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Emergency response times in New York City have been getting longer year-to-year, according to the city's annual Mayor’s Management Report.
Councilmember Joann Ariola represents parts of southeast Queens. She’s also the chair of the council's committee on fire and emergency. Oren Barzilay is the president of EMS Local 2057-Uniformed EMT’s Paramedics and Fire Inspectors of FDNY. They talked with WNYC's Tiffany Hanssen about why emergency response times are getting slower, and how they think the problem should be addressed.
Governor Kathy Hochul is reviving the MTA’s congestion pricing plan to toll vehicles entering New York City south of 60th Street. The governor is cutting the toll rate – from the $15 dollars previously approved by the state and federal government to $9 dollars. And while some transit advocates are hailing the Governor’s decision to end her pause on the program’s implementation, there’s been longstanding bipartisan criticism of the tolling program from suburban elected officials.
Democratic State Senator James Skoufis represents the state’s 42nd Senate district in Orange County. He talked with WNYC's Janae Pierre more about what congestion pricing means for New Yorkers.
Recent research shows that pregnancy related health risks persist for a full year after childbirth itself, such as postpartum depression. The New York City Council recently passed a package of bills addressing disparities in maternal mental health.
Councilmember Linda Lee, who is the chair of the committee on mental health, disabilities, and addiction, spoke to WNYC's Sean Carlson more about what some new mothers face after childbirth and what the city is doing about it.
People incarcerated at the Otisville State Correctional Facility in Orange County, New York can now earn a full associates degree through the City University of New York's Prison-to-College Pathways program. The expanded program is a new partnership between the John Jay College Institute for Justice and Opportunity and the Borough of Manhattan Community College.
Denisse Martinez is the program director. Carla Barrett is the academic director and is teaching a course at the facility this semester. They both joined WNYC host David Furst.
A candy-colored “Exotic Clouds” sign that once beckoned customers into a smoke shop at Stanton and Ludlow streets now hangs over a darkened storefront with windows covered in graffiti. Blocks away, on Allen Street, the gate is down on another shuttered shop, this one with an awning emblazoned with “Social Club,” written in understated cursive.
All around the Lower East Side, tucked between hip restaurants, bars and clothing boutiques, are the remnants of bodegas, lounges and makeshift dispensaries closed by the city in recent months, part of a crackdown on alleged illegal weed stores. Officials have made 5,000 inspections and closed more than 1,100 businesses citywide on charges of selling marijuana without a license.
Read the full story at Gothamist.
We have a big-time re-match at Barclays Center in Brooklyn this Sunday. The New York Liberty are back on the court after their first round victory against the Atlanta Dream in the WNBA playoffs. Their opponent? The Las Vegas Aces - the team that defeated the Liberty in the WNBA finals last year.
Sports reporter Priya Desai joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to discuss the series and the latest in the Major League Baseball playoff picture.
New York City is living through an unprecedented moment, with its sitting mayor the subject of a criminal case and federal corruption charges. And this comes on the heels of several high profile departures from city government. So how is anything getting done? WNYC’s Elizabeth Kim joins Weekend Edition host David Furst with the latest.
For months, parents have been trying to get more crossing guards at the school, which serves 1,000 students. But their requests have bounced between the NYPD, the education department, the transportation department and local officials without any action. A citywide shortage of crossing guards leaves little hope of additional support in the future.
Federal prosecutors say a New York state official who worked for Governor Kathy Hochul and former Governor Andrew Cuomo was secretly an agent for the Chinese government — and made millions of dollars through the scheme. Hochul talked with WNYC's Sean Carlson to address the allegations. She also spoke at length about her proposed cell phone ban in New York schools ahead of the first day of city schools this week.
When Natalie Skeete-Somerszaul was 10 years old, her grandmother taught her how to play the steelpan. Now, Natalie spends hours each day practicing the instrument, often with the Brooklyn-based Eruption Steel Orchestra. In this installment of Radio Rookies, Natalie speaks about her love for steelpan and how playing helps her connect with her Trinidadian heritage.
Radio Rookies is supported in part by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Epstein Teicher Philanthropies, the Margaret Neubart Foundation, and The Pinkerton Foundation.
A vacant lot in the shadow of Yankee Stadium was meant to be the home of a new five-story charter school. But the construction project was abandoned nearly five years ago and the site has since become an illegal dumping ground filled with festering garbage and rats, infuriating neighbors who are praying their stinky nightmare will one day come to an end.
The 20-building LeFrak City housing complex in Corona is home to thousands of working-class and middle-income tenants, offering access to a swimming pool and park inside a secure campus near malls, subway lines and Queens’ famous food scene.
But since the start of 2023, the 4,605-unit development has also been the site of more evictions than anywhere else in the five boroughs, according to a Gothamist analysis of city housing data. At the same time, the complex’s influential owner is suing the state court system, seeking to speed up the removal process for tenants behind on rent.
The rise in evictions at LeFrak City, a collection of mostly rent-stabilized apartments constructed more than 50 years ago as an affordable option for middle-income residents, reveals a deeper housing crisis affecting everyday New Yorkers, say tenants, their advocates and policy experts.
Many people’s income still hasn't rebounded after they lost jobs during the pandemic, and there are limited options for tenants in need of rental assistance. Meanwhile, tenants are struggling to find apartments they can afford amid record-high rents, and property owners who are tired of waiting for back rent are turning to housing court to either get paid or receive permission to remove tenants.Read the full story on Gothamist.com
Governor Phil Murphy declined to say what he was thinking about his pick to replace Sen. Bob Menendez, but then his decision to send his former chief of staff to Washington appeared in other news outlets shortly after the show.
"No news to make in terms of names, but that'll be, you know, it's getting now to the point where it will be any moment over the next few days," Murphy said.
He has chosen George Helmy, who served as his chief of staff from 2019 to 2023 and before that worked for Cory Booker and the late Frank Lautenberg in the senate.
Murphy also fielded a question from a caller about the huge amount of delays on NJ Transit trains over the summer.
"It's been a really bad summer, there's just no two ways about it," he said. In June, only 69 percent of trains arrived on time, well below the minimum standard that NJ transit sets for itself.
The governor also acknowledged that delays of another sort are also hurting residents, answering a question about why it's taking so long to get marijuana convictions expunged. The governor says the delays are mostly a result of records being available only on paper and not digitized.
Over the weekend Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency in New York City jails. At the same time he issued an unusual executive order that allows city correction officers to continue using restrictive measures … which City Council describes as solitary confinement … on detainees at Rikers Island jails. The ban on solitary confinement was supposed to go into effect this week. WNYC's Matt Katz joined Morning Edition to explain what happens next.
Mayor Adams has halted parts of a new law that bans solitary confinement in city jails.
His emergency order stops the Department of Correction from enacting certain parts of the law, which requires a four-hour time limit on holding prisoners in isolation.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams introduced the law that was approved by City Council last year. He said the council can challenge Adams' emergency order in court.
"My office is looking into suing as well," he told WNYC. "We're trying to find what all of our options are."
Williams criticized the mayor for signing the order in the middle of the night on Saturday. The ban was supposed to take effect Sunday.
Adams said the emergency order is temporary, and that his team plans to review the law with the federal judge overseeing mandated reforms at the city's jails.
The city's management of Rikers Island is already under review by a federal monitor.
This week's On The Way roundup of New York City transit news examines new lawsuits challenging Gov. Hochul's last-minute pause of congestion pricing. Also, the latest on Mayor Eric Adams' high-tech effort to boost subway safety.
Local residents say rampant drug use over the last year has made the woods too dangerous. Used syringes and discarded drug paraphernalia line the trails.
Line-sitters have grown in popularity as more New Yorkers become willing to pay to secure a chance to access high-demand goods and opportunities, which can range from shoe releases and Apple products to Broadway tickets and other performances.
Read the full story on Gothamist.
This month marks 10 years since a video of an NYPD officer killing Eric Garner went viral and launched a national outcry against police brutality. Now, with the spread of smartphones, filming police interactions is more common than ever.
As the anniversary of Garner's death approaches, here’s what you need to know about filming the NYPD.
For the complete article, go to Gothamist.com.
The showstopper of the night sky is the Summer Triangle, which is made up of three bright stars from three different constellations: Altair from Aquila the Eagle, Deneb from Cygnus the Swan and Vega from Lyra. Stargazers will also be able to see planets, star clusters and two meteor showers – all with the naked eye. Most can be seen within the five boroughs, in a park, cemetery or other dark spaces.
The Kent Avenue bike lane along the north Brooklyn waterfront has become a dangerous mess where cyclists, luxury building residents, pedestrians and drivers all compete for space, according to advocates and elected officials who are pressing the city for a fix.
Private jet use has been rising globally after the pandemic, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Now, the agency is poised to cash in on the trend.
Aviation reporter Ned Russell joined WNYC host Tiffany Hanssen to explain the new plans to build private jet hangars at Stewart International Airport in Orange County, New York — which is located about 50 miles north of New York City.
The early summer sizzle is baking New York, but on Tuesday, the politics is lit.It's primary day, with contests open for congressional, state legislative, judicial and party elections.The marquee contest is the Democratic matchup between incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Westchester County Executive George Latimer in the 16th Congressional District. The candidates’ positions on Israel’s war in Gaza emerged early as an issue in the race, with Bowman calling Israel’s actions tantamount to genocide and Latimer voicing his staunch support for the Jewish state.But the head-to-head has also featured record ad spending, with notable support from Republican donors for Latimer, and endorsements from high-profile surrogates. These include U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont's U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (for Bowman) and former presidential candidate, Secretary of State and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton (for Latimer).Statewide, 102,883 voters cast ballots during the nine days of early voting, according to data from state elections officials.Read the full story on Gothamist.com
As we inch closer to the general election in November, WNYC is using laundromats across the New York metro area as hubs of civic engagement. We want to get a better understanding what matters to people as they prepare to head to the polls. It’s a project we’re calling 'Suds and Civics.'
George Bodarky, who heads our Community Partnerships Desk, joins Morning Edition to discuss the insights gathered from partner laundromats throughout May and June.
This week marked the first day summer and our first extreme heat of the season. And when the temps reach the 90 degree mark, some of the typical summer food like hot dogs and hamburgers can start to seem less appealing. Our friends at Eater New York are here to help. Senior critic Robert Sietsema is back with a list of dishes to help us chill out on the hottest days of summer in New York City. Speaking with Weekend Edition host David Furst, he mentions some of his favorites.
Green pepper and preserved eggs at Sky Pavilion.(Robert Sietsema/Eater NY)
There's no doubt that Puerto Rican culture is one of the most dominant drivers of culture in New York City history — past and present. In fact, hundreds of thousands of Boricuas gathered in Manhattan this past weekend to celebrate just that at the Puerto Rican Day Parade.
But a recent study from The Center For Latino American and Caribbean Latino Studies finds the Puerto Rican population in the city is changing and shrinking. According to census data, the Puerto Rican population in the 5 boroughs fell by 20% between 2017 and 2022.
Aurora Flores Hostos, artist, activist, and author of books on Puerto Rico and its people, joined WNYC host Michael Hill. Flores Hostos is also the founding member of the salsa band Aurora and Zon del Barrio who will be playing on July 21st at the Harlem Meer in Central Park.
There are those who say it is never acceptable to open up a jar of pasta sauce -- that you must always go with the homemade option. Then there are those of us who need to make quick spaghetti before rushing the kids to baseball practice or orchestra rehearsal.
Luckily, the Italian restaurants of New York City have been only too happy to help, bottling and selling their own lines of sauces. But are they any good? Eater New York senior critic, Robert Sietsema joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to rank some of the most readily available options.
What are the odds of finding a man in finance, 6’5”, with blue eyes and a trust fund?
It’s a popular question in some internet circles after the now-ubiquitous “Man in Finance” meme from New Yorker Megan Boni went supernova viral.
The 19-second video now has 40 million views and counting — plus countless stitches, star remixes, a London flash mob and a talent deal for its creator.
When the American Ballet Theatre begins its summer season on June 18, many eyes will be on Chloe Misseldine and Jake Roxander.
The dancers, both 22, have had meteoric rises to center stage. Critics have called them “stunning” and “dazzling.”
“You didn’t notice them as people with promise, but as dancers who were already fully formed," said dance critic and author Marina Harss.
The two young talents are also what some might call nepo babies, to the extent that anyone can be a nepo baby in ballet, an endeavor that requires intense dedication just to get en pointe, let alone to become a soloist in one of the world's most prestigious dance companies.
Bronx residents who want to watch a movie in theaters now only have one place in the borough to do that. After more than 30 years in business, the Concourse Plaza Multiplex Cinemas in the South Bronx is closing May 28th.
WNYC’s Amanda Rozon reports that for many residents, that’s not just inconvenient — it’s devastating.
Nassau County and its police department were held in contempt of court this month for ignoring an order from a panel of appellate judges to hand over a document it has spent four years and $100,000 in taxpayer funds to keep secret.The closely guarded document? The police department’s phone directory.
The same lead-painted apartments in NYC have endangered children over and over, data shows
The latest attempt to diminish OPRA is opposed by 81 percent of the public, according to a recent poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University. Lawmakers are pushing it ahead anyway.
New York City sanitation police shut down the bustling street vendor market in Corona Plaza in late July, citing ongoing complaints about blocked sidewalks, “dirty conditions,” and “illegal vending” too close to storefronts.
Any vendors without one of the city’s limited and highly coveted permits and licenses were told to leave. Just a handful of stalls and long-time vendors remain, joined by a handful of newcomers, who arrived in the wake of the clear out.
The consequences of the crackdown continue to reverberate throughout the largely working-class immigrant neighborhood. Reporter Arya Sundaram of WNYC's Race and Justice Unit has our story.
As the cost of childcare continues to soar in New York City, it has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for many families to afford the coverage they need. But even as prices for childcare increase, many of the workers who provide that care are barely scraping by on minimal wages. Eliza Shapiro, metro reporter for the New York Times, joins WNYC host Michael Hill to talk about the crisis that families and care providers are experiencing.
A third of people in the Garden State live without a car, and in some pockets of Jersey -- that number is much higher -- especially in Newark's South Ward. Many residents there rely on private buses to help get around without a car. But, a major disruption to those services is just a few weeks down the road. Larry Higgs, transportation reporter for NJ.com, joins WNYC host Michael Hill to talk about the ongoing bus shakeup in the state.
A multi-story, green-and-white sign reading “Con Bud” is being erected over the facade of 85 Delancey St. on the Lower East Side, where Coss Marte plans to open his marijuana dispensary.
Marte put down a $420,000 deposit on a 10-year lease in the building and is on the hook for $38,000 a month in rent starting Oct. 1. He’s in the process of moving his nearby gym, Conbody, above the planned dispensary to create a co-branded space for both businesses.
For Marte, who served six years in prison for selling marijuana and other drugs, the chance to sell weed legally was “an unbelievable dream.” But he is now one of hundreds of entrepreneurs statewide whose plans have been put on hold indefinitely due to an injunction issued last month by a state Supreme Court judge against New York’s Conditional Adult Use Dispensary (CAURD) program.
Gothamist spoke to half a dozen CAURD license holders about what they have at stake. Some have borrowed money from family members, put down hefty deposits on real estate and inked expensive contracts while putting their personal finances and other businesses on the line.
Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
Throughout the month of September on All Things Considered, we’re taking a closer look at the future of work in New York City.
We asked our listeners how their relationship with work has changed since the pandemic. Here are some of their responses.
As the climate crisis becomes ever more immediate, New York City police are declining to enforce a 50-year-old idling ban meant to help prevent more air pollution. In 2020, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to revive attention to it, launching the "Billy Never Idles" campaign, with rock star Billy Idol. But new reporting from Streetsblog NYC finds NYPD enforcement of the decades-old ban is on track to be down almost 100 percent this year.
David Meyer, deputy editor of Streetsblog, joined WNYC's Morning Edition host Michael Hill to talk about the decline, and how New Yorkers are taking matters into their own hands.
Just days after saying that the mounting costs of the migrant crisis “will destroy” New York City, Mayor Eric Adams ordered some of the city’s sharpest budget cuts in years that he said would only be averted with the help of federal and state aid.
In an announcement on Saturday, Adams said all city agencies will be forced to slash spending by 5% beginning in November, and are being asked to prepare for further cuts in January and April as part of the upcoming budget planning cycle. An internal email sent to city employees and obtained by Gothamist said that in total, the cuts could add up to 15%. Taken together, they will amount to billions of dollars in cuts that could affect a wide range of basic services, including schools as well as police, fire and sanitation services, according to the mayor’s office. The size of the city’s total budget is around $107 billion.
The cuts will not require layoffs and city agencies have been directed to minimize disruptions to services.
Nevertheless, Adams warned that many New Yorkers – including the city’s newest arrivals – would feel the pain. He said the city would also find ways to cut spending for services provided to migrants, which include shelter, food, health care and education.
Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
When Maria Antonia Cay opened the Caribbean Social Club in the 1970s, it catered to a working-class community where people from the neighborhood could find reminders of home — whether that was Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic.
The area, known as Los Sures, was once home to mostly Puerto Ricans who came to New York in search of better prospects.
But in the nearly 50 years since the club — which is better known as Toñita’s, after a nickname of Cay’s — opened its doors, the once industrial, blue-collar neighborhood around it has now become one of the city's most coveted real estate markets, brimming with modern high-rises and luxury brand storefronts.
Despite the changing surroundings, Toñita’s has fended off challenges to its continued existence. It remains a sanctuary for new arrivals to the city, including migrants and asylum-seekers who’ve arrived in the last year.
Read the full story at Gothamist.com.
September is National Suicide Prevention Month. It’s a time to raise awareness about the topic, and to ensure that people get the resources they need to discuss suicide prevention and find help if they need. And September 4th-8th is specifically designated Construction Suicide Prevention Week. It's meant to bring attention and provide resources for construction companies and workers. The federal government says the suicide rate for men working in the construction industry is four times higher than the general population.
Elizabeth Crowley is the president and CEO of the Building Trades Employers Association. She joined WNYC's Sean Carlson to discuss the programs and mental health resources available for construction workers.
If someone you know exhibits warning signs of suicide: do not leave the person alone; remove any firearms, alcohol, drugs or sharp objects that could be used in a suicide attempt. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org, take the person to an emergency room, or seek help from a medical or mental health professional.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy's administration violated the constitutional rights of residents of veterans' homes in New Jersey during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report. And despite new management, the homes continue to provide inadequate care and prevention of contagious diseases, the report said.
Scott Fallon reports on COVID-19 for The Record newspaper. He joined WNYC's Sean Carlson to discuss the report.
Bushwick City Farm may be an outlier in its full-throated commitment to addressing the migrant crisis in New York City, but it shares something with many other community gardens across the five boroughs: They’re public places where private citizens have to jointly decide the best use of a precious resource. Senior reporter Arun Venugopal has our story.
The NYPD has agreed to overhaul how it responds to protests as part of a proposed settlement filed Tuesday to resolve lawsuits brought by Attorney General Letitia James, the Legal Aid Society, the New York Civil Liberties Union and individuals who claimed that police violated their rights during citywide Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
The lawsuits claimed that police used excessive force, made illegal arrests and violated protesters’ First Amendment rights during mostly peaceful demonstrations across the city following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. James and police watchdog agencies have issued scathing reports accusing the department of widespread misconduct during the protests.
If approved by a judge, the settlement would include reform measures that are meant to improve the way the NYPD responds to civil demonstrations. The agency has agreed to create a new oversight committee that will assess how police act at protests, whose membership will include representatives from the attorney general’s office, NYCLU and the Legal Aid Society. Police have also agreed to stop using a controversial tactic known as “kettling,” when officers surround protesters and leave them with no path to escape before a mass arrest.
Molly Biklen, deputy legal director for NYCLU, said she expects the latest agreement to spark a cultural shift within the nation’s largest police force, which could inspire other cities to follow suit.
“It shows their commitment to this process of embracing this new way of policing protests,” she said in an interview. “We’ll work through the oversight period to make sure that’s actually happening.”
Read the full story at Gothamist.com.
More than 550 community gardens are blossoming across the five boroughs, tucked between highrises or blooming in once-vacant lots of land.
These vital green spaces depend on New Yorkers to plant seeds, pick weeds and harvest the fruits and veggies, but it’s not always clear how people can get involved.
The good news is these neighborhood treasures are public spaces, and most need committed volunteers willing to get their hands dirty, even if it’s just a few minutes a week.
“I think sometimes people don't realize how much maintenance is required for a community garden,” said Clarisa James, an educator who founded the Garden of Resilience on a vacant city-owned lot in Springfield Gardens, Queens. “Help us take out the garbage, help us with the weeding. It’s as simple as that.”
No community garden is exactly alike, and each has its own leadership structure and specific needs. Some community gardens grow and distribute food and many charge dues. Some have waitlists for plots while others have space available for members willing to put in the work.
In a vast urban sprawl where green spaces are highly coveted, Gothamist spoke with gardeners, volunteers and officials from across the city to lift the veil of secrecy on how everyday New Yorkers can get involved in their local gardens.
Madison Square Garden is known as “The World's Most Famous Arena.” But to a lot of New Yorkers, its relationship to the city's infrastructure is just as frustrating as rooting for the Knicks and the Rangers.
The Garden notoriously sits atop New York Penn Station, and the city needs to periodically reapprove its permit to operate.
On Monday, a City Council committee voted to extend the arena's permit for five years. And while they did vote to extend the permit, it's only half of the city Planning Department's 10-year recommendation.
Councilmember Erik Bottcher represents the West Side neighborhoods around MSG, and pushed for that shorter extension. He spoke about the vote with WNYC’s Sean Carlson on "All Things Considered" on Tuesday.
Read more at Gothamist.com.
It's been a big summer for hip-hop as the culture celebrates 50 years since it emerged on the streets of the Bronx. WNYC and Gothamist have been marking the occasion by amplifying the voices of women from our area who've been influenced by and are influencing hip-hop culture. Sharon Lee De La Cruz is an artist, educator and activist from New York City.
The transcript of Sharon Lee De La Cruz's story has been lightly edited for clarity.
My name is Sharon Lee De La Cruz. I'm an artist, educator, and activist from New York City. Hip-hop influenced my life from the very beginning. Literally, I'm born and raised in the South Bronx, so it's all over the place. And I have vivid memories of huge TATS crew murals, always just like vivid memories around color and murals, just a lot of graffiti around.
Not that I knew at the time, but a couple years ago when I stepped back and looked at my work, I totally see the influence of graffiti, especially around the color usage. I really love characters, but those characters are definitely, or at least the characters that I gravitate towards the most, have an influence of graffiti culture and graffiti-like characters. There's a long visual history of hip-hop that's intertwined with Looney Tunes or characters that were fashioned in hip-hop clothes -- this fun mix of popular media culture and what is considered hip-hop.
I think at its core hip-hop is about storytelling. There's this story of rebellion that is really beautiful and powerful. And so, when I listen to hip-hop tracks, sometimes I laugh, sometimes I cry, sometimes I'm like, oof, like moved. I think about the tracks that just like make me want to punch something, make me feel like I can run faster, you know, or punch harder, right? And so that's the part of hip-hop that's the story and that's the part that motivates me to be better, make better art, and just feel better.
Earlier this summer, hundreds of asylum-seekers, some for days on end, slept on the sidewalk outside the city’s asylum-seeker arrival center, the Roosevelt Hotel on 45th Street, amid what would become a national and international media storm. The newcomers, mostly Black men, have since been relocated to shelters, but some tell Gothamist their days at the center of a media spectacle form painful memories, ones filled with indignation, anger and regret. Reporter Arya Sundaram of WNYC's Race and Justice Unit has our story.
Hell's Kitchen was once one of New York City's most notorious neighborhoods. These days, the tough name remains, but it might be better known for an eclectic and growing food scene. Robert Sietsema, senior critic at Eater New York. He joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to explain. He says "there's no neighborhood quite like it in town for dining."
Penn Station is not just a train hall used by three of the country’s largest railroads. It’s also at the epicenter of a major power struggle between Governor Hochul via her agency -- the MTA --- and Amtrak, the federal agency that owns the dilapidated station.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is calling on President Joe Biden to provide formal federal assistance in response to thousands of migrants seeking shelter in New York, marking an escalation to pressure the White House into taking action.
Hochul, a Democrat, delivered a rare livestreamed address from the state Capitol on Thursday, in which she directly blamed the federal government and its lack of a comprehensive border policy for the issues created by a wave of thousands of asylum-seekers arriving in New York City.
“This crisis originated with the federal government and must be resolved by the federal government,” Hochul said in her speech.
In an accompanying letter to Biden, Hochul asked the federal government to provide the state funding in a variety of ways — including reimbursing the state for the cost of deploying National Guard members to staff more than 50 shelters throughout New York City.
Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
Voters in one New Jersey legislative district will face an entirely different slate of candidates than the one they voted on in the primary, prompting new calls for political reform.
State Sen. Dick Codey (D-West Orange) announced his retirement last week — setting off a chain of events that includes one of his running mates dropping out, and her husband seeking office on their ticket. In the end, party leaders — not primary voters — will have picked all three of the candidates running for seats in the general election for the 27th Legislative District.
Nancy Solomon broke down the confusing game of political musical chairs with Sean Carlson on WNYC's All Things Considered.
Read more about the party machinations here.
Congestion pricing is expected to launch in New York City next year, making the Big Apple the first U.S. city to toll drivers on local streets to combat traffic and fund improvements to public transit.
Drivers could be charged as much as $23 for entering Manhattan south of 60th Street — unless they remain on the West Side Highway or FDR Drive.
The program, which will benefit the MTA and its riders, is not a new idea.
Several cities across the globe have had congestion pricing for decades, and each offers a sort of blueprint for New York City’s program.
Gothamist spoke to experts in Singapore, London and Stockholm about the history of congestion pricing in those cities, the programs' costs in U.S. dollars and ongoing concerns. Each expert also shared advice for New York City as it rolls out its own version of congestion pricing.
Paterson, NJ has seen a series of scandals and allegations over its police force, culminating in a takeover by the state's Attorney General's Office earlier this year. It's also been contending with a rise in crime.
That combination leaves New Jersey's third-largest city facing a complicated question: How do you clean up a police force while also fighting crime?
NJ.com's Sean Sullivan and Deion Johnson have reported on the tension between those priorities, in a community where the police have a long way to go in their quest to earn the public's trust. They joined Kerry Nolan on WNYC to discuss what they've found.
The New York State Department of Labor has found that employers stole roughly $126 million dollars in wages from workers in the state between 2017 and 2021. But despite the agency's success substantiating claims of wage theft, the department has not had much success recovering the money.
A recent analysis by ProPublica and Documented finds nearly 63 percent—about $79 million dollars—of those stolen wages have not been recovered. Documented and ProPublica reporter Marcus Baram spoke with WNYC host Kerry Nolan about what's causing the delays.
Brooklyn's Di Fara Pizza has been crafting some of the city's best pies since 1965. This month, they opened a new sandwich shop called 1012 Kitchen - named for its address at 1012 East 15th Street in Midwood.
Robert Sietsema, Senior Critic at Eater New York, says don't expect a quick bite - because the kitchen's sandwiches are constructed with extreme care. He's been sampling their offerings to see if they live up to the Di Fara name. Speaking with WNYC's David Furst, he brings us the delicious details.
Last Sunday on Weekend Edition, we talked about new vegan restaurants in New York City and about Mayor Adams' mostly vegan diet. This week, one of our reporters decided to try to eat like the mayor.
Armed with his cookbook, the mayor's social media posts about his meals and the produce section of Trader Joe's, WNYC politics reporter Giulia Heyward tried to follow the mayor's diet. She joins Weekend Edition host David Furst for another installment of "I Tried It" to tell us how it went.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Guliani was indicted in Georgia earlier this week, which he called “an affront to American Democracy.” Prosecutors say he made false statements in connection with President Trump’s conspiracy to undermine the 2020 election.
New Yorkers have, of course, been following Giulani’s career for decades, from his time here as a federal prosecutor to his two terms as Mayor, to his ascension to the national stage of the Republican Party.
WNYC's Sean Carlson talks with Andrew Kirtzman, who written two books about Mayor Giuliani, including “Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor," about Giulani's long relationship with Trump and how he went from a popular politician to an alleged co-conspirator in a national scandal.
As more migrant arrivals find their way to New York City, an increasing number of people — mostly women — are heading underground to sell candy and snacks on subway platforms and trains. Their children are often by their side, and sometimes doing the selling themselves.
Reporter Jordan Salama's recent article "The Candy Sellers" was published in New York Magazine. Nathaly Rubio-Torio is the director of Voces Latinas, a Queens-based nonprofit that supports migrants from Latin America. They joined WNYC host Tiffany Hanssen to talk about the subway candy sellers and how the city can better help them.
The once formidable correction union boss Norman Seabrook, who spent 21 months in federal prison for accepting a bribe, was released, and he’s looking for work.
“I pass the time by seeking employment. Putting out my resume in certain places,” Seabrook said in an interview. “A lot of people will consider me overqualified for what it is that I'm putting in for.”
The longtime leader of the 20,000 member union was known for working political backrooms and for his frontpage showmanship. He influenced staffing decisions and raised awareness of correction officers’ safety and working concerns with public stunts like blocking the bridge to Rikers Island and parading a coffin in front of City Hall.
Read the full story at Gothamist.com.
20 years after the 2003 blackout hit all of New York City, much of the Northeast US and parts of southeast Canada, it remains one of the most significant power outages in United States history. It was caused by an overgrown tree branch in Cleveland, Ohio that hit a power line, triggering a cascading effect that plunged millions into darkness.
First Deputy Commissioner of Emergency Management, Christina Farrell, was one of the key members of the response team in 2003. She spoke with WNYC's Morning Edition host Michael Hill about how the city responded at the time, and how prepared we are to brace future blackouts.
During our last few chats with the writers at Eater NY, the focus was all chicken and roast beef. So this time we're bringing a vegan menu to the table.
Melissa McCart, the editor of Eater NY joins us to highlight some of her picks for the city's best vegan restaurants. And speaking with Weekend Edition host David Furst, she also talks about just how much vegan dining has changed in New York.
A federal judge in Manhattan yesterday officially agreed to hear arguments about taking control of Rikers Island jails away from Mayor Eric Adams and his correction department — and handing it over to the federal government. WNYC public safety reporter Matt Katz joined host Michael Hill on Morning Edition to discuss the extraordinary implications of the decision.
Cranberries and New Jersey have a long history together. The Lenni Lenape people harvested wild cranberries to use them in food, drinks, even medicines. Commercial Cranberry farming began in 1835, in a bog in Burlington County.
And now, Cranberry Juice is officially New Jersey’s state juice. It’s an effort made possible because of dedicated letter writing, lobbying and even testimony at a state Senate hearing by fourth-grade students from Eleanor Rush Intermediate School in Cinnaminson.
Teacher Erin Zarzycki, and two of the students, rising fifth-graders Gabriella Fennell and Robert Minniti, joined Michael Hill on WNYC's Morning Edition to tell us how this all came together.
Erin, Gabriella, Robert, welcome to morning edition.
New Jersey hasn't ban gas stoves. And state regulators haven't put forward any policy to do so.
That's despite claims from some lawmakers — mostly Republicans — that regulators were meeting to ban gas stoves and mandate home electrification last month. Instead, regulators passed a program requiring utility companies to offer financial incentives for conversions to more energy-efficient equipment, including hybrid systems that still use gas.
The political rhetoric comes amid an increasingly heated debate over Gov. Phil Murphy's climate priorities, with many Republicans and even some Democrats lining up against his plans for wind power, and for movement away from gas-powered cars.
But regulators with the state Board of Public Utilities say they're frustrated by misinformation, and that they've never considered a proposal to ban gas stoves, in new or old homes, or in commercial and industrial facilities. Your own kitchen setup and your favorite brick oven pizzeria are safe, they say.
Since asylum-seekers began arriving in New York en masse in spring 2022 -- often after being bused here by border-state governors -- an untold number of New Yorkers and aid groups have stepped up to help. But not many of them are as well known as "30 Rock" veteran and comedian Judah Friedlander, who claims some 400,000 followers on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Senior WNYC reporter Arun Venugopal has our story.
The U.S. government has started telling American citizens to leave Haiti after an American nurse and her child were kidnapped. Several thousands of people marched through Haiti's Capital Port-au-Prince last week, demanding protection from violence. Kenya recently offered to lead a multinational police force to restore order.
As the crisis has unfolded, the Haitian communities of New York City have been struggling to help the people of Haiti because of limited travel and instability.
Ricot Dupuy is the co-founder of Radio Soleil, a Haitian radio station in Brooklyn, and Maryse Cadet is the president of the Association for the Children of Regnier, Haiti. Cadet supports a school in Regnier, a locality in the western part of the country from Brooklyn. Both Dupuy and Cadet spoke with WNYC’s All Things Considered host Sean Carlson about their experience with trying to help the people of Haiti.
New Jersey policymakers have been working for years to make education more inclusive — with an LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum, and sex ed standards that discuss gender identity at earlier grades. But they’ve been seeing pushback from parents, local school boards and conservative legislators, who accuse the state of introducing kids to concepts they’re not ready for, or of usurping parents’ role in deciding what’s appropriate for their children.
The latest debate came just last week – when the state Board of Education narrowly passed a set of new equity rules dealing with gender in the classroom.
Nikita Biryukov, a reporter for New Jersey Monitor, spoke with WNYC's Michael Hill about the tense climate around these policies, and the pushback from some parents.
This summer marks 50 years since hip hop culture made its debut on the streets of the Bronx. In celebration of this milestone, WNYC and Gothamist are showcasing the voices of women making a distinct impact on the genre. DJ Perly, from the Bronx, is a two-time DMC USA champion and member of the Heavy Hitters DJ Crew.
The transcript of DJ Perly's story has been lightly edited for clarity.
In New York City, when you are a New Yorker, you just don't realize that it's hip-hop -- it's just life, you know? So, to me, I feel like the moment that I had like that epiphany when hip-hop was like, oh, this is hiphop, was probably when I was starting to get into DJing and teaching myself the whole history of hip-hop, the ins and outs of how to DJ.
I'm a self-taught DJ, so I didn't have like someone to be like, yo, this is how you do this, and so on and so forth. So, I was just teaching myself everything through YouTube at the time when YouTube was just a baby and I had to just listen by ear and try to memorize what the sounds were like and such.
The story that I'm telling through my work is basically having fun and just having that heart and soul of what you do and just do it for the love of it. You know, share that passion with the people and at the same time, never forget to represent your people. I have my little Puerto Rican flag everywhere with me to just show people that, hey, I'm proud of my roots as well, and the history that my family has taught me throughout the years, and I want to contribute that too as well to show people that, you know, don't be afraid to express who you want to be in the arts or whatever, because everyone has little pockets of inspiration and seeds within the hip-hop community as well.
The music industry and other industries are quite male-dominated -- people do or don't want to believe it, but it is true. A lot of women, including myself, had these difficult moments of, not discrimination, but like of not feeling welcomed in certain areas. And I feel like that through community of social media or just community in real life -- it has helped us feel welcomed into that world of acceptance and love and feeling that we belong -- so big ups to social media and also to everyone who's never giving up and keeps fighting for our voices to be heard and making us feel like we do have a seat at the table for sure.
Hip hop turns 50 this summer and WNYC is focusing in on some of the women who have had an impact on the genre. Hair stylist Dionne Alexander is one of a handful of women responsible for the iconic glam of 90’s hip-hop. She styled MC Lyte, Lil Kim and Missy Elliott, just to name a few… and those looks still inspire the fashion we see in the music industry today.WNYC's Janae Pierre talked with Alexander about her journey.
The chaotic incident in Union Square last week raises questions about how NYPD officers respond to large crowds. Thousands of young people descended on the area after popular Twitch streamer Kai Cenat posted that he would host a Play-Station giveaway. His post quickly went viral. When a crowd formed and got rowdy, the NYPD responded in full riot gear.
WNYC's breaking news reporter Charles Lane joins Morning Edition host Michael Hill to talk about what he saw on the scene.
As temperatures climb across New York City, domestic violence survivor groups are raising awareness about a surge in incidents that they witness among South Asian communities during the summertime.
Sakhi for South Asian Women, a Queens-based nonprofit, runs NYC's only domestic violence helpline fully staffed by South Asian-language speakers. Zainab Muzaffar, the organization’s development and communications senior associate director, says the hotline is preparing for a rise in calls after expanding its hours last year. She disclosed that calls to their hotlines in 2021 and 2022 doubled during the summer compared to winter.
Muzaffar says Sakhi has been fighting for culturally sensitive resources for South Asian women who experience domestic violence ever since the organization was founded in 1989. She is among many advocates who are trying to shine a light on the unique ways domestic violence can occur within South Asian communities — not only in New York City but nationwide.
Click "listen" in the player to hear this story, and visit Gothamist for more details.
It takes something extra to thrive in New York City, especially if you are a plant! That’s why the Parks Department has it's onw 13 acre nursery on Staten Island called The Greenbelt Native Plant Center, dedicated to growing flowers and trees that are specifically adapted to the 5 boroughs.
The three New York City Animal Care Center (ACC) shelters took in more than 1,200 stray dogs during the first five months of the year – a roughly 50% increase from the same period of 2022, according to agency data.
Two New York City Councilmembers are introducing a bill Thursday that could add a layer of oversight to City Hall's ongoing effort to clear homeless encampments.
Councilmembers Sandy Nurse and Shahana Hanif of Brooklyn are calling on the city to provide more transparency about what happens after people are removed from public spaces. This bill would mandate monthly reports on how many people were removed, how many were involuntarily hospitalized, and how much money the city is spending on the sweeps, among other things.
Councilmember Nurse joined WNYC host Tiffany Hanssen to discuss the legislation and what she hopes it accomplishes.
Amtrak's plan to tear down a block in Midtown to expand Penn Station is facing unexpected criticism from a high-profile executive within the agency.
Andy Byford, the former NYC Transit president who joined Amtrak in April as an executive overseeing high-speed rail, said last month that the plan was unnecessary.
“It would break my heart to see beautiful buildings torn down on Eighth and Seventh Avenues when they don’t need to be,” said Byford, whom New Yorkers nicknamed “Train Daddy” when he worked for the MTA from 2018 to 2020.
He made the comments — which were first covered by the Daily News editorial board — during a July 20 Zoom meeting held by the group ReThink NYC on the future of Penn Station.
The criticism came as New York, New Jersey and Amtrak officials continue to move forward with the Gateway Program that aims to build two new rail tunnels beneath the Hudson River and rehabilitate the existing tunnels that were damaged by Hurricane Sandy. The program also included plans to expand Penn, which would require the seizure and demolition of a swath of buildings south of 31st Street on a site known as Block 780.
Tributes are continuing to pour in for New Jersey Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver. Gov Phil Murphy's office announced her death Tuesday. She was 71.
New Jersey Assembly member Shavonda Sumter served in the legislature with Oliver for more than a decade, and was the first woman to chair the state's legislative Black caucus. She joined WNYC's Tiffany Hanssen to talk about her colleague's long legacy.
Former NYC Transit president Andy Byford — who now works as an executive overseeing high speed rail at Amtrak — last month decried his new employer’s plan to tear down a block in Midtown to expand Penn Station.
Jonathon Heyward is a conductor whose star is swiftly rising… and he’s about to assume a prominent new position here in New York City.
Heyward has just turned 31, and he’s already conducted all over the world. He became the chief conductor of the Northwest German Philharmonic in 20-21. This fall, he takes on the role of music director at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, where he’ll be the first music director of color in that institution’s 106-year history.
Heyward made his Lincoln Center debut last summer conducting the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra in a pair of concerts with violin superstar Joshua Bell. He clearly made an impression, because he’s now been appointed the next music director for the orchestra, which is poised to get a new name and mission next year. Before then, he’ll conduct the ensemble in two concerts on Friday and Saturday, Aug. 4 and 5, at David Geffen Hall.
Heyward spoke with Weekend All Things Considered host Tiffany Hanssen about his plans and mission, now and for the future.
A plan to merge New Jersey Medical School in Newark and Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick is moving forward.
Officials with the two Rutgers University public medical schools say combining them would improve name recognition and patient care. But many faculty are worried it will reduce residency opportunities for medical students and decrease quality of care, especially in Newark's University Hospital.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka joins Morning Edition host Michael Hill, to talk about a letter he's written the governor seeking physical improvements to University Hospital, which serves many uninsured residents, as well as a commitment for adequate staffing and funding.
Students of color in New Jersey often don't see their own backgrounds reflected among the teachers responsible for educating them. Catherine Carrera, bureau chief at Chalkbeat Newark, and Talia Wiener, education reporter at Montclair Local, spoke to WNYC's Michael Hill about their reporting on the experience of students of color in Essex County.
Chalkbeat Newark, Montclair Local and WNYC are all part of a collaborative of newsrooms exploring race, diversity and segregation in New Jersey. See their stories at segregatednj.org.
With the summer's first real heat wave upon us, many New Yorkers are looking for ways to stay cool. But cooling off in one of New York City's free public swimming areas has become increasingly difficult.
A lifeguard shortage, combined with a lack of functioning public pools, has decreased the availability of a place to swim, and made for long lines and crowded lanes.
Katie Honan, senior reporter for The City news site, joined Morning Edition host Michael Hill to talk about the situation.
The 56-date Renaissance Tour extravaganza lands at New Jersey's Met Life Stadium this weekend. Tens of thousands of fans will flow to the Meadowlands to watch Beyoncé rise on the stage dressed in chrome and silver—but before that wave crests, another wave will wash through the region.
Yelp trends analyst Tara Lewis calls it the “Beyoncé Bump.”
"We know that Beyonce is a force to be reckoned with, but it's really incredible to see the impact that her tour is currently making on local economies."
Yelp analyzed search traffic data in cities where the tour has stopped so far. They found that shortly before the performances, the weekly average of searches for nail salon technicians went up by almost 200% compared to last year. Arts and crafts searches for people looking to glam up their outfits increased by 75%.
For the makers of certain specialty items, that bump is even bigger. Over the last few months, 24-year-old Brooklyn resident Shailee Stevens has become a major purveyor of the disco cowboy hat that Beyoncé used in the announcement for the tour, via her Etsy site.
"I do these in my apartment,” she said, “it's not like I have a factory or anything." She says she's spent hundreds of hours gluing tiny disco tiles onto felt hats to accommodate demand, even raising her prices in order to slow down the flow of requests. "I actually just did a little total for this interview, and I've shipped 605 hats since February."
That’s about three hats a day every day for 6 months straight. All that work has paid off, to the tune of about $80,000 in gross revenue.
But not every fan is pulling out their wallet.
Ahead of the big weekend, Marjory Taylor of Brooklyn is keeping her credit card far away. She paid more than $800 for two nosebleed tickets to the Sunday show. She said she's stimulated the economy enough.
"After spending 800 dollars, I was like, I'm not even buying a new lipstick for this,” she laughed. “I'm like, whatever I have, Beyoncé. I'm shopping my closet."
Lots of teenagers get summer jobs as camp counselors or scooping ice cream, but WNYC’s Amy Pearl caught up with a group of teens who has spent the summer tending the ornamental vegetable garden at historic Untermeyer Park in Yonkers.
Untermeyer Park is open daily at 9am. And is a short walk from the Greystone metro north station. Comfortable shoes are recommended.
Since early June, hundreds have been gathering at a Bushwick playground every few weeks to feast on a communal “perpetual stew.”
Anyone can dine for free or contribute an ingredient to the stew. Lucky for me, this was happening right by my apartment.
I first walked past a perpetual stew meetup on my way home from the gym a few weeks ago, when I noticed a large banner announcing “STEWWWWW” had been hung across Fermi Playground.
For 50 years, Kool & the Gang has ruled dance floors and record charts with hits like “Jungle Boogie,” “Ladies Night,” “Too Hot,” and “Celebration.”
The band actually got started closer to 60 years ago, when brothers Robert Bell, known as “Kool,” and Ronald Bell formed The Jazziacs in Jersey City with their friends and neighbors in 1964.
George Brown was there from the start. The jazz-inspired drummer helped to create the template for funk, soul and R&B, and was a primary songwriter who contributed to hits that sold 70 million albums and won the band two Grammy awards.
Kool & the Gang have just released a new album, “People Just Wanna Have Fun,” and Brown has just published a memoir, “Too Hot: Kool & The Gang & Me.” He joined WNYC's Morning Edition for a chat about his childhood in Jersey City, finding music, and achieving fame.
New York law prevents landlords from discriminating against low-income tenants with rental assistance vouchers, but those same measures don’t apply to insurance companies that routinely refuse to cover buildings that house subsidized tenants.
Dozens of insurance carriers doing business in New York explicitly ask about, and decline to cover, buildings where low-income tenants pay for apartments with housing vouchers, according to a Gothamist review of applications, denials and interviews with insurance brokers, landlords and government regulators.
The practice is now raising concerns among state and federal insurance regulators, and the New York Attorney General's office, that insurers may be unfairly discriminating against groups protected by state and federal fair housing laws. Advocates argue it’s also undermining the city’s efforts to provide affordable housing at a time of rising rents and increasing homelessness and that rules intended to curb insurance discrimination remain weak.
Hair braiders in northern Manhattan spend hours weaving their fingers into intricate patterns every day. The work is hard, and the hours are long. Each day, braiders can spend 10- or 12-hours installing styles.
For many of the West African immigrant women who make their living this way, this work can take a devastating toll. These workers often sustain injuries to their hands, neck, backs and knees from the hours of labor. But without a safety net to rely on, the pain continues because the work continues.
Houreidja Tall is a freelance writer. Her latest piece for Harper's Bazaaris about the balance between the injuries braiders sustain and their continued need to keep working. She joined WNYC's Michael Hill to discuss these unprotected workers' struggles.
New Jersey's constitution outlawed school segregation nearly a decade before Brown v. Board of Education. But segregation persists. The UCLA Civil Rights Project says New Jersey is the sixth most segregated state for Black students, and the seventh most segregated for Latino students, in large part because students' school assignments are so closely tied to where they live. Some New Jersey communities have been trying to grapple with both racial and economic segregation for decades, with mixed success. Efforts to better serve and integrate in the South Orange-Maplewood school district go back decades — including the conversion in 1999 of the majority-Black Seth Boyden school into an “opt-in” demonstration school for multi-intelligence learning. Other moves have included “deleveling” intended to increase Black students’ access to more advanced classes. Yet the district had been sued twice — by the state chapter of the ACLU and then later a group of parents — alleging its tracking and disciplinary practices confine students of color to lower-level classes, and punish students of color with disabilities. Those lawsuits have been settled, with the district promising changes. But a report by the Rutgers University Equity Lab in June found “stark” achievement disparities remained among student demographic groups, and described students’ criticisms about supports. Parents are threatening litigation once again. Mary Mann, a co-editor with the Village Green hyperlocal website, cataloged the intricate history as part of the ongoing Segregated collaboration among New Jersey newsrooms, to tell stories about race, diversity and segregation in New Jersey schools. Her work draws on years of reporting along with co-editor Carolyn Parisi.
Mann spoke with WNYC’s Tiffany Hanssen regarding their findings – and an ambitious integration plan that’s currently underway. A transcript of their conversation below has been lightly edited for clarity.
It was 50 years ago this summer that the sights and sounds of hip-hop culture first emerged on the streets of the Bronx. To celebrate this milestone, WNYC and Gothamist are sharing the voices of the many women from our area who are leaving their own mark on the genre.
Debora Hooper, also known as Debbie D, is one of hip-hop’s earliest female MCs. The Harlem native moved to the South Bronx when she was a teenager, and quickly immersed herself in the burgeoning hip-hop scene.
She recalls being drawn to the music she heard emanating from one of the parks below her 19th floor apartment in the Webster Houses in the summer of 1977, and wanting to be on the mic. After getting that opportunity, she never looked back and went on to join the group, known as DJ Patty Duke and the Jazzy 5 MCs. Debbie D later put her skills to work in Harry Belafonte’s hip-hop film “Beat Street.” She is now a hip-hop scholar/historian and a pioneer in residence at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
MC Debbie D talked with WNYC and Gothamist about her early days in hip-hop, as well as both her and the genre’s staying power.
The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and content.
When did you first catch on to hip-hop?
I was born and raised until my teenage years in Harlem. All of my schooling was in Manhattan and around 13 years old, we had a fire, unfortunately, where we lived in Harlem, and we wound up moving to the Bronx.
We moved to the West Bronx first and we stayed there for a couple of months and then we landed in the South Bronx in Webster Houses. That's basically how it all started. I heard the music there in my bedroom and was curious as to the noise and what was going on. It was my first time actually hearing anything remotely that sounded similar to hip-hop in terms of the beats and the DJing outside, and the break dancing and all of that. So, I went downstairs and followed the music, and that's the first time I got exposed to it. Outside in one of the parks is where the jam was held. That's what we called it at the time. We didn't even call it hip-hop at that time. That was summer of 1977. I was 14 years old.
What was the scene like at that time?
It's all about kids. There were no adults around or particularly involved in early hip-hop. The kids started break dancing and then I heard a guy on the mic. So, I went the first time and then I went back again because this is summertime. And I think for most kids during that particular time, you either wanted to be a break dancer, you wanted to be a DJ, or you wanted to be an MC. And so, because I was raised in the church, ever since I was a young kid, I was used to singing in the choir. I was used to doing Easter speeches when I was in Harlem. I wrote poetry. So, I've always been lyrical. Words have always been a part of my life. So, I decided, you know what? I wanna do that. I just wanted to; I tried it out like everybody else. And so, I got on the mic.
What was that like for you?
Being a woman in the 1970s doing hip-hop wasn't a major thing. You know, people look at it differently today because it's 50 years later, and so the playing field looks a lot different. But back then, girls got on the mic just like guys got on the mic. It wasn't that many girls, but you did have girls who were on the mic. What I often share with people is that at that particular time, the DJ was the central focus of the jams and of hip-hop. And so, for me, getting on the mic, I just asked the DJ, could I get on? And the question usually that DJs were concerned about was, could you rhyme? That's all they were concerned about. Gender was never a factor. If a girl could rhyme, just like a guy could rhyme, then DJs were open to you getting on the mic and vice versa. And thankfully I passed the test.
What do you think about how hip-hop has evolved?
I don't have any thoughts on commercialization. I mean, it's just like anything else, you know, things evolve, and they change. We went from the parks into clubs, and then from there to movies and different things like that. So, it evolved. But you just had more girls that came into the space after a while.
I think the key thing for an early pioneer MC in particular is that there were only a few of us that had staying power, and these are the girls like me, who I say are the matriarchs, the mothers of this culture because we are the ones who really laid the foundation to everything.
You are now a hip-hop educator. What are among the most important things you want younger generations to know about hip-hop and its history?
Early hip-hop, particularly the first 10 years, wasn't heavily commercialized compared to later years. Because of that, oftentimes when people think about early hip-hop, and particularly even using the term pioneers, they often start in the mid-1980s. And so, I often find myself saying, no, we gotta go back another 10 years. If you don't talk about the first 10 years, you basically have missed a whole chunk of hip-hop and how it really started and evolved.
Do you see yourself as an inspiration?
I do see myself as an inspiration. When you look at the story of all the female MCs in hip-hop, including myself, we started off connected to guys. My first crew was DJ Patty Duke and the Jazzy 5. So, you know, any of the girls you talk to will basically bring up a crew's name where they're connected to a guy in some way, shape, form or fashion. But when I stepped out as the first female soloist with a female DJ, you know, with no connection to any guy group, I'm managing the both of us, I'm getting all the calls for us to go and perform. We're working out what we are gonna wear. We're putting our own show together. You know, just me and, and my DJ. And so, I see myself as an inspiration in that light.
What other thoughts come to mind now that hip-hop is turning 50?
When we were kids, they told us it'd probably last about five years and it'd be over. And here we are celebrating the 50th year and believe it or not, most of us are still alive. So, it's exciting for us.
If you love the crunch of fresh fried chicken, Robert Sietsema has you covered. For years, he's been sampling the fried chicken of New York City. And this month, he released his list of the best fried chicken dishes in town. He's senior critic at Eater NY and was the chief restaurant critic for the Village Voice for two decades. Robert joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to consider where New York City ranks when it comes to fried chicken hot spots in the U.S.
A new record label based in New York City is providing a platform for differently abled artists. It’s called Just Call Me By My Name, and its first release is out today, marking Disability Pride Month. The debut offering, an EP titled “Just Call Me By My Name, Vol. 1,” highlights the talent and stories of the five artists signed to the label, rather than their disabilities. The EP spans a range of styles, from pop, rock and rap songs to an opera aria. Ken Trush, the co-founder and managing director of Daniel’s Music Foundation, established the label in partnership with media-distribution company The Orchard. He hopes it will reshape how the public understands people with disabilities. Daniel Trush, Ken Trush’s son and the namesake of Daniel’s Music Foundation, says there’s a message behind the label’s name: Focus on the person, not on the disability. “Don't call me a brain aneurysm survivor or a stroke victim,” he said. “Just call me Daniel, Dan, Danny, or Dan the Man from Manhattan.”
Trucks keep getting stuck on the Brooklyn Bridge because they can’t fit — and the recurring fiasco has for years caused miles-long traffic jams as city officials have failed to solve the problem.
About once a week, truck drivers try to enter the bridge from an exit on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and quickly discover their vehicles are too large to cross, according to Michael Cata, a tech consultant who works in a DUMBO. His office has a bird’s eye view of the recurring calamity, where emergency crews have to usher the trucks off the bridge while traffic comes to a halt.
WNYC's Community Partnerships Desk and the nonprofit, Street Lab, are working together to highlight stories from neighborhoods across New York City. We recently set up shop inside Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. Here's some of what we heard.
The transcript of the voices we collected have been lightly edited for clarity.
Nathan Borgman: "I moved here in 2010. I took the U-Haul on the wrong bridge, you know, that I wasn't supposed to take it on. I don't remember, like RFK or something. So, it was like the tolls were too narrow, and I was the designated truck driver, and then, the mirrors were scraping against the side of the toll [plaza], and it was too late for us to back up and turn around. And it was this super corny thing because it was the summer of 2010 when that New York song came out with Jay-Z. And so that was blasting while we were going over the bridge. So that was the fun iconic coming to New York kind of moment."
Lisa Holm: "I live in the West Village. I have lived in the same apartment since February 1968. It's an 1880s tenement walk-up. I have three windows in my living room, two east, one south. I see rainbows over Seventh Avenue -- if there's an evening rainbow, which is kind of cool. And having grown up in Finland, getting an apartment with all those windows was the height of luxury because where I grew up, so much of the year, we have so little daylight, but I kind of came to the neighborhood and to the city thinking I'd spend a year and maybe move back to Finland, and I fell in love with this crazy city. I'm still in love with this crazy city."
Dylan Markowitz: "I live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, but this is my favorite park. My girlfriend's actually over there selling her art right now, and I'm going over to meet her after work. It just kind of feels like the nexus of the city in a way. This park specifically, it's just a matter of it feeling like when you're here, you're in everyone's backyard all at once. My girlfriend's over there selling her art. You have the guy that plays the grand piano over there. You have people that just sit here all day long and play chess. It's a feeling unlike any anywhere in the city. Even when you go to the other parks like Madison Square and Union Square -- Washington Square Park is an environment all on its own. It's its own thing."
Massimo Accardo: "I was born and raised in Queens, New York. I'm 21 years of age. I go to school in Manhattan. I go to Baruch. The reason why I'm here today is because I want to open up a little table. I want to sell copper lamps, all handmade. I make them at home. It's just been really hard to get out of the house because I'm trying to build this confidence. I'm so intimidated. I don't know what to do. So I was just talking with a man who makes leather and a couple other people who do things by hand. Some are seamstresses, others are tailors, a lot of them sell weed -- that's very popular here. That's probably the staple of Washington Square Park -- and chess. There's a lot of opportunity and I don't want to miss out. I think it's a prime time. I think all things are aligning right now, so I have a lot of hope."
Celia Karp: "I grew up in Greenwich Village and I still live here. It's always nice to sit on a park bench. Once I fed the pigeons in the wintertime and like 300 pigeons followed me right around the park on my walk, and that was pretty cool. I would say they're not rats with wings. They're like the nice bird. I think that rats, well, I have this theory that squirrels are friendly because people are friendly to them, and rats would be just as friendly as squirrels if people were nicer to them. The rats will come to you just like the squirrels, but we need to be nicer to the rats so we can train them to be friendly to us."
Becca Zimmerman: "I'm from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My story is that my great grandmother lived in the Washington Square Village, those big buildings right over there, and I would come here to this park many weekends with her. She lived until she was 104 and the only thing that she would like to eat was a hot dog with extra sauerkraut. So I like to come here and get a hot dog with extra sauerkraut and think of Rose Aginsky Zimmerman."
More and more New York and New Jersey residents are buying electric vehicles, but charging the car can be a challenge for owners who don’t have a garage or driveway.
Instead, renters like Jersey City computer tech Sal Cameli are getting creative.
Cameli, 51, charges his fleet of three electric cars from a wall outlet in the kitchen of his ground-floor apartment. He stretches a custom-made 34-foot cord through an air conditioner sleeve above his window, pulls it high above the sidewalk, yanks it down a street sign and plugs it into a cherry red Tesla, as well as a pair of decade-old Nissan Leafs.
Nearly every Sunday morning for four years, residents of a quiet block in Greenpoint, Brooklyn woke up to reams of paper dumped on their street. A serial litterer was precisely slicing pages from old Reader’s Digests, Bibles, junk mail and 1970s porn magazines before dumping them on tree-lined Noble Street.
Over the course of about six months, researchers interviewed 103 young people, mostly young men, who said they’d carried a gun within the previous year. Reasons ranged from concerns about police, protection from others and involvement in street hustles — but they mostly shared a common theme: the fear of dying.
The data and interviews were compiled into a study, funded by the Center for Justice Innovation and exclusively previewed by Gothamist, called “Two Battlefields: ‘Opps,’ Cops, and New York City Youth Gun Culture.”
The organizers say they’re hopeful the perspectives they uncovered can change major narratives around crime, gangs, gun violence and safety, better informing the politicians and agencies that respond to these patterns.
Read more on Gothamist.
New Jersey has some of the most segregated schools in the nation. A 2017 report by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA found the state's schools were the sixth most segregated for Black students, and the seventh for Latino students. Activists and educators alike say when students from marginalized communities don't have access to diverse educational environments, they suffer, finding fewer opportunities to advance, to go on to college and to wind up in good jobs. Those issues are at the heart of a lawsuit that could find the state's public schools are unconstitutionally segregated, and make lawmakers responsible for finding solutions. It's an issue deeply intertwined with housing policy — because in New Jersey, with its roughly 600 school districts, where you live closely determines where you go to school.
But in New Jersey, there's been far less discussion about what that kind of segregation means for the state's growing Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Ambreen Ali, author of the Central Desi newsletter and website, recently engaged an in-depth discussion with AAPI students, educators and parents about what diversity and segregation mean to their experience.
In May, the New York City Campaign Finance Board announced that Beth Rotman, its executive director, had resigned after a seven-month tenure, citing the “need to move to care for an ailing family member.”
The statement did not tell the full story.
Following a Gothamist investigation, the board's chair acknowledged that Rotman did not resign voluntarily as the agency publicly announced. Instead, she was asked to step aside following a board investigation into concerns about her management.
“On May 13, Ms. Rotman was informed the Board had lost confidence in her leadership of the agency and requested her resignation effective immediately,” Frederick Schaffer, the board's chair, said in a statement.
In the two months since announcing Rotman's departure, internal documents obtained by Gothamist along with interviews with more than 10 current and former colleagues show that the agency, which prides itself on accountability and transparency, is facing an internal integrity issue of its own making related to Rotman’s exit.
Rex Heuermann, an architect and consultant, has been charged in the murder of three women who were part of a string of homicides known as the Gilgo Beach murders, according to an indictment issued by the Suffolk County district attorney's office.
The Suffolk County district attorney, Raymond Tierney, said that investigators found DNA evidence connecting Heuermann to the murders. Cell phone analysis from burner phones believed to be used by Heuermann also suggests that they were in the same vicinity as Heuermann's regular phone around the time when they disappeared. Finally, travelogues from Heuermann show that his family had left Long Island, leaving Heuermann alone around the time that the victims disappeared.
On June 22, state lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favor of a bill that would redraw the state tourism map and create a “Central Jersey” region. The bill now awaits Gov. Phil Murphy's signature. But will Garden Staters be moved from their longheld beliefs?
A midlevel New York court sided with Democrats in their quest to reshape the state’s 26 congressional districts, though Republicans are expected to appeal the decision, which could have significant national implications.
The Appellate Division's Third Department issued a 3-2 decision on Thursday ordering the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission to come up with a new congressional map, a decision that — if affirmed by the Court of Appeals, the state’s top court — could give Democratic lawmakers in Albany significant sway over the final product.
The court case, spurred by a lawsuit backed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, could affect which party controls the House of Representatives, which currently has a narrow Republican majority — helped in part by GOP wins in toss-up districts on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley last year. It marks the latest twist in a yearslong saga that has upended electoral politics in a reliably blue state.
Read the full article on Gothamist.com.
As I approached Kollectiv, a wellness spa on East First Street in NoHo, there was a vague waddle in my stride.
I’d signed up to try whole-body cryotherapy — “WBC” for short — rumored to be a magic bullet for exercise-induced pain, joint inflammation, and even depression and anxiety. So I’d purposely engaged in a crushing workout that morning: Let’s see if cryo is really the physiological wizardry people make it out to be.
At a New York City Council hearing on Wednesday, municipal agency heads were grilled about what they knew and when they acted during the wildfire smoke crisis that swept the metro area in early June.
The tense hearing stretched for nearly four hours on a day when the city faced yet another air quality alert — this time for ground-level ozone, an urban pollutant worsened by hot, stagnant weather. Most of the Council’s questions were directed toward Zachary Iscol, the commissioner of the city's Office of Emergency Management.
Councilmember Gale Brewer chairs the Oversight Committee and presided over the hearing. She spoke with WNYC's Sean Carlson about the administration's response and lessons City Hall can apply in the future.
Sunday’s "1,000 year flood" washed away roads and houses, and flooded basements, mostly in the Hudson Valley, and also killed a 43-year old woman. Local and state leaders are assessing how much work will be needed and how much money it will cost.
Governor Kathy Hochul says the state wants to “grease” the application process for federal disaster assistance to make sure municipalities get aid as quickly as possible in order to begin repairing damaged infrastructure.
Rep. Pat Ryan, who represents much of the region in Congress, told WNYC he expects federal assistance should come through quickly.
I’d signed up to try whole-body cryotherapy — “WBC” for short — rumored to be a magic bullet for exercise-induced pain, joint inflammation, and even depression and anxiety. So I’d purposely engaged in a crushing workout that morning: Let’s see if cryo is really the physiological wizardry people make it out to be.
In honor of Pride month, WNYC is sharing the personal journeys and reflections of older adults in LGBTQ+ communities. Bronx resident Marie Spivey shares her story.
The transcript of Marie Spivey's story has been lightly edited for clarity.
My name is Marie Spivey. I identify as a lesbian. I am 69 years young. I grew up in Harlem. I moved to the Bronx, had a family, had a husband.
I've been involved with the community for most of my life but coming out and really being a lesbian, I was in my fifties when my youngest child went away to school and decided, you know, I'm in the community, I'm involved, and I found somebody of interest -- I did the damn thing.
It was it easy in one sense because I was always involved advocating for the community, and I have family members who are in the community. That part was easy but dealing with my children, even today, it is a problem with my own children. I have five children.
I don't really feel that I missed out. I think that I could have had some more experiences but not missed out in a personal way. It taught me that whatever it is that you want to do, you just have to be brave and do it -- be you. Those who love you and care about you, gonna be there with you and those who don't, you know, you just keep moving forward and leave them on the wayside.
I really led an ordinary life. I really believe that, and just being a human being that cares about other people and advocating and getting involved, that's all that I've been. Nothing has changed. I'm still out there fighting for LGBT elders, making sure that we are heard -- that we are integrated into the community.
It's been a journey. Pride means celebration. Pride means just letting it all out, you know, with enthusiasm, letting people know who we are and how happy we are to be living in these times.
Several lawmakers, local leaders and faculty members are rallying against a plan to merge Rutgers' medical schools in New Brunswick and Newark.
WNYC's Michael Hill spoke with Lilo Stainton of NJ Spotlight News, who has been reporting on the proposal.
This summer marks 50 years since hip-hop first emerged on the streets of the Bronx. To honor this milestone, WNYC and Gothamist are amplifying the voices of some of the women from our area who've been influenced by and are influencing hip-hop culture. Alexa Marie "Lotus" Alerte is an artist originally from Manhattan but raised in Long Island and Queens.
The transcript of Alexa Marie "Lotus" Alerte's story has been lightly edited for clarity.
My name is Alexa Marie "Lotus" Alerte and I am an all-around artist, creative movement artist and walking art. I was born in Manhattan, raised between Long Island and Queens. I spent a majority of my adulthood in basically all five boroughs. I've lived in every borough you can think of, at least for four years. So, I am an all-around New York native.
I actually started dancing when I was two years old. My parents put me in ballet, tap, and jazz mainly to keep me busy and keep me out the house, but it ended up turning into my love language. My first introduction to hip-hop was my sister. My sister loved Jay-Z. It made me also fall in love with lyricism and like how they decided to express themselves. The metaphors, the way that they were telling a story that I actually was a witness to, like, I saw those things going on around me. It was just like, dang, this is like literally all of our experience.
The way that hip-hop has affected me has almost been an embodiment. Everything from my style to the way I talk to the things that I'm actually interested in, people that I look up to, even now in my grown age and seeing what they've done -- Kali, Missy Elliot, those were the people that broke stereotypes of hip-hop for me, especially as a POC woman.
Hip-hop literally raised me into this very outlandish, very, you know, walking art-esque blend of a person, and I don't know what I would be without hip-hop, to be honest.
Hip-hop burst onto the scene in the Bronx 50 years ago this summer. WNYC and Gothamist are marking this milestone by highlighting the voices of women from our area who have made their own distinct mark on the culture. Maria Castillo, also known as "Toofly", is a street artist who grew up in Queens.
The transcript of Maria "Toofly" Castillo's story has been lightly edited for clarity.
My name is Maria Castillo, also known as "Toofly." I was born in Ecuador, but I grew up in Queens, New York. I'm known as "Toofly" because I grew up with the graffiti culture. I started in 1992. When I would go to school, I'd see a lot of graffiti tags, and I wanted to be the female version of what I was seeing on the street. There wasn't that many women. I started to carry around my marker and draw in "blackbooks," which was a book that many artists kind of shared within the culture. And the more you got known as a graffiti writer, which was illegal at the time, obviously and still is, but when I did it, we were defacing property, but we were also trying to find our own expression, our own voice on the street to get recognized by other artists and kind of build a community, and then from there we would expand and evolve and become much better artists with time and hours to paint with.
I had a very great mom who actually took me graffiti writing at nighttime, so that doesn't happen often. I guess she just didn't want me to be in an unsafe grouping of guys, you know, anything could happen. It was hard and harsh for us to grow up around a male-dominated scene that felt very tough. And so that completely changed when we women started to paint because we were creating spaces that were more areas where women could come and also young people and transgenerational communities and multicultural communities. And so, we expanded the space to feel safer.
The message that I tried to put out on walls because now I've become a street artist versus an illegal person on the street defacing property -- now it's permission-based or community-based and also commercial-based -- my messages are usually like women empowerment.
I love hip-hop culture because that's what I grew up with. We love color, and we love the urban aesthetic, which was kind of viewed negatively when we were growing up, but now we've transformed it and now it's like the biggest phenomena.
The cargo ship blaze that erupted Wednesday night at Port Newark and killed two firefighters is expected to burn for several more days as crews work to contain the flames and keep the steel vessel from tipping, officials said.
Veteran firefighters Augusto “Augie” Acabou, 45, and Wayne “Bear” Brooks Jr., 49, died from injuries sustained in the fire. Fellow firefighters, friends and family members remembered both as heroes who loved their jobs helping others.
“They don’t make them like him, he was tough as nails and sweet beyond belief,” firefighter Eddie Paulo, who grew up with Acabou, said Friday.
The federal government has vowed to put up $6.88 billion for New York and New Jersey’s plan to build two new rail tunnels beneath the Hudson River, Sen. Chuck Schumer announced on Thursday.
The funding covers less than half of the project’s estimated $16.8 billion cost — but the commitment represents the largest federal grant ever given for a U.S. mass transit project. New York and New Jersey have already agreed to split the remaining cost.
The project also includes work to repair the two existing Hudson River rail tunnels, which were damaged in 2012 during Hurricane Sandy. Officials in both states have, for a decade, said the new tubes must be built in order to close the existing ones for repairs.
And without the new infrastructure, elected leaders and transit experts warn there could be catastrophic consequences for the crucial Northeast Corridor.
U.S. Under Secretary of Transportation Carlos Monje spoke with WNYC's Sean Carlson about the funding announcement, and the future of the Gateway Project.
Metal scaffolding climbs its way up the reddish-brown sandstone that makes up the Million Dollar Staircase — an enormous, intricately carved, four-floor structure in the New York State Capitol in Albany.
This summer, for the first time since 1898, a new face is being added — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late U.S. Supreme Court justice born and raised in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Midwood.
The Capitol’s famed staircase is home to carvings of 77 “famous” faces, not to mention more than a dozen others who are mysteries even to the building’s knowledgeable historians, though most believe the unknowns are relatives of the original carvers.
A carving of Ginsburg’s face and famed South African collar — the beaded white one she wore for special occasions — has already been installed between the second and third floor, though it remains blocked off from public view as stone carvers complete the inscription and do minor clean-up work. Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration is expected to officially unveil Ginsburg’s stone portrait in August.
Click "listen" in the player to hear the story, and visit Gothamist for more details.
Ballroom culture has a long history in New York City. It arose among Black and queer drag crowds who packed underground clubs in the 1960s. It’s changed and grown since then, pushing its way into the mainstream. But ballroom still provides a safe space for the LGBTQ-plus community … provided you know where to look, and that you can stay up late enough.
New York City has a budget. Mayor Adams and the City Council reached a handshake agreement on a $107 billion city budget yesterday, and the Council approved it earlier today. It comes after some heated negotiations between the Mayor and the Council, and restores some the Adams Administration's more contentious cuts. City Council Finance Committee Chair Justin Brannan joined WNYC's Sean Carlson to talk about the budget and what it means for the council's future working relationship with the mayor.
The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the use of race as a factor in admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina was unconstitutional, departing from a nearly half-century of guidance on affirmative action and erecting new hurdles for underrepresented students of color and efforts by schools to ensure diversity in their classrooms.
The court, in a 6-3 decision that was among the most widely anticipated of the concluding term, ruled the schools’ admission programs violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Court precedent from 1978, eroded in subsequent decisions, allowed race to be considered in higher education under narrow circumstances.
Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
St. Ann’s Corner of Harm Reduction in Longwood is working to open the first overdose prevention center in the Bronx – but the plan is facing delays amid the quest for community buy-in and funding.
Year after year, the South Bronx leads New York City in drug overdose deaths, and neighborhoods there are facing a harder toll as fatalities continue to rise. Mayor Eric Adams has identified the area as a priority location for a new overdose prevention center. These facilities, which are also known as supervised injection sites, let people use risky illicit drugs like fentanyl under the oversight of trained staff.
But St. Ann’s is caught amid an ongoing debate over where these sites should be located and whether they will attract more drug activity to surrounding neighborhoods.
A spokesperson for St. Ann’s first approached Gothamist in late May with the news that the community center would be opening a supervised injection room by the end of June.
But that plan had been scrapped by the time Gothamist toured the site on Westchester Avenue last week, after succumbing to pushback from local leaders.
Richard Ravitch, a former lieutenant governor who helped save the city’s finances and transit systems from the brink of collapse, died on Sunday night. He was 89.
His death at a hospital around 10:30 p.m. Sunday was confirmed by his ex-wife, prominent education activist Diane Ravitch.
A longstanding civic leader and central figure in modern New York history, Ravitch had a hand in nearly every facet of the city for the last six decades— from real estate to transportation to politics. When New York City faced a crisis, elected leaders often turned to Ravitch for guidance.
Read the full article on Gothamist.com.
This summer marks 50 years since hip-hop culture made its debut on the streets of the Bronx. In celebration of this milestone, WNYC and Gothamist are showcasing the voices of women and nonbinary individuals from our area making a distinct impact on the genre. Princex Aimis is a poet from Newark, New Jersey.
The transcript of Princex Aimis's story has been lightly edited for clarity.
My name is Princex Aimis. My pronouns are they, them, theirs, and I'm a poet and the author of my new poetry book titled "Princess in Distress," which follows my life after the disclosure of my gender identity. I am from Newark, New Jersey originally. Hip-hop has greatly influenced me because I feel like it was really my first connection to Black culture, well, specifically Black American culture.
I am a child of African immigrants. It was a bit difficult for me to fit into American society just because we are different. So, I feel like hip-hop allowed me to understand a Black American perspective. Songs like "I Can" by Nas taught me more about my history. I feel like hip-hop overall just taught me that I can walk into spaces unapologetically as who I am and not feel ashamed or discouraged.
There are a lot of artists that have definitely helped me. I really appreciate artists like Megan Thee Stallion for the fact that she's able to be multidimensional. She heavily promotes education, and her work is very positive about her expression and identity. That is definitely something that greatly impacts me and tells me that I can't be placed in a box.
I'm influencing hip-hop with my work by adding a new perspective and lens as a Black trans person. I feel like I've definitely, in some ways been excluded from hip-hop, so, I appreciate the ways in which I can add onto the conversation because hip-hop has always been, to me, a form of protest. It's a revolutionary art form. I feel like I'm just adding onto that legacy.
It's now officially summer in the city - a time when many of us start daydreaming about beaches and vacations. But if you don't have much time in your schedule, there are lots of great weekend getaways and day trips you can take advantage of in the region that don't even involve a car.
This week, Gothamist came up with some ideas for easy getaways from New York City, all using public transportation. We asked reporters in the WNYC newsroom for some of their suggestions and several of them joined Weekend Edition host David Furst to talk about the picks. We hear from Sophia Chang, Christian Santana and Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and Democratic Leaders in the state legislature have reached a compromise over a substantial property tax cut for seniors in New Jersey. The proposal would cut taxes in half for most people 65 years or older – up to a maximum of $6,500. The governor says the state would set aside funds for the next two years and enact the cut in 2025.
WNYC's Nancy Solomon joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to discuss the details.
It's Pride Weekend in New York City, and if you're inclined to attend a march or parade, we've got you covered. WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith joins Weekend Edition host David Furst with details on the weekend's big marches - and some other arts events coming up.
- Pride Weekend
Pride Weekend is underway, wrapping up an entire month of events in the city, and this weekend brings some big public demonstrations. Saturday night, June 24 is the annual Dyke March, which bills itself not as a parade per se, but as a protest against oppression, discrimination, and infringement of civic rights and personal liberty. Organizers say anyone for whom the word "dyke" resonates is more than welcome to join the march, while allies are encouraged to look on from the sidelines. Participants in the Dyke March will gather at Bryant Park in the afternoon, and then at 5 p.m. they'll march down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square Park.
The official NYC Pride March happens Sunday, June 25, starting with a moment of silence at 11:59am to remember victims of the AIDS crisis and of hate crimes. The march will step off from 25th Street and head down Fifth Avenue. It follows a circuitous route through the Village at 8th Street, passes by the Stonewall National Monument and the NYC Aids Monument, and wraps up at 16th Street in Chelsea.
The Queer Liberation March is a grassroots alternative parade organized by Reclaim Pride NYC, in response to what's been viewed as the mainstreaming and commercialization of the official Pride celebration. "Trans & Queer; Forever Here!" is the theme of this year's fifth-annual event. Participants will rally in Foley Square at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 25, and then at 3:30 they'll march uptown to Washington Square Park.
- American Ballet Theater's premiere of "Like Water for Chocolate"
The American Ballet Theater summer season has just begun, and the big event happening now is the New York premiere of "Like Water for Chocolate," a new full-length ballet by the great choreographer Christopher Wheeldon.
As the title suggests, the ballet is based on the Mexican novel by Laura Esquivel and the award winning film it inspired. The story focuses on how the central character’s emotions spill out through cooking to influence everyone around her. It's a pretty spicy story, and not recommended for young children.
Choreographer Christoper Wheeldon is one of the biggest names on the global dance stage, honored for his ballet work but most recently nominated for a Tony award for "MJ the Musical" on Broadway. Joby Talbot is a versatile composer who writes very appealing music. He's done work for the concert hall, the opera house and for films, and he's also created two very successful previous story ballets with Wheeldon, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "The Winter's Tale." So this is a much-anticipated arrival, and it's running at the Metropolitan Opera House through July 1.
- Kurt Rosenwinkel at the Village Vanguard
Guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel is always a popular draw at the Village Vanguard, and he returns to the venerable club on Tuesday night, June 27 for a week-long run celebrating his newest album, "Undercover (Live at the Village Vanguard)."
On a recent Sunday afternoon, business was booming at the TKTS booth on Times Square. As street performers dressed as Elmo and Iron Man enticed visitors to snap photos nearby, a long line snaked around the booth, with people waiting to snap up theater tickets at a dramatic discount. Visitors congregated and chatted on the bright red staircase that was added to the booth in a 2008 makeover.
It’s a dramatic change from when the TKTS booth opened 50 years ago on June 25, 1973. At that time, the theater district was a place to avoid and Broadway was in a state of crisis.
“The city was depressed, and Times Square was a disaster,” said Bob Mayers, the architect who helped design the booth and its famous all lowercase logo. “There was very little pedestrian activity,” he said. “It was considered dangerous. There were muggings. People were afraid to come down to this area at night, especially. And the theaters were half empty.”
As they sought a solution, Mayor John V. Lindsay and his administration teamed up with the Theatre Development Fund. Their response was to create a ticket booth that sold same-day tickets for Broadway shows at half price, plus a modest service charge. An inventory of unsold tickets would be provided by the shows’ producers.
Now, 50 years later, “it has become that kind of town square – which I think is really powerful, because theater is part of community,” said Theatre Development Fund Executive Director Victoria Bailey. And on Wednesday morning, the booth’s anniversary will be officially celebrated on the scenic red steps added in a 2008 redesign, in an event that includes a performance and audience sing-along.
June is Pride month, a time to celebrate LGBTQ+ communities. To mark the occasion, WNYC asked some LGBTQ+ older adults to reflect on their own journeys and share a message for today's generation. New York City resident Criss Smith shares his story.
The transcript of Criss Smith's story has been lightly edited for clarity.
My name is Criss Smith, and I currently live in New York City. I identify as a trans man. I am 63-years-old and very, very happy.
I am somewhat of what you would call a late bloomer because I didn't transition until about six-and-a-half years ago, and I lived most of my adult life as a very miserable lesbian -- because during my time when I was in my 20s and 30s, going through a transition just didn't seem feasible. There weren't any options for me. It just didn't seem possible. It was too expensive. It was always those things that people talked about, but not a lot of people I knew personally went through. Then all of a sudden, I see that it's here, it's available, my insurance covers it, so let's go, let's do it.
I always felt and knew that I was different, and it wasn't part of family, because my family was very religious. It was always about going to church every Sunday, not only Sundays, but Saturdays and different days like that. So it was never an option and I never knew anyone personally that was different like me.
So, it wasn't until I went away to college and started meeting other kids that were LGBTQ that I started considering it and I was like, wait a minute, so maybe there is a life for me being so different.
I feel like a brand-new person. I feel so open, so happy. I feel like I am finally comfortable in my skin.
My advice for the younger generation is to keep going.There are possibilities out there, and I am so proud of the young people because you give me hope. Be strong and just be patient. Be patient because it gets better.
As we mark Pride month, WNYC has been asking older adults in LGBTQ+ communities to share their own personal histories and reflections. Eleanor Batchelder of Jackson Heights, Queens shares her story,
The transcript of Eleanor Batchelder's story has been lightly edited for clarity.
My name is Eleanor Batchelder. I live in Jackson Heights, New York. I identify as a lesbian. I'm 83-years-old now. I had a bookstore. The bookstore was called "Womanbooks," and it was on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, which at the time was where I lived. The store opened in 1975. At that time, we thought New York City did not have a proper women's bookstore. So, three of us decided, three women got together, and we decided to make our own women's bookstore. It became eventually very, very successful, although a lot of people didn't understand what it was. They said 'what is women books?' I said, well, you know, we now have something called a women's bookstore, which examines a lot of different aspects of a woman's life and the things that women care about and tries to give more options. So, women would come and find whatever their interest was and usually go off with an arm load of books
This was a time of great change for women in women's lives, and so women who were trying to think about making changes would come to the store and would ask for books. There were obviously a lot of lesbians coming out at that time, and some of those women had different lives before they decided to become a lesbian or found that they were lesbians. Not everybody after all came out, but to be a woman at that time was very exciting because so much was happening. There were so many more possibilities all of a sudden.
We built the store on what our customers ordered, what they wanted. They often knew more about what was out there than we did. It was an example of what women could do on their own, not being sponsored by men, not being sponsored by any kind of larger entity -- just what women could put together and accomplish on their own.
I had a lot of confidence in myself I think, at every point, and I guess that's an important thing. And the women's movement is important because it gave so many women enough confidence to go and change their lives and do the things that they wanted to do.
When a car hit and killed her 12-year-old son in Brooklyn a decade ago, Amy Cohen dedicated herself to making streets safer for children and other New Yorkers.
A bill named for her son, Sammy Cohen Eckstein, is now known as Sammy's Law. The bill would give New York City the power to set its own speed limits, and it has the support of the governor, Mayor Adams and the City Council. The state's Senate has passed it, and most Assembly members said they'd support it too.
But they never got a chance. The Assembly special session ended without Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie bringing it to a vote. This is the second time the bill has gotten this close, only to expire in the Assembly.
Amy Cohen is the mother of Sammy Cohen Eckstein, for whom Sammy's Law is named. She's also the cofounder of Families for Safe Streets, which provides support services for crash survivors.
She joined WNYC's Michel Hill to reflect on another year of waiting on Sammy's Law, and what comes next for advocates like her.
Sources tell WNYC that violence between detainees at the facility has gotten so bad that staffers have no choice but to lock the kids in classrooms in order to maintain security. It's a regular occurrence and one that employees at the facilities say contributes to educational failures in the city's juvenile detention centers.
A city program aimed at helping people accused of crimes stay out of jail, show up for court and avoid rearrest has exploded in recent years in the wake of bail reform. Now, social workers who operate the little-known supervised release program say they don’t have the resources to support the influx of people, many of whom are facing violent felony charges. And that’s leaving the program at a crossroads.
WNYC reporter Matt Katz visited a supervised release program and shared what he found with Morning Edition host Michael Hill.
To read this story, go to Gothamist.com.
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is buried under a $48 billion mountain of debt — and paying it off threatens to undermine the agency’s core function: running mass transit for more than 5 million people a day.
For the last 40 years, the MTA has taken out loans to help pay for new tracks, stations, trains and buses — and maintain the ones it already owns. Money from fares, tolls and taxes pays back the lenders, plus interest.
That business model worked until the pandemic sent ridership plummeting. This year, the payments on the debt are slated to exceed $3 billion – a 600% increase from $425 million in 1993, according to a Gothamist investigation.
It was 50 years ago this summer that the sights and sounds of hip-hop culture first emerged on the streets of the Bronx. To mark this milestone, WNYC and Gothamist are amplifying the voices of the many women from our area leaving their own mark on the genre.
Ana “Rockafella” Garcia is a B-girl pioneer from Spanish Harlem. Her story has been lightly edited for clarity.
My name is Ana "Rockefella" Garcia. I am a B-girl, which means I'm a female break dancer, but I also choreograph different styles. I dance house, I dance salsa, African, and I am a co-founder and a managing director of a nonprofit dance company in the Bronx called Full Circle Productions, Inc.
Everybody in hip-hop pretty much is baptized with a new name. You rarely use a government or official name -- or your school name. And it usually comes from the display of the talent, whether it's graffiti or if it's dancing or a rapper -- poetry. My name came from the fact that I was able to get into a circle, which is the formation we dance in and cause the fellas in the circle to pause. My skills were too high, or they just weren't used to someone like that, and they didn't want to go after me. So, it was kind of like a battle if they did go after me. So, I was rocking the fellas. So, the name is sort of a job description.
I was a young girl in East Harlem, and then when we moved to the Bronx, so this is the same time that hip-hop is starting to emerge and gain more visibility on tv, and then movies came out.
The people around my neighborhood -- they were able to change their situations and their living conditions through hip-hop. They were able to travel, they were able to go somewhere and be sponsored and get, you know, more wardrobe and eventually, you know, money. So that influenced me to say, well, there's a way out -- it doesn't just have to be gangs or whatever.
It was an inspiring expression of creativity and I felt like, hey, I can be creative too. So, I trusted that what I originally saw hip-hop do for the community -- it can do that for me as well. When I look back, then I can reflect and say, oh, look at all the things I've done. But day to day, there's more deadlines, there's more goals to reach. So, I'm not really thinking about what did I leave behind? But I do want people to know that if you see me at this point in my life, feeling successful that I can pay my bills through dance -- all my bills are paid through dance, then you can do it too.
Thousands of migrant children will mark the end of their first New York City school year this month. They came to the city after difficult journeys, most speaking little or no English. Since last fall, educators have mobilized to meet their needs - hosting clothing drives and doing their best to overcome the language barrier. Amid it all, as WNYC’s Jessica Gould reports, a local chess program is providing a sense of comfort and inspiration.
This week, the online restaurant site Eater NY launched a massive series called "Welcome to Diner Land." It covers just about everything you could possibly want to know about diners in New York, New Jersey and the known universe.
Food writers Melissa McCart and Robert Sietsema were involved with a lot of the team coverage. They join Weekend Edition host David Furst to talk about some of their favorite spots.
There's been a broad decline in LGBTQ+ bars across the U.S., down 45% from 2002 to 2023, according to a report by Greggor Mattson, professor and chair of sociology at Oberlin College and Conservatory.
The pandemic hurt LGBTQ+ bars across the country, but the venues had been in decline for years. Mattson says many people have blamed dating apps, where people can connect online, often for free, instead of meeting in person and spending money on drinks. Others say the mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ+ people has made queer spaces obsolete.
The closure of Mattson’s favorite gay bar in Cleveland in 2013 prompted him to visit more than 250 LGBTQ+ venues nationwide in search of answers to the question posed by the title of his new book: “Who Needs Gay Bars?”
But New Yorkers are resilient, especially when it comes to nightlife. Thanks to local wealth and global tourism, bars serving the LGBTQ+ community in New York City have increased in number. Even after the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City had at least 48 LGBTQ+ bars. That’s up from 36 in 2019, according to Mattson.
“We are hurtling towards disaster, eyes wide open.”
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said those words Thursday, warning that the world must phase out fossil fuels.
Here in the New York City region, those words carry an extra urgency after a widespread smoke condition forced many inside.
While the smoke came not from fossil fuels but from wildfires, those are expected to be more frequent as the climate crisis gets worse. But when it comes to a problem so global, what can people do at the local level?
Liz Moran is a policy advocate with Earthjustice. She spoke with WNYC's Morning Edition host Michael Hill about the most important steps local leaders can take right now.
A bill championed by New Jersey's legislative leaders would cut most seniors' property taxes in half. But Gov. Phil Murphy opposes it — and without a deal, a state shutdown could be looming.
Assembly Leader Craig Coughlin says he’s open to compromises — signaling a potential opportunity to end the dispute. Murphy's side says it's open to talks, too. But so far, no deal is in place.
Not every temporary license plate is what it appears to be.
On thousands of cars across the region, these paper plates lead to a network of used car dealerships and Internet businesses selling them illegally.
One Harlem man unwittingly found himself in the middle of this network, delivering these license plates to buyers without understanding that his actions broke the law. Now, he's exposing his former employer.
Kareem Ulloa-Alvarado is a former courier for an illegal temporary license plate business. Jesse Coburn is an investigative reporter for the news site Streetsblog. Coburn has been closely following the impact of these so-called "ghost" plates on the New York City region.
Ulloa-Alverado and Coburn joined WNYC's Michael Hill to talk about the temporary plates industry and how Ulloa-Alverado's life was changed by it.
A federal judge has opened the door for a possible federal takeover of Rikers Island jails. WNYC public safety reporter Matt Katz spoke to Morning Edition host Michael Hill about the situation.
A series of disturbing recent incidents at Rikers Island is the focus of a federal court hearing set for Tuesday. The hearing comes after the federal monitor who oversees Rikers said that the Adams Administration has become so resistant to providing information about dangerous situations in the city jails that he can’t even be sure how many people have died there this year. Morning Edition Host Michael Hill spoke to public safety reporter Matt Katz about the issue.
I'm not sure if it’s my entry into middle age, the relentless shuttling of my three kids, or my confusing position as a Gen X-Millennial cusper, but lately I find myself much more open to unconventional ways of releasing the pressure — i.e.: fully game for the woo-woo.
So when I read about Humming Puppy, a Chelsea yoga studio whose group classes feature a custom audio experience called “The Hum,” I signed up.
Would the special soundscape bring more focus and calm to my life, as the website suggested?
NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell is leaving the department. Sewell served as police commissioner for a year and a half and was the first woman to lead the NYPD. She came to New York City after a two-decade career with the Nassau County Police Department.
She announced her resignation in a memo sent to the department, but did not give a reason for the abrupt departure so soon into leading the biggest police force in America.
Jillian Snider is an Adjunct Lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a former NYPD officer, and the head of criminal justice policy at the R Street Institute. She joined WNYC Morning Edition host Michael Hill to talk about the impact Commissioner Sewell has had on the NYPD, what may have spurred her to leave so soon, and the legacy she leaves behind.
It was 50 years ago this summer that the sights and sounds of hip-hop culture first emerged on the streets of the Bronx. To commemorate this milestone, WNYC and Gothamist are sharing the voices of the many women from our area who are leaving their own mark on the genre.
Michelle Byrd-McPhee is the founder and director of the nonprofit organization, Ladies of Hip-Hop. Her story has been lightly edited for clarity.
My name is Michelle Byrd-McPhee, I'm founder and director of Ladies Hip-Hop festival. The mission of Ladies of Hip-Hop is really simple -- it's really to provide a space and opportunities to build the next generation of women in hip-hop dance, DJs and visual artists. We are an interdisciplinary organization, even though we started out as dance.
What inspired it? I would love to say something really deep, but the real honest truth is I was a co-founder of an all female hip-hop company in Philly, and this was a time where I was spending a lot of time in New York and D.C. just hanging out. So most of my friends that were women in dance were in New York and they were these powerhouses, you know, I just wanted to dance more with them and I wanted to train my company. So Ladies of Hip-Hop was really just like a way to have really dope women hang out together and I think pass the culture on in a way that a lot of us weren't experiencing it at the time.
The festival was founded in 2004, so at that time women weren't teaching as much. We were around. We've always been around. We've been a big influence on the culture. We've been a big support of the culture, but opportunity to be at the forefront, wasn't there? What I experienced in hip-hop culture at the time that I was hanging out in clubs in the late eighties, early nineties, I wouldn't say I didn't have the support of the men there. I think the men in my community were super supportive of me, but I do feel like depending on what your entry point is as a woman, like who was bringing you into that space and also your comfort level and being in a real male dominated space -- getting in "circles" at the time was really the only outlet. We weren't showing up really so much in concert dance as hip-hop and street dance was showing up on the stage and maybe be one or two specifically "b-girls," which rightfully so, being one of the first dance forms, they accompany the culture, and so there wasn't very much space for anything else. So for me, I had super supportive guys, but I just felt alone.
What advice would I give to a young girl? Number one, believe in yourself. We're not told enough -- never let anyone deter you from what it is you want to do, and especially not because you're a woman.
Robert Sietsema has taken on New York City's best pizza slices. He issued a sometimes eyebrow-raising list of the best bagels in town. Now, our friend from Eater NY is putting himself at the center of a battle over the best roast beef sandwich in Brooklyn. Food writer Robert Sietsema joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to discuss Roll-N-Roaster in Sheepshead Bay and Brennan and Carr in Marine Park.
There are big outdoor events coming up this week featuring some of the city's iconic cultural institutions - from the Museum Mile Festival to the New York Philharmonic beginning its tour of New York City's parks. WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith joins Weekend Edition host David Furst for another edition of the Weekend Arts Planner.
STEVE'S PICKS:
- Outdoor events coming back to life
After a few days of some pretty substantial cancellations do to unhealthy air quality in the region, things are looking up around the city.
The Public Theater will belatedly open its Free Shakespeare in the Park production of "Hamlet" Saturday, June 10 at the Delacorte Theater, after canceling the first two nights because of the air hazard. And speaking of Central Park, City Parks SummerStage opens June 10 with a show featuring St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Say She She, and Mwenso and the Shakes, at 6 p.m. in Central Parks's Rumsey Playfield.
- The Museum Mile Festival
The Museum Mile Festival happens every June, and this year it's happening on Tuesday, June 13 from 6 to 9 p.m. The participating institutions include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Neue Galerie New York, the Guggenheim Museum, Cooper Hewitt - Smithsonian Design Museum, the Jewish Museum, Museum of City of New York, El Museo del Barrio, and The Africa Center. They will be open free of charge starting at 6 p.m., and many of them will offer special activities for visitors. In addition, Fifth Avenue will be closed to automobiles from 82nd Street to 105th Street, so you'll also see street performers, vendors, and art activities for children.
- The New York Philharmonic hits the parks
The New York Philharmonic starts its annual circuit of city parks on Saturday, June 10 in Van Cortlandt Park, in the Bronx. Music director Jaap van Zweden will conduct popular works like Rossini's "William Tell Overture" -- plus popular pieces by Beethoven and Copland, and new music by participants in the Philharmonic's Very Young Composers Program. That same concert comes to Central Park on Wednesday, June 14, Cunningham Park in Queens on Thursday, June 15 and Prospect Park on Friday, June 16. The shows starts at 8, and they're followed by fireworks.
- ACRONYM brings forgotten music back to life
Tuesday, June 13 in Central Park's Naumburg Bandshell, an early-music ensemble called ACRONYM kicks off this year's free Naumburg Orchestral Concerts series. ACRONYM specializes in resurrecting music by forgotten composers of the past, playing pieces that haven't been heard in centuries with a freshness that makes them feel familiar and new at the same time.
The Naumburg Orchestral Concerts series is the oldest continuously running free outdoor classical music series in the WORLD. The Naumburg Orchestral Concerts started in 1905, and this year's series celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Naumburg Bandshell. Each concert will open with a fanfare newly composed for the occasion. Concerts happen every OTHER Tuesday at 7:30 p.m., and they're all hosted by air personalities from our sister station, WQXR.
The Bronx: home of Yankee Stadium and the Bronx Zoo, as well as the birthplace of Cardi B, but also home to the largest population of Puerto Ricans in all the five boroughs and some of the best cuchifritos, lechón, and mofongo in the city.
My friend, skater and fellow food fanatic Pedro Muñoz, joined me in exploring the borough's Puerto Rican food. His family initially moved from Puerto Rico to Manhattan before settling in the Bronx by the 1970s. Although Pedro is Puerto Rican and was born and raised in the Bronx, he says he didn’t grow up eating a ton of Puerto Rican food (aside from during the holidays) and never learned to speak Spanish. He’s what many might call a Nuyorican (an American-born Puerto Rican living in NYC that has lost touch with their island roots). At one time, this term was used pejoratively, but now many embrace the label and use it to celebrate their culture.
Pedro is one of the few people I know who can get down and eat everything like I can (he even has a show called Pedro Eats Everything), and since we were hitting up spots in the borough where he was born, raised and still lives, I knew he was the right person to eat with on this adventure.
Read the full article on Gothamist.com.
Air quality continues to fluctuate in New York City after the region experienced its worst air quality in decades earlier this week due to weather patterns that brought a plume of smoke from Canadian wildfires to the area. The unhealthy haze was something of a reversal for the city. Air quality has been steadily improving here for years, though some neighborhoods are still worse off than others. But such emergencies might become a more frequent occurrence in the years to come due to global climate change. Dr. Philip Fine joined WNYC's Sean Carlson to offer his perspective o on New York's recent air quality crisis. He's the Executive Director of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in San Francisco -- a city with a lot more experience navigating unhealthy air due to wildfires.
Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerated "Central Park Five," is facing two more experienced competitors — Inez Dickens and Al Taylor, sitting representatives for Harlem in the state Legislature — in a City Council race local observers view as another in a long history of challenges to Harlem’s storied political machine.
New York is the only major city in the country that guarantees a bed to anyone who asks for it. But with the migrant crisis, Mayor Eric Adams is trying to change the so-called right to shelter. To trace the history of the law, WNYC’s Elizabeth Kim recently met with Robert Hayes, the lawyer who brought the case that created it.
As smoke from Canadian wildfires continued blanketing the Northeast on Thursday, many outdoor workers in New York and New Jersey said they had no choice but to continue working and breathing in the polluted air to get paid.
Delivery workers, construction crews, street vendors and gas station employees said they felt scratchy throats and itchy eyes after spending Wednesday and Thursday working in air quality conditions ranked among the worst in the nation. The smoke prompted some school closures and event cancellations, grounded or delayed flights, and caused a spike in asthma-related emergency room visits.
WNYC's Karen Yi and David Brand spoke with Morning Edition host Michael Hill about what the last few days have been like for essential workers.
As we mark Pride month, WNYC asked some older adults in LGBTQ+ communities to share their own personal histories and reflections in honor of the occasion. Victor Rios of the Bronx shares her story.
The transcript of Victor Rios's story has been lightly edited for clarity.
My name is Victor Rios. I'm 61-years-old. I feel like a woman inside. I look like a man, but I'm a woman. Ever since I was born and raised, I was me the way I am now. People may like it or dislike it, but that was me and I'm still me that way now. I feel like a woman.
I was born and raised in the South Bronx. It was very scary because there was a lot of machismo and it was scary because they used to beat you up. Nowadays in this century, it's much better -- we are more accepted. To me, it wasn't hard. It was harder for my family to accept who I was, and they didn't like it because they were Puerto Rican people. And at the same time, I tell them -- this is me and I'm gonna live my life as I am. The only one that used to tell me was the guys -- my uncles, my father, and people like that. And I was like, no, I'm me. It was scary because I was scared. I was doing maintenance and in the maintenance department, there's a lot of men. It was challenging because some of them, they used to look at me weird. Some of them used to make noises and say things. It was overwhelming because I didn't know which way to go and what to do. So, what I used to do was walk out of the job. They never threw me out for no job, but I walked out.
I feel good here. I work at the Queens Center for Gay Seniors in Jackson Heights. I'm a kitchen helper. I feel comfortable. I feel like I'm a whole person here. There's no thinking about being a woman or gay because I'm hanging out with them, and I know they are in the same predicament that I am. And it doesn't matter if you gay or not, we are human beings -- we brothers and sisters. That's it. It doesn't make no sense that you say you gay, you this or that. No, we brothers and sisters, and we have to help each other because we alone.
The best medicine in this world is laughing. I think that's the best. I keep on telling them to laugh. No matter how much you're in pain, laughing is the best thing to do in this world.
New York City’s air quality is improving, but it’s still classified as ‘unhealthy,’ according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s thanks to Canadian wildfires that have brought dangerous smoke to the New York metro area. Based on the persistence of the dangerous air pollutants, New York City and state officials on Thursday extended the city’s air quality advisory to Friday evening. WNYC's Health and Science editor Nsikan Akpan spoke with All Things Considered host Sean Carlson about the latest developments.
If you’ve heard “It Wasn’t Me” by Shaggy, been seduced by Sean Paul’s accent or even bobbed your head to Justin Bieber’s “Sorry,” you’ve discovered dancehall. Even the most casual listener might hear the melodic strains of this infectious style while passing through certain parts of Brooklyn on any given day. Dancehall culture has crept into many different art forms, ranging from music to dance and fashion.
In “Bad Like Brooklyn Dancehall,” a new documentary opening tonight at the Tribeca Festival, directors Ben DiGiacomo and Dutty Vannier explore how the music made its way from the Caribbean to take root in New York City during the 1980s and ‘90s – and how Brooklyn became established as a hub for the culture.
The film highlights how dancers, DJs and members of the Caribbean community built a cultural bridge between Jamaica and New York through basement parties and celebrations that brought together people who were worlds apart.
Wildfire smoke from Canada continues to waft down to the East Coast, tinting the skies in New York yellow.
Now, lots of kids are at home too. Some public schools in the city were already scheduled to be closed over the next several days, and some private schools closed too. Kids stuck at home might be wondering why the world looks so different outside today — and why it might not be smart to play outside.
Mike Shanahan is a science educator and planetarium director with the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey. He joined WNYC's Michael Hill to talk about the ins and outs of wildfire smoke for all.
A landlord under investigation for “unlivable” conditions at his Brooklyn apartment building has avoided scrutiny for a rundown property nearby. Housing advocates say the contrasting outcomes are an example of how weak rules and inconsistent enforcement leave vulnerable tenants with few options.
The “Cornell ‘Black Benjie’ Benjamin Way'' street sign now marks the intersection of East 165th Street and Rogers Place. That’s where the 25-year-old was beaten to death in December 1971, while trying to break up a gang fight that started in a nearby schoolyard. Arya Sundaram, reporter with the newsroom Race and Justice Unit, has the story on how Benjamin left his mark on a community, in life and death.
Sofreh is one of the hottest restaurants in Brooklyn, and it only took Nasim Alikhani 30 years to open it.
“I am bringing my entire life into this,” she said on a recent Tuesday, sipping water out of a to-go container in the shade of Sofreh’s back patio.
Since Sofreh debuted in 2018, it’s been called “NYC’s most exciting Persian restaurant.” Alikhani was a guest chef for the White House in March, she was invited to be one of 10 chefs at the Met Gala in 2021, and she has a cookbook out later this month.
And on Monday night she’s up for a James Beard Foundation Award as best chef in New York — one of the industry’s top honors.
June is Pride month, a time to celebrate LGBTQ+ communities. To mark the occasion, WNYC is talking with LGBTQ+ older adults about their struggles, triumphs and what pride means to them. In this segment, Donna Sue Johnson of Westchester County shares her story.
The transcript of Donna Sue Johnson's story has been lightly edited for clarity.
My name is Donna Sue Johnson, and I'm from the south, south jersey. I grew up in Willingboro, New Jersey. I live in Westchester County and identify as a big Black, beautiful, Bohemian, bougie, Buddhist, butch -- I'm a lesbian. I came out when I was in the military, which was very difficult to say the least because it certainly wasn't do ask do tell.
It was more like witch hunts -- it wasn't, don't ask, don't tell. Here I am stationed at Travis Air Force Base, which is situated between Sacramento and the Bay Area, and I go to my first Gay Day parade in 1980 or '81, and I see Sister Boom Boom and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence throwing out condoms -- the bath houses had just closed.
So I was born in 1956, so I'm 66 and I'm old enough to have survived two major epidemics -- the first one being AIDS and the second one being the Covid pandemic. I remember seeing Dykes on Bikes and I remember calling my grandmother and I said, wow, I can't wait to get a motorcycle. She said, 'we don't have no dykes on bikes in this family.' I said, 'how do you know about Dykes on bikes?' She said, 'I watch Phil Donahue.'
What a magnificent epiphany of blissful pleasures to be able to understand and embrace who I am as a Black lesbian who is aging with grace, aging in place and aging intelligently. Not all of my cohorts are able to do so with the hate that is going on in this country toward the LGBT community. It's essential that we let our voices be heard that this is wrong. This is causing older LGBT folks to go back in the closet and be stealth after working so hard to be out. It's a disgrace.
Pride is certainly important so that folks can see that we're here, we're queer, and we're here to stay.
Summertime is when we're confronted by all sorts of free things to do in New York City — and while summer is still a few weeks away, free stuff is already happening! WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor, Steve Smith joins Weekend Edition host David Furst for another edition of our Weekend Arts Planner, emphasizing some of the no-charge highlights ahead this week.
- Photoville in Brooklyn Bridge Park
The 12th annual Photoville Festival celebrates the state of the art in photography, with more than 80 free outdoor exhibits on view in all five boroughs. The two-day opening weekend festivities include family activities, performances, screenings and more — and one exhibition, "NYC Undercover," pairs NYPD surveillance films from the 1960s and '70s with vintage WNYC radio broadcasts to evoke the city in the '60s and '70s. The opening celebration starts on Saturday, June 3, in Brooklyn Bridge Park, and the festival runs through June 18.
- Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in Times Square
The celebrated Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company wraps up its 40th anniversary celebrations by making its Times Square debut next Wednesday, June 7, with a performance of "/Time: Study III," a showcase for company members and guest musicians alike. The show is happening at Broadway and 46th Street, and it starts at 6 p.m., so you could opt catch a little bit of dance while making your way to a Broadway show.
- "Hamlet" at the Delacorte Theater
For its 61st free Shakespeare in the Park season, the Public Theater begins with a new production of "Hamlet" directed by Tony Award winner Kenny Leon. Ato Blankson-Wood — nominated for a Tony for his work in “Slave Play” on Broadway, and previously featured in Public Theater musical adaptations of “Twelfth Night” and “As You Like It” — portrays the moody Danish prince of the title. The play's the thing through Aug. 6, after which attention will shift to "The Tempest" in a new Public Works musical adaptation. "Hamlet" is onstage at the Delacorte Theater starting on Thursday, June 8. Free tickets are being distributed in a variety of ways, including an online lottery... or you can simply show up, stand in line and hope for the best.
- Taj Mahal at BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn!
Henry St. Claire Fredericks Jr., the Harlem-born roots music icon better known as Taj Mahal, opens this year’s BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! concert series. His newest album, "Savoy," includes all kinds of jazz and blues standards, including "Summertime," "Lady Be Good," "Baby It's Cold Outside" and "Do Nothin' Till You Hear from Me." He's topping a stacked bill that also features vocalist Corinne Bailey Rae and The Harlem Gospel Travelers. It's the start of a season that covers a LOT of stylistic ground, including an intense double bill of Kelela and Liv.e, a visit from Welsh icon John Cale, a double bill of Pakistani singer Ali Sethi and Indian-American rapper Raja Kumari, and the Prospect Park debut of Malian singer Oumou Sangaré. Taj Mahal performs at the Lena Horne Bandshell in Prospect Park on Wednesday, June 7: doors at 6 p.m., show at 7, admission free.
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is expected to announce a second run for president next week -- even though there's no indication that the GOP base has been clamoring for his return. WNYC's Matt Katz joins us to explain.
Matt covered Christie for years, wrote the book "American Governor: Chris Christie's Bridge to Redemption" and co-hosted The Christie Tracker Podcast with WNYC's David Furst. Matt joins David for a mini-reunion of the podcast - and to discuss Christie's likely campaign.
More than 54,000 people have donated to the fund set up by Penny’s lawyers on GiveSendGo, which bills itself as the “#1 Free Christian Fundraising Site” and “leading freedom fundraising platform.” Some 40,000 have offered their prayers as well. Arun Venugopal, senior reporter in the newsroom's Race and Justice Unit, has the story on what it all means.
The initiative follows pressure from law enforcement in New York, the art community and the international press, which have shined a spotlight on the museum’s failure to police its collection for looted works. Arun Venugopal, senior reporter with the newsroom's Race and Justice Unit, has the story.
Few of the races in the June 6 New Jersey legislative primary are contested, even though there about twice as many open seats as usual. Political experts say that's in part due to the "county line" system that gives a boost to candidates endorsed by powerful county political organizations.
Morning Edition Host Michael Hill speaks to Public Safety Reporter Matt Katz about which criminal justice reforms have taken hold since George Floyd was murdered, and which have not.
Landlords of roughly 2,800 buildings still use No. 4 heating oil, a major source of air pollution in New York City. But some building owners say they don’t feel prepared to pivot to cleaner alternatives as mandated, despite government-funded incentives to help make the switch.
This fuel source is now on a fast track to being abolished citywide, after the New York City Council voted in February to accelerate a ban. Akin to the new restrictions on gas stove hookups, the ban on No. 4 fuel oil is necessary for improving the city's air quality and reducing the effects of climate change, but landlords say the up-front expenses of phasing out heating oil has created logistical costs and hurdles.
Click "listen" in the player to hear the story, and head to Gothamist for more details.
The Robot Barista.
Imagine a white egg-shaped creature with arms on the countertop. It almost looks like a combination of R2-D2 and the Baymax character from the Big Hero 6 movie. And you get coffee from it. Eater NY's Luke Fortney has been reporting on Botbar Coffee in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to discuss the rise of the machines.
It's Memorial Day Weekend in New York City. And for those of us not at the beach, there are plenty of opportunities for theatre and music in town. WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor, Steve Smith joins Weekend Edition host David Furst for another edition of our Weekend Arts Planner.
- The Lower East Side Festival of the Arts
Theater for the New City is hosting its 28th annual Lower East Side Festival of the Arts over Memorial Day weekend. The event provides an ample smorgasbord of theater, poetry, music, film, performance art, children's events and more, all meant to celebrate the storied neighborhood’s cultural and ethnic heritage.
This year's Lower East Side Festival includes contributions from more than 200 performing arts organizations, independent artists, poets, puppeteers and film makers. The theme is "Global Warming: The Heat Is On," so you can anticipate a strong showing of activist art in various forms -- including a visual art exhibition and some of the films and plays.
As the name indicates, it's all focused on the Lower East Side, and chiefly at Theater for the New City, at 155 First Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets. Evening events are happening there from 6 p.m. until well past 11, Saturday May 27 and Sunday, May 28. But Saturday is the bigger deal: there's a street fair on East 10th Street between First and Second Avenues, starting at 10 am - and that includes an outdoor stage running from 1 to 5 pm. There's an entire slate of children's activities happening between 2 and 4, and a film program running from 1 to 11. It's a whole lot, basically, and you can find out more at Theater For The New City.
- New music with the New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is presenting two very special programs over the next two weeks to wrap up their 2022 - 2023 season. We'll start with next Thursday, June 1, when the Phil presents a world premiere by New York City composer and Bang on a Can founder Julia Wolfe. We can't predict exactly what this new piece will sound like, but Julia Wolfe's LAST New York Philharmonic premiere, "Fire in My Mouth," illustrated a kind of musical activism. The piece was a multimedia work with multiple choruses, inspired by the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and more broadly on issues of immigration and labor, all set to beautiful and powerful music. Something similar could be in store for Julia Wolfe's new piece, "unEarth," which is a 45-minute work for choruses of men and children with video projections and special lighting and staging.
"unEarth" is a response to climate change, taking into account forced migrations, land loss and changing seas. In her program note, Wolfe acknowledges that "art can not solve the crisis," but her piece is meant to get people involved in the conversation. You'll be able to hear "unEarth" at three performances on June 1, 2 and 3.
And that sets the stage beautifully for the FINAL season program, which includes the New York premiere of "Become Desert," the latest in a series of profoundly beautiful and deeply immersive hymns to nature by composer John Luther Adams. The Philharmonic will play "Become Desert" in a thoughtful and appealing program that also includes water-inspired works by Benjamin Britten and Toru Takemitsu, and it's happening June 8, 9 and 10.
New York City Council Members wrapped up a month's worth of hearings that pored over Mayor Eric Adams' proposed spending plan, which currently stands at nearly $107 billion. It's part of an annual lengthy process where both the council and the administration hash out how they're going to spend taxpayer money. And it's coming on the heels of some enormous challenges.
As the city enters the final phase of budget talks, David Cruz, WNYC's People & Power editor joins Weekend Edition host David Furst for an update.
The next few weeks will be a peak time to catch migrating birds in our region. In fact, next Saturday, May 13 is "World Migratory Bird Day." And that means it's also a great time to plan some nature walks where you might see some of those visiting birds.
To help us with some ideas, we talked with naturalist and "Jamaica Bay Guardian" with the American Littoral Society, Don Riepe. The Littoral Society is a group that promotes the study of marine life and habitat, and protects the coast.
Don joined Weekend Edition host David Furst to talk about several ideas for nature walks - including the one he'll be leading on World Migratory Bird Day! Don's Spring Migration Warbler Walk will begin at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center next Saturday, May 13 at 10am. It's free and you can register here.
WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith always joins us to talk about arts events coming up in New York City. The catch this week is that everything is FREE. He assembled a guide of free things to do in the weeks and months ahead for Gothamist and joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to discuss some of the highlights.
STEVE'S PICKS:
- The Public Theater's Mobile Unit hits the road
The Public Theater is a trusted name in Shakespeare productions, thanks to its annual Central Park residency. But you don't have to wait until June to get your bard on: Mobile Unit, the Public Theater's traveling company, is presenting Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors" right now, in a new bilingual musical version created by Rebecca Martínez and Julián Mesri. The production will visit indoor and outdoor locations in all five boroughs through May 21, and then open on May 25 at the Public Theater, where it runs through June 11.
"The Comedy of Errors" is playing Sunday, May 7 at 1 p.m. at the Williamsbridge Oval Recreation Center, in the Bronx. On Tuesday, May 9 you can see it at 5 p.m. at The LGBT Community Center in the West Village. And it's playing on Friday evening at Herbert Von King Center in Bed-Stuy. You can find all the locations and RSVP here.
- "Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers"
Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is one of the art world’s top draws, and she's got a big new show opening Thursday, May 11 at David Zwirner. It's called "Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers," and it promises to be one of her biggest shows to date: literally, in that it's going to sprawl across three Zwirner spaces on West 19th Street.
You can count on seeing fresh variations on Kusama's customary motifs: polka dots, pumpkins, and flowers. The show also includes new paintings, and a new Infinity Mirror Room… one of those marvelous cabinets in which you feel like you're glimpsing an entire universe. Now, we have to mention that this show is going to be a huge draw, and you definitely should anticipate substantial lines – but you can register for a chance to skip them on the gallery's website.
- Richie Goods and Chien Chien Lu in Times Square
For some free music we turn to a new project by bassist Richie Goods and percussionist Chien Chien Lu, who'll be playing in Times Square Thursday, May 11.
Most of the big free summer concert series haven't started yet - Bryant Park Picnic Performances, Lincoln Center's "Summer for the City," Celebrate Brooklyn and City Parks SummerStage all kick off in June. But there's already free music happening in the middle of Times Square a few times a week, presented by TSQ Live with producing partners like Carnegie Hall and Pioneer Works.
Richie Goods and Chien Chien Lu will perform on Thursday as part of a weekly series booked by Jazz at Lincoln Center. One more nice thing about these free Times Square performances is that they all happen at 5 p.m., so you can actually catch a little something on your way to that fancy dinner or big Broadway show.
On This Week in Politics, we focus on an incident that has dominated the city's attention this week – including the attention of New York's political leadership.
It's the case of Jordan Neely, a homeless person who appeared to be in the midst of a mental health crisis and was killed by another passenger on the "F" train.
Many New Yorkers say they're dismayed that passengers took matters into their own hands without reason - with one putting Neely in a chokehold. But others say they are glad someone took action when another passenger acted up.
The story includes questions about race - as Neely was Black and the other passenger is white - as well as homelessness, mental illness, and shared spaces like the subway that are so common in our city.
WNYC's People and Power reporter, Elizabeth Kim joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to discuss.
Eater NY just updated their map of the best bagels in New York City. Robert Sietsema, the senior critic at Eater NY joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to talk about some of his favorites.
Harry Belafonte was remembered far and wide in the last week as an artistic colossus, a giant of stage and screen, the first person to sell a million copies of an album, with “Calypso,” in 1956. But beneath the international acclaim was the story of a single New Yorker who contended with the indignities of racial discrimination at seemingly every turn in his long life, and who eventually helped alter the culture of the city – and the nation.Belafonte, who died Tuesday at the age of 96, spoke at length to WNYC listeners over the years, about his successes as an artist, the indignities he faced both as a Black entertainer and ordinary citizen, and the passions that drove his civil rights activism. In the interviews, he talks about life in a changing New York and nation, from the civil rights era through to the present.Senior Reporter Arun Venugopal took a tour through WNYC's radio archives, to hear Belafonte tell his own story. Here's what he found.
There are always so many worthwhile arts events happening in New York City - it's impossible to see everything. That's where Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith come is. He joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to bring us another edition of his Weekend Arts Planner.
Steve's picks:
- "Daniel Lind-Ramos: El Viejo Griot — Una historia de todos nosotros"
MoMA PS1 in Long Island City has just opened its biggest exhibition this year, "Daniel Lind-Ramos: El Viejo Griot — Una historia de todos nosotros" is dedicated to the work of a Puerto Rican artist who was named a MacArthur "Genius" grant recipient in 2021. The title of the show translates as "The Elder Storyteller—A Story of All of Us."
Daniel Lind-Ramos is known for using objects he finds in and around his studio in Loíza to explore his Afro-Puerto Rican identity, along with issues facing the island. Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the objects employed in his recent are items he collected after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in 2017. The show includes ten sculptures and two video works. It just opened, and it's running through September 4.
- Emerson String Quartet at Alice Tully Hall
The Emerson String Quartet has been among the elite chamber music ensembles for more than four decades – and this is going to be the last year you can hear the group, because they're disbanding in October. The Emerson Quartet has released upwards of 30 albums, nine of which have won Grammy awards. Their most recent release was, "The Prague Concert."
It's not entirely clear when "The Prague Concert" was taped – former cellist David Finckel appears on the cover of the album, which includes music by Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Dvorak. Those exact same pieces will be featured in the concert the current Emerson lineup plays Sunday, April 30 at Alice Tully Hall, hosted by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Then two weeks later, the Emersons will return with a completely different program: works by Bartok and Shostakovich that the group is closely associated with, plus Ravel's gorgeous Quartet in F and the New York premiere of a new piece by a brilliant contemporary composer, Sarah Kirkland Snider. That one is happening on May 7, also at Alice Tully Hall.
- Bonus pick - GODZILLA-THON!
It was take your kids to work day at WNYC this week and some of our visitors gave us weekend suggestions of their own. Here's one of their picks:
GODZILLA-THON is taking place at the Barrymore Film Center in Fort Lee, New Jersey. As the name suggests, it's a film festival focusing on everyone's favorite city-stomping monster. It runs Friday, April 28 through Sunday, April 30 and boasts monstrous hits like Mothra vs. Godzilla, Destroy All Monsters and, of course, the original 1954 film.
On a recent Tuesday morning, a group of longtime volunteers in a SoHo kitchen learned that the reigning Miss Universe, R’Bonney Gabriel, was working at their table.
Minutes after discovering her unusual job title, they got down to business: They wanted to know what restaurants she liked.
Gabriel hasn’t had much time to explore the city’s food scene. She was crowned in January, becoming the first Filipino-American Miss Universe, and, at 28, the oldest.
It’s part of the job description, and a tradition dating back to the ‘90s, that the winner of the Miss Universe Competition spends a year living in New York City. Gabriel won the title in New Orleans on a Saturday, and on Sunday, she flew to New York to start work.
And here she was, discussing restaurants at God’s Love We Deliver while preparing chickpea curry platters for New Yorkers too sick to cook or shop for themselves.
Each spring millions of tiny glass eels enter New York City’s waterways. These juvenile American eels migrate here from somewhere in the Sargasso Sea. And it’s the job of this Staten Island science class to help count them.
A glass eel (bottom) and an elver (next developmental stage) caught in Richmond Creek in Staten Island.(Amy Pearl/WNYC)
New bakeries tempting customers with high end pastries have been seeing a surge in popularity in New York City. And that's been leading to some long lines and high expectations. Emma Orlow a reporter with Eater New York wrote about those lines and how the bakery experience has evolved in the city over the last few years. She joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to chat about some of the city's most in-demand pastries.
Environmental activism takes many forms — attending protests, speaking at hearings, campaigning for green candidates.
Hila Perry is doing something completely different.
Wrapped in a big Earth costume, Perry, or Hila the Earth, uses music and comedy to educate and inspire others about the environment around them. She raps about composting, vegetables and most importantly to her, the Earth.
Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
It's been 18 years since New York City rezoned Greenpoint's waterfront, and local residents are still waiting for the green spaces they were promised. The city’s vision of replacing a contaminated industrial shoreline with a new community of luxury apartment towers remains incomplete — and may now be threatened by sea level rise.
Greenpoint is one of the most polluted neighborhoods in the nation. It is bordered by the East River and Newtown Creek, and centuries of industry — including oil refineries, shipyards and factories — have tainted its coastlines and poisoned the soil underneath many of its streets. The neighborhood is also home to two federal Superfund sites – the Meeker Avenue Plume and Newtown Creek — as well as the Greenpoint oil spill, one of the largest oil spills in U.S. history.
Read the full article on Gothamist.com.
As part of a special Earth Day broadcast, "All Things Considered" is taking the show to Greenpoint, Brooklyn to explore its industrial past and efforts to remediate the area. To prepare, WNYC host Sean Carlson and an environmentalist took a boat tour along Newtown Creek, one of the country's most polluted waterways, which also cuts through some of the trendiest neighborhoods in New York City.
Read the full article and see the photos on Gothamist.com.
Saturday, April 22 is Earth Day and whether you want to pitch in as a volunteer or catch an exhibition that highlights nature, there are plenty ways to celebrate in and around New York City. WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor, Steve Smith joins Weekend Edition host David Furst with his latest arts picks - from Earth Day and beyond.
Steve's picks:
- In putting together Gothamist's guide to Earth Day activities, we made sure to include opportunities to get outside and actually appreciate nature. You could spend an entire day just enjoying the abundant opportunities available in "Earth Day on Governors Island," from birding walks and bicycling lessons, to insect ecology and immersive performance art. Activities run on April 22 from 10 am to 3 pm.
You can also head up to the Bronx to plant trees and flowers in Woodlawn Cemetery, which is an accredited arboretum, or sign up for a shift to tidy up and paint at John Paul Jones Park in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
But there are also indoor activities to consider. The Whitney Museum of American Art is hosting a convergence of three exhibitions that all touch on some aspect of our relationship to nature, and it's your last chance to see one of those shows, "no existe un mundo poshuracán," a showcase of works made by Puerto Rican artists in the wake of Hurricane Maria — which closes Sunday, April 23. The museum is open free of charge all day Saturday, April 22 and hands-on programming for kids is running from 11 am to 3 pm.
That's just scratching the surface, and we haven't even mentioned the open streets programs happening throughout the five boroughs. So I'll definitely recommend listeners to check out our guide on Gothamist.
- The Walkmen reunite
The Walkmen were one of the most emblematic bands of the New York City indie rock scene before they took an extended break starting in 2013. Now, a decade later, they're back together.
In a former life I spent 13 years working as a music editor at Time Out New York, and The Walkmen were a fixture of my entire run... truly one of the most popular and creative bands active from Y2K onward. Their appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert this week proves they haven't lost anything, and they're playing FIVE reunion shows April 24th through 28th at Webster Hall in the East Village. The first four are said to be sold out... but is anything really ever sold out in New York City? Fans who want to get in will find a way.
- A world premiere from Moor Mother
Merkin Hall at the Kaufman Music Center on the Upper West Side has been hosting some of the most original and creative concerts in the city for a long time now under the banner "Ecstatic Music." And next Friday, April 28 at 7:30 pm they'll host a program by the poet, composer, and bandleader Moor Mother, a Philadelphia artist who bridges the worlds of free jazz, hip-hop and concert music with an activist spirit. Her Merkin concert features her bandmates from her blistering jazz combo Irreversible Entanglements, the iconic saxophonist and composer Henry Threadgill, and other guests in the world premiere of a new piece called "6 Movements." The concert is jointly presented by New Sounds Live, so WNYC's own John Schaefer will be on hand to host.
It's been one year since migrants – many of them fleeing violence and poverty in Latin America – began arriving in New York City. Mayor Adams says caring for these individuals is costing the city billions of dollars and that the federal government needs to step in. This week, Adams, a Democrat, criticized President Biden.
WNYC's Elizabeth Kim covers mayoral power for the People and Power Desk. She discusses the mayor's remarks, and what it all means for the city going forward, with Weekend Edition host David Furst.
Rep. Dan Goldman doesn’t deny he needs to know more about his district.
It was one of the recurring knocks against the 47-year-old Democrat and heir to the Levi Strauss denim fortune when he was running in a crowded race to represent the 10th Congressional District, which covers parts of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.
As he reached his 100-day mark as a freshman member of Congress, Goldman was still learning the contours of the district, where millionaires in swanky SoHo apartments, residents of crumbling public housing, and working-class immigrant communities will decide whether he merits a second term. While Goldman won a commanding victory last November, he was one of 13 candidates on the primary ballot and won by fewer than 1,700 votes.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
A beloved New Jersey music festival in May will return to the Garden State after years away, but the comeback has been far from a victory lap.
In the months leading up to the first "Bamboozle" music festival since 2012, ticket buyers have said the event's promoter has failed to deliver on his promises of a return to the good old days.
Karin Price Mueller is a consumer columnist for NJ.com and The Star-Ledger. She joined WNYC's Michael Hill to talk about the troubles surrounding the festival and the response from those poised to attend.
This week, Steve Smith, WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor joins Weekend Edition host David Furst for a preview of some major summer concerts in the city, a couple of big shows coming to Carnegie Hall this week and the reopening of the Queens Night Market.
Steve's picks:
- Queens Night Market
As an enthusiastic fan of eating and a proud resident of Jackson Heights, I look forward to the Queens Night Market opening every year — and this year, it opens Saturday, April 15. This is one of the culinary highlights of the year, a fun and friendly way to sample Afghan mantu, Peruvian ceviche, Trinidadian shark sandwiches, and Sichuan ice jelly — literally dozens of options from around the world, and all of it reasonably priced. The Night Market also offers also arts and crafts vendors, activities for kids, DJs and live music.
The Night Market is open every Saturday night in the wide-open field adjacent to the New York Hall of Science in Corona — the best way to get there is to take the 7 train to 111th Street. April 15 and next Saturday night you can buy advance tickets for $5 — and any tickets remaining at the gate will cost $8. From April 29 onward, admission is free.
- Orchestras from Boston and Washington, D.C. visit Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is welcoming two prominent American orchestras who don't visit all that often. First up on Saturday, April 15, is a group with a self-explanatory name, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.
One of the pieces they'll be performing is "Play," a frenetic, wacky showcase composed by Andrew Norman. It's a piece BMOP commissioned and premiered in 2013, and in 2017 it won the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. Music director Gil Rose and his ensemble have been commissioning big new pieces and documenting important past works since 1996, and now the group is celebrating its 25th anniversary a little belatedly tonight with the Norman piece and two more works: "In Medias Res" by Lisa Bielawa and another Grawemeyer Award winner, "A Thousand Mountains, a Million Streams" by Lei Liang.
And then on Tuesday night at Carnegie Hall, the National Symphony Orchestra pays a visit from Washington, D.C. That group is hitting new peaks of critical and popular approval under the leadership of music director Gianandrea Noseda, and the concert includes a piece by another great American composer, George Walker, whose music Noseda has been championing recently.
- A look ahead to the summer concert season
The summer concerts season is still a few months away, but shows are being announced now, and there are some seriously choice events ahead. The Blue Note Jazz Festival and Celebrate Brooklyn both announced their lineups within the last few weeks.
Forest Hills Stadium rolled out its season this week, and we covered that announcement on Gothamist. It's a season packed with artists like The Smile, The Strokes and Duran Duran.
We'll find out early next week what Lincoln Center has in store for us this summer, and we're all eagerly anticipating word from Central Park SummerStage.
And all of this is in addition to the big shows we already knew about. In June alone, Governors Ball comes to Flushing Meadows Corona Park, The Cure plays three nights at Madison Square Garden, and Dead & Company mount their final two-night stand at Citi Field.
As New York City marks the 50th anniversary of hip hop, some current rap artists say the city is failing to support newer music.
Artists involved with the style known as Brooklyn drill say even the most popular performers in the scene are having trouble finding opportunities to play live.
Reporter Andre Gee of Rolling Stone joined WNYC's Michael Hill to talk about the Brooklyn drill scene, the scrutiny it faces, and the challenges it must overcome as the music's popularity grows.
After dark in SoHo, a neighborhood newcomer calls attention to itself with glowing green light. It’s called the House of Cannabis, or THC–NYC. At a time when weed shops are budding up all over the city, this permanent space is about showing the plant, not selling it.
The five-floor establishment, which opened on April 7, includes 10 immersive exhibitions. Visitors can learn about marijuana's impact on pop culture, fashion and even wellness. One room shows the plant at different stages in its growing process. Another compels you to lie down on a spinning wheel, to be transported to another world while listening to weed-inspired music. (The plant’s distinctive aroma is restricted to only a select few spaces.)
The experience is intended not only to entertain, but also to educate. In a room called the Forum, five large screens play videos of people who ran into trouble because of drug possession. To bolster community, the House of Cannabis is providing employment to formerly incarcerated people through a partnership with A Second U Foundation. They’ll also have artists in residence every few months who will create work inspired by marijuana
The demands that unions for Rutgers University's striking faculty are making focus on their most vulnerable members — including graduate students who make $30,000 a year, and part-time lecturers with no long-term contracts.
Professor Joshua Freeman of the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies says that's a strong statement of solidarity among three separate unions, all supporting each other's demands. He says there's a growing trend of activism and labor organizing, significantly among young people and significantly among academics.
For years, he said, institutions of higher education have made heavy use of contingent labor, and paid those staffers poorly — and those in academia are seeing an avenue to push back.
During a rally at Rutgers University's New Brunswick campus Monday, professors and graduate workers crowded around speakers, chanted for better pay and job security.
But past faculty members holding signs and the dogs dressed in union shirts and red Rutgers collars, students were staging their own creative form of protest.
Criminal justice officials and researchers analyzing arrest data have identified a small group of repeat criminal defendants who, if properly monitored and supported with social services, may present an opportunity to reduce street crime in New York City.
The group represents a small portion of all of those charged with crimes over the last two years, but they stand out because they’re repeatedly arrested in short periods of time while also failing at high rates to show up to their court hearings. They also appear to be responsible for a disproportionately large percentage of alleged crimes. The debate over changing bail laws, which dominates the state legislature and has delayed approval of the state budget, is now turning to what should be done about these alleged recidivists.
Researchers and some city officials say providing them with comprehensive mental health, housing, and drug rehabilitation services could stop some of them from cycling through a clogged criminal justice system, and even improve public safety. Others, like Gov. Kathy Hochul, say judges should be granted extra discretion to impose bail on that group.
“It’s time to have a new debate,” said Aubrey Fox, executive director of the nonprofit New York City Criminal Justice Agency, which oversees Supervised Release programs for people charged with crimes. “Let’s stop solely focusing on whether bail reform is good or bad, and let’s be honest about the challenges we face. The current system is working well for most, but we need better ways of addressing this small group of people who are coming through the system repeatedly.”
A data dashboard published today by Fox’s nonprofit and shared in advance with Gothamist allows users to zero in on the repeat offenders who researchers say may be responsible for many crimes in the city. The dashboard shows how many people are arrested, and how often, each year. Of the more than 92,000 people arrested last year, it shows that 2,505 were arrested five or more times. Notably, the most serious charges that most people in that group faced were misdemeanors and non-violent felonies, which further indicates a population of people who might be helped with more robust social services rather than incarceration, researchers said.
To read the full story, go to Gothamist.com.
The pizza slice. It's baked into city lore. But pizza in New York is as diverse and multifaceted as the city itself. And nothing gets New Yorkers more heated than debating their favorite pizza spots. Robert Sietsema is the senior critic at Eater New York and before that, a long time restaurant critic at the Village Voice. He joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to talk about some of his favorite slices in New York City.
Last month, police in Paterson, New Jersey shot and killed Najee Seabrooks after a lengthy standoff. His death set off waves of protest in a community where many residents had already come to distrust the police because of a string of allegations and convictions around misconduct and excessive force.
And this past week, the state Attorney General's Office took control of the Paterson police department.
NJ Advance Media's Sean Sullivan reports on issues of police misconduct, corruption and accountability and joins us for a discussion about the takeover. Speaking with Weekend Edition host David Furst, Sean says residents are "guardedly optimistic." He says, "This isn't the first time that folks in Paterson have seen an outside agency come in and offer claims that they are going to fix things."
Bruce Springsteen is back in the area for a series of concerts. WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith joins Weekend Edition host David Furst with the lowdown on the upcoming Bruce shows and his latest arts highlights.
Steve's picks:
- The Association of International Photography Art Dealers "Photography Show"
It's a great weekend for shutterbugs and photo aficionados. The Association of International Photography Art Dealers is hosting its 42nd annual "Photography Show" this weekend. The organizers say it's the longest-running exhibition dedicated to the photographic medium in the country — it includes 44 exhibitors showing a mix of contemporary and vintage work, video and media art. That's open through Sunday, April 2 at Center 415 in midtown.
- Even more photographyNewly opened at the Bronx Documentary Center is "Everyday Bronx," an exhibition based on a popular Instagram feed of crowd-sourced images provided by professional and amateurs alike — the idea is to overturn misconceptions about the uptown borough. That show runs through May 14.
And the Museum of the City of New York has a major show called "New York Now: Home," the first installment of what's envisioned as a triennial of local photography. As the title implies, the show focuses on how New York City represents "home" to a wide variety of photographers. Big names like Jamel Shabazz and Richard Renaldi are featured, but so are wonderful images by lesser known and emerging talents. "New York Now: Home" is up through August 27 so there's no hurry — but it's a great way to spend an afternoon.
- Bruce is back in town
Bruce Springsteen is in the New York City area for several shows, but his latest tour hasn't been without controversy. WNYC reporter Ben Yakas talked this over extensively with Kerry Nolan on "All of It" earlier in March, and listeners can find that conversation here. Basically, fans of New Jersey's everyman rocker were upset to see ticket prices for his current tour skyrocket. Loads of fans swore off this tour, in anger or sorrow. But as each concert arrives, prices have tended to settle somewhat among "secondary-market vendors," and true fans are going to get in.
Springsteen and the E Street Band are playing Saturday, April 1 at Madison Square Garden, and on Monday, April 3 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. They'll be back April 9th and 11th at Belmont Park, and at the Prudential Center in Newark on April 14th. They're going to summer in Europe, and then swing back to Metlife Stadium in New Jersey in late August.
So is this the end of the road for Springsteen? There's not necessarily any reason to think so. But, on the other hand, he turned 74 last September, and performing full-tilt concerts lasting three hours or more is probably a finite resource.
Experts like Ben have pointed out that the setlist isn't changing very much from one night to the next, which is somewhat unusual for this artist and band — some have said that's also to accommodate the possible need for substitute players if band members get hit by COVID, as several already have.
But I'm inclined to think it's meaningful that Springsteen has been opening every show with the song "No Surrender," which includes this line: "We swore blood brothers against the wind / I'm ready to grow young again." I'll be honest: that sentiment gives me a genuine thrill.
Making a reservation for a special occasion has always been part of New York City's culture. If you wanted to splurge at one of the top restaurants, you had to plan well in advance.
But something changed during the pandemic. It's gotten even harder to access those exclusive locations. And customers are finding they need reservations for some of the more casual spots as well, including the trendier bars and neighborhood hangouts. Luke Fortney, a reporter with Eater New York joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to discuss.
New York City has long been considered a writers’ town, attracting aspiring authors from all over the world. WNYC’s Amy Pearl visited the Bronx Library Center, where librarian Belarmino Ortega has started a writer's club for teens.
12 Catholic schools in New York City will close at the end of the academic year. The Archdiocese of New York says it will shutter the schools due to low enrollment. The closures come as the Church attempts to navigate low attendance at Sunday Mass, the continuing fallout from the Child Victims Act and Cardinal Dolan inching up against the Vatican's mandatory retirement age. Reporter Rocco Palmo covers the Catholic Church on his website Whispers in the Loggia. He joined WNYC's Sean Carlson to discuss the New York Archdiocese at a particularly challenging time in its history.
A panicked run on withdrawals at New York-based Signature Bank helped lead to the institution’s government takeover Sunday night, but state and federal leaders are urging customers — at Signature and other institutions — to remain calm.
President Joe Biden and Gov. Kathy Hochul delivered separate public statements Monday morning, seeking to calm fears a day after Signature became the next domino to fall in the wake of Friday’s collapse of California-based Silicon Valley Bank, or SVB.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
The free use of public sidewalks and streets by restaurants during the pandemic is about to come to an end as New York City lawmakers work to finalize a highly anticipated bill that will make outdoor dining permanent and transform the landscape of the city.
But the question is at what cost?
As part of the legislation, the City Council is expected to address the issue of how much restaurants should pay to use sidewalks and streets. The regulation could price city sidewalks and streets in the tens of thousands of dollars, adding another revenue generator for the city. It also comes as other cities, including Boston and Los Angeles, face backlash from restaurant owners over fees.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
The new play “War Dreamer” is taking the stage this month at The Wild Project in Manhattan. But it first found its footing inside a Brooklyn apartment known as the Loading Dock Theater, taking its audience from a living room to a Humvee in Iraq.
The play centers on a United States veteran who’s returned from Iraq and is struggling with war trauma, ultimately spiraling into paranoia and conspiracy theories. It was the brainchild of Steven Gridley, who wrote and workshopped the play during the pandemic with his partner and star of the show, Erin Treadway. It found its voice on the fully designed set in their own Downtown Brooklyn apartment.
From the moment Treadway took the stage during a mid-February rehearsal, the kitchen at stage left seemed to fade as the theatrical lighting shone on stage. The living room and bedroom, located through a doorway behind the audience, suddenly seemed miles away.
On the stage, two halves of a tire emerged from the ground along with a metal frame seat and a single headlight. A gas pump was attached to the right of the frame — along with a lampshade, and a rug on the floor between the seat and the front tire.
“It’s sort of all here,” said Gridley, who also goes by the pen name Leegrid Stevens. “I love the kitchen area because it's just there waiting for you when you're done. We put snacks out and drinks and people like to hang out and chat about the show afterwards.”
Treadway and Gridley, who both have day jobs working in finance, have been building out theaters in their living spaces for years. The idea first came to them a decade ago when the church that was letting Treadway use its basement for a show kicked her out a week before load-in.
“We ended up moving all our furniture to the side in our tiny studio and just putting the whole set up there and rehearsing there,” Treadway said. “And we were like, ‘You know what? I think we could kind of do this. What if we just keep the furniture pushed away and we make it a rehearsal space and we just do this here?’”
Eventually they built out a theater inside a studio apartment, complete with a grid for lighting equipment and risers for seating. That’s where Gridley put on his stage adaptation of “Miss Julie.”
“The stage manager and I called the show from our bed,” Gridley said.
Their current apartment — a large, windowless box of a room with a corner kitchen, a small living area and an attached bedroom — eventually became available. It was a blank canvas – their most elaborate yet.
José A. Alvarado Jr. for GothamistSome artists might prefer separation from their work, but Gridley and Treadway said having access to their craft at a moment’s notice has been key to their process.
On a recent Monday morning, Gridley said he woke up inspired.
“I was like, ‘Erin, what if you did this for this one scene?’ And she was like, ‘Can I wake up first and have some coffee before we start rehearsing?’” Gridley said. “I was like, ‘Well, oh yes, yes, let's have coffee, but just this one little moment, can we work on this?’ She's like, ‘Okay, fine. Alright.’ And so we rehearsed this one little moment at like 8 a.m.”
The dedication beamed through with each rehearsal. The lighting changed with each scene — yellow for when the main character experiences a flashback to Iraq and a shade of purple when she’s home. Music and strange, unsettling noises blared during intense war memories.
These subtle details were the result of having access to a stage complete with lighting and sound design equipment throughout the writing and workshopping process. And they were able to workshop those ideas in front of a crowd, thanks to Gridley and Treadway building three rows of raised audience seating into the space.
Brooklyn-based playwright Andres Osorio said he first found out about the space when he went there to watch a play.
“I had no idea what I was walking into,” he said. “When I pulled up to an apartment building, I was like, what is this? This cannot be the right spot.”
He continued, “I think I had to buzz some apartment number, and I walked through the door and saw this great living room with a whole decked out theater and I thought it was so cool.”
Knowing how difficult it is to find space in New York, Gridley and Treadway said they allow other playwrights access to their setup for free. They’ve hosted reading series of other works and they’re also one of the venues that hosts the Exponential Festival, a monthlong festival dedicated to emerging artists working in experimental performance.
“They found a way to not rely on the invitation of institutions to facilitate their creative process,” said Theresa Buchheister, who runs the Exponential Festival as well as The Brick, an innovative theater incubator in Williamsburg.
Buchheister is no stranger to operating underground and DIY spaces – they’ve been involved in the scene for years.
“The access point is incredibly elitist to start a space,” she said. “I think it's impossible to have a fully legal space in New York.”
They added, “If you try to go about it in a 100% legal way, then you're gonna be stuck in construction and zoning hell for years and probably hemorrhage any sort of reserve of funding that you had.”
After seeing the Loading Dock’s theater, Osorio reached out about doing a reading series at the space that included his own play. Gridley and Treadway obliged.
“It was a really nice, intimate feeling,” Osorio said. “It was really important to put it up in front of an audience to see what jokes land, what do people get, what do they not get.”
Osorio said he had never presented his play – which was developed during the pandemic era of Zoom theater – in front of a live audience.
“We’re taught that theater can happen anywhere and for very little money, but the reality in New York City is that it's actually very hard to put stuff up,” Osorio said. “And at this stage in my career, it was extremely helpful to find a space that is free.”
With Gridley’s encouragement, Osorio submitted his play, “Erastes,” about the power dynamics in gay relationships between older and younger men, to local festivals. It will run in the Fresh Fruit Festival in May.
“[One thing] I'm super excited about being able to offer to other people is for them to be able to se their play, not in just a wooden room with chairs around with everybody lit, but focused with theatrical lighting on the actor,” Gridley said. “It's [got] good sound and you can have some effects in things like that. I think it really helps playwrights.”
Around 14,600 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City since the spring, putting them at the center of a national controversy over immigration and human rights. WNYC’s Arun Venugopal has this story about one group of asylum seekers, and their path forward.
This past week saw the start of spring training for the Mets and Yankees down in Florida. And here in New York, a "preseason" of sorts is underway in the world of city politics.
It's the first week of signature gathering as City Council candidates work to secure a spot on the ballot for the June 27th primary. All 51 Council seats are up for election after new district lines were drawn last year.
WNYC's senior politics reporter, Brigid Bergin joins Weekend Edition host David Furst with the latest.
The state health department is investigating a Mount Sinai doctor in connection with the death of an infant in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit during the nurses strike in January. WNYC reporter Bahar Ostadan has been reporting on the case and recently spoke with the baby’s parents.
Mayor Eric Adams on Friday announced a tentative deal with District Council 37, the city’s largest municipal union, that would grant its members roughly 3% annual raises over five years, bonuses, and a plan to allow some city employees the option to work remotely as early as this summer.
“I have made no secret that I am a blue-collar mayor,” Adams said during a news conference in City Hall.
He began by speaking about his late mother, who had been a member of DC37 as a food service worker, as well as his own experience as an NYPD police officer.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
In his first major labor negotiation as mayor, Eric Adams agreed to allow remote work for some city workers, a concession that recognizes the new realities of the workplace. But the precedent could prove to be costly as other unions eye additional compensation for employees who cannot work from home.
A tentative contract agreement reached this month with District Council 37, New York City’s largest municipal workers union, includes a pilot program for flexible schedules to begin by June 1, which others may try to replicate or use as a bargaining chip.
“This is potentially a source of tension within the unions as well as between them,” said Joshua Freeman, a labor historian at CUNY. “Is there some compensation that those workers who can't work remotely will get? That’s a little unclear.”
Read more on Gothamist.com.
It's increasingly rare to find areas of bipartisan agreement in Albany these days. But there's at least one thing some Republicans and Democrats can agree on: restoring the "Tappan Zee" name to the Hudson River crossing that's officially called the "Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge."
A Democratic state senator from the Hudson Valley is now the lead sponsor of a bill to rename the bridge and he says he wants to get it done before the end of the current legislative session in June. WNYC Albany reporter Jon Campbell spoke about the bill and how much momentum there is in seeing the bill through.
The Lehrer Prize recognizes a standout idea, individual, or organization that has contributed meaningfully to improving the quality of life in New York City and the surrounding region. Community well-being is a phrase drawn from the public health arena that takes into account the combination of social, economic, environmental, cultural, and political conditions that affect people in a particular community.
This year's theme: People and organizations who work in and around schools making an impact on the social and emotional well-being of the children in our area.
Nominate:Do you know someone who does this work and makes a difference? They can be a teacher, a parent, a therapist, someone part of an organization, or anyone else doing the important work of keeping kids mentally, socially and emotionally healthy. Make your nomination here and we will select 3 honorees.
About the Lehrer Prize:The award is named after WNYC’s Peabody Award-winning host Brian Lehrer, whose daily call-in show aims to build community by bringing listeners together with elected officials, community leaders, policy-makers, journalists, and each other to convene conversations about the issues affecting our city, our nation, and our lives. Founded to commemorate Brian Lehrer’s 30th anniversary on-air at WNYC, The Lehrer Prize recognizes a standout idea, person, group, or effort that has contributed meaningfully to life in New York City and the surrounding areas over the past year. Each honoree receives $2,500 to continue their organization's outstanding work.
Listen to the awarding of last year's Lehrer Prize, which honored the "vaccine heroes" who helped expand community access to COVID-19 immunizations.
This past week saw Mayor Eric Adams in Albany for "Tin Cup Day." David Cruz, WNYC's People & Power editor joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to discuss his reception.
Tin Cup Day is when mayors from across New York come before state lawmakers to ask for money on behalf of the municipality they represent. The term is somewhat tongue-in-cheek – picture a mayor coming to Albany with a tin cup, tapping it as they're asking for more money while outlining non-fiscal priorities. In this case, that bag of money is Governor Kathy Hochul's $227-billion budget plan she presented last month.
NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand isn’t on the ballot until 2024, but she’s already launched her re-election campaign. WNYC’s Brigid Bergin sat down with her for a wide-ranging conversation last week and joined Morning Edition's Michael Hill to talk about the highlights. Gillibrand touted her achievements and offered a hawkish view of US-China relations.
For most of her 74 years, Ruth Ann Hills took a certain innocent pride in her family’s story and its place in Staten Island history.
Generations of her family had resided in Mariners Harbor on the island’s North Shore. She and her brother David Thomas live in the house their grandfather built on Van Pelt Avenue. They had found Black ancestors on Staten Island as far back as the 1700s, and incredibly they had all eluded slavery.
Or so Hills thought.
WNYC Senior Reporter Arun Venugopal of the Race and Justice Unit has the story.
New York City is an urban zoo — with pigeons, rodents of all varieties, even hawks. The NYC Parks Department reminds you: please don’t feed the animals. WNYC’s Amy Pearl met a guy who can’t resist.
Edited by Jenny Lawton. Mixed by Liora Noam-Kravitz.
The new truck depot is serving a sort of stalemate in a battle over a once empty lot between a developer and a city council member.
Bruce Teitelbaum is the developer who wanted to re-zone the lot to turn it into a multi million dollar housing complex with some apartments at a below market rental rate. But the neighborhood's council member, Kristin Richardson Johnson said the plan lacked enough below-market-rate housing and she blocked the development.
In the meantime, the developer has turned the lot into a truck depot, spurring concerns about noise and fumes.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons covered the story for the New York Times and joined Michael Hill to talk trucks.
It's Lunar New Year season in New York City and there are plenty of events going on, including concerts, dining, and more. WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith is going to focus our attention on one such event happening in Queens today. Speaking with Weekend Edition host David Furst, he brings us his latest picks:
- "This is Home" at Flushing Town Hall
Photography exhibit "This is Home" showcase stories of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community in New York City and abroad: "how they live, work, love, and when needed, stand up for what they believe." The show features works by Janice Chung, a Korean-American artist based in Flushing, and two other New York-based artists, Cindy Trinh and An Rong Xu. The show opens Saturday, Jan. 21 and runs through February 26.
And while you're in Flushing, if the weather cooperates, you can pay a visit to the Queens Botanical Garden, where events celebrating the Year of the Rabbit are happening through next Saturday.
- Claire Chase at Carnegie Hall
Starting Saturday, Jan. 21, the brilliant flutist Claire Chase is appearing at Zankel Hall, the underground performance space accessible on Seventh Avenue just around the corner from the main Carnegie Hall entrance.
Chase is a dazzling performer, but she's also a groundbreaking leader, teacher, and advocate. On Jan. 21, she's honoring the 90th birthday of one of her own heroes, Pauline Oliveros, an experimental-music icon and teacher who died in 2016 — and in doing so, Chase is going to enlist audience members to participate in a "Tuning Meditation."
Oliveros was all about listening closely: to ourselves, to one another, and to our surroundings. That will be a part of the concert, and it'll also be part of two more public programs: on Sunday, Jan 22, a session at 10:30 a.m. is aimed especially at families with very small children, and another at 2 p.m. is for general audiences. All of these performances invite genuine participation — they're not only concerts, but also really hands-on engagement with new music. And they're the start of a broader residency exploring many facets of Claire Chase's ongoing creative mission.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul used her second State of the State address to lay out a wide-ranging agenda for the coming year -- tackling everything from a housing plan to changing the state's bail laws.
But it comes as her relationship with the state Legislature is at something of a low point, with the Democratic Senate threatening to block her pick for chief judge.
WNYC's Albany reporter Jon Campbell was in the Assembly chamber for Hochul's speech. He joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to discuss her proposals.
There are always so many arts events happening in New York City, it's impossible to take it all in. But WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor, Steve Smith is always game for another try. He joins Weekend Edition host David Furst for a preview of some noteworthy upcoming events.
- The New York Jewish Film Festival
The New York Jewish Film Festival is underway at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, jointly presented by the Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center. As always, the festival covers a broad range of topics and concerns, with a special emphasis on films relating to Ukraine. But there's another film that stands out in this year's slate: "This is National Wake."
The film tells the amazing story of the South African band, National Wake, a group of young Jewish and Black musicians who dared to start a band against the rupture and racism of South Africa's apartheid regime. "This is National Wake" is the feature-length directorial debut of journalist Mirissa Neff, and it's filled with Super 8 films of performances, rehearsals and everyday life under apartheid, among a rebellious band whose members dared to resist. It's screening Saturday night, Jan. 14, at 9:15. The festival continues through January 23.
- globalFEST
On Sunday, Jan. 15, globalFEST returns for its 20th anniversary -- and this year's event is emblematic of how this once grassroots initiative has grown into one of the music world's premier showcases for sounds from around the planet. This event used to take place on three stages inside Webster Hall -- now, this year, it's taking over Lincoln Center's beautifully refurbished David Geffen Hall, which also offers three spaces for a continuous flow of music.
This year's lineup is characteristically diverse and appealing. Dengue Fever is a California band inspired by the Cambodian pop sounds that nearly disappeared when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia during the late '70s. Other performers include the New York Arabic Orchestra, flamenco singer Maria José Llergo, Tamasheq desert-blues group Tamikrest, and Mexican garage punk band Son Rompe Pera. You can see a complete line-up at globalFEST.
- MLK - Blueprint for the Culture
There are celebrations and commemorations all over town connected with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but we definitely want to tell everyone about a program WNYC is presenting with the Apollo Theater. This 17th annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration is called "MLK–Blueprint for the Culture," and it's happening Sunday, Jan. 15 at 3 p.m. Notes from America host Kai Wright hosts the first hour, featuring conversation with activist Chelsea Miller. Then WQXR's Terrance McKnight hosts the second half of the program, featuring music with the Harlem Chamber Players and other guests. The show is SOLD OUT, but you can watch it streaming LIVE at 3 o'clock tomorrow on WNYC.
Friday, Jan. 6 marked the second anniversary of the storming of the US capitol building. Here at New York Public Radio, one of our own employees had a very personal connection to that event. Jordan Walthour was a contractor working with the Capitol Police at the time. And while he wasn’t in the capitol building, and wasn’t part of that agency's security response to the rioters, he still saw things that day he will never forget.
Traditionally, December is the month when arts organizations wheel out their crowd-pleasing favorites - from "A Christmas Carol" to "The Nutcracker" to Handel's "Messiah." But things change in January. What used to be a quiet stretch before the spring season has become a bonanza for audiences who crave adventure. WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to explain.
- Under the Radar
January used to feel like a dull, dark break in the performing arts calendar - kind of a gap between fall and spring offerings as the echoes of holiday programming faded into memory. But within the last two decades, New York impresarios have filled that annual gap with some of the most ambitious events of any given year – ideally timed to coincide with the annual Association of Performing Arts Professionals conference, where presenters from across the country come to New York City to talk shop and shore up their own future seasons. And one of those events is the theater festival Under the Radar.
It was founded in 2005 by Mark Russell, and it brings to town adventurous theater and performance-art companies from all over the world. After two years of inactivity prompted by the pandemic, the festival returns to in-person performances this year at the Public Theater and a fistful of partner venues. Some of the hottest buzz surrounds an acclaimed Royal Court Theatre production of Jasmine Lee-Jones's provocatively titled "seven methods of killing kylie jenner." But in a conversation with Gothamist in November, Russell urged would-be audience members not to miss "Are we not drawn onward to new erA," a palindromic paean to a challenged planet, and "Moby Dick," a condensation of the Melville novel populated by puppet actors and an oversize whale. The festival runs through Jan. 22, and you can find a complete schedule at The Public Theater.
- Prototype Festival
If you still think of opera as a fusty old art form mired in oversize stages populated with singers in horned helmets, you haven't experienced Prototype. The youngest of New York City's cutting-edge affairs was established jointly by Beth Morrison Projects and downtown arts center HERE in 2013. In no time at all, the upstart fest cemented a reputation for brave, audacious operas and music theater works spanning the broadest conceivable range of subject matter: history, mystery, Grand Guignol, camp horror, the Book of Revelation and so on.
This year's hot ticket is "In Our Daughter’s Eyes," a one-man vehicle for baritone Nathan Gunn composed by Du Yun whose Pulitzer Prize-winning "Angel's Bone" was a Prototype affair. But don't overlook promising offerings by Gelsey Bell, Silvana Estrada and Emma O'Halloran. The festival runs through Jan. 15; learn more at Prototype Festival.
- New Standards at City Winery
The drummer, composer, bandleader and educator Terri Lyne Carrington has played a major role in fighting for gender equity in jazz, a notoriously male-centric art form. Last fall saw the release of a book titled "New Standards," which includes lead sheets for 101 jazz compositions written by women: Alice Coltrane, Abbey Lincoln, Carla Bley, Maria Schneider and so many more. An album called "New Standards, Vol. 1" followed soon after, with a superstar band interpreting some of the material from the songbook.
Now, a concert at City Winery on Thursday, Jan. 12, showcases the book, the album and, most importantly, the players: Carrington will be joined by major figures like Michele Rosewoman, Linda May Han Oh and Kris Davis. It's also one of the kick-off events for this year's Winter Jazzfest, a citywide celebration that runs through Jan. 18 – find out more at Winter Jazzfest.
With little public attention, New York City has reversed how it polices prostitution, going from 20,000 annual arrests in 1985 to barely more than 100 this year.
The plunge in arrests, gradual over the last decade, accelerated last year with decisions by borough district attorneys to stop prosecuting sex workers and dismiss thousands of open cases against those charged with selling sex.
Those policy decisions coincided with the implementation of two state laws that altered how law enforcement approaches sex work: One ended the ability of police officers to arrest people suspected of loitering for the purpose of prostitution, and another permitted the erasure of old prostitution-related convictions. Supporters of those changes argued enforcement of prostitution laws had long disproportionately affected transgender people and people of color.
Statistics compiled by Gothamist show just how stark the shift has been. As of mid-December, 115 people had been arrested this year for prostitution-related offenses across the five boroughs, according to the an NYPD spokesperson said. In 1985, a peak year for New York City’s vice crackdowns, cops made 19,991 prostitution-related arrests, according to FBI data.
To read the rest of this story, go to Gothamist.com.
Neighbors and activists say a $10.7 billion plan to widen the New Jersey Turnpike extension in North Jersey and replace the Newark Bay Bridge will worsen pollution, draw more cars and push traffic into already overburdened neighborhoods on both sides of the Holland Tunnel.
Each month, WNYC teams up with the nonprofit organization, Street Lab, to collect stories from New York City's diverse communities. Here are a few of the voices we heard during a recent visit to the Fordham neighborhood of the Bronx.
A new map has been released to promote an Edward Hopper show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
The pins on the map all represent places painted by the artist. They are often documents of New York City history and a nostalgic city life—he largely ignored new or fancy buildings. The present-day photos that accompany the paintings show a deeply changed skyline, with skyscrapers towering over or even replacing Hopper's chosen landmarks. Exhibit curator Kim Conaty tells WNYC, the paintings reveal Hopper's dislike of gentrification.
"Edward Hopper's New York" is on view at the Whitney through March 5, 2023.
The recent robberies and deaths of two men who police say may have been drugged while at gay bars in Manhattan has sparked wider fears in the community and a renewed conversation over other, similar incidents.
Many fear the incidents may be part of a larger pattern targeting gay men. And the attacks come at a moment queer communities are facing increased violence and threats.
City Councilmember Erik Bottcher represents Hell's Kitchen, Chelsea and the West Village. He spoke with WNYC's Morning Edition host Michael Hill.
There are always so many arts events happening in New York City and around the region, it can be almost overwhelming. But WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor, Steve Smith is here to help. Joined by Weekend Edition host David Furst, he's back with his latest picks.
- no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria (at the Whitney Museum of American Art)
Now that we're into December, hurricane season might feel like a distant memory – actually, the season just ended on November 30. Here in New York, we marked the 10th anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, which wreaked havoc in the city and surrounding area in October 2012. When Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico in September of this year, it was a stark reminder of the damage done five years ago, when hurricanes Irma and Maria made landfall just two weeks apart.
The lasting impact of Maria in particular – and the austerity measures, political turmoil, earthquakes, and pandemic complications that followed – are the subject of a powerful new show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. "no existe un mundo poshuricán" – "There is no post-hurricane world."
It includes works by 20 artists from the island and the diaspora, organized into thematic groups concerning infrastructure, tourism, grieving, ecology, and protest. Much of the work is dark, understandably, evoking anger, grief, determination, and resilience – a perfect illustration of how art reflects and amplifies the basic concerns of life. The show is on view through next April, and the museum is hosting a variety of tours and talks designed to amplify the show's themes.
- Nicholas Phan - Music from Copland House: These Strangers
Our music pick this week is from Ed Yim, vice president and chief content officer of our classical music sister station, WQXR. Ed is directing our attention toward a brilliant singer named Nicholas Phan, who's presenting a very special concert on Monday, Dec. 5, at the CUNY Graduate Center in midtown Manhattan.
Phan will be singing a composition written by Jake Heggie, "These Strangers." That's also the name of the program, which is devoted to American music based on themes of journeys and migrations. Other composers whose music is featured in the concert are Florence Price, Ruth Crawford-Seeger, and Missy Mazzoli.
The program is presented by Music from Copland House, a terrific program run by the artists retreat now located at the former home of the great American composer Aaron Copland, around an hour north of New York City. But you don’t have to travel that far to hear Nicholas Phan sing on Monday night – the concert is in Elebash Recital Hall at the CUNY Graduate Center, on Fifth Avenue just above 34th Street, and you can register for free tickets at Copland House.
- "In the Court of the Crimson King"
Steve Smith will be hosting a screening of "In the Court of the Crimson King," the acclaimed new documentary about the band King Crimson, that will also feature a discussion with long-time bassist, Tony Levin.
The screening is happening on Tuesday, Dec. 6, at the Metrograph, at 7 Ludlow Street. The film starts at 7 and the Q&A follows.
This week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams introduced 11 proposals to change the state's mental-hygiene law, and he's asking the Legislature to back him up. It's all part of Adams' plan to involuntarily remove severely mentally ill people from the streets and transport them to hospitals for an evaluation.
WNYC's Albany reporter Jon Campbell joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to look at the proposals and reaction from state lawmakers.
Food brings people together -- whether on a holiday, like Thanksgiving, or a regular family supper. We set out to hear from people across New York City about the memories that come with certain family recipes. Lisa Gross of Kensington, Brooklyn shared a recipe from her Korean grandmother that she says, as a kid, was both "terrifying" and "amazing" to watch prepared.
Gross said her grandmother was the inspiration for her business, the League of Kitchens. It's a cooking school where participants learn recipes from immigrant home cooks. You can find a recipe for ganjang-gejang, similar to Gross's grandmother's, here.
Renee Dizon didn’t set out to build a way of life for Filipinos in Queens. But three decades after she and her husband established a modest restaurant in Woodside, that is what it has become. . Before Jeepney and Maharlika, before Lumpia Shack and Instagram-famous ube pastries, there was Renee’s Kitchenette and Grill.
What Dizon and her family have built for the local Filipino community is something of a rarely celebrated success story amid fits and starts for the cuisine, as restaurateurs try to deepen its notches within the most brutal and unforgiving culinary landscape in the United States: New York City.
Filipino dining in the five boroughs has become more visible since food writers provided the earliest whiffs of recognition in the 1980s. Breakthroughs in more recent years have included a thriving pop-up scene and the increased prominence of traditional practices. But the cuisine’s biggest gains have formed a counterpoint with the closures of coveted former success stories in Manhattan, as well as fresher fusion ventures that failed to attract stable business.
For three Sundays in December the city is closing 11 blocks in midtown on Fifth Avenue to traffic. WNYC’s Stephen Nessen reports it’s an Open Streets holiday edition.
Just like the Open Streets over the summer, the city is closing the streets from 48th to 57th Streets on Fifth Avenue to vehicles. The area around Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall will have extra space for pedestrians as well, as the city will remove a lane of traffic to make room for the high number of expected visitors.
These are some of the busiest times of year in midtown, driving in is not recommended. But catching a bus during Open Streets may be tricky. All crosstown buses will be rerouted and on Fifth Avenue buses will skip stops between 48th and 52nd Streets.
The Open Streets will run from noon to 6 p.m. until December 18th.
We all have stories to tell. Stories about people or places that inspire us -- stories of frustration and loss -- stories of people making a difference in our neighborhoods. WNYC is collaborating with the nonprofit, Street Lab, to highlight stories from our diverse communities. Here's some of what we heard in Jackson Heights, Queens.
For many of us, food is at the center off it all. It's what brings family and friends together, especially during the holiday season. We asked a few New Yorkers to dig through their recipes and share something special.
Nawida Saidhosin of Rego Park, Queens shared a recipe for Afghan Mantu.
Saidhosin is a cooking instructor with the League of Kitchens. You'll find her recipe for Mantu with Tomato-Chana Dal Sauce below:
MANTU WITH TOMATO-CHANA DAL SAUCE (Dumplings Filled with Meat and Onions)
Recipe courtesy Nawida Saidhosin and the League of Kitchens
Often served as an appetizer, these traditional Uzbek dumplings are filled with seasoned ground beef and onions, topped with a chunky lentil-tomato sauce, and drizzled with yogurt. Store-bought wonton wrappers can be used in place of the homemade dough. Serve with a refreshing assortment of whole raw scallions, tomato wedges, radishes, lemon slices, and sliced Persian cucumbers on a bed of lettuce and sprinkled with cilantro.
Dough:
1 pound (4 cups) all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling (spooned into cup and leveled)
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon corn oil 1 large egg
About 3/4 cup water
Filling:
A generous 1/3 cup corn oil
1 pound very lean ground beef
1 tablespoon freshly ground coriander
1 1/4 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon red chili powder
1/2 teaspoon turmeric 3 cloves garlic, pressed
1 3/4 pounds medium yellow onions, cut into large dice (about 5 cups)
1 1/2 teaspoons fine salt
Tomato-Chana Dal Sauce:
1/2 cup yellow split peas (chana dal), rinsed, soaked for 30 minutes 3 cloves garlic 2 medium vine-ripe tomatoes
3/4 cup corn oil
1 teaspoon freshly ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon red chili powder, plus more for sprinkling
1/2 teaspoon turmeric Heaping
1/2 teaspoon fine salt 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Yogurt Sauce:
1/2 cup whole milk yogurt (not Greek)
1 to 2 cloves garlic, pressed
1/8 teaspoon fine salt
1 1/2 tablespoons water, plus more as needed
Dried mint, for sprinkling
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves, for garnish
Special Equipment: pasta roller, single or double steamer basket
For the dough: Add the flour, salt, baking soda, oil, and egg to a large mixing bowl. Mix with your hands, and then slowly add the water in stages, while mixing, until the dough comes together and picks up all the flour in the bowl. If the dough feels a little too sticky, sprinkle in a little more flour, or if it feels too dry, sprinkle in a little more water. Knead the dough in the bowl, using the top of your knuckles and flattening the dough into the bowl, and flipping and turning the dough, until it becomes uniformly smooth and soft and is no longer sticky. This could take 20 minutes.
When the dough is smooth, break into about 4-ounce pieces, roll into a ball, and then flatten into an oblong shape. Lay the shapes along the side of the bowl, cover with plastic, and let rest for 30 to 40 minutes.
For the filling: Heat the oil in a Dutch oven or large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the beef and quickly stir with a flat metal spatula to break up the pieces, flattening the meat into the pan and turning it over on itself. Cook, stirring and turning frequently, until all the liquid is gone and the meat is browned and dry, for 10 to 12 minutes. Sprinkle in the coriander, black pepper, red chili powder, turmeric, and garlic. Add the onions, and then stir continually to prevent the onions from letting off too much of their liquid. Adjust the heat as necessary to keep the pan hot but not let the meat burn to the bottom (some browned bits are ok). Continue stirring until the onions become soft and translucent and the mixture is dry, about 15 minutes. Add the salt and stir to combine. Transfer to a baking sheet or platter to cool. The filling can be made a day ahead, covered, and stored in the refrigerator.
To roll the dumpling dough: One at a time, flour each piece of dough and pat or roll into a 3-inch-wide piece. Keep the dough covered with plastic as you work. Dust both sides again with flour, and then feed through a pasta machine at the thickest setting. Dust liberally again, change the setting to two thinner, and feed through again. Dust one more time, change the setting to two thinner, and feed through one last time. At this point, you should be able to see your fingers through the dough; it will be about 1/16 th of an inch. Lay the strip out, cut the rounded tip off, and then cut into squares about 4 by 4 inches. Put a heaping tablespoon of the filling in the center of each square. With a straight side toward you, bring the upper left corner and the lower right corner together and pinch lightly. Then do the same for the two remaining corners. Put the fold that is at 6 o’clock between your left thumb and finger, and the fold at 3 o’clock between your right thumb and finger. Bring your hands together to meet in the middle, and press the dough to seal. Repeat with the other side. Brush a single or double metal steamer with a little oil. (You will need to steam in batches if using a single.) Arrange the dumplings in the steamer; it’s ok if they are close together. When the basket is full, cover, and steam over medium to medium-high heat until they are translucent and don't stick to the pan, about 45 minutes.
For the tomato-split pea sauce: Cover the split peas with 1 inch of water and bring to a boil over high heat. Then reduce the heat to low and simmer until soft, about 30 minutes, adding more water as needed. Puree the garlic and tomatoes in a food processor. Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. When hot, add the tomato puree; it will sizzle and bubble. Continue to simmer until all the water is gone, leaving just the tomato and oil, about 10 minutes. Add the split peas to the tomato sauce, along with the coriander, red chili powder, turmeric, salt, and black pepper. Cook another 3 minutes to combine the flavors.
For the yogurt sauce: Mix the yogurt, garlic, salt, and water (adding more if necessary) to make a pourable but not runny consistency. Spread some of the yogurt sauce on a serving platter. Arrange the dumplings on top. Drizzle with more yogurt sauce. Pour the tomato-split pea sauce over top. Sprinkle with the mint in a spoke pattern, and the red chile powder in between the mint. Scatter the cilantro all over.
Makes 10 to 12 servings (about 60 dumplings)
Prep: 1 hour 45 minutes, plus 30 minutes soaking and 30 minutes resting times
Cook: 1 hour 15 minutes
Food brings people together -- whether on a holiday, like Thanksgiving, or a regular family supper. We set out to hear from people across New York City about the memories that come with certain family recipes. Lisa Gross of Kensington, Brooklyn shared a recipe from her Korean grandmother that she says was both "terrifying" and "amazing" to watch prepared.
Gross said her grandmother was the inspiration for her business, the League of Kitchens. It's a cooking school where participants learn recipes from immigrant home cooks. You can find a recipe for ganjang-gejang, similar to Gross's grandmother's, here.
New Jersey is the latest state to sue some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, alleging they deceived the public for decades about the role fossil fuels play in exacerbating human-caused climate change and cost New Jerseyans billions of dollars in cleanup after deadly storms like Hurricane Sandy.
The lawsuit, filed in New Jersey Superior Court in October, claims Exxon Mobil, Shell Oil, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and the American Petroleum Institute trade group – of which all the companies are members — violated the state’s Consumer Fraud Act through disinformation campaigns that began in the 1980s.
“We know this is a tough fight,” New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said. “I don't think the oil and gas companies that we're suing are going to lie down and say they're agreeing with us, but we're prepared to bring the fight on behalf of the residents of the state.”
New Jersey follows nearly two dozen other states, counties and cities across the country that have brought similar complaints against the fossil fuel industry in recent years. But none of these cases have been resolved yet, raising questions about how a legal team proves who’s at fault for a calamity as large as climate change.
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As people fret over the potential demise of Twitter, the Long Island town of Lynbrook is thinking bigger.
The Nassau County village laid out a contingency plan earlier this year in case the internet ever goes out for months.
The 11-page document, adopted in September and first reported on by Government Technology, lists analog replacements for government operations typically conducted online, like filing building permits, running payroll and dispatching emergency responders.
New Yorkers are no strangers to service interruptions at the hands of their internet service providers — caused in part by networks and cloud computing moving through fewer companies. Local governments have also been plagued by ransomware attacks that cut them off from their computers and bring vital operations to a screeching halt.
A monthslong outage is much less likely than these short-term interruptions — but the Lynbrook officials who drafted the report want to be prepared, citing solar storms and terrorist attacks as possible long-term threats to connectivity. New York City, too, has a plan in place, officials said, although it’s not clear how long the Big Apple could go on without the internet.
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Cellist Seth Parker Woods first presented an early version of his semi-autobiographical program “Difficult Grace” in February 2020, just prior to the collective isolation of Covid shutdowns. Despite the restricted movement that ensued in the early pandemic, he continued to zero in on his inspiration for the work: movement, and more specifically the relocation of thousands of Black people from the American South to major cities and northern states. Now a multimedia, genre-crossing program to be presented in its premiere at the 92nd Street Y tonight, "Difficult Grace" surrounds Woods’s solo cello with film, spoken word and dance. Functioning as narrator, guide and movement artist, Woods is the de facto leader of a performance that includes music composed “for and with” him by Freida Abtan, Monty Adkins, Fredrick Gifford, Ted Hearne, Devonté Hynes (a.k.a Blood Orange), Nathalie Joachim and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay. The “music vernacular,” as Woods put it, is “rooted in kind of Black folk music in America, as well as lots of jazz inflections.”
New York cannabis officials are expected to announce the recipients of the first recreational marijuana retail licenses on Monday – but certain parts of the state will be off limits to dispensaries for the time being. And the state may have to hold off on issuing nearly half of the 150 dispensary licenses designated for the first round.
That’s because a federal judge issued an injunction last week that temporarily blocked New York from handing out retail licenses in certain parts of the state – including Brooklyn and the Mid-Hudson region encompassing Westchester and other counties just north of New York City. The injunction also applies to the Finger Lakes, Central New York and Western New York. Eleven other regions are not directly affected.
The temporary restraining order was requested by a company called Variscite NY One, which sued the state of New York and its Office of Cannabis Management in late September. Variscite alleged that the state’s cannabis equity program violates the “dormant commerce clause” of the U.S. Constitution, which is meant to protect interstate commerce, by discriminating against out-of-state applicants. The state’s Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary program, or CAURD, is prioritizing people with past drug convictions and their family members for the initial dispensary licenses.
All Things Considered host Tiffany Hanssen spoke with WNYC health reporter Caroline Lewis about what this legal kerfuffle could mean for selling legal weed in New York.
Click "listen" in the player to hear their conversation, and visit Gothamist for more details.
"Please, pass the potatoes" is a phrase heard a lot around a dinner table. As families and friends gather during the holiday season, we asked some New Yorkers to share their memories around a favorite recipe. Bronx native Theresa Kuilan shared a story behind her "grandma's potatoes."
You can find the recipe on Theresa's blog, Tessa's Kitchen Tales.
The New Jersey Attorney General has announced new disclosure laws for police officer discipline reports after a 2020 rule created public disclosures that were criticized for being too vague.
Departments must now reveal when officers get in trouble for discrimination, lying, use of excessive force, domestic violence, mishandling evidence, improper searches or arrests. Morning Edition host Michael Hill spoke with CJ Griffin, an attorney and advocate for open public records in New Jersey, about the changes.
Click on the red audio player above to hear the interview.
The World Cup kicks off Sunday, November 20 in Qatar when the host nation takes on Ecuador. Whether you call it soccer or football, excitement is building among local fans. A few of them shared their thoughts on the World Cup, who they're rooting for, and their love for the game.
Mayor Eric Adams joined "All Things Considered" host Sean Carlson to discuss the city's plans to build a 25,000-seat soccer stadium in the Willets Point section of Queens.
In addition to the soccer stadium and a hotel, the redevelopment that includes city-owned land is expected to include 2,500 units of affordable housing — 1,100 of which were planned under de Blasio – making it one of the largest affordable housing projects the city has seen in some time. The $780 million stadium is slated to be home to the New York City Football Club, which for the last decade had been playing its home games at Yankee Stadium. Related Companies, the developer of Hudson Yards and Sterling Equities, are behind the affordable housing project.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
More than a decade ago, correction officers at Rikers Island beat detainees so severely that they broke their bones, perforated their eardrums, injured their spines, and punctured their lungs, according to a lawsuit filed at the time. Detainees demanded the federal court’s “strong hand to finally put an end” to the abuse.
The detainees got what appeared to be dramatic action. In a landmark settlement four years later, New York City officials and federal prosecutors agreed to a range of reforms, including the appointment of a federal monitor to help improve officer training, strengthen policies, and make Rikers Island safer for detainees and staff.
“Through this agreement, we will remain vigilant in ensuring that reform at Rikers Island is enduring and enforceable,” said Preet Bharara, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
To read the rest of this story, go to Gothamist.com.
Since it began in 2016, the Department of Education's Comfort Dog program has expanded into 53 schools. But being a therapy dog requires special training. WNYC’s Amy Pearl visited a class of new recruits.
A number of recent building fires in New York City have been traced to lithium ion batteries, the kind used in e-bikes and other micro-mobility devices. The New York City Fire Department says it has documented 188 battery fires this year—more than 4 times the number for all of 2020. The fires have killed six people this year, and hurt more than a hundred. On Monday, the City Council held a hearing to consider a slate of safety plans to address the issue.
Councilmember Joann Ariola heads the Committee on Fire and Emergency Management. She joined WNYC Morning Edition host Michael Hill to talk about what steps buildings—and the city—should take to help protect people.
In the heart of Bushwick is a Venezuelan barber who for years has opened his Brooklyn home to friends, acquaintances and strangers arriving from his native country.
Juan Sanchez, a 51-year-old father and husband who comes from a large family and has many cousins, said he learned early on to share what he has. His late mother, he said, taught him to always stretch his resources to assist others.
This year, Sanchez’s three-bedroom apartment has become a haven for more and more travelers who are seeking a new home in the U.S. due to political and economic turmoil in their home country.
“It doesn’t matter to me where they’re from or who they are,” Sanchez said in Spanish. “What matters to me is to know the person and help them however I can, so the person receives that human warmth of family that they left in Venezuela.”
There were seven recent arrivals staying with the Sanchez family in late October, with six occupying two of the bedrooms and a seventh sleeping on the couch. Sanchez said the typical stay lasts a few weeks to a few months until his guests find work and earn enough money to pay for a room of their own.
When Sanchez began helping his countrymen six or seven years ago, he said they flew from Venezuela to New York City with visas in hand. There were not as many as today and the first batch of people he helped had far better financial prospects. His recent guests, on the other hand, have entered the U.S. via Mexico under much more harrowing conditions.
They had all taken different paths to reach the Brooklyn apartment — but all were among approximately 23,000 asylum-seekers who have traveled to New York City from Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and other Latin American countries in recent months.
Click "listen" to hear more details, and visit Gothamist for the full story.
Hindu leaders were alarmed after a statue of Mahatma Gandhi was destroyed outside a Queens temple in August.
“The fact that it happened within the temple premises, it always creates a sense of fear, instability, and you don't know what to expect the next day,” said Dr. Uma Mysorekar, the president of the
Ganesh Temple in Flushing, located several miles from the site of the destroyed statue. “And especially given the circumstances of violence all over the place, it is difficult to swallow this.”
The incident was quickly branded a hate crime born of religious bigotry, and the defendant, 27-year-old Sukhpal Singh, faces up to 25 years in prison if he's convicted.
But teasing out the motivation for the crimes isn’t always so simple. Indeed, the destruction of the statue in Queens is just the latest in a series of Gandhi monuments to have been defaced or destroyed around the country, and now some in the South Asian community are cautioning that anti-religious sentiment may not be the cause so much as political grievances surrounding Gandhi himself.
"I think it was more anti-Gandhi, not so much as anti-Hindu," said Mysorekar.
Dr. Suzanne Buchanan, executive director of Autism New Jersey, joined WNYC's Tiffany Hanssen on All Things Considered to discuss why that might be important for people who have difficulty communicating with the police.
For the members of the Aizuri Quartet — violinists Emma Frucht and Miho Saegusa, violist Ayane Kozasa, and cellist Karen Ouzounian — aizuri-e, the Japanese art form that provided the group's name is inspiring. The similarities to their music are two-fold, Ouzounian said. It uses “the same materials we use as musicians, like wood and ink," she said. And, like the electrifying Prussian blue ink, the group’s music crosses borders, “developing, evolving,” Ouzounian added.
That notion of porous borders is further explored in "Song Emerging," the program the Aizuris will perform on Friday, Nov. 18 at The Greene Space, the arts and culture venue operated by New York Public Radio. The expansive undertaking crosses time periods and genres, Frucht said, and centers around "The Aizuri Songbook” — which, like the Great American Songbook, is a collection of representative vocal music.
Singer, bandleader, activist, and educator Michael Mwenso was born in Sierra Leone, and cut his teeth on the London jazz scene as a teenager. At the urging of Wynton Marsalis, he came to New York City, where he worked with Jazz at Lincoln Center and founded the band, Mwenso and the Shakes.
In a three-day residency called "Michael Mwenso Loves You" happening Nov. 14-16 at The Greene Space, the arts and culture venue operated by New York Public Radio, Mwenso will share songs and stories, talk with musical luminaries, and explore his view of Black music as a source of spiritual nourishment and healing.
A nationwide Republican "red wave" didn't materialize during this year's midterm elections. But it did lap on the shores of deep blue New York, especially on Long Island. The GOP flipped two of suburban Long Island's four Congressional districts, meaning the island's entire delegation is now made up of Republicans. The party's success in the politically moderate New York City suburbs comes in a year where its candidates underperformed expectations throughout much of the rest of the country.
Former Democratic Congressman Steve Israel, who represented the North Shore from 2001 to 2017, joined WNYC's Sean Carlson to dissect this year's results, and discuss how he thinks his party can win back the seats it lost on Long Island.
A Mexican religious subculture surrounding the folk deity Santa Muerte is growing in Queens. Her name translates as “St. Death,” and her followers say she watches over the marginalized and undocumented without judgment.
Santa Muerte is the second-most popular folk saint in Mexico. According to some scholars, her followers make up the fastest-growing religious movement among people from Latin America. She’s the patron saint of anyone who lives a little closer to death than the average person, which historically meant cabdrivers, drug dealers and sex workers.
In 2016, WNYC’S Olivia Ebertz made a documentary about a faction of Santa Muerte followers in New York City. On Nov. 5, she checked in on their holiest day of the year: the birthday party of the Saint of Death.
Read more and see additional photos on Gothamist.
Imagine walking out of Prospect Park into a massive car-free pedestrian plaza? That’s exactly what the city’s Department of Transportation is considering. WNYC’s Stephen Nessen reports on new plans to improve Grand Army Plaza.
One idea the city is considering is getting rid of all vehicles from the notoriously traffic choked plaza. It’s also thinking about ways to connect a car-free Grand Army Plaza to permanent Open Streets on nearby Vanderbilt and Underhill Avenues.
A top DOT official tells WNYC it’s time to go beyond citizens moving barricades each week to create car-free streets. He's looking for a more permanent solution.
The agency hopes to tap into $900 million dollars Mayor Adams has set aside for traffic improvements.
DOT is currently soliciting feedback from the public on changes they’d like to see to Grand Army Plaza. And hopes to have firmer plans, by next year.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka asked the South Orange Planning Board this week to delay approving Seton Hall’s plans to expand its sports complex — as Newark neighbors raise concerns about flooding they blame on the school’s past development.
The university currently has a pending application before the South Orange Planning Board to build a new basketball facility on its 58-acre campus, which has prompted pushback from residents who want flooding issues addressed before any new construction begins.
“We’ve been coming to these meetings and trying to reach out to Seton Hall because evidently we are getting an unusual amount of water since they started development,” Newark homeowner Libre Jones said during a planning board meeting on Monday.
Baraka sent a letter to the planning board before Monday’s meeting. But planning board officials said they couldn’t delay hearing the application unless Seton Hall agreed to it.
NJ's 7th Congressional District was reconfigured last year in a redistricting process that shifted 30,000 more Republicans into the territory. That may have cost Tom Malinowski his seat.
The map was drawn by Democrats, who shored up support in several other districts by sacrificing strength in the 7th. But WNYC's Nancy Solomon spoke to political observers and activists about how that happened, and whether it was necessary.
When Ruben Burgos was incarcerated at Rikers Island earlier this year, he used a city-issued electronic tablet to turn his poetry into music. Other detainees used the tablets to watch movies, read books, and participate in job training programs. Burgos said the tablets provided a critical outlet, helping to reduce fights over the phones, the shared televisions and access to food.
“I feel like those tablets could be a safe haven for a lot of people,” Burgos said. “That pad was actually setting a system for when you wanted to watch a movie, when you wanted to take a class. It was setting a standard for reintegration.” He said the devices gave locked up individuals something that was theirs -- and some semblance of control.
But the contract with the tablet provider, APDS, quietly ended June 30 and was not extended for reasons that the Department of Correction has not explained. The program had been in place since 2015, and was expanded to reach almost all of the approximately 5,000 detainees during Covid. Now, more than four months have gone by and incarcerated people haven’t had access to educational, entertainment, and religious material that they had for years – and both correctional experts and the incarcerated say that could contribute to increased tensions and historic highs in violence.
A spokesperson for the Department of Correction said three weeks ago that the agency was finalizing a contract with a new tablet provider. That announcement could still come any day.
To read the rest of the story, go to Gothamist.com
Host Brian Lehrer hears from election watchers and callers from New York and New Jersey about what motivated them to vote this year, and what comes next.
With:
- Dr. Christina Greer political science professor at Fordham University, hosts the podcasts "FAQNYC" and "The Blackest Questions"
- Gabriel Debenedetti national correspondent at New York Magazine and author of The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama (Henry Holt and Co., 2022)
- Melissa Harris-Perry host of The Takeaway from WNYC Studios, and Maya Angelou Presidential Chair at Wake Forest University in the Department of Politics and International Affairs
In this fractured era of political discourse, even the most ardent Democrat and Republican in New York can agree on this: Gov. Kathy Hochul is poised to win the New York City vote on Tuesday.
Whether she can hang on to her seat, however, may depend on how much she can run up the score.
Both Hochul, a Democrat, and Republican challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin have devoted much of the final stretch of their tighter-than-anticipated campaigns to getting out the vote in the five boroughs, with Hochul bringing in Democratic A-listers like Vice President Kamala Harris and the Clintons to rally there on her behalf in the last week.
It’s not a mystery as to why: Hochul’s ability — or inability — to convince Democratic voters to head to the polls in New York City could make or break her as she tries to become the first woman elected governor in New York, running on a message of protecting abortion rights to stave off a stiff challenge from Zeldin and his tough-on-crime campaign.
For more, visit Gothamist.com.
DOC NYC, the country's largest documentary film festival in terms of number of films screened, runs Nov. 9th through 17th on screens and online. The festival includes a wide variety of local, national, and international entries, including Margaret Brown's award-winning "Descendant" (pictured above).
WNYC Morning Edition host Michael Hill spoke with Thom Powers, who's stepping down as the festival's artistic director after 12 years (and who co-hosts WNYC's Documentary of the Week series) about what's in store this year, in theaters around New York City. Powers also explains how viewers can opt to watch festival offerings at home, and what's next for the prestigious series under new leadership.
The closer than expected race for governor between Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul and Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin is causing a lot of worry among Democrats. One of the major concerns is turnout, especially in Black and Latino communities. WNYC’s Elizabeth Kim recently went to the Bronx – a Democratic stronghold – to see what voters had to say about the candidates.
For more, read the Gothamist story.
The congressional race in New Jersey's 7th District is neck and neck between Democratic incumbent Tom Malinowski and Republican Challenger Tom Kean Jr. One of Kean's central attacks against the incumbent, one that he keeps coming back to again and again, is that he's too close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
But in light of the recent attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul, the Malinowski campaign is asking the Republican to back off of some of his rhetoric.
WNYC Weekend Edition host David Furst spoke with senior reporter Nancy Solomon recently to discuss whether the assault changes anything in the tone of the race.
Every September and October, the dunes of Fire Island are filled with Monarch butterflies migrating south to Mexico for the winter. A group of scientists is tracking their journey. WNYC’s Amy Pearl met up with a couple of interns with the National Park Service how are part of those efforts.
Find out more about tagging butterflies at Monarch Watch.
When New Yorkers head to the polls on Tuesday, one issue is likely to be top of mind: public safety. While shootings and homicides are down citywide, every other major crime category is up. And that has many people on edge.
The experts have been doing plenty of their own polling ahead of the election. And the latest surveys have found an increasingly tight race for governor, even in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican to the office in two decades. A recent poll from Quinnipiac University found crime was the most important topic for the largest share of surveyed voters.
To hear how important public safety is to prospective voters as they choose a governor, Gothamist spoke with prospective voters across the city: in Inwood, Ridgewood, Chinatown, Park Slope, and the South Bronx. Almost everyone said they were concerned about crime.
Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
Brentwood, Long Island is one of the most diverse communities in New York State. According to the latest census count, more than 70 percent of its population is Hispanic. Nationally, Hispanics are playing a big role in this election, and both parties are doing all they can to court them. And in a year where many elections will be won by very slim margins, Hispanic voters might make all the difference in deciding close races. WNYC's David Cruz joined Sean Carlson to discuss how both parties are doing all they can to court Hispanic voters in places like Brentwood.
WNYC's All Things Considered team took the show on the road to Long Island this week, broadcasting from Suffolk County Community College's Brentwood campus. While they were, they asked students what they thought of the 2022 elections. Spoiler alert: Most students aren't thinking about them at all. But they did share the issues they say are important to them, and provided some insight into what might get them and their peers more engaged in the political process.
When it comes the top issue for voters this election cycle, that old truism appears to ring true: It’s the economy, stupid. Crime, abortion rights, and threats to democracy are also mentioned as major concerns. But poll after poll indicates that this year, citizens will be voting with their wallets. WNYC's Sean Carlson spoke with a group of guests to delve into the state of the local economy on Long Island, which could play a pivotal role in this year's midterm elections.
Long Island is a microcosm of America. A lot of the political, social and economic trends we see across the country are playing out right here in consequential ways. Cost of living is sky-rocketing. A lot of young people are moving away because they can't afford to live here. Political divisions run deep -- President Trump won Suffolk County by a mere 232 votes in 2020. And the demographics of many communities are shifting. Long Island's Latino population, for instance, grew more than 30 percent between 2010 and 2020. And Brentwood is one of the most diverse towns in the region.
WNYC's Sean Carlson spoke with Lawrence Levy, Executive Dean of Hofstra University's National Center for Suburban Studies about Long Island's role in the upcoming election.
Davóne Tines has had a busy couple of weeks. When he paused for an interview late last month, the Virginia-born bass-baritone was preparing for the release of an opera recording on which he portrays Malcolm X. He had spent almost two weeks performing in "Monochromatic Light (Afterlife)," a composition by Tyshawn Sorey staged by director Peter Sellars at the Park Avenue Armory. He followed that with "Everything Rises," an intimate two-person show he'd created with violinist Jennifer Koh, in its New York premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Tines still hasn’t slowed down. Last week, he debuted with the New York Philharmonic in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. And on Thursday, Nov. 3, he makes his Carnegie Hall recital debut, performing a program called “Recital No 1 : Mass," which includes an original piece he co-wrote in tribute to Breonna Taylor. He envisions his work as stretching the boundaries of what classical music can be – and what impact it can have on an audience.
Residents of Newark's Ivy Hill neighborhood say their homes routinely flood during major storms — a result, they say, of decades of nearby development that didn’t consider their neighborhood.
“We're not near bodies of water,” said homeowner Libre Jones, who added that her basement was inundated by 4 to 5 feet of water after the remnants of Hurricane Ida hit New Jersey last year. “It's literally manmade, urban flooding.”
Ida’s damage prompted Jones and about 20 of her neighbors to press local officials to find a solution as climate change threatens stronger storms. While city and county officials have promised to investigate the cause of the flooding, residents say the blame belongs to their next door neighbor: Seton Hall University.
They say their homes began to flood once the 58-acre campus — located across the Newark border, in the more affluent township of South Orange — began expanding in the 1990s. And now the university is seeking to expand again, with a pending application before the local planning board.
Blind New York voters have a new accessible absentee ballot option this year. But some of the voters say the ballots come with one major flaw: they require people who can’t see or read text to print them out and mail them in.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
This will be a busy week across the region as candidates make closing arguments to voters. WNYC's Brigid Bergin and Michael Hill discuss what voters need to know.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is touting the completion of a project to reduce emissions in the South Bronx. It’s a decades-in the making change to truck traffic to and from the Hunts Point market that supplies most of the city's produce, meat and fish.
Now there are new ramps and roads connecting Sheridan Boulevard and the Bruckner Expressway directly to the Hunts Point Terminal Market. The state expects this will get thousands of trucks off of local streets.
Advocates have been trying to reduce traffic in this part of the Bronx for decades. It’s an area with the highest asthma rates in the country.
This is the first phase in a $1.7 billion state project to reduce traffic in the area. Advocates praise the new changes, but worry about traffic coming and going from a new neighbor—two Amazon warehouses that recently opened in the South Bronx.
Climate change isn’t just affecting the living. During Hurricane Sandy, the dead were flooded in their tombs in low-lying graveyards across the city.
On the rolling verdant hills of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, the storm brought down about 300 trees and destroyed well over 100 tombstones. The roads and paths on the property were inundated in up to 4 feet of water, making it hard to get in or out. This month, the nearly 500-acre graveyard announced a plan to protect its roughly 600,000 final resting places against future floods — while also keeping its tranquil gardens open to the public. This resiliency project will invest more than $2 million to store water in dedicated places well under the grounds, which would alleviate the burden on the city's sewers — the main source of the flooding problem.
“Water pools anywhere it needs to – even graves for that matter,” said Frank Morelli, facilities manager at Green-Wood Cemetery. “But we do whatever we have to do because tomorrow someone needs to be buried and nothing's going to stop that.”
To mitigate flooding on the landmark funerary grounds’ paved surfaces, rain gardens along roads and paths will capture additional stormwater that would otherwise make roads inaccessible or send a deluge into the ponds. The project aims to alleviate up to 2 inches of stormwater from the sewer system and store it for irrigation. It is the first design under the Resilient NYC Partners program, a $53 million municipal initiative launched in June 2021 to help private property owners green their land and manage onsite stormwater.
“If you want to solve this challenge, which is basically managing the rain where it falls, you have to come up with partnerships like this one,” said Craig Holland, senior director of investments for the Nature Conservancy’s Healthy Cities Program. The Nature Conservancy is an adviser on the project. “Cemeteries are one of the largest land uses in suburban and urban properties in the United States,” he added.
The program’s strategy will focus on reducing sewer overflow, and that means moving beyond funding climate resiliency for just public property. In partnering with private property owners, the city government hopes to spread flood protection all over the five boroughs.
Click "listen" in the player to hear the story, and visit Gothamist for more details.
A sprawling tent encampment on Randalls Island meant to house single men seeking asylum sits largely empty by all accounts. But families have continued to arrive in New York City — and many of them have been sent to live in a hotel a block from Times Square. WNYC’s Gwynne Hogan reports there’s a mix of confusion, frustration and optimism from families as they attempt to navigate America’s biggest city.
In Hurricane Sandy, NJ Transit took major damage that took trains out of commission for weeks or longer. It famously parked hundreds of trains a in floodplain ... and they flooded. But now, officials and advocates say, there's more of a focus on resiliency that anticipates climate change.
Still, according to some advocates, New Jersey has a long way to go – and needs to get people out of their cars, onto mass transit, if it's going to deal with climate change in the long term.
New York City is home to millions of people, each with their own story to tell. Stories about people or places that provide inspiration. Stories about love and loss. Stories of communities banding together in difficult times. WNYC is teaming up with the nonprofit, Street Lab, to highlight stories from neighborhoods across New York City. We recently captured a variety of voices at an Open Streets event outside of La Marqueta at 115th Street and Park Avenue in East Harlem.
A decade ago when Hurricane Sandy battered New York City, Rockaway Beach’s beloved boardwalk was destroyed. It was reconstructed and has been open for six years now. WNYC’s Gwynne Hogan tells us, how the new boardwalk has been embraced by the community and the city, but also stands as a bittersweet reminder of the storm.
Overdose deaths are skyrocketing in New York City jails, and the correction commissioner says banning physical letters is a way to stop it.
Commissioner Louis Molina said at a city council hearing Tuesday that fentanyl-soaked children’s drawings, love letters, prayer schedules, and T-shirts have been shipped to detainees. To address that he plans to hire a vendor to scan letters and distribute them to detainees digitally on tablets. Molina also said he may restrict packages so they only come from approved vendors.
"Books are for reading, not for lacing with fentanyl," he said.
Such restricts would mirror the practice in the state correctional system. But city council members were skeptical that most drugs come through the mail, and believe that correction officers must be screened as aggressively as visitors to keep them from bringing in drugs to sell to detainees.
Subway safety is a top concern among riders and a key issue in the race for governor. Last weekend, Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul held an emergency press conference to announce more police officers will be patrolling the subway system. This follows a string of violent incidents and murders. WNYC transportation reporter Stephen Nessen has been looking at the stats and is here to put it all in context.
The fake spiderwebs and plastic skeletons are back; Halloween is just days away. WNYC’s Amy Pearl crashed a kids' pumpkin carving party to find out this year's vibe.
After more than 200 years, the Headless Horseman is still alive in pop culture, and in Sleepy Hollow.
Elizabeth Bradley is a historian with Historic Hudson Valley. She has written about the short story that started it all: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. She spoke with WNYC's Michael Hill about the myth, the town and the enduring appeal of the spooky story.
On the morning after Hurricane Sandy, I decided to bike along the coast of Brooklyn to see what had happened during the storm. From my front porch in Sunset Park, I could see the New York Harbor just four blocks away, but my neighborhood had very little damage.
I wound my way through Gowanus and Red Hook and up to Williamsburg and Greenpoint, visiting communities that I’d been documenting for years. Neighbors were in the streets, pumping out their flooded basements and clearing away fallen trees, flooded cars, and boats. But things did not look all that bad.
Throughout the day, though, news began to slowly trickle in from further out in the city, where dozens of neighborhoods in southern Brooklyn, the Rockaways, and Staten Island had been devastated. As I heard reports of a tanker pushed ashore, destroyed houses, catastrophic fires, and dozens of fatalities, the weight of the storm began to sink in.
Over the weeks that followed, I began visiting these places, many of which I knew from before the storm, to share what had happened. As I climbed over piles of boats that had been pushed ashore and picked my way through marshlands littered with roofs and toys, it felt like visiting a war zone.
The destruction was immense and difficult to witness: Flooded streets, burnt out blocks, flattened houses, and no electricity or water. At least 43 people died in New York City, and thousands of homes were badly flooded.
Ten years on, the storm’s impacts are still being felt. For the communities that lost homes, neighbors, and loved ones, it has been a long decade of recovery and rebuilding. And in the decade ahead, even more neighborhoods will be upended.
To the audio version of this story, click "listen" in the player, and visit Gothamist for more details.
Incarcerated people are being locked in their cells at Rikers Island for long stretches of time that violate city regulations, kept from accessing recreational activities and medical services, and are even being denied meals, officials said on Monday.
The Board of Correction, which sets regulations for the city jails, released a seven-page report about the proliferation of so-called “lockdowns,” or “lock-ins,” in which incarcerated people have to stay in their cells for hours on end. While lockdowns are only supposed to be used in emergencies, the report said lockdowns are a regular part of life at two large Rikers jails, effectively preventing incarcerated people from going to the infirmary, visiting family, accessing the law library, attending religious services, using the phone, taking educational classes, and even showering.
“Accordingly,” the report said, “lockdowns also contribute to growing tension in the facilities that they visited.”
For the rest of this story, go to Gothamist.com.
Thousands of asylum-seekers are pouring into New York City amid a national political battle over immigration — but as hundreds arrive in Staten Island they’re landing in the crosshairs of another ideological fight playing out locally.
Mayor Eric Adams announced this week that new emergency shelters would soon be coming to communities across the five boroughs. In the meantime, migrants are being housed in shelters and empty hotels.
In the West Shore neighborhood of Travis, where two-thirds of voters backed Donald Trump, the transfer of migrants to three little-used hotels has divided the close-knit community. The arrival of roughly 600 asylum-seekers from Latin America has fostered suspicion, acts of compassion and a familiar refrain in the city’s most conservative borough: That they’ve been forgotten by City Hall.
The union representing New Jersey performers at Medieval Times has filed two unfair labor practice charges against the dinner entertainment chain, after the company sued it over alleged trademark infringement earlier this month.
Medieval Times, which operates a performance venue in Lyndhurst and nine other locations in the U.S. and Canada, filed a lawsuit in federal court on Oct. 13. It alleges the newly formed union co-opted the company’s branding when promoting its organizing efforts — using “Medieval Times” in the union’s name, and using castle imagery and colors similar to those used by the company.
Labor experts say the lawsuit is a unique approach to discouraging additional organizing efforts across Medieval Times’ other castle locations and bog the union down in legal fees — but say it’s unlikely to win in court.
Parents at a Prospect Heights elementary school in Brooklyn say school safety agents gave their kids a presentation about bullying that was so graphic some cried and feared they or their classmates would be locked up. Interviews with multiple parents and students, as well as screenshots of a conversation between more than 10 parents on a message board, depict a recent anti-bullying training that left many children confused, scared and mistrustful of police.
“My child didn’t learn anything about how to prevent bullying, how not to behave like a bully,” said Mary Jane Skelly, whose 6-year-old daughter attended one of the presentations at PS9 Sarah Smith Garnet Elementary School in Prospect Heights in late September. “They just learned that they could go to jail, their parents could go to jail, if they engaged in bullying.”
Six parents said their kids were told stories about a child dying by suicide and five said their kids had learned about a child committing murder after being bullied, with other parents on the message board saying their kids had shared similar details. Three claimed that their children were shown a photo of a bloody knife.
Parents said students in kindergarten through fifth grade attended different versions of the anti-bullying assembly with school safety agents. While some parents said the most violent details seemed to have been left out of the presentations for the youngest children, they said even first graders appeared to have been told that any child 7 or older could go to jail for bullying. Parents said their children were told that if they were younger than seven, their parents could go to jail on their behalf.
State law prohibits bullying in public schools, but a representative from the city’s bullying hotline told a reporter that children are not prosecuted for bullying. The department does investigate all allegations of bullying and refers them to police if they believe the student’s behavior rises to the level of criminal activity.
In at least one of the presentations, several parents said, a school safety agent asked for a student volunteer to demonstrate bullying. A fourth grader who was sitting next to the student who volunteered said the officer then allegedly lifted the child by his armpits and raised him in the air, above the officer’s head. The fourth grader, whose mom asked that they not be identified, was distressed, according to the child’s mother.
“He told his dad that he never wanted to go to middle school, because that’s where the bullies are,” his mom said.
Read the full story at Gothamist.com.
Most of the region has recovered from Hurricane Sandy, which hit 10 years ago. But there’s one place where the damage remains: the nearly 112-year old North River Tunnel. It’s used by Amtrak and NJTransit trains to cross the Hudson River from Penn Station into New Jersey. Construction on a new tunnel won't be done for at least another decade. WNYC's Stephen Nessen reports there's no plans to prevent flooding in the current tunnel in the meantime -- leaving it as vulnerable today as it was when Sandy hit.
Early voting begins in New York on Saturday. Voters will cast their ballots for statewide offices like governor, along with state legislative contests, congressional races and ballot questions.
Plus, there was a decision on Friday in a lawsuit over absentee ballots.
Brigid Bergin, WNYC’s senior politics reporter and host of our Sunday call-in show, “The People’s Guide to Power" joined "Morning Edition" host Michael Hill for this update.
WNYC Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to chat about arts highlights in New York City this week.
Steve's picks:
- "Edward Hopper's New York"
You don't want to be the only one among your friends who hasn't seen "Edward Hopper's New York," a new exhibition that opened this week at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Hopper is probably best known for his 1942 painting "Nighthawks," a familiar image that depicts a handful of people inside a brightly illuminated diner, on a dark corner in what could be some Greenwich Village of the mind. He was born in Upper Nyack in 1882, but spent nearly all of his mature career here, and his images of New York City are the focus of this powerful new show, in which the quieter corners of our metropolis are depicted with the gentle melancholy and luminous glow we associate with his work. Through March 5.
- The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra might not convey the metropolitan glamor of its better known London counterparts, but this British ensemble has been a proving ground for some the world's most exciting conductors: Simon Rattle, Sakari Oramo, and Andris Nelsons are three of the more prominent stick-wavers to emerge from that post. For its first Carnegie Hall appearance in 30 years, the orchestra is led by the exciting Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, who recently completed her term as the orchestra's music director. They'll perform Elgar's grandly romantic Cello Concerto with soloist Sheku Kanneh Mason, the young superstar who captured the world's attention at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in 2018. The program also includes the New York premiere of a new symphony by Thomas Adès based on his opera "The Exterminating Angel," and it ends with Debussy's gorgeous "La Mer." Saturday, Oct. 22 at 8 p.m.
- Natalia Lafourcade
Natalia Lafourcade, a wonderful pop and folk singer-songwriter from Veracruz, Mexico, has released a string of successful records, filling her shelf with Grammy and Latin Grammy awards in the process. She'll make her Carnegie Hall debut one day before the release of her new album, "De todas las flores." What's magical about Lafourcade is the way her songs can sound nostalgic and contemporary at the same time – she knows her music history, and she'll honor it by sharing this prestigious stage with two iconic predecessors and past collaborators: Uruguayan pop genius Jorge Drexler, and legendary Cuban balladeer Omara Portuando. Thursday, Oct. 27 at 8 p.m.
This week, a bill to improve conditions for New Jersey's temp workers was up for a final vote before the state Senate. The measure was expected to pass by a small margin and head to Governor Phil Murphy, who was likely to sign it. Instead, the vote was suddenly canceled.
Dozens of temp workers and immigrant advocates who were expecting a victory, left angry and confused. WNYC's Karen Yi spoke to host Tiffany Hanssen about what comes next for the worker rights campaign.
Dr. Mitchel Rosen was across the country for a work conference when Sandy slammed his New Jersey home. He remembers watching TV reports on the damage as he waited for intermittent phone calls from his family back home in Middlesex County.
When they finally did get in touch, they had one request.
“Batteries,” said Rosen, director of the Center for Public Health Workforce Development at Rutgers University. The widespread power outages meant those little canisters of electric charge were in high demand.
“So, I bought a lot of batteries and put them in my suitcase and flew home,” he added.
Rosen knows better than most how critical it is to get power back after a destructive storm like Sandy. He’s trained hundreds of people on how to beat back one of the most tenacious consequences: mold.
Creeping, furry fungus colonized tens of thousands of homes in the areas hardest hit by Sandy, according to estimates from community groups. Storm recovery cost billions of dollars, and an individual home with a major mold problem may have cost as much $25,000 to remediate, according to a report by New York City advocacy group ALIGN. Homeowners and renters alike endured long waits and headaches over red tape as they navigated the remediation process.
A handful of buildings still bear the scars — from a Bronx firehouse with mold-damaged walls and ceilings to a Brooklyn NYCHA development where residents have filed hundreds of mold-related lawsuits. Many more sat unremediated for months or even years after Sandy, posing health risks to children, elderly residents, people with asthma, and the immunocompromised.
In the weeks and months after the storm, doctors, residents, and contemporaneous news coverage all reported a smattering of respiratory symptoms among storm survivors, called “Sandy cough,” “Coney cough,” or “Rockaway cough,” depending on who you asked and where they lived. Because these symptoms often weren’t severe enough to send people to the hospital, data on the phenomenon is hard to come by — but health officials acknowledged it was a problem at the time.
“Providers in the Rockaways have identified patients with respiratory symptoms that they have attributed to viral respiratory infections, exposure to respiratory irritants due to cleanup work or exacerbations of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease [COPD],” the health department’s Dr. Jay Varma told the Amsterdam News, adding that many of those affected had pre-existing respiratory issues.
As New York City continues to confront a changing climate and the prospect of more frequent intense storms, are we better prepared to fight off fungal invaders? Experts say yes, sort of, pointing to recent changes to the law and to homeowners’ understanding of the seriousness of mold. But they add that the city needs to do more to protect its most vulnerable residents against the ravages of flooding and the mold that follows.
“We learned a bit from Sandy,” said Michael Schmeltz, an assistant professor of public health at Cal State East Bay who studied the city’s response to the storm as a graduate student in New York City. “We have the recovery and the emergency response down. But we really need to focus on that preparation.”
Click "listen" to hear more details, and visit Gothamist for the full story.
New York has been grappling with the unexpected influx of asylum seeking immigrants for months. During this time, Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City mayor Eric Adams have made repeated pleas to the federal government for help.
The Biden Administration has answered some of those appeals.
WNYC's Arun Venugopal talks with host Tiffany Hanssen about what New York officials have been asking for, what the federal government has offered and what that means for migrants going forward.
A federal judge ruled that a recent decision to block New York’s gun law will not take effect. Still, with all the many challenges to the law making their way through the courts, many New Yorkers are confused about who can carry a firearm in the state and where.
WNYC's public safety reporter Samantha Max joins host Tiffany Hanssen to talk about where the gun law stands now and what's expected going forward.
At a recent debate for New Jersey’s most competitive Congressional race, a throng of reporters waited at the front door of the Clark Holiday Inn for the Republican challenger to arrive.
Tom Kean Jr. is one of the most well-known Republicans in the state, a former state senator and the son of a former governor. He’s now running for the 7th Congressional District for the fourth time, a rematch of the 2020 race he narrowly lost to incumbent Democrat Tom Malinowski. He eluded the reporters, entering through the back.
Reporters wouldn’t get another chance like that.
At least one New York Republican is worried about high voter turnout in New York City this November. He also happens to be a commissioner on the city Board of Elections.
Manhattan GOP Commissioner Frederic Umane, who has served on the city BOE since 1995, questioned why the agency sent a mailer to all voters this month with basic information about the upcoming general election, including where and when to vote. He raised concerns about cost, why the ten bipartisan commissioners had not approved it and noted that the city BOE was going beyond what it was required to do under state election law.
But ultimately, he warned the mailer risked driving up voter turnout in the five boroughs, which could be bad for his party, since Democrats outnumber Republicans in New York City by more than six-to-one.
Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
With the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy approaching, New Jersey officials are reviving a plan to make developers and towns consider the risks of future flooding brought on by climate change.
The state Department of Environmental Protection has scheduled two public meetings this week to discuss development in inland flood-prone areas. That puts New Jersey back on track to consider and eventually adopt regulations Gov. Phil Murphy first pledged to advance more than two years ago, after the state abandoned a plan to fast-track the rules amid pushback from builders this summer.
A flood rule under consideration could have a major impact on what growth looks like in New Jersey, advocates and developers alike say. WNYC's Karen Yi joined All Things Considered host Sean Carlson to discuss the latest.
Immigrant groups are outraged after a bill extending protections for temporary workers was pulled from a final vote on the Senate floor.
“This time they have chosen to stand with multinational corporations and exploitative agencies over temp worker’s minimum basic rights,” Steven Mercado, a temp worker and organizer with Make the Road New Jersey said in a statement.
The bill would ban temp agencies from making paycheck deductions for costs such as meals or transportation to and from work sites that would often lower a worker’s pay below minimum wage. It would also require temp agencies to tell their workers where they are going to work and how much they will get paid. Workers who are taken to job sites but are sent home without work must also be compensated for at least four hours of work.
As New York City gains control over the monkeypox outbreak, advocates are warning that vulnerable groups still remain at risk.
Cases citywide began dropping late this summer: After a daily average of 74 reported infections in late July, the city is now recording fewer than 10 cases per day. Last week, New York City's Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan said this progress was promising, but it was too soon to declare victory just yet.
“We have turned a corner that I hope indicates that we now have the upper hand on this outbreak,” Vasan said. “While I'm very proud of where we are, I'd like to offer our humility and gratitude for the current situation. "The fact is that we've had real challenges.”
Part of the doubt centers around the epidemic’s lingering health disparities. While infections started out even among different racial and ethnic groups, cases are now smoldering most often in Black and Latino individuals. These two groups are also undervaccinated in New York City, even though people with shots are 14 times less likely to catch the virus in the current nationwide rollout. If this pattern holds in clinical studies of the monkeypox vaccine, it would translate to about 90% effectiveness.
Dr. Joseph Osmundson, a professor of biology at New York University and a health equity expert, spoke with WNYC host Michael Hill about where things stand with the disease. Osmundson said communities still need better access to care, especially with their sexual health, to quash monkeypox for good.
Click "listen" to hear their conversation.
The New York City neighborhoods that have the worst health and poverty, also tend to have more injuries from traffic. These are some of the finding from a new online tool put together by urban planners at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives.
Using census data and publicly available information from the city, the two groups say there's a link between disparities in city services with health and race. For example, in the city council districts with the highest rates of asthma--91% of residents are people of color. And those districts tend to be hotter in the summer, due to lack of green space. They also have slower bus speeds. And, compared to the city average, have fewer bike parking spaces.
The groups hope their findings will spur the city council to prioritize marginalized communities by reducing traffic and building more green spaces.
You can see how your area stacks up at spatialequity.nyc
If you’ve ever welcomed a puppy into your home, as many New Yorkers did during the pandemic, you know it can be a cute, challenging and sometimes chaotic experience. Dr. Alexandra Horowitz is the founder of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College, and her new book, “The Year of the Puppy: How Dogs Become Themselves,” is about her first year raising and getting to know her dog, Quiddity. She spoke with WNYC’s Tracie Hunte about why we find puppies so irresistible, why they aren’t blank slates, and why having her own human baby only partially prepared her for having a four-footed newcomer.
With just over three weeks to go before the midterm elections, the race in New Jersey's 7th Congressional District is drawing a lot of national attention. WNYC's Nancy Solomon joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to bring us the latest on a race that could determine the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Plus, a look at how the redrawing of congressional district lines is impacting politics in New Jersey.
WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor, Steve Smith brings us his latest picks along with Weekend Edition host David Furst.
- "Death of a Salesman"
We've spoken before about all the big shows in previews on Broadway. Now they're starting to open officially, so we can start to revisit what's really worth seeing -- and "Death of a Salesman" belongs high on that list. The new production is helmed by director Miranda Cromwell, and it's based on a hugely acclaimed staging she and Marianne Elliott presented three years ago in London, in which the struggles of the Loman family are intensified by casting them as a Black family working within an otherwise white world.
A lot of attention has been paid to the leading man, Wendell Pierce, who's known for his performances in "The Wire" and "Treme." And rightly so: his depiction of Willy Loman is huge, overwhelming, sympathetic if not entirely likeable. But the actor who grabbed my attention instantly and never let go was Sharon D. Clarke, who portrays Linda Loman.
Other standouts include Broadway veteran André de Shields as a seductively diabolic Ben Loman and Delaney Williams as the Loman's good-hearted neighbor, Charley, but the cast is solid throughout. You might not agree with everything in this production -- The New York Times critic Jesse Green found some of the flashback scenes to play out less like fond memories than clichés, for instance. But the new production helps us to see one of the truly great American plays in a new light, and, as Linda Loman herself says, "Attention must be paid." The show runs through January 15 at the Hudson Theatre, and you can learn more at "Death of a Salesman."
- "A Memorial Tribute to Ingram Marshall"
We're sticking close to home for "A Memorial Tribute to Ingram Marshall," hosted by John Schaefer of New Sounds in The Greene Space, the culture and arts venue operated by New York Public Radio here in lower Manhattan.
Ingram Marshall wasn't a household name, but his works for acoustic instruments with electronics was hugely influential -- composer John Adams stated admiringly that Marshall created music of "almost painful intimacy." Marshall died in June from complications of Parkinson's Disease, and this tribute concert includes some of his most powerful works played by musicians who knew him best, including Timo Andres, Sarah Cahill, and Libby van Cleve. And the program includes Marshall's best known piece, "Fog Tropes," which some listeners might recall from the soundtrack to the Leonardo DiCaprio film "Shutter Island." The concert is happening next Friday night, Oct. 21, at 7pm, and you can learn more at The Greene Space.
Fewer than 1 in 5 New York City correction officers took a mandated course on preventing suicide in the last year, according to data obtained by Gothamist through a freedom of information request, even as the rate of such deaths among incarcerated people on Rikers Island and other city jails accelerated to historic highs.
Eleven people held in custody by the city’s Department of Correction have died by suicide since last year, compared to just five in the preceding six years combined. During the 4 ½ years prior to November 2020, zero suicides were reported.
Despite the skyrocketing suicide rate, from Sept. 1, 2021, to Sept. 20, 2022, just 1,241 of the city’s nearly 7,000 uniformed correction staff members completed a required suicide prevention refresher course, according to correction department data.
For the rest of this story, go to Gothamist.com.
Citing gang violence raging at one jail on Rikers Island, the New York City correction commissioner wants to lock incarcerated people in their cells for nearly twice as long as currently allowed.
To read the rest of this story, go to Gothamist.com.
A New York law is giving domestic violence survivors a chance to get their prison sentences reduced if they can show that they committed crimes largely because of the abuse they endured. In Westchester County, District Attorney Mimi Rocah last week helped a defendant get her sentence reduced for the first time since the law was passed. She spoke to WNYC about the case.
For retired transit worker Frank Mosczynzski, Ocean Breeze on Staten Island’s eastern shore was the perfect place to raise a family and grow old. He had called the area home since the age of two when his parents moved there from Brooklyn. His work commute to Manhattan was easy, and he returned home each night to the beach, a backyard and peaceful respite from the city’s din.
He never imagined he would sell it 2014 to the state to bulldoze. Sandy made landfall in the tristate area on the evening of Oct. 29, 2012, and the 16-foot storm surge that hit Staten Island resulted in 24 deaths, more than any other borough. Mosczynzski’s wife and two adult daughters evacuated in advance, but he stayed behind as a volunteer for the search and rescue team. Some neighbors stayed behind despite warnings — and had to be saved from on top of their roofs or pulled out of the water by boats with ropes. He said he knew at around 7 p.m. on the night of the storm, when he saw his neighborhood turn into a lake, that he would not return home again. Mosczynzski’s own home was filled with 8 feet of water after Hurricane Sandy — and uninhabitable as a result. His family of four adults had to find a place to live, and start paying rent while also trying to buy necessities like clothes. “It just seemed like it was doom and gloom for us in our whole area,” Mosczynzski said. “The house was totally destroyed except one or two boxes from the attic of Christmas decorations and one box of family pictures.”
That was only the start of his long journey through the Staten Island buyout program. New York officials created this initiative for the sake of managed retreat, which is when the government steps in and purchases private property for the purpose of getting residents out of a flood-prone area.
It wasn’t a perfect solution, according to Jane Brogan, chief policy and research officer at the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery during the Staten Island buyout program from 2015 to January 2022. There were homeowners who couldn’t take the buyout because of title issues or imminent foreclosure. But in total, more than 500 Staten Island residents sold their homes to the state at a total cost of $200 million. The buyout program also included more than 200 additional homes in Long Island. Ten years after Hurricane Sandy, the properties acquired in Ocean Breeze and neighboring areas look like a mixture of haphazardly mowed lawns and forests of phragmites. The streets once teeming with generations of the same families living side by side in rows of shotgun houses are now almost completely deserted. The newly rebuilt houses of the few who stayed peek out from the desolate landscape, dominated by noisy geese.
The program also set off broader discussions about whether it’s sustainable to keep living in coastal New York and New Jersey — or if nature is evicting us, how does the government support those who want to relocate?
Click "listen" in the player to hear a feature story, and visit Gothamist for more details.
In New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, incumbent Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes) is facing challenger Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) in a rematch of the 2020 race that the Democrat won by less than a percentage point. But now, the district’s boundaries have been redrawn to include an extra 30,000 registered Republicans. If Kean Jr. is able to win the seat, he could help tip the majority of the U.S. House of Representatives.
It used to be that candidates would call themselves “pro-choice” or “pro-life” on abortion.
But now as the issue is debated in the run-up to the midterm elections, some New Jersey congressional hopefuls who want to appeal to more than the stalwarts on either side of the abortion issue are having a hard time explaining their positions.
NJ Spotlight senior writer Colleen O'Dea joined WNYC's Sean Carlson to discuss how abortion is playing as an issue in the Garden State's Congressional midterms.
Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
A new study abroad program at Hunter College has brought together students from Ukraine and Russia with one thing in common: They’ve all fled the war.
The six undergraduate students – three from Russia and three from Ukraine – are studying everything from biology to political science. During a get-together last week attended by Gothamist, hints of tension surfaced: One Ukrainian student said she tries to stay away from Russian neighborhoods in the city.
Another student from Moscow said he still loved his home country of Russia, but feared it will fall deeper into autocracy.
All the students shared an overwhelming anxiety about their friends and families back home – and an appreciation of the opportunity at Hunter. The university is assisting each student with tuition and financial aid so they can continue studies disrupted by the conflict.
WNYC reporter Sophia Chang spoke with All Things Considered host Sean Carlson about the students taking part in the program. Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
In less than a month, voters on Staten Island and parts of southern Brooklyn will head to the polls for one of the most anticipated midterm elections in the state. It’s a rematch between House Republican incumbent Nicole Malliotakis and Democrat Max Rose. Rose, who won as a centrist Democrat in 2018, is hoping to win back the seat by focusing on abortion rights. WNYC’s Elizabeth Kim took a ferry ride to see how that strategy was playing on Staten Island.
For more, read the Gothamist story.
James Jenkins doesn’t remember the faces of the Nassau County police detectives who strip searched him at the side of a residential street in 2018. He just remembers the bright lights of all the cop cars.
“Just imagine 10 people sitting there watching you naked, that you've never even seen before,” Jenkins said with a mix of laughter and tears.
They had just searched his friends for drugs during a car stop. When his friend tried to run, they tased him. He was taken away in an ambulance. Next, they turned their attention to Jenkins.
“The guy puts on gloves and literally drops my pants for me, spreads my legs, and tells me to cough,” Jenkins said.
Jenkins later sued the officers and the county for false arrest and excessive force. In 2021, a judge ruled in Jenkins’s favor, excoriating the officers in a 20-page ruling, saying they created false reports, lied in court, falsely arrested Jenkins, and that the public strip search amounted to excessive force. The judge took the exceptionally rare step of fining two of the officers a total of $30,000.
Yet despite this damning judgment, the incident was not investigated or found to have merit by Nassau’s internal affairs unit. In fact, over the last six years, not a single one of the 144 civilian complaints of false arrest and excessive force against Nassau police officers has ever been classified as “founded.”
“It's almost saying like James Jenkins didn't exist that night,” Jenkins said. “It’s saying when that happens again, it's just going to be swept under the rug.”
For the complete story, visit gothamist.com.
No one would have known that Trevell Coleman killed someone in 1993 if he hadn’t walked into an East Harlem police precinct 17 years later and told them he did.
Now, more than a decade into his prison sentence, the very prosecutor who argued to put Coleman behind bars and the judge who sentenced him are both asking Gov. Kathy Hochul to release him. His case could serve as a litmus test for a governor who has pledged to reform the state’s clemency process while campaigning against a Republican challenger who has frequently accused her of being soft on crime.
“There are hundreds, if not thousands of others who merit clemency, who should have clemency,” said Steve Zeidman, Coleman’s clemency attorney. “To me, Trevell's case is just a reminder of that.”
For more on the story go to gothamist.com
In 2018, police arrested Fernando Saint-Jean after a traffic stop on the Palisades Interstate Parkway, saying they thought he had drugs. He had a bag of candies.
He sued, and now a judge is letting his case proceed, even though the police involved have made a claim of qualified immunity. WNYC's Tiffany Hanssen spoke with New Jersey Monitor's Dana DiFilippo, who has been reporting on the case, about the challenges involved in holding police accountable for alleged wrongdoing and the status of the suit.
As the New Jersey Symphony opens its centennial season, it does so with a music director who is both mindful of the organization's rich history and eager to continue expanding its reach and range of offerings. Earlier this year, conductor Xian Zhang accepted a second extension to her contract, ensuring that her leadership will carry the orchestra through the 2027-28 season.
In a recent interview, Zhang expressed enthusiasm about the ensemble's future, including its continuing commitment to diversity in the music it plays. To read more, see the complete article on Gothamist.
Democrats and voting-rights activists in New York say a Republican-backed lawsuit seeking to upend the state's absentee ballot laws is a transparent attempt to 'wreak havoc' in the weeks leading to the general election on November 8th.
The New York Civil Liberties Union filed court papers saying the lawsuit seeks to change the voting rules "in the middle of an ongoing election based on fanciful theories... and wild allegations of potential fraud." During a hearing on Wednesday, attorneys representing state and federal Democrats argued the Republican legal challenge is without merit and should be rejected, while lawyers representing the GOP said the absentee rules are unconstitutional.
WNYC's Albany reporter, Jon Campbell joins Weekend Edition host David Furst with the latest.
Some of New York City's venerable arts institutions are in the spotlight this week, with a new exhibition opening at the Museum of Modern Art and the New York Philharmonic moving back to its newly rebuilt performing space at Lincoln Center. Speaking with Weekend Edition host David Furst, WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith brings us his latest arts picks.
- Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces
One of the season's most promising new museum exhibitions is set to open Sunday, Oct. 9 at the Museum of Modern Art. "Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces" doesn't focus on a single artist or historical style, but rather on a pioneering art space called Just Above Midtown, which was opened at 50 West 57th Street in 1974 by a then 25-year-old arts educator named Linda Goode Bryant. It was meant to provide a venue for Black artists to show at a level of visibility readily available to their white peers, and allowed them to pursue work in whatever medium and mode suited them, including abstraction, conceptual and performance art, and video. Future stars like David Hammons, Howardena Pindell and Lorraine O'Grady were among the artists who got an early boost at Just Above Midtown, and they're all represented in a show that Linda Goode Bryant helped to assemble. It opens on Oct. 9, and runs through February.
- San Juan Hall: A New York Story
On Saturday, Oct. 8, Lincoln Center will reopen its flagship auditorium, David Geffen Hall, with a pair of concerts that pay tribute to a historic Black and Latin-American neighborhood that was displaced and demolished to make way for the construction of Lincoln Center itself. San Juan Hill was the name of the neighborhood, and "San Juan Hall: A New York Story" is a big new piece the Trinidad-born trumpeter and composer Etienne Charles wrote for his band, Creole Soul, to perform with the New York Philharmonic.
In composing "San Juan Hill," Charles found his inspiration in all the various kinds of music favored in Black and Latin-American neighborhoods, then and now: from jazz, blues, mambo, and calypso to disco and hip hop. The piece also includes recorded interviews with former residents of San Juan Hill and their families, as well as spoken narration by poet Carl Hancock Rux. There will be two performances Saturday, at 2 and 8 p.m. And, in an effort to make these concerts available to everyone, tickets are available on a Choose-What-You-Pay basis, starting at $5 per ticket, and a handful of free tickets will be distributed at the David Geffen Hall welcome center starting at 10:00 a.m. this morning. Check out Lincoln Center for details.
- The New York Philharmonic comes home
The New York Philharmonic starts its own season in the newly renovated David Geffen Hall next week. Bear in mind that folks complained about the hall under question pretty much from the start in 1962. Now, 60 years later, the auditorium has been radically remodeled, with better acoustics, seating that surrounds the stage on all sides, more performance spaces, and better amenities and access.
The New York Philharmonic will give its extensively renovated hall a proper workout with its season-opening program on Wednesday, Oct. 12. Music director Jaap van Zweden conducts the world premiere of "Oyá," a new composition not just for the musicians, but for the hall itself, including its structural acoustics and lighting. Also on the program are a repeat performance of "Stride" by Tania León, which the New York Philharmonic commissioned, and premiered just before the pandemic shutdown in 2020 – it went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2021. There's also a beautifully quirky piece by John Adams, "My Father Knew Charles Ives," and the over-the-top Technicolor glitz of Respighi's "Pines of Rome." The program repeats three more times though Oct. 18, and you can find out more at NY Phil.
As fears about local violence and mass shootings leave many parents worried for their children's safety, New York City officials announced Thursday that they are hiring violence interrupters, mentors, and other community members to help keep students safe.
Project Pivot will provide mentoring, career counseling, recreational activities, and violence prevention programming to 138 city schools with high rates of suspensions, chronic absenteeism, and other factors that put students at risk of violence. The initiative is expected to cost $9 million.
“We cannot be afraid to do the things that work,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference Thursday morning. “We can’t be afraid because it doesn’t fit into the traditional pathway of education.”
Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
In New Jersey's 7th Congressional District, both Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski's campaign and that of Republican challenger Tom Kean Jr. trying to stake claims on moderate and independent voters, while are working to get their own parties’ voters to turn out.
For Kean, that means little or no engagement with media, and few widely advertised events.
For Malinowski, that means convincing middle-of-the-road voters Kane is too extreme, in lockstep with a party that’s reshaped itself around former President Donald Trump — while reminding Democrats control of the House is on the line.
A federal judge has blocked New York’s newly enacted ban on carrying guns in Times Square and on public transportation including the New York City subway system, ruling that it likely violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
U.S. District Judge Glenn Suddaby of Syracuse issued a temporary restraining order on Thursday that will prohibit much of the state’s new concealed carry laws from being enforced as the lawsuit challenging the measures begins its journey through the court system.
The ruling serves as a major blow to the laws Gov. Kathy Hochul and Democratic state lawmakers approved in July, when they were trying to blunt the impact of a Supreme Court decision making it easier to get a permit to legally carry a gun in public. But it won't take effect until early next week, giving the Hochul administration time to appeal.
WNYC's Albany reporter Jon Campbell spoke with All Things Considered host Sean Carlson about the ruling and its impact.
For the full story, visit Gothamist.com.
When police stop someone with a bench warrant, they are required to take that person to court to see a judge. But a new federal lawsuit alleges NYPD officers have been transporting people to Rikers Island illegally, where they must wait for days in difficult jail conditions before their paperwork is cleared up.
Attorney M.K. Kaishian is one of those suing. She joined WNYC Morning Edition host Michael Hill to talk about the suit.
Nick Pinto broke the story for the news site Hell Gate.
The first Sunday in October, many churches celebrate St. Francis of Assisi with a "blessing of the animals." In New York City, St. John the Divine is known for its extravagant animal processions. But WNYC’s Amy Pearl visited a much quieter celebration.
Mayor Eric Adams has abruptly shifted gears and changed the location of New York City’s first “tent city” to temporarily house asylum seekers bused here from border states: Orchard Beach is out and Randall’s Island is in. Here’s what we know about the switch and the rest of the administration’s plans for “Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers.”
WNYC's Jake Offenhartz and Arya Sundaram joined host Sean Carlson to outline what we know about Adams's "tent city" plan.
Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
The Republican candidate in New Jersey’s most competitive congressional race stumbled through an answer on whether he supports abortion rights Sunday night — later telling Gothamist he’d bar abortions after 20 weeks in most cases.
The clarification comes after Tom Kean Jr. told those gathered at a forum he supports a "woman's right to choose" — except in cases of incest or rape, or a threat to the mother’s health. At the forum, confused audience members sought clarity. At the time, Kean (R-Westfield) only doubled down on the statement.
With several weeks left until the midterm elections that will decide who controls Congress and Albany, Morning Edition host Michael Hill talks about the latest political news and what’s coming this week with WNYC’s Brigid Bergin, senior politics reporter and host of our new, live Sunday pop-up politics show, The People’s Guide to Power.
It’s now easier for New Yorkers to learn more about the police officers who have sworn to keep them safe through a new online database created by the Legal Aid Society, which it believes is the most comprehensive collection of officer misconduct records to date.
Law Enforcement Look Up — shared exclusively with Gothamist ahead of its public launch Monday — allows users to search through thousands of records obtained by the public defender organization over the years. The records include civil lawsuits filed against police officers, documents from NYPD internal investigations, Civilian Complaint Review Board allegations and a trove of district attorney letters regarding officers’ credibility — some obtained by Gothamist. The site also houses a smaller set of records on city Department of Correction staff discipline.
WNYC public safety reporter Samantha Max got a sneak peek at the website ahead of its public release. She sat down with Morning Edition host Michael Hill to discuss how it works. Listen to their conversation here and read the full story on Gothamist.com.
"1-800 Happy Birthday," assembled by artist and filmmaker Mohammad Gorjestani at WorthlessStudios in Bushwick, features voicemail messages left by friends and family of people killed by police.
For more on this story, read the article on Gothamist.
WNYC Culture and Arts Editor, Steve Smith joins us once again. Speaking with Weekend Edition host David Furst, he brings us his latest arts picks:
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The 60th annual New York Film Festival kicked off this weekend, launching two very full weeks of movies and events taking place all over town. There's a lot to take in this year, including a handful of screenings at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria. Admittedly, there's very little chance of scoring some of the festival's hottest tickets – good luck getting into Noah Baumbach's adaptation of Don DeLillo's "White Noise," Joanna Hogg's "The Eternal Daughter," or Kelly Reichardt's "Showing Up." But you'll still have plenty of opportunities to catch such wildly diverse films as Claire Denis's "Stars at Noon," Park Chan-Wook's "Decision to Leave," Jafar Panahi's "No Bears," and Hong Sangsoo's "The Novelist's Film." And tickets are still available for this weekend's world premiere of "Till," Chinonye Chukwu's film biography of Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. The festival runs through Oct. 16, and you can learn more at Film at Lincoln Center.
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If you'd prefer to be outdoors and you're open to a trek, consider heading up to the Medieval Festival at Fort Tryon, in Hudson Heights and Inwood. The festival is back after a two-year pandemic hiatus, and you'll see jugglers, jesters, and jousters – and yes, you heard that correctly: fights between knights on horseback. You'll hear period-appropriate live music, and crafts, clothing, and food will all be available. One tip: Come prepared, because the park doesn't have any ATM's available and you definitely don't want to have to barter for a turkey leg. That's happening on Sunday, Oct. 2 from 11:30 a.m.–6:00 p.m., and admission is free. (Regarding the weather: Organizers told Gothamist that the fest will happen rain or shine, unless there’s thunder and lightning.)
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If you like art that poses provocative questions, then the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows Corona Park has the show for you: "Crisis Makes a Book Club." The exhibition features work by Xaviera Simmons, a native New Yorker who employs photography, video, painting, sound art and more to confront heated issues like white supremacy, wealth stratification and the historic U.S. urge toward empire-building. Simmons is creating new original works for this show, while also designing active interventions in the museum's galleries and billboard-size displays for its exterior facade. There's an opening reception for this show and another new opening, featuring art by Charisse Pearlina Weston, this Sunday, Oct. 2 from 1 to 5 p.m., including family art-making workshops and food vendors from the Queens Night Market. The exhibitions run through March 5, and you can learn more at The Queens Museum.
Back in 1981, a disco act called Weeks & Company burned up discos around the world with songs like “Rock Your World." Singer, songwriter and producer Richie Weeks would work late into the night recording songs and performing in legendary nightclubs like Paradise Garage and Studio 54 – and then head in to punch the clock for his day job at the Post Office. When disco cooled down, Weeks pursued his living elsewhere. But now, a new series of previously unheard private recordings is bringing him fresh recognition. Speaking from his home in Newark, Weeks talks to Michael Hill about his days as The Love Magician, and what made him decide to start releasing tracks from his private trove of 300 vintage tapes.
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration recently announced its decision to temporarily house asylum seekers from South America in massive tent facilities. The mayor says the tents would take the pressure off the city's straining shelter system, where more than half of the 15,000 asylum seekers that have arrived since the spring are residing.
But the sprawling white tents filled with cots may breach the city's long standing legal obligations to provide shelter to anybody who seeks it. A tent facility for adult asylum seekers is being built at Orchard Beach in the Bronx. A second facility will primarily house families, but its location has not been announced.
Josh Goldfein is a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society, a non-profit legal group that assists low-income families and individuals. He sat down with WNYC’s Sean Carlson to discuss the city’s decision to temporarily house migrants from the southern border in large tents.
WNYC and Gothamist have obtained never-before-seen photos and videos from inside Rikers Island jails that depict shocking scenes of neglect and squalid living conditions. These images touch on the most debated criminal justice issues in the city today. WNYC reporter Matt Katz spoke to Morning Edition host Michael Hill about his exclusive reporting.
A long-simmering controversy over solitary confinement at city jails came to the steps of City Hall on Wednesday with dueling, heated rallies that preceded a marathon hearing on the issue.
Corrections officers voiced their support for isolating dangerous detainees, while members of the City Council voiced support for a bill banning the practice. The two groups yelled chants at each other (“Safe jails now!” versus “End solitary now!”), and correction officers jeered at council members and gave the thumbs down signs.
Advocates spoke of incarcerated people indefinitely locked alone in cells or caged showers, resulting in extreme psychological trauma. They held signs with the names of those who recently died at Rikers Island, including several who died by suicide after being held in isolation. Family members of the deceased said officers failed to protect their loved ones.
For the rest of this story, go to Gothamist.com.
The City Council convened a hearing on Thursday to recognize Long COVID’s disproportionate impact on women and gender minorities. Health experts testified that women are more likely than men to face debilitating long-term symptoms that push them out of the workforce, while patients and patient-advocates shared stories of dismissals from doctors and challenges with accessing financial support.
The Committee on Women and Gender Equity, chaired by Councilmember Tiffany Cabán, led the hearing in collaboration with the Subcommittee on COVID Recovery and Resiliency. Cabán introduced Long COVID as a women’s health issue in her opening remarks, referencing a study that found women are twice as likely as men to experience the condition.
Reporter Betsy Ladyzhets joined WNYC's Sean Carlson to recount the City Council testimony, and discuss the latest data. Click "listen" in the player to hear their conversation, and you can read Ladyzhets' full report on Gothamist.
Lawmakers from New York are in an ongoing battle over ticketing drivers from New Jersey.
New Jersey lawmakers fired the first shot when the state Senate passed a bill last June that would block the Department of Motor Vehicles from sharing driver’s info with other states, like New York.
In response, New York lawmakers introduced their own bill this month to charge drivers from New Jersey a $50 fee for coming from a so-called non-cooperative state. Details of how the fee would be imposed are not yet clear.
The dueling legislation comes amid a war of words between New Jersey and New York officials over congestion pricing.
Lawmakers from New York say they’ll drop their bills, if New Jersey lawmakers drop theirs.
New York City is struggling to accommodate asylum seekers who continue to arrive at the Port Authority in buses from the southern border. The city now says around 14-thousand asylum seekers have come since spring, more than 3,300 of whom are children. WNYC’s Gwynne Hogan brings us inside one South Bronx school that’s rapidly changing its curriculum and plans to meet the needs of the new students. Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
Participatory budgeting is a way for New Yorkers aged 11 and up to propose and vote on public projects. It's only available in some city council districts, but now, there's a new city-wide initiative too.
WNYC's Morning Edition host Michael Hill spoke with one of the creators of participatory budgeting, former New York City Council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, to learn more about the program's history and how it's changing.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a report Saturday detailing their proposed $52 billion plan to protect the New York City metropolitan area from storm surges and coastal flooding. It marks a major step forward in a long-delayed study initiated in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
The Army Corps report provides significant new details for a proposal that was picked from a range of five options, as part of the NY & NJ Harbor & Tributaries Focus Area Feasibility Study (HATS). The tentatively selected plan, Alternative 3B, now proposes a 14-year construction project that would build 12 storm surge gates across some of the largest waterways around the New York City region.
It would also erect coastal barriers across more than 41 miles of the city’s shoreline, including extensive systems of seawalls and floodwalls in East Harlem, Lower Manhattan, southern Brooklyn, and the entire Rockaway Peninsula.
The Army Corps is soliciting public feedback on their report through January 6, 2023, in order to refine their proposal. It anticipates beginning its final designs for the plan in 2025 and starting construction in 2030. If approved, funded, and built, this proposal would create the largest and most comprehensive system of coastal protections in the region, while dramatically reshaping New York City’s waterfront.
All Things Considered host Sean Carlson spoke with environmental photojournalist Nathan Kensinger, who broke the latest news on the project for WNYC. Click "listen" in the player to hear their conversation, and visit Gothamist for more on the story.
As elevated trains rumble overhead at the Metro North station on 125th Street in East Harlem, a team of street cleaners works 40 hours a week filling yellow garbage bags with discarded coffee cups, cigarette butts, and dirty needles.
“We’ve got to keep it safe and clean for our kids,” said Gary Linares, program director at the nonprofit Positive Workforce, which helped recruit the six-person street cleaning team. “We’re out here all types of hours, cleaning when problems arise.”
The East Harlem revitalization project, called Uptown Grand Central, recently received funding from the Manhattan district attorney’s office to pay people to beautify the area. It is one of 10 grants awarded this summer with the goal of preventing violence by investing in communities rather than waiting to prosecute crimes that have already happened. One group will use the funding to pay young people to paint murals in public housing and another will spend it on tech classes. Some recipients will spend it on restorative justice programs, healing circles, and mentorship sessions.
But that funding will soon run out. Even as shootings in the city remain above pre-pandemic levels, only $32 million — about 15% of the total $250 million initially earmarked for the grants — remains. If the DA’s office doesn’t replenish the fund, it could be up to private donors to pick up the tab. The DA’s office said it works to support its grantees and trains them in how to fundraise on their own but did not respond to questions about whether it would allocate more funding when the $250 million runs out.
Read the rest of the story on Gothamist.com.
Our planet is heating up. One needs only to look at the summer of 2022 as proof.
A group of wildfires burned hundreds of parched acres in the normally lush forests of the Shawangunk Mountains in New York’s Hudson Valley in August. The fires were a rarity in this part of the country, as drought baked the tri-state region for weeks.
Elsewhere in the U.S., wildfires raged amid unprecedented heatwaves in the Pacific Northwest and the Colorado River, a source of drinking water for 40 million people, continued to dwindle. Overseas, countries like France, Spain, and China were scorched by wildfires, while similar and ongoing drought conditions in East Africa pushed populations to the brink of survival.
Droughts and their subsequent disasters often take communities by surprise — displacing people from their homes, destroying crops and leaving governments to scramble for resources. But researchers at the University of Connecticut have stumbled upon a curious, new method to predict flash droughts weeks before they begin.
Visit Gothamist for more details.
Editor's note, Oct. 3, 2022: This radio report misstated a detail surrounding the levels of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF). The audio story has been removed and the accompanying article has been updated.
When Eric Adams was campaigning for mayor, he set ambitious goals for building new bus and protected bike lanes. But nine months into his mayoralty, both goals appear already out of reach. WNYC’s Stephen Nessen reports his transit agency is also struggling to keep up with routine demands.
*New data from Mayor Eric Adams' office shows* that the NYPD spent much less time on trauma-informed training for sexual assault investigations during the previous fiscal year. At the same time, reports of forcible rape in New York City have surged since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. And the spike comes as the Department of Justice is looking into allegations that the NYPD unit that investigates these crimes is shaming victims instead of taking their reports seriously.
Host Tiffany Hanssen talks with WNYC's public safety reporter Samantha Max to dig into the numbers, the training and the investigation.
WNYC Culture and Arts Editor, Steve Smith joins Weekend Edition host David Furst once again, to bring us his latest picks for music, theater and other cultural happening in New York City.
- Radiolab for Kids:
The first place we're headed is The Greene Space, the news, culture, and performance space New York Public Radio operates here in Soho. A new season of programming has just begun, and on Saturday, Sept. 24, they're hosting a live event tied to a new podcast: Radiolab for Kids. In the series "Terrestrials," Lulu Miller interviews guests about the wonders and strangeness of science.
For the live event, Lulu Miller will talk BUGS with entomologist and educator Sebastian Echeverri. Harpist Aviva Jaye will perform live... and you'll even be able to sample Mexican dishes made with insects. It's happening at 2 p.m. on Sept. 24 at The Greene Space, 44 Charlton Street, and you can register in advance at The Green Space.
- The Stone Breakers:
Fine artist and musician Jasper Marsalis is presenting his hip-hop performance art project, Slauson Malone 1, in a theatrical performance called "The Stone Breakers." Jasper is the son of jazz star Wynton Marsalis and actor Victoria Rowell -- but the music he makes is different from anything his lineage might imply.
We can't really describe in detail what "The Stone Breakers" will be like -- and that's by design. In an article we published on Gothamist, Jasper Marsalis told writer Timmhotep Aku - quote - "Confrontation is important to me, because it signifies the breaking of something." His work is meant to shake up his own biases; it echoes the uncertainty we're all living with, and at the same time he's aiming at breaking down the walls between artist and audience. The event is happening at the Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East Side at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 24. Go in with an open mind, and you won't be disappointed.
- Theater:
"Topdog/Underdog," the modern classic by Suzan-Lori Parks, opens Tuesday at the John Golden Theater. This 20th-anniversary revival features Tony Award-winner Corey Hawkins and, making his Broadway debut, actor Yahja Abdul-Mateen II, who listeners will know from his roles in "Watchmen," "The Matrix Resurrections," and Jordan Peele's reboot of "Candyman."
Also opening on Tuesday is one of the most important of all American plays, Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun." This revival is directed by Robert O'Hara, a playwright himself, who received a Tony nomination for directing "Slave Play" on Broadway. The show runs through Nov. 6 at the Public Theater, downtown.
- Klezmer goes Gospel:
The Klezmatics, New York City's beloved klezmer anarchists, are teaming up with singer Joshua Nelson, the so-called "Prince of Kosher Gospel," in a free show in Washington Square Park, closing out the Village Trip festival on Saturday, Sept. 24, at 4 p.m.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has conditionally vetoed a bill to improve working conditions for 130,000 temporary workers, who fuel a quarter of the state’s warehouse industry.
Murphy recommended amendments to the measure on Thursday, including a $1 million appropriation to implement the bill and ensure “robust enforcement” of temp agencies that break the rules. He said he supported the bill’s effort to promote a fairer industry but said his changes would “bolster its administration and effectiveness.”
The bill would prohibit temp agencies from making certain deductions from workers’ paychecks, such as transportation costs to and from work sites, that cause earnings to drop below minimum wage. It would also require temp agencies to tell their workers where they will be sent for the day and how much they will be paid.
Additionally, the bill would make clear that workers have to be transported in vehicles to work sites that meet capacity limits and have one seatbelt per person. During the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gothamist reported that temp workers were crammed into vans, above vehicle capacity limits and despite public health recommendations to social distance. Gothamist also found some temp agencies were not certified by the state as required by law.
Workers who are taken to job sites but are sent home without work would also have to be compensated for at least four hours of work, under the bill. Temp agencies violating the rules could face daily $5,000 fines.
Murphy’s conditional veto doesn’t look to strike any of the protections outlined in the bill, but suggests technical changes to more clearly define the types of temporary workers who would be covered, such as those who labor in maintenance, construction, and food service and production.
Once autumn hits, it can feel like spiders are suddenly everywhere. One was even spotted on Queen Elizabeth's coffin during Britain's royal funeral.
Spider scientist Sebastian Alejandro Echeverri grew up in New York City and runs the website spiderdaynightlive.com. He joined WNYC Morning Edition host Michael Hill to talk about the eight-legged crawlers.
The COVID-19 pandemic made it clear just how crucial New York City’s emergency medical services are.
But maintaining that workforce can be a challenge — particularly since EMS workers, who operate as a branch of the FDNY, are still fighting for pay and benefits that are on par with those of firefighters and other uniformed city workers. They received a pay bump last year. But after five years on the job, a firefighter still earns about $25,000 more than an EMT and nearly $10,000 more than a paramedic.
Some EMS workers say they often balance overtime with second or third jobs to make ends meet. The EMS unions’ current contract with the city expired in June, so fresh negotiations could get underway soon — and union leaders say help can’t come soon enough.
Click "listen" in the player to hear more details, and visit Gothamist for the full story.
Soon, leaves across the region will change and produce extraordinary colors. And in some parts of New York State, they already have.
WNYC's Michael Hill spoke with meteorologist Jim Sagle on where to find the best colors this year. He's been covering fall foliage for more than a decade for Yankee Magazine.
An Oklahoma teacher left her job after the state's Secretary of Education accused her of giving students "banned and pornographic material." The accusation came after Summer Boismier posted a QR code for the Brooklyn Public Library's "Books UnBanned" program. It allows anyone 13 to 21 years old to access the library's entire digital collection for free.
She is in New York this week, speaking out against banning books. She and Brooklyn Public Library President Linda Johnson spoke with WNYC's Morning Edition host Michael Hill about what happened, and the growing fight over book bans.
This summer, New York City officials released a public service announcement about what people should do in case of nuclear Armageddon. But if an atomic bomb does explode in the city, experts advise against taking cover in a building with a fallout shelter sign.
Thousands of these black-and-yellow signs still remain on structures throughout the city’s five boroughs, marking locations where New Yorkers could take refuge from the deadly radioactivity of a nuke — more than 50 years ago.
Back then, these shelters were mostly concrete windowless rooms packed with canned goods and water supplies to sustain people for days — but they were never all they were cracked up to be in terms of protection. In truth, it didn't matter if the shelters worked or not; if a nuclear bomb went off, most people would be dead from the initial blast.
Fallout shelter signs are the last remnants of an ill-conceived program that was designed to quell the fears and anxieties of Americans who had little faith in the shelters to begin with.
“I'm really struck at the enormous fraud that was perpetrated on the public,” says Dr. Jeffrey Kroessler, an associate professor who specializes in New York City history and is the interim chief librarian at John Jay College. “And let's give New Yorkers credit. They knew that this was ridiculous. That it was a fraud; that there is no such thing as survivability.”
Click "listen" in the player to hear more details, and visit Gothamist for the full story.
The city shelter where a Colombian asylum seeker committed suicide over the weekend has been inconsistent in providing essential resources for the Spanish-speaking migrants being placed there, according to interviews with several residents at the family facility in Hollis, Queens.
Several Spanish-speaking homeless families at the Queens shelter said they were placed there after arriving at the PATH DHS Assessment Shelter in the Bronx. Since arriving at the Hollis site, they’ve relied on a telephone translation service and translation apps to communicate with staff and social workers, according to interviews with three recent migrant residents who live in the facility.
Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
The minimum wage in New Jersey will increase to $14.13 in 2023. It's slightly more than expected due to inflation. For the last three years, the state has increased the minimum wage by $1 under a low Gov. Phil Murphy signed in 2019. It boosted the minimum wage from $8.60 cents to $15 an hour by 2024.
Within hours of hearing a plane carrying asylum seekers might land in New Jersey, volunteers and organizers had assembled at the Teterboro Airport — ready with diapers, food and greeting signs stuffed in their cars.
But no migrants ever arrived. Instead, Ultimate Air Shuttle 11 touched down in Teterboro with only crew on board.
On Tuesday, about 15 residents huddled at the parking lot of a restaurant adjacent to Teterboro Airport, as regional and national media raised alarm over the possibility that Republican Gov. Florida Ron DeSantis could be sending dozens more migrants north from Texas. The same plane had taken migrants to Martha’s Vineyard last week, in a move many Democratic leaders have decried as a political stunt and an abuse of vulnerable people.
Frank Carone, the chief of staff to Mayor Eric Adams and trusted gatekeeper, announced Monday he’ll be leaving public service at the end of the mayor’s first year in office.
The departure, first reported by the New York Times, comes less than a year before Adams completes his first term. It’s unclear where Carone — who served as an attorney for the Brooklyn Democratic Party and was also a law partner at the firm Abrams Fensterman — is headed. Adams’ spokesperson, Fabien Levy, did not respond to a request for comment on why Carone is departing the administration or where he’s going.
Through a spokesperson, Carone said he was proud of his work over the last 18 months, serving on Adams’ campaign, and eventually, City Hall. He also said he was looking forward to “continuing to get stuff done” in the coming months.
Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
Immigrants to the United States haven’t particularly been welcomed lately.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seized headlines last week when he flew migrants who had recently arrived in Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. The move recalled Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sending buses of migrants to Washington, D.C. and New York City.
But here in New York, a 10-year-old Syrian girl is getting a different reception.
Her name is Little Amal — and she’s a 12-foot puppet, who’s supposed to represent a refugee looking for her mother. Her name, Amal, means "hope" in Arabic.
A group of English theater and film directors and producers came up with the idea for Amal as a way to put a human face on the global refugee crisis. The puppet traversed Europe last year, journeying some 5,000 miles from the Syrian-Turkish border to Manchester, England. Her trip to New York, which started with her arrival at JFK Airport on Sept. 14, will continue through Oct. 2.
Read more about Amal and her New York City visit on Gothamist.
Nearly half the 35,000 residents who applied for New Jersey’s excluded worker fund still haven’t received any help — but have until the end of the month to prove they were shut out of other pandemic aid and therefore qualify for a $2,000 check.
The Department of Human Services told Gothamist $41 million has been distributed to 18,000 workers, with another 17,000 applications still pending. The fund is meant to aid individuals such as undocumented immigrants or formerly incarcerated people who didn’t qualify for other COVID-19 relief programs or unemployment benefits.
People with pending applications have until September 30th to submit required documents and prove they are eligible, officials said. While advocate groups said they were working with applicants to help them upload the right paperwork, they urged the state to step up its outreach efforts or move back the deadline.
“The state promised us that every eligible applicant will receive their relief check, so it must ensure everyone is aware of the new deadline and has the opportunity to obtain an appointment and ask questions with adequate language access support,” Laura Bustamante and Rosanna Aran from the Excluded NJ Coalition said in a statement to Gothamist. “New Jersey needs an immediate ramp-up to the program's operations or must extend the deadline.”
The Excluded New Jerseyans Fund was rolled out almost a year ago in October after months of protests, rallies and a three-week hunger strike by immigrant advocacy groups. They argued undocumented immigrants who got sick during the pandemic, lost work or loved ones were struggling to put food on the table and pay their rent.
But the fund was slow to take off; only a fraction of the aid was distributed in the first few months as workers complained the application process was onerous and required documentation that was nearly impossible to acquire.
Authorities searched a senior federal judge’s home as part of a Manhattan criminal investigation that led to felony charges earlier this month against his 49-year-old son, who is accused of surreptitiously recording women engaged in sexual acts in his Upper East Side residence.
Investigators seized three hard drives as well as a black binder and three spindles holding more than 150 DVDs from the home of Senior U.S. District Judge Thomas McAvoy in the Binghamton area of New York’s Southern Tier — evidence that is now being used in a 29-count indictment handed down against his son, Daniel McAvoy, according to court records obtained by Gothamist.
WNYC's Albany reporter Jon Campbell joined All Things Considered host Sean Carlson to discuss the case.
To read the full story, visit Gothamist.com.
Tom Kean Jr. is running as a Republican in the ultra-competitive NJ-7 Congressional race — where the common wisdom says any candidate will have to appeal to independents and moderates to win. But his campaign website includes a hard-to-find, seemingly hidden-away page that outlines staunchly conservative positions on voting issues, in stark contrast to more moderate views the Congressional candidate promotes on the rest of the site. His opponent, incumbent Republican Tom Malinowski, has been eager to paint Kean as a Trump-type conservative.
Read about it on Gothamist.com.
In New York City, public school students have just closed out their first full week of school. This comes on the heels of news that, across the country, student achievement plunged during the pandemic. Earlier this month, the National Center for Education Statistics released test results from last year (2021) showing a significant decline in math and reading scores.
WNYC education reporter Jessica Gould talks with host Tiffany Hanssen about the report and New York City's plan for dealing with the "learning loss."
The New York Times recently published an investigation that found students at some Hasidic yeshivas are not receiving an adequate education in subjects like math and science. And the topic of ultra-Orthodox Jewish yeshivas took center stage in Albany this week, when the state Board of Regents passed new regulations meant to ensure students in religious private schools receive a quality education.
WNYC reporters Sophia Chang and Jon Campbell join Weekend Edition host David Furst to discuss why it's a sensitive issue for New York politicians.
We've been highlighting the new arts season this month, and this time we have a lot of Broadway on the agenda. WNYC Culture and Arts Editor, Steve Smith joins Weekend Edition host David Furst with the latest.
Steve's picks:
- Broadway in previews:
You can now see several of the most hotly anticipated plays of the year, open now in previews or just about to be. Just as a reminder, previews are a set of public performances that take place before a show officially opens. It gives the creative team time to identify problems and fine tune solutions in ways that might not have been possible during rehearsals. And they are officially off limits to critics, so I can't actually advocate for any of these shows. But they're almost certainly going to become very hot tickets. The shows now playing are Tom Stoppard's very personal historical drama "Leopoldstadt" at the Longacre Theatre and Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" at the Hudson Theatre. Suzan-Lori Parks's "Topdog/Underdog" opens for previews on Saturday, September 17 at the John Golden Theatre. And on Monday, August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson" starts previews at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.
We'll almost certainly come back around to talking about these shows as they open officially, but it's worth mentioning that you can start seeing them now.
- Rosalia at Radio City:
Rosalia is performing at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday and Monday nights (Sept. 18 and 19). I think it's fair to say she's one of the hottest pop acts on the planet right now... but she's anything but typical. Rosalia is a Spanish artist who originally trained extensively in flamenco music. But over the years she started to incorporate more and more disparate sounds and styles into her personal approach. She started breaking through to the pop world on a global scale with her 2018 album, "El Mal Querer," which also won a slew of awards. She started collaborating with stars like J Balvin and Billie Eilish, and earlier this year released a dazzling new album, "Motomami," blending flamenco, bachata, reggaeton, hip-hop, and more.
- The 40th anniversary of WNYC's New Sounds!
I go back a long way with New Sounds -- as a college student in San Antonio, I bought John Schaefer's book of the same name in hardcover when it came out in 1987, and brought it with me when I moved to New York a few years later. John's impact on the world of new music and its audience has been extraordinary.
Helping to honor 40 years of New Sounds are the very popular and always satisfying Punjabi party band Red Baraat and the local Colombian psychedelic-rock band Combo Chimbita -- and Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley will be on hand to DJ. That's on Wednesday night, September 21 at Brooklyn Bowl, and the best place to go for more information is New Sounds.
The man in charge of NYCHA – the largest public housing authority in the U.S. – will no longer serve as its chief executive officer, Mayor Eric Adams said Thursday.
The announcement that Greg Russ is stepping away from NYCHA's day-to-day operations came in the wake of findings of unsafe levels of arsenic in tap water at Jacob Riis Houses in the East Village.
Earlier this month, the city warned the roughly 3,900 residents of the 19-building complex against drinking or cooking with the water. Later, the firm that did the testing said it got it wrong, and the mayor’s office declared the water safe to drink.
The City Council is holding a hearing on Sept. 23 to ask NYCHA officials and the Adams’ administration to explain what happened.
The mayor appointed Lisa Bova-Hiatt, the housing authority’s executive vice president of legal affairs and general counsel, as interim CEO while the city looks for a permanent replacement. But Russ will continue to chair NYCHA’s board of directors, Adams said.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
Facing concerns among advocates for the homeless after an uptick in New York City’s homeless population, local officials offered conflicting responses on how the city intended to comply with its right-to-shelter law.
Following a tour of a new Manhattan intake center on Thursday, Mayor Eric Adams brushed off a question about New York City’s mandate that requires the city to offer shelter to people in need, instead punting it to his chief counsel, Brendan McGuire.
“We did not say that we're reassessing the right to shelter,” said McGuire. “What we said was that we're reassessing the city practices with respect to the right to shelter.”
The remarks offered few specifics on exactly what changes would be made around the legal requirement, which has been the foundation of the city’s shelter system for decades. On Wednesday, amid the recent busing of thousands of migrants from southern states to New York, Adams issued a statement saying he would “reassess” the way the city handles shelter requests.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
Wearing a mask on New York City subways, buses and taxis is no longer required. The MTA even has a cheeky ad that spoofs its own previous mask guidance, telling riders “you do you” when it comes to how to properly wear a mask. WNYC’s Stephen Nessen reports not everyone is cheering the change.
After sitting out two years because of the pandemic, Afropunk returned to New York City for its Brooklyn edition over the weekend of Sept. 10 and 11. For two days through sunshine and rainfall, artists spanning rap, rock, alternative R&B, and Afrobeats converged in Fort Greene’s Commodore Barry Park, where they performed in front of a crowd estimated at almost 10,000 people each day, according to a festival spokesperson. Many who attended hailed its return, saying it provided a place for Black expression in all forms. For more, read our feature story on Gothamist.
A new investigation by the New York Times finds some of New York's Hasidic Jewish religious schools are failing to educate students in basic academics, including English, science, and math. New York Times reporter Brian Rosenthal spoke with WNYC Morning Edition Host Michael Hill.
A bright orange city parking ticket floats past artist Sarah Cameron Sunde as she silently stands chest deep in the East River at Hallet’s Cove in Queens. A score of geese descends on the small sliver of beach just north of the Socrates Sculpture Garden in Astoria as several fishermen cast their lines with cages on the ends over the high sea wall that encloses the beach.
From the other side of the sea wall, passersby stare at the fully clothed woman with prolonged curiosity as the water slowly inches up her back. Some sit and watch, but everyone is invited to stand with her in the water.
This scene was one of the final rehearsals for Sunde’s nine-year art project, “36.5/A Durational Performance With the Sea.” On Wednesday morning, Sunde began the conclusion of the nine-part series, which aims to provoke dialogue and meditation on sea level rise. It took her to six continents — where she stood in the water for full tidal cycles. New York City represents the project's last stop and final performance — but also a return to its origins.
Click listen in the player to hear the story, and visit Gothamist for more details.
State education policymakers have approved new regulations requiring New York’s private schools give students a robust education, as allegations mount that some Hasidic yeshivas did not teach basic math, history, and English.
The Board of Regents, which sets policy for the state Department of Education, unanimously voted in favor of the rules with little fanfare Tuesday.
The new framework for what qualifies as an education “substantially equivalent” to one offered in public schools follows a New York Times investigation into Hasidic yeshivas in Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley. The paper reported Sunday that out of roughly 1,000 boys at one Hasidic yeshiva in Williamsburg, virtually none passed any state math or reading tests in 2019.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
The New Jersey compassionate release law that took effect last February was supposed to make it easier for gravely ill or dying inmates to get out of prison early and save taxpayers the cost of their care.
But two cases before the New Jersey Supreme Court will determine the measure’s reach — and whether state judges have the discretion to deny releases for end-of-life prisoners who meet strict medical and safety requirements outlined by the Legislature.
“[It] will really determine the fate of this law,” said Alex Shalom, senior attorney for the ACLU of New Jersey, which has filed amicus briefs in both cases. “It will determine whether the law can achieve its laudable objective of increasing compassion and saving the state money.”
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on the compassionate release request for a man who shot and killed a Newark police detective inside an Essex County courtroom in 1993.
The justices will also weigh on a second case regarding the compassionate release of a woman who was convicted of murdering her husband, and who was freed earlier this year due to her permanant physical incapacitation, after a successful appeal of a Superior Court ruling that she be kept in prison.
A lack of routine inspections by corrections officers, delay in critical first aid, and not screening for self-harm are just a few of the findings detailed in a report released Monday by the city’s jail oversight board investigating deaths at Rikers Island.
The 35-page report from the city’s Board of Corrections examining deaths of incarcerated people in 2021 comes as the rate of deaths at the Rikers Island jail complex so far this year outpaces last year’s, where six people died by suicide and another four died from drug overdoses. Overall, there were 16 deaths in city custody last year, and 13 so far this year.
The deaths at the beleaguered jail complex have reinforced calls from advocates for incarcerated people for a federal takeover of the facility.
For more on this story, go to Gothamist.com.
Under New Jersey law, public officials are entitled to their pensions if they serve honorably. But a report published this week by NJ Advance Media found that nearly 100 officials with criminal convictions related to their work are still getting payments.
Riley Yates, Reporter at NJ Advance Media identified those officials. He joined WNYC host Tiffany Hanssen to talk about this investigation, the disgraced officials receiving pension payments and what, if anything, is being done to address the issue.
It was back to school for nearly a million public school students in New York City on Thursday. And thanks to new legislation signed by Governor Hochul late this week, their class sizes will eventually be getting smaller. That's just one of the major developments happening, "This Week in Politics." WNYC's senior politics reporter Brigid Bergin joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to talk about that and more.
Brigid also gives us a preview of her brand new, local politics show, The People's Guide to Power. The first episode airs live this Sunday, September 11th at noon.
For a few weeks now we've been talking about the arts season ahead and now it feels like everything's starting to happen. WNYC Culture and Arts Editor, Steve Smith joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to highlight some choice options for the week ahead.
Steve's picks:
- New exhibitions:
If you're interested in seeing a substantial range of sophisticated and engaging contemporary art with maximum efficiency, you might consider spending a day with the Hauser & Wirth galleries. In the past few days they've opened four shows well worth seeing, each featuring the work of a significant contemporary woman artist.
In Hauser & Wirth's Chelsea space at 542 West 22nd Street, three very different shows have just opened. The one likely to demand the most attention is "Demented Words," which highlights the familiar and popular text-based work of Jenny Holzer. There's also a gorgeous show of paintings by Christina Quarles -- her first solo show in New York City with the gallery, in fact -- and "Al Rio," an especially timely exhibition of melancholy photographs Zoe Leonard took along the border separating the United States and Mexico.
And there's another show happening uptown. All three floors of the original Hauser & Wirth townhouse gallery at 32 East 69th Street are occupied now by a show surveying work made by Lorna Simpson. She's a Brooklyn-born photographer and media artist who makes collages juxtaposing images and text, asking timely and provocative questions about race, gender and history. "Lorna Simpson: 1985 – 92” is an illuminating show, and also a very, very beautiful one.
The Lorna Simpson show is open through October 22, and the other shows are on through October 29. The galleries are open Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 6pm. For details, visit Hauser & Wirth.
- Afropunk:
This weekend marks the return of Afropunk, which is happening for the first time since 2019. The festival starts at noon on Saturday, September 10th in Commodore Barry Park, in Fort Greene. Saturday night's headliners are The Roots, the legendary Philadelphia hip hop crew. And Sunday's big attraction is Nigerian superstar Burna Boy -- who became the first-ever African performer to sell out Madison Square Garden.
Afropunk was sparked by a 2003 documentary film that examined punk culture among Black communities... the first festival happened in Brooklyn in 2005. It's grown to massive proportions -- there are festivals across the country and around the globe. in addition to the big acts we named, there's a full slate of buzzworthy acts like Tierra Whack and Pink Siifu. And beyond music, the festival celebrates culture, fashion, wellness, and social justice -- it's a very big deal, and good to see it back in action. You can find ticket information at Afropunk Brooklyn.
- Roxy Music turns 50:
I'm personally looking forward to seeing the iconic British art-rock band Roxy Music at Madison Square Garden this Monday night... September 12th. Bryan Ferry, Andy Mackey, Phil Manzanera and Paul Thompson are celebrating their 50th anniversary, and St. Vincent is opening. It's sure to be a grand affair, and tickets are still available.
New York City’s first-ever chief equity officer Dr. Torian Easterling announced this week that he is stepping down.
Easterling, who spent more than seven years at the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, was appointed by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in September 2020, shortly after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis spurred widespread protests.
Last year, the city passed a resolution that designated racism a public health crisis and outlined nine steps for the New York City Board of Health to take to achieve health equity. Easterling will continue in his role until the end of September.
Easterling sat down with WNYC’s Sean Carlson to discuss what he has accomplished during his time in city government and the road ahead for improving health equity in New York City.
Click "listen" in the player to hear their conversation.
Days before the Labor Day holiday weekend, new signs appeared in Times Square warning visitors they were entering a gun free zone. Legislation, signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul in June 2022, prohibits the carrying of firearms in "sensitive places" like Times Square. New Yorkers who live and work around the Midtown tourist destination have mixed reactions with many remaining skeptical that the changes will decrease gun violence in the city.
WNYC's Matt Katz sits down with host Tiffany Hanssen to discuss the new law, its impact and potential legal challenges.
The nation's top beatboxers are converging Friday in New Jersey to show off their skills at the American Beatbox Championships, which are taking place in Atlantic City over Labor Day weekend. And thanks to a newly added contest for international competitors, this year's battle has global repercussions. Kaila Mullady of New York City is a two-time winner of the Beatbox Battle World Championship, and a member of the group Freestyle Love Supreme. She also co-hosts and produces the American Beatbox Championship, and recently spoke about the competition with WNYC's Morning Edition host Michael Hill.
Inside Ravenswood Generating Station, New York City’s largest power plant, the air trembles from the inferno swirling in its giant boiler. It’s early August, and a large digital display in the control room — resembling an alarm clock — reads off how many megawatts of energy are flowing into the boroughs. The red digits move from 299 to 311 in an instant. The facility is almost at maximum capacity, as the city sweats through a string of heat waves.
“We've been running at near full output for the last couple of weeks while we've been in this recent hot spell,” said Ravenswood CEO Clint Plummer.
Most New Yorkers recognize the Ravenswood Generating Station from its four red-and-white smoke stacks rising from Long Island City. They’re an iconic part of the East River waterfront — its pillars jutting from Long Island City like an industrial parthenon.
The facility has long supplied at least 20% of the city’s energy needs — primarily by burning natural gas and fuel oil. But these energy sources now run afoul of the city and state’s goals of going green to prevent the worst consequences of climate changes — problems that could devastate the waterfront where Ravenswood sits.
So last month, Rise, Light & Power — the current owner of the facility — announced a proposal to transition the 2,480-megawatt energy center to 100% renewable energy. Their plan calls for a combination of wind, geothermal energy and battery storage that would be funded through their own capital along with state and local grants. If approved, the project could have a massive impact on reducing local carbon emissions and air pollution — a boon for people’s short-term and long-term health.
Click "listen" in the player to take a tour of the facility and hear about the plan. And for the full story, visit Gothamist.
Starting Thursday, gun owners will not be allowed to carry their firearms into a wide swath of facilities designated as “sensitive” locations in New York, including most health care centers, restaurants, mass transit and even Times Square.
The bulk of the state’s recently passed Concealed Carry Improvement Act takes effect on Thursday, implementing a series of more-extensive requirements to obtain a permit to legally carry a weapon in public.
WNYC's Albany reporter Jon Campbell joined "All Things Considered" host Sean Carlson to discuss the latest.
For more, visit Gothamist.com.
On Thursday, Times Square becomes a sensitive location. That means visitors cannot carry weapons, despite the Supreme Court decision that struck down New York’s gun-carry law.
A state law signed in the wake of the Supreme Court decision established Times Square as a sensitive location where most will continue to be forbidden from carrying guns. The City Council held a hearing Tuesday to hash out the exact boundaries of Times Square.
"This feels very surreal to me, that we’re taking about a New York where people are going to be carrying," said Council Member Erik Bottcher, who represents Times Square. "I can’t really believe we’re having this conversation and it’s because of the Supreme Court, because of what they did."
Anyone who wants to carry a gun in New York City still needs a permit from the NYPD.
To read more of this story, go to Gothamist.com.
More than four dozen state lawmakers have penned a letter to Mastercard and American Express, urging the New York-based credit card companies to support a measure that could make it easier to spot suspicious purchases at gun stores.
Credit card companies track spending based on the type of retailer where a card is used — though they do not track the individual items that are purchased. Each purchase is tagged with what’s called a merchant category code, with the master list set by an international standards body. Some categories are fairly broad, such as those for grocery stores and airlines, while others are quite specific. There are unique codes for tent and awning shops, wig and toupee stores — even separate categories for antique shops, secondhand stores and pawn shops.
But there are no codes just for gun retailers.
A Mastercard reference booklet lumps them into a “miscellaneous” category with magic stores, silk flower shops and bottled and distilled water dealers, or a “durable goods” category that also includes lighting fixtures and grave markers.
“I think people would be shocked to find that out,” said State Sen. Zellnor Myrie, who spearheaded the letter, which was shared exclusively with Gothamist. It asks Mastercard and American Express to support the creation of a new code for gun sellers.
“I think the public would agree that it’s important for us to keep track of these things,” Myrie said.
Read the full story at Gothamist.com.
Read the rest of the story on Gothamist.com.
It's that time of year when theatres, museums and concert halls gear up for a new arts season as August comes to a close. Speaking with Weekend Edition host David Furst, WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor, Steve Smith helps us get ready for the fall -- and also has some picks for the end of August.
STEVE'S PICKS:
- Fall Preview:
Over the last week, I've collaborated with a number of reporters to survey the season ahead and round up some of the best options in a series of Fall Preview stories. We covered museums and galleries and we had a New Jersey correspondent give us a list of top events specifically happening across the river. Our reporter Ben Yakas talked to booksellers and other literary types for a survey of upcoming books. We covered theater and dance, and ended the week with a roundup of 21 essential concerts and music festivals.
- This weekend:
The 30th annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival is happening Saturday, August 27 in Marcus Garvey Park and Sunday, August 28 in Tompkins Square Park. This festival always provides an outstanding survey of big-name talent and rising stars. Saturday's show includes a project called Black Wall Street. It's led by vibraphonist Nikara Warren, who just happens to be the granddaughter of the great pianist Kenny Barron. Saturday night's bill also includes trumpeter Terence Blanchard, who's augmenting his band with a string quartet, and veteran bassist Buster Williams.
Then on Sunday, the action moves downtown to Tompkins Square Park, very close to one of the last apartments actually occupied by festival namesake Charlie Parker. The iconic saxophonist Archie Shepp headlines Sunday night, joined by two brilliant younger musicians, pianist Jason Moran and vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant. Both days run from 3 to 7 p.m., and they're free.
- The week ahead:
The Village Vanguard is hosting a very special engagement: pianist Brad Mehldau is playing solo, two sets a night, Tuesday through Sunday. Mehldau is a fascinating artist: a powerful bandleader, a significant composer, and a radical thinker whose most recent album, Jacob's Ladder, fuses the progressive rock of his youth, by bands like Yes and Rush, with ideas about spirituality and the search for God through music. He's also a brilliant interpreter of songs -- he's brought material by Nick Drake and Radiohead into his personal portfolio, and plays a beautiful version of Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind" on another recent album, "Suite April 2020."
Anyone who has tried to buy a home lately knows it's a tough market, but a new report by the Asbury Park Press finds New Jersey homebuyers aren't just in competition with other people — they're also up against multimillion-dollar corporate investors. Michael L. Diamond and Stephen Stirling delved into the numbers and found a story of LLCs snapping of tens of thousands of homes, pricing out regular residents. Tenants can't keep up with the rent. Diamond and Stirling discovered that there are six times as many LLCs owning single- to four-family homes in the state as there were 10 years ago.
A Brooklyn Public Library initiative to combat state book bans has landed an Oklahoma teacher in trouble, after a parent there complained her promotion of the resource was itself a violation of state law.
Summer Boismier, a high school English teacher in Norman, Okla., told Gothamist she was placed on leave after providing her students with information about Books UnBanned, a program that allows anyone between the ages of 13 to 21 to access the Brooklyn Public Library’s digital collection at no charge.
The library system launched the resource in April as a response to a surge in book bans spearheaded by conservative activists and lawmakers throughout the U.S. It has since received more than 4,000 applications from teenagers in every state, according to Fritzi Bodenheimer, a spokesperson for Brooklyn Public Library.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has been hounded since the start of the coronavirus pandemic by criticisms that his administration endangered the staffs and residents of long-term care facilities as it scrambled, unprepared to confront the health crisis.
Now, 41 lawsuits have been filed by staffers who say they were barred from wearing masks and taking other steps that could have protected them, and the elderly residents in their care. WNYC's Sean Carlson spoke to NorthJersey.com reporter Scott Fallon about where things stand.
WNYC's Brigid Bergin joins Morning Edition host Michael Hill with the latest on New York's state Senate and congressional primaries.
Polls are officially open across the five boroughs Tuesday for the second of two primaries this summer. While the June 28th primary asked voters to decide their party’s nominee for governor and state Assembly races, this one will decide nominees for state Senate and congressional posts.
The second primary came as a result of a chaotic state-level redistricting process that resulted in a judge ordering two primary contests after ruling Democrats illegally drew the legislative and congressional maps. The extra time was required for a court-appointed mapmaker to reconfigure the state Senate and congressional lines.
Polls close at 9 p.m. today.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
The company that sold tens of thousands of air purifiers for use in New York City public school classrooms since the start of the pandemic — despite concerns among parents, teachers, and ventilation experts about their efficacy — used a high-powered lobbying firm to target key members of city government.
New documents obtained by Gothamist show just how close some of those relationships were.
The Intellipure air purifiers sold to the Department of Education by the Manhattan-based company Delos Living have stirred controversy within school communities because the devices do not use HEPA filters, which are recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to protect against the indoor spread of COVID-19.
However, the education department has referred to the devices in the past as “HEPA purifiers” in its messaging to parents, educators, and the press. Documents obtained by Gothamist show Delos also referred to them as HEPA purifiers in its internal communications with the education department, although the company was clear that the air purifiers do not use HEPA filters. As Gothamist reported last year, the purifiers also have lower air flow rates than other similarly priced models, meaning they don't ventilate and physically clean the air as much as others.
The education department said it has bought over 160,000 of the air purifiers since the summer of 2020. Public records show the city has spent roughly $60 million on contracts with Delos Living since 2020, not including an additional $27 million contract recently signed by the city.
Filings with the city clerk over that same period show the company has paid $375,000 to a well-connected lobbying firm called Kasirer that has targeted a wide range of city officials on Delos Living’s behalf. Those listed include senior members of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, Schools Chancellor David Banks and his two most recent predecessors, and current Mayor Eric Adams, while he was still Brooklyn borough president.
But the ties to city government went even deeper: Email and text-message records recently obtained by Gothamist reveal that one of Kasirer’s top lobbyists was in direct contact with City Hall on behalf of Delos — while her husband was a senior adviser on de Blasio’s COVID-19 response team.
New York City’s conflicts of interest law prohibits city employees from using their positions to benefit spouses or other people associated with them. After this story was published, de Blasio’s former adviser said he was not involved in the contract and did not discuss Kasirer’s lobbying work with his wife while he was at City Hall.
None of the redacted records obtained by Gothamist indicate that the mayor’s adviser was involved in the contract, and Delos said it was unaware of the relationship at the time. However, put together, the documents illustrate a lobbying effort that was extensive, cozy with those in power, and happening at a time when de Blasio had suspended the city’s normal procurement procedures.
WNYC host Janae Pierre speaks to investigative editor Christopher Werth about the new revelations. Click "listen" to hear their conversation, and visit Gothamist for the full story.
New York City health officials announced last week that they detected polio in wastewater, suggesting that the dangerous virus is silently spreading within the nation’s most populous metropolis. The spotting happened about a month after nearby Rockland County became the first American locale in nearly a decade to report a symptomatic case of polio. The virus is also cruising through sewage in Orange County, which sits next to Rockland in the Hudson Valley.
For decades, the country hasn’t had to worry about community transmission of polio. Thanks to childhood vaccination, most people in the U.S. have been protected for 70 years, and homegrown outbreaks were eliminated from both North and South America by 1994.
It would be easy to fret now — especially with the news coming on the heels of more than two years of COVID-19 and a summer of monkeypox. But a slew of health researchers told Gothamist that it isn’t time to panic. Only a single symptomatic case has been identified in New York so far. But a new vaccination push is warranted, given that some cracks have emerged in our collective defenses.
“If we start getting three or four or five random cases in New York City, then I would definitely be looking for my vaccine schedule and make sure I've been vaccinated,” said Dr. David Buchholz, a pediatrician and the senior founding medical director for primary care at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
Polio is almost exclusively a threat to the unvaccinated — and based on current immunization rates, many neighborhoods in New York City and counties statewide are below the levels needed to keep the virus from thriving among youngsters, the most vulnerable age group.
The threat was more severe in the 1940s and 1950s, when the virus killed thousands of Americans each year and paralyzed scores more. The afflicted were mostly children, but included adults like President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Back then, the polio virus, which primarily spreads via fecal matter, contaminated water in swimming pools and even drinking fountains. Many of those threats are long gone in high-income nations due to vaccination and public infrastructure such as water treatment.
“Are we going to see the numbers we saw in the '50s or in the '40s?” asked Dr. Perry Halkitis, dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health. “Unlikely.”
But some technological gaps remain in understanding our collective public health. Most New Yorkers, for example, will have an easier time checking their order history on Uber Eats than finding their childhood vaccination records.
“Over the course of your lifetime, particularly if we're thinking about immunizations you might have received as a child, you've moved around to a lot of different organizations,” said Dr. Julia Adler-Milstein, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco who directs its Center for Clinical Informatics and Improvement Research. “That means that your history is fragmented in all those different places that you've been.”
It’s also unclear how many New York residents might be carrying polio right now because wastewater surveillance cannot reveal such information.
Right now, the methods can simply tell the presence or absence of polio, stated Syracuse University epidemiologist Dr. David Larsen, who helps manage the New York state wastewater surveillance network, via email. “There needs to be further development to estimate trends in transmission.”
So for any New Yorker who can’t find their vaccine documents, who has a young kid at home who hasn’t completed their vaccine schedule, or who simply wants to know if they might be at risk if an epidemic emerges, here’s a guide to facing a polio outbreak in 2022 — just in case.
Click "listen" in the player to hear a guide to finding your old vaccination records, and visit Gothamist to get answers to some frequently asked questions about polio in New York.
Stuck in traffic on Broadway near City Hall — like any other car in lower Manhattan on a hot August morning — is an ordinary-looking bright blue and white Toyota Prius.
That is, until it pulls up and you see the words “I measure air quality” written on the driver’s side door.
The car is sucking in air through clear plastic tubes that run through the rear window and into a little mobile laboratory arranged neatly like catalog luggage in the trunk.
For the next year, more than 20 of these labs on wheels will be deployed in a pilot program run by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. The fleet is part of a statewide campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions locally and improve urban air quality in accordance with state climate laws, which require enhanced air monitoring.
“Right now, we measure temperature, black carbon, carbon dioxide, humidity, pressure, ozone, nitrous oxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, fine particulate matter…,” said the car’s driver Ramses Diaz, listing some of the pollutants and metrics they record as he cruises through downtown. The vehicle can quantify about 20 different emissions.
Target areas include Manhattan, the Bronx, Albany and Buffalo/Niagara. Within a year, people living in these places will be able to go online and find their homes and workplaces, and see what kind of air they are breathing when they walk out the door. While regulations on heating oil and other pollutants have led to markedly cleaner air in cities than in decades past, environmental leaders say there’s much work yet to be done.
“There are holdouts — areas of extreme pollution,” said Basil Seggos, the DEC commissioner. “Really the purpose of going down to the street level is to find out what people are breathing on the street, in their homes, in their backyards, and then use that data ultimately to drive better decision-making.”
Click "listen" in the player to hear the story, and visit Gothamist for more details.
The embattled Jersey City councilwoman who was caught on video in an apparent hit-and-run listened to nearly five hours of public comment calling on her to resign Wednesday night. Then, she spoke.
WNYC's Nancy Solomon has the full story at Gothamist.com.
The Infrastructure Reduction Act President Joe Biden signed this week addresses much more than economics. It also sets aside $369 billion over 10 years for clean energy and climate resiliency.
Ed Potosnak, the executive director of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters, joined WNYC's Michael Hill on Morning Edition to discuss why that's of particular importance to New Jersey and the region.
Read the full transcript here.
Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney is relying on a practice one expert says is blurring ethical lines in her re-election bid.
A "franked" letter refers to mail sent from a House member to a constituent paid for by taxpayers. According to her office, Maloney sent nearly 26,000 franked letters touting her various achievements across the 12th congressional district at a time when there is supposed to be a blackout for mass communications. The workaround: those letters were sent in batches of 499 or fewer, to comply with the letter of House rules.
Richard Painter, a law professor and former chief white house ethics attorney for President George W. Bush, said Maloney was exploiting a loophole
"This is clearly an attempt to get around the law," said Painter.
A spokesperson for Maloney's campaign said all mailers complied with House rules.
Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
The eviction protection measures New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed last year to stave off a wave of renters being displaced have prompted the dismissal of more than 10,000 cases in landlord-tenant court so far, state officials said.
But housing advocates say even as the law kept thousands in their homes, the rules weren’t uniformly applied across every county, and likely resulted in tenants who should have been protected nonetheless losing their homes.
Eviction filings are now back on the rise, reaching the highest levels since the pandemic began, as state rental assistance programs dry up. About 58,000 eviction filings were made in the first seven months of 2022, more than double the 25,600 filed in the same period last year but shy of the 89,500 filed between January and July 2019, records show.
The courts, meanwhile, are slogging through a backlog of more than 31,000 cases, management reports show. Tenancy cases are considered backlogged if they take more than two months to process.
WNYC's Karen Yi spoke to All Things Considered host Sean Carlon.
In New Jersey, everyone is connected to everyone — so when a powerful politician whose father is a county executive and who holds influential positions of her own is accused of wrongdoing, can the system really be expected to hold her to account? WNYC's Nancy Solomon explores that question in the case of Amy DeGise, the Jersey City Councilwoman accused of a hit-and-run. Most of her fellow councilmembers have demurred or avoided speaking at all about whether she should step down. And while her court case is being moved out of Hudson County, where she's so connected to the local Democratic machine, some activists say that isn't enough.
See the full transcript, including some material that didn't make it to WNYC's air because of time constraints, here.
Standing outside Sing Sing prison last Sunday, Stephanie Rivera looked on as her 8-year-old son bit into the side of a cucumber and grinned.
It was a last stop before they got back in the car for the hour-long drive home to Long Island after a visit with her husband inside.
Since last year, the farm stand has been open every third weekend outside the walls of the Ossining prison — with volunteers handing out free bags of fresh produce that visitors can bring in to their loved ones.
But as of Monday, visitors are no longer be able to bring the fresh produce inside. A recent order from New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, or DOCCS, restricts people from mailing or bringing care packages of food to people in prison.
It’s a big shift for this little produce stand — a joint initiative between the abolitionist farmer collective Sweet Freedom Farm, upriver, and the Sing Sing Family Collective.
Going forward, incarcerated people can only get two packages a year — and those must be delivered through the mail, not in person. Any food must be sent through a third party vendor. It will have a big impact on incarcerated people’s ability to eat fresh and specialty food. For their loved ones, it will mean higher costs and more complications, they say.
Greg Mingo, 69, was released in September, after 40 years in prison. Now he comes out every month to volunteer at the stand. “You know, everybody needs food. Times are hard.” he said. “We know about the economy, the situation. It's really hard on families. So this helps.”
He said, even if the food can’t be brought in to people inside, he and the others will still be out there, making it available to their families.
He worries that having to ship produce through a vendor means the end of fresh items for those inside.
“That's why they call them perishables,” he said. “By the time they get it, a lot of it may not be any good.”
The aim is to stop drugs and weapons
DOCCS spokesperson Nicole Sheremeta said the pivot in policy aims to cut down on drugs and weapons being smuggled into the facilities. In a statement, DOCCS wrote that 290 packages were found to contain contraband in 2019 during package room examinations. In 2020, that number jumped to 924 packages containing contraband.
In the first half of 2021, officials found 577 packages concealing contraband, suggesting another record year occurred. The statement pointed out that contraband that is not confiscated can further lead to violence and drug issues.
Including the contraband that’s found in packages, the total number of contraband drugs and weapons discovered in state prisons has dropped from 5,837 to 5,475 between 2019 and 2020. Items listed as weapons include things like toothbrushes and can lids, which may or may not have been intended for violence.
Mingo and others who had spent time in the facilities were skeptical that banning packages will keep contraband out.
“You might have isolated instances,” Mingo said. “But for the most part, when the package arrives at the facility it's opened up, it's examined, checked and everything. And so when you come down to pick up the package, it's in paper bags already.”
Queens Assembly member David Weprin said he is also skeptical the ban will reduce smuggling. He said DOCCS won’t provide his office with any data to back up their claims of contraband coming in through packages in increasing amounts. He and State Senator Julia Salazar recently authored an editorial, opposing the ban.
“The packages you send are already subject to multiple types of screening and searches. In fact, my office is constantly in contact with incarcerated individuals and their families regarding missing items from care packages.” he said. “We need more accountability in the mail rooms, not a blanket ban on families who want to support their loved ones.”
Weprin stopped by the farm stand Sunday to speak out against the policy.
“This directive will impose unnecessary fees on families and will significantly diminish access to fresh foods, homemade goods and religious articles for those who are incarcerated,” Weprin said”
He added that DOCCS is sending a message: “They believe the contraband coming into facilities is coming through the packages you send to your loved ones. I can't just take their word for it. I want proof. And so far they've failed to share the data behind this decision”
“It’s going to be a lot more money.”
Incarcerated people and their loved ones said they will suffer in many ways after produce and other packages are banned.
Joseph Wilson and his wife Renee Wilson co-founded the Sing Sing Family Collective. Gothamist went to visit Joseph the last day before the ban went into effect. Families stood in line to get in, clutching bags and suitcases full of food items for their loved ones.
Wilson said the measure feels unfairly punitive.
“Zero percent of packages my family sent had contraband items,” he said. “So why are they being punished?”
Wilson pointed out that if DOCCS is finding more contraband in packages, that’s evidence the system works — the contraband was found.
Activist Wilfredo Laracuente feels similarly. He spent 10 years in Sing Sing. He’s worried that severing one more connection between those inside and their families is going to increase stress and conflict, and destabilize family bonds, hurting reentry efforts.
“The data is very clear. It says that if you have a strong support circle, and you have family that's behind you or coming to see you and bringing packages, that’s going to enable your reentry process upon your release.”
He said a package serves as a reminder that someone outside cares for you. “It creates a more humanistic component. You get to embrace your humanity.”
As she watched her son with his cucumber, Stephanie Rivera said she worries that vendors may not take EBT cards and will charge for shipping. They may also send items in multiple shipments, which can put prisoners over the limit on the number of packages you can get in a time period.
“It’s just basically a lot more money and a lot more work for us to do so we can try to make sure that the guys eat.” she shook her head. “It’s going to be very stressful.”
A refined approach to an unpopular idea.
An earlier attempt at restricting packages into prisons failed in 2018, after intense public backlash.
Amy Peterson is a member of a larger coalition fighting the package ban, using the hashtag #BringBackCarePackages. She said the big difference between that 2018 initiative and this one is that the last attempt included books, and it only allowed the use of a handful of vendors, severely limiting options.
“There were maybe like 40 books to choose from,” she said. “It was really outrageous, and that really got people's attention.”
But she said DOCCS learned from that failure.
“When they instituted this [current] ban, they very carefully studied the response to the last one. And so they said this doesn't apply to books, and they tried to make some alterations that make it seem not as terrible.” she said. “They were sort of very careful to think about what the criticisms were gonna be.”
Early voting kicked off this weekend for congressional and state Senate primaries. And The New York Times has made endorsements for several key races. WNYC's senior political correspondent, Brigid Bergin joined "Morning Edition" edition host Michael Hill to discuss the latest Monday morning as we barrel towards that August 23rd primary.
WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith is back with his latest recommendations. Speaking with Weekend Edition host David Furst, he brings us some intimate theater and a project that explores the Arab, Moorish, and North African roots of Afro Latin and Afro Cuban music.
Steve's picks:
- An evening out at the theater is almost always a welcome opportunity, but every now and then it's something more: an experience that transcends entertainment and really gets under your skin in a profound way. That's the way I felt about "The Nosebleed," which is running now in the intimate Claire Tow Theater, produced by Lincoln Center Theater.
"The Nosebleed" was written by Aya Ogawa, who's a Brooklyn-based playwright, director, performer and translator. The play was produced previously at the Japan Society, and it has racked up some impressive reviews in its various iterations. The idea starts out simple: Ogawa addresses the audience directly, talking about the subject of failure, and specifically her own failure to provide a proper memorial for a father with whom she had a difficult relationship.
Four more actors come to the stage, each revealing some small, possibly trivial failure – kind of making it clear to the audience that everyone makes mistakes. The actors mostly play Ogawa for the rest of the evening, while Ogawa sticks around to play her youngest son and, eventually, her father. Failure remains the key theme throughout – identity and obligation are also major threads – and what "The Nosebleed" ultimately suggests is that it's never too late to find your peace – as Ogawa does onstage, with her cast and selected audience members. The conclusion is filled with profundity and delirious beauty.
The show runs through August 28th, and I'm thinking about going again before it's gone.
- Coming up on Friday, August 19th, trumpeter, composer and bandleader Arturo O'Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra present the U.S. premiere of "The Cuban-Khaleeji Project." This is the U.S. premiere of a project originally commissioned by The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi. And it makes sense to present this at Little Island, the man-made arts and recreational facility that juts out into the Hudson River at Pier 55, between 13th and 15th Streets, because the project explores the Arab, Moorish, and North African roots of Afro Latin and Afro Cuban music and the music of seafaring peoples around the Arabian Gulf.
The project is being presented here by Little Island in conjunction with the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, an organization involved with performance, education, and presentation of the music of all of the Americas. And to vividly illuminate the ties between African, Afro Cuban, and Arabic musical traditions, O'Farill and his 18-piece band are welcoming some heavyweight guests: Kuwaiti percussion ensemble Boom.Diwan, led by composer Ghazi Al-Mulaifi, British-Bahraini trumpet player Yazz Ahmed, Moroccan vocalist Malika Zarra and Emerati oud master Ali Obaid. The performances are happening Aug. 19, 20, and 21 at 8 p.m., and tickets are on sale now here.
Early voting starts Saturday, August 13th for New York's special August 23rd primary, where Democrats and Republicans will pick their nominees for Congress and for state Senate. The congressional races are capturing most of the headlines in New York City, but there are plenty of competitive state Senate races too - especially among Democrats. WNYC's Albany reporter Jon Campbell joins Weekend Edition host David Furst for a guide to some of the key match-ups.
As early voting draws near for the August 23rd primary, six leading congressional candidates sought to make closing arguments on how they could be the best advocate for one of New York City’s most liberal districts.
The two-hour event, co-hosted by WNYC and Spectrum News/NY1, was the first televised debate in the race for the 10th Congressional District. It offered voters a chance to hear the candidates’ views on a range of issues from climate resiliency, former President Donald Trump and bail reform. Following a protracted redistricting process, the new district now covers Lower Manhattan and parts of northwest Brooklyn — a solidly blue district where the primary will likely determine the victor in the November election.
For the most part, the debate — which was moderated by WNYC’s Brigid Bergin and NY1’s Errol Louis — was a civil affair. But there were several sharp attacks from the candidates against Daniel Goldman, an ex-prosecutor and MSNBC analyst who helped impeach Trump. An heir to the Levi Strauss clothing fortune, Goldman recently contributed $1 million of his own money to his campaign.
To read a recap of the debate, visit Gothamist.com.
Spotted lanternflies are living their best lives, scaling skyscrapers, riding the subway, and lounging at the beach in seemingly more plentiful numbers than in the last two summers combined. After all the hype, perhaps now is the right moment to pause, take stock of these spotted little creatures, and appreciate the fact that, according to some experts, they may not actually be as bad as we thought.
On February 15th, just weeks after a bullet grazed an 11-month-old girl in the Bronx, a 19-year-old was fatally shot during her shift at Burger King, and two police officers were killed in Harlem, city leaders gathered for an announcement about summer youth employment.
This year, Mayor Eric Adams announced, a record-breaking 100,000 young New Yorkers would be working on the city’s dime.
“Our summer youth employment is crucial,” he told reporters at a press conference.
One official after the next said the boost in funding would help make communities safer by giving young people opportunities to thrive.
“We know that gang violence and gun violence is real, and it’s pervasive,” said the mayor, who included more funding for summer jobs as part of his Blueprint to End Gun Violence. “But if you want to stop someone from holding a steel gun in their hand, give them an opportunity to hold the tools they need to be productive as a citizen. And we know we can do it if we invest in the right way.”
Council Speaker Adrienne Adams echoed the mayor, adding, “These types of investments are essential to address and prevent the increased violence that our city and many other cities across the nation are facing.”
And Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who for years has pushed to expand summer youth jobs and lobbied to keep the program intact during the pandemic, also tied the effort to public safety. “It is so important that we’re all together dealing with this gun violence,” he said.
Indeed, for years New York City has set aside taxpayer dollars to pay young people to work, with the promise that the investment would help them in school, prepare them for the workforce, and keep them out of trouble.
Gothamist spoke with more than a dozen researchers, city officials, employers, and youth participants about the work. They praised New York City’s program, while also noting ways it might further its impact. A growing body of research has found summer youth employment can prevent criminal justice contact, at least temporarily. One study suggests it can even save lives.
But many young people who want to participate aren’t selected. And for most of those who are, the jobs will end this month. At a time when violent crime is still above pre-pandemic levels and many New Yorkers are concerned about public safety, some interviewed wondered whether the city ought to add even more slots next summer – and consider keeping young people employed year-round.
Read the rest of the story on Gothamist.
The MTA’s congestion pricing plan to toll vehicles that enter Manhattan below 60th Street could reduce traffic by as much as 20 percent. But the proposal could increase traffic in other places.
Tolling plans in Manhattan would cause surges in traffic in Connecticut, Staten Island and the Bronx, according to the MTA.
The Cross Bronx Expressway could see an increase of 4,000 vehicles a day.
State Assemblyman Jefferey Dinowitz says it’s mind boggling that the MTA would consider a plan to increase traffic in his borough.
“That is like the most backwards, inefficient, and unfair thing that I can possibly think of that they can do.”
The MTA says congestion pricing will not reduce air quality. The agency is holding six public hearings before it picks a final pricing scheme.
Less than two weeks after an Amazon warehouse employee died in Carteret, New Jersey, a worker in another facility fell off a three-foot ladder and struck his head — then died a few days later. The following week, a third worker at a different location died.
All three fatalities are under investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a spokesperson confirmed to Gothamist.
The three deaths in as many weeks come amid increased scrutiny by labor leaders and lawmakers to Amazon’s growing footprint in the state.
For more on this story visit Gothamist.com.
Assembly Member Eddie Gibbs is New York’s first formerly incarcerated state legislator. He visited Rikers this week to check how people there are faring in the heat.
Public health experts are pointing to the past epidemics as examples to help explain why monkeypox isn't a sexually transmitted infection — at least not by the classic definition.
Ebola had plagued Africa for decades while being overlooked by most of the world with regard to resources and research. In 2013, the long-known virus flared up, creating a global emergency.
New international attention created increased scrutiny, and it soon became clear that transmission involved sex. Ebola chiefly spreads because of direct contact with infected bodily fluids but occasionally moves between people via semen.
A similar story can be told about the Zika virus — it is mostly carried between people by mosquito bites but has also been transmitted by genital fluids. Neither Ebola nor Zika are typically listed as STIs — by the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.
Now, as monkeypox spreads in the U.S., health experts are trying to tackle similar misconceptions about how this virus spreads.
Globally, the World Health Organization has recorded sexual transmission in 91% of cases this year — but that leaves about one in 10 infections spreading non-sexually. The global health agency also says that transmission via skin-to-skin contact during sex and bodily fluids cannot currently be “disentangled.”
“We have many diseases that can be transmitted sexually, but that's not necessarily the only route,” said Dr. Leslie Kantor, professor and chair of the department of urban global public health at the Rutgers School of Public Health. “And then those are not considered sexually transmitted infections.”
But the STI label can also be empowering, health experts said.
It can help at-risk groups to spend more thought on making informed decisions about their sexual activity. Given that many people in New York City seem to be getting the virus through sexual or intimate contact so far, public health officials have started to caution against risky sexual behavior. The STI label can also come with greater access to health care, such as free testing.
WNYC/Gothamist spoke with more than a half-dozen epidemiologists, professors of medicine and health care policy experts to address the fundamental question of whether monkeypox should be considered an STI and other unknowns circulating around the orthopoxvirus.
Host David Furst spoke with health and science editor Nsikan Akpan about what they said. Click "listen" in the player to hear the conversation, and visit Gothamist for more details.
Newark city workers were going door-to-door with water Tuesday morning after more than 100,000 people were affected by a 72-inch water main break that compromised service in the city as well as nearby Bloomfield and Belleville.
Officials said most of the affected area was experiencing low water pressure but most residents still had water. They estimated the water main break would be repaired by the end of the day.
Kareem Adeem, director of Newark's water and service department, told Gothamist that by late morning, officials had isolated and closed off most of the valves in the area of the break at Branch Brook Park.
Officials in all the affected communities were urging residents to boil water until further notice.
Diane Romano was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 52. In the nine years since, her husband, John, has taken care of her at their home on Long Island.
But he and other dementia caregivers have faced an added challenge the last couple weeks: extreme heat.
“It's difficult caring for someone who has Alzheimer's if you put the weather aside — just the normal day to day,” John Romano said. "When you add heat and weather, it impacts them in a number of ways.”
For many people, extreme heat is a nuisance. For Diane Romano and other dementia patients, it can be deadly.
About one in nine Americans over the age of 65 has dementia. It’s caused by degenerative, neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s — and can impair thinking, reasoning and memory.
People with dementia are also incredibly vulnerable to heat, researchers told Gothamist, in part because their patients have lost neurons in their brain. Changes to fluid levels in their bodies — like sweating and dehydration during a heat wave — can lead to less blood going to their brain, exacerbating the confusion already being caused by the neuron loss. They may take diuretic medications that can cause greater dehydration still.
“Her mind can't tell the body to adapt to the heat and she just kind of wilts,” John Romano said.
Dementia isn’t the only mental disorder that ERs see more of during heat waves. A June 2021 study by SUNY Buffalo tracked emergency room visits during heat waves that involved mental health crises across New York state.
Click "listen" to hear more on the story, and visit Gothamist for the full details.
A new study involving research from Rutgers University has found pregnant women in the U-S exposed to chemical compounds called phthalates are at increased risk of preterm birth. That's when a baby is born too early—a condition that's become more common since 2014. It now affects about one in 10 births, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Emily Barrett is an associate professor at Rutgers' Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology and one of the authors of the study. She joined WNYC Morning Edition host Kerry Nolan to talk about the troubling findings.
After years of delay due to the global pandemic, a change in ownership and construction issues, the World Artisan Market is now open for business in Astoria, Queens.
WNYC contributor Scott Lynch has been checking out the food at the market. Speaking with Weekend Edition host David Furst, he says five of the seven spaces are up and running. The restaurants include Sotto la Luna, Elevenses, Sala Astoria, Urban Vegan Roots and Potlux Kitchen.
The World Artisan Market is located at 34-39 31st Street in Astoria, Queens.
"Burn Hollywood Burn" spicy jackfruit stuffed pizza at Urban Vegan Roots. (Scott Lynch)
We're back with another Weekend Arts Planner. And this week, we'll be heading outside for some Shakespeare and inside for some jazz. WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor, Steve Smith joins Weekend Edition host David Furst with his latest picks.
- Shakespeare in the Park is mounting its second production of the season, a musical adaptation of the delicious comedy "As You Like It" with music and lyrics by Shaina Taub. If that name rings a bell, it could be because her newest musical, "Suffs," ran not so long ago at the Public Theater. Or maybe you've heard that she provided lyrics for the new musical adaptation of "The Devil Wears Prada" by Sir Elton John.
The show received a limited staging in 2017… its return was announced for 2020… and everyone knows what happened next.
This production is directed by Laurie Woolery, who runs the Public Theater program Public Works, and although it does feature a cast of professionals, the production also involves community members from all over the city. "As You Like It" opens on Wednesday, August 10th, and runs through September 11th… free tickets are distributed before every performance, and you can find out how to get them here.
- A long, long time ago, Bill Frisell used to be associated primarily with the weird mutant strains of new jazz bubbling up in downtown clubs like the Knitting Factory, Roulette and Tonic. But over the years, his approach has broadened, and so has his appeal. Frisell is a brilliant interpreter of standards and songs, a terrific composer, and an improviser whose work never fails to surprise and delight.
He's also entered a select lineage of artists routinely entrusted with two-week residencies at New York City's most hallowed and historic jazz club, the Village Vanguard. There, he's following in the footsteps of iconic players like the pianists Cedar Walton and Tommy Flanagan and the drummer Paul Motian – Frisell played in Motian's band for decades.
In a way, Frisell's latest residency is three weeks long. He's actually at the Vanguard this weekend, playing as a sideman with the great drummer Andrew Cyrille. Coming up on Tuesday night, Frisell's name moves to the top of the marquee – he'll play a week of intimate shows with saxophonist Greg Tardy and drummer Johnathan Blake, two sets a night, Tuesday through Sunday at 8 and 10 p.m.
And then Frisell's back for a second week starting on Tuesday, August 16th, leading a quintet that includes two bassists – Thomas Morgan and Tony Scherr – and two drummers – Kenny Wollesen and Rudy Royston. Whatever you think this is going to be, most likely it's going to be something else. Again, two sets each night at 8 and 10 p.m. You can buy tickets in advance here.
As public safety initiatives go, tracking an apex predator presents its fair share of operational challenges. But if the stress of their new shark-detecting duties is getting to them, our guides aren’t showing it.
“They’re here, they’ve always been here, but now maybe there’s more of them,” shrugged Lt. Sean Reilly, a state police officer with the Department of Environmental Conservation. “What are you going to do?”
WNYC's Jake Offenhartz has more on the state's new shark patrols. Read the full story on Gothamist.com
Roller-skating has a storied, almost century-long history in New York City — from children in the 1930s skating in Central Park to the disco era of the 1970s and 80’s, when it became a keystone of African-American culture and rinks spread out across the city.
But in the early aughts, beloved rinks shut down one after the next: Skate Key in the Bronx, then The Roxy in Chelsea, followed by the self-proclaimed birthplace of roller disco itself, Empire Roller Skating Center in Crown Heights, which closed its doors for good in 2007. Today there’s still just one dedicated, year-round indoor roller rink on Staten Island.
But the pandemic seems to have brought a reversal to that years-long trend, at least in the warmer months. There are more than a dozen places to skate on any given day of the week, from Rockefeller Center to Rosedale, Queens, making it easier for a new generation of skaters to fall in love with the sport. WNYC's Gwynne Hogan has more. You can read the full story on Gothamist.com
A new state law requires everyone who applies for a gun license in New York to turn over their social media handles for a background check. The goal is to find signs of potential violence before people have the chance to pull a trigger.
But as law enforcement agencies adjust their policies to comply with the additional requirements, some worry the legislation could have unintended consequences. A researcher who studies the intersection of social media and gun violence argues the measure could disproportionately affect people of color, while civil rights advocates call it “invasive” and say it could violate first amendment rights.
The new law includes several measures to minimize the chances of irresponsible or dangerous gun use. Applicants will be required to go through safety training and submit four character references. They will also need to hand over a list of every social media account they’ve used in the past three years.
The purpose of the background checks, according to the bill language, is to ensure that applicants have “good moral character” and are unlikely to hurt themselves or someone else.
Read the rest of the story on Gothamist.
Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman is a co-chair of a the Forward party, hoping to appeal to those seeking another option, somewhere to the center of Republicans and Democrats. She heads the organization alongside former presidential and New York gubernatorial candidate Andrew Yang. Whitman spoke with Kerry Nolan on WNYC's Morning Edition Thursday to talk about the Forward party, the criticisms it has faced, and the prospects for meeting in the middle.
New York has some of the strongest climate laws in the country. But when the state Legislature ended its most recent session in early June, some essential bills — ones needed to meet environmental mandates — were left out in the cold.
The starkest example is the All-Electric Buildings Act. Buildings emissions are one of the largest contributors to global warming. New York State consumes more fossil fuels in its residential and commercial structures than any other state. In New York City, nearly 40% of greenhouse gas emissions come from heating, hot water, and cooking gas in buildings.
The All-Electric Buildings Act, sponsored by State Sen. Brian Kavanagh and Assemblymember Emily Gallagher, would prohibit infrastructure, building systems or equipment used for the combustion of fossil fuels in the construction of any new building statewide. But it didn’t even make it to the floor of the State Senate and Assembly this year.
After the monumental passage of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act three years ago, advocates hoped that it would fast-track other bills into law to save the planet from the worst ravages of climate change. The CLCPA requires that the state of New York cut greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors by at least 85% below 1990 levels by 2050 — and use 100% zero-emission electricity by 2040.
But local environmental groups and even some New York lawmakers feel that they need to legislate faster before the impacts of climate change worsen.
In candid conversations, a dozen Democrat legislators gave reasons for why some measures are stuck. Gothamist also contacted more than a dozen Republican state legislators for this story but received no response.
Click listen in the player to hear more details, and visit Gothamist for the full story.
Officials in New York city have declared the spread of monkeypox a public health emergency, calling the city the epicenter of the outbreak. Leaders in New Jersey are watching cases tick up too, with the total there approaching 200. Monkeypox spreads through prolonged close contact, which can happen between anyone — but officials are focusing outreach and availability on the population affected most so far: LGBTQ men. That's because all viruses are opportunists and monkeypox has taken advantage of close, intimate contact in that community to spark outbreaks. The situation creates a unique challenge: How do you target that outreach without stigmatizing the very people public health officials hope to help — groups who faced stigmas associated with other diseases before? Christian Fuscarino, executive director of Garden State Equality, spoke with Sean Carlson on WNYC's All Things Considered about striking the balance.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, New York City has seen an uptick in violence against Asians. One NYPD figure shows the number of anti-Asian incidents reported in the subway alone increased 233 percent from 2020 to 2021.
Now, Asian American artists are responding through their work. Filmmakers Jodie Chan and Jia Li, in their short documentary "Invisible Seams," and visual artist Bianca Romero, with large-scale murals like "Spread Love, Stop Asian Hate," are showing their community’s dignity and resilience.
For more details, read the complete story on Gothamist.
Construction is expected to begin soon on the Portal North Bridge. That’s a notorious chokepoint for NJ Transit and Amtrak over the Hackensack River.
The nearly 112 year-old Portal Bridge is a swing bridge, meaning when big ships pass below, all train traffic is halted, so it can open. And sometimes it gets stuck and workers with hammers have to manually close it. This causes delays up and down Amtrak's northeast corridor.
The new $1.6 billion bridge will be taller so ships can pass below once the bridge rotates.
On Monday, lawmakers dug ceremonial gold shovels into a pile of manure in a parking lot near the bridge and tossed it to mark the occasion.
The bridge overhaul is the first part of the massive Gateway project. With federal funds flowing Amtrak hopes it can begin construction on a new tunnel under the Hudson River next year.
New York's second primary election of the summer is less than a month away, and voters in the newly drawn 12th Congressional District in Manhattan will get a chance to hear directly from the Democratic candidates Tuesday night.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, attorney Suraj Patel and Rep. Jerry Nadler are all set to participate in a 90-minute debate starting at 7 p.m. It will air live on WNYC and on Spectrum News NY1, who are co-sponsoring the event.
WNYC Senior Politics Reporter Brigid Bergin will co-moderate the debate live from the CUNY Graduate Center, alongside NY1 Politics Anchor Errol Louis.
Morning Edition host Michael Hill spoke to WNYC's Jon Campbell for a preview.
Russ & Daughters Cafe has reopened on the Lower East Side after being closed due to the pandemic since March of 2020. And the owners are calling it a joyous comeback. Co-owner Niki Russ Federman says, "There's been this euphoria to our return."
WNYC's Arts & Culture reporter Ben Yakas joins Weekend Edition host David Furst with the latest. Happily, Ben says the food is, "exactly as you remember it."
Two altercations on different ends of the state have re-ignited the debate over New York's criminal justice reforms. And it has aligned Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin with New York City's Democratic Mayor, Eric Adams -- at least on this one issue.
WNYC's Albany reporter, Jon Campbell joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to discuss the latest.
WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith is back with another Weekend Arts Planner. Speaking with Weekend Edition host David Furst, he brings us his latest picks:
- Normally we try to give you lots of lead time before sending you out to see something -- but today I'm going to tell you about a concert happening Sunday night, July 31, at Central Park SummerStage. It's a triple bill of groundbreaking Black artists representing new strands in creative jazz and pop -- and it's a killer.
The headlining act is Sons of Kemet, a British quartet led by Shabaka Hutchings, who plays saxophone along with a tuba player and two drummers. It's one of several bands that Hutchings leads, and on its latest album, "Black to the Future," the group plays with a handful of guest stars. Sons of Kemet mix jazz improvisation with African and Caribbean beats, and a decided political slant.
Press reports have stated that this is the LAST U.S. tour for Sons of Kemet, at least in its present configuration, and the occasion is an even bigger deal because it includes two more groundbreaking acts, Chicago drummer and composer Makaya McCraven and Brooklyn singer and multi-instrumentalist L'Rain, two of the most talked about artists in contemporary music.
It's all happening at Central Park SummerStage, Sunday, July 31, free of charge, starting at 6pm.
- Next weekend at Lincoln Center, the MacArthur genius-award winning choreographer Kyle Abraham opens a series of performances that should prove to be extraordinary. So much of what Lincoln Center has done with its programming is dedicated to ideas about marking what we've lost and celebrating what we have as we start to come together again after pandemic isolation, and these Kyle Abraham performances are suited to that idea.
First up is a program literally called "Reunions," in which seven star alumni of Abraham's dance company A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham present new pieces of their own design. That's happening on August 6 and 7 on Lincoln Center's Hearst Plaza, and it's free.
That sets up a second program called "Requiem: Fire in the Air of the Earth," a major new evening-length dance by Abraham in its New York City premiere. The music is based on Mozart's well-known "Requiem," a mass for the dead. But it's been reworked by the amazing electronic musician Jlin. The tie to the somber idea of a "Requiem" is there, but this particular dance is as much about the joy of reuniting and being alive. It's happening in the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center August 11, 12, and 13, and tickets are available on a "choose what you pay" basis. That means they're not likely to last, so you'll want to plan ahead.
The New Jersey Coalition Against Racial Exclusion hand-delivered a letter to a Department of Justice official at the NAACP's National Convention earlier this month. The group says it plans to file a federal complaint against Gov. Phil Murphy's administration, alleging New Jersey doesn't just let school segregation fester, but perpetuates it.
The group has been involved in issues between school districts -- cases where one a community with more white kids seeks to pull students out of a high school with more Black or brown kids. And it says the state exacerbates what academics have already called some of the most severe school segregation in the country when it signs off on those moves.
Two shootings by different off-duty New York City correction officers this summer happened just weeks apart. One officer who allegedly shot and killed a teenager holding a toy gun now faces criminal charges, while the other – who fired his weapon at a Fourth of July celebration – has been hailed by public officials as a hero.
Many details remain unknown. The correction officers were not wearing body cameras and police have released limited information. But both incidents raise questions about how correction officers, who are allowed to carry guns off duty, are trained on when to use deadly force outside of jail settings, and how those calculations are changing as a result of a recent Supreme Court decision over the city’s gun laws that increases the likelihood of encountering armed civilians.
Not all correction officers carry guns on the job, but whether they do or not, all are permitted to carry guns on the street – a rare entitlement in New York. Unlike the NYPD, the Department of Correction does not post a policy guide on its website, making it difficult to know what its officers are taught. And while police training has come under increased scrutiny in recent years, jail officer training has received much less attention. In response to a list of questions about its protocols, the DOC told Gothamist that its training goes “above and beyond state law” requirements and includes yearly refresher courses.
Read the rest of the story on Gothamist.
New Jersey has dropped one notch on a yearly ranking of the most expensive states for renters — but it and New York are still among the least affordable in the nation.
The annual “Out of Reach” rankings by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, jointly released in the Garden State with the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey Thursday, named New Jersey the seventh most expensive state in the U.S. for renters. That’s a slight shift from last year, when the state ranked sixth, but a stark reminder of the state’s need for more affordable housing.
New York state retained the fourth-place ranking it had last year.
The report said a New Jersey resident working a $13/hour minimum wage job would need to work 80 hours a week to afford a one-bedroom apartment and not spend more than a third of their income on rent, a measure that the federal government uses to determine affordability. More than a third of residents across the state rent their homes. In Hudson and Essex counties, more than half are renters. In Passaic, 48% rent.
Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s sudden and surprise transfer of dozens of New York and New Jersey immigrants out of a detention center in the Hudson Valley this week constitutes a shift from prior years, when more than 2,000 immigrants awaiting the disposition of their deportation cases were held in five local jails. Today, there are just more than 100 detainees at just two facilities, and the number is dropping fast.
This stems both from a national decline in the number of people arrested and held by ICE compared to during the Trump Administration, and from the fact that local political pressure against deplorable conditions in ICE-contracted jails has led to the closure of three ICE facilities in North Jersey last year and litigation to shutter a fourth.
Now, that pressure is part of what is prompting ICE to depopulate the fifth and final facility in the region that holds immigrants — the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, NY. Without warning on Monday, dozens of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans held at the facility were transferred to facilities around the country, including a privately-run jail in Mississippi where immigrants have previously complained of officers’ use of excessive force, like strangling.
Advocates say the transfers are retaliatory — in response to public allegations of abuse at Orange County — and they serve to cut immigrants’ ties with families and make it harder to prepare legal defenses.
To read the rest of the story, go to Gothamist.com.
A key state oversight body approved the financing plan to redevelop Penn Station and its surrounding neighborhood Wednesday, greenlighting one of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s loftiest projects, which is estimated to cost a total of $22 billion.
The Public Authorities Control Board (PACB) — an obscure state board that sank former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Amazon project — was charged Wednesday with approving the way the Penn Station project would be funded. A two-page sheet published a day before the vote noted it would rely on 50% federal funds, with New York and New Jersey evenly splitting the rest of the costs. Along with Penn Station’s revitalization, which is expected to cost $7.2 billion alone, the plans will see the construction of 10 skyscrapers around Midtown and the creation of eight acres of open space. The state is calling it one of the biggest projects in city history.
"For far too long, Penn Station has been an overcrowded, cramped, and neglected mess. This vote is a major milestone in our plan to fix Penn Station and transform the surrounding neighborhood," Hochul wrote in a statement after the vote.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
Hurricane Sandy slammed 35 public housing developments managed by NYCHA, leaving tens of thousands of low-income New Yorkers without power for days or even weeks on end in autumn of 2012. Other types of affordable housing were hit hard, too; 24,000 government-subsidized apartments and 40,000 rent-stabilized apartments were in the path of the storm surge, according to data from NYU’s Furman Center, which studies housing policy.
Claudia Perez, residents’ association president at the Washington Houses in East Harlem, recalled watching the floodwaters surge around nearby NYC Health + Hospitals Metropolitan.
“Sandy was really scary,” she said. ”When you see a hospital going underwater, you're like, ‘oh my God, what's going on here?’”
Future storms, coupled with rising sea levels from climate change, will flood even more low-income New Yorkers’ apartments, exacerbating an ongoing affordable housing crisis. A WNYC-NPR analysis of data from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) predicts that a Sandy-like storm could flood more than 50 NYCHA developments by 2080.
“People in affordable housing are more exposed to flooding, and they have the least resources to deal with it,” said Bernice Rosenzweig, a professor of environmental studies at Sarah Lawrence College.
Disasters often leave a legacy that breaks down between “the haves” and “the have-nots” — and with climate change, it will be a struggle to adapt with limited resources as the sea steadily creeps closer. In East Harlem, for example, Sandy’s floodwaters damaged parts of Metro North Plaza and the East River Houses, two NYCHA developments. Both have received funding from FEMA for repairs and upgrades, which are still in progress.
But the nearby Washington Houses were outside Sandy’s main inundation zone, so the complex wasn’t eligible for the same FEMA-funded resiliency upgrades. But the NHC data predicts that, as early as 2050, a comparable storm could bring floodwaters to the development’s door, putting residents and infrastructure at risk.
Across the river, upscale neighborhoods are facing this struggle, too. The lapis-colored door for the El Pinguino oyster bar sits on Greenpoint Avenue, a few steps from the luxury tower-studded skyline of the East River. Restaurant owner Nicholas Padilla has been running a dining establishment on this patch of the Brooklyn waterfront for more than a decade, and he has come to dread the rain.
At any given time in his dirt basement, Padilla can dig about 6 inches deep and hit water. As a result, he can’t count on his basement for storage. Owners at four neighboring businesses told Gothamist the same thing.
Padilla’s first restaurant in the area, Alameda, was flooded with 6 feet of rain and raw sewage by Sandy, costing tens of thousands of dollars in damage just shortly after he had signed the lease. But he said he won’t leave until the floodwaters chase him permanently from his business and his home, located less than a block away. He doesn’t know where else to live.
“It just seems crazy we dug 6 inches under the underground, in the basement and there was standing water,” Padilla said. “It’s New York City. It’s so hard to find somewhere to go. It just feels like people will just live here until it’s in the river.”
Aside from the addition of new building codes to address flooding and private partnerships to build more greenspace on the waterfront, there have been no major coastal resiliency projects since Sandy flooded the neighborhood a decade ago, that’s according to municipal agencies, including the Department of Environmental Protection, the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, and local City Councilmember Lincoln Restler.
“Our area has grown in population and had more new housing built than any other part of New York City over the last 15 years,” said Restler, who released a district-level climate plan for the area earlier this year. “But we have not seen enough investment in strengthening our shorelines and realizing a more resilient waterfront.”
Greenpoint and neighboring Williamsburg are among the several waterfront areas in New York City that are booming with high-priced developments — but also facing severe threats from storm surge and sea level rise. Other areas include Long Island City in Queens and Hudson Yards in Manhattan.
The local community board estimates that 40,000 new residents were added to the Greenpoint and Williamsburg waterfront area in the past decade. Counting only the projects currently planned for the waterfront, at least another 20,000 residents will be added over the next decade, according to Stephen Chesler, chair of the environment protection committee for Community Board 1, where the Greenpoint and Williamsburg waterfront is located.
Many live in the development of new high-rise towers right along the East River with unobstructed views of Manhattan. This property also ranks among the most valuable in the city. Last year, the neighborhood experienced the city’s second-largest rise in median home prices — a 28% increase that featured a median sale of $1.2 million. That’s 60% higher than citywide prices.
The area also lacks substantial measures to protect the homes and businesses in this vulnerable flood zone that is predicted to be inundated by the end of this century to the middle of the next. Over the next 30 years, tide and storm surges will increase further inland, and at greater heights, bringing damaging flooding at a frequency that will be more than 10 times as often as it does today, according to an earlier analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And these projections don’t account for other effects of climate change, such as inland flooding that’s expected from intensifying rainfall.
But all of these data sets are still predictions, and there’s still time to allay some outcomes. The damage will depend on the extent to which governments curb greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades.
That’s why advocates and experts alike are urging the municipal, state, and federal governments to prepare New York City's housing stock for coming storms. Some are calling for building upgrades, so New Yorkers aren’t trapped in powerless, hazardous apartments and houses the next time the storms arrive. Others say the time to depart is now.
“We can’t control the ocean, not even with sea walls,” said Klaus Jacob, a geophysicist and climate expert at Columbia University’s Climate School. “We need to start moving people to higher ground now, and using the coastal areas as a barrier.”
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The governor’s plan to redevelop Penn Station and the surrounding midtown neighborhood got a key approval today. The $22 billion project still has many more twists ahead.
The state board that oversees major development projects is giving the go-ahead to one aspect of Governor Kathy Hochul’s Penn Station project. It agrees to let developers pay the state a fee over city real estate taxes. The state will use that fee to partially finance renovations for the decrepit Penn Station train hall. It's projected to cost $7 billion.
It’s a funding arrangement similar to the one used in Hudson Yards and the Moynihan train hall.
The oversight body still needs to sign off on the acquisition of land around the train hall.
The plan also assumes New Jersey will cover a quarter of the costs, and that the federal government will cover half.
Designs for the new Penn Station are expected to be chosen by the fall.
A few small orange flags stuck in the dirt are the only markers that distinguish Kwesi Joseph’s kale and collard plantings from the rows of other lush vegetables at the Hands and Heart Community Garden on New Lots Avenue in East New York.
But Joseph, an urban gardens specialist for the Cornell Cooperative Extension, is conducting a low-tech and audacious experiment with those vegetables.
His thesis is simple – crushed basalt rock mixed with soil and compost in this Brooklyn garden will both capture more carbon from the air and also help plants grow bigger, thus increasing the potential yield of fruits and vegetables.
“If urban gardens can assist in sequestering carbon, why not?” Joseph said.
The experiment is his own twist on ongoing research that Ben Houlton, dean of Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, is currently conducting to glean what the potential is for using rock dust as a tool for carbon capture.
It’s an idea already in practice in other places like Davis, California and Northampton, Massachusetts, said Joanna Campe, executive director of Remineralize the Earth, a sustainable agriculture nonprofit based in Northampton. She noted that Joseph’s experiment is likely among the first time rock dust’s impact on plant nutrients has been studied in an urban garden.
“Even in organic agriculture, the minerals are often missing that we need. And minerals are absolutely important for us to utilize all the other nutrients, so we can increase the nutrients in our food supply by adding rock dust,” Campe said. “And it increases the biological activity, so it's also food for the micro-organisms, so to speak.”
Basalt and other silicate rocks naturally react with carbon dioxide in the air, sequestering it out of the atmosphere and turning it into a solid that gets stuck in the ground. Studies show that this process, known as enhanced rock weathering, can also remove acids from soil and sop up nitrogen pollution caused by fertilizers.
Basalt rock is also sustainable, given that it is produced by volcanic lava and is the most common type of rock in the Earth’s crust.
“The idea is if farmers apply this rock dust to soils around the world, then we can convert a significant portion of CO2 [carbon dioxide] that would enter our atmosphere into bicarbonate or carbonate, which are stable and below ground and really all good things for solutions for our climate,” said Garrett Boudinot, a research associate at Cornell’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology who’s assisting Joseph with the Brooklyn garden project.
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Former Mayor Bill de Blasio is no longer a candidate in the crowded race for the 10th Congressional District, which covers Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. De Blasio dropped out last week, saying he didn’t have enough support. WNYC’s Elizabeth Kim sat down with de Blasio to talk about why he says he won’t run for office again and what he wishes he had done better as mayor.
For more, read the Gothamist story.
Three correction officers and a captain at Rikers Island were arrested Monday on charges that it took them nearly eight minutes to intervene in 2019 when an 18-year-old attempted suicide by hanging.
Nicholas Feliciano, now 21, tied two sweatshirts from the ceiling of his holding cell, authorities said. He twisted and flailed for about two minutes before losing consciousness. Several correction staff walked past Feliciano’s cell, but no one cut him from the noose or rendered aid. The man is still hospitalized after he sustained a traumatic brain injury during the incident.
“The defendants ignored their duty as Correction Officers to maintain custody, care and control of the person incarcerated, by allegedly waiting nearly eight minutes until they rendered assistance to the inmate whom they saw hanging,” said Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark, who is prosecuting the case.
The four — Captain Terry Henry, 37, and correction officers Daniel Fullerton, 27, Kenneth Hood, 35 and Mark Wilson, 46 — face reckless endangerment and official misconduct charges. All pleaded not guilty and were released without bail. They will be back in court on September 15th.
To read the rest of the story, go to Gothamist.com.
In the highly competitive race for the open 10th Congressional District seat, a grassroots advocacy campaign calling for affordable housing on an empty, state-owned World Trade Center development site has become an unexpected political test for candidates seeking to represent one of the city’s most liberal districts.
Against the backdrop of an affordable housing crisis and issues of equity, all but one of the major candidates have embraced the idea that has been described as quixotic, but which has gained newfound political relevance amid an up-for-grabs August 23rd primary.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
New York’s redistricting court decision did more than split the state’s primary election. It also set the stage for a one-off test of a type of open primary election, where registered voters can change their party affiliation up until, and including on Primary Day itself, August 23rd.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
The MTA is expected to run out of money to operate the trains and buses earlier than it had anticipated. And its not likely to see ridership return to pre-pandemic levels for several years.
It may be the middle of the summer, but the MTA is already preparing for budget season next fall.
With the ongoing pandemic, and many people still working from home, fewer people are taking mass transit. That means the MTA is spending federal relief money faster than it expected and it could burn through its $15 billion in another three years.
The agency’s Chief Financial Officer is urging the board to start preparing now by thinking of ways to raise $2.5 billion a year to cover its shortfalls. Otherwise, they should prepare for service cuts, job losses or greater fare hikes.
Read more of this story on Gothamist.com.
Morning Edition's Michael Hill speaks with WNYC's senior political correspondent Brigid Bergin about the latest news in New York politics.
Correction: The August 23rd primary allows any registered voter can go to their poll site on primary day to request an affidavit ballot and change their party affiliation, allowing them to vote in that party's primary. A previous version of this story misstated the registration deadlines for this primary. Both the audio and the text have been updated to address the error.
An official's revelation that a man was isolated in a cell at Rikers Island for more than 30 hours before his death earlier this month exposes a stark reality: Although corrections officials claim there is no solitary confinement at the city’s jail complex, the practice still exists by other names.
According to current and former correction officials, detainees, and defense lawyers, people continue to be held alone, behind bars and plexiglass, in cells and sometimes shower cages, for lengths of time that defy United Nations rules for the treatment of the incarcerated.
The city had planned a more humane system of isolating, punishing, and rehabilitating detainees accused of infractions involving violence or contraband to go into effect. But that plan has repeatedly been delayed since last year due to what officials say is a dearth of correction officers to implement it. Now, in accordance with emergency executive orders issued by Mayor Eric Adams, it’s on hold indefinitely.
“Over and over again, this is how reform efforts get sabotaged in this agency,” said Kayla Simpson, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society, which represents many pre-trial detainees at Rikers.
Simpson spoke at a recent meeting of the city board of correction, which enacted the more humane rules on solitary confinement that jail officials say they can’t implement. “All of this is happening against the background of not only the persistently horrifying drumbeat of instability and death, but also of a city that has decided to use emergency executive authority so that it decides what rules it will follows and when, in defiance of oversight structures like this board,” she said.
To read the rest of this story, go to Gothamist.com.
WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith joins us for another edition of his Weekend Arts Picks. Speaking with Weekend All Things Considered host Tiffany Hanssen, he delivers his latest picks:
- "Tiona Nekkia McClodden: MASK / CONCEAL / CARRY"
We've taken you to some big shows at major museums and galleries during recent weeks, but we've got a different kind of experience to share this week. "MASK / CONCEAL / CARRY" is a new show featuring work by Tiona Nekkia McClodden, a 41-year-old multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker and curator based in Philadelphia. McClodden is familiar to lots of New York arts audiences — she's got works in local museums, and she's been involved with programming at places like The Kitchen.
Her show is at 52 Walker, the new Tribeca outpost of David Zwirner Gallery that's directed by dealer and curator Ebony L. Haynes. The space is run by an all-Black staff, and it's intended to offer something different than the conventional gallery experience. Shows here will stay on view for months, rather than weeks. And while you're free to snap pictures and post them on your social media feeds, the gallery doesn't share its own images on its website — the idea is that you're meant to come in and have the experience yourself.
In the case of this show, that's a big deal. Entering 52 Walker on a blistering summer day, you're plunged into cool darkness, and calming electronic drone music plays softly in the background. The first thing you're likely to see is a wall label that says, "I Don't Believe in Trigger Warnings Anymore," which argues that making a disclaimer before sharing hurtful or offensive material online is dodging responsibility for the impact of whatever follows.
And here, a different kind of trigger warning: Many of the pieces in McClodden's show involve guns, firing-range targets and other intimations of violence. Seeing such things hung on walls and set on pedestals, you suddenly view what seemed like a calm environment a lot differently. It's not an easy show to experience, but it's one that really will make you think. It's on view through Oct. 8th.
- globalFEST at Lincoln Center
The inimitable Ukrainian group DakhaBrakha has become a big attraction among American audiences into music from around the world. They're familiar to New York audiences in large part because of their their work with globalFEST, a major event celebrating global sounds that happens every January. As the group tours abroad during the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, its message is reaching more ears than ever.
Now, globalFEST is coming to Lincoln Center on Saturday, July 30, to celebrate its 20th anniversary, and DakhaBrakha is among the main attractions. Not only that, but globalFEST is sharing the occasion with two like-minded local nightclubs similarly known for presenting music from all over the world: the Park Slope club Barbès, which also is celebrating its 20th birthday, and Drom, in the East Village, which turns 15 this year. The party is going on all day long with dance and devotional music from around the globe, and it's happening free of charge on all of Lincoln Center's outdoor plazas next Saturday. In addition to DakhaBrakha, the lineup includes Kurdish vocalist Aynur, Washington, D.C. go-go institution Rare Essence (which is celebrating its 45th anniversary!), local purveyors of Colombian psychedelia Combo Chimbita, Tennessee singer-songwriter Amythyst Kiah, and vocalist Ahmad Fanoos with his Heart of Afghanistan Project. The evening ends with a late-night Global Silent Disco.
For more details and an hour-by-hour program, check out the Lincoln Center website.
For Alexander Si, an Asian American artist who spent most of his life in China and Canada, visiting the fast-casual salad chain Sweetgreen can be a strange experience. Si moved to Chinatown around three years ago, and now works on projects inspired by aspects of American popular culture that have made an impression on him as an immigrant.
His most recent work is a life-size facsimile of a Sweetgreen franchise, including a replica of the eatery’s stylish online order pick-up shelf and seating area with a video of a real sweetgreen embedded inside the seats, at the downtown art gallery Chinatown Soup. He means to raise questions about gentrification and economic disparity among consumers and workers. But some local activists think Si's missed the target.
Greg Tate’s sudden death in December sent a ripple through New York City’s art scene. Last Sunday, friends, family and fans assembled at Lincoln Center to celebrate his life and work. The event included a visual-art exhibition and a performance by Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber, the stylistically freewheeling band Tate assembled in 1999.
Lincoln Center collaborated with the Tate family to assemble the tribute as part of their “Summer for the City” series. The celebration was one of several programs planned for this summer by a handful of NYC institutions to elevate Tate, who was known for his immeasurable love for Black culture — and how that love saturated his work
In the early months of the pandemic, as lines outside food pantries stretched for blocks and restaurants threatened to go out of business, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy launched a pilot program to help feed the hungry and keep businesses afloat.
Known as Sustain and Serve, the initiative distributed federal COVID dollars and state funds to organizations that purchased meals from restaurants to feed residents in need. Millions of meals later, the program continues to be a lifeline for some organizations and restaurants — as pandemic concerns fade but inflation sends costs skyrocketing.
“Being part of this has exposed huge numbers of people in New Jersey to the hunger that was in their backyard,” Tara Colton, executive vice president for economic security at the New Jersey Economic Development Authority told WNYC.
When Phil Murphy first campaigned to be New Jersey's governor in 2017, he courted progressives by promising strides toward equity, inclusion and social justice.
Now in his second term, Murphy's national profile is on the rise, with some speculating he'll run for president if Joe Biden declines to. He was set to speak before the NAACP's national convention this week before his speech was canceled due to scheduling reasons. But in anticipation of it, NJ Spotlight News reporter Taylor Jung spoke to social justice advocates in New Jersey to ask: Has the Governor done enough for people of color in the Garden State?
Sean Carlson of All Things Considered on WNYC explored that question with Taylor Thursday afternoon. Read the transcript on Gothamist.
A brand-new push to unionize New York State Senate employees has the potential to shake up how Albany operates, with organizers hoping it could provide more protections to legislative workers who can find themselves working long hours with little notice.
Since January, some of the state Senate’s more than 1,000 staff members have been organizing to become the latest in a string of legislative bodies across the country whose workers have unionized or are working toward that goal – a list that includes the New York City Council staff.
Last Friday marked their public launch party: Organizers for the newly minted New York State Legislative Workers United sent a one-page, single-spaced letter to Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins.
For years, the Senate’s Democratic majority has embraced pro-union positions, and organizers are hoping the Senate leadership embraces – or at very least, doesn’t derail – the organizing effort.
For more, visit Gothamist.com.
The House Jan. 6 committee aims to show in what could be its final hearing Thursday night that Donald Trump's lies about a stolen election fueled the grisly U.S. Capitol attack, which he did nothing to stop but instead “gleefully” watched on television at the White House.
Watch live starting at 8 p.m., or listen on WNYC:
The prime-time hearing will dive into the 187 minutes that Trump failed to act on Jan. 6, 2021, despite pleas from aides, allies and even his family. The panel is arguing that the defeated president's attempts to overturn Joe Biden's election victory have left the United States facing enduring questions about the resiliency of its democracy.
“A profound moment of reckoning for America,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the committee.
With live testimony from two former White House aides, and excerpts from the committee's more than 1,000 interviews, the Thursday night session will add a closing chapter to the past six weeks of hearings that at times have captivated the nation and provided a record for history.
Ahead of the hearing, the committee released a video of four former White House aides -- press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, security aide Gen. Keith Kellogg, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and executive assistant to the president Molly Michael -- testifying that Trump was in the private dining room with the TV on as the violence unfolded.
“Everyone was watching television,” Kellogg said.
Returning to prime time for the first time since the series of hearings began, the panel intends to explain just how close the United States came to what one retired federal judge testifying this summer called a constitutional crisis.
The events of Jan. 6 will be outlined “minute by minute,” said the panel's vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.
“You will hear that Donald Trump never picked up the phone that day to order his administration to help," Cheney said.
“He did not call the military. His Secretary of Defense received no order. He did not call his Attorney General. He did not talk to the Department of Homeland Security," Cheney said. “Mike Pence did all of those things; Donald Trump did not.”
The hearing will show never-before-seen outtakes of a Jan. 7 video that White House aides pleaded for Trump to make as a message of national healing for the country. The footage will show how Trump struggled to condemn the mob of his supporters who violently breached the Capitol, according to a person familiar with the matter and granted anonymity to discuss it ahead of its public release.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson has testified that Trump wanted to include language about pardoning the rioters in the speech, but White House lawyers advised against it. Trump reluctantly condemned the riot in a three-minute speech that night.
Testifying Thursday are former White House aides. Matt Pottinger, who was deputy national security adviser, and Sarah Matthews, then press aide, both submitted their resignations on Jan. 6, 2021, after what they saw that day. Trump has dismissed the hearings on social media and regarded much of the testimony as fake.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chairman of the committee, is isolating after testing positive for COVID-19 and will attend by video. Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., a former Naval officer who will lead the session with Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who flew combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, said she expects the testimony from the White House aides will “just be really compelling.”
"These are people who believed in the work they were doing, but didn’t believe in the stolen election,” Luria said.
The White House aides were not alone in calling it quits that day. The panel is expected to provide a tally of the Trump administration aides and even Cabinet members who resigned after Trump failed to call off the attack. Some Cabinet members were so alarmed they discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.
As the panel continues to collect evidence and prepares to issue a preliminary report of findings, it has amassed the most substantial public record to date of what led up to Americans attacking the seat of democracy.
While the committee cannot make criminal charges, the Justice Department is monitoring its work.
So far, more than 840 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot. Over 330 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors. Of the more than 200 defendants to be sentenced, approximately 100 received terms of imprisonment.
What remains uncertain is whether Trump or the former president's top allies will face serious charges. No former president has ever been federally prosecuted by the Justice Department.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wednesday that Jan. 6 is “the most wide-ranging investigation and the most important investigation that the Justice Department has ever entered into.”
“We have to get this right,” Garland said. “For people who are concerned, as I think every American should be, we have to do two things: We have to hold accountable every person who is criminally responsible for trying to overturn a legitimate election, and we must do it in a way filled with integrity and professionalism.”
In delving into the timeline, the panel aims to show what happened between the time Trump left the stage at his “Stop the Steal” rally shortly after 1:10 p.m., after telling supporters to march to the Capitol, and some three hours later, when he issued a video address from the Rose Garden in which he told the rioters to “go home” but also praised them as “very special.”
It also expects to produce additional evidence about Trump's confrontation with Secret Service agents who refused to drive him to the Capitol — a witness account that the security detail has disputed.
Five people died that day as Trump supporters battled the police in gory hand-to-hand combat to storm the Capitol. One officer has testified about how she was “slipping in other people's blood” as they tried to hold back the mob. One Trump supporter was shot and killed by police.
“The president didn’t do very much but gleefully watch television during this time frame,” Kinzinger said.
Not only did Trump refuse to tell the mob to leave the Capitol, he did not call other parts of the government for backup and gave no order to deploy the National Guard, Cheney said.
This despite countless pleas from Trump's aides and allies, including his daughter Ivanka Trump and Fox News host Sean Hannity, according to previous testimony and text messages the committee has obtained.
“You will hear that leaders on Capitol Hill begged the president for help,” Cheney has said, including House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who she said indicated he was “'scared' and called multiple members of President Trump’s family after he could not persuade the President himself.”
The panel has said its investigation is ongoing and other hearings are possible. It expects to compile a preliminary report this fall, and a final report by the end of this session of Congress.
The reign of Papaya King, the beloved hot dog and juice joint that opened on the Upper East Side in 1932, is expected to end soon, and fans are flocking to pay their respects.
The story began when a Greek immigrant named Gus Poulos quickly learned he couldn't hawk his love for tropical fruit juices to a neighborhood full of German Jews without some confusion. The beet- and cabbage-loving crowd needed to be lured in. When Hawaiian music and servers in grass skirts didn't do the trick, Poulos added snappy hot dogs — and the rest was history.
Now, as neighborhood institution faces demolition, connoisseurs of all ages are coming in to snatch up a sweet, sour treat that now might taste just a little bit bittersweet.
The quasi-state agency overseeing the Penn Station redevelopment project is holding a key vote Thursday. It’s likely to approve what will be the city’s largest renovation project in modern history. WNYC’s Stephen Nessen reports, there are still unanswered questions about how the plan is being funded, even as it’s quickly moving forward.
The mysterious disappearance of man in Paterson, N.J., is raising questions about police conduct and record keeping in that city.
On February 2nd, 2022, the got a call about a disturbance at a Union Avenue bodega. There, they arrested 41-year-old Felix DeJesus of Haledon, N.J. What happened next is unclear, but DeJesus's family says he has not been seen since. And they've struggled to get answers from police.
Reporter Joe Malinconico has been covering the story for the Paterson Press. He joined WNYC Morning Edition host Michael Hill to talk about the case.
New Jersey residents who need help paying their rent have until Monday, July 25 to enter a state lottery for housing assistance.
But the Department of Community Affairs, which administers the program, said that in the last week it had already been inundated with far more pre-applications than it can grant via available slot, underscoring the state’s housing affordability crisis.
“We are aware of the critical need for affordable housing in New Jersey and remain committed to investing in programs that help to make New Jersey more affordable to live and raise a family,” Lt. Gov. and DCA Commissioner Sheila Oliver said in a statement this month. “If you are in need of housing assistance, please take this opportunity to submit an application during the open enrollment period.”
The department said 4,000 households will be selected for the Rental Assistance Program, which subsidizes rents for very low income families and individuals, which the state defines as those making less than 30% of the median family income for their counties. The application lists specific income requirements for each county.
As of Monday — a week after applications opened — 61,509 were received, DCA spokeswoman Gina Trish said. And the open enrollment period still had another week to go.
Standing in the rotunda of City Hall, Mayor Adams stood flanked by homeless service advocates and civil rights attorney Norman Siegel on Tuesday to announce a new volunteer program that will allow everyday New Yorkers to assist in reaching out and building relationships to people currently living on the streets.
Adams said the goal is to augment - not replace - the city's current outreach efforts.
"There is no dignity in living on the streets. That we agree on. And so we are going to lean into the things we agree on and not the things we disagree on," said Adams.
Volunteers will be screened and receive three hours of training before hitting the street with a team, with a pilot program expected to start next month.
Those interested in applying can email nyccshap@gmail.com or call (212) 537-6772.
Psychiatric staff at one of New York City’s public hospitals are growing increasingly alarmed about high numbers of workplace injuries amid what they describe as an overall atmosphere of combativeness and violence that has only worsened since the pandemic began. Many of these injuries have been debilitating for staff, who say patient safety is also at risk.
Documents obtained by Gothamist and interviews with nine current and former employees at Harlem’s Metropolitan Hospital show that workplace injuries have caused employees to miss thousands of work days over the past four years and have led many psychiatric staff to leave altogether. The medical center is run by NYC Health + Hospitals, whose facilities treat a large share of the city’s psychiatric patients.
The employees, including nurses and support staff such as behavioral health associates, describe the psychiatric department at Metropolitan as an often understaffed, volatile environment that lacks the resources to accommodate the range of acute needs patients have and offers little in the way of therapeutic care. Some NYC Health + Hospitals staff say they are now afraid to speak out about workplace violence themselves because they believe a union representative was fired for repeatedly flagging workers’ concerns.
“When you don't have the support that you need and then you run into another crisis, it's always in the back of your head, like, ‘I don't want to get hurt again,’” said Humberto Garcia, a former inpatient psychiatric nurse at Metropolitan Hospital.
On the day Garcia was injured last July, he said he first noticed one of his patients getting increasingly agitated around lunchtime. At first, he said the patient was complaining about the food and the staff not paying attention to him before repeatedly demanding to be discharged. The patient finally got so frustrated that he started throwing chairs and food, according to Garcia. An altercation ensued while staff tried to subdue the patient with medication. Garcia ended up with a black eye, and an injured shoulder that forced him off work for a month, according to a doctor’s evaluation reviewed by Gothamist.
Most of the employees who spoke to Gothamist said they had been injured multiple times during violent incidents, which are reported to the New York State Department of Labor along with other workplace injuries.
In response to Gothamist’s findings, Stephanie Buhle, a spokesperson for NYC Health + Hospitals, said, “We know that there has been an increase in violence nationally since the start of the pandemic, coupled with an increased need for emergency behavioral health care.” She added that the health system is aware of safety concerns at Metropolitan and already working to address them.
The troubles in Metropolitan’s psych department got worse over the past couple of years, state Labor Department records show. There were at least 21 violent incidents involving behavioral health patients in 2018, keeping employees out of work for 866 days overall. This figure remained somewhat steady in 2019 with at least another 21 incidents resulting in 826 missed work days. That’s about 40 missed work days per incident, on average, over those years.
By 2020, the number of workdays missed per incident shot up 68% — with at least 36 violent incidents resulting in 2,375 days out of work. A year later, staff working with Metropolitan’s behavioral health patients missed at least 2,840 days of work due to 27 incidents of violence — or 100 days per episode.
These include injuries incurred while breaking up a fight, while restraining a patient, or from a patient attacking an employee. Such incidents accounted for more than half of all the days staff were out due to workplace injury at the hospital that year.
Morning Edition host Michael Hill speaks with WNYC health reporter Caroline Lewis about her investigation into the hospital.
Click listen in the player to hear their conversation, and visit Gothamist for more details on the story.
Outside Bushwick Educational Campus, a line of mostly young men stretched down Irving Avenue on Sunday, waiting for their first dose of the monkeypox vaccine.
“I'm craving it. My pores are like, ‘Gimme gimme gimme,’” Larry Bullock, a bartender, told Gothamist as he waited in line. “I work in a gay club, I need it, I've been wearing gloves to work for the last four nights and I never wear gloves to work. But I've noticed my hands are so soft and supple now."
The high school was one of three large-scale sites that opened Sunday as New York City ramps up its vaccination efforts to tamp down on rising cases. As of Friday, the city reported 461 cases of monkeypox which account for nearly a third of all U.S. cases recorded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The city is struggling to meet demand with a limited supply of doses, and last week, officials botched the vaccine roll out when its outsourced appointment websites crashed. Eventually, the city transitioned to using its own appointment scheduling site where appointments quickly disappeared.
The city and state say they’ve come to an agreement on plans to redevelop Penn Station and the surrounding midtown neighborhood. But key details are still missing.
Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul say the city is on board with the state’s plan to allow developers to build 10 skyscrapers in midtown — and use money from leases — to renovate Penn Station.
They say the city will still collect existing real estate taxes on the the properties being developed, with an annual 3 percent increase. The agreement says this could last for 80 years or until the project fees are paid off, but it doesn’t include how much those fees are.
The developer Vornado is building the bulk of the properties and is agreeing to make improvements to the neighborhood and train station.
A recent study found developers could get more than a billion dollars in tax breaks with this deal.
A key vote by the state agency in charge of the project is set for Thursday.
WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith joins us for another edition of his Weekend Arts Picks. Speaking with Weekend Edition host David Furst, he delivers his latest picks:
- "Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: World Unbound"
I went to the Museum of Modern Art earlier this week to see their big new exhibition, "The Red Studio." The show is named after a groundbreaking painting by Matisse, a depiction of his own studio, which is literally strewn with other works he'd created up to that date – at MoMA, the famous painting is surrounded by those other paintings and sculptures in one room, while another room traces the journey the painting took from Matisse's actual studio to MoMA.
I also got a preview glimpse of the new room-sized Barbara Kruger installation, "Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You." which opens Saturday, July 16 and is destined to be immortalized in thousands of Instagram selfies and TikTok shorts.
And then I rounded a corner and was stopped dead in my tracks by something unexpected. "Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: World Unbound" is the first-ever U.S. museum exhibition devoted to the visionary artist from Cote d’Ivoire. Bouabré was born in 1923 and died in 2014, and he spent his career pursuing themes of equality and mutual understanding through his art – up to and including the invention of a new graphic-based writing system.
The gallery is lined with dozens and dozens of small, colorful sketches. They're both childlike and sophisticated. And be forewarned, one small section devoted to anatomical intersection is decidedly NSFW. And in one more special touch, everywhere you go you hear the sound of Bouabré's voice, emerging from speakers that play his voice enunciating the sounds of his utopian alphabet. The show is magical, and it's on view through August 13.
- The Bad Plus at the Blue Note
Bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King hail from Minnesota, and in 1989 they got together with Wisconsin pianist Ethan Iverson in a trio that soon would be famous as The Bad Plus. You might even say notorious: All three band members were formidable composers, but what The Bad Plus became best known for was quirky, idiosyncratic covers of pop and rock hits: "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Heart of Glass," "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," and so on.
When Iverson left the group in 2017, Anderson and King hired another pianist, Orrin Evans. They made two strong records, but then disbanded last year. The new album coming out on September 30 is simply titled "The Bad Plus," and it's a reset in more than just name: Instead of a new pianist, Anderson and King have recruited saxophonist Chris Speed and guitarist Ben Monder.
Chris Speed and Dave King have played together in a few different bands recently, including Speed's own trio. And Ben Monder has been in the neighborhood at least since Reid Anderson's fantastic solo album from the year 2000, "The Vastness of Space."
But it's more than history, it's chemistry: these players sound great together.
And if what Anderson and King are saying in keeping the name is that The Bad Plus had as much to do with their writing and their collective sound as any specific players or instruments, the music on their upcoming album supports that view. You can hear them in action at the Blue Note jazz club on West 3rd Street next Tuesday through Sunday, with sets each night at 8 and 10:30 p.m. For details, and to buy tickets, head to the Blue Note website.
The past few years have created an epidemic of mental anguish.
The World Health Organization states that the "prevalence of depression and anxiety have increased by 25 percent" since COVID-19 emerged. Fatal substance abuse keeps breaking records in the U.S. and the tri-state area. And while suicide technically declined nationwide during the first year of the pandemic, self-harm is still a leading cause of injury and death — with 46,000 fatalities in 2020.
Starting Saturday, people in crisis will have a new way to reach out for help. The national 988 mental health crisis number is rolling out as a lifeline for people who need emergency counseling.
But access to the hotline’s services may be limited in some places.
The federal government provided a huge sum – $400 million — to help local governments build out the call centers. Places like New York and New Jersey also added millions of dollars through their fiscal budgets. Other states haven’t added this backing, which means their residents’ calls could be rerouted here.
WNYC host Tiffany Hansen spoke with Jonathan Purtle, a health policy professor at New York University and director of policy research at their Global Center for Implementation Science. He has studied how call center support for 988’s predecessor — the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline — has varied state-to-state.
Jagger Freeman's conviction has brought renewed scrutiny to New York’s felony murder law, an arcane legal concept that broadens the crime of murder to include those who set into motion a series of events that lead to a person’s death, regardless of their intent. The legal doctrine can be traced back to Elizabethan England, but was abolished in the United Kingdom decades ago, and no longer exists in other common law countries.
Currently, New York is one of just 13 states that accept a proximate theory of felony murder – meaning that a person can be liable for a “foreseeable” death, even if the victim was killed by an outside party, such as a police officer. It shares that distinction with states like Texas, Alabama, Florida and Georgia.
On a hot July evening 55 years ago, two white police officers in Newark arrested and beat a Black cab driver named John Smith. Witnesses watched as the police dragged the battered and bloodied man in to a precinct.
An angry crowd began to gather outside, driven by the incident as well as long-simmering resentment over treatment of the city's Black community. Someone threw a rock at the precinct, then another. As the situation escalated, police in riot gear charged into the crowd.
The ensuing violence lasted five days. It left 26 people dead, hundreds more seriously hurt, and a city burned and scarred.
Lawrence Hamm is a long-time Newark resident and the chairman of the People's Organization for Progress. He spoke with WNYC Morning Edition host Michael Hill to reflect on the legacy of the Newark Rebellion, and what has—and hasn't—changed since then.
The knights, squires and royal court members of Medieval Times in Lyndhurst, New Jersey are readying for what could be their most consequential performance to date: voting for the first time to join a union.
On Friday afternoon, 42 workers at the Bergen County dinner theater will decide whether to join the American Guild of Variety Artists, which represents performers including the Rockettes and the members of Cirque du Soleil.
The vote follows a national wave of collective organizing and an uptick in unionization rates in New Jersey. Food service workers, retail employees, even budtenders at medical and recreational cannabis markets are getting organized.
“This isn't a means of lambasting my employers or us collectively saying, ‘We're giving you the finger,’” Zaire Wood, 32, a knight at Medieval Times, said. “We're making a sincere effort, a genuine effort to collaborate with our employers, to help them understand what we feel every day.”
Medieval Times hasn’t yet responded to several emails and calls for comment this week.
Alexei Ratmansky, the artist in residence at American Ballet Theatre, is considered one of the most important choreographers of the 21st century. Formerly the youngest-ever director of the Bolshoi Ballet, Ratmansky has roots in both Ukraine and Russia, and that’s made the current war in Ukraine personal for him. Now, as the ABT summer season draws to an end, he's making plans to process his feelings onstage, through his art.
New York's top judge shocked the legal community this week when she abruptly announced she would step down at the end of August.
Chief Judge Janet DiFiore had been in charge of the state's judicial branch since 2016, and she could have stayed on for another three years. Now, Governor Kathy Hochul will get to choose her replacement, and she's already facing pressure from progressive Democrats who see it as an opportunity to reshape the state's top court, the Court of Appeals.
WNYC's Albany reporter Jon Campbell joined Morning Edition host Michael Hill to discuss the latest.
For more, visit Gothamist.com.
More and more politicians are calling on Governor Kathy Hochul to relinquish control of the multi-million-dollar Penn Station renewal project. They say it would make it more transparent and accountable.
The state agency known as the Empire State Development Corporation has been in charge of the project and wants to allow developers to build 10 skyscrapers in midtown. They also want to use proceeds from leases to fund repairs to Penn Station.
In a letter to Governor Hochul, city, state and federal leaders call on her to create a new entity to coordinate and oversee the project. But Rachael Fauss with the good government group Reinvent Albany, isn’t so sure that’ll improve transparency.
"You have to make sure you can still follow the money and understand all the budgets and costs. Creating new entities often makes it harder to follow the money," Fauss said.
Hochul’s office isn’t saying if she’ll do it.
City officials have fired a correction officer following the death of the eighth detainee at the Rikers Island jail complex this year, Department of Correction officials said.
“A preliminary review of this incident required that we take immediate action against the staff involved, and an officer was terminated,” said Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina in a statement. A spokesperson did not specify how Elijah Muhammad, 31, died on Sunday, or what role the fired officer played.
The death rate at Rikers this year is keeping pace with last year, when 16 people died in city custody and public outrage heightened over conditions for incarcerated people. In addition to this year’s eight deaths at Rikers, two inmates died shortly after being held at the jails there; one after he hanged himself in a Bronx court lock-up, and the other at the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward. The causes of deaths included suicides, drug overdoses, and untreated illness.
In the wake of the latest death, advocates once again called for a federal takeover of the jails at Rikers. A federal judge has postponed a decision on a possible federal receivership until at least November.
As news of Muhammad’s death was released, lawyers for Rikers detainees were in court arguing that the city should be fined for denying medical care to thousands of inmates. A judge previously found the DOC in contempt of court for failing to bring inmates to the infirmary when they’re injured or ill.
On Monday, city attorney Chlarens Orsland told a judge that officers are no longer failing to bring thousands of inmates to their appointments, but he acknowledged that some have been denied timely care because there is not enough space to securely hold detainees while they wait at the infirmary.
An attorney representing the detainees, Katherine Kelly Fell, said the city can’t keep arresting people and sending them to Rikers if it can’t properly care for them.
“It is simply not an answer to say we are going to continue to incarcerate all of these individuals on Rikers Island but we are not going to provide them medical care,” she said.
State Supreme Court Judge Elizabeth Taylor requested more detailed information from the city about missed medical appointments, and delayed until August a decision about whether to fine the city $100 for each missed medical appointment over the course of several weeks.
From the galleries to the concert halls to Shakespeare in the Park, there are always so many great arts events happening in New York City. WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor, Steve Smith highlights a couple of can't-miss events with Weekend Edition host David Furst.
Steve's picks:
- Just a few minutes after I entered the Gagosian Gallery at 555 West 24th Street for their new show of works by Nam June Paik, my phone died. I only managed to snap three quick photos. And that was a real disappointment, because this is the kind of show that really makes you want to get a bunch of photos and share them. Paik's fusty old TVs, stacked-up or disassembled and hung on a wall, his fake plastic cellos, his happy little robots made out of console radios… it's all catnip on social media.
The show is called "Nam June Paik: Art in Process, Part 1," and as the title indicates it's the first installment of a big two-part survey devoted to Paik, a hugely influential media artist who was born in South Korea in 1932, was active all over the world, and died in Miami in 2006. The second part opens on July 19 at an uptown Gagosian gallery on Park Avenue.
It's just plain fun to see Paik's quirky constructions and psychedelic TV-scapes. He fuses a sort of junk-art packrat mentality with profound contemplations of a future ruled by video communications and instantaneous electronic connection on a global scale – Paik is credited with coining the term "information superhighway." It's also a funny paradox to think about Paik's clunky TV cabinets and picture tubes feeling dated, while the next room over is filled floor to ceiling with old-fashioned paintings on canvas and sketches on paper.
You're constantly reminded of Paik's quirky wit. But the show also includes a few pieces that are arresting for a quieter beauty and poetry, like "One Candle, Candle Projection," which consisted of a single lit candle, a video camera, and a series of projectors throwing different views of that flickering flame on the walls close by. I could have sat and contemplated that piece for quite some time, had Gagosian only provided a chair.
Part 1 of "Nam June Paik: Art in Process" is on view now at Gagosian's gallery at 555 West 24th Street. It closes on July 22. And Part 2 of the show opens on July 19 at Park Avenue and 75th Street.
- The concert we're going to check out this week is happening in the East Village on Thursday, July 14. It's part of something called Independent Venue Week, in which hundreds of small clubs and theaters from coast to coast are banding together to celebrate their continued survival and vitality as they bounce back from pandemic shutdowns.
It's also part of the 15th anniversary celebrations at Drom, a nightclub on Avenue A that was opened by two immigrant entrepreneurs and has been one of New York City's focal points for global music, progressive jazz, funk, electronica -- you name it.
But mostly, it's a chance to be dazzled by one of Cuba's most talented and charismatic performers, Pedrito Martinez.
Pedrito Martinez was born in Havana in 1973. He started his professional career at age 11, and came to New York City at 25. Since then, he's performed and recorded with a panoply of superstars: Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Wynton Marsalis, Isaac Delgado -- the list goes on and on.
I had a chance to hear Martinez play just a few weeks ago in San Francisco, working with a band of Latin Music superstars fronted by Isaac Delgado.
This is a chance to see and hear him play up close and personal, and to celebrate Drom's anniversary and the continued contributions of New York's small venues. A party is absolutely guaranteed.
New York City police officers are leaving their jobs at what some officers and experts say is an alarming rate, and not enough new recruits are taking their place.
Even as 561 new police recruits were sworn in earlier this month, hundreds of officers were handing in their badges and shields to leave the department. According to the Police Pension Fund, over 2,100 sworn officers have retired or resigned since January. That’s more departures in half a year than there were in all of 2019.
Departures surged in 2020. And while fewer people left last year, the department is still struggling to staff up. There are currently almost 1,200 vacant positions, according to NYPD statistics.
This comes as violent crime is still above pre-pandemic levels, and a string of high-profile crimes have left many New Yorkers on edge. Some in law enforcement are concerned that the shrinking ranks lack the manpower needed to keep the city safe.
The Police Benevolent Association, which represents rank and file officers, calls the staffing decline a “stampede.”
“We’re not only losing experienced veterans. We’re also losing cops in the prime of their careers who are taking their talents elsewhere,” President Patrick J. Lynch said in a statement. “The NYPD cannot continue papering over this staffing crisis with more and more overtime. That will drive even more cops to pursue other opportunities where they can make more money and have a better quality of life.”
The NYPD did not share details on its attempts to hire and retain more officers, but says it has rolled out a recruitment campaign and is currently accepting applications. The department has also noted that many officers retiring now joined in the NYPD’s large academy class after 9/11, following another surge in retirements.
"I’m not going to say it’s the worst I’ve ever seen, but it’s definitely up there,” said Robert Lukach, who spent 35 years with the NYPD and retired this spring as a deputy chief. Lukach loved his job at what he felt was the country’s “premium” law enforcement agency.
He worked all over the department, from patrol to the domestic violence unit in the Bronx and the city’s emergency service unit. He liked helping people and keeping busy. For years, he felt like his work was doing something – that people appreciated it.
But that started to change in 2020. First COVID hit. Then New Yorkers protesting police brutality filled the streets. Lukach agreed that George Floyd’s death was tragic, and he didn’t stand by the actions of the officer who killed him. But protesters didn’t know that, and he said he could feel their anger as they threw hard frozen water bottles at him.
“The destruction was just, it was just unbelievable,” Lukach remembered thinking as he traveled through the city and saw all the boarded up windows. “All the hard work, all the things that had been done over the years by the NYPD to reduce crime just felt like it just kind of went out the window, and it was just – it was sad.”
There were peaceful and violent actors on both sides during the protests. Most protesters were not violent, and the Civilian Complaint Review Board has investigated hundreds of allegations of police misconduct during the demonstrations, including the pepper spraying and arrest of a Black state senator.
Lukach said many of his coworkers have left recently or are thinking about it. He wonders how that will impact the department, as it loses so much institutional knowledge.
“There were some really, really good gun guys that could say, hey, just by that individual’s walk, his hip, how he grabbed his you know right part of his belt, were all quick indications that, ‘OK, let me start looking at this guy. Let me see what’s going on,’” Lukach said. “And I think that learning curve, you’re going to lose. And that’s an invaluable thing for young police officers to get that information so that they have the understanding and the ability to use that later on, when they need to.”
John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor Maki Haberfeld is a former law enforcement officer who studies police science, including staffing trends. She worried about an exodus from the NYPD back in 2019, after officers were drenched with buckets of water while working in Harlem, which Gothamist and other outlets reported at the time.
“It’s not like you get a job and you’re married to it,” she told Gothamist for this story. “You can go and get another job and you are not risking your life and nobody’s throwing buckets of water at you and nobody’s throwing molotov cocktails at you.”
It’s not just a New York problem, Haberfeld said that other cities are struggling to recruit and retain officers as well. Recently, ads for departments across the country, including Washington D.C.and Norfolk, Va., have popped up in subway cars, urging riders to apply.
“I’m on many list-servs of many police organizations, so I get, you know, maybe 15, 20 emails a day from various police organizations and associations,” she said. “I’m just seeing an overall sentiment that there aren’t enough qualified candidates to join.”
“There’s only that much an individual can take given the fact that we live in times that you can go and get another job,” Haberfeld said.
Experts say other factors are at play as well.
Some officers and politicians blame recent changes to New York’s bail laws, which have caused frustration among officers who feel people they arrest are being released from jail too quickly – even though researchers have not found a clear link between bail reform and increases in crime. Law enforcement cite a city law that prohibits some types of police restraints, which officers say they need to do their jobs. Others blame vaccine mandates which barred officers from working if they didn’t get their shots.
Experts and officers also point to the NYPD’s low pay compared to many other departments. The starting salary is $42,500, and the average hourly pay for an officer with decades of experience is substantially lower in New York City than in neighboring departments, according to a 2019 review by the Police Benevolent Association.. Experts say that leads some local criminal justice students entering the profession to consider taking their training and skills elsewhere.
“Some of our students are more inclined to leave the comfort of New York to pursue a better life,” said Kristina Simonsen, also of John Jay College, who advises students applying for jobs in law enforcement. She said higher pay outside the city allows some of her students to pursue their passion without sacrificing their quality of life. The starting salary in nearby Yonkers, for instance, is over $72,000. In San Jose, California, she mentioned, it’s even higher: nearly $106,000 once you graduate from the academy.
“The cost of living is different,” Simonsen said. “They’ll still be able to save money. They’ll still be able to afford a home and, like, the other essentials that we look for when we’re thinking about our career versus $42,000. That is just to me not on par with what the job is asking.”
Advocates for criminal justice reform don’t want the city to spend more money on law enforcement. They would rather see the police department’s budget spent on community resources to prevent violence and address root causes of crime. Some groups expressed frustration when the city council passed a budget last month that kept funding for the NYPD on par with last year.
“This year, the NYPD’s budget will continue to be an oversized portion of the city’s budget, which will result in more police flooding our neighborhoods and the continuation of failed, abusive policing tactics,” Communities United for Police Reform said in a statement after the budget vote. "While the council pats themselves on the back for merely restoring already insufficient community investments, the already bloated NYPD was given its largest budget ever. We demand deep cuts in the NYPD budget because we know that police do not prevent violence, they don’t keep us safe. We needed vision and bold investments, and instead, we are getting more of the same: criminalization and over-policing.”
You can go and get another job and you are not risking your life and nobody’s throwing buckets of water at you and nobody’s throwing molotov cocktails at you.
John Jay College of Criminal Justice Professor Maki Haberfeld
But Simonsen said there are still plenty of people who do hope to join the NYPD. And as officers retire and resign, the department they leave behind is becoming more diverse. The share of white officers has dropped by more than 2,000 in the last five years, from half the department to less than 45%, according to department statistics. Meanwhile, the number of Latino and Asian officers in the department has climbed.
At the latest academy graduation, the recruits hailed from 38 countries and spoke 34 different languages, according to the NYPD. They were men and women of various races and ethnicities who had chosen to join the department even though many of their potential colleagues were leaving. Class valedictorian Amall Ali said she had eagerly accepted the job at the NYPD, even though she could have made more money elsewhere.
“As you all know, we don’t take this job for the money, but rather, to protect and serve,” she said, and the crowd cheered in agreement.
Simonsen said many of her students want to stay close to their families. They want to work for their hometown department. And they want to make it better and more reflective of the communities it serves.
“They want to be a part of the change, and that has to come from within,” Simonsen said. “Nothing’s going to change if the same people are consistently getting these jobs or applying for these jobs. So, we have women who are going into law enforcement. We have people of color who are going into law enforcement and want to be there and want to be the agents of change.”
This story was updated to include additional context about the 2020 protests.
Labor unions and environmental activists are celebrating the end of a deal between Amazon and the Port Authority to build a massive cargo hub at Newark Liberty International Airport.
At a Friday press conference, a coalition of nonprofits chanted “shame, shame, shame, our communities are not a game,” claiming victory after a 10-month fight opposing the 250,000 square-foot cargo facility. They’d said it would spew emissions in an already polluted area and could displace union jobs that better protect workers.
The airport straddles the cities of Newark and Elizabeth.
“We have to push back on these corporations who think they can come into our community and pollute our communities,” Kim Gaddy, founder and CEO of the South Ward Environmental Alliance in Newark, said. “One in four children in this city have asthma right now. We don't need more trucks. Look around — they’re everywhere.”
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced on Thursday the agency and Amazon had agreed to pull out of negotiations to finalize a 20-year lease.
Last week the NYPD announced it will be working with law enforcement officials across the state to conduct a sustained crackdown on the spike in drivers using fake license plates, and people who cover their plates to evade tolls. Just days later, WNYC’s transportation reporter Stephen Nessen witnessed firsthand what the crackdown looks like.
early every New Jersey municipality reviewed in a recent probe ignored state laws capping sick and vacation leave payouts for their workers, in at least one case wasting nearly $200,000 of taxpayer money, the state’s top auditor says.
The Office of the State Comptroller probed 60 municipalities — selected based on their budgets and population sizes — and found 95% violated measures approved in 2007 and 2010 that were designed to curb employee benefit costs and avoid cushy payouts to government workers.
Just three of the 60 towns were entirely abiding by the laws, the agency said in a report released Thursday.
“Laws that were intended to lower property taxes are being ignored and violated in a staggeringly high number of municipalities,” acting Comptroller Kevin Walsh told reporters during a Thursday press call. “Municipalities are annually handing out what are effectively unlawful, under-the-radar annual bonuses. Waste is happening today and towns have committed themselves to even more waste in the future.”
The New York City Police Department has long used social media to share information on crimes under investigation and to get the public’s help finding suspects. Surveillance footage and imagery have become commonplace on the department’s Twitter and Facebook pages. But as technology progressed, so did the frequency of graphic imagery on the department’s online channels, creating a cycle of sometimes shockingly graphic imagery being shared online, picked up by local news outlets, and transmitted across the airwaves.
On Monday night, the NYPD held private parties for officers and their guests at multiple locations along the waterfront in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn. Even as public spectators were turned away from popular viewing sites due to a lack of space, the police-only areas remained off limits to those unaffiliated with law enforcement.
It’s been more than nine months since the waters of Hurricane Ida flooded tens of thousands of homes and killed 11 residents of basement apartments in Queens. The storm made the dangers of basement apartments – impossible to ignore. But as the months have ticked by, and with another hurricane season upon us, WNYC’s Gwynne Hogan reports city and state officials have done little to make basement tenants safer. Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
It can be hard to find a public restroom in New York City. A 2019 Comptroller report ranks New York City 93rd worst out of the 100 largest American cities in terms of the number of bathrooms per residents. But one New Yorker is working to make it easier to know where to go, when you've got to go.
Teddy Siegel's TikTok account shares restroom codes around New York City in an effort to make bathrooms more accessible for all. She joined WNYC's Morning Edition host Michael Hill to talk about why she does it, and the best bathroom in New York City.
Despite the resurgence of COVID-19 this spring, there are now fewer options for free PCR tests in New York City.
A Gothamist analysis of municipal data found that the number of NYC Health + Hospitals testing sites were cut in half citywide from mid-February to mid-April — from 270 sites to 144 locations — leading to fewer hours of testing availability. This shrunken landscape includes both brick-and-mortar clinics as well as mobile testing vans.
Practically speaking, these trends meant that New Yorkers had 15% fewer hours to get a free PCR test — given more than 10,000 hours were available the week of February 14th, when the omicron surge was waning, versus 8,500 hours the week of April 18th. By this part of the spring, the coronavirus was rebounding again, driven by newer versions of the omicron variant.
The revelation defies a pledge made by city health officials in the early spring, when they said changes in federal pandemic funding would not reduce city-run testing sites.
“There's going to be no change to our city-run sites in terms of our mobile sites, our fixed sites,” Dr. Ted Long, the executive director of the NYC Test and Trace Corps, told Gothamist in late March. “We're going to be continuing full force ahead and even expanding as we need to, to meet the demands of testing across New York City.”
WNYC host Michael Hill spoke with Betsy Ladyzhets, a health data journalist who broke the story for Gothamist. Click listen in the player to hear their conversation.
Peter’s Mine Road is plastered with signs. On one side, they say “congratulations class of 2022.” On the other, they say “Superfund site.”
Pollution in this area of Ringwood, New Jersey dates back to 1967, when the Ford Motor Company began dumping paint sludge and other hazardous byproducts from their Mahwah car factory on land surrounding a defunct mine. But for a while nobody knew – especially not the indigenous people who lived there. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency didn’t designate the site for federally-managed Superfund cleanup until the 1980s.
Those toxic chemicals remain at the center of a decades-long fight, waged largely with the Ramapough Lenape Nation’s Turtle Clan.
Two weeks ago, New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the state Attorney General’s office filed a new lawsuit against Ford, saying the automaker was “fully aware” of the harm it was causing to Ringwood and the ancestral lands of the Ramapough.
Most of the area’s residents were and continue to be members of the Turtle Clan. Chief Vincent Mann said the community’s way of living off the land unknowingly sealed their fate.
“They were harvesting wild medicinals. They were drinking the water,” Mann said. “In all of those things was all the toxic chemicals that was disposed of there by Ford Motor Corporation, allowed by the town of Ringwood.”
According to the new civil complaint, Ford later sold or donated the land to municipal governments and residential developers without fully disclosing the contamination they’d left behind. By 1973, the company no longer owned any land at the site.
New York voters will head to the polls Tuesday to pick the Democratic and Republican nominees for governor. Gov. Kathy Hochul is seeking her first full term, but two of her fellow Democrats -- Rep. Tom Suozzi of Long Island and New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams -- are hoping to put her out of work. And there's a heated four-way race among the GOP, with businessman Harry Wilson, former Trump aide Andrew Giuliani, former Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino and Long Island Rep. Lee Zeldin seeking the nod. WNYC's Albany reporter Jon Campbell joined host Tiffany Hanssen on "All Things Considered" to discuss how the candidates spent the last full day of the primary season. For more on the race, visit Gothamist.com.
An affordable housing co-op in West Harlem is weighing their options — change over to electric heat pumps, install rooftop solar or both. It’s an energy decision they must make in the next couple of years when their boiler that runs on fuel oil #2 needs to be replaced, as new climate laws take effect.
For these homeowners, who are all low-to-middle income, climate change mitigation feels like both a luxury and a necessity for the 20-unit building on West 156th Street. Government incentives and tax credits can cover more than 70% of the upfront costs of solar panels, yet customers still end up paying tens of thousands of dollars for installations.
But co-op board member Estelle Bajou doesn’t want to wait or be left out of the clean energy transition just because she has to “make every dollar count on a low income.”
“When you’re low-income, there’s an expectation that you won’t be able to afford to go green,” said Bajou.
Looking for alternatives, a growing number of leaseholders, small businesses or even low-income homeowners like Bajou are turning to community solar programs. Renewables developers compare the concept to Netflix — a subscription in one of these programs entitles a person to a share of a solar farm or a rooftop installation rather than outright ownership. This share of renewable power generation offsets a customer’s own electricity usage, reflected directly on their utility bill.
They also get to contribute individually toward mitigating climate change. Every megawatt of solar power generates emissions-free electricity that could replace a megawatt of natural gas, which releases 200 kilograms of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.
This option also allows energy customers to choose solar power without paying for the upfront costs, construction and commitment. Out-of-pocket expenses for household solar installations range from $15,000 to $22,000 in New York City, according to market analysts at EnergySage.
In March, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that more 1 gigawatts of community solar had been installed across New York, which could power more than 200,000 homes every year. More than 700 projects are in the works, she said, which would add up to another 2.3 gigawatts of power toward the state’s goal of building 10 gigawatts by 2030.
Click listen in the player to hear more details, and visit Gothamist for the full story.
It’s impossible to keep up with everything happening in New York City arts and culture, but here are a few recommendations for events you shouldn’t miss:
- "By Land, Air, Home, and Sea: The World of Frank Walter"
This show was assembled for the David Zwirner Gallery by Hilton Als, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic for The New Yorker. Walter is a fairly little known artist, whose work Als first encountered at the Venice Biennale in 2017. The show is intimate in scale, but its elemental force makes you lean in close.
- "The Art of Making It"
This new documentary, which opens on Wednesday at the IFC Center, takes a good, hard look at the business of art galleries and museums, and how a successful career happens, or maybe doesn't. Director Kelcey Edwards introduces viewers to some talented young artists, like painters Jenna Gribbon, Gisela McDaniel and Chris Watts. You really get a very clear sense of the challenges even successful artists have faced — and, paradoxically, how the pandemic may have set the stage for change.
- C4 Trio
This band of Venezuelan performers, whose name is pronounced "say cuatro," is made up of three superstars of cuatro, a nimble little guitar-like instrument with four strings. Edward Ramírez, Héctor Molina and Jorge Glem are joined by bass player Rodner Padilla in the group, which has made seven albums and won two Latin Grammys. They play in Weehawken, NJ, on Wednesday, and at Lincoln Center on Thursday.
For more details and useful links, visit Gothamist.
Natelegé Whaley and Naima Moore Turner started organizing double Dutch outings not just for nostalgic fun, but also to create space for Black people in a rapidly gentrifying borough. The founders of Brooklyn Recess round up eager participants from throughout the city for their jump-rope outings in Brooklyn parks, and sometimes at public events where they know the community will be present.
The Supreme Court's ruling Thursday to strike down a century-old law in New York limiting the ability to carry a gun in public has faced immediate condemnation from elected officials.
In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul called the decision "reckless and reprehensible," and Mayor Eric Adams said the decision "has made every single one of us less safe from gun violence."
WNYC's Michael Hill spoke with Adams.
New York parents seeking the COVID-19 vaccine for their infants and toddlers have had little luck so far.
Despite the federal government authorizing the vaccines for children ages 6 months to 5 years old over the weekend, supplies of the Pfizer and Moderna shots have yet to be delivered, according to interviews with a half dozen pediatricians, pharmacies and clinics.
City officials had vowed last week that the COVID-19 Vaccine Finder website would be updated “beginning on June 21 … to find convenient locations across the five boroughs to vaccinate young children.” Appointments for 10 city-run sites were expected to open Tuesday under this pledge.
But no appointments for the pediatric shots, which carry a smaller dosage than the adult version, had emerged on the NYC Vaccine Finder website as of Tuesday afternoon. Mayor Eric Adam’s original promise called for the “tots for shots” program to open as early as Wednesday. The mayor’s office told Gothamist it plans to open up city-run appointments by 9 p.m. Tuesday night.
Click listen in the player to hear more details, and visit Gothamist for the full story.
What’s better than spending a lazy summer afternoon strolling in the park or cooling off at the beach? How about bringing along a New York City shelter dog! WNYC’s Amy Pearl tried out the Borough Break program at Animal Care Centers of NYC. Meet Victory!
Victory at the Staten Island shore on her day away from the shelter (Amy Pearl/WNYC)
Victory the Staten Island shelter dog loves tug of war (Amy Pearl/WNYC)
Victory loves ice cream! (Amy Pearl/WNYC)
Victory in her kennel at Staten Island Animal Care Center (Amy Pearl/WNYC)
The U.S. Supreme Court will decide a dispute between New York and New Jersey over the future of a port watchdog agency that was created 70 years ago to combat organized crime.
On Tuesday, the court granted both states’ joint motion to decide whether New Jersey can withdraw from the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, a watchdog agency established in 1953 through an interstate agreement approved by Congress. The court earlier this year temporarily halted New Jersey’s plans to exit the commission.
“Governor Murphy is pleased that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear the case regarding the Waterfront Commission in an expeditious manner, with briefs being filed this summer and fall,” Murphy spokesman Bailey Lawrence said in a statement.
The Supreme Court set deadlines through November for both states to file their motions.
WNYC's Brigid Bergin and Morning Edition's Michael Hill talk about the latest in New York politics.
Corrections officers at the Rikers Island jail complex would be barred from holding incarcerated people alone in cells for extended periods of time under legislation that Public Advocate Jumaane Williams plans to unveil today.
The draft legislation, shared first with Gothamist, would allow officers to put people in solitary confinement only for a few hours if someone poses an immediate danger. Medical staff would also need to check on them every 15 minutes, and mental health clinicians would be required to conduct rounds once an hour. The bill is the latest effort to ban the use of a practice that human rights advocates have labeled as torture, after similar efforts were scuttled under former Mayor Bill de Blasio.
"Rikers Island is not a safe place to be right now, and how we're operating is leading to that,” Williams told Gothamist. “So, if everyone's agreeing that there's problems of minimum standards, there's problems of staffing, solitary confinement makes all of those things worse."
The proposal would also limit the use of other restrictive forms of housing — measures that curb the amount of time people can participate in activities or spend time with others. People would have the opportunity to be released back to the general population after 15 days if they don’t pose a “specific, significant and imminent threat.” Employees who interact with those in restrictive housing would also need to be trained in de-escalation, conflict resolution and the use of force policy.
Melania Brown said ending solitary confinement is essential. Her sister, Layleen Polanco, a 27-year-old transgender woman, suffered a seizure while being held alone in a restrictive housing unit.
"I just didn't want anyone else to feel the pain that we was feeling of seeing my sister cold and in an examiner's bed on a death that could have been prevented,” Brown told Gothamist.
Brown’s family settled with the city for nearly $6 million in 2020 and 17 correction officers were disciplined for her sister’s death. But she says it’s not about the money.
“As long as solitary confinement is still in place, my sister will never get the proper justice that she needs,” Brown said.
But Michael Skelly of the Correction Officers' Benevolent Association warned that without punitive housing, both staff and prisoners will be in danger and he is pushing for the bill to be rejected. Skelly said Council members should visit injured staff members and detainees at the hospital after an assault before they decide whether they’ll support the legislation.
"If you stand for safety and security, if you stand for protecting rights of nonviolent inmates and officers who show up to work every day to keep everyone safe — if you stand with them, then you'll vote against it," he said.
Mayor Eric Adams’ office said he'll review the legislation once it's introduced.
The continued existence of this policy ... speaks to the fact that carceral systems have not figured out how to exist without it.”
Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative
Experts have found that solitary confinement can have detrimental effects that sometimes last even after people have been released from prison.
“People who are put in solitary for a long time, they tend to come out with high rates of PTSD, anxiety, depression,” said Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative.
She said it can also affect people’s physical health, because they often can’t go outside to exercise or buy food from the commissary to supplement their diet. But for many correctional facilities in the U.S., she says, restrictive housing has become a vital tool to maintain safety.
“I don’t want to condone solitary,” Bertram said. “But I also think that the continued existence of this policy, despite the fact that I think many – if not most – people think it is a torturous thing to do to someone, speaks to the fact that carceral systems have not figured out how to exist without it.”
This city has tried to get rid of what corrections officials call "punitive housing" multiple times in the past. The Board of Correction approved a plan last year to eliminate it, though de Blasio ended up delaying the deadline, because of staffing shortages. More than two-dozen Council members also sent a letter to Adams just before he took office, urging him to condemn the practice.
A federal monitor is currently overseeing the city’s jail system, which has been plagued with rampant staff absenteeism, violence, limited access to healthcare and multiple deaths. A federal judge signed off on a new action plan earlier this week, which will allow local officials to keep running Rikers for at least another five months.
The state Legislature recently passed its own restrictions on solitary confinement in jails and prisons across New York, limiting its use to 15 days. The city Department of Correction says no one has been placed in punitive segregation since that law took effect in April. However, it does plan to phase in a new restrictive housing program, the Risk Management Assessment System, starting July 1. A spokesperson says it will be a tiered system, with those in the highest level allowed a minimum of 10 hours out of their cells.
Fifty years ago, five burglars were arrested inside the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate hotel in the early hours of June 17th, 1972. The ensuing investigation exposed a trail of abuses leading to President Richard Nixon himself.
Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman was a freshman Representative at the time, and quickly gained notice as a member of the Judiciary Committee that oversaw Nixon's impeachment hearings. Holtzman went on to serve 4 terms in Congress, and was elected Brooklyn District Attorney and later Comptroller of New York City.
She joined WNYC's Morning Edition host Michael Hill to talk about the enduring significance of the Watergate scandal.
The Harlem Chamber Players swell to orchestral proportions to revive "The Ordering of Moses," a biblical oratorio composed by Harlem Renaissance artist R. Nathaniel Dett, at Riverside Church in advance of Juneteenth weekend. The piece premiered on NBC Radio in 1937, but was cut short before the performance had concluded.
Conductor Damien Sneed says the piece “encapsulates and it exudes almost every possible musical idiom, every possible rhythm, the textures, the color, the timbre.” He hopes it will become “a normal part of the canon of orchestral music, the canon of choral music, and, of course, of the genre of oratorio.”
A musical tradition that began as a solo act during the loneliest days of the pandemic has blossomed into an ensemble that’s helping to develop the next generation of musicians.
The 1/6 committee is set to plunge into Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to salvage the 2020 election by pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the electoral count — a highly unusual and potentially illegal strategy that was set in motion in the run-up to the U.S. Capitol riot.
Watch the hearing live, starting at 1 p.m. ET, or listen on WNYC:
With two live witnesses Thursday, the House panel intends to show how Trump’s false claims of a fraudulent election left him grasping for alternatives as courts turned back dozens of lawsuits challenging the vote.
Trump latched onto conservative law professor John Eastman’s obscure plan and launched a public and private pressure campaign on Pence days before the vice president was to preside over the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden's election victory. A federal judge has said it is “more likely than not” Trump committed crimes over the scheme.
"The illegality of the plan was obvious," the Jan. 6 panel said in a court filing against Eastman.
The committee will hear from Greg Jacob, the vice president’s counsel who fended off Eastman’s ideas for Pence to carry out the plan; and retired federal judge Michael Luttig, who called the plan from Eastman, his former law clerk, "incorrect at every turn.”
Thursday's session is also expected to divulge new evidence about the danger Pence faced that day as the mob stormed the Capitol shouting “hang Mike Pence!” with a gallows on the Capitol grounds as the vice president fled with senators into hiding. Nine people died in the riot and its aftermath.
The session is expected to show how Trump’s pressure on Pence “directly contributed” to the attack on the Capitol and how the Eastman strategy posed a “grave, grave threat” to democracy, according to a committee aide who insisted on anonymity to discuss the upcoming hearing.
Ahead of the hearing, Pence's former chief of staff, Marc Short, said his boss was determined to stay at the Capitol that night and finish the job, despite the threats.
“He knew his job was to stay at his post,” Short said on CNN on Wednesday.
Short said Pence didn't want the world seeing the vice president leaving the Capitol when "a hallmark of democracy” was under siege.
“He thought it was important that he stay there and make sure the work of the American people was completed that night,” said Short, who testified under subpoena to the committee for eight hours, but has not yet appeared as a live witness.
The panel is reconvening for a third hearing this month after a blockbuster prime-time start last week, followed by logistical setbacks in recent days. Monday's key witness, former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, abruptly declined to appear in person because his wife was in labor with their child. Wednesday's scheduled hearing with witnesses from the Justice Department who tried to convince Trump that his claims of voter fraud were just not true was postponed.
Nevertheless, the panel's yearlong investigation is portraying a publicly gripping account of Trump's final weeks in office as the defeated president clung to “the big lie” of a rigged election even as those around him — his family, his top aides, officials at the highest levels of government — were telling him he simply lost the election.
Former Attorney General William Barr, who resigned at the end of 2020 rather than be part of Trump's plans, testified earlier that the president was becoming “detached from reality” if he believed the lies. He said he told the president his claims of voter fraud were “bull-—.”
With 1,000 interviews and reams of 140,000 documents, the committee is connecting the dots, showing how Trump's false claims of election fraud became a battle cry as he summoned thousands of Americans to Washington for a Jan. 6 rally and then sent them to Capitol Hill to “fight like hell” for his presidency.
More than 800 people have been arrested in the Capitol siege, and the panel is considering whether to send a referral for criminal charges against Trump to the Justice Department. No president or former president has ever been indicted by the Justice Department, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has said he and his team are following the proceedings in Congress.
For now, the panel is pressing ahead with its hearings, with more scheduled for next week.
Thursday's will unpack the Eastman plan to have the states send alternative slates of electors from the five or seven states Trump was disputing, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. With competing slates for Trump or Biden, Pence would be forced to reject them, returning them to the states to sort it out, under the plan.
Pence refused the plan, believing the founding fathers would not have left it to one person, the vice president, to decide the outcome, Jacob told the panel in previous testimony. Jacob said the idea was utterly against some 130 years of precedent in American history, “entirely made up.”
The committee in hearings ahead will be delving into the roles of extremist groups and others who heeded Trump's call to Washington. Leaders and others from the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys face rare sedition charges over their roles in the Capitol attack.
Several members of Congress are also under scrutiny, including Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., whom the committee has asked for an interview to discuss a Capitol tour he gave that included basement tunnels to a group of people the day before the attack.
The panel is also probing several candidates for elected office, including the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, who were among the rioters.
The panel, which is expected to deliver a final report on its findings later this year, intends for its work to be a record for history of the most violent attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812. Unlike other national traumas that have pulled the country together, the Jan. 6 Capitol attack appears to have left many Americans divided. Congress splintered over forming the committee, which most Republicans opposed.
The panel's two Republicans, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, have been shunned by the GOP for their work with Democrats leading the investigation into Trump and his role in the Capitol attack.
New Jersey has over 100 toxic Superfund sites -- more than any other state in the U.S. And with the worsening climate crisis, time could be running out to clean up these polluted industrial wastelands.
NJ Spotlight News has launched a new podcast that documents all of the ways extreme weather is threatening Superfund sites across the Garden State. Like a pair of chemical ponds near the Raritan River in Bridgewater. Investigative producer Jordan Gass-Poore', who hosts the podcast, joined WNYC host Michael Hill to discuss the nine-part series Hazard NJ.
Click listen in the player to hear their conversation, and visit Gothamist for more details.
A lawsuit filed by one of the victims in the Sunset Park subway shooting could be a test case for a new state law that intends to make it easier to take gun companies to court in New York.
Ilene Steur, 49, has sued Glock, which manufactured the 9-mm pistol that a man allegedly used to shoot her and nine other commuters on a crowded subway train in April. Steur’s attorneys argue that the company has not gone far enough to keep their guns out of the wrong hands.
For years, a federal law has barred nearly all such lawsuits against the gun industry. But that could be changing, at least in New York. A state law signed by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo last year found a loophole to allow civil cases like Steur’s. Legal experts say it could set the standard for a new strategy to go after gun companies when their products end up at the scene of a crime.
But lawmakers and legal scholars are still unsure if this suit will stand up in court, because of the strong federal protections for companies like Glock and the burden of proof Steur’s attorneys would need to meet to hold the gunmaker liable.
“It’s hard to say at this stage,” Jake Charles, executive director of the Center for Firearms Law at Duke University told the Brian Lehrer show earlier this month, adding Steur and her attorneys would need to gather evidence to support their claims.
“It seems to be a bit of a legal stretch,” says Amy Swearer, a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
The suit paints a picture of a weapon that has become pervasive in American culture. It cites movies, TV shows and rap songs that have made Glock a household name, from appearances on “Law and Order” to lyrics in songs by T.I. and Tupac Shakur.
Steur wants Glock to change how it advertises and sells its guns, to prevent more shootings like the one that injured her. Her complaint argues that Glock appeals to prospective buyers with criminal intent, like the man who shot her, by promoting their guns’ easy concealment and high firepower. It also accuses the company of flooding the market with more weapons than it can bear to sell legally and not doing enough to prevent wrongful purchases.
Glock did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
‘You can’t file these suits anymore’
Complaints against gun companies used to be common. In the late 1990s, multiple cities, including Chicago, New Orleans and Los Angeles, sued gunmakers and dealers for their role in the spread of violence.
There was also a push on the national level to regulate the sector. Before leaving office in 2000, President Bill Clinton reached an agreement with the manufacturer Smith & Wesson to add new safety measures to their designs, stop working with dealers whose sales were regularly traced to crime scenes and limit their magazine capacity to 10 rounds of ammunition.
But that deal was an anomaly. Other gun companies warned lawmakers that the constant threat of civil suits could put them out of business.
“That was sort of the point, was to kneecap this lawful industry and to make it more difficult, more expensive for them to engage in, again, this lawful industry,” says Swearer of the Heritage Foundation. “So, Congress stepped in to essentially say, ‘You can’t file those suits anymore.’”
In 2005, legislators passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, also known as the PLCAA, which shields the gun industry from lawsuits when their products are used in shootings, with just a handful exceptions. Since then, nearly all complaints against gun companies have been thrown out in court, including a suit brought by the city of New York against Beretta, a gun manufacturer.
But a few recent developments could reverse that trend.
In Connecticut, the gun manufacturer Remington reached a historic settlement with the families of the victims in the Sandy Hook shooting this past February, almost a decade after one of their guns was used to kill 20 children and six adults at an elementary school. And in New York, legislation passed last year made it legal to sue firearm companies if their marketing or sales practices endanger residents’ health or safety.
That law paved the way for Steur to sue Glock. It could provide a path forward for a new wave of lawsuits against the gun industry – both in New York and elsewhere.
While complaints against gun companies are typically barred, they are allowed when gunmakers or dealers advertise or sell their products in a way that violates a state’s own laws for firearm marketing and sales. New York, in essence, made a law for just that exception.
“I think then you will see a lot of other states that are more friendly to gun control and to these sorts of arguments, I think you will see more of these sorts of laws being passed, precisely to give room for those sorts of lawsuits circumventing the PLCAA,” Swearer says.
State Sen. Zellnor Myrie sponsored the bill that legalized civil suits against the gun industry in New York. He doesn’t know if it’s the best option to curb violence. But, in a moment when people are searching for solutions, he said it is one viable way to address the problem.
“Unfortunately, bad actions by industries and corporations are usually not resolved by the good will of a CEO or the good will of an industry leader,” he says. “The unfortunate reality is that they are often forced to change their practices by way of litigation.”
‘We do not want your business’
Myrie wishes corporations would take more steps to prevent their firearms from being used in crimes before anyone sues them. The National Shooting Sports Foundation and several firearms companies – including Glock – have challenged his legislation in court, arguing that it violates federal law and would make it impossible for them to operate.
“The Act irreparably harms Firearm Industry Members by forcing them to choose between halting their operations or being in fear of the constant possibility of business-ending litigation,” the suit states.
Myrie thinks companies that are doing what they can to ensure their guns aren’t used to kill people have nothing to worry about. If they can’t do business without putting people at high risk for victimization, he says, then they ought to change their practices. Otherwise, he doesn’t want their guns in New York.
“If you are, in fact, contributing to kids being killed in Crown Heights, in Brownsville, in East Flatbush, and in Buffalo, and in Syracuse, and in Rochester, then no, we do not want your business,” he says.
A judge ruled against the gun industry last month, so the state law still stands – at least for now. But the National Shooting Sports Foundation tells Gothamist that the gun groups plan to appeal. If the case goes all the way to the Supreme Court, it’s possible the conservative-leaning bench would rule in their favor. That could jeopardize not only New York’s law, but also future proposals in other states.
Split Here
Myrie says saving lives should be more important than debates about Second Amendment rights. He says he has attended too many funerals and spoken to too many victims and traumatized communities “for this to be just some political issue where we disagree with folks.”
Myrie says it’s an issue of “life or death.”
“This isn’t about anyone coming after your legally possessed guns. This is not what this is about,” he says.” They are killing my people. The guns are killing my people.”
A New Jersey program that incentivizes unemployed people to return to work has only distributed a small fraction of its $10 million budget since it launched in late September, records obtained by Gothamist show.
The Return and Earn program was announced when the state’s unemployment rate remained alarmingly high at 7.1%. At the time, Gov. Phil Murphy said the program would give unemployed workers a $500 bonus and subsidize the costs of teaching them new skills at companies with 100 or fewer employees.
Murphy said he would allocate federal coronavirus aid money from the American Rescue Plan and pay 50% of new hire wages during a “training period” of up to six months, with a maximum of $10,000 per employee, and $40,000 per employer.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
WNYC's Brigid Bergin joined Morning Edition's Michael Hill with what you need to know about New York politics this week.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot is delving deeper into what it calls “the big lie,” Donald Trump's false claims of voter fraud that fueled his relentless effort to overturn the 2020 election and led a mob of his supporters to lay siege to the U.S. Capitol.
The 1/6 panel resumes its hearings Monday with live witnesses, including Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, as committee members say they have uncovered enough evidence for the Justice Department to consider an unprecedented criminal indictment against the former president. Stepien was subpoenaed for his public testimony.
Watch Monday's hearing live, starting at 10 a.m., or listen on WNYC:
Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., are set to lead the morning hearing after last week's blockbuster session drew nearly 20 million Americans to see its prime-time findings.
For the past year, the committee has been investigating the most violent attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812 to ensure such an assault never happens again. Its findings come as Trump is considering another run for the White House, and some warn that his effort to over turn Joe Biden's election victory posed a grave threat to democracy.
Stepien, a longtime Trump ally, oversaw the “conversion” of Trump’s presidential campaign to a “Stop the Steal” effort, according to a subpoena issued by the committee last fall. He is likely to face questions about what those in Trump's inner circle were telling the president about the election results. Stepien is now a top campaign adviser to the Trump-endorsed House candidate, Harriet Hageman, who is challenging Cheney in the Wyoming Republican primary election.
In addition to Stepien, the committee is also set to hear testimony from Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News political editor closely involved in election night coverage who stood by the decision to declare Arizona as being won by Biden. He wrote about his experiences later in an op-ed and might be asked about Trump's actions as Fox New declared states Biden won.
A second group of witnesses testifying Monday will be made up of election officials, investigators and experts who are likely to discuss Trump's responses to the election, including dozens of failed court challenges, and how his actions diverged from U.S. norms.
Among them is the former U.S. attorney in Atlanta, BJay Pak, who abruptly resigned after Trump pressured Georgia state officials to overturn his presidential defeat. Trump wanted to fire Pak as disloyal, but Pak stepped down after Trump's call urging Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s win in the state became public.
The panel will also hear from former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, the only Republican on the election board and who faced down criticism as the state's election was called for Biden; and noted Washington attorney and elections lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg.
As he mulls a White House run, Trump is decrying the investigation into his efforts to overturn Biden's election a “witch hunt.” He said last week that Jan. 6 “represented the greatest movement in the history of our country.”
Nine people died in the riot and its aftermath, including a Trump supporter shot and killed by police. More than 800 people have been arrested in the siege, and members of two extremist groups have been indicted on rare sedition charges over their roles leading the charge into the Capitol.
In its prime-time hearing, the committee laid out how Trump was told over and over again by his trusted aides and officials at the highest levels of government that there was no election fraud on a scale that could have changed the outcome. But Trump pursued his false claims about the election and beckoned supporters to Washington on Jan. 6 to overturn Biden's victory as Congress was set to certify the Electoral College results.
Additional evidence is set to be released in hearings this week focusing on Trump’s decision to ignore the outcome of the election and the court cases that ruled against him.
Monday’s hearing will also turn to the millions of dollars Trump’s team brought in fundraising in the run-up to Jan. 6, according to a committee aide who insisted on anonymity to discuss the details.
The committee has said most of those interviewed in the investigation are coming forward voluntarily, although some have wanted subpoenas to appear in public. It is unclear why Stepien was issued a subpoena. A Trump spokesman, Taylor Budowich, suggested that the committee’s decision to call Stepien was politically motivated.
Lawmakers indicated that perhaps their most important audience member over the course of the hearings may be Attorney General Merrick Garland, who must decide whether his department can and should prosecute Trump. They left no doubt as to their own view whether the evidence is sufficient to proceed.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said on CNN he doesn’t intend to “browbeat” Garland but noted the committee has already laid out in legal pleadings criminal statutes they believe Trump violated.
“I think that he knows, his staff knows, the U.S. attorneys know, what’s at stake here,” Raskin said.
No president or ex-president has ever been indicted. Garland has not specified whether he would be willing to prosecute, which would be complicated in a political election season in which Trump has openly flirted with the idea of running for president again.
This summer, New York City residents will have a chance to offer feedback on how to update the City Council's legislative boundaries. And the commission tasked with finalizing those maps assures residents that the process won't be anything like the state's chaotic version.
We're talking, of course, about redistricting, which happens every 10 years following the census.
WNYC's People & Power Desk editor David Cruz joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to discuss the city's redistricting process.
For the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, big crowds are expected to return to Midtown for the 65th annual Puerto Rican Day Parade Sunday morning — a celebration of the island’s food, song and dance.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has pushed city agencies to clear homeless encampments from streets and subways. He’s said repeatedly it’s about ‘dignity’ and getting homeless people into stable housing. But new data obtained by WNYC from the city’s sanitation department raises questions about the efficacy of those plans.
Read the full story on Gothamist.com
The law permits police, school officials, family members, and others to request a court order allowing authorities to seize weapons from someone threatening violence. In response to recent mass shootings, a new Executive Order expands the list of those who can file orders, and mandates that state police do so if they see a threat.
WNYC's Morning Edition host Michael Hill spoke with former Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart to discuss the recently-expanded Red Flag Law, and how she rolled out the program back in 2019.
With never-seen video, new audio and a “mountain of evidence,” the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol will attempt to show not only the deadly violence that erupted that day but also the chilling backstory as the defeated president, Donald Trump, tried to overturn Joe Biden's election victory.
Watch the hearing live at 8 p.m. ET, or listen on WNYC:
Thursday's prime-time hearing will open with eyewitness testimony from the first police officer pummeled in the mob riot and from a documentary filmmaker who recorded the melee, and it will feature the committee's accounts from Trump’s aides and family members of the deadly siege that put U.S. democracy at risk.
“When you hear and understand the wide-reaching conspiracy and the effort to try to corrupt every lever and agency of government involved in this, you know, the hair on the back of your neck should stand up," Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., a member of the 1/6 committee, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"Putting it all together in one place and one coherent narrative, I think, will help the American people understand better what happened on January 6th — and the threats that that could potentially pose in the future.”
The 1/6 panel's yearlong investigation into the Capitol attack will begin to show how America’s tradition of a peaceful transfer of presidential power came close to slipping away. It will reconstruct how Trump refused to concede the 2020 election, spread false claims of voter fraud and orchestrated an unprecedented public and private campaign to overturn Biden’s victory.
The result of the coming weeks of public hearings may not change hearts or minds in politically polarized America. But the committee's investigation with 1,000 interviews is intended to stand as a public record for history. A final report aims to provide an accounting of the most violent attack on the Capitol since the British set fire to it in 1814 and to ensure such an attack never happens again.
Emotions are still raw at the Capitol, and security will be tight for the hearings. Law enforcement officials are reporting a spike in violent threats against members of Congress.
Against this backdrop, the committee will try to speak to a divided America, ahead of the fall midterm elections, when voters decide which party controls Congress. Most TV networks will carry the hearings live, but Fox News Channel will not.
The committee chairman, civil rights leader Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, will set the tone with opening remarks.
The two congressional leaders will outline what the committee has learned about the events leading up to that brisk January day in 2021 when Trump sent his supporters to Congress to “fight like hell” for his presidency as lawmakers undertook the typically routine job of certifying the previous November's results.
“People are going to have to follow two intersecting streams of events — one will be the attempt to overturn the presidential election, that's a harrowing story in itself," Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the committee, told the AP.
“The other will be the sequence of events leading up to a violent mob attack on the Capitol to stop the counting of Electoral College votes and block the peaceful balance of power,” he said.
First up will be wrenching accounts from police who engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the mob, with testimony from U.S. Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who was seriously injured in the attack. Also appearing Thursday will be documentary maker Nick Quested, who filmed the extremist Proud Boys storming the Capitol. Some of that group's members have since been indicted, as have some from the Oath Keepers, on rare sedition charges over the military-style attack.
Along with the live eyewitness testimony, the panel will unveil multimedia presentations, including unreleased video and audio, and a "mountain of evidence," said a committee aide who insisted on anonymity to preview the hearing. There will be recorded accounts from Trump's senior aides at the White House, the administration and the campaign, as well as members of Trump's family, the aide said.
In the weeks ahead, the panel is expected to detail Trump’s public campaign to “Stop the Steal” and the private pressure he put on the Justice Department to reverse his election loss — despite dozens of failed court cases and his own attorney general attesting there was no fraud on a scale that could have tipped the results in his favor.
The panel, made up of nine lawmakers, faced obstacles from its start. Republicans blocked the formation of an independent body that could have investigated the Jan. 6 assault the way the 9/11 Commission probed the 2001 terror attack.
Instead, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ushered the creation of the 1/6 panel through Congress over the objections of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. She rejected Republican-appointed lawmakers who had voted Jan. 6 against certifying the election results, choosing her own preferred members to serve.
Trump has dismissed the investigation as illegitimate, and many Republicans are poised to defend him.
Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York said at a GOP leadership news conference that the committee’s “shameless prime-time show” is nothing but a smear campaign against the former president, his party and his supporters.
But by many measures, the attack was set in motion shortly after Election Day, when Trump falsely claimed the voting was rigged and refused to concede once Biden was declared the winner.
The proceedings are expected to introduce Americans to a cast of characters, some well known, others elusive, and to what they said and did as Trump and his allies tried to reverse the election outcome.
The public will learn about the actions of Mark Meadows, the president’s chief of staff, whose 2,000-plus text messages provided the committee with a snapshot of the real-time scramble to keep Trump in office. Of John Eastman, the conservative law professor who was the architect of the unsuccessful scheme to convince Vice President Mike Pence to halt the certification on Jan. 6. Of the Justice Department officials who threatened to resign rather than go along with Trump's startling proposals.
Lawmakers have also been caught up in the probe, including House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, who defied the committee's subpoena requests for testimony. Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump, who urged her father to call off the rioters, appeared privately before the committee.
The Justice Department has arrested and charged more than 800 people for the violence that day, the biggest dragnet in its history.
It's been a pivotal year at the John Jay Educational Campus.
Life inside this hulking red-brick building in Park Slope, Brooklyn is like a thumbnail sketch of New York City's largely segregated school system as a whole.
Each of its four floors houses a different high school. Millennium Brooklyn, one of the city’s selective schools, has many more white and Asian students than the other three. At Cyberarts Studio Academy, John Jay School for Law, and Park Slope Collegiate, the vast majority of students are Black and brown.
For more than a decade, Millennium students played on sports teams with peers from a sister school in Manhattan, where most students are also white and Asian. The three schools in the building with mostly Black and brown students played together on joint sports teams.
Sometimes, the Millennium Phoenixes and the John Jay Jayhawks faced off against each other – creating the kind of rivalry one might expect between schools in nearby towns – but in the same building, under one roof.
Then, during the pandemic, town hall meetings held over Zoom allowed parents and students from across the building to meet and talk, and adults heard about how many of the teens in this building felt about having separate teams with unequal access to sports. After years of activism by students and parents, administrators decided to merge all the building’s teams into one athletics program.
Some called it an integration.
Players threw away their old jerseys and put on new ones – this time as the John Jay Jaguars. They started rooting for each other.
WNYC partnered with the student journalism nonprofit The Bell to chronicle the effort through the eyes and ears of students on the girls varsity volleyball team and their classmates across the building.
The journey has been bumpy, as students and coaches endeavored to overcome decades of divisive education policies, unite the schools, and win.
For more about their experience, listen to WNYC’s new podcast, Keeping Score.
"Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars," newly opened at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, includes everything from previously uncirculated demos to personal and professional ephemera. The exhibition is open to the public through March 4, 2023.
It’s been three years since a plan to charge drivers that enter Manhattan below 60th Street won approval in Albany. It’s called congestion pricing, and the MTA is in charge of it. But it’s still just in the early phases.
WNYC’s Stephen Nessen reports on why the program to reduce traffic and raise money for MTA improvements is still not up and running yet.
As her 80-year-old fingers tug up mugwort weeds and sow seeds at the Herbal Garden of East New York, head gardener Johanna Willins feels both “wonderful and worried.”
Willins is one of 57 New York City public gardeners featured in “The Warmest Years on Record,” an oral history project by Brooklyn artist Rachel Garber Cole that captures people's anxieties about the planet's future. It includes audio installations that opened at 13 community gardens across Brooklyn on June 4th during Open Garden Day. The project is funded by the Brooklyn Arts Council with the support of New York City Parks Department and runs through December 15th.
“It’s wonderful just watching everything come back alive after the winter time is over,” said Willins, as she rubbed mint and hyssop leaves between her fingers and smelled them. “But I see it [climate change]. I see it. I see it. After a long winter, what should have been up, was not up. And when it came up, it [collard greens] just looked funny, as if it didn’t get enough water, or it got a burn on it.”
On the front gate of each of the 13 gardens, colorful signs display a single question chosen from a series of 13 questions about climate change that Cole has been asking gardeners since the project started in 2018. To hear the answer, visitors scan a QR code on the poster, and listen to a demo of answers that range from seven to 20 minutes, depending on the question.
Click listen in the player to hear about this project, and visit Gothamist for more details.
Many New York City parents say they have had to get creative to secure baby formula for their children, relying on word of mouth, social media and family and friends while waiting out a national shortage.
It’s been more than three months since federal officials linked a bacterial outbreak to Abbott Nutrition, forcing a voluntary recall of its major formula products and precipitating the national crisis. Abbott is one of four brands in control of 90% of the baby formula market in the U.S., according to NPR.
Patricia Grisafi, who lives in the East Village, said she first started having trouble finding formula for her seven-month-old daughter in April. By mid-May, she was getting nervous and consulted with parents at her local playground. They told her about a Facebook group that allowed people to send each other cans.
She said she was wary of online scams — something New York officials have also warned about. The New York Department of Health has directed those struggling to find formula to contact their local WIC office for assistance, while state Attorney General Letitia James and New York City Mayor Eric Adams have taken action to try to stop price gouging.
Health care reporter Caroline Lewis spoke with host Sean Carlson about what Grisafi and other city parents are doing to hunt down formula. Click listen in the player to hear their conversation, and visit Gothamist for more details.
Beginning this summer, a mental health professional will arrive along with a police officer in a modified uniform and in an unmarked car at some 911 calls for behavioral health crises in two cities in North Jersey. The program, already underway as a pilot in rural South Jersey, is part of the attorney general’s plan to change the way law enforcement statewide handles mental health crises and avoid police killings.
“This program is a recognition by law enforcement, as well as by the communities, that there are actually people with better expertise in handling an incident of emotional or mental distress,” Acting New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin told Gothamist/WNYC.
Called ARRIVE Together, the program is limited, for now. It runs twice a week during the day in Elizabeth and adjacent Liden, with one officer assigned from each city’s department and a mental health screener from Trinitas Regional Medical Center. Each officer in the program will wear a shirt that says “police” and arrive in an unmarked patrol car without flashing lights, according to Elizabeth Police Chief Giacomo Sacca.
“When you’re dealing with someone in a mental health episode, you want to have the least amount of triggers as possible,” Sacca said. There has been a spike in emergency calls about people going through mental health crises since the start of the pandemic in Elizabeth, the fourth largest city in the state, according to Sacca.
The use of deadly force by police “overwhelmingly involves cases of mental health or emotional distress,” according to Platkin. And so in these instances, the hope is that the officer and mental health screener “can divert those individuals away from the criminal justice system to the mental health system and really provide them the care that they need.”
For the rest of this story, go to Gothamist.com.
WNYC's Brigid Bergin joined Morning Edition's Michael Hill with what you need to know about New York politics this week.
New Jersey's Primary Election Day is this Tuesday, June 7. Voters will pick candidates to run in the General Election this fall for the state's 12 U.S. House seats.
Last year, New Jersey Republican Congressman Chris Smith voted for President Biden's infrastructure bill -- and was promptly attacked by former President Trump, who called on Republicans to challenge Smith for his seat. Jonathan Salant, Washington correspondent for NJ Advance Media joins WNYC's David Furst for a look at that primary race and other key Garden State match-ups.
After some stormy weather this week, it looks like a weekend with clear skies and comfortable temperatures in New York City - a perfect time for us to start thinking about cultural events taking place in the great outdoors this summer. We look ahead to a few of them with WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith. Speaking with Weekend Edition host David Furst, Steve brings us his latest picks:
- "Hargrove" -
The Tribeca Festival is going to draw lots of viewers into movie theaters. And there's a huge range of features screening this year, from actor Ray Romano's debut as a director to a documentary about David Lynch's fixation with "The Wizard of Oz." But the festival also includes outdoor events -- some free, others ticketed -- and it's one of those that I'm looking forward to most: the premiere of a film called "Hargrove," screening on Sunday, June 12, on the plaza outside of Brookfield Place.
Roy was a wunderkind who blew in from Texas and spun heads with his abundant talent – having seen him play in a Texas nightclub as a teenager, I can attest to this effect personally. Director Eliane Henri and her crew followed Hargrove around the world in 2018, not knowing it was his final year – he died on November 2 at age 49. We hear about his impact from marquee names like Herbie Hancock, Questlove, and Erykah Badu, who's one of the film's executive producers. We learn about the vast range of styles he covered: straightahead jazz, Latin jazz, funky fusion, R&B, hip hop. But we get a sense of just how demanding and draining the life of a touring artist is. Roy battled with substance abuse, and even after he put that behind him, he endured chronic pain for the rest of his life. His passing left a hole in New York City's musical life that's still felt, and this documentary honors his memory. You can find out more about this screening and the rest of the festival's offerings at Tribeca Festival.
- Kamasi Washington -
Year after year after year, Celebrate Brooklyn is one of New York City's best loved and best attended outdoor music series. Presented by BRIC at the Prospect Park Bandshell, this year's festival opens on Wednesday night, June 8 with the ecstatic sounds of Los Angeles saxophonist, bandleader, and multimedia artist Kamasi Washington.
Many listeners will remember that Washington and his extended family of L.A. jazz players first drew attention for working with rapper Kendrick Lamar. His style is a throwback to a more optimistic era of soulful jazz -- he writes big bold music for large bands and choirs. You might also sense his kinship with conscious R&B artists like Curtis Mayfield. One thing's for sure, it's going to sound great outdoors in Prospect Park on Wednesday night.
- Sarah Kirkland Snider -
Sarah Kirkland Snider is among the most impressive younger composers in the New York new-music scene. She writes music that sounds ageless and contemporary at once, with an emotional impact that's direct and immediate. She's got a hot streak of events happening in June. She's curating an intimate evening at Lincoln Center's Kaplan Penthouse on Wednesday night, June 8, which sets the stage for the world premiere of a new piece she's written for the New York Philharmonic to perform on Friday night at Carnegie Hall.
Everyone always asks, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall." But once you've gotten to Carnegie Hall, what do you do for an encore? Well... would you believe a cemetery? "Mass for the Endangered" is a choral work Sarah wrote with her close collaborator, poet Nathaniel Bellows. The choir, Gallicantus, will perform the mass on June 14, 15 and 16 in the Catacombs at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. It's part of a series called The Angel's Share, which includes an hour of spirits tasting and a twilight walk through the cemetery. These events tend to sell out early, so if you're intrigued, here's the web site: deathofclassical.com.
A longtime local controversy over food cart vendors was reawakened last month when police officers handcuffed a woman selling mangoes from a food cart in a Brooklyn subway station.
The city’s rules about food carts – including no food carts in the subways – are complicated and numerous. Maria Falcon’s arrest, caught on video, led to public outcry on social media, with people asking why the muscle of the NYPD was needed for what seemed like a minor offense. Mayor Eric Adams pushed back against the outrage, saying that turning a blind eye to street vendors in the subway is the beginning of a slippery slope.
To better understand the issues at stake, Gothamist looked back at the city’s long and complicated tug-o-war with the churro vendors, coffee carts and Halal trucks. We found that they are as beloved as they are controversial.
Why are police cracking down on street vendors all of a sudden?
The tension between street vendors, police and city officials is nothing new. It’s been happening since Ed Koch was mayor in the late 1970s, and even before that. The tension often arises because the mobile food vendors’ interests tend to clash with those of brick-and-mortar food stores and restaurants. Some people also complain that the vendors block sidewalks and other public spaces, like subway platforms. Over time, a long list of rules have been written. There are complex guidelines about where carts can and can’t be on any given street.
In the early days of the pandemic, police eased up on enforcing street vendor rules. Advocates say food carts were a much needed source of affordable, open air food in a difficult time. They were also small businesses that kept many people afloat. But this spring, as Mayor Eric Adams works to bring order back to the city streets, city agents and police have started issuing tickets again and, in rare cases, making arrests.
What’s the deal with all the mobile food carts I see around the city? Are they selling legally?
To sell food legally, a street vendor needs both a license, and a permit for their cart. The licenses are not that hard to get. They cost $50 every two years, and vendors need to register to pay taxes and take a food safety course to get them. It’s the cart permits that can get costly and complicated. Right now there are only 5,100 permits available in the city, though the City Council last year agreed to add 400 a year for the next 10 years, which will almost double the total number available by 2032. But advocates estimate that there are already about 20,000 vendors – both food and merchandise – working in the city, and many of them cannot get a permit.
The cap has been in place for about 40 years, and even the wait list has been closed since 2007. The restrictions have given rise to an underground market for the permits, where private citizens have obtained them, and rent them out to vendors for as much as $23,000 for two years. Directly from the city they would cost $200.
Sherif Baioumy, who rents a permit for his Midtown halal truck on the underground market, says that’s a lot of money that could be going to the city that ‘s instead going to underground operators. “I'm doing all the hard work,” Baioumy said. “I'm out here ... in the winter when it's snowing, when it's a hundred degrees hot and I'm working right in front of the grill and the gyro machine… while I pay this person, all that cash under the table. They don't report that to the IRS or pay any taxes on it. They just take the cash and go away.”
Didn’t the City Council pass a law last year aimed at fixing some of these problems?
Yes. Last year the Council passed a bill that adds 4,000 street vendor permits over the next ten years, and tasks civilian city employees, not police officers, with enforcing the rules that govern them. Still, police officers continue to be involved in some arrests, city records and reports show. A spokesperson for the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, which oversees the inspections, said city workers still do about 15 percent of inspections jointly with police. Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, deputy director of the Street Vendor Project, which advocates for the interests of street vendors, said one reason may be that inspectors don’t have the authority to demand that vendors show them their identification, while police do. Maria Lopez, who sells fruit and other food at Broadway Junction, said through a translator that during the early days of the pandemic she didn’t see the police much. Now, they seem to be back. “A lot of her partners are being displaced and having their products taken away,” the translator said. “It's been really difficult because they are just trying to make a living.” A spokesperson for the NYPD said in an email that while the primary responsibility is led by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, police maintain the authority to enforce all violations and ”officers use a high level of discretion.”
What do local businesses and city officials say about how vendor rules are being enforced?
Mayor Adams defended the arrest of Maria Falcon in the subway, saying it’s important to enforce existing rules – like the one against selling food in the subway. "Next day is propane tanks being on the subway system. Next day is barbecuing on the subway system," he said at the time.
Restaurateurs have also expressed concern that too many street vendors with low overhead, charging low prices, may drive away business from their establishments. Mark Dicus, executive director of the SoHo Broadway Initiative, a Neighborhood Improvement District serving people who live and work in the SoHo Broadway Corridor, said he believes street vendors have an important role to play in the city’s economy, but there should be rules to ensure that the food is safe, and they are not creating hazards by blocking roads or sidewalks, or emitting exhaust.
“Our position is there just needs to be somebody responsible for this and whatever agency that is, they need the tools and resources to do effective enforcement so vendors who want to follow the rules can follow the rules, and the bad actors can be held accountable,” he said.
Kaufman-Gutierrez, of the Street Vendors Project, said she agrees that rules are needed. She said vendors just want the city to make them easier to follow, and to put as much effort into educating and supporting vendors as they do into ticketing them.
So what now?
Last week, a city board called the Street Vendor Advisory Board announced some recommendations that they say would create a fairer system for licensing and regulating food cart vendors. The recommendations would need to be adopted by the mayor as an executive order, or voted on by the Council to become law. They include new small business support for street vendors, simplifying bookkeeping requirements, allowing mobile vendors to keep food on top of carts, and removing criminal liability for vendors on the street.
Kaufman-Gutierrez said it’s a step in the right direction: “Street vending is as old as New York City and part of what makes our streets and sidewalks so full of life. Now, as we are reimagining the streets with outdoor dining, street vendors, who were the original open dining, should be included in that planning, not penalized.”
State lawmakers are racing to pass hundreds of bills on the last day of the legislative session. The Democrat-led Legislature is taking up measures related to abortion, gun control and the New York City school system. But lawmakers won't extend a tax break for housing developers that Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams wanted to continue.
WNYC Albany reporter Jon Campbell joined All Things Considered host Sean Carlson for an update on the end-of-session wrangling at the State Capitol.
President Joe Biden is delivering an address to the nation Thursday night about the latest wave of mass shootings, attempting to increase pressure on Congress to pass stricter gun limits after such efforts failed following past outbreaks.
Watch the speech live, or tune in to hear it on WNYC, starting at 7:30 p.m. ET:
The speech follows last week's shootings by an 18-year-old gunman, who killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and another attack on Wednesday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a gunman shot and killed four people and himself at a medical office.
And those came after the May 14 assault in Buffalo, New York, where a white 18-year-old wearing military gear and livestreaming with a helmet camera opened fire with a rifle at a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood, killing 10 people and wounding three others in what authorities described as “racially motivated violent extremism.”
The White House said Biden would speak at 7:30 EDT about the “tragic mass shootings, and a need for Congress to pass commonsense laws to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is taking lives every day.”
“He’s going to renew his call for action to stop the epidemic of gun violence that we’ve seen in Uvalde and in Tulsa and in Buffalo in just a few short weeks," said press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. She said Biden did not plan to announce any new executive actions and that “tonight’s speech is going to focus on what Congress needs to do."
“It’ll be basically making sure that his voice is out there and calling to action and making sure that the American people know that he’s still continuing to speak on their behalf,” she said.
Biden has used national speeches in the past to speak about the coronavirus pandemic and the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. But the president has used such addresses sparingly during his nearly 18 months in office, especially during evening hours
Earlier Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke about the Oklahoma shooting, saying, “All of us hold the people of Tulsa in our hearts, but we also reaffirm our commitment to passing commonsense gun safety laws.”
“No more excuses. Thoughts and prayers are important, but not enough," Harris said. "We need Congress to act.”
Before marking Memorial Day on Monday, Biden told reporters at the White House that there may be some bipartisan support to tighten restrictions on the kind of high-powered weapons used by the gunman in Uvalde. But he also noted that, while he had taken some steps via executive actions, he didn't have the power as president to “outlaw a weapon.”
He also said that “things have gotten so bad that everybody’s getting more rational, at least that’s my hope," adding, “There’s realization on the part of rational Republicans” who realize ”we can’t keep repeating ourselves."
Visiting Uvalde on Sunday, Biden mourned privately for three-plus hours with anguished families. Faced with chants of “do something” as he departed a church service, the president pledged: “We will.”
His Thursday night address coincided with bipartisan talks that are intensifying among a core group of senators discussing modest gun policy changes. Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said the group is “making rapid progress."
Jean-Pierre said Biden is “encouraged” by the negotiations on the Hill, but said that the president wants to give lawmakers “some space” to negotiate.
The private discussions in the Senate, which is split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, are not expected to produce the kinds of sweeping reforms being considered by the Democratic-led House — which has approved expansive background checks legislation and will next turn to an assault weapons ban.
Even a House package debated Thursday that is less sweeping, including a provision raising the required age for buying semi-automatic firearms to 21, faces slim chances in the Senate.
Instead, the bipartisan senators are likely to come up with a more incremental package that would federal funding to support state gun safety efforts, with incentives for bolstering school security and mental health resources. The package may also encourage “red-flag laws” to keep firearms away from those who would do harm.
No major gun legislation has passed the Senate in years — even after the devastating massacre of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.
The Senate did, however, approve a modest measure to encourage compliance with background checks after a church shooting in Texas and the Parkland school shooting in Florida.
For more than a year, Rana Abdelhamid was running for Congress. She was an upstart candidate building progressive momentum to challenge Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney in the current 12th congressional district. It used to cover Manhattan and western Queens. Then came redistricting. WNYC’s Brigid Bergin reports on the ongoing fallout from the state’s tumultuous process of redrawing district lines.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
It’s not often that you meet someone who knows everything about everything. But after walking a marathon a day 5 days a week for a year and sampling everything bagels in every neighborhood and borough, Mike Varley does. WNYC’s Amy Pearl has more.
An ambitious plan to bring affordable high-speed internet to millions of people across New York City has been put on pause, leaving the poorest New Yorkers hanging while the Adams administration decides whether to proceed.
The Internet Master Plan, which was announced in January 2020 by former Mayor Bill de Blasio, was designed to help more than 1.5 million city residents who do not have any kind of internet access. It also aimed to bring more competition to areas with only one internet provider. Experts and other politicians praised the plan at the time, and an early pilot brought affordable broadband to 45,000 residents of New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings.
But at a City Council technology committee hearing in mid-May, the city's new Chief Technology Officer Matthew Fraser said the program is being re-evaluated.
And the next phase of the project — a $157 million effort that would build out public broadband infrastructure — is yet to launch. That’s despite the city drawing up contracts with internet service providers, according to officials at the Office of Technology and Innovation.
“Eleven service providers, many minority-owned, are ready and waiting to lay the necessary fiber optic cables for major broadband expansion,” said Danny Fuchs, managing partner at HR&A Advisors, which worked on the Internet Master Plan.
Click listen to hear some details, and head to Gothamist for the full story.
There’s a new development in the unsolved murders of a prominent New Jersey couple found dead at home in 2014.
The New Jersey Attorney General has opened an investigation into the deaths of John and Joyce Sheridan. The case has received renewed attention after the release of a podcast from WNYC Studios: Dead End: A New Jersey Political Murder Mystery.
Reporter and host of that podcast, Nancy Solomon, joined WNYC Morning Edition host Michael Hill to talk about the latest.
It’s the final week of New York’s shortened legislative session and NY's voter registration deadline is looming. WNYC's Brigid Bergin joined Morning Edition host Michael Hill for an update.
In 2021, complaints of rat sightings were up more than two-thirds compared to the same period in 2019. That trend has continued this year.
On a narrow dirt path in Westchester County, four small children dressed as superheroes in a rainbow of satiny capes and masks picked dandelions on the grassy roadside. As they giggled and chanted for ice cream, their mothers, carrying babies in their arms or sporting baby bumps, unfurled a black and yellow banner that read:
“Fossil fuel expansion is incompatible with a 1.5 degrees Celsius pathway.”
The message was intended for the man living across the dusty lane behind a white picket fence and a neatly clipped lawn, CEO of BlackRock Larry Fink,. His company is the world’s largest asset manager controlling a value of about $10 trillion — and the globe’s biggest investor in coal production.
The rally of moms and kids outside of Fink’s home on May 14th was the second in six months held by Sunrise Kids, a climate activism organization started by new parents in 2018 that caters its meeting schedule and protests to parents who are juggling babies and professional careers. Sending this message to Fink until he gives in to their demands to divest from coal has become the primary goal of this network of moms concerned about the planet’s future and their children’s.
“We want to tell him [Larry Fink] to be a superhero, and not a super villain,” said Thea Prince, a 4-year-old who was waving a silvery star-studded baton. “This is a magic wand. It shoots out powers to get super villains to save the Earth.”
BlackRock is the ultimate decision-maker for the largest global bond and shareholder in the coal industry. According to a February analysis released by Urgewald, a German-based environmental group that tracks investments in the fossil fuel industry, BlackRock had $109 billion in assets in the coal sector based on its company’s filings through November 2021.
Click listen in the player to hear more about this story, and visit Gothamist for the full details.
City officials said the front entrance is supposed to be unlocked for emergencies, but they are reviewing the policy.
After the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, politicians have once again been talking about making changes to the country's gun laws. And, once again, many Americans feel like meaningful change is nearly impossible to achieve.
Gun control has now become a new focus in the governor's race in New York. David Cruz, editor of WNYC's People & Power Desk, discusses the latest with Weekend Edition host David Furst.
It's Memorial Day Weekend - a time for Americans to gather and honor those who died while serving in the military. It also marks the unofficial start of summer, with plenty of beach getaways and barbecues in the forecast. But there's no break in the arts calendar here in New York City. And Steve Smith, WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor, is back with another Weekend Arts Planner. Speaking with Weekend Edition host David Furst, he brings us his latest recommendations.
Steve's picks:
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Takashi Murakami is one of the most popular and successful artists in the world for his signature "superflat" style – think fields of exuberant grinning daisies in outrageously bright hues. That style is represented in Murakami's big new show at the Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue. But this show also looks backward, with a room full of pale, cool paintings based on an ancient Chinese porcelain vase, and forward, with a street-level gallery filled with manga-style images and sculptures Murakami based on an NFT collaboration he'd created recently. You can interact with a virtual reality simulation of the show at Gagosian.com, but people who visit the show in person can use Snapchat to see what looks like live animations floating in midair around the art and viewers alike. The show is up through June 25, and of course there are limited-edition tchotchkes in the gift shop.
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"Fat Ham" had its debut online last year, and it recently won a Pulitzer Prize. It just opened at the Public Theater, which is working in collaboration with National Black Theatre. Playwright James Ijames remixes "Hamlet" into a tight, funny story about a young queer Black man named Juicy, who's caught between the ghost of an abusive father and the loud, strutting presence of his uncle, now his stepfather, who detests him. Ijames samples "Hamlet" liberally, he wrings an unforgettable set piece out of a Radiohead song, and he delivers an flamboyant ending. The cast is terrific, and the intimate staging draws you into the action – when I attended, more than a few people felt free to shout their support to this character or that. The fourth wall didn't stand a chance. It's running at the Public Theater through July 3.
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Eddie Palmieri, the Salsa Spaceman, is a living legend and a genuine New York City icon. Who better to kick off the outdoor music season at Lincoln Center? Palmieri and his orchestra will be performing on Wednesday night, June 1 at The Oasis, a new dance floor installation right smack in the middle of Lincoln Center plaza. The dance floor opens at 6pm, you can get a quick salsa dance lesson at 6:30, and Palmieri gets started at 7:30. Best of all, it's free – make a reservation online starting Tuesday, or just show up.
Getting around by subway this Memorial Day weekend may be tricky. The MTA is doing track and signal work that’s impacting nine lines. WNYC’s Stephen Nessen reports, the MTA knows it’s a pain for riders, but says it can get a lot of work done in three days.
When the MTA does track repairs, or installs signals, it takes a lot just to set up a work site. Crews have to move all the trains out of the way, turn off power to the third rail, and get all the supplies in place. And then clean up in time for the start of the work week. While recent ridership data shows people are back to riding the subways on the weekends at levels pretty close to what is was before the pandemic, the MTA insists disruptive weekend outages are still the best time to get work done. The head of the agency says they’re still looking at ways to adjust schedules to adapt to new ridership trends.]
Less than six months after leaving office, former Mayor Bill de Blasio is a candidate again. This time, he's running for Congress to represent a newly drawn district that covers Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. How do voters feel about that? WNYC’s Elizabeth Kim found out.
For more, read the story on Gothamist.
More than a hundred musicians and bar regulars from across the city packed themselves inside the subterranean venue to say goodbye to the grimy jazz club that both emerging artists and Grammy-award winners have called their musical home.
For more about this story and additional photos, visit Gothamist.
The number of people trespassing on subway tracks has ticked up for the past three years. And its deadly, with 68 people killed last year. This week the MTA put out a report outlining how it plans to prevent track intrusions.
The report finds in most cases people are choosing to go on to the tracks—these aren’t accidents. Most incidents delay trains for an average of 30 minutes, and occur in Manhattan.
The MTA is currently testing infrared cameras on the front of trains that can detect whether a person is on the tracks.
It will also pilot artificial intelligence technology that monitors CCTV cameras and sends out alerts if there is any so-called dangerous behavior that could lead to track intrusions.
Finally, it’s moving forward with installing platform screen doors at three stations and aims to have them in place by 2025.
The horrific shooting in a Texas elementary school Tuesday had some familiar elements for the families that lost children in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.
That shooting took the lives of 20 children and six adults. Former Gov. Dan Malloy led the state during the shooting. He spoke to WNYC Morning Edition host Michael Hill.
In the MTA’s ongoing efforts to address fare evasion, MTA Chair Janno Lieber has recently taken a new tack: appealing to riders’ morality. He says people who pay the fare feel like "suckers" when they see others hopping turnstiles or going through the exit gate. WNYC's Stephen Nessen talked to commuters to find out if this is how they view fare evasion.
A chaotic political season in New York took another turn this weekend. WNYC's Brigid Bergin joins Morning Edition's Michael Hill for this update.
Nassau Community College's former observatory is looking for a new home, and a group of amateur astronomers hopes it could become New York City's first for-the-public observatory.
The Garden City school closed the 12-foot-high, 6-foot-wide observatory at the end of 2019 as it prepared for renovations. The structure, which was used by astronomy students for more than 40 years, is being replaced by a green roof and six open-air telescopes.
Local astronomers and professors are scrambling to move the half-ton galvanized steel observatory off the campus by May 24th and find it a new home.
“I couldn't let it go to the scrap, and I even wanted it if I didn't have a bunch of trees in my yard, I’d plop it in the middle of my yard,” said Dr. Thomas Bruckner, chair of Physical Sciences at the college. “But a lot of people wanted it; it was just a matter of picking it up. It's big and heavy. It doesn't come apart.”
The Amateur Astronomers Association of New York is leading the mission, and after a nearly yearlong journey, it may have settled on a permanent home in the Bronx. The old observatory could see past the Andromeda Galaxy, more than 2.5 million light-years from Earth, on a clear, dark night — so a public space offers a unique opportunity for young aspiring astronomers to explore the cosmos.
The final frontier is just within reach — if city park officials can agree to the plan in time.
After shutting down during the pandemic, Harlem icon Charles Pan-Fried Chicken is back with two new locations. Scott Lynch joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to talk about a big return for Chef Charles Gabriel.
Charles Pan-Fried Chicken:
The Harlem location at 340 West 145th St., at the corner of Edgecombe Avenue.
The UWS location is at 146 West 72nd St., between Amsterdam and Columbus.
Both are open Sunday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and on Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Chef Charles Gabriel flipping his birds. (Scott Lynch/Gothamist)
The pan-fried chicken with a few sides and other options at Charles Pan-Fried Chicken. (Scott Lynch/Gothamist)
Radiolab is 20 years old and we are celebrating! We are going back to our roots by taking over the live radio waves to play crazy, wonderful audio, and to open the phone lines and answer your questions and comments from Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (use the hashtag #RadiolabLive or tag us @radiolab). There will be plenty of surprises, too!
Tune in live, Sunday May 22nd from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET, on WNYC (93.9 FM and AM 820) or streaming on WNYC.org.
A court-appointed mapmaker finalized New York's congressional districts and state Senate districts early Saturday morning, putting them in place for the next decade - barring any further lawsuits. Carnegie Mellon University fellow Jonathan Cervas, who was tasked with redrawing new district lines after a set of Democrat-drawn maps were overturned, released his final maps after midnight.
Some notable changes include the 11th Congressional District picking up Bensonhurst, making it more of a Republican stronghold. Bedford-Stuyvesant will once again be covered under one district, a reversal from what we saw earlier this week when the neighborhood was going to be split into two districts, angering lawmakers.
But even with the maps finalized, chaos still reigns this election year - a year when many say the balance of power could shift in Congress. Currently, Democrats hold a slim majority and many had been looking to New York State as a place where the party could count on some safe seats. The new maps introduce another element of uncertainty.
WNYC Albany reporter Jon Campbell who was up overnight awaiting the maps. He joined Weekend Edition Host David Furst to discuss the latest.
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio officially announced Friday that he will run for U.S. Congress, entering what is expected to be a crowded field of Democratic contenders for a newly carved out 10th district — stretching from Lower Manhattan to the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Borough Park and Park Slope.
“People are hurting, they need help, they need help fast and they need leaders who can actually get them help now,” de Blasio said during an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. "I do know how to do it from years of serving the people of this city and so today I am declaring my candidacy for the 10th Congressional District of New York."
The two-term mayor had signaled his interest in the seat earlier this week when he opened up an exploratory committee.
To read the full story, go to Gothamist.com.
Less than a year ago, Gregory Mingo was serving out a double life sentence that began with his incarceration in 1981 and was set to end in 2031. But now, at the age of 69, Mingo is a free man, and looking to shape criminal justice policy in New York. WNYC’s Arun Venugopal has more on his new life as an activist, and the obstacles to change.
New York City has the largest municipal workforce in the country. But over the last year it’s been dramatically shrinking. WNYC’s Elizabeth Kim explains why.
Read the story on gothamist.com.
In the valley below Times Square's electrified billboards and skyscrapers stands a 30-foot tall inflatable sculpture: a horror comedy mashup of a child’s bouncy castle and a nuclear mushroom cloud. At the very top are big black letters that demand “Zero Nukes” in the eight languages of the countries thought to possess nuclear weapons: English, Russian, Mandarin, Hebrew, Hindi, Korean, Urdu and French.
The art work, which is also called "Zero Nukes," was made by the Mexican artist Pedro Reyes. It's the centerpiece of "Amnesia Atómica NYC," a public art project commissioned by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and presented by Times Square Arts, which is meant to generate conversations around the anti-nuclear movement through performances, a virtual-reality experience, participatory art work and much more.
For more, read the story on Gothamist.
New York City’s risk level for COVID-19 upgraded from medium to high on Tuesday, according to a bulletin from the city’s Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan.
The announcement came a day after Vasan issued a new advisory about the spread of the coronavirus, which has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 New Yorkers since the pandemic emerged in early 2020. In the advisory, Vasan urges New Yorkers to take extra precautions to prevent the spread of the virus.
But neither Tuesday's statement nor the advisory contained any new mandate for mask wearing or vaccination, but reiterated a “strong recommendation” for people to wear high-quality masks in public settings, both indoors and outdoors. Under a health department document issued in March and entitled “NYC COVID-19 Alert Levels and Recommended Actions,” the city government is advised to require face masks in all public indoor settings when its alert levels reach high.
Consider This host Janae Pierre speaks with Health and Science Editor Nsikan Akpan about the surprising pivot, given Mayor Eric Adams has previously pledged to follow the science and the numbers surrounding the pandemic.
Click listen in the player to hear their conversation.
A 31-year-old woman incarcerated at Rikers Island died Wednesday, officials said. She was the 21st person to die in city custody since the beginning of last year.
The cause of Mary Yehudah’s death is under investigation, according to the Department of Correction. She was pronounced dead at Elmhurst Hospital. The Daily News reported that Yehudah suffered a drug overdose.
Yehudah was in custody at the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers. She was held since February on a robbery charge.
For the rest of this story, go to Gothamist.com.
After voting it down last month, a city panel has agreed to approve a controversial funding plan for public schools.
Kevin Noel spends his days selling electric bikes and scooters — and helping clients whose vehicles are misbehaving. He’s never had a problem with his own ride, a blue-and-white e-bike decorated with stickers, but he has heard the stories about electric-bike fires and seen his fair share of fried batteries.
“I charge it inside my house,” Noel, who works as bike shop assistant in Brooklyn, said of the bike’s lithium-ion battery. “I leave it on the charger overnight, and nothing ever happens.”
Lightweight lithium-ion batteries have become the norm in e-bikes and electric scooters, which power New York City’s massive delivery economy. If properly cared for, these power-packed batteries aren’t inherently dangerous. But they can cause exceptionally destructive fires if they’re broken, refurbished or stored improperly — particularly in bike shops or apartments with multiple batteries inside.
The frequency of fires involving the e-bike batteries is swiftly rising citywide. So far in 2022, the New York City Fire Department says it has investigated close to 70 such fires, including one fatal blaze. Between January and early May 2021, FDNY reported just 18.
If this pace continues, Daniel Flynn, chief fire marshal at the FDNY’s Bureau of Fire Investigation, expects twice as many e-bike fires this year compared to last.
“We’re not telling people not to get them,” said Flynn. “We just want to stress that they do present a danger and to be aware of that.”
Advocates said that delivery drivers need higher wages to afford better-quality batteries, safe places to charge and education on how to spot a dangerous battery. Usage data is hard to come by, but a report by Los Deliveristas Unidos counted some 65,000 New York City delivery workers in September 2021, most of whom use e-bikes to get around.
Click listen in the player for more details, and visit Gothamist for the full story.
Get three New Yorkers in a room and you’ll get four opinions about alternate side parking. But what about a street sweeper’s eye view? WNYC’s Amy Pearl followed along.
music:
JOHANN STRAUSS: The Blue Danube - Waltz
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Georg Szell, conductor
Recorded June 23, 1934
Just below the World Trade Center and Liberty Park in Lower Manhattan, you’ll find Washington Street, a stretch of four relatively nondescript blocks – there’s a hotel, a Starbucks, a burger place. But from around 1880 to 1940, this street was the hub of a thriving neighborhood called Little Syria. And that neighborhood gives its name to a new show by the Syrian-American rapper and poet Omar Offendum.
This week, the Brooklyn Academy of Music presents "Little Syria," a hip hop musical that tells a mostly forgotten New York story. The show is presented as part of a season curated by the poet and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib.
A New Jersey State Police sergeant won’t face criminal charges after he fatally shot and killed a Black man on the Garden State Parkway two years ago.
The state Attorney General’s Office said a state grand jury declined to charge Sgt. Randall Wetzel in the shooting death of 28-year-old Maurice Gordon. He died two days before George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, touching off a nationwide examination of the use of lethal force by police.
Gordon, an UberEats driver from Poughkeepsie known as “Junior,” interacted with six officers during four different encounters over a 28-hour span. But the officers were all unaware he’d been stopped before. When Sgt. Wetzel pulled him over, Gordon was speeding near exit 50, going 101 mph, authorities said.
“Today's vote of no true bill is another reminder that police accountability still escapes Black people in New Jersey,” William O. Wagstaff, an attorney representing Gordon’s family, said in a statement. He called the news “another hindrance to the family’s grieving process.”
Wagstaff also filed an excessive force case in federal court last March against Wetzel, the State Police and the Attorney General’s Office. The case remains pending.
State Police didn’t respond to a request for comment or confirm whether Wetzel is back on the job. He was placed on paid administrative leave during the course of the investigation.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams hopped on an Amtrak train and headed north Tuesday – all in a last-minute attempt to convince Albany lawmakers to support the city’s agenda before they end their annual session in two weeks.
Adams, a Democrat, worked the halls of the Legislative Office Building in Albany, darting from meeting to meeting with rank-and-file legislators. He was trying to win an extension of three soon-to-expire city programs: Mayoral control of the school system, speed cameras in school zones and a lucrative tax break for housing developers.
It was a whirlwind trip: The mayor didn’t have an opportunity to meet with Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders, who were in Buffalo for a visit by President Joe Biden. And he took just a few brief questions from reporters as he rushed out of the building around 2:50 p.m., all in hopes of making a 3:10 train at the station across the Hudson River.
“This was a good exchange of ideas,” Adams said as he was greeted with a swarm of cameras in a crowded hallway following his final meeting. “We took a lot of notes.”
For more, visit Gothamist.com.
Hundreds of people gathered at El Museo del Barrio this weekend to celebrate the life of the Black Puerto Rican photographer and activist Hiram Maristany, who passed away in March at the age of 76.
New York voters and candidates have a busy summer in store for them, with not just one but two primary dates. This is all the result of the redistricting process in which a Steuben County judge ruled the initially drawn maps were unconstitutional. WNYC's Jon Campbell and Brigid Bergin explain.
Read more about the redistricting process and how this impacts you on gothamist.com.
Once again WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith joins David Furst for our weekend arts planner. This week, it's a mix of new visual art and new music.
- Lauren Halsey's first solo exhibition in New York
David Kordansky opened his first gallery in Los Angeles’s Chinatown in 2003, and rapidly developed a reputation for showcasing the city's most fascinating artists. He moved to a bigger space in Culver City in 2014, and just last week opened his first New York City gallery at 520 West 20th St.
For his big New York splash, Kordansky is showing works by Lauren Halsey, one of L.A.'s most exciting young artists. Halsey was in the news here already just recently: In March, the Met Museum awarded her its annual rooftop installation commission, and then in April came news that for logistical reasons the rooftop show is postponed a year.
For anyone who's curious about what’s to come, the show at Kordansky is a great way to whet the appetite. Halsey is a passionate collector of signs, posters, advertisements and nostalgic miniatures that might verge on kitsch, fashioned into pillars, dioramas and so-called "funkmounds" that celebrate life, work, culture, leisure and Blackness writ large. You're overwhelmed by big, splashy pieces – including a wall-mounted creation with real running water – while at the same time drawn close with the tiny, loving details she packs into her creations. It's an effervescent explosion of color, on view though June 11.
- The first solo album from Sikh trumpeter and vocalist, Sonny Singh.
You may not have heard of Sonny Singh, but if you're ever heard the irresistible Punjabi party band Red Baraat then you know his trumpet playing and singing. Sonny has also performed extensively with Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab, who this year became the first-ever Pakistani singer to win a Grammy award. This week, Singh released his debut solo album, "Chardi Kala," and he'll be celebrating with a record-release show at Joe's Pub on Tuesday night - May 17.
In addition to being a singer, songwriter, musician, and bandleader, Singh is a Sikh activist and someone works tirelessly to promote tolerance and understanding. The title, "Chardi Kala," refers to the Sikh principle of eternal optimism, and that's definitely what comes through across the span of his album. He taps into his formative years performing Sikh kirtan music, but true to his all-embracing mindset, he packs a lot of other musical influences into his sound, and the results are utterly irresistible.
Nestled inside Stokes State Forest in New Jersey, about a half-dozen children are setting up insect traps, using vanilla cookies and tuna to see what six-legged creatures they snag.
“Doing science is very easy, you can just go to the dollar store like I did,” Denise Manole, 24, said as she led a class on identifying insects on a spring morning. “It's just going out and doing it and then having fun and loving what you're doing. That’s all science is about.”
Manole is a New Jersey Watershed Ambassador with AmeriCorps and is leading one of the handful of workshops at the New Jersey School of Conservation.
The 240-acre school is a rural oasis in the densest state in the U.S. The school is located in Sussex County, the state’s northwestern county, close to the state’s border with Pennsylvania and New York. The single-story red cabins are spread across Stokes State Forest, a peaceful enclave 50 miles west of denser Essex County.
New York was trying to send a message.
The state permitted marijuana possession last year, but recreational sales of the drug remain illegal until regulators can set up business licenses. This process has been slow — with the first legal sales still months away. But recreational dispensaries didn’t want to wait and began “gifting” their customers weed with the purchase of, say, a digital video – exploiting a potential loophole in the state law.
So New York’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) organized a public crackdown in February – complete with a press release touting its efforts – announcing it mailed out cease-and-desist letters to what it claimed were more than two dozen retailers engaging in unlicensed, unlawful sales.
Or at least that’s what the state agency said at the time. In an email to Gothamist last week, OCM refused to acknowledge whether the cease-and-desist letters actually exist.
For more on why that is, read more at Gothamist.com.
Next fall, educators will screen all public students for dyslexia. In a pilot program, teachers at 160 schools will get special training on how to support students with reading difficulties. And two public schools will launch dyslexia-specific programs. The goal is to have one in every borough by 2023.
Opening a black shell case to display his wares on an early May afternoon, a marijuana dealer in Brooklyn began pulling out a wide variety of edibles that were nestled among vape pens and jars of flower. Some products were obviously homemade — but with packaging that appropriated popular brand names.
Round, multi-colored “Skittles” gummies came in a plastic jar, and the “Pez” hard candies were sold in little tins. A chocolate bar with a Hershey’s logo was labeled “600 milligrams per bar,” presumably of THC, the ingredient in cannabis that gets you high.
Among the products offered by this citywide delivery service, smokeable flower is still the most popular. But edibles now make up 30% to 40% of sales, according to its operator, who spoke with Gothamist but asked to be anonymous because he sells marijuana illegally.
New York only legalized marijuana in March 2021, and the state has yet to issue licenses for non-medical dispensaries. But that hasn’t stopped an explosion of edibles from entering the market in recent years. As state-by-state legalization has introduced packaged edibles to other parts of the country over the past decade or so, it has sparked consumer demand — and confectionary creativity among cannabis purveyors — in legal and non-legal markets alike.
But edibles have also gained more attention from politicians and regulators in recent years who say playful packaging is too appealing to kids who could accidentally ingest large amounts of THC. Poison centers in New York have issued warnings as recently as last summer about children and teens eating edibles that look like candy.
As some packaging becomes more sophisticated, there may be confusion among some adults as well. The delivery service operator Gothamist spoke to, for instance, sells strawberry-flavored sour belts, packaged in a sleek, opaque zip-lock bag like the ones commonly used for cannabis products sold in licensed dispensaries.
This particular bag features the name of a regulated cannabis brand based in California and an official-looking warning telling users to “Keep out of reach of animals and children.” But the amount of THC listed — 1,000 milligrams for the whole bag — suggests that it is a copycat. That’s 10 times the amount of THC per package that California allows.
New York has yet to develop its rules around edibles, but New Jersey recently opened its first licensed dispensaries with only clinical-looking ingestible products such as lozenges and capsules and a 100-milligram cap on the THC content per package.
Yet as regulators seek to restrict the potency and types of edibles sold in licensed dispensaries, the broader market for ingestible cannabis is only getting more varied and innovative.
For more details, click "listen" in the player, and visit Gothamist for the full story.
Dozens of civil rights, labor and voting rights groups want New York to strengthen election protections. WNYC's Brigid Bergin reports
An independent oversight board for the Rikers Island jail complex issued a damning report on Monday that found three inmates died this year after they fell ill and correction officers failed to render aid.
One man was sick for days, vomiting and defecating on himself, but correction officers didn’t bring him to nine scheduled medical appointments, the report said. Another wasn’t resuscitated by two correction officers assigned to his unit, one of whom wasn’t even medically cleared to interact with inmates. And a third died after choking on an orange; he was brought to the medical clinic by other incarcerated people because officers didn’t help.
And yet on Tuesday, when the oversight body, the New York City Board of Correction, held a public meeting with the Department of Correction that runs Rikers, board members barely pressed correction officials on their allegations. One board member recently appointed by Mayor Eric Adams, Joseph Ramos, even described recent deaths — including an apparent suicide — as “natural.”
The board’s findings come as advocates and defense attorneys for Rikers inmates are agitating for a federal receivership, in which a judge would order control of the jails be turned over to the federal government.
To read the rest of the story, go to Gothamist.com.
New York will direct $35 million to health care providers in an effort to expand access to abortion procedures and bolster security at clinics, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Tuesday.
Hochul, the first woman to serve as governor, said the state will create a dedicated Abortion Provider Support Fund in the wake of the leaked U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, leaving New York providers bracing for an influx of women from states where abortion could soon be outlawed.
The Democratic governor said the state intends to make the funding available by the time the Supreme Court finalizes its decision. The move adds to a growing list of actions by the state Legislature on abortion rights, which include the introduction of bills to expand access.
“There’s a lot of anxiety, and we don’t know what’s going to happen, but we have to prepare for any scenario,” Hochul said.
For more, visit Gothamist.com.
In the wake of last week’s leaked Supreme Court draft opinion overturning the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, the country has been thinking about, and planning for life in America if and when Roe is overturned, and considering the vast inequities that will exist between women who have access to legal and safe abortion, and those who don’t.
Join WNYC for a national call-in special Thursday evening. Brian Lehrer takes calls from listeners around the country, with Errin Haines, editor-at-large at The 19th, an independent newsroom with a lens on gender, politics, and policy; and Jessica Bruder, author of Nomadland, and the recent Atlantic cover story about “the abortion underground.”
We know we're not going back to 1972 — so where are we going?
Thursday, May 12 at 8 pm Eastern on WNYC, and public radio stations around the country.
Photographer Jamel Shabazz is best known for his images of 1980s hip hop fashion worn by everyday New Yorkers on the streets. As a corrections officer, he also documented life in the prison system. Now a new exhibit at the Bronx Museum of the Arts takes stock of his work.
New Jersey’s highest court has ordered the parole of Sundiata Acoli, a former member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army who was convicted in the 1973 shooting death of a state trooper.
The 3-2 ruling on Tuesday overturns a decision by the State Parole Board to deny parole for Acoli – who is now 85 and suffering from dementia – his supporters say. The court wrote that the board’s denial “is not supported by substantial evidence in the record or by a reasonable weighing of the relevant factors.”
The justices said the parole board did not determine that Acoli, who was convicted of murder, was likely to commit another crime if released.
Acoli received a life sentence after being convicted in the May 2, 1973 shooting death of State Trooper Werner Foerster after being pulled over on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Since becoming eligible for parole in 1993, the parole board has denied his release eight times. His lawyers appealed his case to the state's Supreme Court, arguing he’s been a model prisoner and his health was deteriorating.
For more on the story visit Gothamist.com.
National Grid, one of the largest investor-owned utility companies in the world, unveiled a plan last month to wean New York off natural gas by 2050.
The process would call for the utility to slowly transition to renewable natural gas, also known as biogas and biomethane. It’s essentially the gas captured when methane is released from landfills, farms and wastewater treatment plants. Those emissions can be collected and purified and then used in pipelines to provide gas for fuel, heat, hot water and cooking.
Biogas is touted as an environmental-friendly alternative to replace the conventional use of liquid natural gas in pipelines because these recurring emissions from waste streams would otherwise contribute to further greenhouse gas releases.
National Grid’s climate strategy does include electrification with wind and solar power as part of the transition. The company plans to “decarbonize” natural gas with a mixture of biomethane and green hydrogen. Its green hydrogen would be produced through the electrolysis of water. An electric current — produced by renewable energy such as solar and wind — splits water, separating out oxygen as a byproduct and leaving the hydrogen for part of the company’s fuel.
“We're going to rely on a lot of solar, wind and storage, energy efficiencies — [it’s] just foundational,” said Donald Chahbazpour, director of policy and regulatory strategy for National Grid.
But gas will continue to flow, and environmental experts say that the plan is not a solution that will help reduce global warming because the process still produces carbon emissions.
Click listen to hear more on the story, and visit Gothamist for more details.
Merle Hoffman has been providing abortions to both New Yorkers and out-of-state patients since she launched Choices Women’s Medical Center in Queens in 1971. The opening came in the brief window between when New York legalized abortion and when the Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court established abortion access as a constitutional right in 1973.
In recent years, Hoffman says she has partnered with groups that help people travel from states where it’s harder to get the procedure.
“What has really happened is that there is a kind of overground railroad with safe places that patients can go,” Hoffman said.
Currently, she said, those coming from out of state only make up about 5% of her patient base. Statewide, the portion is closer to 9%, and if Roe v. Wade is overturned, “that will definitely grow”, Hoffman said. Politico published a preliminary draft of a Supreme Court opinion that suggested America’s highest judicial body wants to remove abortion rights — which would likely leave access up to states. New York politicians responded with a deluge of assurances and open invitations to non-residents in need of these health care services.
But merely ensuring a place for out-of-staters may not be enough. In Missouri, where nearly 10,000 residents traveled to neighboring states for an abortion in 2020, lawmakers have proposed a measure that would allow people to sue anyone anywhere who provides an abortion to a Missouri resident, sends abortion pills to Missouri or otherwise “aids or abets” such a pregnancy termination.
Other states that want to ban or severely restrict abortions are also likely to try to extend their reach if Roe v. Wade is overturned, predicts David Cohen, a professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law who specializes in the intersection of constitutional law and gender.
“Anti-abortion states are not going to settle with banning abortion within their borders,” Cohen told Gothamist. “They are going to want to stop as many abortions as possible.”
Click listen in the player to hear the story, and visit Gothamist for more details.
A week after the Supreme Court draft opinion set to nullify abortion rights leaked into the public sphere, Democratic lawmakers look to galvanize voters around this moment. WNYC’s Brigid Bergin has the story.
For more, go to gothamist.com.
Members of the Shinnecock Indian Nation said they may have found more ancestral graves under a mansion on eastern Long Island. The house stands on a site called Sugar Loaf Hill in Southampton. By one estimate, there could be as many as 10,000 burials at the location.
Tela Troge, a member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation and an Indigenous sovereignty attorney, spoke with WNYC Morning Edition host Michael Hill.
From an engrossing photography show to a bass player's birthday at Carnegie Hall, WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith joins Weekend Edition host David Furst for a preview of some upcoming arts highlights.
Steve's picks:
- Some of the words that came to mind over and over again when I visited the new Deana Lawson exhibition at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City were "majesty" and "dignity." Lawson was born in Rochester, New York, in 1979, and her work focuses primarily on subverting conventional modes of Black representation through photography. The MoMA PS1 show just arrived from the ICA in Boston, and it's Lawson's first ever solo museum exhibition.
One of the most appealing things about the show is that it actually messes around with your anticipation that photographs simply reflect reality. Lawson poses Black men and women in casual clothes – or in no clothes at all – in mundane settings like kitchens, bedrooms and living rooms. Her models occupy space unapologetically, like a grand portrait from an Old Master. But then you start to notice the tiny details Lawson uses to complicate her narratives – you wonder about the hidden meanings behind the clutter she strews across a table, the curtains she hangs on a wall, or the ankle monitor adorning one of her more majestic models. The longer you linger, the more you’re sucked into the delicious complexity of the images she creates. The show runs through September 5th.
- The film director David Lynch has specialized in surreal mystery and suspense from the very start of his career, turning out idiosyncratic classics like "Eraserhead," "Blue Velvet," and "Mulholland Drive" – to say nothing of his cult-classic TV series Twin Peaks, whose surprising revival in 2017 is the director's most recent work to date. It surely attests to his lingering popularity that a major buzz flared up on Twitter around a month ago, insisting that he's got a secret new film screening at the Cannes Film Festival, which starts next week, and that it features one of his most compelling collaborators, Laura Dern.
While everyone waits around, possibly in vain, for a new Lynch film, the last one he completed is on screens again: "Inland Empire," a three-hour mystery filmed without a script and shot entirely with a handheld digital camera. The film deals obliquely and ruthlessly with the way women are treated in Hollywood. It's terrifying and baffling even by Lynch's enigmatic standard, and it features an extraordinary performance by Laura Dern. A 4K restoration of the film has been making the rounds just lately, allowing everyone to see it again as if for the first time. It's showing this weekend at the IFC Center, but a special one-off screening Wednesday, May 11 at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater has the added benefit of a live talk by New York film critic Melissa Anderson, who's written a brilliant little book about the film, and more broadly about the creative spark between Lynch and Dern.
- Jazz icon Ron Carter is the most-recorded bass player of all time, with more than 2,200 credits to his name. He's worked with everyone from Thelonious Monk, Milt Jackson and Miles Davis to Roberta Flack and A Tribe Called Quest - he even popped into Radio City Music Hall in April to jam with Grateful Dead veteran Bob Weir.
This coming Tuesday night, May 10th, Carnegie Hall is Ron's house – he'll take over the big stage in Isaac Stern Auditorium to celebrate his 85th birthday. He'll play with three of his own groups: his Golden Striker Trio with pianist Donald Vega and guitarist Russell Malone – a quartet featuring saxophonist Jimmy Greene – and an eight piece group including four cellos. Fellow bassist Stanley Clarke and Buster Williams will be on hand to pay tribute, and the program includes jazz standards and Carter originals.
Jazz bassist, Ron Carter. (Courtesy of Shore Fire Media)
The leak of a U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion, striking down Roe v. Wade, continues to reverberate. It sparked protests across the country - and vows from voters and politicians that it would upend the midterm elections this fall.
WNYC's Senior Politics Reporter, Brigid Bergin, joins Weekend Edition host David Furst for a look at how the draft opinion might affect congressional races in New York.
New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board voted to increase rents by some of the biggest margins in nearly a decade during a preliminary vote Thursday night, though they were somewhat less than what the board had been mulling in recent weeks.
The board endorsed rent increases of between 2 and 4% for one-year leases and between 4 and 6% for two-year leases, which could amount to the most sizable surge in stabilized rents since 2013, when one-year leases went up 4% and two-year leases went up 7.75%.
WNYC reporter Gwynne Hogan joins All Things Considered Host Sean Carlson to discuss what the preliminary vote means for landlords and tenants.
For nearly a decade, the New York Police Department's gang database spurred controversy. Police said it was a vital tool to curb gang violence, but advocates contended that it used flimsy evidence to target people of color. So in 2018, the city’s Department of Investigation initiated a four-year probe into the strategy.
Now, The Trace and Gothamist have learned, the NYPD has created another list, this one focused on gun violence. Neither the NYPD nor the Adams administration have announced the list's creation, nor has the news media reported on it. But two law enforcement supervisors with direct knowledge of the list confirmed that the list exists.
The NYPD drew up the Gun Recidivist Investigation Program list, known as the GRIP List, soon after Mayor Eric Adams took office earlier this year, an NYPD supervisor with knowledge of the list said. The list is made up of people the department believes are involved in recent gun violence.
Civil liberties and anti-surveillance advocates are concerned about the list, which both the advocates and law enforcement sources say may include not just people with gun charges, but also suspects, witnesses, and victims. Law enforcement sources said rank-and-file officers can access the list through an internal NYPD portal and that several NYPD units are using the list as part of investigations, on patrol, and to surveil those on the list.
Chief of Crime Control Strategies Michael LePetri, who helped create the GRIP list, referred to it at a March City Council committee hearing on Adams’ Blueprint to End Gun Violence. His comments weren’t picked up by the news media at the time. At the hearing, LePetri didn’t divulge details about the list’s makeup or criteria, but he argued that it enables the department to be precise by focusing on a limited number of people it alleges are driving gun violence.
The fate of the state's primary elections are still up in the air. WNYC's Brigid Bergin reports on Wednesday's federal court battle.
Washington Square Park on a sunny spring Saturday is a hectic mix of gawkers and hawkers, locals, students, chess players and, for the last 30 years or so, wiener dogs. WNYC’s Amy Pearl has more.
"The Dachs Song" by Paul de Vries & Murray Weinstock, performed by Murray Weinstock and members of the Dachshund Friendship Club.
Last week, New York’s top court threw out the state’s new Congressional district lines, saying Democrats drew them in their favor. The ruling will probably delay federal primaries and could have major ramifications on the balance of power in the House of Representatives.
Math teacher Kate Belin has been incorporating lessons about gerrymandering to 11th and 12th grade students. Belin spoke to WNYC's Morning Edition host Michael Hill.
State leaders in New Jersey and New York are trying to reassure residents that the potential Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade won't effect their access to abortion. Here's Governor Phil Murphy from earlier Tuesday. This year, Murphy and lawmakers codified abortion rights into the state constitution. But a flood of patients experiencing unwanted pregnancies in nearby states -- where reproductive rights are more restricted -- may soon head to New York and New Jersey with the hopes of receiving abortion care.
Kaitlyn Wojtowicz, Vice President of Public Affairs at Planned Parenthood Action Fund of New Jersey, spoke with WNYC's host Sean Carlson.
Ekim Kaya, a tech entrepreneur and car fanatic, was driving his Lamborghini to the Manhattan Classic Car Club one evening a couple of years ago when a scooter sideswiped him on the West Side Highway. Kaya got out, expecting to exchange information. Instead the two young men on the scooter assaulted him, and stole his $240,000 car.
Police later that night found the Lamborghini crashed at a McDonald’s drive-thru in the Bronx. The carjackers were never caught. And Kaya, who lives in Tribeca, now avoids driving in the city. He’s concerned about all crimes, not just carjackings, and he asks his fiance not to use the subway.
“I’m -- especially at night -- always on alert,” he said.
But Kaya admits he’s not just afraid of crime because he was a victim. It’s not even just because of the spike in violent crimes in New York City since the onset of the pandemic. Some of his fear is rooted in what he sees on TikTok every day -- “people breaking into businesses, stealing stuff, and being able to get away with it.”
Polls indicate a growing sense of the city as dangerous. Major crime totals are in fact up compared to 2019, before the pandemic, when crime was at historic lows. And so far this year six out of seven major crimes -- rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny, and grand larceny of a vehicle -- are seeing double-digit percentage increases over last year.
But what has increased perhaps more than crime is the fear of crime. In 2001, all categories of major crimes were higher than in 2021. But in February of that year, just 36% of New York City voters described crime as a very serious problem, a Quinnipiac University poll found. The same pollsters asked New Yorkers the same question this February, and even though crime rates are lower, 74% called crime a very serious problem.
To read the rest of this story, go to Gothamist.
If the Supreme Court finalizes its leaked draft ruling overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in the coming weeks, New Yorkers will not have to worry about losing their existing abortion rights, which have been codified into law and touted by Gov. Kathy Hochul.
But New York abortion providers and groups that help patients with the finances and logistics of getting the procedure are preparing for the possibility that a lot more people from out of state will soon need their services.
As Hochul said on Twitter Monday night after Politico published the draft opinion: “For anyone who needs access to care, our state will welcome you with open arms.” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy pledged the same, saying his state “will not go backwards on reproductive rights.” But the tri-state area isn’t immune to anti-abortion sentiments, with a handful of introduced bills challenging the right in recent years.
New York has served as a safe haven for those unable to terminate their pregnancies closer to home since it became one of the first states to legalize abortion in 1970, three years before the seminal Supreme Court decision made the freedom to get an abortion a constitutional right. In 1992, the Casey ruling reaffirmed the core portions of Roe but opened up avenues for challenging abortions.
As other states have made concerted efforts to chip away at or ban abortion access outright in recent years, New York has again seen an uptick in patients coming from out-of-state, although they still make up a relatively small percentage of the total abortions performed.
Data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the share of abortions obtained by out-of-state residents has steadily increased in New York since record numbers of anti-abortion restrictions began rolling out about a decade ago in other states. The CDC reported in 2012 that out-of-staters accounted for 3% of New York abortions. This proportion tripled to 8.9% by 2019 — with nearly 7,000 non-residents seeking abortions in the Empire State.
Click listen in the player to hear their conversation and visit Gothamist for more details.
A new report out Monday finds that city voters submitted nearly 75,000 different ranked combinations in last year's Democratic mayoral primary. WNYC's Brigid Bergin has the story.
The CCRB faces a statute of limitations deadline of May 4th for civilian complaints over the NYPD’s response to the 2020 protests in New York City. Staff members say it’s struggled to fully investigate allegations, both because of a lack of cooperation from the police department and mistakes made within the oversight agency.
We asked for your poems on the theme of normalcy. We received nearly 500 in all. The response was heartfelt and tremendous.
You gave us flowers, hope, pastrami hash, and three bubbles of air. You gave us laments over graying roots, masks, Ukraine, and lost loved ones. You gave us your rage, your subway commutes, your fuchka trucks and coco bread, and stoop music on summer days.
You can read a collection of some of the poetry here.
And if you'd like to take a trip through time, revisit this conversation between the late WNYC Morning Edition host Richard Hake and our former producer Shumita Basu from Poetry Month of 2020—just a month after the city shutdown for the pandemic, and just a week before Richard's death.
Things may never be normal, as you told us in so many ways this month. But that's how time works.
We are grateful to everyone who sent in poems, and to those of you who listened.
There are always so many arts events happening in New York City, it's impossible to take it all in. But WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor, Steve Smith gives it his best shot. He joins Weekend Edition host David Furst for a preview of some upcoming events.
- Kazuko Miyamoto: To perform a line
Blockbuster shows tend to suck up a lot of oxygen, but there's a lot to be said for a succinct little exhibition that serves its purpose well – and "Kazuko Miyamoto: To perform a line" is a great example. Miyamoto was born in Tokyo in 1942, and arrived on the Lower East Side in 1964, where she melded her Japanese cultural inheritance with her adopted New York City culture. She made paintings, fiber sculptures that seem to shimmer and ripple as you move around them, performance pieces, and, from the late 1960s onward, a series of kimonos fashioned from fabric, newspaper, and other common material. The Japan Society show is her first solo exhibition at an institution. It's smartly designed, elegantly organized, manageable in scope, and dramatic in impact – one of those shows that makes you feel like you’ve learned something fresh and important.
"A Strange Loop" on Broadway
Michael R. Jackson introduced his flamboyant musical – about a fat Black gay man named Usher, who works as an usher at "The Lion King," while trying to write a Broadway musical possibly about being a fat Black gay man who's trying to write a musical. The show was a super-hyped hit off Broadway in 2019, won a handful of huge awards including the Pulitzer Prize, and finally – after several COVID-delays – opened on Broadway this month.
It's a wildly subversive show about guilt, desire, longing and self-loathing, in which Usher interacts continuously with a campy chorus of his own doubts and inhibitions personified. It's howlingly funny, unapologetically raunchy, and deeply, deeply moving – and Broadway newcomer Jaquel Spivey is brilliant as Usher.
- "The Shape of Jazz to Come"
The composers collective Bang on a Can has been bringing together all kinds of contemporary music -- jazz, classical music, indie rock, electronica, you name it -- in its annual marathons since 1987. Even before the pandemic, Bang on a Can started imagining a big multi-venue festival that would be something like Big Ears down in Knoxville – and this weekend it's finally happening. The festival is called Long Play and it's crammed with musical adventures around the clock – but the finale is something extra special: a re-imagining of "The Shape of Jazz to Come," a watershed album from 1959 by jazz iconoclast Ornette Coleman, Sunday night, May 1st, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music:
Assembled by Coleman's son, drummer Denardo Coleman, the concert features a new Bang on a Can Orchestra with special guests who worked with Coleman, playing the six cuts from Coleman's album in new arrangements by six leading Black composers: Nick Dunston, Craig Harris, Nicole Mitchell, Carman Moore, David Sanford, and Pamela Z.
17-year-old Elizabeth Shvarts is the newly-appointed New York City Youth Poet Laureate and the northeast regional National Youth Poet Laureate finalist. She joined WNYC Morning Edition host Michael Hill to talk about the climate crisis, Taylor Swift, and the importance of getting uncomfortable.
Poem by Elizabeth Shvarts (Shanelle Gabriel Urban Word NYC/WNYC News)
Abdoul Bouda was searching for a stranger.
As he stared at his tablet that was issued by New York City Test & Trace Corps, he regarded the name and address for the mystery woman, but knew that the phone number was out of date. The corps had already attempted to reach her.
So he tried the door of her Pelham Bay apartment building. It swung open, unlocked.
“We are lucky that this is open,” Bouda said. “Usually we need to knock and ask for permission.”
Bouda wandered through the maze-like, dimly lit hall until he found the woman’s door. He rang the bell and identified himself. The woman cracked the door open. She was masked up and visibly exhausted. Her voice quavered as she spoke, raspy with coughing. A scruffy shih tzu stood behind her legs, eyeing the contact tracers with suspicion.
It was an awkward but necessary moment — one familiar to members of the Test & Trace Corps. The people Bouda and his colleagues visit in person are often the COVID afflicted who need their attention the most. It might be because of a language barrier or limited access to technology like smartphones or broadband internet. Or their chaotic work schedule makes it hard to book resources like testing appointments online or by phone.
Since New York City Health + Hospitals launched the corps in June 2020, its members have visited more than 200,000 COVID patients and their close contacts at home. They’ve spoken with them in more than 40 different languages. (Bouda speaks three himself.) They’ve set people up with dog walkers, grocery delivery, cell phones and beds in isolation hotels.
Like it or not, full-scale casinos are on their way to New York City and the surrounding area.
In early April, Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers fast-tracked the approval process for the state’s final three remaining casino licenses, which are destined for downstate after the first four were reserved for regions north.
Casino operators have had their eye on New York City for decades, and in recent months, more than a handful of major players – including Las Vegas Sands and Hard Rock International – have expressed interest.
But it’s still too soon to say exactly where the casinos will go, though New York City Mayor Eric Adams has made clear he’s hoping for multiple facilities in the city.
For more, visit Gothamist.com.
New York City plans to move homeless people out of a former hotel in the Financial District and end its “long-term use” of the property as a shelter, a spokesperson for the city agency that oversees homeless services confirmed to Gothamist.
Julia Savel, spokesperson for the city Department of Social Services, which oversees the Department of Homeless Services, said the city will move all occupants out of the former Radisson Hotel New York Wall Street by June 30th.
She declined to provide additional details, including how many homeless people live there, where they will go or explain why the city is closing the facility, which is of a kind highly valued by homeless people and their advocates because it offers single-occupancy rooms, rather than a congregate setting or shared rooms.
Ever since it was built in the late 19th century, West Park Presbyterian Church has been at the center of progressive and radical politics, including the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement and nuclear disarmament. It was here in the 1980s, at the height of the AIDS crisis, that God's Love We Deliver was born.
The Upper West Side building was landmarked in 2010, but the red sandstone structure -- “one of the best examples of a Romanesque Revival style religious structure in New York City," according to preservationists -- is crumbling. Church officials say repairs would cost $50 million, which means it could be torn down to make way for a high-rise.
“Essentially what's happened is that the congregation of the West Park Presbyterian Church has in fact run out of money by attempting to keep up this landmark building,” said Roger Leaf, a trustee of the Presbytery of New York City, who serves as chair of the West Park Administrative Commission, the governing body of the church.
But elected officials, community residents and artists are vigorously pushing back, saying the church is too important to be demolished.
The Hole is a long-overlooked neighborhood on the border of Brooklyn and Queens that’s aptly named – it lies an estimated 15 feet below the surrounding neighborhoods. It’s never been connected to the city’s sewer system and floods constantly. City officials are launching yet another push to do something - once and for all. But WNYC’s Gwynne Hogan reports, many residents are deeply skeptical they’ll ever see change. Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
This week marks the 200th birthday of Frederick Law Olmsted, the famed landscape architect and designer of Central and Prospect Parks. WNYC’s Amy Pearl visited a little-known piece of Olmsted history on Staten Island: Olmsted-Beil House Park.
Officials in New Jersey are investigating a cluster of people who have developed rare brain tumors after it was revealed that they may all share a link to a high school in Woodbridge, N.J.
Matthew Stanmyre with NJ Advance Media has been covering the investigation. He joined WNYC's Morning Edition host Michael Hill to explain.
Last week, when New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy announced a $9 million expansion of the state police, social justice activists who marched in the streets in 2020 to push for reallocating police funds were left with one question: Why?
“I’m baffled,” said Racquel Romans-Henry, policy director at the New Jersey nonprofit Salvation and Social Justice.
“We saw that in the midst of the protests of 2020, you had elected officials standing with advocates, declaring that they understand there's an issue and something must be done,” she continued. “And this insistence to put more police on the streets seems to really be a disconnect between what was said then and what we're seeing now.”
Activists say they mistakenly thought Democrats were convinced that a police-centered approach to public safety doesn’t work.
“For the past two years, we've had an acknowledgment from these very same politicians saying that we can't arrest our way out of societal problems,” said Zellie Thomas, a Black Lives Matter organizer from Paterson. “But it seems like hiring police officers are the only solution that politicians are committed to.”
To read the rest of this story, go to Gothamist.com.
A mid-level state appeals court ruled Democrats gerrymandered New York’s new congressional districts to their favor, setting up a pending showdown in the state’s top court that could sway the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The state Appellate Division in Rochester issued a split decision Thursday upholding a lower court’s ruling that threw out the Democrat-drawn congressional districts, finding they violated the state constitution’s ban on drawing district lines to benefit a particular party. But the appeals court reinstated New York’s newly drawn state Senate and Assembly district lines, which the trial court judge had also tossed on procedural grounds.
Now, the New York State Court of Appeals will get to weigh in. The top state court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday, an expedited schedule because New York's primary elections are just two months away.
WNYC Albany reporter Jon Campbell joined host David Furst to discuss the latest. For more, visit Gothamist.com.
Thursday was the first day for legal recreational marijuana sales in New Jersey. And eager buyers waited for hours outside 13 dispensaries for their chance to purchase legal weed. WNYC's Karen Yi stopped by two of them to chat with people waiting for the grand opening, and spoke to host David Furst about this historic moment.
For the full conversation, click "Listen".
Pramila Venkateswaran is the former poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island. She's also the author of the poetry collection "We Are Not a Museum." She joined Morning Edition host Michael Hill to talk about why poetry is the most human of languages.
Poem by Pramila Venkateswaran (Pramila Venkateswaran/WNYC)
More than 22.5 million people are breathing bad air across New York City, Newark and its surrounding areas – and just over half are people of color.
These conclusions come from the 23rd annual State of the Air report released Thursday morning by the American Lung Association. It assesses human exposure to known hazardous pollutants such as ozone and particulate matter by analyzing nationwide data initially collected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 2018 to 2020.
Despite the widespread failing grades, air quality in the New York City-region is improving. State of the Air once again gave failing grades to ozone levels in Manhattan, Queens, The Bronx and Suffolk county, but Staten Island managed to improve to a D. But the good news is that particulate matter pollution continues to improve or stay stable.
Click listen in the player to hear more details, and visit Gothamist for the full story.
WNYC spoke with George Joseph, a reporter from THE CITY, who found the Brooklyn Democratic Party's top attorney is the person of contact listed on the election objection forms.
Read his report, co-written with Yoav Gonen, unraveling the alleged scheme here.
Scientists and health professionals from the region have joined the fight against a sewer utility’s plans to build a fourth power plant in Newark.
On Wednesday, 130 doctors, medical providers and professors sent a letter to Gov. Phil Murphy, asking him to reject a permit for a 84-megawatt gas-fired power plant. The Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission, which serves one in six New Jersey residents and treats waste from states along the East Coast, including New York, said the plant will provide back-up power during storms and prevent the disaster caused by Hurricane Sandy when the facility lost power and 840 million gallons of raw sewage seeped into the Passaic River and Newark Bay.
“We urge you to deny the air permit for the PVSC power plant in favor of a solution that utilizes one hundred percent, zero-emission, renewable energy,” the letter said. “Doing so would be consistent with Governor Murphy’s environmental justice commitment and
climate goals, and decrease further harm against the people of the Ironbound community as well as the whole of Newark.”
The health and environmental experts are joining a chorus of residents and community advocates who have railed against the plan for months arguing Newark is already overburdened by pollution. The plant would be built in the city’s Ironbound neighborhood that is sandwiched by Port Newark and Newark Liberty Airport. The Ironbound also has a fat-rendering plant, a garbage incinerator and hundreds of trucks that crisscross residential streets every hour.
For more on this story visit Gothamist.com.
Wednesday is America’s unofficial weed holiday, but in an attempt to avoid mass chaos at overrun dispensaries, recreational cannabis sales will start in New Jersey on Thursday, April 21st.
Although stoners aren’t traditionally known for being early risers, the first dispensaries will open at the crack of dawn. The RISE shops in Paterson and Bloomfield, owned by Green Thumb Industries, plan to unlock their doors to those older than 21 at 6 a.m.
But only 13 dispensaries will be doling out recreational cannabis across the state when sales start, meaning customers may still have to contend with some seriously long lines. Those shops will be all that’s available for the roughly 6.6 million adults who are older than 21 in New Jersey.
WNYC Host David Furst spoke health reporter Caroline Lewis about where New Jerseyans can go to find the legal weed and what types of products will be on the menu.
Click listen in the player to hear their conversation, and head to Gothamist for a map along with more details.
Starting on Thursday, April 21, New Jersey companies will begin selling recreational marijuana for adult use. But is the state ready for the demand?
WNYC host Michael Hill spoke with reporter Mike Davis, who covers cannabis for the Asbury Park Press and USA Today Network. They discussed why New Jersey's launch was delayed and whether people need to worry about law enforcement in towns that aren't allowing dispensaries to open yet.
Click listen in the player to hear their conversation, and visit Gothamist for a map of the available dispensaries.
A contingent of New York City landlords and real estate brokers are promising to give low-income renters a fairer shake, as part of the settlement of a federal discrimination lawsuit filed by the advocacy group Housing Rights Initiative (HRI).
Earlier this month, HRI announced a proposed agreement with 23 landlords and real estate brokers, including some of the biggest names in the industry. They were accused in a 2021 lawsuit of routinely turning away apartment applicants who get government help paying their rent, in violation of laws barring such source-of-income discrimination.
Attorney Matthew Handley of the law firm Handley, Farrah and Anderson is representing HRI, whose lawsuit targets 88 landlords and brokers. He spoke with WNYC host Kerry Nolan about the lawsuit and what’s next for the ongoing litigation.
For the full conversation, click "Listen". Read the full story at Gothamist.
Everywhere you look trees and flowers are blooming. Look close and you can see bees visiting the blooms. WNYC’s Amy Pearl followed some of those bees to their urban home near Gowanus.
About a dozen people embarked on a 150-mile bike ride from New York City to Albany on Saturday morning to demand lawmakers take action against climate change.
Holding a bright yellow sign that read “Climate Can’t Wait,” members of various community groups such as the Sunrise Movement, Food & Water Watch and the Queens Climate Project organized a rally in Battery Park to kick-off the week-long ride that will culminate with an Earth Day rally next Friday. The groups are pushing the state Legislature to pass a dozen bills that would move the state away from relying on fossil fuels.
“The legislature and the governor failed to pass anything of note in the state budget. And so they need to act now before the legislative session ends in June,” Laura Shindell, an organizer with Food & Water Watch, told Gothamist. “Sure, you believe in climate change, but if you're not passing legislation to actually move New York off of fossil fuels, you're just as bad as the people who don't believe climate change is happening.”
For more on this story visit Gothamist.com.
New York City is arguably the center of American theater, from the biggest Broadway venues to the smallest D.I.Y. spaces. But that doesn't mean most performers or theater operators are raking in money—especially now, more than two years into the pandemic. Now, Super Secret Arts, a new theater space in Gowanus, Brooklyn is trying a fresh twist on the membership model, in hopes that it will help them pay artists fairly while keeping the lights on: a $25 monthly subscription fee that gives audiences access to all the live performances they want, like Netflix or Spotify.
For the full story, click "Listen."
The Mets recently showed off new cuisine and more in a preseason media gaggle, complete with a tasting menu. Reporter Jeff Lunden came, he saw and he ate, and returned to tell the tale.
Read more and see photos on Gothamist.
As a manhunt began Tuesday morning for the person who shot 10 people in a crowded Brooklyn subway car, law enforcement quickly looked to the station cameras that they hoped had caught their suspect on tape.
But they were out of luck.
The surveillance cameras at the 36th Street station in Sunset Park, where the incident occurred, had not been working, MTA officials later said.
While New York City boasts the world’s fifth largest metropolitan train system, it ranks fourteenth in terms of the number of surveillance cameras it has in operation. And even the cameras it does have have been known to malfunction.
April is National Poetry Month, a time to celebrate the written word and the role it plays in our lives.
Dimitri Reyes is a poet from Newark, N.J. He's also an artist-in-residence at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and the author of the book "Every First & Fifteenth."
He joined Morning Edition host Michael Hill to talk about what brought him to poetry, how picture prompts in grade school brought forward his love of writing, and the value of storytelling in verse.
It's also the start of our poetry month challenge! Please send us your poems! Our theme this year is "normalcy," whatever that means to you in this particular moment. You can submit your poems via Twitter (@wnyc) or email them to wnycpoetry@gmail.com. We may read your poem on the air.
Oye! This is an apartment building ode.
Dimitri Reyes
Oye! This is an apartment building ode.But not just any ode, an ode about breathing,walking, jumping, running, skipping people.An ode to a time where we’d remember whatodes felt like to read outside. An ode aboutoding so hard it boxes itself into a sonnet.Harder than bus stop benches and light railseats, taxes, and systemic poverty. The odingof this poem is an apartment building sonnetabout people stacked up like bricks like wordsin a sonnet. People that will tap your shoulderto make sure you’re listening to the fact that thispoem is a token, a favor, a shirt off their back.Oye! This is The Apartment Building Ode.
In the wake of Tuesday’s subway shooting in Sunset Park, many New York City parents were left wondering how to talk to their children about what happened. Traumatic events can be especially hard for young people, whose brains and understanding of the world are still developing.
Gothamist collected audience questions from parents who are trying to make sense of their own emotions about the crisis while also fielding concerns from their kids. WNYC host Sean Carlson then posed those queries to Dr. Alison Holman, a professor at the University of California, Irvine’s Sue and Bill Gross School of Nursing. She’s spent her career studying how traumatic events affect people differently depending on their life experiences and behavior.
Holman explained why it’s important for parents to address the event, rather than to downplay or ignore it, unless a child raises the issue. She offered different conversational tips based on the age of the child and advice for parents seeking ways to cope.
Click listen in the player to hear their conversation.
Newark’s police force will remain under a court-ordered federal monitor through next summer even as local officials tout major reforms and say they no longer need a high-paid watchdog, which has cost city taxpayers $7.4 million over the last five years.
The city’s oft-troubled police department has been under scrutiny since a U.S Department of Justice investigation uncovered civil rights abuses and misconduct by officers in 2014. Newark and the DOJ reached a deal in 2016 to overhaul policing in the city under a court-enforced order known as a consent decree.
They also agreed to appoint former state Attorney General Peter Harvey as a federal monitor for five years and capped his payments at $7.4 million. Harvey’s job is to ensure Newark keeps its consent decree promises, but his predetermined July 2021 end date has come and gone, and he says the work still isn’t done.
The court overseeing the work has sided with Harvey, ensuring Newark will continue to have its own police watchdog. It plans to officially extend Harvey’s appointment for two years through July 2023, Newark officials said. The two sides are still finalizing how much that will cost the city and what milestones they will need to meet during the additional time.
For more on this story visit Gothamist.com.
Newark is investing $23 million to upgrade an aging water treatment facility that was at the center of its lead contamination problem five years ago.
The long-awaited fixes to the Pequannock Water Treatment Plant aim to improve the way the city cleans its water and prevent the type of crisis that thrust Newark into the national spotlight in 2019 when it was forced to distribute bottled water to 14,000 households. The upgrades build on the city’s $190 million investment to replace more than 23,000 lead pipes outside of the facility, running under streets into people’s homes.
“You're going to have another process in place to make the water even purer,” said Kareem Adeem, Newark’s Director of Water and Sewer, after a groundbreaking ceremony on Monday. “Those efficiencies will help manage and run the plant better.”
The Pequannock plant in West Milford pumps water to more than 300,000 customers and opened in 1989. When lead levels first spiked in Newark in 2017, city officials traced the problem to a treatment failure at the facility. A process known as “corrosion control” — which prevented water from becoming too acidic and corroding old lead pipes — was no longer effective. Water pumping into people’s old homes was eating away at old lead pipes.
Click listen in the player to hear more on the story, and visit Gothamist for full details.
New York Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin resigned from office hours after he was arrested Tuesday in connection with a bribery scheme, in which federal prosecutors say he directed a $50,000 state grant to a Harlem nonprofit in exchange for numerous donations to his political campaigns.
In federal court Tuesday afternoon, Benjamin pleaded not guilty to a five-count felony indictment that accused him of bribery, fraud and falsification of records related to the alleged scheme.
April 15th is the start of striped bass season in New York City. But if you want to catch one, you’ve got to get up early. WNYC’s Amy Pearl headed to Throgs Neck in the Bronx at 5am to meet up with the Uptown Fishing Crew.
Beside a blue fence in the back of the East Fourth Street Community Garden in Kensington, a skinny, leafless little tree pokes optimistically up from the Brooklyn soil.
At this point, the sapling looks like not much more than a stick, though a tiny swollen bud at its very top foretells its plans and potential. But to gardener Eric Boucourt, it’s a revolution — a return to New York City of something once precious — and since lost.
The tree is a fall pippin, one of the country’s oldest varieties of apple that’s thought to date back to the 1700s. And it’s one of 40 trees recently planted around New York City as part of a project called the Open Orchard. It aims to restore long-gone fruit trees to the region.
“It's a very special tree,” Boucourt said lovingly, showing pages of research he’d studied on how best to help the little fall pippin grow.
Open Orchard comes from the mind of Sam Van Aken, a botanist and artist who serves as the associate director of the School of Art at Syracuse University. The project was commissioned by the Trust for Governors Island through Governors Island Arts. Van Aken said it will cover an acre and a half of Governors Island with 250 varieties of fruit — all of them either indigenous to, originated in, or historically grown in New York City.
The effort also aims to plant about 100 heirloom trees in gardens around the city by next spring. The distribution to community gardens is in partnership with Green Thumb, the city’s urban gardening program. Most of these historic fruits were once plentiful on the city’s grassy knolls and hills. But they’ve since been mostly lost to climate change and mass agriculture.
The Open Orchard on Governors Island opens to the public on April 29th. Van Aken said visitors will be able to stop by and see, and soon even taste, the fruits that other New Yorkers might have enjoyed centuries ago.
But some agriculture experts said the organizers need to make sure these reintroduced trees don’t themselves become invasive, raising familiar questions about conservation and what it truly means to be a native species.
Click listen to hear about this project, and head to Gothamist for more details about its history.
Even as marijuana is increasingly legalized and decriminalized in many states, including New York, it’s still a herculean task for scientists to research its effects.
Consider the recent example of a study about the dangers of secondhand cannabis smoke. About a week ago, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley released these findings, earning the attention of several news outlets. But the study’s launch was initially delayed by about four months.
The team then had to work around several restrictions due to marijuana still being classified as a Schedule 1 drug by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). This label puts pot in the same category as heroin. These legal constraints make it more challenging to study the health impacts of weed even as it becomes more accessible in states like New York and New Jersey.
The Berkeley study alleges that secondhand bong smoke might be just as harmful as tobacco because of how much particulate matter gets released into the air. But given the heavy restrictions on marijuana research, this takeaway might not be completely valid. They would need a whole different class of experiments to support this idea fully.
Click listen in the player to hear more details, and visit Gothamist for the full story.
Some lawmakers doled out praise, some called it unacceptable and others held their collective nose as they cast their votes, bleary-eyed from an all-night session.
But in the end, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's first budget was passed by the state Legislature – albeit more than a week late.
The Democrat-controlled Senate and Assembly gave final approval early Saturday to the $220 billion spending plan after debating and voting throughout the night, putting an end to a stalemate with the governor that persisted beyond the April 1 start of the state's fiscal year.
WNYC's Albany reporter Jon Campbell joined Weekend Edition host David Furst to discuss the latest.
For more, visit Gothamist.com.
From concerts and gallery shows, to festivals and parades, there are always so many cultural events going on in New York City it seems almost foolish to try to narrow the weekly highlights down to a mere three. But WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor, Steve Smith is ready to give it a shot. Speaking with Weekend Edition host David Furst, Steve brings us ideas for this weekend and beyond.
Steve's picks:
- Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure - Saturday is opening day for a brilliant new exhibition devoted to the life and art of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Brooklyn artist who blazed a trail through NYC's graffiti and nightclub scenes before burning out prematurely. There's a lot of corporate sponsorship behind this show, which comes complete with a well stocked boutique and official Spotify playlist. But the collection includes some 200 works seen rarely or never before, and the show – arranged in close consultation with his sisters – does a genuinely fine job of illuminating the man behind the mythology. 2. The Hong Sangsoo Multiverse - The South Korean film director Hong Sang-soo has become a perennial favorite among NYC cinephiles, his work screening regularly in film festival lineups and arthouse cinemas. Since his first film appeared in 1996 he's made a staggering 27 feature films: intimately scaled, deceptively structured slices of life featuring feckless film directors and writers, women discovering their strength and self-reliance, messy relationships, and usually too much alcohol. Practically everything Hong has made so far is included in "The Hong Sangsoo Multiverse," a clever Film at Lincoln Center festival made up of double features that span his canon. If the idea of choosing from that many films is perplexing, here's a tip: most of Hong’s earliest and latest films are pretty easy to find on home video, so go for the harder-to-find middle films, like "Our Sunhi," playing Saturday, April 9 and "Hahaha," which screens Sunday, April 10. 3. Wendy Eisenberg "Eye Music" at Roulette - A new song cycle by this arrestingly quirky, flamboyantly talented jazz guitarist and indie-rock singer-bandleader -- with an excellent band of improvising collaborators. The show takes place at Roulette in Brooklyn on Thursday, April 14.
Untitled (Thor), 1982. The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat (Licensed by Artestar, New York)
It was Opening Day for the New York Yankees. And after two seasons marked by limited fan attendance and delayed games, it almost felt like a normal start to the season, with the Bronx Bombers taking the field against their eternal rival, the Boston Red Sox in a packed Yankee Stadium. WNYC's Danny Lewis decided to check in with some fans ahead of the first pitch. To hear the full story, click "Listen."
The Hong Sangsoo Multiverse, running April 8th through May 10th at Film at Lincoln Center, focuses on the intimate, disarming and structurally playful cinematic canon of South Korean director Hong Sang-soo, a favorite among New York film aficionados. Dennis Lim, Film at Lincoln Center director of programming and the author of a new book about Hong's film Tale of Cinema, discusses why and how this extensive series of crafty double features was conceived.
Read more about the series on Gothamist.
April is National Poetry Month, a time to celebrate verse and rhythm and imagery.
It's also the start of our poetry month challenge. Please send us your poems! Our theme this year is "normalcy," whatever that means to you in this particular moment. You can submit your poems via Twitter (@wnyc) or email them to wnycpoetry@gmail.com. And be sure to keep listening — we may read your poem on the air!
12 year old Kalima Crawford is a 7th grader at PS-MS 5 Port Morris School in the Bronx. She joined Morning Edition host Michael Hill to read one of her poems, and talk about what poetry has meant to her.
Poem by Kalima Crawford (Sharon Burrell /WNYC)
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders are closing in on a final budget agreement that will make changes to the state’s cash bail system, legalize to-go cocktails at restaurants and relax the state’s gas tax for much of the rest of the year.
The Democrat-led state Legislature is meeting in private Thursday afternoon to discuss the details of the $220 billion spending plan. If they sign off, it would end a stalemate that lingered since the state began its fiscal year April 1st without a budget in place.
The budget would represent an $8 billion increase over the previous fiscal year and $4 billion more than what Hochul originally proposed, a hike fueled by higher-than-expected tax revenues and an infusion of federal cash from the various COVID relief packages.
Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
As New York City grapples with a rising crime rate, Vital City, a new policy journal, aims to find evidence-based solutions to the most pressing public safety problems. Its founders are Elizabeth Glazer, the former Director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, and Greg Berman, co-founder of the nonprofit Center for Court Innovation. They spoke with WNYC's Michael Hill about the inaugural issue, which focuses on gun violence.
For the full conversation, click "Listen."
Police arrested six activists and a homeless man following a more than seven-hour standoff Wednesday, where the group refused to leave an encampment of four tents set up under a sidewalk shed on East 9th Street in the East Village.
The standoff, in which the homeless protesters demanded placement in actual housing rather than a shelter or a transitional bed, was the latest flashpoint over Mayor Eric Adams’ controversial push to clear the city of homeless encampments. Read the full story on Gothamist.com
Lawmakers in Albany say they are close to a deal that would tighten bail laws, allowing judges to hold more people in jail as they await trial. Advocates for many of New York City’s immigrant communities have said they oppose such a change, which they say would penalize people who could not afford to pay bail. But several Chinese community groups are taking the opposite stance. April Xu is a reporter for Documented, a nonprofit news site dedicated to covering New York’s immigrant communities. She discussed the issue with WNYC host Michael Hill.
For the full conversation, click "Listen."
The crime rate is up in New York -- and so are the number of arrests, according to the NYPD’s latest data.
Police officials said at a press conference on Wednesday that there were 335 arrests for murder and non-fatal shootings so far this year, compared to 257 in the same period last year. Overall, through March, the NYPD hit a 21-year high in the number of arrests officers made for major crimes.
In the transit system, arrests are up 64% year-over-year. There is also a dramatic increase in summons for minor “quality of life” offenses this year, including more than 17,000 for fare evasion, 1,400 for smoking, and 600 for obstruction of seats, like when someone is stretched out sleeping.
“So are we giving greater attention, greater detail, to lower-level offenses? Yes we are. And we’re doing that to make people feel safe and improve safety in the transit system,” Wilcox said.
Advocates for police reform believe such enforcement of small crimes -- known as “broken windows policing” -- target poor and minority New Yorkers and lead to constitutional violations. Rikers Island’s jail complex is slated to close in 2027, with small county-based jails opening in its place, but increased arrests complicate that plan because there are currently too many incarcerated people to fit at the planned facilities.
Police brass also detailed the work of their controversial new Neighborhood Safety Teams, where squads of officers in modified uniforms and unmarked cars seek to stem violence in the most dangerous neighborhoods. After about three weeks of these units patrolling the streets, there have been 135 arrests, with 25 of those on gun charges, the NYPD said.
Although the number of shootings has steadily increased since the onset of the pandemic, about half of shootings this year were in just 10 neighborhoods -- five in the Bronx, four in Brooklyn, and one in Queens. Forty percent of those responsible for shootings this year are part of a gang or a crew, police said, and a quarter of shootings in March happened during the day.
One feature of the current crime landscape in the city is repeat arrests, officials said. Thirty-seven percent of those arrested this year for burglaries have three or more prior arrests for the same offense. And about a quarter of those arrested for gun crimes have previously been convicted of a felony.
The NYPD press conference came as lawmakers in Albany were hammering out a deal to give judges more leeway to impose bail on those charged with crimes in order to keep people who can’t afford bail locked up pending court dates. Some Democrats and racial justice activists say the 2019 and 2020 bail reform laws have had no impact on public safety, since few people out on bail are rearrested. But Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said rolling back the reforms will make the city safer.
“We certainly would hope that judges would be allowed to consider the potential violence of the offender and recidivism with those policies as well,” she said.
Two dozen employees at New Jersey's Department of Corrections have been issued non-compliance letters for failing to get an initial jab of the COVID-19 vaccine. Though Governor Phil Murphy gave workers inside high-risk settings an extension until May 11 to get fully vaccinated and boosted, unvaccinated employees still had to meet an initial mid-February deadline for their first dose.
The DOC says 68% of its workforce of about 8,100 employees is either fully or partially vaccinated. An agency spokesman says no disciplinary action has yet been taken as the department continues sorting through medical and religious exemptions.
On a cold, February day in the hills of the Finger Lakes, thousands of leafless maple trees stood dormant, waiting patiently for the kiss of spring. Armed with a hammer and drill, Aaron Wightman trudged through deep snow in the Arnot Teaching and Research Forest.
Wightman pointed the drill into the bark of a sturdy tree and followed with a high-pitched thrust forward. Then, he hammered a spout into the wooden hole. In a few weeks, the tree would give forth a thin, sweet sap that would become maple syrup.
Wightman’s family has made maple syrup for generations. He has been tapping trees since childhood, but he’s seen warming winter-spring temperatures push the tapping season back by more than a month.
“We didn’t even tap until the end of February or early in March when I was young,” said Dr. Wightman, the co-director of the Maple Program at Cornell University. “Now we tap in early January.”
Americans are the world’s leading consumers of maple syrup, and New York State holds the title of the second-largest U.S. supplier after Vermont. Now, in the midst of a global pandemic when more of us are cooking at home, demand for the gold stuff has gone through the roof.
But this swell in demand coincides with a changing climate that brings warmer winter temperatures to much of the Northeast. And winter and early-spring temperatures determine how well precious maple sap will flow. The climate problem was so detrimental last year that it squeezed the global supply of maple syrup.
Unabated, it could even threaten maple syrup production on this side of the northern border.
Click listen in the player to hear more details, and visit Gothamist for the full story.
New Jersey is bringing transparency to law enforcement’s practice of confiscating private property it believes may be connected to illegal activity.
Through asset forfeiture, police can seize cash and property -- and sometimes not return it -- regardless if there were arrests or convictions. That has led to allegations of abuse and demands for more information about what police are taking and why.
A 2020 law signed by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy mandates that prosecutors report to the Attorney General the description, monetary value, and alleged criminal violation associated with all such seizures. Police also must report whether charges were filed and if the defendant has been convicted.
In compliance with that law, Acting Attorney General Matt Platkin announced Wednesday that a new online portal is launching in which county prosecutors will report forfeitures in a searchable online tracking system. The database requires information on whether anyone whose property was taken was ultimately charged and convicted of a crime, and the monetary value of what was seized. Given that Black and Latinx New Jerseyans were found to be disproportionately affected by this practice, demographic information about who police took property from will also be in the online portal.
Nationally, cash and property worth billions are seized by police each year, according to the nonprofit law firm Institute of Justice, and some of that money is used to support police budgets. In New Jersey, between 2009 and 2019 police in the state collected $166 million, according to an advisory committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Under the law, police in New Jersey can seize property valued less than $10,000 and cash less than $1,000.
The Office of Attorney General is spending $2.6 million on the forfeiture module, and is conducting 80 trainings around the state on how to use it.
"The Division of Criminal Justice is committed to ensuring the civil rights and liberties of residents are protected," said Lyndsay Ruotolo, director of the Attorney General’s Division of Criminal Justice, in a statement. "This portal will help increase confidence in New Jersey’s justice system by ensuring comprehensive reporting on civil forfeiture is tracked and accessible to the public."
New York lawmakers agreed to pass a short-term spending bill Monday to ensure state workers get paid this week after officials failed to reach a broader budget agreement with Gov. Kathy Hochul.
The state’s fiscal year began Friday, but Hochul and lawmakers were unable to get a roughly $216 billion spending plan in place as they sparred over weighty issues like criminal justice reform, New York City casinos and a proposed $600 million state subsidy for a new football stadium for the Buffalo Bills.
The talks are happening entirely behind closed doors, as has long been tradition in New York’s secretive budget process where major, multi-billion-dollar decisions are hashed out by the governor, the leader of the Senate and the speaker of the Assembly.
For more, visit Gothamist.com.
For seven years, music producer Ryan Burvick has given people incarcerated on Rikers Island and in other correctional facilities around New York City the chance to learn the art of hip-hop through a program called “The Free Studio.”
The students range from people awaiting trial, to teens held in juvenile facilities. Burvick spoke to Gothamist about what it has been like to bring music production classes into the jail system and what it means to his students.
For the full conversation, click "Listen."
On a recent afternoon, a sales associate at Street Lawyer Services, a marijuana dispensary on the Lower East Side, scrolled through the shop’s inventory on a screen as Oliver, a return customer, looked on. Because of the store’s “gifting” model, he was technically there to purchase digital content such as a video or mixtape that just happened to come with a cannabis gift of his choice.
Oliver chose a $40 “content pack” that included THC edibles packaged to look like a popular brand of sour gummies. He weighed different options for a vape cartridge, finally landing on one labeled with a strain called “Girl Scout Cookies” for $60. His total for these and other goodies came to about $200, and he also opted to become a member of the shop. That way he could get future discounts and perks, which include free access to the colorfully painted lounge in the back.
Oliver, who asked for his last name to be withheld because of the stigma still associated with cannabis, said he preferred this retail experience over texting a dealer.
“It’s a great thing,” he said. “I feel like it's more regulated and safer. I like walking into a store better than some random guy coming to my house.”
But as official as a branded storefront may seem, the unlicensed dispensaries that have been popping up on the Lower East Side and in other parts of New York City are just as unregulated as any delivery service. The main difference is the visibility with which they operate and the new era of the cannabis industry they represent.
New York City is already known for having one of the most robust underground cannabis markets in the world. There’s no shortage of potent products or sophisticated branding, and convenient home delivery has been the norm ever since the advent of cell phones.
But since New York legalized marijuana for adult use last March and lowered the penalties for unlawful sales, it’s also become increasingly easy to pick up a pre-rolled joint or bag of gummies from a store. That’s the case even though the first licensed dispensaries aren’t supposed to open until the end of 2022. Some shops point to loopholes in the law to make the case that they’re operating legally.
Click listen in the player to hear more on the story, and visit Gothamist for the full details.
A Steuben County judge has struck down the recently redrawn congressional and legislative maps for New York, ordering the state Legislature to "submit bipartisanly supported maps" by April 11th — setting up a likely battle in the state’s top court.
But Senate and Assembly Democrats quickly appealed the ruling late Thursday night, and they’re expected to seek a stay blocking it from taking effect while the appeals courts weigh in. Gov. Kathy Hochul also vowed to appeal.
In an 18-page ruling, Acting State Supreme Court Judge Patrick F. McAllister said the maps, drawn every 10 years after the latest U.S. Census count, were unconstitutionally and politically drawn by the Democrat-controlled state Legislature. McAllister said the maps are "void and not usable."
Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
Bias incidents in New Jersey against transgender people and Asians saw big increases last year, compared to 2020, according to new numbers from the state Attorney General's Office.
Acting Attorney General Matt Platkin said last year set a record for the highest number of bias incidents since the state started keeping track in 1994. Incidents against transgender people more than doubled in 2021 and increased by 90% for Asians.
Platkin said part of the rise is due to divisive rhetoric that blamed Asians for the pandemic.
"These words are not empty, there's people on the ground who listen to them and act upon them," he told WNYC.
The preliminary numbers show Black people are still the most targeted group and the victims of about 40% of the 1,800 reported incidents. Jewish people were the most commonly impacted religious group.
In the 1930s, the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) made maps of thousands of cities across the United States. Each neighborhood was color-coded according to the perceived security of prospective lenders’ investments.
In Brooklyn’s map, the area around the Navy Yard was colored in bright red, signifying a “D” rating — the lowest possible. An accompanying report listed undesirable features like the nearby shipyard and Brooklyn Bridge — and describes the neighborhood’s residents, who were mainly Italian and Black merchants and laborers. A “great many” received government assistance.
“An area of poor properties and shifting population of questionable character and occupation,” the report by the HOLC, a government-sponsored group, read. Like so many neighborhoods inhabited by immigrants, people of color and people living in poverty, the area had been redlined, cutting residents off from homeownership and discouraging investment.
Fair housing laws of the 1960s officially ended redlining, but the longtail effects of the inequity continue to show up within the old boundaries. New research links the historical discrimination, coupled with generational harm caused by land-use policies, with modern-day pollution.
To hear the story, click listen in the player, and visit Gothamist for more details.
The nonprofits that took New Jersey to court over its segregated schools went to Trenton on Thursday to demand the state diversify its districts. Advocates called on Gov. Phil Murphy to end the de facto segregation that has had generations of Black and Latino students attending overwhelmingly non-white schools.
Larry Hamm, chair of the People's Organization for Progress, said segregated schools "weren't equal in 1954 and they're not equal in 2022."
Student Morghan Blair goes to a diverse high school where she says she has two teachers for 15 students in her class. But she said her peers at predominantly Black and Latino schools often have "one teacher to 30 students. How is anyone getting help from that?"
The state mandates students attend schools where they live, which advocates say perpetuates residential segregation into the classroom.
Full-service gas is up there with the Taylor Ham/Pork Roll debate as one of the most New Jersey Things Ever. For 73 years, drivers have been barred from pumping their own gas, thanks to a law requiring all gas stations have attendants to top off tanks. But the latest effort to introduce at least some self-service pumps to the Garden State is running into a serious speedbump: an overwhelming majority of New Jersey residents would prefer to keep things the way they are. And the state's most powerful lawmaker agrees.
For the full story, go to Gothamist.com.
The correspondence shows how a group of well-funded park enthusiasts went far beyond its self-proclaimed “horticultural” mission to clamp down on disorder in a park that has long been a mecca for artists, students and radicals — and which had taken on new resonance for a generation seeking alternatives to nightlife during the pandemic. WNYC's Jake Offenhartz spoke with host Sean Carlson about the Washington Park Conservancy.
A new report found Clark Township in Union County, New Jersey paid $400-thousand dollars to a whistleblower in attempt to prevent the release of recordings that allegedly show the mayor and police chief using racist and sexist language.
Audio files obtained by NJ Advance Media allegedly show Mayor Sal Bonaccorso using racial slurs in multiple instances. Reporters Riley Yates and S.P. Sullivan wrote the story, and Riley Yates joined Morning Edition host Michal Hill to talk about it.
April 1st marks the start of National Poetry Month, a time to celebrate the written word and the role it plays in our lives.
It's also the start of our poetry month challenge. Please send us your poems! Our theme this year is "normalcy," whatever that means to you in this particular moment. You can submit your poems via Twitter (@wnyc) or email them to wnycpoetry@gmail.com. And be sure to keep listening -- we may read your poem on the air!
Haydil Henriquez is the first ever Bronx Poet Laureate. She joined Morning Edition host Michael Hill to read one of her poems, and talk about what poetry has meant to her and to the Bronx.
New York City mayors have traditionally pursued pet economic development projects. But few in recent memory have been as buzzy and polarizing as crypto — a decentralized banking system based on digital currencies. WNYC's Elizabeth Kim spoke with host Sean Carlson about how Mayor Adams sees the future commerce. You can read more of the story of Gothamist.
City council members clashed with top NYPD officials at a hearing Wednesday over the department’s new plan to crack down on low-level crimes.
Council Member Tiffany Cabán cited a National Academies of Science study that shows a focusing on minor violation -- known as broken windows policing -- didn’t have an effect on stopping stop crime.
Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said her efforts are not aggressive and low-level crimes can lead to worse violations.
Caban interjected: "So yes or no? Did you consult any of the research on negative mental health impacts including increased anxiety and trauma that this style of policing has on young black men in New York City?"
Sewell did not cite any research that the department used in developing the new policing approach.
Within days of the Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, people displaced by the war began to arrive in New York. By some estimates, hundreds of Ukrainians have already relocated here, and members of the city’s Ukrainian community are welcoming the new arrivals by opening their homes, offering legal advice and providing emotional support.
"They have no friends, they have no relatives, they have no money, they have no right to work," said Yuliya Zolotarevsky, who works by day at Brooklyn Public Library and sees up close the grief and disorientation of the new arrivals.
These include Iryna, a 50-year-old who withheld her full name, citing the privacy and safety of her family. She's been sleeping on the sofa of a friend in Brooklyn and trying to make ends meet by cooking borscht and cleaning homes while worrying about the safety of her husband and their 28-year-old son, who remain in Ukraine.
"It’s scary to end up in a situation like this where we don’t know what's going to happen tomorrow," she said. "Are you going to be alive? Will your closest people be alive?"
Eudes Pierre was brandishing a small pink knife on the street early one morning last December. When he headed into Brooklyn’s Utica Avenue subway station, officers converged on the scene. Fearing he had a gun in his pocket, they kept their distance. Police later said Pierre had attempted suicide in the past, and h. His family said he had been treated for mental illness.
“You okay pal, you need help?” one officer asked, according to body-worn camera footage released by the state Attorney General’s Office, which is investigating the incident. “We’re here to help you, dude. Just put the knife down. If you put it down we can talk, and get you help … Nobody wants to get hurt here.”
But somebody did get hurt. Officers couldn’t subdue Eudes Pierre with Tasers. Soon enough he walked up the stairs of the station, prompting officers to draw their guns and call for cover. When he ran into the street -- police later said he was running toward a cop -- two officers shot him 10 times, according to police. He was handcuffed. Officers then administered first aid until the ambulance arrived 10 minutes later. Pierre, 26, a deliveryman for Uber Eats who was on a leave from his studies at the College of Staten Island, died at the hospital.
“If there was someone there just to listen to him,” said Rohlan Pierre, his older brother, moments after viewing videos of the shooting. “Because that’s probably all he really wanted and needed, was somebody to just listen to him at that moment.”
New York is expanding a pilot program that does just that -- dispatching unarmed professionals to listen to, and otherwise assist, those experiencing mental health crises. The goal is to avoid the violence that too often ensues when police officers respond to the scene. Since 2016, NYPD officers have shot and killed 19 people in the midst of a mental health crisis, 16 of whom were people of color, according to New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and the advocacy group Correct Crisis Intervention Today.
The new $50.4 million pilot program -- called B-HEARD, or Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division -- began in Harlem last summer and is expanding to Washington Heights and the South Bronx. It involves dispatching one social worker and two FDNY EMTs/paramedics, instead of cops, to mental health calls. B-HEARD does not respond to calls involving the threat of violence, so if it operated in the area where Pierre was killed, a B-HEARD team would likely not have responded. .
Officials say early indications are the program has been a success, helping to avoid costly, onerous hospitalizations, while connecting those in need to long-term assistance. But Pierre’s family and advocates for people with mental illness say that mental health professionals aren’t being dispatched often enough to save lives.
For the rest of this story, visit Gothamist.com
New Jersey officials are cracking down on landlords violating a new state law meant to stop discrimination against formerlly incarcerated people looking for housing.
The state Attorney General’s Office sent seven cease-and-desist letters to housing providers who posted apartment ads that explicitly banned residents with convictions from applying. That practice is now prohibited under New Jersey’s landmark law that limits when landlords can run background checks.
“We are committed to ensuring that every New Jersey resident has a fair chance to find safe and affordable housing,” acting Attorney General Platkin said in a statement. “If you are violating the law, we will seek you out, and we will hold you accountable.”
The three-month-old law is hailed by housing advocates as one of the most sweeping in the nation that eliminates automatic housing rejections for formerly incarcerated people.
As winter and spring play tug of war during the first half of March, a special pilgrimage is taking place in the Hudson Valley: the spotted salamanders are looking for the perfect spot to mate.
All month, we're using this spot to talk about some of the plants from the Wednesday Twitter event #wildflowerhourNYC, where people post photos of local wildflowers.
Priyantha Wijesinghe is a zoologist and teacher at LaGuardia Community College. His favorite for this last Wednesday of March is henbit, an early blooming plant in the mint family.
"Its flower has the kind of symmetry we see in a pea flower," he said, "not like a daisy or a rose. The flowers are purplish pink, about half an inch long."
The henbit is often dismissed as a weed, but Wijesinghe said don't let that stop you from taking another look. "I'm sure you'll agree, that the henbit flower is beautiful."
If you want to submit a wildflower photo, snap a picture of what you see and tweet it to us @wnyc, or tweet it to #wildflowerhourNYC Wednesday nights between 8-9.
The midterm election season is heating up across New York City with candidates going door-to-door to collect petitions for the primary contests set for June.
But remnants of last year’s November election still linger and could be a prelude to the coming months. One sign in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn is just such a harbinger.
WNYC's Brigid Bergin has this report.
A prick of the fingertip is a rite of passage for most New York children. During their first six years of life, state law mandates that their blood must be regularly screened for lead exposure.
Widely used in paint, plumbing and gasoline in centuries past, lead is a neurotoxin that can cause irreversible learning impairments and behavioral problems. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has determined that no amount of exposure is safe. But one of the lingering debates within public health circles has asked what level should merit a response from a pediatrician or a health department.
In 2019, the City Council passed legislation requiring the city’s health department to follow any changes in what the CDC calls its “blood lead reference value” — essentially an indicator for when local health departments should intervene to provide treatment and cut off the source of exposure. That shift came in October, when the CDC lowered its reference value from 5 micrograms per deciliter of blood to 3.5 micrograms.
But New York City officials did not immediately adopt the new guidance, despite the legal requirement from the City Council. After nearly five months of public pressure by public health advocates, the New York City Health Department moved to adopt the CDC’s new reference level of 3.5 micrograms, according to a department spokesperson.
Any test results at or above that level will now automatically trigger an investigation by the department. According to data obtained by Gothamist via a Freedom Of Information Law request, the shift in policy means hundreds of additional children will now be eligible for city-funded services each year, amounting to a 50% increase in the city’s annual caseloads.
The city’s adoption of the new lead rules is a move that many public health advocates said they were concerned wouldn’t happen, at least anytime soon. Last month, a coalition of 10 advocates and organizations petitioned the city’s Board of Health to adopt the new standard.
WNYC editor Christopher Werth spoke with host Michael Hill about breaking the news on the health department's pivot and what it could mean for parents. Click listen in the player, and visit Gothamist for more details on the story.
Food writer Scott Lynch joins Weekend Edition host David Furst once again for a look at new places to eat in New York City. This time, it's a review of Patti Ann's in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Scott says the "aggressively family friendly" restaurant was intended, in part, as a tribute to chef Greg Baxtrom's mother who recently retired as an elementary school teacher.
Patti Ann's in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. (Scott Lynch / Gothamist)
This week, just in time for the NBA playoffs and baseball season, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced he was exempting athletes and performers from the city's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private workers. That means, for example, Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving, who is unvaccinated, can now play home games.
WNYC's Elizabeth Kim reports on mayoral power. She joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to talk about the timing of the change and the latest reaction.
When the remnants of Hurricane Ida barreled across New Jersey, Maryann Morris had just started to settle into her newly purchased home on a quiet residential block in Manville.
Less than a year after she moved in with her 7-year-old daughter, Ida’s flood waters inundated her basement and sloshed up another four feet on the first floor.
“There were still my daughter’s baby blankets and stuff from the hospital when she was born,” Morris, 43, said. “There were presents down there that she hadn't gotten to open from her birthday.”
Seven months after the storm, Morris and her daughter, Ember, are still living in a nearby rented apartment as they wait to settle an insurance dispute and receive a government loan to start construction. Morris said her insurance company agreed to cover part of the repairs but it isn’t cooperating with the U.S. Small Business Administration, which will make up the rest.
“I have run out of ways to answer my daughter about when we're going home,” Morris said. “Because I don't even know.”
The recovery for Morris has been slow; the inside of her house is completely gutted. But even when she returns home, she’ll have to decide whether it’s safe enough to stay. She’s one of 200 home and business owners in Manville who received letters from the Somerset County borough telling them they have to elevate their properties or sell to the state’s buyout program, known as Blue Acres.
It’s a dilemma many more homeowners across New Jersey will face as storms worsen. Federal and state officials are launching new initiatives to proactively target flood-prone homes and find long-term solutions before a disaster strikes.
Last fall, a federal jury in Brooklyn convicted two New York City men of murder and extortion. Lawyers for the men claimed the pair didn’t get a fair trial because the judge had prevented unvaccinated people from serving on the jury, and they filed a motion for a new trial. The judge rejected the motion, writing that the men "killed one man" and "this court declines to let them add one or more jurors to their body count.”
Herb Pinder, the editor of WNYC's Race and Justice Unit, talked about what this ruling means. Listen to his conversation by clicking the 'play' button.
Launched by two expat DJs, the grassroots Brooklyn concert series Take Two invites an intimate audience to listen to a classic jazz LP, and then hear a live band offer its own fresh interpretation of the same music. Piotr Orlov reports on the series and its latest event, revisiting Don Cherry's 1975 album Brown Rice.
Read the complete story on Gothamist.
Saint Peter's University in Jersey City can make history as the only No. 15 seed to make the Elite 8 in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. They face No. 3 Purdue in the Sweet 16 Friday night.
“Itchy water eyes, runny nose, coughing, sneezing, wheezing, shortness of breath, scratchy throat, congestion…”
That is what Brooklynite Amy Grech, 49, experiences with the first plant buds of spring, and she said since she was 14 years old, her allergies have worsened in severity as well as lengthened in duration.
“My eyes will get really red. You would think that I was high,” said Grech, who spent the worst days of allergy season indoors with the windows shut. “Every day I'm doing this saline nose spray; the Zaditor [eye drops] first thing when I wake up; allergy pill right after breakfast; Nose spray throughout the day.”
For Grech and many other spring allergy sufferers, spring life won’t get any better, according to a new study that found a strong link between climate change and pollen production. In the warmer, wetter future with rising levels of carbon dioxide, these discharged microscopic grains from the male parts of flowers will not only significantly increase, but their production will be extended by weeks. The scientists behind the study predict allergy season will lengthen as a result, intensifying sensitivities to pollen and symptoms.
Click listen to hear a featurette about the story, and then visit Gothamist for more details.
Legal experts and interest groups will weigh in on Ketanji Brown Jackson as the Senate Judiciary Committee wraps up four days of hearings on her historic nomination to become the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.
Jackson faced down a barrage of Republican questioning over two days about her sentencing of criminal defendants, her bid to join the Supreme Court veering from lofty constitutional questions to attacks on her motivations on the bench.
On Thursday, the last day of hearings, interest groups including the American Bar Association and civil rights organizations will testify about Jackson's suitability for the court. Witnesses chosen by Republican senators will also speak.
The American Bar Association, which evaluates judicial nominees, last week gave Jackson its highest rating, unanimously “well qualified.”
On Wednesday, her final day of Senate questioning, Jackson declared she would rule "without any agendas” as the high court's first Black female justice and rejected Republican efforts to paint her as soft on crime in her decade on the federal bench.
The GOP criticism at her confirmation hearing was punctuated with effusive praise from Democrats, and by reflections on the historic nature of her nomination — none more riveting in the room than from New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who used his time not to ask questions but to tearfully speak and draw tears from Jackson as well.
Booker, who is Black, said that he sees “my ancestors and yours” when he looks at her. “I know what it’s taken for you to sit here in this seat," he said. “You have earned this spot.”
Jackson was silent as Booker talked, but tears rolled down her face, her family sitting behind her.
Jackson was in tears a second time after similar praise from Sen. Alex Padilla, and she responded to the California Democrat that she hopes to be an inspiration because "I love this country, because I love the law.”
Though her approval seems all but sure — Democrats are aiming for a vote before Easter — Republicans kept trying to chip away at her record.
In more than 22 hours of hearings, GOP senators aggressively questioned Jackson on the sentences she has handed down to child pornography offenders in her nine years as a federal judge, her legal advocacy on behalf of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, her thoughts on critical race theory and even her religious views.
Tempers rose as Wednesday's hearing wore on, with Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., slamming down his gavel at one point when Cruz refused to yield after his time expired while he was grilling Jackson.
“You can bang it as long as you want,” Cruz snapped, shouting that he just wanted Jackson to answer his question.
“At some point you have to follow the rules,” Durbin shot back.
The focus on sentencing was part of a larger effort by the committee's Republicans — several are potential presidential candidates — to characterize Jackson's record, and her judicial philosophy, as too empathetic and soft on criminals who commit the worst offenses. It was also reflective of an emerging emphasis on crime in GOP midterm election campaigns.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told Jackson she seemed like “a very kind person” — but “there’s at least a level of empathy that enters into your treatment of a defendant that some could view as maybe beyond what some of us would be comfortable with, with respect to administering justice.”
The sustained focus on her record suggested that, contrary to Democratic hopes, Jackson’s confirmation vote in the full Senate is unlikely to garner much, if any, Republican support. Still, several Republicans acknowledged that she is likely to be on the court. Democrats can confirm her without any bipartisan support in the 50-50 Senate as Vice President Kamala Harris can cast the tiebreaking vote.
Jackson, backed by committee Democrats, said the Republicans were mischaracterizing her decisions. Asked if her rulings were endangering children, she told the committee on Tuesday, "Nothing could be further from the truth.”
She said she bases sentences on many factors, not just federal guidelines. Sentencing is not a “numbers game,” she said, noting that there are no mandatory sentences for sex offenders and that there has been significant debate on the subject.
Some of the cases have given her nightmares, she said, and were “among the worst that I have seen."
She reminded the committee that her brother and two uncles served as police officers, and that “crime and the effect on the community, and the need for law enforcement — those are not abstract concepts or political slogans to me.”
President Joe Biden chose Jackson in February, fulfilling a campaign pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court. She would take the seat of Justice Stephen Breyer, who announced in January that he would retire this summer after 28 years.
Jackson would be the third Black justice, after Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, and the sixth woman. Her confirmation would maintain the current 6-3 conservative majority on the court. She would also be the first former public defender on the court, and the first justice with experience representing indigent criminal defendants since Marshall.
Some of the most combative rounds of questioning during the hearings came from the potential GOP presidential candidates, including Cruz, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton. All hit on issues that are popular with the GOP base, including attacks on critical race theory, the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions. Jackson said the idea doesn't come up in her work as a judge, and it “wouldn’t be something I would rely on” if confirmed.
For more than a century, New York City residents who can't afford a burial or whose bodies are unclaimed have been laid to rest in the potter's field on Hart Island. But it's hard to access, and many people are unaware of its history. But a new play by theater company Mason Holdings meditates on the island's role, and New Yorkers' relationships with it.
For the full story, go to Gothamist.com.
Standing in the sunshine outside a Suffolk County courthouse, Derek tried to explain the fight with addiction that keeps getting him arrested.
“It’s a crazy thing,” said Derek, who asked us not to use his last name because he fears it could jeopardize his upcoming court case. “It just makes you do things that you normally wouldn’t do when you’re a sober person.”
Derek, now in his 40s, was first arrested for drug possession when he was 15. He’s spent the last 25 years in and out of jail.
Usually when he’s been arrested, Derek has waited for trial in jail.
But his most recent arrest was different. Under the changes to the state bail laws enacted in 2020, he got to wait for trial at home. During the waiting period, he got access to a slate of publicly-funded programs known as pretrial services. For Derek, that meant drug counseling. Already, he says he can tell that support will make it easier for him to stay out of trouble after his case is over.
“I have a lot more resources than I did before,” he said. “If I have any issues with anything, I can go to these counselors.”
But the support Derek got is rare. Under the new bail reform laws, counties are required at a minimum to keep track of people who have been released before trial – either using electronic devices or probation staff. If counties want to spend the money, they can also offer other services like mentoring, drug counseling, and job placement — services advocates say reduce crime.
In an analysis of the 10 most-populous jurisdictions in New York, most departments in charge of pretrial services aren't increasing funding, even though thousands more people are now awaiting trial from home? Only two -- New York City and Westchester -- significantly increased the budgets for the departments in charge of pretrial services. The eight remaining counties increased budgets by an average of 3% since 2019, less than the rate of inflation.
Dr. Regina Alvarez is an assistant professor at Dominican College, and a contributor to the Twitter event #WildflowerHourNYC, where people post photos of local wildflowers they've spotted.
The wildflower she's liking this week? Ozark witch hazel, a late-winter blooming shrub that sometimes gets mistaken for forsythia.
"It has these long, ribbon-shaped petals, and they're kind of crinkly." she said. "Enjoy it! It's fabulous!"
If you want to submit a photo, tweet it and tag us @WNYC, and be sure to check out all the things that are blooming Wednesday night on #WildflowerHourNYC between 8-9 pm.
Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is returning to the Senate for a third day of hearings as Republicans try to paint her as soft on crime and Democrats herald the historic nature of her nomination to become the first Black woman on the high court.
In Tuesday's marathon hearing, Republicans aggressively questioned Jackson on the sentences she has handed down to sex offenders in her nine years as a federal judge, her advocacy on behalf of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, her thoughts on critical race theory and even her religious views. At one point, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas read from children's books that he said are taught at her teenage daughter's school.
Several GOP senators grilled Jackson on her child pornography sentences, arguing they were lighter than federal guidelines recommend. She said she based the sentences on many factors, not just the guidelines, and said some of the cases had given her nightmares.
Could her rulings have endangered children? “As a mother and a judge,” she said, “nothing could be further from the truth.”
In what Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., described as “a trial by ordeal,” Jackson spent her first day of hearings answering GOP concerns and highlighting her empathetic style on the bench. The committee's Republicans, several of whom have their eyes on the presidency, tried to brand her — and Democrats in general — as soft on crime, an emerging theme in GOP midterm election campaigns.
Jackson told the committee that her brother and two uncles served as police officers, and that “crime and the effect on the community, and the need for law enforcement — those are not abstract concepts or political slogans to me.”
Wednesday's hearing is the second day of questioning, and the third day of hearings, after Jackson and the 22 members of the panel gave opening statements on Monday. On Thursday, the committee will hear from legal experts before an eventual vote to move her nomination to the Senate floor.
President Joe Biden chose Jackson in February, fulfilling a campaign pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court for the first time in American history. She would take the seat of Justice Stephen Breyer, who announced in January that he would retire after 28 years on the court. Jackson would be the third Black justice, after Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, and the sixth woman.
Barring unexpected developments, Democrats who control the Senate by the slimmest of margins hope to wrap up Jackson’s confirmation before Easter, though Breyer is not leaving until the current session ends this summer.
Jackson said the potential to be the first Black woman on the court is “extremely meaningful” and that she had received many letters from young girls. Her nomination also “supports public confidence in the judiciary,” Jackson said.
Democrats have been full of praise for Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, noting that she would not only be the first Black woman but also the first public defender on the court, and the first with experience representing indigent criminal defendants since Marshall.
Republicans praised that experience, too, but also questioned it, focusing in particular on work she did roughly 15 years ago representing detainees at the U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Jackson said public defenders don’t pick their clients and are “standing up for the constitutional value of representation.” She said she continued to represent one client in private practice because her firm happened to be assigned his case.
Picking up on a thread started by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and amplified by the Republican National Committee in fundraising emails, Cruz questioned Jackson on her sentences for child pornographers, at one point bringing out a large poster board and circling sentences he said he found egregious.
Jackson defended her decisions by saying she takes into account not only sentencing guidelines but also the stories of the victims, the nature of the offenses and the defendants' histories.
“A judge is not playing a numbers game,” she said. “A judge is looking at all of these different factors.”
Cruz, Hawley and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., are potential 2024 presidential candidates, and their rounds of questioning were some of the most combative, hitting on issues that are popular with the GOP base. Cruz asked her about critical race theory, a premise that centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions. Jackson said the idea doesn't come up in her work as a judge, and it “wouldn’t be something I would rely on” if confirmed.
The Texas senator also questioned her about her daughter's private school in Washington, where she sits on the board, bringing up a book called “Antiracist Baby" that he said was taught to younger children at the school.
“Do you agree with this book that is being taught for kids that babies are racist?” Cruz asked.
Visibly annoyed, Jackson took a long pause. She said no children should be made to feel they are racists, victims or oppressors. “I don’t believe in any of that," she said.
Asked about abortion, Jackson readily agreed with comments that conservative Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh made about two landmark cases when they were up for confirmation. “Roe and Casey are the settled law of the Supreme Court concerning the right to terminate a woman’s pregnancy. They have established a framework that the court has reaffirmed,” Jackson said.
Jackson’s answers bypassed a key point: The court right now is weighing whether to overrule those cases that affirm a nationwide right to abortion.
Near the end of the day, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., asked Jackson when life begins. She told him that she didn’t know, and added, without elaborating, “I have a religious view that I set aside when I am ruling on cases.”
Nationwide, More than half of all Black children will have gone through some sort of child protective services investigation by the time they turn 18, twice the rate of white children. A newly formed civil rights group in New York City is taking aim at the longstanding racial disparities embedded in the child protective services system. WNYC’s Gwynne Hogan has more:
New Jersey officials say they should be able to decide who can police the state's docks, even if their neighbors in New York disagree.
In a legal brief this week, New Jersey's acting Attorney General said the Waterfront Commission had outlived its usefulness. He said the agency is over regulating the ports in order to justify its existence and he urged the U.S. Supreme Court court to reject New York's "eleventh-hour" attempt to stop a plan that's been four years in the making, when state lawmakers voted to withdraw from the commission in 2018.
Last week, New York asked the Supreme Court to prevent New Jersey from dissolving the bi-state agency that was created 70 years ago to fight organized crime at the ports. New Jersey plans to hand oversight of its piers and terminals to the State Police starting Monday.
It’s been one month since Russia invaded Ukraine. WNYC’s Amy Pearl visited Razom, a non-profit aid group operating out of the East Village.
It is a classic practice memorialized in countless television cop dramas: an enterprising detective offers a cigarette or soda to a suspect in a police interrogation room in an effort to soften them up.
But a federal class-action lawsuit filed Monday night in the Southern District of New York accused the NYPD, working with the city medical examiner’s office, of unconstitutionally using that practice to collect possible suspects' DNA from cigarette butts, empty cans or bottles left in interrogation rooms. The suit, filed by the Legal Aid Society, tells the story of a 12-year-old brought in for questioning who was given a soda from McDonald’s that an officer, clad in rubber gloves, later carefully collected to search for DNA fragments, according to court filings.
Phil Desgranges, supervising attorney for Legal Aid, said this means that everyone, including children, can potentially become “permanent suspects,” as each individual's unique biological data could be stored in a suspect index and compared to evidence in future crimes, regardless of whether that person was charged with a crime.
“If the NYPD wanted to search someone’s cell phone, if they wanted to search your home, they would have to get a warrant or court order to do so,” Desgranges said. “But here, they’re getting this ability to effectively search your genetic material perpetually without any authorization from a court, and without any knowledge of the person whose DNA is being taken.”
The Legal Aid Society filed the class-action lawsuit against the city, along with top NYPD and medical examiner officials, on behalf of the more than 30,000 people with DNA in the suspect index as of the filing. Lawyers said they hoped to get the DNA profiles expunged from the index and stop the NYPD and medical examiner from taking and holding DNA in perpetuity.
To read the rest of this story, go to Gothamist.com.
Only three months into his tenure, Mayor Eric Adams has put food policy front and center in his agenda. In February, he hosted a cooking demonstration while announcing a citywide chain of plant-based medicine clinics. He directed city agencies to serve more plant-based meals a few weeks later.
But concurrently, Adams has also called the high price of healthy food "a myth" and said New Yorkers should buy berries and lentils from their local bodegas.
“I want people to say, ‘What could I eat in my bodega right now?’” Adams said at the February 7th cooking event. “These black-eyed peas are right in your local bodega. The carrots in your local bodega. The bananas, the apples in your local bodega. The berries in your local bodega.”
In truth, experts say time and money constraints, as well as a segregated food system, make it difficult for the poorest New Yorkers to eat the kind of diet that helped Adams himself manage his Type 2 diabetes, a chronic disease afflicting close to 1 million New Yorkers.
Adams has acknowledged these disparities, telling reporters, “Healthy food is where The New York Times is on the stand. Unhealthy food is where all the other tabloids are on the stand.” Research finds that not having enough nutritious food is linked to chronic disease risk, particularly for people who aren’t eligible for food assistance services such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Food policy experts and advocates applaud the mayor’s food-forward agenda, while also calling on him to fill gaps in the city’s disconnected patchwork of nutrition programs. The researchers and advocates interviewed for this story say the city’s efforts to remedy food insecurity tend to address smaller issues, like the absence of grocery stores, rather than the overarching problems.
“What would it take to make healthy food as convenient, accessible and affordable as unhealthy food?” asked Nicholas Freudenberg, director of the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute. “How can we change the calculus, so healthy food is the easy choice rather than the hard choice? We really need to think of policies that would move us in that direction.”
For more details, click listen in the player, and check out the full story on Gothamist.
Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson will face senators’ questions for the first time Tuesday as Democrats push to quickly confirm the only Black female justice in the court’s 233-year history.
Jackson, a federal appeals court judge, sat and silently listened to more than four hours of senators' opening statements on Monday, the first of four days of Judiciary Committee hearings on her nomination. As senators begin 30-minute rounds of grilling on Tuesday, she will respond to their specific points, including charges by some Republicans that she has been too lenient in sentencing on criminal matters.
In her own 12-minute statement, Jackson didn’t mention specific cases but told the committee that she would “apply the laws to the facts of the case before me, without fear or favor, consistent with my judicial oath,” if she were to be confirmed.
Jackson, 51, thanked God and professed love for “our country and the Constitution." She stressed that she has been independent, deciding cases “from a neutral posture” in her nine years as a federal judge.
While Republicans promised pointed questions, Democrats were full of praise for President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee. Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin said that to be first, “often, you have to be the best, in some ways the bravest."
Biden chose Jackson in February, fulfilling a campaign pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court for the first time in American history. She would take the seat of Justice Stephen Breyer, who announced in January that he would retire after 28 years on the court.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., spoke emotionally about the “joy” he felt about her historic nomination and acknowledged her family's pride. Booker, who is Black, said the white men who have sat on the Supreme Court for two centuries were “extraordinary patriots who helped shape this country” but that many people could have never dreamed of sitting on the court.
Jackson would be the third Black justice, after Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, and the sixth woman.
"When the next generation behind us looks at the highest courts in the land, this ideal will be made more real," Booker said.
Barring unexpected developments, Democrats who control the Senate by the slimmest of margins hope to wrap up Jackson's confirmation before Easter, even though Breyer is not leaving the court until after the current session ends this summer. Democratic leaders are hoping for some Republican support, but can confirm her with the support of only Democrats in the 50-50 Senate as Vice President Kamala Harris can cast a tie-breaking vote.
In the opening statements, Democrats on the Judiciary panel sought to preemptively rebut Republican criticism of Jackson's record on criminal matters as a judge and before that as a federal public defender and a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency created by Congress to reduce disparity in federal prison sentences.
Jackson “is not anti-law enforcement” and is not “soft on crime,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said, noting that members of Jackson’s family have worked in law enforcement and that she has support from some national police organizations. ”Judge Jackson is no judicial activist."
The committee's senior Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, promised Republicans would “ask tough questions about Jackson’s judicial philosophy,” without turning the hearings into a ”spectacle."
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., noted that Democrats had opposed some past Republican judicial nominees who were Black or Hispanic, and he said that he and his GOP colleagues wouldn't be deterred by Jackson’s race from asking probing questions.
Graham said of some criticism from the left: “It’s about, ‘We’re all racist if we ask hard questions.’ That’s not going to fly with us.”
Graham was one of three Republicans to support Jackson's confirmation, 53-44, as an appellate judge last year. But he has indicated over the past several weeks that he is unlikely to vote for her again.
Even though few Republicans are likely to vote for her, most GOP senators did not aggressively criticize Jackson, whose confirmation would not change the court’s 6-3 conservative majority. Several Republicans used their time to denounce Senate Democrats instead of Jackson’s record.
Republicans are trying to use her nomination to brand Democrats as soft on crime, an emerging theme in GOP midterm election campaigns. Biden has chosen several former public defenders for life-tenured judicial posts.
With Jackson taking notes, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said in his opening statement that his research showed that she had a pattern of issuing lower sentences in child pornography cases, repeating comments he wrote in a Twitter thread last week. The Republican National Committee echoed his claims in blast messages to supporters.
The White House, along with several Democrats at the hearing, has rejected Hawley’s criticism as “toxic and weakly presented misinformation.” Former Alabama Sen. Doug Jones, who is guiding Jackson through the Senate process, told reporters afterward that “she will be the one to counter many of those questions” on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Hawley is one of several committee Republicans, along with Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who are potential 2024 presidential candidates, and their aspirations may collide with other Republicans who would prefer not to pursue a scorched-earth approach to Jackson’s nomination.
Members of the Judiciary panel are already familiar with Jackson, who appeared before them last year after Biden chose her to fill an opening on the federal appeals court in Washington. She was also vetted by the committee and confirmed by the Senate as a district court judge under President Barack Obama and to her post on the sentencing commission.
Jackson expressed her thanks and love to her husband, Patrick Jackson, a surgeon in Washington who wore socks with an image of George Washington and occasionally wiped away tears. Their two daughters, one in college and the other in high school, also attended, as did Jackson's parents and in-laws.
While the focus was on the Senate hearings, the Supreme Court itself was in session Monday, but one chair was was empty. Thomas, 73, the longest-serving justice now on the court, was in the hospital being treated for an infection. He does not have COVID-19, the court said in a statement.
Environmental activists are protesting oil tankers carrying Russian fossil fuels into the New York area as energy companies take advantage of a grace period before an official ban on oil and gas from the country goes into effect.
WNYC's Jake Offenhartz spoke with host Sean Carlson.
It took years of advocacy and a scandal-ridden pandemic for state lawmakers to pass minimum staffing requirements for New York’s nursing homes last May. But just as those rules were supposed to take effect on January 1st, Gov. Kathy Hochul decided to give long-term care facilities some leeway.
The governor issued an executive order on December 31st postponing enforcement of the rules for 30 days, citing a state of emergency she had declared due to a health care workforce shortage. At the time, the move seemed to be related to the omicron variant. COVID-19 cases had spiked in recent weeks, exacerbating staffing issues at hospitals and nursing homes.
But Hochul has since extended her executive order multiple times, most recently delaying enforcement of the rules, through the end of March.
Under the legislation, nursing homes are supposed to hire enough staff to provide patients with an average of three-and-a-half hours of clinical care each day. Patient advocates and labor unions say they are left wondering when nursing homes will actually have to staff up and comply. Studies have linked higher nursing home staffing levels to better quality care and even lower mortality rates.
“There is no reason to further postpone long-overdue reforms that hold nursing home operators accountable for ensuring adequate standards of care,” Milly Silva, executive vice president of 1199 SEIU, one of the unions that fought for the staffing legislation, said in a statement. “Residents, their families, caregivers and the tax-payers who fund this industry deserve better.”
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The Senate Judiciary Committee is beginning historic confirmation hearings Monday for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who would be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.
Watch the hearing live, starting at 11 a.m.
Barring a significant misstep by the 51-year-old Jackson, a federal judge for the past nine years, Democrats who control the Senate by the slimmest of margins intend to wrap up her confirmation before Easter.
Jackson is expected to present an opening statement Monday afternoon, then answer questions from the committee's 11 Democrats and 11 Republicans over the next two days. She will be introduced by Thomas B. Griffith, a retired judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Lisa M. Fairfax, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.
Jackson appeared before the same committee last year, after President Joe Biden chose her to fill an opening on the federal appeals court in Washington, just down the hill from the Supreme Court.
Her testimony will give most Americans, as well as the Senate, their most extensive look yet at the Harvard-trained lawyer with a resume that includes two years as a federal public defender. That makes her the first nominee with significant criminal defense experience since Thurgood Marshall, the first Black American to serve on the nation's highest court.
In addition to being the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, Jackson would be the third Black justice, after Marshall and his successor, Justice Clarence Thomas.
The American Bar Association, which evaluates judicial nominees, on Friday gave Jackson’s its highest rating, unanimously “well qualified.”
Janette McCarthy Wallace, general counsel of the NAACP, said she is excited to see a Black woman on the verge of a high court seat.
“Representation matters,” Wallace said. “It's critical to have diverse experience on the bench. It should reflect the rich cultural diversity of this country.”
It's not yet clear how aggressively Republicans will go after Jackson, given that her confirmation would not alter the court's 6-3 conservative majority.
Still, some Republicans have signaled they could use Jackson's nomination to try to brand Democrats as soft on crime, an emerging theme in GOP midterm election campaigns. Biden has chosen several former public defenders for life-tenured judicial posts. In addition, Jackson served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency created by Congress to reduce disparity in federal prison sentences.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., highlighted one potential line of attack. “I’ve noticed an alarming pattern when it comes to Judge Jackson’s treatment of sex offenders, especially those preying on children,” Hawley wrote on Twitter last week in a thread that was echoed by the Republican National Committee. Hawley did not raise the issue when he questioned Jackson last year before voting against her appeals court confirmation.
The White House pushed back forcefully against the criticism as “toxic and weakly presented misinformation.” Sentencing expert Douglas Berman, an Ohio State law professor, wrote on his blog that Jackson’s record shows she is skeptical of the range of prison terms recommended for child pornography cases, “but so too were prosecutors in the majority of her cases and so too are district judges nationwide.”
Hawley is one of several committee Republicans, along with Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who are potential 2024 presidential candidates, and their aspirations may collide with other Republicans who would just as soon not pursue a scorched-earth approach to Jackson's nomination.
Biden chose Jackson in February, fulfilling a campaign pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court for the first time in American history. She would take the seat of Justice Stephen Breyer, who announced in January that he would retire this summer after 28 years on the court.
Jackson once worked as a high court law clerk to Breyer early in her legal career.
Democrats are moving quickly to confirm Jackson, even though Breyer's seat will not officially open until the summer. They have no votes to spare in a 50-50 Senate that they run by virtue of the tiebreaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.
But they are not moving as fast as Republicans did when they installed Amy Coney Barrett on the court little more than a month after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and days before the 2020 presidential election.
Barrett, the third of President Donald Trump's high court picks, entrenched the court's conservative majority when she took the place of the liberal Ginsburg.
Last year, Jackson won Senate confirmation by a 53-44 vote, with three Republicans supporting her. It's not clear how many Republicans might vote for her this time.
Jackson is married to Patrick Johnson, a surgeon in Washington. They have two daughters, one in college and the other in high school. She is related by marriage to former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who also was the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2012. Ryan has voiced support for Jackson's nomination.
Jackson has spoken about how her children have kept her in touch with reality, even as she has held a judge's gavel since 2013. In the courtroom, she told an audience in Athens, Georgia, in 2017, “people listen and generally do what I tell them to do.”
At home, though, her daughters “make it very clear I know nothing, I should not tell them anything, much less give them any orders, that is, if they talk to me at all,” Jackson said.
A seemingly endless cycle of violence has kept homelessness top of mind in Lower Manhattan, particularly in Chinatown, where business and civic leaders, residents and activists are searching for solutions. Senior reporter Arun Venugopal of the WNYC's Race and Justice Unit has the story.
New York State Assemblywoman Taylor Darling (D-18) grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and Hempstead on Long Island, and she said she felt the disparity living in a community that is predominantly Black. She said finding green space to play was “impossible,” and her family suffered from asthma, exposure to lead, water and air pollution.
Her new fight to secure $15 billion for climate justice in the 2022-2023 state budget is a personal one. With the approval deadline looming about two weeks away, Darling along with Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages (D-22) said they want to implement programs to “fix the wrongs” caused by environmental racism — that includes lack of green space, updating housing, improving air and water quality as well as training for jobs in the environmental sector.
“The drive on Washington Avenue from Hempstead to Garden City, you see very, very little trees while you're driving through Hempstead, heading towards Garden City,” Darling said. “But as soon as you pass that invisible fence into Garden City, it's so lush. It's so rich that the air smells and tastes different because the greenery is there.”
The proposed $15 billion would allow for investment in communities like Hempstead and Bedford-Stuyvesant, where residents have borne the brunt of the environmental burden of exposure to industrial waste and limited access to parks.
This infusion of financial support into disadvantaged areas would allocate $4.8 billion for infrastructure for the energy transition such as expanding offshore wind, grid stability and upgrading energy systems in public housing. It would also include electrifying buses, including the school fleets.
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Dom DeMarco, the founder and owner of Midwood's Di Fara Pizza, died on Thursday at the age of 85. WNYC's Emily Lang spoke with New York pizza makers about the life and legacy of New York's most iconic 'pizzaiolo.'
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is backing a series of changes to the state’s 2019 bail reforms, staking a position for the first time amid a raging debate over criminal justice in New York.
The Democratic governor sent a 10-point public safety plan to the state Legislature this week that, among other measures, would allow judges to set bail for additional charges and for repeat offenders. It would also grant judges more discretion to require bail in certain felony cases, based on a defendant’s criminal history or whether they possess a firearm.
Legislative leaders have made it clear they have no intention of rolling back the hard-won reforms of 2019. Hochul, who is mounting a run this year for a full term as governor, has been attacked by Republicans and moderate Democrats for not doing more to tamp down a persistent spike in crime in New York City and elsewhere.
WNYC Albany reporter Jon Campbell spoke with All Things Considered host Sean Carlson about Hochul's plan.
To read the full story, go to Gothamist.com.
This year we're celebrating some of the organizations who went above-and-beyond doing incredible work getting us vaccinated against COVID-19.
Host Brian Lehrer is joined by Mitra Kalita, co-founder of URL Media and CEO and publisher of Epicenter-NYC, to recognize the work of this year's honorees.
Join the conversation at 212-433-WNYC (9692)!
About the Lehrer Prize: Founded to commemorate Brian Lehrer’s 30th anniversary on-air at WNYC, The Lehrer Prize recognizes a standout idea, person, group, or effort that has contributed meaningfully to life in New York City and the surrounding areas over the past year. Each honoree receives $2,500 to continue their organization's outstanding work. This year, the prize recognizes organizations that have gone above and beyond to advocate for vaccination in their communities.
The 2022 winners of the 'Lehrer Prize for Community Well Being':
India Home Vasundhara Kalasapudi, MD, a geriatric psychiatrist and executive director of India Home, a non-profit organization founded in 2007 dedicated to addressing the needs of the Indian and larger South Asian senior citizen immigrant community, talks about her organization’s work shifting their work during the pandemic to provide vaccine access to their mostly non-English speaking community.
Bed-Stuy Strong Carolyn Ruvkun and Christina Xu talk about their work with Bed-Stuy Strong, an online community and mutual aid network founded in 2020 in response to the pandemic.
UCC Newark Craig Mainor, executive director of UCC Newark (United Community Corporation), shares his long-standing organization’s collaborative work in boosting vaccinations in Newark, NJ.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Department of Health undercounted the number of COVID-19 nursing home deaths by at least 4,100 and was unprepared to confront the deadly contagion before it ever arrived, state Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli said in an audit released Tuesday night.
DiNapoli's report pointed to a "persistent lack of funding for public health" over the last 10 years that left lawmakers unnecessarily handcuffed in the face of a devastating pandemic. Inaccurate death counts, mismanagement and the control over pertinent information under Cuomo led to a reality in which the actual number of nursing home deaths is still uncertain, the comptroller said. The findings are the latest refrain in a litany of scandals that emerged in Cuomo's final months in office before he eventually resigned amid sexual harassment allegations.
Read the full story on Gothamist.com.
Some veterans in New York City are speaking out against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ proposal to close its medical center in Fort Hamilton at the southern tip of Brooklyn.
The agency said the facility is out of date and difficult to access by public transportation, in addition to being located in an area that’s home to a declining number of military servicepeople. It is also moving to replace another medical center in Manhattan under a proposal that would likely mean lower hospital capacity.
For more details, click listen in the player and visit Gothamist.
West Ward Councilman Joseph McCallum admitted he solicited bribes and kickbacks from contractors seeking work in Newark.
McCallum also served on the board of directors for the city's redevelopment agency.
The U.S. Attorney's Office said under the kickback scheme, McCallum received a $16,000 bribe from a contracting company, a $25,000 bribe from a development company and $500 in cash for an out of country trip where he tried to get more payments from a developer. McCallum, 66, told WNYC he plans to finish out his term which ends in June. He will be sentenced in July.
Members of the Ukrainian diaspora found moments of comfort at the Metropolitan Opera Monday night, when the company mounted a concert benefiting Ukrainian war-relief efforts.
Two years ago today, the New York City school system shut down. We didn’t know it then, but it was just the beginning of an avalanche of changes that would be brought on by the COVID 19 pandemic. WNYC’s Amy Pearl has this time capsule from March 16, 2020, recorded by her friend John DeLore.
The killer police say targeted homeless people in New York City and Washington D.C. is part of a disturbing trend: A growing number of unhoused people are being murdered in the city.
The New York Police Department reported Tuesday morning that the man they believe has shot at least five homeless people in New York City and Washington D.C. since March 3 -- killing two -- has been arrested in Washington D.C. They had not released further details Tuesday morning.
Data compiled by city agencies shows that the killings are part of a larger pattern. Since 2018, the number of homeless people killed in New York City has increased 300 percent. Seven people were killed that year, 10 in 2019, then 11 in 2020, and finally 22 in the last fiscal year. It’s a trend that homeless advocates told The Washington Post holds true nationally, though there is no definitive national data.
Advocates say the violence may be fed by a perception that homeless people are a nuisance or threat to the public. In New York, high-profile incidents of violence on the subway, including the death of a woman pushed to her death by a homeless and mentally ill man, recently led Mayor Eric Adams to announce that police would move homeless people out of the transit system. The NYPD added about 1,000 officers to patrol the subways.
To read the rest of the story, visit Gothamist.com.
As gas prices continue to rise across the U.S., some New Yorkers like Brooklyn resident Stephanie Doba don't need to worry.
Desperate to decrease her use of fossil fuels three years ago, Doba traded in her fuel-efficient Toyota Prius for an electric vehicle — a Tesla 3 Midrange. And she said she can't imagine going back to a gas-powered car.
“For me, it was wanting to put my money where my mouth is as someone very concerned about the climate crisis,” Doba said. “I just couldn't bear driving a gas car anymore.”
Yet Doba is a rare breed of New Yorker. According to state data, approximately 21,000 electric vehicles are registered in New York City, which is less than 1% of all the vehicles registered in the five boroughs. A similar trend applies statewide, where only about 62,000 of 11 million vehicles are solely electric.
This low rate of electric vehicle adoption is despite New York leading many states in advancing climate change policies. Transportation, meanwhile, accounts for 20% of greenhouse gas emissions in New York state and nearly 30% nationally.
For more on this story, click listen in the player and visit Gothamist.
Mayor Eric Adams had consistently been imploring workers to return to the office full time. He says it’s critical for the city’s post-pandemic recovery. WNYC’s Elizabeth Kim reports on how the mayor has now walked back that stance, and why.
Click here to read the story on Gothamist.
New Jersey lawmakers vented their frustrations at state Labor Commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo on Thursday during a three-hour hearing, as he testified over his department's handling of unemployment benefits.
Senators said they're still getting calls from constituents who've waited months for their unemployment benefits.
"290 days, pending, 286 days, pending," state Senator Anthony Bucco said, calling those wait times unacceptable.
Asaro Angelo says most claims have been processed and said the constituents calling the senator's office were just 3% of the claimants in his district.
"I need to focus on the 100%," he said.
Lawmakers also pressed Asaro Angelo to do more to help residents and open unemployment offices. The commissioner says limited in-person services will start March 28.
State policy seeking to right the wrongs of the past by prioritizing recreational weed licenses for those with past convictions is a step in the right direction, advocates said this week.
New York’s first cannabis dispensaries are slated to open by the end of the year, which is months ahead of the summer 2023 launch date cannabis officials had pointed to in the past, state officials confirmed Thursday. And under the new licensing regulations, people convicted of a cannabis offense before legalization in March 2021 would have a head start in the entrepreneurship process, as would the family members of those with such convictions. In an unprecedented attempt to address historic inequities, officials said that cohort would be the only group eligible to apply for the first round of retail licenses in New York.
The policy to prioritize that group would likely garner between 100 and 200 licenses, according to Chris Alexander, executive director of the state’s Office of Cannabis Management. That would likely be just a fraction of the industry as the state has not set an upper limit for the number of overall licenses.
Colorado, for contrast, doled 1,500 adult-use business licenses just seven years into legalization, according to The Denver Post.
But prioritizing these 100 to 200 businesses would represent one of the first concrete steps that New York officials have taken to deliver on the promises of equity and inclusion that were made in the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act, the law that legalized cannabis in March 2021. The law called for half of licenses going to so-called “social equity applicants,” a category that includes not only those who have been impacted by prohibition, but also distressed farmers, disabled veterans and women- and minority-owned businesses.
WNYC host Sean Carlson spoke with health and science reporter Caroline Lewis about what the policy could mean for the industry's future. Click listen in the player, and visit Gothamist for more on the story.
A new report by the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice found that New Jersey had one of the largest percentage drops in its prison population nationwide. The study comes as the state's early prison release program winds down.
The criminal justice reform group says between the end of 2019 and 2021, New Jersey's prison population decreased by one-third. That's the second largest drop in the country, and a contrast to other states which saw their prison populations drop during the first year of the pandemic, only to have their inmate populations tick back up in 2021.
New Jersey's decline is largely due to a one-of-a-kind measure approved by state lawmakers. It allows eligible inmates to accrue public health credits due to the pandemic and move their release dates up by eight months. More than 5,500 hundred people have been freed early, though the program is expected to end this summer.
Workers at a national retail chain REI in SoHo voted to unionize last week. So did tech workers at the New York Times. Baristas at a handful of Starbucks locations around the city are organizing, so are thousands of Amazon warehouse workers. Their union vote will take place later this month. month. WNYC’s Gwynne Hogan looks at whether labor is having a moment in New York City.
When biochemistry grad student Amanda Whittaker’s Con Edison bill tripled last month, she was so frustrated by the increase that she blasted out a letter to the Public Service Commission, the state regulatory agency for public utilities.
“As a graduate student, money is perpetually tight,” the doctorate candidate wrote on the commission’s public complaint webpage, explaining that she had to take out $10,000 in student loans to supplement her $30,000 annual teaching stipend from Hunter College. Her share of the rent on a three-bedroom apartment in Astoria is $950.
“I live hand-to-mouth and barely have enough money to eat, let alone enjoy all that New York has to offer,” she added. “I depend on a razor-thin margin to keep the lights on.”
The jump in New Yorkers' energy costs came in part because of a 13% rate hike for Con Ed customers that went into effect in 2020. Then, this February, the utility said another recent increase was caused by a spike in demand and disruptions in the supply chain that caused natural gas prices to jump.
The double whammy caused bills to double or even triple last month, leading to a chorus of outrage from utility customers over the megawatt hole the state utility companies had blown in their budgets. Elected officials, including the governor and state attorney general, promised to hold the utility accountable.
But one voice was conspicuously silent: Special Counsel for Ratepayer Protection Rory Lancman, a former state and city lawmaker who was tapped by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in October of 2020 to be the first in-house watchdog for utility customers.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
It may feel like winter will never end, but greener days are coming and some New Yorkers are already out there looking for signs of spring.
Zihao Wang is an urban botanist and a frequent contributor to the Wednesday night Twitter event #wildflowerhourNYC, where people post photos of local wildflowers that they've spotted.
His recent favorite? The tulip tree, with its large yellow and green tulip-shaped flowers. But he said you don't need to rely on their blooms to identify them — their leaves are distinctive too.
"Many may say they look like a cat's face," Wang said. "But to me they also look like the shape of a tee-shirt."
The buds of Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) #WildflowerHourNYC pic.twitter.com/oOR3mWjmgv
— Zihao Wang (@Violaplantago) March 3, 2022 The largest tree in the city, the 450 year old Queens Giant of Alley Pond Park, (also known as the Alley Pond Giant), is a tulip tree.
If you see something blooming today, despite the chilly temperatures, take a picture! You can tweet it and tag us @WNYC, and be sure to check out all the great finds on #wildflowerhourNYC on Twitter.
The New York City Board of Elections says a vendor error triggered nearly 44-thousand faulty voter address verification letters to be sent out in recent days. WNYC's Brigid Bergin reports.
The MTA's $600 million renovation of Penn Station has begun, starting with the removal of low-hanging beams.
Hate crimes have been on the rise in New York City but a new report finds a small portion result in conviction.
The City reports only about 15 percent of hate crime charges filed between 2015 and 2020 resulted in a conviction.
Reporter Yoan Gonen explains why to WNYC's Michael Hill.
In a pivotal moment, masks are becoming optional for students in kindergarten through 12th grade in New York City public schools. New Jersey is lifting its statewide mask mandate as well, and some districts in New Jersey are keeping the requirement, while others are making masks optional.
Scientifically speaking, a squirrel is just a rodent, sharing this status with mice and rats, fellow denizens of New York City parks. But something about these wide-eyed, bushy-tailed fearless acrobats draws the attention of any park-goer.
That’s what inspired 72 New Yorkers to venture into parks for a single afternoon in early March 2020 to count and observe squirrels in 24 parks in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Their findings, entitled Squirrels, Parks and the City: A (very serious) data-gathering expedition, were released Friday by The Squirrel Census. The results are accessible through NYC Open Data, a site that publishes free public data provided by city agencies and other groups.
This census, which is run by a rag-tag group of data scientists and moonlighting naturalists, spotted 433 squirrels overall. Tompkins Square Park in the East Village had the most sightings. Four parks — Sternberg and Cooper Parks in Brooklyn as well as Thomas Paine and Sara D. Roosevelt Parks in Manhattan — recorded zero sightings. Grey squirrels were the most common (390 total), followed by cinnamon-colored squirrels (26) and then black squirrels (16). One squirrel entry wasn’t labeled with a color.
For more details, click listen in the player and head to Gothamist.
New York Republicans made clear at their nominating convention this week that they intend to make crime and public safety the major plank of their platform in 2022, when a handful of statewide offices are up for grabs along with congressional and state legislative seats.
The Republican State Committee gathered on Long Island to back their preferred candidates, including Congressman Lee Zeldin, who is running for governor.
WNYC's Albany reporter Jon Campbell joined Weekend Edition Host David Furst to discuss the week in New York politics.
For more, visit Gothamist.com.
The 19th-century Park Slope venue Grand Prospect Hall has been demolished, despite efforts from neighborhood activists who hoped to preserve at least some part of the widely beloved building.
Monday marks the start of a new phase of the pandemic in New York City. Mask mandates in city public schools will end for students five and older. And the Key 2 NYC vaccine requirement for restaurants, gyms and cultural venues will also end.
WNYC’s Elizabeth Kim talks about the changes and how experts and businesses are responding.
About 20 or so people piled into Fountain House Bronx on a recent morning, filling the social club’s main hall with a mix of English and Spanish. The members, all of whom must have a mental illness such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder to join, discussed what was on the agenda for the day.
A handful of paid staff scattered themselves throughout the room, but it was up to the members to divide up tasks, such as cooking lunch, managing the front desk and picking up a fellow member from Lincoln Hospital after a medical procedure. Two people opted to work at the Wellness Corner, an onsite store that sells hygiene products and used clothes at a discount. Others volunteered to call members who hadn’t visited in a while.
Fountain House’s south Bronx outpost opened in 2013 in a smaller and less grandiose location compared to its flagship location in Midtown Manhattan, which houses enviable facilities such as a library, plant nursery and gym. But it serves the same purpose of connecting people to social services, employment and educational opportunities while fostering a strong sense of community — something members said is just as important to their mental health as therapy or medication.
With membership on the rise, Fountain House officials said the Bronx clubhouse had outgrown its current digs and was slated for a major expansion in the borough.
At a time when the discourse about how to address serious mental illness in New York has circled back to upping the number of hospital beds, court-mandated treatment and efforts to nudge homeless people out of the subway system, clubhouses represent a completely different approach.
For more on this story, click listen in the player and head to Gothamist.
As New Jersey enters its third pandemic year, officials are preparing to find ways for residents to coexist with the coronavirus. But even as cases and hospitalizations drop, one research institute in the Garden State is keeping its focus on the long-term effects of catching the disease.
The COVID-19 Institute of New Jersey studies these so-called COVID long-haulers, or people who still struggle with symptoms weeks, or even months, after their initial infection. The condition is also sometimes called post-COVID syndrome.
Dr. Angel Lazo is the medical director of the institute, based at Christ Hospital in Jersey City, which is also charged with providing care with those afflicted. He told WNYC host Michael Hill that close to 30% of people who catch coronavirus develop a long-hauler symptom. He said the general public would be surprised to learn that long-haulers tend to be relatively young adults, bucking the trend seen with severe forms of COVID-19 in older people.
Click listen in the player to hear more details.
The New York Liberty is at the center of controversy after the WNBA team repeatedly chartered flights for away games and team trips. In a new piece for Sports Illustrated, Howard Megdal explains "How Airplanes Became the WNBA’s Biggest Scandal."
Megdal spoke with WNYC host Sean Carlson.
A lawsuit arguing that New Jersey's schools are unconstitutionally segregated was back in court today.
The plaintiffs in the case are a coalition of nonprofits that say the state allowed the de facto segregation of its schools. Calling it a "historic day" the plaintiffs argued before Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy asking him to find the state liable so both parties can get to work finding a solution.
Almost half of New Jersey’s Black and Latino students attend public schools that are 90% non-white.
While the state's lawyers don't dispute the numbers. they say the statistics alone aren't enough to prove segregation. They say the plaintiffs have to put in the work to investigate the root causes of these racial imbalances and figure out how to fix them before any ruling of liability. A decision from the judge is still pending.
It’s been nearly 2 weeks since the city and state launched a new multi-pronged effort to reduce crime in the subways, amid an uptick in assaults. It’s called the Subway Safety Plan. And Mayor Eric Adams says it’s also a coordinated effort with the state to help homeless people who take shelter in the subways.
"The system is not made to be housing, it’s made to be transportation," Adams said.
WNYC’s Stephen Nessen went out on a recent night this week to see how the plan is playing out, and what challenges the city faces.
A coalition of nonprofits is suing New Jersey for allowing the segregation of the state's schools. After a four-year legal battle, both sides return to court on Thursday.
The potentially landmark case argues that New Jersey has the responsibility to remedy the disparities that are among the worst in the nation. The suit says state officials allowed this to happen by requiring students to attend schools in the municipalities where they live, in a state rife with residential segregation.
One majority nonwhite South Jersey district, which intervened in the case, argues New Jersey needs to mandate regionalization plans to force districts to take students from other towns.
Schools Chancellor David Banks says his agency has a huge budget but is plagued with dysfunction, despite many educators' best efforts.
Public toilets: everyone needs them but no one can figure out how to build and maintain them. At least that's the case in New York City, which has the some of fewest public bathrooms per capita for a large U.S. city.
Aaron Elstein is a reporter for Crain's New York Business and he's written about this in a special feature called "No Place To Go." He spoke with WNYC's Sean Carlson.
Click "Listen" in the player above to hear their conversation.
It may be cold outside, but no need to wait for April showers — you can already spot signs of greenery.
Urban forester Georgia Silvera Seamans and ecologist Marielle Anzelone host a Twitter event on Wednesday evenings where they invite people to post their photos of local wildflowers using #wildflowerhourNYC.
Silvera Seamans described her favorite this week, the Cornelian cherry. She said it's actually not a cherry but a dogwood, introduced from East Asia, most noticeable in the spring. "They have these small beautiful flowers that are quite a lovely yellow, like floral sunshine on gray days," she said. "The buds are swelling and opening right now."
If you want to submit a wildflower photo, do it! Snap a picture of what you see and tweet it to us @wnyc, or tweet it to #wildflowerhourNYC Wednesday nights between 8-9 pm.
Miguel Rodriguez stood in a long line outside a food pantry in Long Island City, waiting for his turn to pick up free groceries after his construction company canceled a day of work.
It was the first time Rodriguez, 38, of Elmhurst, came to the pantry run by the charity Hour Children. He said he now earns 30% less than his pre-pandemic wage and his hours are not steady.
“We have two kids at home. We need food. I'm working. We are working, but it's not enough,” said Rodriguez, who lost his job as a cook in March 2020 when the restaurant he was working at went out of business after the government ordered non-essential businesses to close.
Rising food prices are forcing New Yorkers struggling to feed themselves and their families to rely more on food banks and pantries. U.S. inflation has hit its highest level since 1982, eroding consumers’ purchasing power and exacerbating the food insecurity crisis that existed before COVID-19 swept through the city.
For more on this story, click listen in the player and head to Gothamist.
New York needs to cease using fossil fuels immediately and move toward renewable sources of energy in order to limit the inevitable impact of climate change, experts said in response to the latest United Nations climate change report.
The report’s predictions for low-lying coastal cities like New York City are grim: more deadly heat waves and sea level rise that could render parts of Lower Manhattan uninhabitable in this generation if no action is taken to limit global warming.
“You’re going to have to move faster – every city is going to have to move faster,” said Tim Kohler, an archaeology and evolutionary anthropology professor at Washington State University and one of the lead authors for the North American section of the report. “We’re putting greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and that has to stop or places like New York City are going to have huge problems.”
The assessment was released Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Representatives from 195 UN member countries met over the last two weeks to come to a consensus on how global warming is influencing nature, agriculture and human health. The report also gives lawmakers a roadmap on the potential and limits for humans to adapt to these changes.
For more details, click listen in the player and head to Gothamist.
Rep. Lee Zeldin easily won the state Republican Committee’s gubernatorial nod Tuesday at the party convention on Long Island, taking home more than 85% of the vote – a margin that makes it tougher for his GOP rivals to make the June 28 ballot.
His victory capped the Republicans’ two-day nominating convention at the Garden City Hotel, where party leaders backed a slate of candidates who repeatedly made clear they intend to make crime one of the defining issues of the 2022 campaigns.
"We are going to win this race because we have to win this race,” Zeldin, who represents parts of Long Island, said during one of his two speeches at the convention. “This is a rescue mission to save our state that will be successful."
WNYC's Albany reporter Jon Campbell joined All Things Considered host Sean Carlson to discuss Zeldin's win and what it means for the party.
For more, visit Gothamist.com.
For years, New York’s home health aides have been arguing that they have not been fairly compensated for 24-hour shifts. In a landmark decision, an arbitrator ruled Friday that 42 home care staffing agencies must pay $30 million into a “special wage fund” to compensate workers who were underpaid for these shifts and for other assignments dating as far back as 2008.
The award covers more than 100,000 current and former home care workers represented by the union 1199SEIU.
“This is a win for 1199 home care workers and our families, and I am proud to be a part of the fight to make sure 24-hour workers are paid more fairly,” Argelis Sanchez, one of the impacted workers, said in a statement via the union.
For more details, click listen in the player and head to Gothamist.
Despite the frigid temperatures and frozen ground, farmers have a lot to do in February. WNYC’s Amy Pearl headed to Queens County Farm Museum and took a walk with Agricultural Director Danny Morales. Check out the 2022 crop list here.
Danny Morales shows off flower seedlings in a greenhouse at Queens County Farm Museum. (Amy Pearl/WNYC)
On March 1, 2020, city health officials reported the first known case of COVID-19 in New York state. The weeks that followed changed many New Yorkers’ lives.
Maria Gennaro lost her job at a radiology clinic. Heidi Poulakos switched to Zoom to finish up her final semester of nursing school. Jen Lovallo was stuck in her Park Slope apartment, trying to figure out how to make her groceries last another week.
Two years later, they all work at New York City Health + Hospitals’ Bay Ridge testing site, along with 32 other staff members — checking in patients, swabbing noses, processing the results and making sure the whole operation runs smoothly. They’ve worked through surges, slow periods, personal milestones and devastating losses. Together, they’ve conducted more than 150,000 tests since the site opened in May 2020.
As they move toward a third year on the frontlines, these veteran COVID testers are reflecting on how the pandemic uprooted their lives and brought them together. Gothamist visited the longstanding site to hear about what they’ve learned and their hopes for the future.
For more on the story, click listen in the player and head to Gothamist.
Small farmers have faced challenges acquiring land for decades. That's especially true for farmers of color, who own just two percent of farm businesses across the country. Now, the pandemic has made those problems worse.
Demand for housing in rural areas has soared. That's driven up the cost of farmland outside of New York City, and is pricing farmers out. Greta Moran is a senior reporter covering this issue for the website Civil Eats. Dr. Gabriella Pereyra is the co-director of the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust.
They spoke with WNYC's Michael Hill.
Click "Listen" in the player above to hear the conversation.
Governor Kathy Hochul is lifting the state's indoor mask mandate for schools starting Wednesday. But WNYC's Stephen Nessen reports, New York City students, will have to wait a little longer.
Hochul says she’s dropping the mask mandate inside schools due to a combination of factors. Covid positivity rates statewide, are less than 2 percent. And they’ve dropped by 98 percent since the Omicron peak in early January. Vaccination rates are some of the highest in the nation.
But Mayor Adams says he'll decide on Friday whether to drop the city's public school's indoor mask mandate--as well as the requirement to show proof of vaccination at indoor venues. Both could go into effect, on March 7th.
Masks are still required on mass transit, in hospitals and nursing homes, as well as in shelters.
Starting Monday subway and bus riders using the OMNY payment method who take 12 trips will be automatically upgraded to a weekly unlimited pass.
Commuters don’t need to do anything other than tap in using the new OMNY fare payment system. After 12 trips the rest of the week will be free until Sunday at midnight.
It’s called farecapping. And the MTA is hoping it will bolster ridership. There are about 2 million fewer riders now, than before the pandemic. This farecapping pilot will last 4 months.
The MTA says if its popular and profitable, it could continue or be expanded with other options like a monthly unlimited pass.
You can also still use your MetroCard, which won’t be phased out for another two years.
Earlier this month, WNYC listener Jabob Kopas was the winner of NPR's Sunday Puzzle with Will Shortz. And this week, he joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to issue a puzzle of his own:
"You take a ride between two stops on the subway. If you take the name of the first station, rearrange the syllables, and then change the first letter of the first syllable and the first letter of the last syllable, you get part of the name of the second station. What are the two stations? Hint: your ride takes you to a different borough than the one you started in, but you only have to change trains once in midtown."
If you think you have the answer, email it to trivia@wnyc.org.
Taking a cue from NPR's Sunday Puzzle, we'll take all of the correct answers and randomly draw a winner. Sadly, we don't have any official Weekend Edition lapel pins to send you. But if we choose you as the winner, we can send you a WNYC tote bag and we'll certainly read your name on the air during next week's show.
Good luck!
A lawsuit over the city's new noncitizen voting law for local elections has hit a snag. WNYC's Brigid Bergin reports
New York City is awash this month in the confluence of Black culture, forward-thinking art, and utopian vision known as Afrofuturism, and anyone who wants to experience a more youthful, energetic vision of Afrofuturism can head to Brooklyn, where a festival called Dweller is showcasing a community of Black artists playing techno music to packed dance floors.
For more information, read our feature on Gothamist.
Some people in New York City have long-theorized that speed cameras unfairly target drivers in black and brown neighborhoods, garnering revenue at the expense of residents of those communities. Now, a new analysis checks into that claim, with some surprising findings.
Reporter Julianne Cuba and activist Brian Howald looked into it for Streetsblog. They spoke with WNYC's Morning Edition host Michael Hill about what they found.
The MTA announced this week that it agreed to install protective barriers on platforms at three stations as part of a pilot. This comes after public pressure following the death of Michelle Go in Times Square, who was pushed into an oncoming train in January. But the agency has more immediate ways to keep riders safe.
The platform screen door pilot could take years to launch, and at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. And it may not even be easily replicated across the system with so many different types of stations and subway cars to factor in.
In the meantime, the MTA says it’s already doing other things-like using its current surveillance cameras to monitor for trouble—before a crime occurs. The agency is doing this at 22 stations now.
It's also looking into installing soothing blue lights at stations, which have been shown to prevent suicides. There have been nine suicides in the subway so far this year.
Musicians from Bob Dylan to Public Enemy’s Chuck D have sung the praises of Woody Guthrie; Philip Palmer, who curated the new exhibit "Woody Guthrie: People Are the Song" at the Morgan Library & Museum, says that “the musician/activist tradition really starts with Woody Guthrie.” But Guthrie was also full of surprises: a fine illustrator, a prodigious writer, a prolific family man, and – despite his reputation as a “Dustbowl Balladeer” – an artist with a close connection to New York. WNYC’s John Schaefer speaks to Palmer and to Deana McCloud of the Woody Guthrie Center about an exhibit that shows why Woody Guthrie still looms large on the American cultural scene, 55 years after his death.
Black New Yorkers are disproportionately prosecuted for misdemeanors even though such cases rarely result in convictions, according to a new study released Thursday by the Center for Court Innovation.
Of the 190,000 misdemeanor prosecutions in 2019 and 2020 in New York City, like vending without a license and aggressive solicitation, Black people accounted for about half of those charged despite making up just about a quarter of the city population. The authors of the nonprofit’s study found that Latino New Yorkers were also overrepresented in prosecutions of these minor crimes.
“The data doesn’t prove bias, it just proves we’re getting inequitable outcomes,” said Michael Rempel, one of the authors of the report. “Whatever the reasons for the outcome, the upshot is we’re looking at vast overinvolvement of Black and brown people in a misdemeanor justice system that doesn’t ultimately promote either accountability or fairness.”
Just 12% of the misdemeanor arrests resulted in a conviction, and only 9% brought a prison sentence. About a third resulted in a plea deal to a lesser offense, like a non-criminal violation.
This week, the MTA and city and state officials launched a subway safety effort − and also announced a plan to pilot protective screen doors at three subway stations. Transportation reporter Stephen Nessen has the details.
A task force studying reparations is underway in California, and in Boston, there’s a push to establish a reparations commission. Meanwhile, in New York, activists like Leah Goodridge are hoping to gain traction for reparations, despite considerable odds. She said that with Black New Yorkers in power across the state -- running the state senate, the assembly, the New York City Council and of course the Mayor's office -- the time was ripe for reparations.
Even since protests erupted nationally in the wake of George Floyd's death in 2020, “there really has been a movement overall to put your money where your mouth is,” said Goodridge, a housing advocate.
However, it’s unclear whether that momentum will be sustained in New York. An effort last year to set up a commission to merely study the issue of reparations was passed in the state assembly but not the senate. And of the many recommendations made to Mayor Adams by a Citizens Commission known as New Yorkers for Social Justice, reparations was nowhere to be seen.
New York will lift its statewide mask mandate for businesses and other indoor spaces beginning Thursday, but a similar masking requirement will remain in place in K-12 schools for at least another couple weeks, Governor Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday.
Citing the recent decline in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, Hochul said she will allow the business mandate to expire as scheduled. First implemented in December, it applied to all indoor spaces, other than private residences, that did not require vaccination for entry.
But the mandate will remain in effect in certain areas with high concentrations of people, including public transit, planes, correctional facilities, child care and nursing homes, Hochul said.
And the school mandate in New York will remain in effect at least until early March.
WNYC's Albany reporter Jon Campbell joined "All Things Considered" host Sean Carlson to discuss what Hochul's decision means for New Yorkers. To hear their conversation, click "Listen" in the player above.
Last week, Mayor Eric Adams announced a new menu plan for New York City school kids – it includes Vegan Fridays. So WNYC’s Amy Pearl headed over to P.S. 139 in Brooklyn to find out what some kindergarteners thought of the change.
New Jersey has spent at least $9.5 million testing state workers for COVID-19 since Gov. Phil Murphy mandated weekly swabs for unvaccinated public employees returning to the office last fall, according to records obtained by Gothamist.
The governor’s vax-or-test rule applied to state employees as they resumed in-person duties beginning October 18th. Gothamist obtained a ledger of payments the state made to its primary testing provider, Vault Health, through a public records request to understand how many taxpayer dollars have gone toward testing public workers, about 26% of whom are unvaccinated.
Gothamist also obtained a breakdown of vaccination rates for the state’s 77,000 employees, which show most departments and agencies have fully inoculated more than 70% of their staff, according to the governor’s office. The Department of Corrections and NJ Transit have the lowest rates at 41% and 61% respectively. The Turnpike Authority and State Police also ranked toward the bottom with only 64% and 65%, respectively, taking all their recommended shots.
Records show departments and agencies spent $9.5 million on testing-related costs from mid-October through February. Overall, New Jersey has spent about $154 per employee on testing, and the costs per capita for each office correlate with its vaccination rate, as one might expect. More shots equal less spending on testing per person. About 20,000 state workers remain unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated.
WNYC host Michael Hill spoke with New Jersey reporter Karen Yi about the documents and what they mean as the state begins its move to reopen. Click listen in the player, and for more details on the story, visit Gothamist.
There are some historic firsts, a few surprise nominees, a couple of snubs, but also New York City seems to be a reoccurring co-star in some of the nominated films for 2021. WNYC's All of It host Alison Stewart spoke with Sean Carlson about this year's nominees.
The former head of one of New York City's biggest homeless shelter operators has pled guilty to bribery.
Victor Rivera is the founder and former head of the Bronx Parent Housing Network. The nonprofit's website says it manages more than $70 million dollars in contracts from the city to offer housing and services at more than 80 building sites. He's expected to face prison time and forfeit more than a million dollars.
A New York Times investigation last year exposed financial wrongdoing, as well as allegations of sexual misconduct against Rivera. He has denied the sexual misconduct, and was not charged, though his organization paid out a combined $175-thousand dollars in settlements.
Reporter Amy Julia Harris broke the story. She spoke with WNYC's Morning Edition host Michael Hill.
You can’t catch what you don’t see. New Yorkers will remember how this saying defined the early weeks of the city’s COVID-19 pandemic, as the boroughs and the nation struggled to develop a test for the virus. Delayed or absent detection meant people showed up to hospitals with their symptoms too far advanced, raging and beyond recuperation.
Laboratory testing gradually built itself up and evolved to cope with case surges, but it is now entering a new evolutionary phase with omicron. The highly transmissible variant has propelled the use of at-home COVID-19 tests, especially when lines for in-person tests were hours long or difficult to book around the holiday season. The U.S. Postal Service will now deliver kits to your door — if you can bypass the kinks in its ordering website. Supplies have improved online and at retail stores after deep shortages. And New York City schools are handing out millions of kits to exposed students and staff as well as symptomatic people who don’t want to stand in lines during this frigid winter.
But city officials are not tracking the results of the at-home tests, unlike other counties in New York and other major cities such as Washington D.C. and Austin, Texas. As Gothamist reported last week, this rise of the home kit is contributing to the sharpest drop in conventional testing that New York City has experienced during the pandemic.
As community transmission cools off, testing numbers tend to fall, but never quite as fast as current data show. Some health experts worry this decline is part of a larger national pattern with coronavirus testing, one that could make it harder to spot new variants.
Yet this winter, other jurisdictions such as Tompkins County in upstate New York potentially caught up to an extra 25% of cases by allowing their residents to report at-home test results. Translate these patterns to the five boroughs, and New York City could have spotted an additional 250,000 infections on top of the 1 million cases that have been recorded since it began handing out free home tests on December 16th. The same week, omicron became the dominant variant in the city.
Click listen in the player, and head to Gothamist for more on the story.
The MTA will begin a four-month fare capping pilot for OMNY users.
The agency has been rolling out the contactless payment system in phases. Currently riders can only buy single $2.75 rides.
But starting February 28th, it will introduce fare capping. If commuters take 12 trips between Monday and Sunday, they won't pay per ride for rest of that week. As a result, says the agency, no OMNY customer would pay more than $33.00 per week. That's the same cost as an unlimited seven-day MetroCard.
The MTA says if enough people use it, it could be become a regular feature of OMNY.
In an effort to boost ridership, the agency is also offering discounts for the commuter rails, which won’t get OMNY until sometime next year.
The MetroCard, however, will be around until at least 2024.
Martial Simon is accused of shoving a woman to her death in front of a subway train in Times Square last month. But before that incident, he had been cycling in and out of hospitals for years.
New York Times reporter Andy Newman says systematic failures may have put Simon back on the street.
"(Simon) was angry at the medical system," Newman said. "Not because they were trying to hold him against his will, but because the hospitals kept releasing him before he could stabilize."
Read his reporting here.
Underneath the Q train, near the intersection of Coney Island and Brighton Beach Avenues, many of the passersby are older and speak in Russian. Last Wednesday, 64-year-old Irina Andreeva was among them, walking alongside her son, Alexander Astafurov, toward one of three COVID-19 testing vans parked side-by-side.
It was the first sunny day in weeks, but Andreeva was feeling under the weather.
“I have a temperature, and I’m shaking,” Andreeva, 64, said in Russian, as her son translated. She said several of her friends had caught the coronavirus in recent weeks as the omicron variant swept over New York City.
Some had more severe cases than others. One unvaccinated friend ended up being hospitalized at Maimonides Medical Center for a couple of weeks, Andreeva said. She felt more secure because she had had two doses of COVID-19 vaccine, but her son, who also lives in the neighborhood, said he now wants them both to get boosters to be on the safe side.
Omicron tore through New York City, with the five boroughs recording 1 million COVID-19 cases since the variant became dominant in mid-December. That’s four times as many cases as the city’s first wave in early 2020. But, as in previous surges, the burden has not been distributed evenly across people from different backgrounds and neighborhoods.
Some at-risk communities are still dealing with much higher rates of hospitalizations and deaths, despite the overall impression of a milder wave. These include people who are older, often fighting against pre-existing diseases. And as local organizations work to make sure these vulnerable groups get their booster shots, they continue to come up against those who don’t want to get vaccinated at all.
One of the city’s omicron hotspots centers on the southern tip of Brooklyn, spread across the neighborhoods of Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, Sheepshead Bay and iconic Coney Island. The two zip codes encompassing this region — 11224 and 11235 — have experienced 75 deaths per 100,000 people over the last month, a fatality rate nearly three times the citywide average. The pair of zip codes ranked only behind East New York when it came to the pace of COVID deaths between December 24th and January 20th, while their hospitalization rates were also among the highest in the city.
Click listen in the player, or head to Gothamist for more on the story.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office is charging the man who allegedly sold actor Michael K. Williams a deadly dose of fentanyl last September with causing his death – an offense that could land him in prison for life. But as prosecutors increasingly use this aggressive tool to stem the tide of overdose deaths, politicians, public health experts, and victims’ families disagree about whether dealing deadly drugs should have the same legal consequences as homicide.
Williams’ alleged dealer, Irvin “Green Eyes” Cartagena, 39, was arrested Tuesday in Puerto Rico on conspiracy drug charges for selling fentanyl-based heroin that resulted in Williams’ death. The so-called “death resulting” or “drug-induced homicide” charge — created by Congress in 1986 during the war on drugs but increasingly used in recent years — carries a sentence of 20 years to life, and has become a tool that prosecutors in New York and nationwide use in selected cases.
There have been at least 128 people in New York charged with causing deaths through overdoses, according to an analysis by the Health In Justice Action Lab at Northeastern University. Nationwide, data shows prosecutors have filed most of those charges in the last 13 years, as opioid overdoses reached crisis levels.
WNYC reporter Matt Katz spoke to host David Furst about the case on Morning Edition. For more on the story, go to Gothamist.com.
President Joe Biden came to New York City this week where he met with Mayor Eric Adams to address rising gun violence. It was the first public meeting in the city between the two Democrats and all signs indicate a growing relationship between Biden and Adams. WNYC's Elizabeth Kim reports on mayoral power. She joins Weekend Edition Host David Furst to discuss the politics behind the visit.
It was an unprecedented release of data compared to what the Nassau County Police Department typically makes available. Late last month, the public got a detailed look at arrest numbers, traffic stops, pat downs, and other police interactions — revealing sharp racial disparities in law enforcement.
Just under half of this Long Island county’s population identifies as non-white — including Black, Latino, Asian and other categories. And yet, according to the new topline arrest data, those demographic groups made up a full two-thirds of people arrested by Nassau police.
At a hearing last week, Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder told local lawmakers it was “unfair” to draw conclusions about the arrest data because 35% of those arrested came from outside the county, which includes neighboring parts of New York City and Suffolk County.
“They're not part of the county of Nassau,” Ryder told lawmakers. “They came here to commit some kind of criminal act.“
But an analysis of the data by WSHU and WNYC/Gothamist found that racial disparities persisted independent of whether the person who was stopped, summonsed, or arrested by police resided in Nassau County or elsewhere, providing a more granular view into how police interact with the public than the raw data offers.
Read more at Gothamist.com
It's been nearly 50 years since a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army was convicted in the shooting death of a New Jersey state trooper in East Brunswick.
Sundiata Acoli received a life sentence plus 24 years for the murder of Werner Foerster. Acoli, now 85 and suffering from dementia, has repeatedly been denied parole over the last 30 years.
Earlier this week, his longtime attorneys and civil rights lawyers went before the state Supreme Court to press for his release.
Reporter S.P. Sullivan has been covering this story for The Star Ledger and NJ Advance Media. He spoke about it with WNYC's Morning Edition host Michael Hill.
The days of partisan gerrymandering were supposed to be over.
Never again would New York lawmakers exclusively draw the state’s U.S. congressional districts or their own state district lines, a decennial process that Democrats and Republicans had used for generations to tighten their grip on power.
Instead, the task would be put to the newly created Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) – five Democrat-aligned and five Republican-aligned members who would put their heads together and reach consensus.
That’s what the people of New York were told back in 2012. It didn’t work out that way.
The IRC imploded this year, its first leading the redistricting process, failing to reach consensus as the even number of Democrats and Republicans on the panel deadlocked. That paved the way for state lawmakers to draw the maps themselves – repeating what they had done for generations before.
The Democrats, who now control both the state Senate and Assembly, took full advantage, approving new congressional lines Wednesday that will give their party the edge in 22 of the state’s 26 districts for the next ten years – unless Republicans can get them overturned in court. On Thursday, they approved new Senate and Assembly lines, too.
The path to New York’s latest redistricting process has led to accusations of gerrymandering and abuse of the system from good-government advocates and Republican lawmakers, who – ironically – helped put the “independent” redistricting plan in place back when they controlled the Senate in 2012.
It has all left many Albany watchers – and even some lawmakers themselves – to draw the same conclusion: The new redistricting system, a decade in the making, was set up to fail.
WNYC Albany reporter Jon Campbell spoke to lawmakers, advocates and party leaders about where it all went wrong and what happens next.
For more, visit Gothamist.
President Joe Biden is set to travel to New York City on Thursday to talk to Mayor Eric Adams about gun violence.
Political experts say Biden's visit carries added significance for the two Democrats, who need one another at this pivotal moment. New York City, like many parts of the country, is still struggling to recover from the pandemic and all of its related crises, including a rise in violent crime.
Adams has been demanding more help from the federal government to stem the flow of illegal guns into the city. And Biden, whose approval ratings have been slipping, could be bolstered by a success story in America's biggest city.
Read more at Gothamist.
Videos created with the help of artificial intelligence are starting to flood the internet. A new exhibit looks deeper. WNYC's Jennifer Vanasco visits the Museum of the Moving Image.
For the full story, visit Gothamist.
Arguably the most exciting time to be a New York Knicks fan was during the 1990s. Many fans considered the time period the glory days of New York City basketball, even though it ended without a NBA championship. Teams feared playing Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley and John Starks—not just because they were good, but because the team would also physically fighter other players on the court.
WNYC's Michael Hill spoke to Chris Herring, author of the book "Blood in the Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks."
Fifteen New Jersey nursing homes that repeatedly received low inspection scores still got more than $300 million dollars in Medicaid funding over a three-year period according to a new report from the state comptroller's office.
Acting Comptroller Kevin Walsh said his office reviewed more than 300 nursing homes and found 15 of them received one-star ratings nearly every four months for two years in a row — the lowest possible rating. Nursing homes across the country are graded on a five-star scale based on factors like staffing levels, the time nurses dedicate to spending with patients and residents' quality of life.
But despite the poor ratings the facilities continued to collect public funding. Walsh is recommending the state bar poor-performing facilities from admitting new patients. And, as a last resort, cut them off from Medicaid funding.
"I think taxpayers generally would be concerned that funds that could be used for excellent care is instead continuously being used for substandard care," Walsh told WNYC.
The comptroller's office released a dashboard of the 15 facilities here.
Two years ago, ProPublica reporter Eric Umansky says his wife saw an NYPD officer hit a teenager with their police car on Halloween. Another witness called in a complaint to the Civilian Complaint Review Board. The city agency investigated and filed disciplinary charges against multiple officers in the incident. But then the NYPD stepped in, invoking its authority to unilaterally end the cases against most of the officers.
Umansky reported on the case, and spoke to WNYC's David Furst.
Click "Listen" in the player above for their conversation.
For a couple of months each winter, Atlantic herring follow the cold water down from Maine and arrive right on our doorstep! WNYC’s Amy Pearl bundled up and headed out to Sheepshead Bay.
Special thanks to Molly Schwartz.
New York state lawmakers will vote this week on a set of congressional maps that would boost the Democratic Party’s chances of winning additional seats, though Republicans are threatening to challenge the lines in court.
The state legislature’s redistricting task force – controlled entirely by Democrats for the first time in modern history – unveiled its proposed maps on Sunday, clearing the way for a full vote as soon as Wednesday and putting the Democratic Party in an advantageous position to make gains. It is the first time in a century Democrats have had this much say over redistricting.
The proposal was required to reduce New York’s congressional delegation from 27 to 26, based on the latest Census numbers. And it was put forward after a more-independent panel reached impasse, paving the way for lawmakers to draw the lines themselves.
If approved, 22 of the state’s 26 congressional districts would have a Democratic enrollment advantage – a gain of three that could help the party potentially pick up seats as it clings to a narrow House majority nationally.
Morning Edition host Kerry Nolan spoke to WNYC Albany reporter Jon Campbell to discuss the latest and what it could mean for the 2022 elections.
For more, visit Gothamist.com.
New Jersey is now making it easier for immigrant workers excluded from other forms of COVID-related aid to apply for the $40 million fund created by Gov. Phil Murphy. The program faced criticism from immigrant advocate groups who said the process was too cumbersome and required documents that applicants didn't have.
"There are many people waiting for this fund, waiting to pay rent and bills and this process is very frustrating," Caritina Hernandez, an organizer with Movimiento Cosecha NJ, said in Spanish during a press conference Monday.
Earlier this month, WNYC reported Murphy's office diverted most of the fund dollars to cover state payroll because not enough people applied before the money had to be used by the federal deadline. Last week, Murphy said he would replenish the fund with dollars from another bucket of federal subsidies and extend the application window through the end of February.
The Department of Human Services, which is overseeing the program, said it would no longer require applicants to prove they were impacted by COVID-19. Some immigrants don't have bank accounts which makes it hard to prove they lost income. Others couldn't secure a letter from their employer verifying they had to quarantine or lost work.
"We are working to update the application and website to remove demonstrating COVID-19 impact from the eligibility criteria and required documents," the DHS spokesman Eva Loayza-McBride said in an email. The other requirements remain the same. To qualify, residents must earn $55,000 a year or less and show they were excluded from federal stimulus payments and unemployment.
Carlos Castañeda, an organizer with Cosecha, said the state needs to better communicate the process to the community or else the program will fail again.
"If the community members that are ones needing access to this fund don't know that they can now go ahead and apply because of one less hurdle in their way, it's going to be the same," he said.
Castañeda is also calling on the state to hire more evaluators to sort through the applications. Some advocates said applicants have waited over a month to hear back.
DHS is currently working with five nonprofits to look through applications and it's unclear if they will contract with additional organizations. Loayza-McBride said the department also hired temporary state staff since last year to increase capacity.
To date, more than 13,000 people have applied. About 3,100 have been approved and received $7.5 million in benefits, 500 were denied.
Everyone has their pandemic pastime. What’s Francine Ricchi’s? Tracking the lengths of COVID testing lines.
For more than a year, the Boerum Hill resident has done laps around her Brooklyn neighborhood almost daily, tallying the number of people waiting to get their noses swabbed and then posting to her Twitter account.
On her most recent trips, though, Ricchi has seen a change in the testing sites along her route. During past waves, she has watched lines grow and dwindle, as community transmission rises and falls. And sure enough, as cases skyrocketed in December, she documented queues of more than 100 people waiting to get tested.
But even though the daily number of New York City cases has still been enormously high — day after day larger than the peak once recorded in April 2020 – Ricchi said testing lines have become ghost towns.
“It was mostly documenting different locations showing there was no line at opening time,” she said. On January 26th, when the daily average case rate was 5,054, “there was really nobody. At one location, there were two people. We’re definitely in this period where demand for tests has dropped off.”
City data supports Ricchi’s findings. As COVID cases have come down from their omicron summit, so too have tests, which is to be expected.
But official PCR testing numbers have been cut nearly in half over two weeks. Last year, a similar drop took six months. It’s the sharpest drop over the shortest time ever recorded during the pandemic.
Morning Edition host Kerry Nolan speaks with WNYC health and science data reporter Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky about what the plunge means. Click listen in the player, and head to Gothamist for more on the story.
It's been several days since New York City Mayor Eric Adams unveiled his plan to fight gun violence after two NYPD officers were fatally shot on duty. While the plan involves strategies the city can roll out, there are some things beyond his control. And Adams will need the state and federal governments to bring his recommendations to fruition.
Weekend Edition host David Furst talks about it with Gothamist editor David Cruz.
A major snowstorm is coming to the region. New Jersey has already declared a state of emergency and New York heads into one later tonight at 8 p.m. But the forecast has been variable and hard to pin down. Meteorologist Garett Argianas spoke with host David Furst to give an update on conditions.
The NY State Senate Elections Committee Chair wants Republican commissioners to stop questioning election integrity without evidence. WNYC's Brigid Bergin reports
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy will restore money his office diverted from a $40 million fund meant to help immigrants and other workers excluded from COVID relief funds.
On his monthly public radio call-in show, Murphy on Thursday said he'd use money from the federal stimulus signed by President Biden last March to shore up the Excluded New Jerseyans Fund.
Last week, WNYC reported the governor's office diverted $34 million from the fund and reallocated it to other expenses. The state said not enough people applied to use up that pot of money by the federal deadline that'd been set by the Trump Administration. It prompted outrage from advocate groups, who said the program had been set up to fail.
The new funds offer more flexibility in how the benefits are distributed. Murphy said anyone who applied but wasn't approved will have their application reviewed under easier criteria. The deadline to apply for the fund will also be extended until the end of February.
On the rocky banks of Newtown Creek on Thursday, local environmental activists hauled out five large black contractor bags worth of trash – a shoe, beer cans, masks and lots of plastic. They didn’t gather in Maspeth to remedy a superfund site soiled with decades worth of dumping, but rather to call upon Gov. Kathy Hochul to put pressure on the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to reject a new permit for National Grid, which runs the Greenpoint Energy Facility located just across the creek.
The London-based utility provider wants to expand the facility’s capacity to convert liquid fuel to natural gas, which the ralliers characterize as a step in the wrong direction and a violation of environmental justice laws.
Thursday morning, local environmental groups sent a petition with 11,800 names to Hochul, a regional DEC office and its commissioner, Basil Seggos, to vote no on the decision expected February 7th. They were joined by U.S. Congresswomen Nydia Velazquez and Carolyn Maloney along with New York City Councilmembers Sandy Nurse and Lincoln Restler.
Click listen in the player, and head to Gothamist for more on the story.
The former Alaska governor returned to Elio's restaurant Wednesday night and dined outdoors just days after it was revealed she tested positive for COVID-19. Gothamist's Jake Offenhartz spoke with host David Furst about spotting Palin on the Upper East Side.
Mayor Adams has been granted a waiver to hire his brother to a top security post. But WNYC's Brigid Bergin reports, City Hall agreed to a set of strict guidelines to avoid violating anti-nepotism laws.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
Last Friday evening, a small crowd of people began assembling on a street corner in the Bedford Park section of the Bronx. Shivering passersby stopped in their tracks to watch the crush of TV cameras that had descended upon the working-class neighborhood,
Standing with their heads bowed next to brightly-lit deli, they were holding a vigil for a baby girl who days ago was shot in the face by a stray bullet.
Following a prayer, Mayor Adams grabbed a bullhorn and spoke about recent incidents that have unnerved New Yorkers.
Read more on Gothamist.com.
New York state officials are expressing alarm after a new report uncovered the head of the consulting firm running New York's troubled emergency rental assistance program boasting about profits.
The Washington Post reports the CEO of Guidehouse, Scott McIntyre, told employees in November that the company had made 38% margins on its contract with the state, earning $115 million over six months in fees. Washington Post reporter Jonathan O'Connell spoke with Morning Edition host Michael Hill.
More details are emerging this week in the New Jersey case of a political operative who hired two hit men to kill an associate, and then paid the men at a diner.
Sean Caddle, 44, of Hamburg, N.J., pleaded guilty on Tuesday in federal court to one count of conspiracy to commit murder for hire. He was allowed to remain at home on $1 million bail.
The U.S. Attorney for New Jersey did not name the victim, but it is widely known to be Michael Galdieri, a former Jersey City Council candidate, political operative and son of the late state Sen. James A. Galdieri.
Galdieri was stabbed to death and his apartment in Jersey City was set on fire in May 2014. Galdieri and Caddle worked together on several election campaigns.
New York City has released its final count of traffic fatalities from last year, the deadliest one since 2013, with 273 people killed by vehicles.
The city can use the data to pinpoint and prioritize the most dangerous neighborhoods. District 31 in Queens, which includes Far Rockaway, Arverne and Edgemere topped the list last year with 11 deaths. Overall though, Brooklyn had the most fatalities at 60.
Mayor Adams has pledged to redesign 1,000 intersections this year to make them safer with raised crosswalks and signal priority for pedestrians. Intersections are where half of all city traffic deaths occur.
There were three crashes so far this week, two of them fatal.
It’s cold outside. Really cold. And the gray of winter has set in. But this is actually a great time to get out and explore New York City’s urban forests. WNYC’s Amy Pearl went to Alley Pond Park in Queens to meet urban botanist Marielle Anzelone.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has announced new plans to fight gun violence. The announcement follows a series of high profile incidents, including the fatal shooting of two NYPD officers.
Adams says he's putting more officers on patrol in high-crime neighborhoods, and hiring more so-called violence interruptors to mediate conflicts. But some critics are criticizing parts of the plan, like the idea of bringing back a controversial plainclothes anti-crime unit. WNYC/Gothamist reporter Matt Katz spoke to Katherine Fung about the policies.
Click "Listen" in the player above to hear their conversation.
COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in New Jersey are dropping, as the state's omicron surge shows signs of receding. State officials said Monday infections and hospitalizations likely peaked there earlier this month.
About two weeks ago, new COVID cases in New Jersey hit an all-time high. Since then, cases have decreased by more two-thirds. Hospitalizations have also declined by a third to about 4,000.
Gov. Phil Murphy says those are positive signs.
"While yes we believe are on the backside of omicron, we are not free of it," he said Monday at a media briefing in Trenton.
Despite lower hospitalizations and average case rates, the numbers are still higher than any previous surge in the state since the spring of 2020. Officials also reported four pediatric deaths related to COVID since Christmas. Three of them were infants.
Violence rocked the New York City Police Department Friday night after two police officers were shot while responding to a domestic violence call in Harlem. The gunfire killed 22 year-old officer Jason Rivera, and Officer Wilbert Mora remains hospitalized in critical condition.
These were the third and fourth NYPD officers shot just last week after a spate of violent high-profile incidents across the city. Collectively, it creates a challenging dynamic for Mayor Eric Adams who's been in office since January first. He ran on a commitment to restore public safety.
WNYC’s senior political correspondent Brigid Bergin joins Morning Edition host Michael Hill with the latest.
Fifteen people held at the Rikers Island died in 2021. It was an especially deadly year for the jail complex, where the vast majority of people are awaiting trial.
Those who died were all Black or Latino men, ranging in age from 24 to 64. Violence, medical neglect, and overdoses drove the majority of the fatalities.
Reporters Bliss Broyard and Lisa Riordan Seville profiled the fifteen men for New York Magazine. They spoke with families, cellmates, and friends about not just how these people died, but also who they were in life. They spoke with WNYC's Morning Edition host Michael Hill about the story.
Lots of restaurants offer a 'soup and a sandwich' combo lunch special. But why bother with TWO food items when it can be brought together as one? Now, R&D Foods in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn has done just that.
Scott Lynch, who writes about food for Gothamist, joins Weekend Edition host David Furst for a review of the 'Chicken Soup Sandwich.'
With the Jets and Giants out of the picture, the Buffalo Bills are the only hope for a New York team to advance in the NFL playoffs. Besides, those two other teams play in New Jersey. So let's get real: Buffalo is home to the state's only NFL franchise.
The Bills will take on the Kansas City Chiefs at 6:30 p.m. Sunday for the right to advance to the AFC Championship game.
WNYC's Albany reporter Jon Campbell — a Bills fan and Buffalo-area native — joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to discuss what the team means to its fanbase in western New York.
Kathy Hochul cemented her status as the frontrunner in her bid for a full, four-year term as New York governor with a potent one-two punch this week.
First came the poll. Siena College found her with a more-than-30-point lead in a Democratic primary amongst her various rivals, and that was before former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio decided against joining the race.
Then came the fundraising numbers. Hochul's campaign raised a historic $21.9 million since July, a record-smashing sum for a single filing period. It's more than double what all of her Democratic and Republican opponents raised — combined — and far outpaced the $7 million Cuomo raised during the same period when he first ran as an incumbent in 2014.
How exactly does a governor raise that much money in such a short span of time? Gothamist/WNYC dug into Hochul's first six-month campaign filing as a candidate for governor, which was made public this week.
WNYC's Albany report Jon Campbell joins David Furst for a closer look. And for more, visit Gothamist.com.
A military medical team has arrived in New Jersey to help ease the load on the overwhelmed University Hospital in Newark.
Dr. Shereef Elnahal, president and CEO of University Hospital, spoke with WNYC's Michael Hill.
The call comes in at 4 am. Some waterfowl are in trouble out in the lake at Prospect Park, their webbed feet stuck frozen to the ice coating the water. In the predawn darkness, our hero slips out of bed and races to the park, where she carefully slides across the dangerous ice to save the creatures.
That rescuer is Marty Woess, Wildlife and Aquatic Technician for the Prospect Park Alliance. She's the one who gets the call when there's a hurt raccoon, or a swan that's swallowed a fish hook, a turtle that's gotten itself wedged somewhere. She talked to WNYC's Morning Edition Host, Michael Hill, about how she does it—and how she got started.
Former President Donald Trump is the target of at least three separate investigations that are in the news this week. One in Congress, one being conducted by the New York State Attorney General, and one from the Manhattan District Attorney. Reporter Ilya Marritz, who covers Trump legal matters for NPR, spoke with WNYC Consider This host Jennifer Vanasco.
Asian New Yorkers are experiencing a surge in political power, but at a legislative agenda breakfast meeting Thursday the epidemic of anti-Asian harassment and violence overshadowed the political gains.
Rep. Grace Meng [D-Queens] highlighted Saturday’s fatal attack on Michelle Go, an Asian American woman killed after being pushed onto subway tracks at Times Square. The accused assailant, Simon Martial, 61, has been charged with 2nd-degree murder in the incident. So far, authorities have not determined it was a racially motivated attack.
“Even though Michelle's tragedy might not necessarily be prosecuted as a hate crime, it’s still something that evokes so much fear, already-existing fear in so many in our community,” Meng told a group of city, state and federal officials and activists at a forum organized by the Asian American Federation.
Meng is also set to attend a candlelight vigil on Friday for Yao Pan Ma, 61, who was killed after being attacked in Harlem while collecting cans. Police arrested Jarrod Powell, who was charged with attempted murder and two hate crime assault charges.
A piece of New York City transit history has been sold at auction: the iconic Staten Island ferry named for John F. Kennedy. It spent decades shuttling countless people back and forth across New York Harbor before it was retired last year.
Acting Senior Port Captain Kenneth Meurer is one of the people who once captained the ferryboat. He spoke about what it was like captaining the Kennedy, and his thoughts on its future.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg took the oath of office almost three weeks ago. Bragg campaigned on a platform of criminal justice reform and reducing the number of people sent to prisons and jails. But his early efforts have faced pushback from police unions, politicians and Mayor Adam’s newly-appointed NYPD Commissioner. And Bragg may soon face resistance from within the courts themselves. WNYC’s Gwynne Hogan joins Morning Edition Host Michael Hill to discuss this story. Read the full story on Gothamist.com.