Tag: Immigration

JHISN Newsletter 01/13/2024

Posted on January 13, 2024 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

We celebrate many new years in our neighborhood. Greetings to you in New Year 2024—according to the Gregorian calendar and its lineage of imperial time. (During the Roman Empire, Julius Caesar introduced an earlier version of the Gregorian calendar that abolished a lunar-based year, still marked in many global cultures).

Our first article of 2024 brings you a story of the art and cultural work of people who have been deported or returned to Mexico after growing up in the US. Next, we report on how the Mayor’s budget cuts to libraries ignore the important programming, outreach, and resources that New York’s public libraries offer immigrant communities and new arrivals.  

 Newsletter highlights:
  1. Making art out of the trauma of forced return 
  2. Budget cuts threaten public libraries’ vital role for immigrants

1. “Pocha” Art at the New York–Mexico Border

Here in NYC, at the end of 2023, students and faculty at The New School’s Transnational Border Lab showcased the activist artwork they created during a semester working with Otros Dreams en Acción (ODA). The ODA was established in 2018 in Mexico City by Jill Anderson, a US researcher, and Maggie Loredo, who grew up in the US but was forced to return to Mexico. Their work is based in a cultural center for deportees and forced return migrants named Pocha House: ​​”The word pocha is a slur leveled at Mexicans whose speech and bearing show the traces of a childhood spent in the United States.” 

Together, Loredo and Anderson have created numerous projects and presented their research findings about the people who have had to return to Mexico even though they never grew up there. In addition to their Ecologies of Migrant Care project, they self-published Lxs Otrxs Dreamers. The book combines art with the stories of those returned to Mexico and “bears witness to trauma and resilience in the face of immigration policies that have separated families for generations.” Some of those stories are also accessible through the Lxs Otrxs Dreamers website.

ODA, which is also a Spanish word meaning a poem to be sung, shares their artwork on Instagram. They also share news about their public presentations, such as a recent panel discussion for the Hemispheric Institute, to spread awareness of the human impact of deportation and forced return.

A sample of the images created at The New School were printed on plastic sheets with corner grommets, which allow them to be tied up outdoors. It evokes images of tarpaulin sheeting that is commonly seen throughout migrant refugee camps and temporary shelters. The artworks assemble images of deportation paperwork, the butterfly used by many immigrant advocacy groups, personal stories in written word, and the challenge to childhood that migrants face regularly. 

The New School’s end-of-year event also included a screening of El Digno Retorno (A Dignified Return), a film by Jose Eduardo Aguilar. Aguilar has been doing a university and film festival circuit to advocate for opportunities in the film industry for the deported and returned community; provide resources to undocumented people who are thinking of returning or facing deportation to Mexico; and support through the Visa Justice Program the acquisition of B1/B2 nonimmigrant visas for deported and returned people to travel to the US.

Immigrant activism in the U.S. has a focus on immigrants staying in the country, but pocha activism is about the right to come and go between countries. As part of their Visa Justice Program, ODA has also created a petition for those who are deported or forcibly returned to be able to travel freely and safely between the US and Mexico.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

2. Cuts to Libraries Threaten Lifeline for Immigrant New Yorkers

“…[T]he Mayor wrongfully blames recent asylum-seekers as the manufactured rationale for massive spending cuts. Rather than invest in public programs and public works as a way to create stability, opportunity, and economic mobility for people, he has chosen to balance the budget on the backs of low-income New Yorkers…” –City Council Member Shekar Krishnan, op-ed, AMNY (12/12/23)

NYC library budgets are an immigrant justice issue. While not as visible as other social services, the role of libraries and library programming to immigrant communities has been huge … and is now under attack. Mayor Adams’ announcement in November of a 5% cut across all city services—with the specter of an additional 5% cut coming this spring—was met by outcries and criticism, including his attempt to blame the draconian cuts on the “migrant crisis.” But the new year begins with the library cuts going into effect, and Sunday service is now eliminated citywide.

The reduced budgets threaten the future of a host of programs and services that NYC libraries offer immigrant communities. For years, people have been able to sign up at libraries for IDNYC, a government ID card accessible to anyone regardless of immigration status. Libraries offer free English classes; online and in-house citizenship resources including preparation for the Naturalization Interview and Citizenship Test; free immigrant legal services through the ActionNYC program; and confidential guidance for asylum seekers on health insurance, school enrollments, mental health services and more. NYPL has hosted over ten immigration resource fairs and created thousands of “Welcome Kits” in partnership with the New York Immigration Coalition. The Queens Public Library runs the New Americans Program with multilingual workshops on tenants’ rights, starting a business, parenting, career planning, and becoming a citizen.

At the most basic community level, libraries provide free access to the Internet and computers, a welcoming space for kids, and a warm space for grandparents in the winter. Now all New Yorkers, including immigrants, have lost those crucial supports on Sundays.

Even before the cuts, Queens libraries were struggling to meet the growing need of recent asylum seekers and other migrants. At the Jamaica branch, as many as 200 people lined up outside the library each day, a ten-fold increase over 2022. Last October, at the Jackson Heights and Elmhurst branch libraries, over 1500 people were shut out of classes that had already filled up weeks in advance. The Flushing branch had to set up a lottery for classes after a surge of migrant interest.

 A spokesperson for the Mayor told library leaders that “due to the migrant crisis, granting further resources to them would be an example of ‘irresponsible spending’ that puts New Yorkers at risk.” Far from it. Cutting library budgets ignores the quiet but vital role that libraries play in supporting migrants and immigrant communities across the city.

UPDATE: In just the past two days, the Mayor has reversed some budget cuts (although not to libraries). Critics note that the move to restore selective funding demonstrates that the money has existed all along to protect essential services. Instead, several City Councilmembers claim, the severe cuts reflect the Mayor’s overinflation of the “migrant crisis” and his fiscal mismanagement of the city. 

 WHAT CAN WE DO?
  • Support #NoCutsToLibraries. Sign the pledge supporting Queens Public Library.  

 

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

 

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN. 

 

 

JHISN Newsletter 12/23/2023

Posted on December 23, 2023 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

As 2023 comes to an end, immigrant justice struggles continue on so many fronts: national and global migration politics; racial and class inequalities; community empowerment; and the lived realities–and failures–of refuge, asylum, and sanctuary. We encourage those of you who can, to consider an end-of-year donation to one of the local immigrant groups JHISN follows most closely, listed below in our What Can We Do section.

For our last issue of the year, we update you on the return of some of the immigrant street vendors displaced by the city from Corona Plaza. Their victory is only partial; hopes for a more just outcome will require an ongoing fight.

1. Tug of War Over Street Vending Enters New Stage

“To allow only a handful of vendors to return part-time ‘Feels like a slap in the face,’ said Ana Maldonado, 40, who ran a tamales stand in the plaza….’There is a lot of anger’ among the vendors.”  —New York Times (11/28/23) 

“It’s a foundation. It’s not the end-all-be-all. It’s not the perfect agreement.”  —Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, deputy director, Street Vendor Project

After months of arm-twisting and horse-trading, the Adams administration has agreed to allow a limited number of street vendors back to Corona Plaza. The deal includes stringent restrictions. A “Community Vending Area” has been established under the formal authority of the Queens Economic Development Corporation (QEDC), a non-profit that works with the city to promote small business development. Since the QEDC will now run the vending area as a private enterprise, taking responsibility for enforcing all city and state regulations, vendors who they sponsor avoid the requirement to get (unobtainable) individual licenses.

Fourteen standardized blue stalls have been deployed to be shared among the 80 members of the Corona Plaza Street Vendor Association (CPSVA). Craft items are for sale now; food sales will come soon. Once the market is in full operation, each eligible vendor will have access to a stall about once a week. The vending area will only be open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., effectively preventing the revival of the former, celebrated, night food market. As Gaston Cortez, president of the CPSVA says, “From 5:00, all the way to 11:00—that’s the best time for food vendors.” Cortez, who works with his wife to sell chilaquiles, tacos, and Mexican soups, says he will be forced to hustle odd jobs to help pay the family’s bills.

The CPSVA and their allies are pushing for more stalls and expanded hours. They’ve expressed hope that their partial victory at Corona Plaza will be a first step in decriminalizing street vending, and will help establish a pattern for legal street vending across the city. At a press conference on December 12, Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi seemed willing to consider opening other Community Vending Areas if the Corona Plaza “experiment” is successful. 

It’s not clear how much impact the Community Vending Area model might have for the 12,000 vendors—mostly immigrants—who are currently on the city’s waiting list for vendor licenses. Or the thousands more who aren’t even allowed to join that list, which is currently closed. Nor can the city be considered a trusted partner, having broken its promises to the vendors over and over.

Vendors are especially skeptical of the Adams administration’s intentions in light of the ongoing crackdown at Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza greenmarket. Parks Enforcement Patrol has been aggressively citing unlicensed vendors and forcing them to leave Prospect Park. Some vendors have moved to nearby traffic medians or in front of the Brooklyn Central Public Library. Cynthia Blade, a long-time craft and vintage jewelry vendor, told Gothamist, “They’re shutting us down at the height of the holiday season. I would say…80% to 90% of my annual income comes from the holiday season.” Not far away, another enforcement blitz—on the Brooklyn Bridge—has resulted in 240 citations by Sanitation Department cops. 

But street vendors are taking the offensive too. On Wednesday, December 6, hundreds of people chanting “Vendor Power!” rallied in support of a new city council initiative that would provide substantial relief. The four-part legislative package is being put forward by council members Pierina Sanchez (the daughter of street vendors from the Bronx), Amanda Farias, Jackson Heights council member Shekar Krishnan, Carmen De La Rosa, and public advocate Jumaane Williams. The first of the proposed laws would mandate that the city issue at least 3,000 vending licenses a year for five years, after which there would be no cap. The second would make unlicensed street vending a civil offense instead of a crime. The third would establish a Department of Small Business Service to assist vendors. The final piece of legislation would clarify rules about where vendors could operate. “We are one of the only cities in the United States of America that arbitrarily caps vending,” Sanchez argues. “The solution lies in business licensing. It lies in decriminalization.” 

WHAT CAN WE DO?

 

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

 

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN. 

 

JHISN Newsletter 11/18/2023

Posted on November 18, 2023 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends, 

As the UN announces that millions of displaced people face starvation in Gaza, JHISN adds our voice to the humanitarian calls for an immediate cease-fire and for an end to all war crimes, Islamophobia, and anti-semitism. While, at home, our mayor scapegoats desperate displaced migrants as the reason for cutting city services, JHISN calls for strict adherence to international law regarding asylum seekers and taxing the rich to pay for the needs of all New York residents, new and old. Our libraries are threatened by budget cuts despite providing critical community services including their Winter Coat Drive which we encourage our readers to support with donations at the 81st Street location.

In this newsletter, we offer an additional way to listen to local coverage of immigrant stories online with WBAI in partnership with the DocumentedNY team. Happily, we lead with the excellent news about the power of immigrant labor that has resulted in the hired car workers in NYC getting back hundreds of millions of dollars in wages stolen by Uber and Lyft.

1. Taxi Workers Alliance Celebrates Massive Wage Theft Settlement

“NYC Uber and Lyft drivers were cheated out of their hard-earned income at a time when an independent study found drivers were earning below even the minimum wage, and when out of that income drivers must pay for operating expenses. On top of that, drivers are locked out of the courts due to arbitration. Tens of thousands of drivers were cheated out of a better life and then kept from pursuing justice.” —Bhairavi Desai, New York Taxi Workers Alliance Executive Director

The taxi and hired car industry, powered by immigrant labor, is an essential part of NYC’s economy. It’s also a site of constant cutthroat struggle, where billionaires fight for market share, and weaponize political connections and technology to ruthlessly extract profit from hundreds of thousands of drivers. Remarkably, the drivers, led by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA), not only manage to survive in this merciless arena, but continue to notch up significant victories.

NYTWA started in 1998, defending the rights of yellow cab and black car workers—long before the advent of ride-share apps. But once Uber and Lyft started flooding the streets with tens of thousands of cars, the union pivoted to include the app drivers’ concerns. Today 70 percent of the 21,000 NYTWA members are Uber and Lyft drivers. 

The union soon learned that ride-sharing companies were engaged in widespread wage theft, including illegally deducting passenger sales tax out of driver’s pay. Employer-friendly arbitration clauses, included by default in drivers’ contracts, severely limited the ability of the workers to sue. In 2015, NYTWA asked the governor and attorney general to do something about their stolen wages. They were turned down flat.

Undeterred, the NYTWA began a relentless campaign to bring Uber and Lyft to account. In 2016, they filed suit and publicized the app companies’ blatant lawbreaking. Soon, Uber “discovered” that they had “made a mistake” in the way they calculated commissions, and promised to pay back tens of millions of dollars—a small proportion of what was owed. In 2019 and 2020, the NYTWA went back to court, challenging the arbitration clauses in cases of wage theft, and demanding full reimbursement for all drivers.

On November 2, after eight and a half years of NYTWA organizing, State Attorney General Letitia James announced that Uber and Lyft had agreed to a massive settlement; one of the largest wage theft recoveries in history. The companies will pay back all the stolen wages, amounting to $328 million. In addition, Uber and Lyft have agreed to guarantee drivers a minimum wage and sick leave. As NYTA’s Desai says,

“You can’t turn back the clock and feed a hungry belly, but this money is going to help drivers get the life that they should have had in the years that this money was initially stolen. I hope that drivers will be able to move into that bigger apartment, put a down payment on their next car, or have their kid go back to college – that’s how significant this is.”

Attorney General James praised the drivers for their unrelenting efforts. She thanked the NYTWA specifically “for bringing the matter to this office.”

As we write, another uphill NYTWA battle against the ride-share companies and the city administration is underway. The union supports the longstanding cap on the number of ride-share vehicles in the city. The cap serves to prevent the companies from oversaturating the city with cars and pushing down driver income. But Uber and its captive mouthpiece, the Independent Drivers Guild, have been pushing for an exemption from the cap for electric vehicles. This would do more than weaken the cap: because of a city mandate for all-electric fleets by 2030, exempting electric vehicles essentially does away with the cap altogether. As usual, the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission has taken the companies’ side.

For now, an injunction stemming from a NYTWA lawsuit has stopped the city from issuing any more electric for-hire vehicle license plates.

WHAT CAN WE DO?:
  • Donate to the NYTWA
  • Read more about Uber and Lyft wage theft and the campaign to stop it

2. DocumentedNY on the Radio

“Our journey on earth, though difficult and long, shall be filled with happiness and in the end everyone gets their due, either good or bad.”—Irinajo Lyrics by Beautiful Nubia as translated from Yoruba by Fisayo Okare, host of Documented Immigration News Roundup

The online free speech radio station, WBAI, has been elevating the work of the DocumentedNY news source with a half-hour show airing at 5 pm on Saturdays. The show host, Fisayo Okare, has brought attention to migration issues ever since Texas started busing migrants to NYC. She brings to us not just the words, but the live voices of people advocating for the immigrant populations coming into New York City. 

In the November 11 episode, Okare spoke with Diane Enobabor, who grew up in Texas and is currently a PhD student at CUNY. Enobabor co-founded BAMSA, the Black and Arab Movement Solidarity Alliance, to support men placed at the Stockton Street “respite center” in Bushwick/Bed-Stuy after they arrived from Texas. Along with other members of BAMSA’a rapid response team, she advocated for the City to better support these immigrants, including ensuring that the men had access to showers. BAMSA originally planned to volunteer support work for no more than two months, so as to not cover over the need to address systemic problems about the way the city was providing support services.

BAMSA used monies from a $5,000 grant to launch ESL classes and to begin capturing better data about the migrants they were working with. Since the asylum process tracks people based on the last nation of residency rather than their nation of origin, many asylum seekers of African origin become statistically invisible after coming to the US via other nations. BAMSA’s research has shown that 40% of African migrants arrive by plane, 10% by train, 49% by bus, and only 1% arrive on the Texas buses.

Enobabor also learned that recent migrants who move outside of NYC, such as the Mauritanians who have found success in Ohio, as well as those who returned to Texas, actually found cheaper housing and better access to work opportunities elsewhere. She notes that NYC used to be the foundational start for most migrants but now, by not taking this opportunity to provide the best support to new migrants, NYC is missing an important chance for its own revitalization.

Enobabor and Okare also raised awareness of Adama Bah who founded a Harlem non-profit called Afrikana. The organization played a crucial role by serving as greeters to arriving migrants at Port Authority and then expanded support by helping provide IDNYC cards to people without established residency. Bah’s efforts to support new immigrants were recognized earlier this year when State Senator Jessica Ramos nominated her for the BPHA Community Awards from the New York State Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and Asian Legislative Caucus.

JHISN applauds the work of these incredible women. We encourage our readers to support DocumentedNY and to listen to the noteworthy online radio coverage the news team is now providing about migration issues.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

 

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN. 

 

 

JHISN Newsletter 11/04/2023

Posted on November 4, 2023 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

As the relentless bombing of homes, schools, refugee camps, mosques, churches, markets, hospitals, and humans in Gaza continues, we can only ask our readers to not turn away. For those who support an immediate ceasefire, see DRUM (Desis Rising Up & Moving) for local actions to pressure electeds. For broader NYC actions, please follow Jewish Voice for Peace NYC.

This week’s newsletter offers an update on a tentative agreement that would allow immigrant vendors to return to Corona Plaza. We then take a deeper look at the digital divide, in terms of both access and content, that excludes far too many asylum seekers and other migrants from full participation in online worlds.

Newsletter highlights:
  1. Deal for Corona Plaza street vendors? 
  2. Digital access for immigrants to US

1. Return of Corona Plaza Vendors Linked to Soccer Stadium Approval

“I was calling a foul on the displacement of men and women who are hard workers, largely immigrants, in Corona Plaza who really deserve an opportunity to work”–Queens Borough President Donovan Richards on NY1 

It’s been almost three months since street vendors at Corona Plaza–mostly immigrant women from Central and South America–were forced out by the Sanitation Department police. Ever since, vendors and their political allies have been urgently trying to make a deal with the Adams administration to reopen the Plaza and restore vendor livelihoods. Their proposals include limited, dedicated spaces for vendors to prevent overcrowding, while still retaining the “cultural spark” that the Plaza was known for. Although the administration has seemed willing to consider this in principle, they have dragged their feet.

Meanwhile, during this same period, the city has been working on securing final approvals for a new 25,000-seat soccer stadium at nearby Willets Point, expected to be ready for the New York City Football Club’s 2027 Major League Soccer season.

One of the needed approvals was that of vendor ally Borough President Donovan Richards, who had to okay changes to street maps. But early in October, Richards announced that he would not sign off until he secured an agreement allowing vendors to return to Corona Plaza, and also provide some of the vendors with space in the stadium’s concession operations.

“My position was and will continue to be, how are the local residents benefiting from this stadium? How’s the city treating the very community that this stadium is going to be placed? At the end of the day, this wasn’t about me, this wasn’t about politics, this was about largely immigrant women and children who were just trying to feed their families, who were just trying to pay their rent.” – Queens Borough President Donovan Richards 

On October 16, Richards announced in an interview on NY1 that he had reached a tentative agreement to benefit the vendors and guarantee that the new jobs created will go to community members:

“We have reached a tentative agreement with the city now to get those vendors back on the site at Corona Plaza, and the goal is to ensure that…we create jobs. The stadium is a great project, but at the end of the day we have to make sure the benefits reach local communities.”

The return of vendors to the Plaza would affirm the importance of this lively food hub—for both workers and their customers.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

  • Support Corona Plaza street vendors.

2. Unaddressed—the Digital Divide in NYC

Internet access is a key problem facing immigrants. Reduced access to adequate and appropriate digital services affects every step of migration, from border transit to legal proceedings to locating necessary services. Immigrant justice advocates, like the journalists of Documented NY, identified this serious obstacle by listening to the 5,700 members of their WhatsApp community, a third of whom are recently arrived asylum seekers.

Research from Cornell University has indicated that, while better digital tools could help immigrants, the content itself is often out of date and users worry their digital fingerprints may be tracked. This led an interdisciplinary team to create the Immigrant Rights for Health website, sharing “accurate and accessible information on health and legal benefits available to immigrants.”

The existence of a digital divide hurts the people who are often most in need of internet access. This was a forefront issue during the pandemic years of lockdown from schools, work, and government/social services. In Jackson Heights, the city’s census review of 2020 found 26% of households lacked broadband connectivity. Mayor de Blasio’s Chief Technology Officer even created an Internet Master Plan to address the issue. The report acknowledged that around 1.5 million New Yorkers lacked an internet connection because a “private market solution to broadband service continues to leave out too many New Yorkers.” Two and a half years later, under Mayor Adams, the city quietly killed the Master Plan. 

NYC Mesh identified this same internet access issue back in 2014. The volunteer-run, open-source, community broadband network aimed to create an affordable network controlled and operated by and for local residents as an alternative to the private market. NYC Mesh requires social trust to expand their open-source system which leverages the rooftops and households of its members, so its growth has always been hyper-local and limited.

The New York City Council made an initial effort during the pandemic to introduce local laws to improve network access. Its Committee on Technology introduced four local law proposals: 1) provide public school students with mobile hotspot devices; 2) create written materials on affordable internet programs; 3) provide public access to wireless networks; and 4) establish a website for cable franchise agreements. Although there were many positive conversations in Hearing Committees, where they even discussed options like providing network devices in shelters, all four initiatives since 2022 have been laid over in Committee—the bills were sent to the full Council for more debate and still await a final vote.

One program that has expanded is the city’s LinkNYC Public-Private Partnership which converted pay phones to internet access nodes. During 2023 Immigrant Heritage Week, the city and LinkNYC launched the “We Love Immigrant New York” campaign with the Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Affairs; it included a “We Speak NYC” program to help immigrants learn English. It also created the first Gigabit Center, at La Colmena in Staten Island, which was identified by Mayor Adams as a resource navigation center providing high-speed internet access for newly-arrived immigrants. A second Gigabit Center opened at Silicon Harlem in the Bronx in August 2023. There are also plans to bring network access to 200 NYCHA locations through the “Big Apple Connect,” though there is uncertainty as to how effective this will be.

In December 2022, a few months after southern states began busing immigrants to sanctuary cities, the American Immigration Council noted that 24% of immigrants were likely to lack broadband access. Comparatively, 20% of people born in the USA are without broadband. Housing those migrants in temporary shelters in NYC has highlighted this public issue; the New York City Bar reported in 2020 that the city needed to provide internet access to help people in temporary housing find permanent homes. In 2021, and again in 2023, they supported a state bill to do so. This has not yet become law but it has finally passed from the Senate to the Assembly.

For those making asylum claims, the need for network access is crucial. Most of our Newsletter readers will have heard about the CBP One phone app which has significantly, and by design, reduced applications for asylum because it creates a technology bottleneck. Even people who can get access to devices are not guaranteed access to service. Once in the US, continued access will be needed not just for information, but to attend online court proceedings where many cases are now heard.

In closing, it is noteworthy that most of the research and discussion, even for global digital access initiatives like the UN Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, has not been updated much since 2022. Clayton Banks, who co-founded Silicon Harlem, summed up the stalled efforts to change the digital divide: “The city put over $160 million in the [2020] budget to make this happen, but not a nickel of it was spent.“

WHAT CAN WE DO?

In solidarity and with collective care,
Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN. 

 

 

JHISN Newsletter 10/21/2023

Posted on October 21, 2023 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

It’s not that easy to keep up with immigration politics in NYC. Corporate media often distorts or ignores current issues; grassroots immigrant-led justice groups are rarely highlighted in journalistic accounts; and local media—including Gothamist, Queens Post, City Limits, and Queens Daily Eagle—can be uneven in their reporting. So you might have missed the truly significant news that Mayor Adams, under the pretext of a “crisis” of new migrants in NYC, is trying to overturn the city’s decades-old Right to Shelter law. We offer that important story below.

We also give an update on the recent work of Adhikaar, a Queens-based immigrant justice organization—the first in the US to represent Nepali-speaking communities.

 Newsletter highlights:
  1. Mayor takes aim at Right to Shelter
  2. Adhikaar helps win TPS extension and more…

1. Adams Attacks NYC’s Right to Shelter

“You know, I think the mayor thought he was going to sneak this by, that he was going to repeal the right to shelter, he was going to throw new arrivals out on the street like they weren’t human beings and nobody was going to notice.”    —Christine Quinn, president and CEO of Win

JHISN has recently argued that Mayor Adams has used the busing of asylum seekers from Texas as a pretext for cutting social services and introducing a new wave of austerity politics to our city. True to form, Adams—with support from Governor Hochul—is now trying to use the arrival of these migrants as an excuse to gut New York City’s renowned Right to Shelter law.

Because of a 1981 consent decree, Callahan v Carey, NYC is legally obligated to offer access to a bed, lockers, showers, and necessary toiletries to those in need.

“There’s a reason why New York City doesn’t have tent encampments, and it’s not that we’re any cheaper than west coast cities,” said Kathryn Kliff, staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society. “Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, any of those places, you’re going to see a lot of people sleeping out. The reason you don’t see that here is because there is a right to shelter.”  —The Guardian (10/4/23)

Some previous New York mayors, including Giuliani and Bloomberg, have viewed Right to Shelter as an unwelcome obstacle to their budget-cutting efforts. Today Adams, deploying his trademark hyperbole, proclaims that providing this right to asylum seekers will “destroy” the city. Even as he tries to gut the Right to Shelter, he uses it to dishonestly justify major spending cuts to a broad swath of other city social services.

 To advance his austerity agenda, which progressive legislators have called “manufactured scarcity,” Adams makes the inflated claim that shelter and services for asylum seekers will cost 12 billion dollars over three years. City Comptroller Brad Lander estimates the real cost at around 5.3 billion—or about 1.6% of the budget. Adams has loudly complained that “more than 122,700 asylum seekers [have] come through our intake system since the spring of 2022.” What he fails to mention is that only about half that number are actually in the care of the city, spread out among 210 sites. Many asylum seekers have left for other parts of the country or found housing on their own. In addition, 40% of asylum seekers arriving in New York are from Venezuela; most have recently gained federal Temporary Protected Status, which will allow them to get work permits and move out of the shelter system more quickly.

Adams’ Chief Advisor, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, has made the administration’s animus towards migrants obvious: “The right to shelter was intended for our indigenous homeless population, so we argue that we should not have to shelter all of these immigrants.” She didn’t mention the benefits migrants bring to the city. Nor did she acknowledge that there are 40,000 rent-stabilized apartments sitting vacant.

Initially, Adams tried to get the Manhattan State Supreme Court to approve a broad waiver of Right to Shelter. The waiver was to go into effect any time the city executive decided shelter services were too expensive. Since that blunt legal maneuver failed, the mayor has now asked the court to let him suspend the consent decree when shelter populations rise, as long as he or the governor declare a “state of emergency.” According to the latest news reports, the parties to the consent decree have been asked to enter mediation by Judge Gerald Lebovits.

Ignoring the pleas of religious leaders, Governor Hochul enthusiastically backs Adams’ play. She calls Right to Shelter “an open invitation to 8 billion people” to get a free bed in New York. This is the same right-wing narrative embraced by Curtis Sliwa and the New York Post, which urges outright defiance by the mayor of Right to Shelter law.

Rallying progressives to defend Right to Shelter, the Coalition for the Homeless and the Legal Aid Society have circulated open letters of protest to Adams and Hochul. The letters reaffirm the human rights of unhoused people, and rebut false arguments about asylum seekers. For instance, they point out that comparable numbers of migrants used to arrive year after year before the Right to Shelter consent decree even existed—debunking the incendiary claim that Right to Shelter is a magnet for opportunist freeloaders. 

So far, 50 organizations, including JHISN, have co-signed the letters. The version addressing Adams states:

We, the undersigned organizations, are vehemently opposed to your efforts to undermine the legal Right to Shelter for both new arrivals and longtime New Yorkers, as you propose doing in your October 3, 2023 letter to the court, and see such efforts as an abrogation of your moral and legal duties as the mayor of a sanctuary city, a city that has been a proud beacon of humane and progressive values for its entire history, and where we, as community, have long been dedicated to the ideal that no one should be left to live, or die, on our streets. –Open Letter (10/11/23)

WHAT CAN WE DO?

2. Adhikaar at 18 Years Old

Founded in 2005 by four women with $500 and a vision, Adhikaar today is the only women-led community organization in the US building the power of Nepali-speaking workers and immigrants. Located in Woodside, Adhikaar has become a transformative force at the national, state, and local level. The group continues to struggle for adequate protective legal status for Nepali immigrants nationwide. After winning the fight to extend temporary protective status (TPS) for Nepal until mid-2025, Adhikaar members traveled to the White House last June to meet with administration officials and press the need for more action beyond the automatic extension for existing TPS holders.

 At the state level, Adhikaar is a leader in the #AllHandsIn campaign to pass the Nail Salon Minimum Standards Council Act, which is currently stuck in committee in the NYS legislature. With close to 40,000 workers in New York State, 73% of whom are Asians or Pacific Islanders, the nail salon industry is a notorious site of wage theft and employee exploitation, as well as health risks from hazardous chemicals. “During my career, I had seven miscarriages in the industry. That’s the reason I want to protect my sisters who work in the industry,” explains Pabitra Dash, Adhikaar’s senior organizer. The legislation would create a Council that includes industry workers to establish statewide standards and protections for nail technicians. Adhikaar has mobilized hundreds of workers in Albany, media coverage, and support from electeds to try to keep the legislation alive and moving forward.

And here at the community level, Adhikaar launched an organization-wide initiative on community safety—what it means for members and how to achieve it. After conducting a member survey last April, Adhikaar held a series of self-defense trainings and member discussions in response to the rise in attacks and threats against Asian Americans in New York. “The training helped members who feel marginalized or vulnerable, gain a sense of empowerment and control over their own safety,” (Adhikaar May-June 2023 newsletter).

 WHAT CAN WE DO?

 

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

 

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN. 

JHISN Newsletter 10/07/2023

Posted on October 7, 2023 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

We debated whether to bring this week’s story to you. Would we be amplifying Curtis Sliwa’s vicious, cynical politics by reporting on them? Should readers who have never heard of Sliwa be introduced to him here?

Ultimately we decided that this was an important story to share. We offer a summary look at the anti-immigrant movement that Sliwa, with his billionaire-funded bullhorn, is trying to build in NYC. Some of you may remember Sliwa as the failed Republican nominee in the last mayoral race. Today, anointing himself the “mayor in exile,” he hopes to use anti-immigrant resentment and fear in his next run for mayor. We also want to situate Sliwa’s (limited) popularity in the context of the growing traction of conservative and anti-immigrant politics in the city. So. Read with caution. Read with care. And help us build immigrant justice movements strong enough to make this story irrelevant.

Curtis Sliwa and 77 WABC—Spearheading NYC’s Anti-Migrant Protests

“They don’t have enough handcuffs. They don’t have enough cops. They don’t have enough cars. We’re going to be here 24/7/365 and the illegals are not gonna want to come here. They should stay in Manhattan.” —Curtis Sliwa at the former Island Shores Senior Living facility (9/19/2023)

If you were in New York City in the 1980s, you probably knew Curtis Sliwa as the red beret-wearing Guardian Angel claiming to “protect” subway riders. If you listened to talk radio in the 1990s, you knew him as a regular co-host on WABC. If you were here in 2021, you’ll remember him as the Republican candidate for Mayor. Now, using the radio platform of 77 WABC, Sliwa’s latest incarnation is as the chief organizer and promoter of protests against migrant asylum seekers,  thinly veiled as opposition to the shelters that house them. 

A regular feature of Sliwa’s broadcasts is verbal attacks on Mayor Adams for his ineptitude as a mayor, his fancy suits, his enjoyment of NYC’s nightlife, and his policies towards migrants arriving in the city. At the end of August, in an intensification of those attacks, Sliwa organized a loud rally in front of Gracie Mansion. He declared that asylum seekers should be housed at Rikers Island until they are granted working papers. Immigrant justice counter-protesters from Rise and Resist denounced Sliwa for his hate-filled rhetoric.

Sliwa is on right-wing radio for hours each day. He is a regular guest at 7:05 a.m. on 77 WABC’s Sid Rosenberg & Friends morning show. He then hosts his own midday show (with Anthony Weiner as his foil). Sliwa also produces a stream of  Minicasts and Rip and Read podcasts. Hectoring listeners at the top of his voice, he recycles half-truths and baldfaced lies about migrants, characterizing legal asylum seekers as an invasion of “illegal aliens” who have deliberately decided to come to NYC for the freebies. Sliwa’s daily screeds imply that “fighting age men” seeking US asylum are at best a danger to citizen children and women and, at worst, terrorists in disguise.

77 WABC is the third-largest talk radio station in NYC. It was purchased in 2021 by billionaire John Catsimatidis’ Red Apple Media. Catsimatidis is best known as the owner of the New York supermarket chain Gristedes, but Red Apple Group also owns United Refining in Pennsylvania and real estate in New York and elsewhere. Catsimatidis’ Republican credentials are very strong. His daughter, Andrea, is chairwoman of the Manhattan Republican Party (and married to the grandson of Richard Nixon). His son John and wife Margo are numbers three and four of the 22 Party vice presidents. 77 WABC hosts shows for other right-wing Republicans including Bill O’Reilly, Sid Rosenberg, Rudy Guiliani, Brian Kilmeade, Andrew Guiliani, and Jeanine Piro, and offers a perfect vehicle for Sliwa’s return to political prominence.

During August and September, Sliwa organized, promoted, and attended protests against temporary shelters for asylum seekers in Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx. Protests targeted the former Creedmore Psychiatric Center, the former Catholic girls school, St. John Villa Academy, the former Island Shores Senior Living Facility in Midland Beach, the unused Floyd Bennett Field, and Overlook Manor, a former college dorm in Riverdale. Despite Sliwa’s claims that people have been forced out of these places to accommodate migrants, each was already vacated and/or sold before the city identified them as possible sites for migrant shelters.

Creedmore, in Queens, was Sliwa’s first target. On August 8, hundreds of people waving signs reading “Save Our Neighborhood” and “Americans Over Migrants” turned out to protest a tent city being built on Creedmore’s parking lot. Sliwa returned to another Creedmore protest a week later and was arrested when he refused a police order to move out of the road.

Much of Sliwa’s activism has been in Staten Island. Sliwa appeared at a preemptive protest at the Midland Beach facility organized by artist Scott LoBaido before it was certain the facility would be a shelter for migrants. A week later a larger protest was held at the same site with LoBaido and Newsmax television’s John Tabacco as speakers. 

At least eleven Staten Island electeds—including some Democrats— wrote to Mayor Adams and Comptroller Brad Lander asking them to refuse to make the Midland Beach facility a migrant shelter. Nevertheless, a contract was signed. When the first bus of migrants arrived at night on September 19, Sliwa led protesters who blocked the streets. They shouted, “You’re not welcome,” You’re illegal” and argued with the large police presence. Ten were arrested and Sliwa threatened more protests to come. Several dozen protesters returned the very next day.

On August 28, Sliwa led a protest rally attended by hundreds at Staten Island’s St. John Villa Academy, expected to house up to 300 migrants. Representative Nicole Malliotakis and Borough President Vito Fossella also attended and spoke in opposition to the shelter. Sliwa returned to St. John Villa on September 5, where he threatened to shut down all the bridges to the island. After several Staten Island lawmakers filed suit to prohibit the shelter, a judge ruled that the right to shelter was “an anachronistic relic from the past,” and issued an injunction preventing the city from using the school to house migrants. Although the city is appealing, Sliwa organized hundreds of residents in a “victory rally.” He warned that the court decision was only a “part-time victory,” and the “war could resume at any moment.” He also proclaimed, “You won this battle here, but the bigger battle is in Midland Beach.’’

On his podcast, Sliwa called for “the mother of all rallies” at Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field on September 14. He claimed there were going to be “7,500 single able-bodied young men, illegal aliens with no jobs and nothing to do” housed in tents on a flood plain, implying that these will be dangerous people. “This is our battle for our neighborhoods, for our children, for our grandparents. For your equity.” Sliwa’s anti-migrant rhetoric as well as sharp attacks on the mayor were recorded at the rally. Bolstering the protest, a dozen lawmakers filed suit on September 19 to block the use of Floyd Bennett Field to shelter asylum seekers, arguing that it is an improper use of federal parkland. While some claim to worry about the migrants being housed on a known floodplain, protesters’ signs and comments indicate instead a focus on the false allegations that the migrants are illegal.

At the end of September, Sliwa turned his attention to Overlook Manor in Riverdale (planned as a residence for migrant families). He organized 75 residents of nearby Waldo Gardens to protest, claiming the building is an unused college dorm on campus. In fact, it is not on campus and is no longer connected to the college, having been sold in May 2022 to Stagg Group, an affordable housing developer. When met by a 50-person counter-demonstration at his September 24th rally, Sliwa said:

 “If you look at the demographics of both groups, on the one side, the pro-migrant group. They’re young progressive socialists for the most part. [On the other], these guys, senior citizens, many of them first-generation immigrants from Russia, Eastern Europe, who fled communism.” 

Let’s be clear: Mayor Adams bears a lot of responsibility for the current antagonism against the shelters by failing to talk to local politicians and community leaders before announcing plans affecting their neighborhoods. The initial outcry in May after he sent migrants, unannounced, to a Westchester community apparently did not improve his communication skills. Lack of dialogue with affected communities creates political space for the demagogues stoking people’s anti-immigrant fears, despite how misplaced and often racist those fears are. And people like Curtis Sliwa take full advantage, preying on and amplifying those fears to their political advantage.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

 

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

 

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN.