Governor Andrew M. Cuomo proposed a positive reform agenda to address systemic racism and police brutality amidst the ongoing protests across the state and nation in response to the killing of George Floyd. The reform agenda includes a national ban on excessive force and chokeholds by law enforcement officers; independent investigations of police brutality conducted by independent, outside agencies – not by local prosecutors; and disclosure of disciplinary records of police officers being investigated.
While standing firmly in support of the protests against police brutality, the Governor said that protest for its own sake would only work against the cause, but that there needs to be a clearly defined list of actions that need to be articulated.
“You want to make that moment work,” he declared. “Yes, you express the outrage. But then you say, ‘Here’s my agenda. Here’s what I want.’ That’s what we have to be doing in this moment. And the protesters are making a point. And most of them are making a smart, sensible point. But you have to add the positive reform agenda that every voice calls for so the government, the politicians know what to do. And there is a positive reform agenda here. There should be a national ban on excessive force by police officers. There should be a national ban on chokeholds. Period. There should be independent investigations of police abuse.”
And Cuomo also differentiated between the those who are exercising their Constitutional First Amendment right to protest against those who are taking advantage to loot and vandalize, giving Trump the opportunity to deflect and discount, and shift focus to himself as the “law-and-order” strongman. Indeed, there are reports that White Nationalist group is posing as Antifa on Twitter, calling for violence. Trump is proposing to designate Antifa a terrorist group, and is using them to justify calling out military against protesters – which would be a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
“There’s no doubt that what the President’s trying to do here is turn the attention to the looters rather than the point of the protest, which is genuine outrage,” Cuomo said in an interview with Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC. “”You look at what happened with Mr. Floyd, you have to be outraged. It’s not just Mr. Floyd in an isolated situation, it’s been years and years of the same situation. You can go back to Rodney King, Amadou Diallo and Eric Garner – it’s a long list.
“They want to make this about looting and criminals rather than the killing. That’s what they’re trying to do. In New York, we did have large protests and we do have people who are, I think, exploiting the protest. There’s no doubt that there’s some people who came out and did looting and criminal activity. You have some disrupting organizations that are seizing upon the moment. We want to make sure that order is maintained and we’re putting in place a curfew.”
“Use this moment. You look in history, Nicolle, when did change come? Change came when the people insisted on change. Let’s talk about investigation of police abuse. No chokeholds, nation-wide standard for undue force. Let’s talk about funding of education and equal funding in education. Let’s talk about affordable housing. Let’s talk about a child poverty agenda. Let’s use the moment constructively.”
Cuomo ordered a curfew of 11 pm in New York City, and doubled the number of police, from 4,000 to 8,000. However, that was not enough to stop a spate of acts of looting and vandalism.
The protests come just as New York City was hitting the milestones in the fight against COVID-19, which has taken more lives – and more disproportionately in communities of color – in the city and state than anywhere in the country or world. The Governor said that if there was any “silver” lining in the timing, the protests are happening when the infection rate has been cut from 20 percent to 2 percent but still raised concerns of reigniting the spread of the pandemic.
Here is a transcript of Governor Cuomo’s remarks:
We’re talking about reopening in one week in New York City. Now we’re seeing these mass gatherings over the past several nights that could, in fact, exacerbate the COVID-19 spread. We spent all this time closed down, locked down, masked, socially distanced and then you turn on the TV and you see there’s mass gatherings that could potentially be infecting hundreds and hundreds of people. After everything that we have done. We have to talk a minute and ask ourselves what are we doing here? What are we trying to accomplish?
We have protests across the state that continued last night, they continued across the nation. Upstate we worked with the cities very closely. The State Police did a great job. We had, basically, a few scattered arrests, upstate New York. But the local governments did a great job, the people did a great job, law enforcement did a great job. The protestors were responsible. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad, either, upstate.
I said from day one, I share the outrage and I stand with the protestors. You look at that video of the killing of an unarmed man, Mr. Floyd, it is horrendous. Horrendous. It’s frightening. It perverts everything you believe about this country. It does and there’s no excuse for it. No right minded American would make an excuse for it. So, protest yes. Be frustrated, yes. Outraged, yes of course. Is there a larger problem? Of course. It’s not just Mr. Floyd, it goes back – there are 50 cases that are just like Mr. Floyd. We’ve them here in New York City. What’s the difference between Mr. Floyd and Amadou Diallo? Or Abner Louima? Or Eric Garner? What is the difference? What have we learned? Nothing?
So, yes, we should be outraged. And yes, there’s a bigger point to make. It is abuse by police. But it’s something worse. It is racism. It is discrimination. It is fundamental inequality and injustice. My father spoke about it in 1984. The speech called “The Tale of Two Cities.” People still talk about it. The point of the tale of two cities is there’s two Americas. Two sets of rules. Two sets of outcomes. Two sets of expectations. It’s true. It was true then, it’s true now. Look at our prisons and tell me there’s not inherit injustice in society. Look at public housing, tell me there’s not inherent injustice.
Look at what happened with this COVID infection rate nationwide. More African Americans infected, more African Americans dead proportionally than white Americans. Of course, there’s chronic institutionalized discrimination. There is no doubt. There is no doubt. And there’s no doubt that it’s been going on for a long time and people are frustrated, and it has to be corrected and it has to be corrected now. And there’s no doubt, that this nation as great as it is has had the continuing sin of discrimination. From before the nation was formed and it started with slavery. And it has had different faces over the decades, but it’s still the same sin. That is true. That is true. So let’s use this moment as a moment of change? Yes.
When does change come? When the stars align and society focuses and the people focus, and they focus to such an extent that the politicians follow the people. That’s when change comes. “Well, the leaders lead!” Baloney. The people lead. And then the politicians see the people moving, and the politicians run to catch up with the people. How did we pass marriage equality in this State, giving a new civil right to the LGBTQ community? Because the people said, “enough is enough. How can you say only heterosexual people can marry, but the LGBTQ people— they can’t marry? How is that constitutional? How is that legal?” You have your own preference— God bless you. But how in the law, do you discriminate between two classes of people. We passed marriage equality.
After the Sandy Hook massacre, after all those years we tried to pass common sense gun safety. Do you really need an assault weapon to kill a deer? But then the Sandy Hook massacre happened, and the people said, “enough. You’re killing children? Young children in schools with an assault weapon? In the Sandy Hook massacre. Enough.”
And in that moment, we passed common sense gun safety in the State of New York. Record income inequality? People said, “enough” and passed a real minimum wage in this State that went all across the nation. There’s a moment for change, and is there a moment here? Yes. If we’re constructive and if we’re smart, and if we know what were asking for! It’s not enough to come out and say, “I’m angry, I’m frustrated.” OK. And what? “Well, I don’t know, but I’m angry and frustrated.”
And you want what done? You need the answer. “Well, I want common sense gun reform.” OK, what does it look like? Here it is— three points. “Well I want to address income inequality.” Well, what do you want? “Here’s what I want. Minimum wage at $15. Free college tuition.” What do you want?
You want to make that moment work. Yes, you express the outrage! But then you say, “here’s my agenda. Here’s what I want.” That’s what we have to be doing in this moment. And the protestors are making a point. And most of them are making a smart, sensible point. But you have to add the positive reform agenda that every voice calls for so the government, the politicians know what to do. And there is a positive reform agenda here. There should be a national ban on excessive force by police officers. There should be a national ban on chokeholds. Period. There should be independent investigations of police abuse. When you have the local District Attorney doing the investigations— I don’t care how good they are— there is the suggestion of a conflict of interest. Why? Because that DA works with that police department every day and now that prosecutor is going to do the investigation of that police department that they work with every day? Conflict of interests can be real or perceived. How can people believe that the local prosecutor who works with that police department is going to be fair in the investigation? It shouldn’t be state by state. Minnesota Governor Walz put the attorney general in charge. Good. In this state, I put attorney general in charge of investigations where police kill an unarmed person. Good. But it shouldn’t be the exception. It should be the rule. There is no self-policing. There’s an allegation, independent investigation. Give people comfort that the investigation is real.
If a police officer is being investigated, how is there disciplinary records not relevant? Once a police officer is being investigated, if they have disciplinary records that show this was a repeat pattern, how is that not relevant? By the way, the disciplinary records can also be used to exonerate. If they have disciplinary records that say he never, she never did anything like this before, fine. That’s relevant too.
We still have two education systems in this country. Everybody knows it. Your education is decided by your zip code. Poorer schools in poorer communities have a different level of funding than richer schools in this state. $36,000 per year we spend in a rich district. $13,000 in a poor district. How do you justify that? If anything, the children in a poorer community need more services in a school, not less. How do you justify that? You can’t. Do something about it. You still have children living in poverty in this nation? Well, when we had to, we found a trillion dollars to handle the COVID virus, but you can’t find funding to help children who live in poverty? No, you can find it, United States. You just don’t want to. It’s political will. When you need to find the money, you can find it. Let’s be honest, the federal government has a printing press in their basement. When they have the political will, they find the money.
The federal government went out of the housing business and never re-entered it. We have a national affordable housing crisis. Of course you do. You don’t fund affordable housing. I’m the former HUD secretary. I know better than anyone what the federal government used to do in terms of affordable housing with Section 8 and building new public housing. And we just stopped, and we left it to the market. Now you have an affordable housing plan. That’s what we should be addressing in this moment. And we should be saying to our federal officials, “There’s an election this year, a few months away. Here’s my agenda. Where do you stand?” Say to the congress, the House and Senate, “Where’s your bill on this?”
I heard some congressional people talking saying well maybe they’ll do a resolution. Yeah, resolutions are nice. Resolutions say in theory I support this. Pass a law, that’s what we want. A law that actually changes the reality, where something actually happens. That’s government’s job is to actually make change. Make change. You’re in a position to make change. Make change. Use this moment to galvanize public support. Use that outrage to actually make the change. And have the intelligence to say what changes you actually want. Otherwise, it’s just screaming into the wind if you don’t know exactly what changes we need to make.
And we have to be smart in this moment. The violence in these protests obscures the righteousness of the message. The people who are exploiting the situation, the looting, that’s not protesting. That’s not righteous indignation. That’s criminality and it plays into the hands of the people and the forces that don’t want to make the changes in the first place because then they get to dismiss the entire effort. I will tell you what they’re going to say. They’re going to say the first thing the President said when this happened. They’re going to say “These are looters.” Remember when the President put out that incendiary tweet? “We start shooting when they start looting or they start looting, we start shooting?” That’s an old ’60s call. The violence, the looting, the criminality plays right into those people who don’t want progressive change. And you mark my words, they’re going to say today, “Oh you see, they’re criminals. They’re looters. Did you see what they did breaking the store windows and going in and stealing?” And they’re going to try to paint this whole protest movement that they’re all criminals, they’re all looters. That’s what they’re going to do. Why? They don’t want to talk about Mr. Floyd’s death. They don’t want people seeing that video. They want people seeing the video of the looting. And when people see the video of the looting they say “Oh yeah, that’s scary. They’re criminals.” No, look at the video of the police officer killing Mr. Floyd. That’s the video we want people watching.
Now, I don’t even believe it’s the protesters. I believe there are people who are using this moment and using the protest for their own purpose. There are people who want to sow the seeds of anarchy, who want to disrupt. By the way, there are people who want to steal. And here’s a moment that you can use this moment to steal. You can use this moment to spread chaos. I hear the same thing from all the local officials. They have people in their communities who are there to quote unquote protest. They’re not from their community. They don’t know where they’re from, extremist groups, some people are going to blame the left, some people will blame the right. It will become politicized. But there is no doubt there are outside groups that come in to disrupt. There is no doubt that there are people who just use this moment to steal. What, it’s a coincidence they broke into a Rolex watch company? That was a coincidence? High end stores, Chanel. That was a coincidence? That was random? That was not random. So, can you have a legitimate protest movement hijacked? Yes, you can. Yes, you can. And there are people and forces who will exploit that moment and I believe that’s happening.
But we still have to be smart. And at the same time, we have a fundamental issue which is we just spent 93 days limiting behavior, closing down, no school, no business, thousands of small businesses destroyed. People will have lost their jobs. People wiped out their savings. And now mass gatherings with thousands of people in close proximity one week before we’re going to reopen New York City? What sense does this make? Control the spread, control the spread, control the spread. We don’t even know the consequence for the COVID virus of those mass gatherings. We don’t even know. We won’t know possibly for weeks. It’s the nature of the virus. How many super-spreaders were in that crowd? “Well, they were mostly young people.” How many young people went home and kissed their mother hello or shook hands with their father or hugged their father or their grandfather or their brother or their mother or their sister and spread a virus?
New York City opens next week. Took us 93 days to get here. Is this smart? New York tough. We went from the worst situation to reopening. From the worst situation to 54 deaths in 50 days. We went from the worst situation to reopening in 93 days. We did that because we were New York tough. New York tough was smart. We were smart. We were smart for 93 days. We were united, we were respectful of each other. We were disciplined. Wearing the mask is just discipline, it’s just discipline. Remember to put it on, remember to pick it up, remembering to put it on when see someone, it’s just discipline.
It was also about love. We did it because we love one another. That’s what a community is. We love one another. And yes, you can be loving even in New York. Even with the New York toughness, even with a New York accent, even with a New York swagger. We’re loving. That’s what we’ve done for 93 days in a way we’ve never done it before. Never in my lifetime. Never in my lifetime has this city and this state come together in the way we have. I don’t think it ever will again, in my lifetime. Now you can say maybe it takes a global pandemic for it to happen. I don’t know if that’s true and I don’t know that the power of what it was like when it came together might not be so beautiful that people want to do it again.
Remember when we all acted together during coronavirus and we rallied and we knocked coronavirus on its rear end. Remember when we all wore masks and we had to have hand sanitizer? Remember what we did? Wow. When we come together, we can do anything and it’s true. It’s true for the state, it’s true for a nation. When you come together and you have one agenda you can do anything. You want to change society, you want to end the tale of two cities, you want to make it one America? You can do that, just the way you knocked coronavirus on its rear end.
People united can do anything. We showed that, we just showed that the past 93 days. We can end the injustice and the discrimination and the intolerance and the police abuse. We have to be smart. We have to be smart right now. Right now in this state. We have to be smart tonight in this city because this is not advancing a reform agenda. This is not persuading government officials to change. This is not helping end coronavirus. We have to be smart.
Vice President Joe Biden can address the systemic racism and inequality in our justice system in ways that even President Barack Obama couldn’t. In just a few minutes remarks, the presumptive nominee for president of the Democratic party summed up centuries of injustice and terror, saying, “And it is long past time we made the promise of this nation real for all people. This is no time for incendiary tweets. This is no time to encourage violence. This is a national crisis, and we need real leadership right now.” He spoke after meeting with George Floyd’s family, after nights of peaceful then violent protest and just before the officer who caused his death was arrested for murder.
Once again — the words “I can’t breathe.”
An act of brutality so elemental, it did more than deny one more black man in America his civil rights and his human rights. It denied his very humanity. It denied him of his life.
Depriving George Floyd – as it deprived Eric Garner – of the one thing every human being must be able to do: Breathe.
So simple. So basic. So brutal.
The same thing happened with Ahmaud Arbery. The same with Breonna Taylor. The same thing with George Floyd.
We’ve spoken their names aloud. Cried them out in pain and horror. Chiseled them into long suffering hearts.
They are the latest additions to an endless list of lives stolen–potential wiped out unnecessarily.
It’s a list that dates back more than 400 years: black men, black women, black children.
The original sin of this country still stains our nation today.
Sometimes we manage to overlook it, and just push forward with the thousand other tasks of daily life. But it’s always there.
And weeks like this, we see it plainly.
We are a country with an open wound.
None of us can turn away.
None of us can be silent.
None of us any longer can hear those words — “I can’t breathe” — and do nothing.
We cannot fall victim to what Martin Luther King called the “appalling silence of the good people.”
Every day, African Americans go about their lives with constant anxiety and trauma, wondering — who will be next?
Imagine if every time your husband or son, wife or daughter, left the house, you feared for their safety from bad actors and bad police.
Imagine if you had to have that talk with your child about not asserting their rights — and taking the abuse handed out to them — just so they could make it home.
Imagine having the police called on you – for just sitting in Starbucks or renting an Airbnb or watching birds.
That is the norm for black people in this nation — they don’t have to imagine it.
The anger and the frustration and the exhaustion — it’s undeniable.
But that is not the promise of America.
And it is long past time we made the promise of this nation real for all people.
This is no time for incendiary tweets. This is no time to encourage violence.
This is a national crisis, and we need real leadership right now.
Leadership that will bring everyone to the table so we can take measures to root out systemic racism.
It’s time for us to take a hard look at uncomfortable truths.
It’s time for us to face the deep, open wound we have in this nation.
We need justice for George Floyd.
We need real police reform that holds all cops up to the high standards that so many of them actually meet — that holds bad cops accountable, and that repairs the relationship between law enforcement and the community they are sworn to protect.
And we need to stand up as a nation — with the black community, and with all minority communities — and come together as one America.
That’s the challenge we face.
And it will require those of us who sit in positions of influence to finally deal with the abuse of power.
The pain is too immense for one community to bear alone.
It is the duty of every American to grapple with it — and grapple with it now.
With our complacency, our silence — we are complicit in perpetuating these cycles of violence.
Nothing about this will be easy or comfortable. But if we simply allow this wound to scab over once more, without treating the underlying injury — we will never truly heal.
The very soul of America is at stake.
We must commit, as a nation, to pursue justice with every ounce of our being. We have to pursue it with real urgency. We have to make real the American promise, which we have never fully grasped: That all men and women are not only equal at creation, but throughout their lives.
With
chants of “No More Cover-Ups. We Want Witnesses” and “What do we want?
Witnesses. If we don’t get it, Shut It Down,” protesters took to the streets in
New York City as well as Washington DC and 30 other cities to demand Senators
uphold their oath for an impartial examination of the truth before a vote to
convict or acquit Donald Trump of his office as President of the United States.
In
New York, a couple of hundred protesters organized by the NYC Coalition to
Impeach and Remove gathered in Times Square, and then marched down to Herald
Square. Here are highlights:
Amid
a sea of “Bernie” signs and chants of “We are the 99%” and “We will win”, Jane
Sanders, looked out over the massive crowd of 25,000 that overflowed
Queensbridge Park, beneath the Queensborough Bridge, onto the street, and said,
“Here are people from every background in the melting pot called New York. Most
of our ancestors came to America for a better life- mine from Ireland to escape
famine, poverty; Bernie’s from Poland escaping anti-Semitism, poverty.
“All believed they could have a better life. But in the last 40 years that
promise has eroded. Bernie plans to change that.” And, noting that this is his
first rally since his heart attack, she said to massive cheers, “Bernie is
back. He’s healthy and more than ready to continue his lifelong fight for
working people of America.”
Michael Moore: “This is not just about defeating Trump, but the
rotten system that gave us Trump’
Democracy,
said documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, is where “Everyone gets a seat at the
table, a slice of the pie and not fight for last crumbs. We don’t just need a
democratic politics, we need a democratic economy.”
Moore said, “The powers that be are very unhappy you’re here, that Bernie is
back. The pundits, the media [boo] are throwing everything out there to get
people to think differently:
“That Bernie is too old. Here’s what’s too old: the Electoral College, the
$7 minimum wage, women not being paid the same as men, thousands and thousands
of dollars of student debt, $10,000 deductible for health care, Super
Delegates, the fossil fuel industry – that’s what’s too old.
“It’s a gift we have 78-year-old American running for president. The
experience he has, what he has seen. He knows what a pay raise is, a pension –
look it up. What it looks like to defend against fascism and white supremacy,
to have the library open every day, what regulations are (Boeing). I’m glad
he’s 78.
“Health? We should be talking about the health of planet that’s dying [crowd
chants “Green New Deal”]; the health of kids in Flint Michigan, of 40 million
living in poverty, of young black males shot in back by police [chant Black
Lives Matter, Black Lives Count]. The only heart attack we should talk about is
the one Wall Street will have when Bernie wins.
“Next, that Bernie can’t win. He will win he has won 8 times to the House, 2
times to the Senate, 22 states in 2016 – almost half [chant “We will win.]. In
2016 [Democratic primary], Bernie won Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota. Of the 11
states that border Canada, Bernie won 10 (not NY) [boo] – we can fix that. Of
the 5 states that border the Pacific, he won 4; of 6 in New England, won 4;
Bernie won West Virginia – all 55 counties. According to a poll, he is #1 in
Nevada, a dead heat in Iowa, #1 in New Hampshire. He has raised more money from
more donors with the smallest amount.
“Why say Bernie can’t win? Because they are lying to the American people.
Bernie will win. [Chant, “We will win”]
“They say he can’t win because he is a [Democratic] socialist [yay!]. That’s
not going to fly. The American people have loved socialism for the last 70
years. Social Security, free public school, Medicare, Medicaid, fire department
– all are socialist.
“What they don’t want to do is tell the truth, what would happen if they
structured economic policies with democracy instead of capitalism. And this
isn’t capitalism of your great grandpa, this is a form of greed, selfishness so
that just few at the top succeed, the rest struggle paycheck to paycheck.
“Afraid taxes on rich will go up under Sanders? It was depressing during the
debate to watch Democrats go after Medicare for All. What would Franklin
Roosevelt say?
“They say we can’t afford it? How does Canada afford it? Every other
industrialized country has figured it out, why can’t we? They don’t want us to
figure it out.
“They say taxes will go up? That is part of the big lie – your taxes already
are up. We don’t call it a tax – in Canada, France, Finland they get free
health care, free or nearly free day care and college, but pay more in tax for
these things. The average American family pays $12,000 a year for child care,
$4000 in student loans, $6000 for deductibles, co-pays and premiums for health
care – too damn much – the average is $20,000/year but we don’t call it a tax.
“We are here in Queensbridge Park, Manhattan Island just across the river is
headquarters of corporate America [boo], corporate media [boo], Wall Street
[boo]
. So much misery has been visited on the American people from a half mile
away. It must stop.
“They must hear us at Goldman Sachs, Fox News, Trump Tower – the scene of
the crime.
“This [election] is not just about defeating Trump, but the rotten system
that gave us Trump…. beating Trump isn’t enough. We must crush Trump at
the polls, then fix the rotten corrupt economic system that gave us Trump.”
San Juan Mayor Cruz: “Move forward on the path of progressive agenda.
We are equal. We will win. We must win.”
Calling herself a “climate change survivor,” San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz
Soto, attacked Trump for “killing us with inefficiency” that contributed to
3,000 Puerto Ricans dying after being smacked by back-to-back hurricanes.
“Why we have to win” she says is for Medicare-for-All, so no one has to
choose between groceries and insulin; to be able to afford college and life
after college, to “stand against those who earn $100 million and pay workers
starving wages; who take away women’s right to choose; the crime of separating
families at southern border; climate change.
“I am a climate change survivor. Climate change is real – 3000 Puerto Ricans
were killed because Trump Is a racist, xenophobic, paper throwing demagogue.” [Chant, “Lock him up.
Vote him out.”]
“The time is now to be fearless, relentless. I stand with Sanders – I respect
every other candidate but there is one name only who can get the job done. Be
united in one progressive voice, cross generations. Move forward on the path of
progressive agenda. We are equal. We will win. We must win.”
Nina Turner: “We must knock out Billionaire class that doesn’t
believe working people deserve a good life.”
National
co chair Nina Turner quoted Congresswoman Barbara Jordan who said American
people want an America as good as its promise. “That means an America where
people don’t die because have to ration insulin; hospitals are not closing;
where there is clean water, air, food; a justice system that doesn’t gun down
black folks in their houses.
“We need to clean up the criminal injustice system, Truth & Reconciliation
about the ravages of racism, a health care system not commodified. We need to
take care of Mother Earth.”
Alluding to the Democratic candidates, she said, “There are many copies but
only one original. We finally have somebody in our lifetime, his own special
interest is people of nation.
“We must knock out Billionaire class that doesn’t believe working people
deserve a good life.”
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “We need a United States
truly, authentically operated, owned by working people.”
“We must bring revolution of working class to the ballot box of America,”
declared Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She prompted chants of “Green
New Deal,” saying, “Queensbridge Park is ground zero in the fight for public
housing and environmental justice.
“Last February I was working as a waitress in Manhattan, shoulder to
shoulder with undocumented workers who were putting in12 hour days with no
healthcare, not a living wage. We didn’t think we deserved it. That is the
script we tell working people: your inherent worth, value as human depends on
income another underpays. Turn around that basic language… We must change the
system that puts corporate profit ahead of all human and planetary costs.”
After her parents put all they had to buy a house, she said she learned from
an early age that “kids’ destiny determined by zipcode. Income inequality is a
fact of life of children.” Her father died of cancer when she was 18 and she
learned, “We all are one accident away from everything falling apart.
Sanders, she said, has fought for Planned Parenthood, for public education,
for CHIP, for single-payer health care, for gender rights, to end
“life-crushing” student debt.
“He didn’t do it because it was popular. He fought when it came at the
highest political cost in America.
“In 2016, he changed politics in America. We now have one of the best
Democratic fields – much because of Sanders.
“I’m in Congress today but one year ago I was a sexually harassed waitress.
This freshman class in overwhelming numbers rejected corporate money – thanks
to Bernie – endorsed Medicare for All, sees the climate crisis as an
existential threat.
“[In Congress] it is no joke to stand up against corporate power and
establishment interests. Arms are twisted, political pressure psychological and
otherwise applied to make you abandon the working class.
“I have come to appreciate the nonstop advocacy of Sanders. It’s not just
what he fights for but how: mass mobilization of the working class at the
ballot box, a movement (against) racism, classism of Hyde Amendment,
imperialist and colonial histories that lead to endless war and immigration
crisis.
“NYCHA is underfunded by $30 billion –that is not an accident, but an
outcome of system that devalues poor, Logic that got us into this won’t get us
out.”
Women’s March on NYC organized by Womens March Alliance, Jan. 19, 2019
Tens of thousands took to the streets of New York City on Saturday, January 19, 2019 for the third annual Women’s March organized by the Women’s March Alliance, calling for action on a Woman’s Agenda that encompasses everything from pay parity, paid parental leave and reproductive freedom, to immigration reform, gun violence prevention, climate action, criminal justice reform – in other words, the gamut of social, political, environmental and economic justice. (See also With Cry of ‘Your Voice Your Power,’ Alliance Mounts 3rd Annual Women’s March on NYC Jan. 19)
The marchers got particularly animated outside of
Trump Tower Hotel on Central Park West, chanting “Shame, Shame, Shame,”
extending a finger, and waving placards calling for “Indict, Impeach, Imprison.”
The protesters use their bodies as message boards. Here are highlights:
New York State Governor
Andrew M. Cuomo used his 2019 State of the State Address to delineate a Justice
Agenda that works toward the ideal of full, true justice for all.
In stark contrast to the
federal government’s dysfunction and the self-destructive tactic of using the shutdown
to extort a political prop, the Governor is laying out a blueprint to move
forward, while shielding New Yorkers from Washington’s devastating federal
attacks. It is aimed at strengthening the middle class, safeguards the
environment, improves the health of communities and invests in building an infrastructure
for the 21st century. For the ninth consecutive year, the Budget is balanced
and holds spending growth below two percent.
“In December, in the face of the nation’s biggest social crisis, and with the federal government seeking to undo generations of progress, Governor Cuomo laid out his legislative agenda to enable the Legislature to commence action on these top priorities immediately upon convening.” In this State of the State Address, the Governor called on the Legislature to swiftly and immediately act on these priorities in the first 100 days of session.
“In the face of unprecedented challenges on a national level and a federal government at a complete standstill, New York will deliver on the most productive agenda in our history and build on our record of accomplishments,” Governor Cuomo said. “This is a true Justice Agenda that ensures our neediest schools receive an equitable share of funds, advances historic criminal justice reform, safeguards our health care, protects the rights of women in our state from the federal government, and leads the nation in fight against climate change and contaminants in our environment and our water. While extreme conservatives in Washington govern by division and fuel dysfunction, New York State will raise the beacon of progress and take action to make a real difference in people’s lives.”
Here is a summary of the initiatives (it is long, but New Yorkers should see the detail of the agenda):
The FY 2020 Executive Budget is $175.2 billion on an All Funds basis.
State Operating Funds is $102.0 billion, growth of 1.9%
Health and Education spending grows at 3.6%, Executive Agencies at 0.8%.
ECONOMIC JUSTICE
Continue the Phase-In of Middle Class Tax Cuts: The Budget supports
the phase-in of the middle class tax cuts. Under these reforms, rates will
continue to drop to 5.5 percent and 6 percent when the cuts are fully phased in
– an up to 20 percent cut in income tax rates for the middle class – and
produce a projected $4.2 billion in annual savings for six million filers by
2025. As the new rates phase in, they will be the State’s lowest middle-class
tax rates in more than 70 years.
Extend the Millionaire’s Tax: To protect the progress that has been
made in enhancing progressivity and ensuring tax fairness for New York’s
middle-class, Governor Cuomo is proposing a five-year extension of the current
tax rate on millionaires. This will preserve an estimated $4.4 billion annually
otherwise unavailable to make vital investments in education and infrastructure
to secure New York’s future economic prosperity.
Make Permanent the Property Tax Cap: Governor Cuomo made a
first-ever property tax cap a hallmark of his first campaign for Governor and a
priority of his administration’s first year. Since the implementation of the
tax cap in 2012, growth has averaged approximately 2 percent and the tax cap
has produced approximately $25 billion in taxpayers’ savings. The Governor
proposes that New York preserve and make permanent the property tax cap, as he
has advocated in the past.
Close the Carried Interest Loophole: Because of an egregious
loophole in federal law, some of the wealthiest people in the country,
including hedge fund managers and private equity investors, are paying lower
tax rates on their income than many middle class families. This “carried
interest” loophole results in a substantial cost to middle-class New
Yorkers, with the State losing about $100 million every year. To ensure that
the wealthiest Americans are paying their fair share, Governor Cuomo will take
a landmark step to close the carried interest loophole under New York State law
and effectively eliminate the benefits of this loophole under the federal tax
code.
Fight for the Full Deductibility of State and Local Taxes: Governor
Cuomo fought the federal tax bill every step of the way while it was under
consideration in Congress. After its passage, New York joined together with
three other states to sue the federal government over this illegal and targeted
assault. The Governor will continue to fight against this law and the threat
that it poses to New York State, and he urges the new Democratic House of
Representations stand together and demand that the SALT deduction is fully
restored.
Continue Lawsuit Against Federal Government Challenging Unconstitutional Tax
Law That Targets New York: Governor Cuomo and Attorney General Barbara
D. Underwood filed a lawsuit to protect New York and its taxpayers from
Washington’s drastic curtailment of the SALT deduction. The lawsuit argues that
the new SALT cap was enacted to target New York and similarly situated states,
that it interferes with states’ rights to make their own fiscal decisions, and
that it will disproportionately harm taxpayers in these states. The Governor
and Attorney General Letitia James will continue in their fight to overturn the
law’s unprecedented and unconstitutional limitations on SALT deductibility.
Building 21st Century Infrastructure
Invest an Additional $150 Billion in the Nation’s Largest Infrastructure
Program: Governor Cuomo has made an unprecedented commitment to invest
$150 billion in infrastructure projects over the next five years. Beginning in
FY 2020, these capital projects will rebuild transportation and mass transit
systems, drive economic and community development, create new environmental and
park facilities, and support our sustainable energy future.
Reduce Traffic Congestion in NYC and Fund the MTA: This year, the
Governor will implement congestion pricing to establish a reliable funding
stream to transform the transit system and reduce congestion in Manhattan. By
charging fees for vehicles to move within the most congested area of New York
City and then reinvesting those funds into transit improvements, this plan will
combat gridlock and deliver to New York City’s residents and visitors the
world-class transit system they deserve.
Establish Accountability for the MTA: The MTA is a bureaucracy that
lacks any accountability. The board of 17 members gives no single person a
clear majority of nominees and there are 32 unions representing MTA employees
that exert significant political power over the elected officials who appoint
the board members. To overhaul this bureaucracy and fix the system, the
Governor will work with the Legislature to establish clear authority over the
MTA, while continuing to solve the need for dedicated funding and splitting
capital funding shortfalls between New York City and New York State. Only with
clearly designated authority and adequate funding can the MTA can be overhauled
into the efficient and effective transit system that New Yorkers deserve.
Expand Design-Build and Enact Other Efficiencies to Expedite Construction
Projects: Governor Cuomo’s $100 billion infrastructure program is arguably
the nation’s largest and boldest. Key to the program’s success is the
Governor’s decision to deploy the design-build method on complex projects, saving
taxpayers time and money by making a single contractor responsible for both a
project’s design and its actual construction. To ensure efficiency across State
projects, the Executive Budget includes legislation authorizing the use of
state-of-the-art methods such as construction manager at-risk and construction
manager-build, while expanding design-build to additional agencies.
Continuing New York’s Bottom-Up Economic Development Strategy
Invest $750 million for Round Nine of the Regional Economic Development
Councils: In 2011, Governor Cuomo established 10 Regional Economic
Development Councils (REDCs) to develop long-term regional strategic economic
development plans. Since then, the REDCs have awarded $6.1 billion to more than
7,300 projects. This strategy has resulted in 230,000 new or retained jobs in
New York. The Executive Budget includes core capital and tax-credit funding
that will be combined with a wide range of existing agency programs for a ninth
round of REDC awards totaling $750 million.
Invest in Communities Across the State Through the Fourth Downtown
Revitalization Initiative: The Downtown Revitalization Initiative is
transforming downtown neighborhoods into vibrant communities where the next
generation of New Yorkers will want to live, work and raise families.
Participating communities are nominated by the State’s ten REDCs based on the
downtown’s potential for transformation. Through three rounds of awards, each
winning community was awarded $10 million to develop a downtown strategic
investment plan and implement key catalytic projects that advance the
community’s vision for revitalization. The Executive Budget provides $100
million for the Downtown Revitalization Program Round IV.
Ensuring A Quality Education for All
Require Districts to Distribute State Aid in a More Equitable Manner to
Their Neediest Schools: Although the state distributes 70 percent of
its funding to the neediest districts, the districts do not always distribute
funding to their schools in an equitable manner. In fact, some school districts
have schools with significantly higher needs receiving less than the average
school in the district. Governor Cuomo proposes to require that these school
districts devote a portion of their 2019-20 school aid to increase the
per-pupil allocation in those high-need schools. This increase in allocation
will help ensure that funding intended to help improve educational outcomes for
the neediest students reaches those students.
$1 Billion Education Aid Increase: State support for school
districts will have increased by $8.1 billion (42 percent) since FY 2012. Over
70 percent of this year’s increase goes to high-need school districts.
Foundation Aid is increased by $338 million.
Expand Universal Pre-Kindergarten: The Budget includes an
additional $15 million investment in pre-kindergarten to expand high-quality
half-day and full-day prekindergarten instruction for three- and four-year-old
children in high-need school districts.
Recruit 250 New Teachers in Shortage Areas through the We Teach NY
Program: With the goals of diversifying and strengthening the teacher
workforce pipeline, Governor Cuomo proposes to invest $3 million in the We
Teach NY program, which will strategically recruit 250 new teachers to fill
identified needed positions in New York classrooms in 2024.
Expand Master Teacher to High Poverty Schools to Increase Access to Advanced
Courses: In 2013, Governor Cuomo launched the New York State Master
Teacher Program to strengthen our nation’s STEM education, giving selected
educators an annual $15,000 stipend for four years, professional development
opportunities and a platform to foster a supportive environment for the next
generation of STEM teachers. In order to recruit and retain outstanding
educators in the highest poverty schools, the Executive Budget will provide
$1.5 million to support 100 new Master Teachers who teach in high-poverty
schools with high rates of teacher turnover or high rates of relatively
inexperienced teachers.
Protect Student Loan Borrowers: There are approximately 2.8 million
student loan borrowers in New York that have tens of billions of dollars in
outstanding student loan debt, which is serviced by about 30 student loan
servicers. The Governor will advance sweeping protections for student loan
borrowers by requiring that companies servicing student loans held by New
Yorkers obtain a state license and meet standards consistent with the laws and
regulations governing other significant lending products such as mortgages;
banning upfront fees; requiring fair contracts and clear and conspicuous
disclosures to borrowers; and providing penalties for failing to comply with
the law.
Creating Economic Opportunity for Every New Yorker
Launch the $175 Million Workforce Initiative: Governor Cuomo will launch a new Consolidated Funding Application for workforce investments that will support strategic regional efforts that meet businesses’ short-term workforce needs, improve regional talent pipelines, expand apprenticeships, and address the long-term needs of growing industries — with a particular focus on emerging fields with growing demand for jobs like clean energy, health technology, and computer science. These funds will also support efforts to improve the economic security of women, youth, and other populations that face significant barriers to career advancement.
Expand Employer-Driven Training Opportunities by Enhancing the Employee Training Incentive Program: Governor Cuomo proposes to expand the Employee Training Incentive Program to provide more training options to more industries by enabling employers with dedicated training shops to draw on in-house expertise in delivering approved training, and by extending ETIP tax credits to internship opportunities in additional high-tech industries.
Protect Workers from Union-Busting Activity by Codifying EO 183 into Law and Expanding its Protections to Local Governments: New York State has a long and distinguished history of standing by union workers. This year, Governor Cuomo will continue to advance his support for unions by introducing legislation that not only codifies EO 183 into law, but expands its protections to local governments to ensure that more union workers are protected.
Increase Criminal Penalties for Wage Theft: Governor Cuomo will advance legislation to increase criminal penalties for employers who knowingly or intentionally commit wage theft violations to more closely align with other forms of theft.
Ensuring Access to Affordable Housing
Enact Historic Legislation to Strengthen Rent Regulation: This year, the Governor proposes aggressive rent regulation reforms, including ending vacancy decontrol, repealing preferential rent, and limiting building and apartment improvement charges. These changes will preserve the rent regulated housing stock, strengthen tenants’ rights to affordable housing, and ensure New Yorkers safe, quality affordable housing.
Limit Security Deposits to Reduce Housing Barriers: Governor Cuomo will propose legislation to limit security deposits to a maximum of one month’s rent across New York State, making New York’s security deposit limits among the strongest in the nation This law will serve to ensure that burdensome security deposits will no longer serve as a barrier to entry for anyone trying to find a new place to live.
Help Families Build Credit and Holistically Evaluate Credit Scores: In New York State, most landlords conduct background credit checks on potential tenants, which often leads to rejecting applicants with low credit scores or an insufficient credit history. To ensure all New Yorkers have a fair shot of accessing affordable, quality housing, Governor Cuomo will issue regulations prohibiting state-funded housing operators from automatically turning away applicants with poor credit or histories of bankruptcy. Instead, the State will require that all potential tenants and homeowners be holistically evaluated to determine the circumstances behind their credit history and their ability to pay rent on a forward-looking basis.
Enact Source of Income
Protections to Support Fair Housing for All: In certain parts of New York State, landlords
can reject applicants based on their lawful source of income,
disproportionately impacting households that rely on non-wage income or income
assistance and those who use vouchers to obtain housing for their families. The
Governor will work with the legislature to amend the New York State Human
Rights Law to prohibit discrimination based on lawful source of income statewide
to ensure that such lawful income is not a blanket barrier to housing, reducing
financial instability for New York’s most economically vulnerable individuals.
Combating Poverty
Support ESPRI Communities and Establish ESPRI Representation on REDC
Workforce Development Committees: In 2016, Governor Cuomo
created the Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative (ESPRI) to combat poverty
and reduce inequality. ESPRI is an important component of the Governor’s
anti-poverty agenda, and this year Governor Cuomo proposes to build on the
success of these State and local partnerships to address poverty, supporting
more community-based efforts through continued funding of ESPRI. Governor Cuomo
will also continue to support efforts by the REDCs and the economic development
community to broaden and deepen their commitments to local anti-poverty efforts
and he will ensure an ESPRI representative is included on each region’s
Workforce Development Committee and involved in the review process for the
Governor’s new Workforce Development Initiative.
Reduce Hunger and Food Insecurity: Building on historic investments
to combat food insecurity, Governor Cuomo will establish a goal to reduce
household food insecurity in New York State by 10 percent by 2024. In order to
achieve this goal, Governor Cuomo is directing the following actions: create a
food and anti-hunger policy coordinator; simplify access to SNAP for older and
disabled adults; enhanced resources and referrals in clinical settings;
participate in SNAP online purchasing pilot; and expand food access in Central
Brooklyn.
Supporting the Rural and Agricultural Economy
Continue the Revitalization of the Great New York State Fairgrounds: The
State Fair drives $100 million a year in economic activity in Central New York
and thousands of jobs. Under Governor Cuomo’s leadership, New York State has
invested more than $120 million dollars in two phases over the last three years
to remake the New York State Fairgrounds. To continue the transformation of the
State Fairgrounds, the State will make additional renovations and upgrades to
enhance user experience. The Governor’s commitment continues to make the
fairgrounds a year-round destination.
Fund Key Programs to Support New York’s Farmers: The agricultural
industry is full of variability and uncertainty. As a reflection of the
Governor’s resolve to support New York’s farmers, this year’s Executive Budget
will continue funding the specialized technical assistance, industry promotion,
and research investments statewide to reduce farms’ exposure to economic and
climate inconsistency.
SOCIAL JUSTICE
Advancing Criminal Justice for All
Bail and Pretrial Detention Reform: Governor Cuomo is advancing
legislation that will end cash bail once and for all, significantly reduce the
number of people held in jail pretrial, and ensure due process for anyone
awaiting trial behind bars. This series of reforms will include a mandate that
police issue appearance tickets instead of making arrests in low-level cases,
eliminate money as a means of determining freedom, and institute a new
procedure whereby a district attorney can move for a hearing to determine
whether eligible defendants may be held in jail pretrial, for which the judge
must find reasonable cause to believe the individual is a danger to themselves
or others.
Improve Transparency in the Discovery Process: As only one of ten states
where prosecutors can withhold basic evidence until the day a trial begins,
Governor Cuomo’s plan will bring New York’s discovery process into the 21st
century by requiring both prosecutors and defendants to share all information
in their possession well in advance of trial. Defendants will also be
allowed the opportunity to review whatever evidence is in the prosecution’s
possession prior to pleading guilty to a crime.
Ensure the Right to a Speedy Trial: Governor Cuomo will introduce
legislation that ensures criminal cases no longer drag on without
accountability. With this proposal, Governor Cuomo will guarantee that all
necessary discovery procedures are completed quickly, and that no New Yorker is
unduly held in custody as they await their day in court.
Abolish the Death Penalty: Although the New York Court of Appeals ruled
the death penalty unconstitutional in 2004, capital punishment was never fully
repealed in statute. To address this disparity, Governor Cuomo will
introduce legislation to permanently strike capital punishment from the law to
guarantee that this draconian punishment is never again practiced in the State
of New York.
Transform the Use of Solitary Confinement in State Prisons: New
York has dramatically reformed and reduced the use of solitary confinement for
people who engage in misconduct within state prisons. The Governor is directing
DOCCS to accelerate the momentum of solitary confinement reform by limiting the
length of time spent in separation, building dedicated housing units for
rehabilitation and integration following a disciplinary sanction, and expanding
therapeutic programming to reinforce positive and social behavior.
Establish Compassionate Release: The Governor will establish a
process of compassionate release for incarcerated individuals over the age of
55 who have incapacitating medical conditions exacerbated by their age.
Enact a Comprehensive Re-entry Package to Improve Outcomes for Formerly
Incarcerated Individuals: Governor Cuomo will enact a four-point plan
to ease the burdens placed on individuals who have paid their debt to society
and provide them with the opportunities they need to succeed.
Legalizing Adult Use Cannabis
In January 2018, Governor Cuomo directed the Department of Health to launch a
multi-agency study to review the potential impact of regulated cannabis in New
York. The study, issued last July, concluded that the positive impact of a
regulated cannabis program in New York State outweighs the potential negative
aspects. Building on extensive outreach and research, Governor Cuomo is
proposing the establishment of a regulated cannabis program for adults 21 and
over in the FY 2020 budget that protects public health, provides consumer
protection, ensures public safety, addresses social justice concerns, and
invests tax revenue. Specifically, the program will:
Reduce impacts of criminalization affecting communities
of color.
Automatically seal certain cannabis-related criminal
records.
Implement quality control and consumer protections to
safeguard public health.
Counties and large cities can opt out.
Restrict access to anyone under 21.
Generate approximately $300 million in tax revenue and
create jobs.
Advancing Reproductive Justice and Women’s Equality
Pass the Reproductive Health Act and Comprehensive Contraceptive Coverage Act and Enshrine Roe v. Wade into the New York State Constitution: Governor Cuomo will work with the legislature to pass the Reproductive Health Act within the first 30 days of the 2019 Legislative Session, codifying the principles of Roe v. Wade into State law. This law will ensure the right of people to make personal health care decisions to protect their health, in addition to their life, and ensure that health care professionals can provide these crucial services without fear of criminal penalty. Upon passage of the RHA, the Governor will advance a concurrent resolution to enshrine the principles of Roe v Wade into the New York State Constitution. Additionally, Governor Cuomo will advance legislation to codify affordable access to contraception, including emergency contraception, into New York State law, by passing the Comprehensive Contraceptive Coverage Act.
Improve Access to In-Vitro Fertilization and Fertility Preservation Coverage: This year, Governor Cuomo will advance legislation to expand access to coverage for IVF, as well as medically-necessary fertility preservation services. This legislation will specifically mandate that large group insurance providers cover IVF and will also require large, small, and individual group insurance providers to cover egg-freezing services for women with certain health conditions, including those undergoing cancer treatment.
Reduce Maternal Mortality and Morbidity and Racial Disparities: Based on recommendations from the Maternal Mortality Taskforce established by Governor Cuomo in 2018, the Governor will advance a series of policies to reduce maternal mortality and racial disparities in New York State, including creating an education and training program to reduce implicit racial bias in health care institutions statewide, expand Community Health Worker programs, enacting legislation to create a statewide Maternal Mortality Review Board, creating a data warehouse to provide near real-time information on maternal mortality and morbidity and to inform targeted quality initiatives, and convening an Expert Workgroup on Postpartum Care to develop recommendations targeting the critical time immediately after birth.
Pass the Equal Rights Amendment: Governor Cuomo will push to pass the Equal Rights Amendment to add sex as a protected class to Section 11 of Article 1 of the New York State Constitution. With this change, Section 11 of Article 1 of the New York State Constitution will read: No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws of this State or any subdivision thereof. No person shall, because of race, color, sex, creed or religion, be subjected to any discrimination in his or her civil rights by any other person or by any firm, corporation or institution, or by the State or any agency or subdivision of the state.
Pass the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act: Governor Cuomo will advance the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, which will build on Jenna’s Law to include more meaningful sentence reductions and encompass crimes committed not only against, but also at the behest of, abusers. The Act will also permit a small population of currently incarcerated survivors to apply for re-sentencing and earlier release due to their prior victimization.
Eliminate the Statute of Limitations for Rape: While New York removed the statute of limitations for Rape in the First Degree, a five-year statute of limitations remains for Rape in the Second Degree and Rape in the Third Degree. Therefore, in 2019 Governor Cuomo will advance legislation to remove the statute of limitations for Rape in the Second Degree and Third Degree.
Increase Protections Against Harassment in the Workplace: Building on the nation’s most comprehensive sexual harassment package signed into law by Governor Cuomo in 2018, Governor Cuomo will advance legislation to lower the high bar set for employees to hold employers accountable under the New York Human Rights Law for sexual harassment, protect employees’ rights to pursue complaints, and ensure workers know their rights, by requiring all employers to conspicuously post a sexual harassment educational poster in their workplace.
Modernize New York’s Pay Equity Law: Since taking office, Governor Cuomo has fought aggressively to close the gender pay gap in New York. This year, Governor Cuomo will build upon that effort by championing the passage of a salary history ban. In addition, the Governor will advance legislation to expand the definition of “equal pay for equal work” to require equal pay on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, and other protected characteristics, and expand the requirement that equal pay be provided for all substantially similar work, adding flexibility in recognition of the complexity of the issue.
If You Can See It, You Can Be It 2019—Girls in Government: Governor Cuomo will create an opportunity for girls to learn about the impact they can have through politics through the new Girls in Government initiative, a non-partisan program to encourage girls in grades 8 through 12 to get involved in government and public policy. The program will introduce girls to the machinery of advocacy and public policy and teach young girls about public affairs and issues that matter to them personally and in their community. They will witness first-hand the inner workings of state government and meet with elected officials and senior staff.
Creating a Safer New York
Establish Extreme Risk Protection Orders to Save Lives: Governor Cuomo will continue to champion the Red Flag Bill, also known as the Extreme Risk Protection Order Bill, which would prevent individuals determined by a court to have the potential to cause themselves or others serious harm from purchasing, possessing, or attempting to purchase or possess any type of firearm, including handguns, rifles, or shotguns. This legislation builds on New York’s strongest-in-the-nation gun laws, and, if passed, would make New York the first state to empower its teachers and school administrators to prevent school shootings by pursuing court intervention.
Extend the Background Check Waiting Period: Governor Cuomo continues to support legislation to establish a 10-day waiting period for individuals who are not immediately approved to purchase a firearm through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
Ban Bump Stocks: Governor Cuomo will advance legislation to close existing statutory loopholes to prohibit ownership or sale of a bump stock. As evidenced by the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, bump stocks can be equipped to semi-automatic weapons to simulate machine gun fire with deadly consequences. Bump stocks serve no legitimate purposes for hunters or sportsmen and only cause unpredictable and accelerated gun fire, and there is no reason to allow for their continued sale in New York State.
Pass the Child Victims Act: Having advanced the Child Victims Act, Governor Cuomo is fighting to enact the bill and provide survivors with a long-overdue path to justice. This legislation will increase the length of time during which a child sex abuser may be held criminally accountable, allow abuse victims to commence a civil lawsuit at any time until they reach age 50, and ensure that each and every survivor has an opportunity to seek justice by creating a one-year window for victims whose claims have previously been time-barred to bring suit.
Enact Comprehensive
Safety Reforms for Large Passenger Vehicles: The horrific tragedies involving modified stretched
limousines in Schoharie County in 2018 and Suffolk County in 2015 filled every
New Yorker with a deep sense of empathy and sorrow for the victims and their
loved ones. Governor Cuomo proposes a number of statutory reforms to both
protect passengers and hold those accountable who seek to flout the law, including
an outright ban on the registration of remanufactured limousines, prohibiting
their operation in New York State.
Authorize Speed Cameras: In order to reinstate the bill signed into law
by Governor Cuomo in 2013 authorizing the City of New York to develop a system
to advance school zone highway safety utilizing camera technology to record and
enforce speeding violations, the Governor will put forward a proposal to
reinstate and expand the speed camera program in New York City.
Enacting the Democracy Agenda
Allow Universal Absentee Voting: Governor Cuomo will push to amend the
constitution to make absentee ballots available to any eligible voter, no
matter their reason for wanting one.
Enact Statewide Early Voting: This proposal would combine early voting
with electronic poll books, making make it easier for poll workers to keep
track of voting records and verify voter identity and registration
status.
Permit Same-Day Registration: Governor Cuomo is proposing amending the
constitution to eliminate this outdated but formidable barrier to the ballot
box.
Automatic Registration: Today New Yorkers are given the opportunity
to register to vote when interacting with State agencies and they must
affirmatively ask to be registered. The budget will include a proposal to
reverse that process and register eligible New Yorkers to vote unless they
affirmatively ask not to be registered. Automatic voter registration will not
only boost voter registration and turnout in this state, it will also strengthen
our democratic process.
Make It Easier to Register to Vote: In order to ensure voter
registration is as simple as possible, the Governor is proposing that all
automatic voter registration opportunities be available online, and that New
Yorkers are able to apply to register to vote on the State Board of Elections
website if they choose to do so.
Make Election Day a Holiday: An inability to take off of work
should never be a barrier to voting. For this reason, Governor Cuomo will
advance legislation to ensure that every worker in New York State receives, as
of right, paid time off to vote on Election Day.
Eliminate Restrictions on Voting Before Noon in Upstate Primaries:
Governor Cuomo will fix unequal ballot access across the state by ensuring that
voting hours are extended for primary elections upstate to match those voting
hours across the rest of the state.
Fight to Ensure that All New Yorkers Are Counted in the 2020 Census: In
2019, Governor Cuomo will launch a comprehensive campaign to protect the
integrity of the 2020 Census and to ensure that every New Yorker is counted.
Enacting Ethics Reform
Adopt Campaign Finance Reform: Governor Cuomo will advance a
comprehensive package of campaign finance reform legislation to combat the
unprecedented influence of big money in politics and empower the voices of all
New Yorkers.
Public Financing of Elections: There is no incentive in today’s campaign finance
system for candidates to focus on ordinary donors. Large donors provide
large donations which drown out the voices of ordinary people. Public
campaign financing is the remedy to this problem. By enacting a 6:1 public
financing matching ratio for small donations, candidates will be
incentivized to focus on small donors.
Lowering Campaign Contribution Limits: Governor Cuomo is proposing lowering contribution
limits for all candidates. By implementing these reforms, and creating a
strong public financing system, New York will dramatically reduce the
influence of money in politics and return to a government by the people
and for the people.
Ban Corporate Contributions and Fully Close the LLC
Loophole: Ever since the Citizens United
decision in 2010, corporate money has overtaken our elections system. It
is time for New York State to finally say enough is enough. Governor Cuomo
will fix this problem once and for all by banning all corporate and LLC
contributions. It is time to restore the power to the people, and take it
out of the hands of dark money and special interest donors.
Strengthen Disclosure Laws that Expose Dark Money inPolitics : In June 2016, Governor
Cuomo advanced ethics reform legislation to address the impact of Citizens
United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010). The Governor
cautioned about the increase of dark money in politics and promised to
“strengthen disclosure requirements and mandate that groups report
the identity of anyone exerting control over them.” In August 2016,
the Governor signed into law New York Executive Law § 172, which requires
disclosures of political relationships and behaviors widely recognized to
be influential but which operate in the shadows. Now, with the lessons of
the 2018 election in hand, the Governor proposes strengthening this law in
a variety of ways to assure all New Yorkers have critical information
about who is actually speaking to them. Further, the Governor is seeking
to streamline the reporting process for 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4)
organizations, including by providing a mechanism for organizations to
apply for a statutory exemption before the start of a reporting period.
Require Financial
Disclosures by Local Elected Officials: This proposal will require these local elected officials to
submit basic financial disclosure information to JCOPE, just like their state
counterparts, so that the people of New York State can have the information
they need about the people they choose to represent them at all levels of
government.
Build a Dynamic, User-Friendly Database of Economic Development Projects: In
an effort to increase transparency and modernize the information available on
State economic development efforts, the Governor is directing Empire State
Development (ESD) to build and host a searchable online database that will give
the public more current and relevant information on projects that receive ESD
assistance. When deployed, the new database will provide the public with more
recent information on projects and combine the data from many static,
program-specific reports into one dynamic, user-friendly website.
Ensuring Immigrant Rights
Pass the Jose Peralta DREAM Act: Governor Cuomo will pass the Senator
Jose R. Peralta DREAM Act to finally open the doors of higher education to
thousands of New Yorkers. The Senator Jose R. Peralta DREAM Act will give
undocumented New York students, who are deserving of the same advantages given
to their citizen peers, access to the Tuition Assistance Program, as well as
state administered scholarships.
Codify Executive Order Prohibiting State Agencies from Inquiring About
Immigration Status: In 2017, Governor Cuomo issued Executive Order 170,
prohibiting State agencies and officers from inquiring about or disclosing an
individual’s immigration status unless required by law or necessary to
determine eligibility for a benefit or service. Building upon further
amendments to the Executive Order, Governor Cuomo proposes codifying the
protection of the amended EO 170 into law.
Protecting LGBTQ Rights
Pass the Gender Identity and Expression Non-Discrimination Act:Governor
Cuomo supports the passage of the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act
(GENDA), solidifying protections against discrimination, harassment, and hate
crimes against people on the basis of gender identity.
Banning Conversion Therapy: Governor Cuomo supports legislation to
expand the definition of professional misconduct for professions licensed under
the education law to include engaging in, advertising for, or allowing someone
under one’s direction or oversight to engage in conversion therapy with a
patient under the age of eighteen years.
Ban the “Gay Panic” Defense: Governor Cuomo will again
push to close the loophole in New York State by passing legislation to ban gay
and trans panic defenses.
Make Surrogacy Legal in New York State: New York State law
presently bans the practice of gestational surrogacy, and creates destabilizing
uncertainty about who the legal parents are when a child is conceived via other
reproductive technology like artificial insemination or egg donation. The
Governor is proposing legislation to lift the ban on surrogacy contracts to
permit gestational carrier agreements.
Serving Our Veterans
Support for Transgender Troops: New York will stand with all
veterans regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. This year, all
New York State Division of Veterans’ Affairs staff will receive LGBTQ cultural
competency training to help understand how to best serve LGBTQ veterans. DVA
will also work with LGBTQ-focused organizations to make sure that each and
every LGBTQ veteran receives individualized assistance in a safe and supportive
environment, including by helping LGBTQ veterans upgrade their service
discharges so that these brave veterans will be able to access healthcare,
education, financial compensation, and other benefits they have earned.
JUSTICE FOR ALL NEW YORKERS
Protecting Quality, Affordable Health Care
Codify Health Care Protections and Coverage Guarantees for New
Yorkers: In light of the continued federal attacks on the ACA,
Governor Cuomo believes it is essential that New York codify key ACA
provisions, including the state’s health insurance marketplace, as well as
enhanced State regulatory protections into State law. This is critical to
stabilizing the health insurance market and inoculating New York from any
further federal attacks on the health care system.
Take Action to Achieve Universal Access to Health Care: Governor
Cuomo is establishing a Commission on universal health care to be supported by
Department of Health and Department of Financial Services, and comprised of
health policy and insurance experts to develop options for achieving universal
access to high-quality, affordable health care in New York. This review process
will consider all options for expanding access to care, including strengthening
New York’s commercial insurance market, expanding programs to include
populations that are currently ineligible or cannot afford coverage, as well as
innovative reimbursement models to improve efficiency and generate savings to
support expanded coverage.
Fighting to End the Opioid Epidemic
Protect New Yorkers from Predatory Practices: Governor Cuomo will
advance legislation to 1) require that out-of-state facilities be licensed in
their home state and accredited by a nationally recognized organization, and 2)
prevent predatory out-of-state providers from targeting justice involved
individuals by working with courts to immediately connect individuals to
in-state treatment programs and by advancing legislation to protect in-state
court ordered treatment. He will also direct OASAS to implement regulations
that require out-of-state marketers comply with OASAS requirements when
marketing in New York State. With these actions, New York will implement the
strongest practices in the nation to protect its residents, forcing predatory
treatment programs to look elsewhere to fill their facility quotas.
Expand Access to Buprenorphine: Buprenorphine is an important
advance in Medication Assisted Treatment, which, like methadone and injectable
naltrexone, is used in combination with counseling as appropriate to help
people reach and sustain recovery from Opioid Use Disorder. To expand use of
buprenorphine, Governor Cuomo will direct the Department of Health to require
all hospitals statewide to develop protocols for their Emergency Departments to
address Opioid Use Disorder based on the standard of care for treatment or
referral for treatment.
Expand Access to Medication Assisted Treatment in Criminal Justice Settings: To
expand access to treatment in prisons and jails, Governor Cuomo has directed
OASAS to distribute over $4 million to support addiction treatment services in
over 50 facilities. Additionally, Governor Cuomo will expand access to
Medication Assisted Treatment by providing $1.2 million to support the
establishment of up to three new MAT programs in State prisons.
Increase Access to Naloxone: Governor Cuomo will direct DOH to
advance legislation that expands Good Samaritan laws to apply to workers in
restaurants, bars, and other retail establishments. In addition, Governor Cuomo
will increase access to naloxone at SUNY and CUNY by ensuring that naloxone is
provided as part of every dorm first aid kit, or available for the Resident
Assistant on duty every night in every SUNY and CUNY dorm.
Launch a Comprehensive Substance Use Prevention Blueprint for Schools: At
Governor Cuomo’s direction, New York State will launch a statewide
collaborative to streamline all prevention resources and develop best
practices, standards, and metrics for substance use prevention into a focused
“Prevention Blueprint” that will assist schools to follow a
comprehensive, evidence-based and data-driven approach to prevention. OASAS
shall work in collaboration with the State Education Department, Department of
Health and the Office of Mental Health to develop the Prevention Blueprint for
use in the 2020-21 school year.
Creating Healthy Communities
Protect New Yorkers from Unknown Exposure to Toxic Chemicals: Governor
Cuomo will introduce new legislation authorizing the Department of
Environmental Conservation, the Department of Health and the Department of
State to develop regulations establishing an on-package labeling requirement
for designated products, indicating the presence of potentially hazardous
chemicals, developing a list of the more than 1,000 carcinogens and other
chemicals that will trigger labeling, and identifying the types of consumer
products that will be subject to the new regime. DEC and DOH will be further
empowered to require manufacturers to disclose the chemical contents of
consumer products in sold or distributed in New York State and explore possible
additional measures to protect consumers.
Control Health Threats from Tobacco: Governor Cuomo is proposing
comprehensive legislation to combat the rising use of tobacco products. This
legislation includes:
Raising the Minimum Sales Age for Tobacco and
Electronic Cigarette Products from 18 to 21: Most underage youth obtain tobacco and vapor
products from friends who are over 18 and can legally purchase products.
Raising the minimum age will remove sources of tobacco from high schools.
Ending the Sale of Tobacco and Electronic Cigarette
Products in Pharmacies: Health
care related entities should not be in the business of selling tobacco,
the leading cause of preventable death in New York State. Ending the sale
of tobacco and electronic cigarette products in pharmacies will reduce the
availability, visibility, and social acceptability of tobacco use,
especially to youth.
Clarify the Department of Health’s Authority to Ban the
Sale of Certain Flavored E-Cigarette Liquids: Flavored combustible cigarettes, except menthol, were
banned by the FDA in 2009 to reduce youth smoking as they were frequently
used as a starter product. Most e-cigarette users said their first
e-cigarette was flavored. Flavors, such as sweet tart, toffee, and bubble
gum, make e-cigarettes more attractive and make e-cigarettes more attractive
to youth. Legislation is being introduced to provide the Department of
Health the authority to ban the sale of flavored liquids that target youth
use of e-cigarettes.
Restricting Available Discounts Provided by Tobacco and
Electronic Cigarette Manufacturers and Retailers: New York has the highest cigarette tax in the
nation, but manufacturers and retailers have developed tactics to reduce
prices, such as “buy one, get one free” discounts. These tactics
directly target price-sensitive consumers, including youth. Restricting
discounts on tobacco and vapor products will strengthen the impact of New
York’s tax on tobacco and disincentivize tobacco use.
Introduce a Tax on E-Cigarettes: Tobacco use is reduced or prevented when the price of
tobacco products is high. Youth are particularly sensitive to price
increases on tobacco products. New York State has one of the highest taxes
on combustible cigarettes and one of the lowest youth smoking rates in the
country. The same rationale is expected to apply to taxation and youth use
of electronic cigarettes and e-liquids.
Require E-Cigarettes to Be Sold Only Through Licensed
Retailers: Currently the sale of
e-cigarettes is almost entirely unregulated. Restricting the sale to
licensed retailers will allow the current enforcement infrastructure to
ensure that minors do not purchase tobacco products.
Invest in Community-Based Supports for Aging New Yorkers: Governor Cuomo proposes investing $15 million in community-based supports for aging New Yorkers. This needed targeted investment in NYSOFA’s programs and services will help serve more older adults and will help them maintain their autonomy, support family and friends in their caregiving roles, and delay future Medicaid costs. Working with the Department of Health, NYSOFA will develop specific metrics to evaluate the success of this investment.
Create the Family First Transition Fund: The state will leverage the investment of private foundation funding to create a Family First Transition fund that will provide resources to local departments of social services and foster care agencies to have the resources needed to prepare for the implementation of the Family First federal legislation. This investment will allow New York State to adequately prepare for the implementation of Family First and will position New York to continue to prioritize the needs of its most vulnerable children and families and ensure the local departments of social services are fully equipped to meet those needs while maintaining compliance with important federal benchmarks.
Continuing New York’s Environmental Leadership
Launching the Green New Deal: Amidst the Trump Administration’s assault on the environment and in order to continue New York’s progress in the fight against climate change, Governor Cuomo is announcing New York’s Green New Deal, a nation-leading clean energy and jobs agenda that will put the state on a path to carbon neutrality across all sectors of New York’s economy. At the Governor’s direction, New York will move boldly to achieve this goal with specific near-term actions and long-term strategies to spur unparalleled innovation and transform the state’s electric, transportation, and building infrastructure while prioritizing the needs of low- and moderate-income New Yorkers. This landmark initiative will further drive the growth of New York’s clean energy economy, create tens of thousands of high-quality 21st century jobs, provide all New Yorkers with cleaner air and water by reducing harmful emissions, and set an example of climate leadership for the rest of the nation and world to follow.
Establish $10 Billion Green Future Fund: This year, Governor Cuomo will advance a $10 billion Green Future Fund to support clean water infrastructure, renewable energy and clean transportation, and open space and resiliency. This fund includes $5 billion in total for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure—building upon the $2.5 billion Clean Water Infrastructure Act and effectively doubling the state’s investment in clean water over the next five years.
Continue Historic $300 Million Environmental Protection Fund: Governor Cuomo proposes maintaining the State’s historic $300 million EPF. This investment will prioritize programs to protect New York’s water bodies, promote stewardship projects in parks and on other state lands, revitalize municipal waterfronts, and build community resilience to climate change—all while creating jobs and stimulating local economies.
Expanding the Bottle Bill to Include Most Nonalcoholic Drinks: In order to reduce litter and provide relief to overburdened municipal recycling entities who are struggling amidst changes to the global recycling markets, Governor Cuomo will expand the Bottle Bill to make most non-alcoholic beverage containers eligible for 5 cent redemption, including those for sports drinks, energy drinks, fruit and vegetable beverages and ready-to-drink teas and coffee.
Prohibiting the Use of Plastic Bags: To address the environmental impacts of single-use plastic bags, Governor Cuomo proposes a statewide plastic bag prohibition with certain exceptions.
Thousands gathered at Times Square in Manhattan precisely at 5 pm on Thursday, Nov. 8, 2018, a day after Donald Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and only two days after the Blue Wave swept over the House and into state houses across the country, and appointing Matthew Whitaker the Acting Attorney General, a sycophant who has been outspoken against the Muller “lynch mob” and the liberal “Russian hoax.”
Within minutes, the numbers gathered at Duffy Square in Times Square in Manhattan grew to the thousands; soon people were packed together, waving hand-drawn signs and chanting “Trump is not Above the Law,” and “Protect Mueller.” After about an hour, they marched down Broadway about two miles to Union Square through streets and crossroads that clogged with rush hour traffic, past stores and offices still busy with people – a contrast to typical protests which go through vacant caverns on a weekend morning. They were greeted with supporters all along the route.
New York City was one of about 1000 such rallies across the nation, a response to Donald Trump’s latest in-your-face lawless outrage: firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions in order to replace him with a sycophant, Matthew Whitaker, whose only “qualification” to be the Acting Attorney General is that he, like now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, expressed willingness to shield Trump, his family and associates from investigation.
The NYC Planning Team later reported that best estimates put the numbers at 6,000, part of a nationwide turnout of over 100,000 people who came out with less than 24 hours notice.
Whitaker had been auditioning for the job in appearances on TV – the recruitment ground for any number of Trump appointees, including his Director of Communications, the ex-Fox News executive Bill Shine – expressing disdain for Mueller’s team as a “lynch mob”, and declaring in interviews in 2017 that the Russia investigation was a liberal hoax, and while there may have been interference by Russia into the election, there was no collusion with the Trump campaign. No one bothered to ask how Whitaker, who said he wanted to come to Trump’s attention in order to get a job with the Administration in Washington, would have any direct knowledge of the “evidence” to support his claims.
Whitaker was critical of the investigation in an August 2017 CNN op-ed, saying that Mueller investigating Trump’s finances would be crossing a red line, even though the question of whether the Trump empire is built on money laundering for Russian oligarchs loyal to Vladimir Putin is key to whether there was in fact a conspiracy, or collusion, between Russia and the Trump campaign, and whether Trump’s foreign policy decisions are impacted by whether other governments have sway over him (a partial list: Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Russia, China, India, Turkey, Panama. Yet Whitaker is now the highest law-enforcement officer in the country.
Whitaker also defended Donald Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with Russian officials promising opposition research against Hillary Clinton, stating, “You would always take that meeting,” demonstrating not only his bias (and conflict of interest) but his ignorance of law (it’s illegal to take anything of value from a foreign power; the “dirt” on Hillary Clinton was illegally obtained, which would render the Trump campaign a co-conspirator). But defending illegality is not new: he served on a board of a company that, like Trump University, existed to bilk its customers, and which used Whitaker’s position as a federal prosecutor to bully those who would have sued. And yet, he is now the highest law-enforcement officer in the country. (But dishonesty, along with blind loyalty to Dear Leader, seem to be the prerequisites for a Trump appointment.)
Whitaker, as a 2014 candidate for US Senate from Iowa, had promised he would vote for federal judicial nominees who have “a Biblical view of justice.” He also expressed disdain for the notion of the Judiciary as a co-equal branch of government, and blasted the original decision, Marbury v Madison from 1803 which established the Supreme Court as the arbiter of constitutionality. (I’ll bet he thinks differently now that Trump has put two Federalist Society judges on the court for a long-term conservative majority.)
Trump had to jump over the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is in charge of the Mueller investigation, in order to pluck Whitaker, who was a chief-of-staff to Sessions for a matter of months. Despite basically carrying out Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant, anti-civil rights agenda, Sessions was pilloried by Trump for having recused himself from the Russia probe, since Sessions was part of the Trump campaign and lied to Congress during his confirmation hearing about having had contact with Russians. The likelihood is that Trump deliberately planted Whitaker in the post precisely for this maneuver.
On the other hand, many legal scholars have said Whitaker is not legally allowed to be the Acting chief-law-enforcement officer for the nation since he has never gone through a confirmation process. Again, Trump is likely thinking he can get anyone through the Republican-controlled Senate.
Some 19 different organizations, including Moveon.org, Need to Impeach and Democracy for America,, sent out the “Emergency. Break the Glass” notice, triggered when Trump moved to fire Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, to rally people in New York City and around the country.
Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY 12) was among those who addressed the protesters in Union Square. Also, among the organizers, a Brooklyn College student, a mother from Connecticut with an autistic child; and Therese Okoumou, who scaled the Statue of Liberty last July 4 to protest Trump’s family separation policy.
Here are more photo highlights from the New York City rally and march to protect Mueller:
The Women’s March the day after Trump’s Inauguration in January 2017, in Washington and across America, was the largest day of protest in American history; subsequent protests throughout his tenure – for climate action, gun reform, immigrants – have also been massive.
The Women’s Movement has been rekindled with the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation to the Supreme Court.
Trump has signaled he has had enough of protest. He prefers what Putin and Kim Jong-un have: a way of suppressing all opposition, be it a free press or protest.
It filters down from Trump (or from Fox to Trump) to the Republican talking heads eerily mimicking the same phrases and charge: the protesters were paid by George Soros (versus the astroturf Tea Partyers literally paid by Koch Brothers). We can’t have “mob rule.” We must uphold the “Rule of Law” – a laughably ironic statement coming from this mobster-in-chief, whose kinship with Kavanaugh – credibly accused of sexual assault, and now vulnerable, as Trump is, to blackmail – is cemented by Kavanaugh’s promise to shield Trump from investigation or indictment, and his pronounced threat against the “conspiracy” of liberals, Democrats and Clinton supporters. “What goes around, comes around,” the pretender “umpire calling strikes and balls,” menaced.
It is yet another example of Trump (and Republicans) accusing opponents of the criminality they themselves commit – “Rigged election.” “Politicized FBI.” “Pay to Play” (Lock her up!). Voter Fraud (a red-herring to justify Voter Suppression). And the most laughable: accusing Democrats of “unprecedented” obstruction, as if being a Democrat means you are a persona non grata in Trump’s America.
Trump has used this technique to intimidate Democrats from questioning the 2016 Election, accused Democrats of obstructing his agenda and appointments (while also boasting he has gotten a record number of judges appointed), and basically ignoring the majority of Americans in this supposed democracy on everything from gun reform to environmental protection to health care.
He has used his words to raise suspicion and discredit the Mueller investigation, about the FBI and CIA intelligence, about the New York Times and Washington Post’s investigations into campaign finance activity and now the tax evasion (and fraud) that enabled him and his family to cheat the American people out of $500 million. Now he expects this technique to either shut down protest or discredit whatever investigations and reports emerge.
Trump has been playing the “victim” card that he attacks women for: Oh pity the poor, aggrieved white men who need to fear being held to account for wrong-doing. Can’t have that.
He has attacked Senate Democrats who were doing their due diligence in investigating Kavanaugh’s fitness (unfitness) for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court attacking them as “evil,” and accusing them of “con” (that’s really rich).
“Honestly, it’s a very dangerous period in our country,” Trump said at the New York City press conference, just ahead of the Kavanaugh vote. “And it’s being perpetrated by some very evil people. Some of them are Democrats, I must say. Because some of them know that this is just a game that they’re playing. It’s a con game. It’s at the highest level. We’re talking about the United States Supreme Court.”
He is desperate to use Kavanaugh to turn out his voters because he fears a Blue Wave will result in investigations, actual oversight and maybe even impeachment if Democrats get a majority in Congress. So he manufactures a message of aggrievement, of discrediting victims of sexual violence, which is a form of subjugation
More menacingly, he is signaling that he will summon the forces of the state to suppress opposition.
I watched as dozens of protesters on the Capitol steps arrested (300 on Thursday, 124 on Saturday) while Kavanaugh was ultimately confirmed with the smallest number of votes ever, a mere 50. Nearly 300 had been arrested on Thursday, after the sham FBI report was “released” using a level of secrecy that Trump did not see fit to use to protect the Russian investigation’s sources, methods and lives. You would think the arrests contradicted the Constitution’s protection of the right to assemble and petition our government.
How does exercising the Constitutional right to assemble and petition our government warrant arrest? But in Trump’s America, can’t have that.
Kavanaugh becomes one of four sitting Supreme Court Justices named by presidents (George W. Bush and Trump) who lost the popular vote; meanwhile, those 50 Senators who confirmed Kavanaugh represent about 40% of Americans but now, those Justices have the majority to control the lives of millions of people for generations to come.
So a minority is exerting its tyranny over the majority – taking over each and every one of its institutions, the White House, the Congress and now the Supreme Court (and all the other lesser courts).
So people are taking to the streets. And Trump can’t have that.
This faux “Law and Order” Putin-wannabe is signaling with his use of terms like “mob rule” and screams that protest somehow violates the “Rule of Law” (as opposed to his own evasion of accountability for sexual assault, tax evasion, campaign finance violations, conspiracy with a foreign adversary to steal the election) that he will call out enforcement to shut down protest. In his mind, even not applauding his State of the Union is tantamount to treason.
He will use all the tools and powers at his command, including whatever is possible to suppress the vote, under the guise of preventing voter fraud, or just impeding access to the polls.
Techniques the Republicans have used effectively include locating polling places so they are less accessible to certain voters, purging voter lists, challenging voter IDs if the name isn’t exact (an excellent technique to prevent women from voting); limiting hours, having employers refuse to give time off (or pay) to go vote, having too few voting machines, forcing people to stand on line for hours, then shutting the doors when time’s up, and even having thugs stand outside. Wouldn’t put it past them to set up road blocks.
This actually has happened where those entrusted with enforcing the law does the bidding of those wielding political power.
At the New-York Historical Society, there is a chilling exhibit, “Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow,” a punch-to-the-gut examination of how the Emancipation Proclamation, Civil War, and most significantly, Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, led to an institutionalized system of terror and subjugation of African Americans. This included the complicity of the Supreme Court which issued decisions dating back to Dred Scott, that perpetuated subjugation.
The 1857 Dred Scott case ruled that though Scott was in territory that did not have slavery, Scott had no right to sue because he was not a US citizen, and no black person, free or slave, could be a US citizen. (This was overturned with the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause that covered any person in the US, which is why undocumented immigrants also have rights under the Constitution). :“All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States…No State shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”)
Nonetheless, the Supreme Court for a century was complicit in systemic subjugation of blacks, minorities, immigrants and women.
Despite the 15th Amendment guarantee of voting rights (“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude”) states which had allowed non-propertied white men to vote in 1828 (where is the Constitutional amendment for that?), now passed laws restricting voting only to white men, which the Supreme Court did not overturn.
After Congress, in 1875, passed a civil rights act banning discrimination in public places, the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1883.
In 1882, the federal government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, restricting Chinese immigration and prohibiting the courts from naturalizing Chinese as citizens. (No doubt, Kavanaugh will raise this as “precedent” for backing a Muslim Travel Ban.)
In 1884, The Supreme Court ruled that the 14th and 15th amendments do not grant citizenship to Native Americans. (Today, new Voter ID laws could limit access to polls by Native Americans in North Dakota and Trump’s Justice Department is no longer prosecuting voting rights abuses.)
In 1890, as Mississippi and other southern states formalized disenfranchisement of African Americans, the Supreme Court upheld them because voting restrictions did not specifically mention “race.”
In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v Ferguson that it’s A-OK for segregated facilities to be “separate, but equal.”
Meanwhile, the Ku Klux Klan was rising, terrorizing Blacks, especially those who sought to run for political office. Blacks were lynched for nothing more than being accused of looking at a white woman (making Trump’s faux victimization of white men credibly accused of sexual assault even more absurd). More than 4,000 African Americans were publically lynched from 1877 to the 1950s, in a great many cases, aided and abetted by local police.
Interestingly, anti-lynching efforts were led by women’s organizations, and an anti-lynching bill was put forward in 1937, though none got passed the filibusters of the southern Dixiecrats.
Just as today, the Ku Klux Klan and White Supremacists used the guise of righteous “glory be to God” to subjugate, terrorize and retain power.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell went nuclear in overturning the filibuster, even as the United States’ gap in populations of large and small states mushroomed from the time of the Founders’ compromise that gave each state, large and small, two senators each. Wyoming with a population of 579,000 has equal voting power to California with 40 million. A similar imbalance in the Electoral College shows the fraud of “one-person, one vote” (a Wyoming voter has 4 times the weight of a Californian), and the lie to the Republicans’ false flag of “voter fraud” to justify its voter suppression. The majority no longer rules, not in the White House, not in the House, where gerrymandering entrenches the minority Republican party, not in the Senate and not in the Supreme Court.
As for that ridiculous assertion by Senator Susan Collins of Maine that a PAC accumulating money to use against her reelection in 2020 was akin to bribery? What a joke, since the pro-Kavanaugh right-wing groups, led by the Judicial Crisis Center, spent $7 million on its campaign to get Kavanaugh confirmed. The imbalance in campaign spending, thanks to the Scalia Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision, has given special interests ownership of politicians and policy. Glad to hear Collins is upset about that, but I doubt she will do anything about it.
This Kavanaugh battle has illustrated a number of things: Might makes right. Power begets power. Women who have been assaulted or harassed will get no justice. There’s no such thing as “No man is above the law” which means that there is no actual “Rule of Law.”
Women’s rights activists. Gun Rights Activists. Climate Activists. Workers Rights activists, Immigrant Rights activists cannot be cowed. Yes, it is crucial to turn out and vote in these midterms – and it will take a Blue Wave of more than 60% just to get to 51% majority in Congress. But if the Republicans are able to keep control with all the levers and advantages of using power to keep power (gerrymandering, voter suppression, campaign spending, propaganda and outright election hacking), then those peaceful protests protected under the Constitution may in fact turn into an angry mob of unleashed frustration and victimization.
Governor Andrew Cuomo has designated Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas as Special Prosecutor to investigate, and if warranted, prosecute, “any and all matters” concerning the public allegations against Eric Schneiderman, who has resigned as the state’s Attorney General after being accused by four women of sexual assault.
In a letter to Acting Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood, who was formerly the state’s Solicitor General, and Singas, Governor Cuomo referenced the New Yorker article dated May 7, 2018 titled “Four Women Accuse New York’s Attorney General of Physical Abuse.”.
Singas is the former head of the Special Victims’ Bureau at the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office and the founding member of the Domestic Violence Bureau at the Queens County District Attorney’s Office, so she has specific and extensive expertise in this area, the Governor noted.
“In addition to investigating the specific allegations outlined against Schneiderman in the article, the Special Prosecutor shall investigate facts in the article suggesting that the Attorney General staff and office resources may have been used to facilitate alleged abusive liaisons referenced in the article.
“The Special Prosecutor shall have the powers and duties specified in subdivision 2 of section 63 of the Executive Law for purposes of this review, and shall possess and exercise all the prosecutorial powers necessary to investigate, and if warranted, prosecute the alleged incidents.”
The Special Prosecutor is also charged with working with District Attorney Tim Sini of Suffolk County regarding the incident that reportedly occurred in the Hamptons located in Suffolk County, as well as with any other District Attorneys who have relevant fact patterns.
“The Special Prosecutor’s jurisdiction will displace and supersede the jurisdiction of the New York County District Attorney’s Office (“DANY”), as there appears, at a minimum, an appearance of a conflict of interest with the Attorney General’s Office, which is currently investigating the relationship and actions between DANY and the New York Police Department and their handling of alleged illegal acts including sexual harassment and assault, by producer Harvey Weinstein.
“There can be no suggestion of any possibility of the reality or appearance of any conflict or anything less than a full, complete and unbiased investigation. The victims deserve nothing less.”
NEW YORK –The New York Civil Liberties Union, American Civil Liberties Union and Brooklyn Defender Services filed a federal class action lawsuit today challenging the recent cessation of bond hearings for immigrant detainees and the Trump administration’s indefinite detention of immigrants.
The administration’s halting of bond hearings in New York follows a February Supreme Court decision in a case from California, Jennings v. Rodriguez, holding that a federal immigration statute does not entitle immigrants to bond hearings. In that case, the Supreme Court chose not to decide whether the U.S. Constitution independently requires bond hearings and instead sent the case back to the appeals court in California to address that question. In New York, however, the federal appeals court already recognized that the Constitution requires such hearings in a 2015 case, Lora v. Shanahan. Nonetheless, the federal government has stopped providing them to immigrant detainees in New York. Today’s lawsuit seeks to restore bond hearings and due process protections for jailed immigrant New Yorkers.
“In the pursuit of its anti-immigrant agenda the Trump regime seeks to do away with basic legal protections that are fundamental to any notion of justice,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Immigrants are entitled to due process, and bond hearings are a vital safeguard against the unjustified and prolonged imprisonment that the Trump regime seeks to impose on all immigrants. The New York Civil Liberties Union and our partners will fight to ensure immigrant New Yorkers can rely on the rule of law even under the Trump regime. ”
Hundreds of thousands of people both with and without lawful status are detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) each year. Immigration detention can last months or even years, as people fight their deportation cases through a slow and backlogged immigration court system. Bond hearings are an essential opportunity to demonstrate to a judge that incarceration is not necessary to ensure that someone returns to court. Without a hearing, immigrants, including asylum seekers and green card holders, may remain locked up indefinitely while they fight their cases.
“Without the opportunity to request release, our clients, including asylum seekers and long-time green card holders, are indefinitely detained and separated from their families, their jobs, and their communities in horrific detention centers,” said Lisa Schreibersdorf, Executive Director of Brooklyn Defender Services. “Indefinite detention is contrary to our most basic constitutional principles and we are proud to continue the fight for due process and justice for our clients and their communities.”
The lead plaintiff in the class action, Augustin Sajous, is a 60-year-old Haitian man who has lived in the US for 46 years, since he became a permanent resident as a child in the 1970s. He studied engineering, bought a house, and helped raise a family, but in recent years he has struggled with mental health issues, which led to bouts of homelessness. Mr. Sajous was arrested by ICE in September 2017 and is subject to deportation because of two 2015 misdemeanor convictions for bending MetroCards in order to use them with zero balance.
“The Supreme Court’s recent ruling does nothing to undermine the fact that the Constitution ensures that all people in the U.S. are entitled to due process protections,” said Jordan Wells, staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union. “We are taking action now to ensure that immigrant New Yorkers who are currently detained get a fair opportunity to secure their freedom.”
In addition to Wells, counsel on the case include NYCLU staff attorneys Robert Hodgson, Paige Austin, and Aadhithi Padmanabhan, associate legal director Christopher Dunn and paralegal Maria Rafael, ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project staff attorney Michael Tan and deputy director Judy Rabinowitz, and BDS attorneys Andrea Saenz, Brooke Menschel, Zoey Jones and Bridget Kessler.
