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LGBT

Thousands March Against Hate In New York City

By Zack Ford on May 21, 2013 at 9:01 am

(Credit: Jeffrey James Keyes via Queerty)

Thousands marched Monday night in New York City to denounce the recent rash of anti-gay violence, including the murder of Mark Carson this weekend. The march to the spot where Carson was shot was led by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and Edie Windsor, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court challenge of the Defense of Marriage Act, and also included representatives from numerous other LGBT groups.

Glennda Testone, Executive Director of the city’s LGBT Community Center, addressed the crowd at the intersection of 8th Street and Sixth Avenue:

We have always been a community that takes care of each other.  Sometimes when no one else will. We’ll continue to do that. We will continue to show up for each other. There are hundreds of us here tonight, but the truth is, that there are five hundred thousand LGBT people who come to New York because they want to live openly. They want to be who they are, they want to love, and they should be able to do that. They should be able to do that on any street, any avenue, any neighborhood in this great city that we all love. [...]

The violence we’ve seen in recent weeks is a reminder. It’s a reminder that political and legal gains do not always necessarily translate immediately to the street, to every street, and to every person. This is a reminder. It’s why we need to stay united, it’s why we need our voices to be strong, and we can’t go back. We are here today not only to mourn the loss of our community, not only to take back some of our power, and to take back that sense of safety, but we are here together, as one, to create a strong voice that says we will not be threatened, we will not be harassed, we will not be taunted, and we will not be killed because of who we are and who we love.

More photos can be found at Queerty, Towleroad, and Joe.My.God. Watch a brief clips from the rally, including remarks from Carson’s aunt:

Health

New York Launches Investigation Into Private Prison Health Care Company Linked To Nine Deaths

By Sy Mukherjee on Apr 15, 2013 at 12:05 pm

The New York state Attorney General’s office has launched an investigation into Correctional Medical Care (CMC) Inc., a private health care contractor that has become the Empire State’s largest provider of medical services to county jails. The investigation comes in the wake of nine inmate deaths at several different jails between 2009 and 2011 that have all been linked to negligent or inadequate care provided by CMC.

A report by the Commission of Correction’s Medical Review Board highlighted inadequacies in the care provided by CMC, including poor communication, negligence, and failure to live up to its own stated standards of medical care:

The Medical Review Board has blamed CMC for failing to follow its own drug withdrawal and detoxification policies, for ignoring signs of mental illness and for failing to treat some illnesses, the Press and Sun-Bulletin reported. The board recommended county-level inquiries to decide if CMC is to continue to provide services at the Broome, Tioga and Dutchess county jails.

CMC has provide medical services at the Broome County jail since 2006 under contracts worth more than $18 million through the end of 2013. Sheriff David Harder told the newspaper he was satisfied with CMC’s track record and noted few inmate complaints.

The state review board report said CMC failed to follow its own intoxication and withdrawal policy after Alvin Rios was booked into jail following his July 2011 arrest for criminal possession of a controlled substance. The doctor said he wasn’t made aware of Rios’ condition. The report said Rios was left in a “life-threatening status without appropriate medical attention” and died of a heart problem.

Other inmate deaths included 26-year-old Justin McCue, who hanged himself after his mental health services were halted; Maria Viera, who died of a heart inflammation after CMC failed to provide her with proper detoxification procedures; and a number of suicides that stemmed from a combination of improper mental health evaluations and insufficient medication.

A comprehensive 2009 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that New York’s use of private health contractors has directly corresponded with the state’s ballooning prison population — and those concurrent trends have the potential to exacerbate each other. That’s because higher incarceration rates have led to exploding demand for cheap medical services, which in turn promotes profit-driven behavior from health care companies, since they actually have a financial incentive to see more Americans put in jail. In New York, that dynamic has resulted in the growth of “for-profit corporation[s] providing cost wary, yet expensive and inconsistent care” in a state that spends three and a half times more money on prisons than it does on education.

The CMC investigation underscores the serious problems stemming from a combination of exploding prison populations, states’ increasing use of for-profit health care contractors, and budget cuts to safety net programs. And this isn’t the first time that this issue has been in the news recently. California Gov. Jerry Brown is also currently under fire for turning a blind eye to his state’s lackluster prison health care.

Economy

New York City Council Reaches Deal To Give Workers Paid Sick Days

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Mar 29, 2013 at 9:35 am

After years of debate, the New York City Council has finally come to an agreement on paid sick leave legislation. It is now poised to pass a bill that would require any company with more than 15 employees to provide five days of paid leave annually, and any company with fewer employees to give 5 days of unpaid leave.

On Thursday, Speaker Christine Quinn (D), considered a favorite for the New York City mayoral race, signaled that she would be willing to work on a compromise. Quinn had previously refused to bring the bill up for a vote, expressing unfounded concerns that paid sick leave would be bad for business and lead to job loss.

Just hours after Quinn said she would participate, the deal was reached:

“Throughout these negotiations I have always said that I was willing to listen and engage all sides,” said Quinn in a statement. “Because of deliberate, thoughtful, and at times hard-nosed negotiations, we now have a piece of legislation that balances the interests of workers, small business owners, and local mom and pop proprietors across this City.”

The legislation is not as strong as paid sick leave laws in Seattle, San Francisco, Washington DC, and Portland, Oregon, which all require companies with more than five employees to offer paid sick days. The New York City proposal also will be implemented slowly: it wouldn’t take effect until 2014 and would only apply to companies with more than 20 employees for the first year and a half. Some low-wage workers, like the many restaurant workers in establishments with fewer than 15 people, will still be forced to choose between losing wages or coming into work sick. Quinn’s colleague and mayoral opponent Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio tweeted that he will keep pushing to make the law more inclusive:

Companies with more than 20 employees would have until April 1, 2014 to comply with the law; companies with between 15 and 20 employees will have until October 1, 2015. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to veto the proposal if it is passed, but the Council likely has enough votes to override his rejection.

Economy

Why New York Should Pass A Strong Paid Sick Leave Policy

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Mar 28, 2013 at 9:40 am

Since 2010, New York City’s earned sick leave initiative has been debated but never passed, largely thanks to New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s (D) refusal to allow a vote. Now, with her hat firmly in the ring for the 2013 mayoral race, Quinn is hinting that she might wind up putting her weight behind the bill. But it isn’t yet clear what concessions might be made, and it’s possible the policy might be seriously “watered-down,” in order to get her support.

Currently, New York’s paid sick leave proposal would require companies with five or more employees to provide five paid sick days a year; for companies with fewer than five people, sick leave would be required, but unpaid. Here is why it’s important that Quinn support a serious, comprehensive piece of paid sick leave legislation, and not let the bill get watered down:

1. It’s good for business. At first impression, paid sick leave might sound like a loss for employers — paying people not to come to work — but it’s actually good financially for a company. When people come to work sick, they spread illness, getting other employees sick and thus leading to an even bigger loss in producitvity. Sick employees are also less productive and stay sick longer when they don’t take time off.

2. Sick leave doesn’t kill jobs. Quinn has said she supported the paid sick leave initiative, but wanted to wait until the economy had recovered in New York. But it’s a debunked theory that paid sick causes job loss, and there’s some indication that proper regulations can actually spur job growth. After paid sick leave passed in San Francisco, the city actually saw significant job growth.

3. Sick workers are a public health risk. About 40 percent of private sector workers in the US lack paid sick leave, and 80 percent of low-income and food workers are among that group. Food workers and service industry workers who come into work sick are a hazard for public health. Look, for example, at the additional 5 million cases of swine flu that can be attributed to people sick on the job.

4. It’s a family-friendly policy. Single parents are the most likely to have no paid leave, and often have the responsibility of caring for a sick child on their own. Single moms are more likely to live in poverty and have less job stability. For them, sick days can make a huge difference. As Center for American Progress policy analyst Sarah Jane Glynn has previously points out, “A single mother with no paid sick days, working full-time earning $10 an hour (the average wage for a worker without paid sick days), would fall below the poverty line if her child caught a bad case of the flu and she had to miss three days of work without pay.”

It’s likely that Christine Quinn has just woken up to the fact that opposing paid sick leave could be a politically toxic move. But Quinn has also gotten herself the reputation, much like that of her possible predecessor Mayor Mike Bloomberg, of being a supporter of hyper-efficiency in the name of business. If the pro-worker policy of paid sick leave doesn’t appeal to her on its humanitarain grounds, then she should at least support it for the good of her city’s businesses.

Climate Progress

Can The Empire State Go Green? New Study Says New York State Can Be 100% Renewable By 2050

By Jeff Spross on Mar 14, 2013 at 11:46 am

A new study out of Stanford University, scheduled to be published in the journal Energy Policy, argues that New York State can eliminate fossil fuels from its energy mix entirely by 2050.

Written by Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi — who helped produce a similar plan for the world as a whole in 2009 — along with several other coworkers, the report suggests that New York State’s end-use power could be supplied by a mix of various forms of solar, wind power, and water-based and geothermal sources. That goal could be met as early as 2030, and all conventional fossil fuel generation would be phased out no later than 2050.

On the demand-side of the ledger, because renewables generally deliver power more efficiently — electric cars lose far less energy to waste heat than standard combustion engines, for example — the state’s end-use demand would be cut by roughly 37 percent. Efficiency updates would to buildings, infrastructure, etc. would make up the rest of the gap. By the report’s analysis, this would all cut the United State’s climate costs by about $3.2 billion a year by 2050.

The major points of the plan are:

Replace all fossil fuel electricity with solar, wind, and other renewables. This would include mostly offshore wind and some onshore, together supplying about half the state’s energy needs. Standard solar arrays and concentrated solar power systems, plus wide deployment of residential rooftop solar (a goal already getting a boost from third-party leasing, among other things) as well as commercial and governmental rooftop solar, would deliver another 38 percent of the state’s energy. A mix of hydroelectric, wave, tidal, and geothermal would fill in the rest. The offshore wind would arguably be the most dramatic project, requiring an area of ocean surface equivalent to about 4.6 percent of New York State’s land area.

Replace all combustion-driven transportation with electricity and hydrogen. Standard passenger cars would go electric, while most larger road vehicles, non-road machines, ships, and trains would be driven by hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen combustion. Electricity and ground sources would provide heating and air conditioning, and electricity and hydrogen combustion would power industrial processes.

Efficiency retrofits to reduce energy demand. Residential, commercial, institutional, and government buildings would be updated with improved insulation, lighting, and heat and filtration systems. Solar power would be more broadly used for lighting, water heating, and passive seasonal heating and cooling. Future infrastructure would be framed towards encouraging public transit use and telecommuting.

Delucchi went into more detail with NY Times blogger Andrew Revkin on how the study’s authors think these goals could be hit in practical terms.

The plan also involves deploying a smart grid to manage these various energy sources, as well as integrating weather forecasting into operations. The researchers chose not to include natural gas since it remains an emitter of carbon dioxide and methane, and because the extraction of natural gas remains highly carbon-intensive. More interestingly, they decided not to include biofuels either, due to their inefficiency in comparison to electricity for transportation, the high land-use required to grow either corn or cellulosic feedstocks in comparison to land-use of wind, and because the agricultural production of biofuel crops offsets a lot of the carbon reduction and creates other pollution.

According to Stacy Clark at HuffPost, Jacobson estimated the total cost for the project at $600 billion — no small ask. However, Jacobson and his co-authors also estimate the project would create 4.5 million jobs during construction, and maintain 58,000 permanent jobs thereafter. Using rough metric’s economists have developed for estimating the financial value of a human life, as well as the costs to New York State from deaths due to pollution-induced illnesses, they also estimate the project would pay for itself in 17 years.

Let’s get started.

Climate Progress

Awesome Star-Studded Music Video: Don’t Frack My Mother!

By Ryan Koronowski on Mar 12, 2013 at 2:04 pm

Sean Lennon, Yoko Ono, and a flotilla of celebrities sing a song titled “Don’t Frack My Mother” that opposes fracking in New York State. The video has some actual information in it, but you’ll get distracted by the sustained barrage of familiar faces. And the fact that they rhyme:

Now we can’t afford for this world to get hotter

with

And we can’t afford polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons in our water

That’s gotta be a first time PAHs have appeared in a pop song.

Health

New York Poised To Pass ‘Rape Is Rape’ Bill To Update Definition Of Sexual Assault

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Feb 13, 2013 at 9:00 am

Lydia Cuomo, a rape survivor, is advocating to update New York's definition of rape

As anti-choice politicians seek to narrow the definition of sexual assault to “forcible rape” or “legitimate rape,” lawmakers in New York State are taking the opposite approach — and actually may be prepared to advance a bill that would expand the definition of rape to encompass additional acts of sexual violence.

Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas (D) first introduced the legislation last year after Lydia Cuomo, a Bronx schoolteacher who was raped by a city cop, discovered that her assaulter wasn’t going to be charged with “rape.” Since Cuomo’s rapist didn’t vaginally penetrate her, his crimes fell outside of New York’s current definition of rape — but Simotas’ bill seeks to change that by widening the state’s rape statues to officially include forced oral and anal sex. Cuomo traveled to Albany on Tuesday to use her own personal experience to help advocate for the proposed legislation, urging state lawmakers to make sure an outdated legal definition won’t continue to deny survivors the justice they deserve:

Cuomo wants to use what happened to her to spur lawmakers to act this year. The legislative push is also part of her healing process. [...]

Last week, she recounted how she sat nervously with her family in the 15th-floor office of the district attorney that day last March when she found out the 12-person jury couldn’t agree that she had been raped — an option she said never once entered her mind as a possibility.

“When we found out the reason why, it just seemed so ludicrous to me,” Cuomo now says. “I think, quite frankly, it’s insulting.”

“Ultimately I was being told, ‘Oh, you were anally raped and orally raped, but we don’t believe you were raped; you were sexually assaulted.‘”

At the beginning of 2012, the FBI updated its definition of rape for the first time in 80 years to include forced anal and oral acts. But, while that’s an important step to update the way the agency measures trends in crime, it doesn’t impact federal or state legal codes. Twenty five states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government have eliminated the word “rape” from their codes in order to use the more inclusive terms “sexual assault” or “sexual abuse” — but in the remaining states, including New York, the official definition of what’s considered to be rape can vary widely.

Cuomo wants to encourage all policymakers to use more specific language because, even though it may seem like quibbling to them — in New York, the crimes defined as a “criminal sexual act” and a “predatory sexual assault” both lead to essentially equivalent sentences — it can mean all the difference in the world to survivors of sexual violence. Creating distinctions between different types of penetration ultimately serves to rank sexual crimes against each other, which can make survivors feel like their individual experiences are also being ranked on a scale of ranging levels of seriousness. Cuomo and Simotas want to emphasize that “rape is rape.”

“I think a lot can come from calling something what it is and talking more openly about it,” Cuomo told Salon. “Some people say, ‘Oh, it’s just semantics.’ And I do think it is semantics at the end of the day, right? But I think the semantics are important.”

As the the New York Daily News reports, state lawmakers are beginning to agree. Senate co-leader Jeffrey Klein (D) said the legal code “definitely needs to change” since, as it’s currently written, it represents “an insult to not only the victims of these horrendous crimes, but to our legal system.” And Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D) confirmed that he’s “inclined” to pass Simotas’ bill.

Economy

New York Rep: GOP Made Us ‘Go Around Like Third World Beggars’ For Sandy Aid

By Aviva Shen on Jan 18, 2013 at 1:50 pm


Rep. Peter King (R-NY) did not hesitate to attack his fellow House Republicans after they refused to hold a vote on providing disaster relief funds to states affected by Hurricane Sandy. After public shaming, the House finally passed a bare-bones aid package on January 4.

But King has not forgotten his colleagues who tried to block funds for the devastated regions of New York and New Jersey. On Friday morning, King recalled in a WOR-AM interview with Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) how he and the rest of the New York delegation were made to feel like “third world beggars”:

[King] cited a New Jersey congressman who said on the floor that Congress now needs a “hypocrites conference” for those whose states received funding the past and now sought to deny the New York region what it was seeking.

“Quite frankly it’s going to be difficult going back and working with people you sit next to and whenever they were in need, we responded immediately,” he said. “Not one member of Congress ever voted against or said one word in opposition to aid going to other states when the money was needed. We were going around like third world beggars. At least they put us in that position.”

After House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) cancelled the Sandy vote at the last minute, King railed that Republicans had “put a knife in the back of New Yorkers.” Indeed, more than half of the 67 Republicans who voted against Sandy aid previously lobbied for disaster funding for their own states before turning on New York and New Jersey. In the interview, King raged against the injection of politics into a crisis that left his home state in shambles for over two months before Congressional action.

King went on to praise Cuomo’s passage of a tough gun regulation bill vehemently denounced by many Congressional Republicans.

Election

Campaign Finance Reform Advocate Defeats Right Wing Millionaire In NY Senate Race

By Josh Israel on Jan 18, 2013 at 12:10 pm

State Senator-Elect Cecilia Tkaczyk (D-NY)

State Senator-Elect Cecilia Tkaczyk (D-NY)

Progressive Democrat Cecilia Tkaczyk has been elected to the New York State Senate over former Assemblyman George Amedore (R), after a successful court challenge led to the counting of 99 previously uncounted ballots from the November elections. Amedore, a wealthy real estate developer, saw his 37 vote lead become a 19 vote loss as the ballots were counted Thursday and Friday.

Tkaczyk ran a strongly progressive campaign in the Albany-area district, emphasizing her support for public education, LGBT equality, equal pay for women, reproductive choice, environmental protection, and campaign finance reform. Though she was heavily outspent by Amedore, she benefited from outside spending by supporters of public financing for candidates. In a December op/ed, she observed: “If I do get sworn in, I’ll know my support for public financing is a central reason I won the job.”

Amedore, on the other hand, was a strong conservative who opposed marriage equality, abortion rights, equal pay for women, and increasing the minimum wage. He consistently opposed campaign finance reform as an Assemblyman and attacked the idea of public financing of campaigns.

A coalition of Republicans and Independent Democrats share power and jointly control the 63-member Senate. But with Tkaczyk’s newly-determined victory, Republican Conference Leader Dean Skelos will have a minority of seats — strengthening both the influence of the five-member Independent Democratic Conference and the likelihood of progressive legislation passing the body. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver are both Democrats.

The legislature is expected to take up campaign finance reform this session. LGBT advocates are also hopeful that the long-delayed Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act will finally be enacted to provide employment protections for transgender New Yorkers.

Justice

Texas Attorney General Invites New York Gun Owners To Move To Texas

By Aviva Shen on Jan 17, 2013 at 3:00 pm

On Tuesday, New York became the first state to pass gun legislation in response to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December. The measures include bans on assault weapons and magazines that hold more than 7 bullets, and a requirement that gun owners in homes with mentally ill people must properly lock up their firearms.

Though these new laws are immensely popular among New York voters, Texas attorney general Greg Abbott (R) has extended an open invitation to any New Yorkers who feel threatened by the new gun violence protection measure. Abbott launched an Internet ad campaign targeting New Yorkers shortly after Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) signed the law.

The provocative web ads, paid for with Abbott campaign funds, will appear as a pop-up on screens on a variety of media web sites, including that of The New York Times, for those accessing the sites in Manhattan and Albany.

“Is Gov. Cuomo looking to take your guns? Sick of the media outing law abiding gun owns? Are you a lawful NY gun owner seeking lower taxes?” reads one of two pop-up ads.

A second reads: “Wanted: Law abiding New York gun owns looking for lower taxes and greater opportunity.”

Click on either and you are directed to a Facebook second amendment petition page with the greeting: “You’ll fit right in here in Texas!”

The Facebook page boasts that New Yorkers who move to Texas will be able “to keep more of what you earn and use some of that extra money to buy more ammo.”

Abbott’s campaign may not attract many New York defectors. A new poll found that 73 percent of New York voters supported the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. A full 91 percent support stricter penalties on purchasing illegal guns or using guns on school property. Even New York’s Republican state senators supported the new laws, passing it by a margin of 43 to 18.

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