Author Archives: Info@greaternycforchange.org

#Resist.

In the week since Election Day, we’ve seen more than 100 years of social and economic justice advocacy and legislation threatened and the cherished diversity of American society thrown into question. Not only the Affordable Care Act, but also Medicare is under siege. A Muslim registry has been proposed. Deportation forces that are opposed by the governments and police of our largest, most vibrant cities are planned. And, most tellingly, an array of bigots, xenophobes, racists, outsourcers, climate-change deniers, and just brutish and incompetent people is lining up to lead our nation at home and abroad.

Many of you have joined in protest. You’ve said #NotMyPresident, loud and clear. We urge you to continue, but also to resist the gradual “normalization” of this administration-in-waiting. There is nothing “normal” or “American” about what is being proposed.

What to do, right now? Here are three suggestions:

Read–and learn. Congressman Jerry Nadler has just come out with a must-read primer demonstrating how to use existing government as a tool of resistance.
Organize. Join one or more of the meetings taking place across New York to plot our collective way forward. There’s one called Rise Up Together: The American Majority Against Trump this Sunday, November 20th, from 6 to 8 pm at The Center at 208 West 13th Street, Manhattan.
Help. Support the neediest and most vulnerable–those who are immediately threatened. We’ll be making more suggestions, but you can start by supporting and empowering the Muslim community; defending reproductive choice and the right to free or affordable contraception; informing and protecting our immigrant neighbors and families; and standing up for the right to health care by using the hashtag #IfILoseCoverage.

If there was ever time for solidarity, it’s NOW. We’re partners in the campaign to #CLOSErikers. Join us for a vigil outside Gracie Mansion on Sunday afternoon, December 4th

Let’s flip Long Island Blue!

Organizer Dale in front of Sen. Kaminsky’s office. Our volunteers helped make it happen!

While we’re on the ground in Pennsylvania, there’s work to be done in New York. Democrats have three terrific, progressive candidates in key districts in Long Island’s Nassau County, which has long been dominated by GOP elected officials far out of touch with today’s constituencies:

District 7 (North Shore): Adam Haber has a good shot at this seat, but turnout will be key.
District 9 (South Shore): Todd Kaminsky won the Special Election in April by running an effective ground game, with the help of ourvolunteers! Now the state GOP is propping up the same opponent.
District 6 (Mid-Island): Ryan Cronin can edge out the incumbent this year!

Campaign 2016 Kickoff

Throughout the year, you’ve helped others secure a living wage and affordable housing, expanding access to health care, limiting discrimination and disenfranchisement on the basis of color or gender, and ensuring a fairer, more ethical, more participatory democracy and government that work for us all.
This fall, all those issues and more are on the line. That’s why we’re asking you to join us in knocking on doors, making phone calls, and encouraging people to vote, participate–and move the ball forward toward a better future.
GNYCFC volunteers will be traveling to Pennsylvania to help keep that battleground state Blue and to neighborhoods in Long Island and the Hudson Valley to elect a progressive majority in the New York State Senate. It’s fun, and it’s the best way to ensure that you won’t wake up on November 9th wishing you’d done more.

SIGN UP TO VOLUNTEER FOR HILLARY AND FEDERAL ELECTION CANDIDATES IN PENNSYLVANIA: Pennsylvania is a swing state on the presidential level, and we have a chance to elect the state’s first woman senator ever in Katie McGinty. In 2012, KeepPABlue helped move the election dial a few points forward to re-elect President Barack Obama; this year, buses will leave and return to Union Square every Saturday and all GOTV days starting September 17th. No prior canvassing experience is necessary.
SIGN UP TO VOLUNTEER TO FLIP THE NEW YORK STATE SENATE: Our state senate races receive less media attention than the Presidential race, but much of the dysfunction in our state is a result of the continued Republican control of the State Senate. This year we have a real chance to win back the State Senate, and you can help. There will be phone banks in Manhattan and day canvassing trips to key senate districts outside the city to campaign for great progressive candidates. Free transportation is provided, and no prior canvassing or calling experience is needed.
Let’s work together this fall. We can win this, together!

Sometimes the polite way doesn’t work. Then we take to the streets.

On June 12th, 49 LGBT club-goers were slaughtered and 53 more injured with an assault weapon in Orlando, FL. The US Congress had no response besides the usual prayers and a strangely deafening moment of silence. That’s why Gays Against Guns is replacing moments of silence with moments of action to make our elected representatives pass sensible gun reforms.
Two weeks after the Orlando massacre, and just days after Congressman John Lewis’s sit-in on the House floor highlighting Congressional inaction on gun safety, hundreds of GAGers marched in the NYC Pride Parade, 49 of them shrouded in white veils and carrying signs with the names and faces of each Orlando victim.
In early July, GAG “named, shamed, and blamed” NRA puppet Congressman Lee Zeldin (R-LI) with a demonstration in his district and a puppet in his likeness. GAG members demonstrated outside Trump Tower on the opening night of the Republican National Convention. They staged “die-ins” outside two New York City Reebok Crossfit stores after learning that the winner of an annual fitness contest would receive a Glock handgun–the same gun used against Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and 19 others in Tucson, AZ in 2011. New GAG chapters are sprouting up across the nation, with actions to shame politicians in the NRA’s pockets this election season.
We’re in. Greater NYC for Change has long fought for sensible gun safety laws–laws supported by 90% of Americans and a large majority of NRA members.
We’ve seen the massacres, but also the daily gun violence that kills 33,000 Americans each year. Other nations–the UK, Canada, and Australia among them–have responded to crisis with life-saving gun regulations. Here at home, we increasingly recognize the futility of polite lobbying of politicians. Constituents need to know who is working for them, and who is working for the gun industry.
There’s more: Gun violence disproportionately affects minority and vulnerable communities–children at Sandy Hook, worshipers at a Charleston prayer group, young Black men, and the LGBT community, itself the target of an estimated 20% of all hate crimes. Trans women and LGBT people of color are at greatest peril. But as the direct actions led by ACT UP and others in the fight against HIV-AIDS and for Marriage Equality demonstrate, the LGBT community knows how to fight–and get results.

YOU can join us. Email gagnyoutreach@gmail.com and “like” GAG on Facebook. You don’t need to be gay to join GAG. All you need is a healthy disgust at politicians who won’t do their most fundamental job: ensuring our safety and protecting us from danger.

Join the Fight for $15.

As we wrap up the Albany budget session, the fate of 3,000,000 New York State workers is at stake. We’re on track to make New York the first state to pass a $15 minimum wage for all workers, IF enough people make their voices heard on March 15.

Today, 54% of those earning less than $15 an hour are women; 48% of all black workers and 49% of Hispanic workers statewide make less than $15. Income inequality continues to rise. The ranks of millionaires and billionaires have swelled to record levels and wages have flattened, leaving hard-working New York families far behind.

It’s hard to underestimate what could happen if we #RaiseTheWage.

It would fast-track the path out of poverty, provide worker dignity, help millions of workers pay for the basics, all while boosting the state economy. More and better-paying jobs would be among the results.

Governor Cuomo has named this statewide effort after his father—the Mario Cuomo Campaign for Economic Justice. We urge you to join in for ALL the men and women, fathers and mothers, who are struggling to provide dignified lives for their families. That’s for #allofus.

To rally in Albany on March 15, reserve your seat on buses from New York City, Long Island, or the Hudson Valley. If you can’t make it, follow the Fight for $15 on T witter or Facebook; we’ll be posting pictures and tweets that you can share, too. And don’t forget to tell your senator to pass paid family leave!

It’s Not Just Flint.

We know the immediate effects of the Flint, MI crisis—how the combination of “emergency management,” austerity politics, and irresponsible governance literally poisoned the children of a poor, majority-black city. Thousands of children are now at risk for stunted growth and reduced learning development due to toxic levels of lead ingested through their drinking water.

That means long-term deprivation and, most likely, more cycles of poverty in hard-working communities of color. Yet environmental racism and willful disregard for society’s most vulnerable have a far wider reach.

Think of Baltimore, where the rate of lead poisoning in children is three times the national average–all concentrated in a few racially segregated zip codes. Or Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” with its chemical- and refinery oil-laced water and air. Or, closer to home, the South Bronx, where health disparities from industrial pollution and repeated “industry dumping” in our nation’s poorest congressional district include asthma, enduring mental illnesses, and obesity.

This isn’t new. The systematic environmental abuse of the poor and communities of color is decades-long. But it’s time to demand that more resources—not less—be put into the neighborhoods that most need them.

Right now, you can sign the petition by our friends at Color of Change and demand that budget cuts to the Center for Disease Control’s Healthy Homes and Lead Poisoning Prevention Program be restored to pre-2005 levels.

It’s a start. A stab at environmental justice. What’s happening in Flint must be prevented from happening elsewhere.