Hi friends,
This post is mainly for the locals today, plus those of you who know and love New York City.
The signs were excellent, the crowd was both friendly and deadly serious about congestion pricing.
I ran into friends, including John Trotter. Last year, John photographed subjects for the Caring Capacity project about home care. He spotted one of our subjects, Robert Acevedo, rolling at the front of the march to Bryant Park.
Photograph by John Trotter
A minor digression: care issues — child care, elder care, maternal health care, etc. — never get the attention they deserve. Here’s a quick action from Moms Rising to make sure they are on the agenda at the first presidential debate.
Call on CNN to ask the presidential candidates about care at the first debate. Personalize it!
Accessible transit matters, even if we are not wheelchair users.
The clever folks from Transportation Alternatives came ready with signage to indicate that the station where we ended our march is one of hundreds that is not ADA accessible, and that the funding for those upgrades is linked to the congestion pricing program.
Comptroller Brad Lander is working with legal experts to identify potential plaintiffs for a lawsuit to challenge the Governor’s decision to pull the plug on congestion pricing. Among the possible plaintiffs are
New Yorkers with disabilities, who are depending on the MTA’s commitment to making 95% of the city’s 472 subway stations ADA accessible by 2055;
Residents of the Central Business District that are adversely impacted by congestion, such as those with respiratory illnesses;
Businesses based in the CBD that are adversely impacted by congestion.
The good folks at Riders’ Alliance are collecting stories from real New Yorkers about how killing congestion pricing will affect us — delayed trains, inaccessible stations, and buses stuck in traffic.
Tell your story and be part of the campaign to get congestion pricing back on track.
It’s almost time to vote again in New York. The upcoming primaries are for Congressional seats and seats in the State Assembly and State Senate.
Early voting begins this Saturday, June 15. Saturday is also the last day to request an absentee ballot for the June 25 primary.
To find your poll site and hours for early voting, go here.
Once you navigate to the page with your polling site, there’s a small dark blue rectangle at the top of the page that says view my ballot. Note that there are some judges to vote for.
It is famously difficult to get information about judicial candidates who appear on our ballots. Because judges hold enormous power, you probably want to know which ones have a tendency to give extra-long sentences, for example.
Scrutinize, an organization that advocates for judicial transparency and criminal justice reform, has created a database with profiles of more than 20 judges up for reelection or reappointment this year, shared first with Gothamist.
The judges on my ballot are not listed in the database yet. New tools need time to get up and running. I remain hopeful that this will become more useful.
Okay…this next bit is pretty wonky. Voters in NY also get to choose District Leaders aka State Committee Members. Weirdly, voters choose two District Leaders of two different genders, indicated by M, F, or X.
What do District Leaders do? They are county representatives who volunteer to help run their political parties.
Traditionally, their duties include voting for party leadership, choosing poll workers and nominating judges.
But the unpaid, volunteer role can be what you make of it, and some use the district leader position to register voters, lobby for policy changes or connect New Yorkers to services.
The District Leaders, also hold an informal vote to determine which candidates should receive the party’s all-important endorsement for Supreme Court judge. Despite the name, the Supreme Court
is the state’s main trial court, hearing criminal cases involving felony charges and civil cases where more than $50,000 is at stake.
If you’re still with me, I am honored, because we are in the weeds here with the local political factions. In Brooklyn, the Kings County Democratic Chairwoman Rodneyse Bichotte-Hermelyn, is a famously controversial character, in part because of her efforts to set off intra-party conflict by working against progressive Dems.
The New Kings Democrats are the progressive faction that counters Bichotte-Hermelyn and the Democratic machine.
See the endorsements from the New Kings Democrats for help choosing the most progressive District Leaders.
CORRECTION:
Yesterday, I included an action with some errors. The letter to save library funding and keep the NYC libraries open on Saturdays was written by Zev Thompson, who is a rising high school senior. It is a letter to council members, not the mayor.
Tell your council member to oppose Mayor Adams’s cuts to the libraries! Zev made it easy.
with love,
L