your election campaign for the 15^th senate district. I did so with enthusiasm in hope of flipping the State Senate to the Democrats. After more than forty years it happened! I’m proud that I was a part of the movement.

On Friday the 4^th of December, I listened to your interview on the Brian Lehrer Show, I listened carefully to your answers to Brian’s questions, In all honesty, I was unconvinced of your reasoning. I believe Diane Savino hit the nail on the head!

True, you represent your constituents (had I known you did not commit to a yes vote, I would have contacted you) but, you should also be a catalyst for higher understanding of these issues, and make no mistake this a civil rights issue, and should be judged on the basis of separation of church and state. And I dare say, it is just a matter of time; the right of human beings to choose their partners in this society will come to pass.

Lastly Joe, I would want to know if you had a child who was gay, would you deny him or her of following their heart?

Respectfully

Gabriel Falsetta

Workers in U.S. most dangerous industry demand protection

From the People's World
By Dan Margolis, Chair
New York State Communist Party

He's had a gun put up to his head during a robbery. He's been assaulted with a crowbar, and had every window in his car broken. He's had a jagged beer bottle shoved into his neck. He was nearly maced.

All of this on the job.

Of colleagues he knows: One was stabbed in the lower neck with a hunting knife. One was choked by a woman. One was shot in the eye after being robbed. Another remains in a four-year coma after a violent assault. Still another, Ndiaye Serigne (pronounced "Jay Serene"), was beaten violently on Halloween by mask-wearing men.

Police officer? Soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan? What sort of job does he, David, as well as his colleagues, hold?

They work, according to the Department of Labor, the most dangerous job in the United States: New York City taxi driver. While New Yorkers tend to take cab drivers for granted, they perform the most dangerous, and one of the most grueling, jobs in the city.

In Serigne's case, the four masked passengers jumped into his cab, one of them taking the front seat. Since it was Halloween, Ndiaye wasn't surprised by the masks. But after crossing the bridge into Staten Island, the man in the front seat switched off the meter, and told Serigne that "now it's a free ride." Serigne, in a move that may have saved his life, ignored his assailants' orders to pull down a narrow street and instead drove to a nearby gas station. It was there that he was beaten and the passengers-turned-attackers fled. Now when he looks at the security camera video, he can't believe what he sees.

"I'm just thankful that I am alive," he said, noting that a childhood friend from his native Senegal was murdered on the job only three years ago. "We are just workers, but some passengers treat us so badly."

According to taxi workers and their representatives, this is a horrible story, but one that is neither an anomaly nor even surprising.

"Drivers are 60 times more likely to be killed on the job and 80 times more likely to be robbed on the job than any other worker in the United States of America," said Bhairavi Desai, Executive Director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance yesterday.

Taxis move nearly half a million people each day, she added. "The airports, finance, restaurants, Broadway, every single industry in New York City, depend on taxi drivers for their bottom line. Our bottom line is our lives need to be protected."

Now taxi drivers, united into the TWA and well as elected officials are going to do something about it. Standing next to Desai, New York State Assembly member Rory Lancman, D-Queens, announced that he would introduce a bill into the Assembly that would extend protection already won by bus and subway workers to taxi drivers.

"Men and women who drive these taxis are entitled to just as much protection as the people who run our trains, drive our buses," Lancman, who chairs the Assembly Subcommittee on Workplace Safety, said.

Under recently-enacted laws, won after a sustained fight by Transport Workers Union Local 100 and its allies, anyone who assaults a bus driver, or subway or railroad worker, is to be charged with a felony and potentially sentenced to prison time. Lancman, the TWA and some transit workers present, want to see that protection extended to taxi workers. The law would also require a sign in each cab warning would-be assailants that any assault could lead to prison time.

The bill would send a signal, Lancman said, that "we in New York state will not tolerate [violence against drivers], and we will take every measure that we can to make sure that when these men and women get into their cab to start their shift, at the end of it, when they leave that cab to go home to their families, to go home to their children, that they come home safe and sound."

Communist Party on NYC council election results: The struggle continues

New Yorkers elected a new city council November 3, with some remarkable, and contradictory, results. Some incumbents were sent packing, some new progressives were elected and some important victories were gained over the Brooklyn Democratic Party machine. At the same time, the pernicious effects of racism were exposed in some races, most notably the 19th district, in Queens.

Overall, the election results were better than might have been expected. Some of these important results are mentioned above. Another is that, for the first time in this city's more than 400-year history, most seats in the council are held by an African American, Latino, or Asian American, meaning that the council much more accurately represents the complexion of this predominately racially and nationally oppressed city. Four members, or about eight percent of the new council, will be openly gay, the highest number yet.

In addition, about 25 percent of the incoming council's members will be non-incumbents, i.e. new members. This is for various reasons: some went off to fight for higher office, others simply retired. But there is another, more important reason: popular revulsion with those city councilors who agreed to go along with Bloomberg's plan to override the will of New Yorkers and overturn the results of two term limits referenda-thus paving the way for himself to run for a third term. Many have seen this as an undemocratic power grab. Five incumbents were defeated, at least partially due to complicity in Bloomberg's power grab, marking the highest number of sitting councilors thrown out in nearly two decades.

At the same time, there were some serious setbacks. Two council seats were lost to Republicans, giving that party a total of five out of 51 seats. Worse still, one of the seats they picked up can be attributed to anti-Asian racism.

John Liu, the first Asian-American ever elected to any city office, left his council seat in the 20th district, which includes Flushing and surrounding Queens communities, to fight for-and win-the seat of city comptroller. There were several Democratic candidates who ran in the primary. Two Korean Americans, two Chinese Americans and a white candidate. In this district, the necessity was to build a coalition of Korean and Chinese people, as well as the relatively small African American community and some of the white population in order avoid a vote fractured along ethnic lines-and losing to the Republican.

John Choe, one of the Korean American candidates and Liu's former chief of staff, was in the best position to do this: he had worked for years with the entire community, and had the backing of the Queens Democratic Party. However, his candidacy was not able to overcome the divisions, especially given that another candidate, S.J. Jung, also a Korean American, received the backing of the Working Families Party. Choe ultimately lost to the little known Chinese American candidate Yen Chou, who lost to the (also Chinese) Republican candidate Peter Koo. It is worth noting that the margin of difference was less than the total number of votes cast for the Working Families Party and Green Party candidates if they were combined.

In the 19th council district, in Queens, Democrat and Korean-American Kevin Kim lost to Republican heathen Dan Halloran for the seat given up by Democrat Tony Avella. This, the other Republican pickup, looks to be due entirely to racism. Halloran ran an almost openly racist campaign, in which he essentially told voters that were Kim to be elected, Asian developers would change the entire community to look like (overwhelmingly Asian) downtown Flushing.

To make matters worse, the term used above, "heathen," was not an insult: this is what Halloran calls himself. In fact, he's a member of a bizarre religious sect called Theodism, which describes itself as heathen. This sect worships the gods and goddesses of Northern Europe-and has been linked to extreme racial beliefs.
Also, Kim's Asian campaign workers were reportedly harassed and surrounded by white thugs who chanted "white power" and "Asian man out!" all while carrying Halloran paraphernalia. It is clear that, in a district that is very much Catholic-and therefore not predisposed to vote for heathens and where Asian American campaign workers were set upon, and which had been previously Democratic, that the use of racism was the primary reason for Kim's loss.

It would be wrong to paint all whites in the 19th district as racist, of course. Halloran, beat Kim by only about 1,300 votes, so it is clear that at least a good section of the area's white population voted for Kim. Clearly, there is a basis here for the struggle against anti-Asian racism going forward.

At the same time, there were strong gains for Asian Americans. As mentioned above, John Liu, who was born in China's Taiwan province, has become the first-ever Asian-American elected to any citywide position. Also, Margaret Chin defeated incumbent Alan Gerson in the Democratic primary in the first city council district in Manhattan, making her the first ever Chinese representative of the district that includes Chinatown. Both of these elections are historic steps forward for the Asian American community, and New Yorkers should celebrate them.

In the 34th district, which represents Williamsburg and Bushwick, Brooklyn, as well as Ridgewood, Queens, incumbent Democrat Diana Reyna handily defeated, by a margin of 60-35 percent, her main opponent, Maritza Davila.

While Reyna is an incumbent Democrat, this race represents a victory for the grassroots. Vito Lopez, who represents the Brooklyn Democratic Party machine, and is notorious for alleged patronage and corruption scandals, and who is known to place people into office based on their allegiance to him, backed Davila, because Reyna, in essence, decided to fight for affordable housing instead of take Lopez's orders.

Even though she lost the Democratic primary, Lopez decided to take Davila to the general election anyway, on the Working Families Party line: He made an unholy alliance between himself, Democratic clubs he controls, the WFP and the Catholic Church. (The Brooklyn diocese is particularly thankful to Lopez for helping to scuttle state-level legislation that would have lifted the statute of limitations on child rape; the church claimed that if all their victims in Brooklyn and Queens were awarded compensation, the diocese would likely be bankrupted.)

Lopez failed miserably, delivering a rout to the Brooklyn Democratic machine, and empowering progressive currents within the party there.

On Staten Island's north shore, in a blow against racism, Debi Rose was elected the first African American council person to serve any area of the Island. In addition, Rose is openly progressive; she's a member of Staten Island's Peace Action and other organizations.

In uptown Manhattan, Ydanis Rodriguez, who is connected to Dominican left organizations, won with 94.7 percent of the vote-10,672 ballots to 592-after winning about 60 percent of the vote in a six-way primary. Rodriguez has been a staple figure in New York City progressive politics, especially in the fight for immigration reform.

In the primary elections, Jumaane Williams beat incumbent Kendall Stewart in the 45th district in Brooklyn, making him the first Grenadian to ever occupy a seat in the council. So ebullient was the Grenadian population, in New York City and abroad, Williams and his family were invited to meet with, and be congratulated by, the Prime Minister of Grenada. Williams beat Stewart in a six-way primary race by 12 points. Stewart, unpopular for siding with Mayor Michael Bloomberg in changing city term limit laws over the objections of city voters, ran on the Independence Party line in the general elections, after running an extremely dirty campaign. In that election, he suffered an even worse defeat, by a difference of 59.1 points.

Williams, who is only 32, has worked with progressive city council members, including Rosie Mendez, D-Manhattan and others, and has spent his time fighting for housing rights.

Of course, New York City has a number of progressive city councilors who were reelected. Perhaps the most well-loved on this list would be Letitia James, who enjoys an almost celebrity status in Brooklyn, as well as around the other boroughs, for her work in civil and human rights, as well as leading the fight against Forest City Rattner, a multi-billion dollar developer aiming to demolish much of the Fort Greene and Prospect Heights sections of Brooklyn in order to build luxury condos.

Twice in this discussion the Working Families Party was mentioned as playing a nefarious role. This fact cannot be avoided, but, at the same time, it is important not to demonize the WFP. Virtually all of the elected progressives (aside from Reyna) were backed by them. As the party is based in the city's labor movement, both the progressive and reactionary trends on display in the latter are also on display in the former. As we were so glaringly shown in the mayoral race, there are some big divisions in the labor movement-and they were also on display in these elections as well. The question for progressives becomes not how to defeat the Working Families Party, but how to help it, and all of labor, become more united, and to defeat reactionary trends. A weakening of the WFP would be a weakening of the progressive movement. The same goes for labor overall: progressives must work to help unite the labor movement.

Further, the Working Families Party is now leading or has recently led a number of important campaigns: it is fighting to ensure that all New Yorkers are eligible for paid sick days; it fought for fair share tax reform a few months ago; and, in what may have been its most heroic move this election cycle, the party fought a strong, if unsuccessful, battle to stop Bloomberg from overturning the term limits law.

This is only a brief sampling of some of the more exciting races, and some preliminary analysis, but even here it can be seen that the results of the elections were contradictory: some reasons for jubilant optimism, as well as reasons to renew important fights, especially against racism (as the mayoral election showed) are on display.

The struggle continues.