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      New York mayor plans to hospitalize mentally ill people involuntarily

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      New York mayor plans to hospitalize mentally ill people involuntarilyAdvocacy groups for civil rights groups and the homeless criticized mandate: ‘Mayor is playing fast and loose with the legal rights’ The mayor of New York City announced on Tuesday that he is ordering police and emergency services to more aggressively hospitalize those with mental illness who are on the streets, even if the hospitalization is involuntary and they pose no threat to other people.Mayor Eric Adams’ directive would give outreach workers, city hospitals and first responders, including police, discretion to forcibly hospitalize anyone they deem as not “meeting their basic human needs, causing them to be a danger to themselves”, Adams told a news conference.The mayor called the directive an attempt to clear up a “gray area where policy, law and accountability have not been clear”, adding that the mandate is “a moral obligation to act” in light of “a crisis we see all around us”.“These New Yorkers and hundreds of others like them are in urgent need of treatment, yet often refuse it when offered,” said Adams.“The very nature of their illnesses keeps them from realizing they need intervention and support. Without that intervention, they remain lost and isolated from society, tormented by delusions and disordered thinking. They cycle in and out of hospitals and jails.”The Adams administration did not provide evidence that forced treatment is effective in treating mental illness or preventing crime.Advocacy groups for civil rights groups and the homeless criticized the mayor’s mandate.“The mayor is playing fast and loose with the legal rights of New Yorkers and is not dedicating the resources necessary to address the mental health crises that affect our communities,“ said Donna Lieberman, executive director the New York Civil Liberties Union.“Forcing people into treatment is a failed strategy for connecting people to long-term treatment and care.”The Coalition for the Homeless also denounced the mayor’s plan, saying the city should focus on expanding access to voluntary psychiatric treatment.“Mayor Adams continues to get it wrong when it comes to his reliance on ineffective surveillance, policing and involuntary transport and treatment of people with mental illness,” said the coalition’s executive director, Jacquelyn Simone.State law also generally limits the ability of authorities to force someone into a mental health facility unless they pose a danger to themselves or others.But Adams called such limitations a “myth”, stating that the law does not require a person to be behaving in an “outrageously dangerous” or suicidal way before a police officer or medical worker could take action.As part of its initiative, the city said it would open a phone line to allow police officers to consult with clinicians.The mayor has also announced a subway safety plan and vowed to expand outreach teams, made up of clinicians and police officers. But critics called the plan a crackdown on the mentally ill and the homeless.A spokesperson for the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, said the city’s plan builds on mutual efforts to increase capacity at psychiatric hospitals, as well as expand outreach teams in subways.TopicsNew YorkMental healthUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      The other New York: how Republicans made ‘shocking’ gains in the empire state

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      The other New York: how Republicans made ‘shocking’ gains in the empire state The GOP made surprise gains in immigrant enclaves in Brooklyn, as Republicans slammed Democrats as ‘soft on crime’When political pundits predicted a national “red wave” in the midterm elections, they never imagined that one of the few areas it would actually surface would be southern Brooklyn, New York.They weren’t imagining Sunset Park, a working-class area where nearly three in four residents are people of color: a tight-knit Mexican community on its west side and a fast-growing Chinese community to the east, with plenty of mouth-watering taquerias and hand-pulled noodle joints. At the park, when it’s nice out, Latin dance music intermingles with old Mandarin pop songs until the sun goes down.Or Bensonhurst, further south, where old-school pizza joints have been replaced by boba shops and Asian vegetable stalls, drawing shoppers with pushcarts under a clattering overhead train.But it was in immigrant enclaves like these that Republicans overperformed by as many as 30 points compared with four years ago, building on steady rightward trends in nearby Russian and Orthodox Jewish communities. Altogether, the GOP racked up enough votes to flip three state assembly seats in southern Brooklyn and push candidate Lee Zeldin within six points of the governor’s mansion, the best performance for a Republican in 28 years, stunning the state’s political elites.Among those surprised was Joe Borelli, a 40-year-old rightwing city councilman and longtime Trump ally from Staten Island. “It was hard for me, even as a student of politics, to compute that we could flip some of these districts,” Borelli told me. “It was shocking to me how far we’ve actually gone in engaging some of those voters.”Statewide polls found midterm elections voters ranked crime as the most urgent issue, and southern Brooklyn has been no exception. Crime statistics paint a more complicated picture. Like in the rest of the country, homicide rates in New York have ticked up since the pandemic. They also remain at historic lows for the city – on par today with the homicide rates in American suburbs.But media coverage of New York’s crime has swelled dramatically. In July, a Bloomberg report found local tabloids like the New York Post mentioned violent crime six times more often after the election of the city’s cop-turned-mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who has also made violent crime a focus of his speeches.So it seemed to confirm the trend in April when a gunman opened fire on passengers in a subway car in Sunset Park, injuring 10 people and grabbing global headlines. The 62-year-old shooter was captured the next day, but it shook the neighborhood – particularly Chinese American residents, already on edge over a pandemic-era surge in reported assaults against Asian Americans.Whether accurate or not, the narrative of New York City spiraling into violent chaos seems to have played in Republicans’ favor. Top Democrats have been stuck in a debate over how to respond: Adams has ordered more policing while blaming violent crime on bail reform – a progressive policy backed by Governor Kathy Hochul – which state data shows hasn’t increased recidivism. The confusion has presented an opportunity for Republicans like Adams’ challenger, Curtis Sliwa, and Hochul’s opponent, Lee Zeldin, who have slammed Democrats as “soft on crime” and called loudly for the harsher treatment of suspected offenders. And they’ve taken that pitch directly to immigrant neighborhoods in southern Brooklyn, drawing large rallies of enthusiastic new supporters.That includes Yiatin Chu. At a Bensonhurst coffee shop called Cafe Gossip, Chu, a 55-year-old political activist, tells me how she was a liberal who went through a conservative awakening in the last few years. She says Asian immigrants have long been goaded into voting Democratic by non-profit social services, but in recent years voters like her have grown wrathful over bail reform, along with moves by Adams’ Democratic predecessor, Bill de Blasio, to open new homeless shelters and a high-rise jail in Chinatown. She’s even angrier over his proposal to end an admissions test that has enabled Asian American students to dominate the city’s top high schools. “It’s about self-interest and self-interest of your family, self-interest of your community,” Chu said. And the Republican party “is at the very least paying attention to us and talking to us”.This year, Chu founded a political club called Asian Wave, which in November instructed thousands of voters through the Chinese messaging app WeChat to vote for Republicans down the line. One of them was a virtually unknown candidate named Lester Chang, who ended up toppling Peter Abbate, a Democratic state assemblyman who has represented Sunset Park and surrounding neighborhoods since 1987. Chang, a former navy officer and longtime Chinatown resident, had run two failed races in Manhattan before switching to run in Brooklyn this year. “Manhattan is solidly blue,” he said. “So I tried here in Brooklyn because I saw I had a chance.” He claims to have spent just $25,000 on his victory – buoyed by teams of enthusiastic Chinese American volunteers.Chang, who is 61, says he won by knocking on doors and asking voters if they felt better off than two years ago. “The theme is anger, simple anger, especially for crime,” he tells me. “They don’t feel safe anymore, especially going to the subway.” To fix that, Chang wants to build a “transition center” to house homeless people next to the city’s notoriously unsafe prison on Rikers Island, where 14 detainees have died this year. Chang also wants to deploy a “minimum of 3,000 national guard soldiers to guard every single subway station, platform, cars and buses, carrying long and small guns”, which he likens approvingly to the militarized cops in China.“Everyone I talk to,” he says, emphasizing each word: “They. Love. That. Idea.”For years, social scientists have found the perception of crime is influenced by consuming negative news, and that perceptions of crime influence one’s sense of safety more than actual crime. That could help explain why the Republican narratives found traction this year in the areas just outside of New York City – where violent crime is rare, but urban chaos can feel frighteningly close. As Staten Island’s Borelli puts it: “Every household in my district has at least one person who commutes to another borough for work. And they see and witness the degradation of a lot of the general sense of order that New York had just three years ago.”How a five-term New York Democrat lost a House seat to a RepublicanRead moreIn the Hudson Valley, known for its quaint colonial hamlets an hour north of the city, the Republican Mike Lawler ousted Sean Patrick Maloney after months of hammering the Democrats’ congressional campaign chair over bail reform, in one of the biggest political upsets of the year. Attacks on crime also helped Republicans flip two congressional seats in Long Island, the wealthy suburb directly to New York City’s east.The GOP also made gains in Staten Island, New York City’s whitest borough. Connected to southern Brooklyn by the Verrazano Bridge and Manhattan by only a ferry, Staten Island is a suburb where most own their homes and drive cars, unlike the renters and strap-hangers who fill the rest of the city. Instead of a compact city grid, Staten Island has sparse, rolling boulevards lined with ranch homes, Victorian mansions, and American flags. Republicans flipped one of the few Democratic state assembly districts here in November, electing a Republican known for erecting a giant pro-Trump statue on his mansion’s front lawn.But Borelli is even more excited by the Republican surge in southern Brooklyn, which he says is proof the party can hold its own in urban neighborhoods. That could have big implications in battleground states like Pennsylvania, where residents are concentrated in left-leaning Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. “We don’t have to win the vote in every city, but we can lessen the margins in the city to be more competitive statewide. And this should be the plan for the Republican party going forward.”The real test may be a neighborhood called Bay Ridge. Here at the end of the R subway line, just south of Sunset Park, you won’t find trendy lofts or cramped tenement buildings but neat limestone row houses and single-family homes. The area still carries an old reputation as a conservative white enclave; that’s been challenged in recent years by an influx of Arab, Asian and Latino immigrants, as well as millennials seeking cheaper rent. Now, bars aimed at Irish retirees share streets with Palestinian cafes full of diverse young people. In recent elections, votes have split almost evenly between the left and right, creating tension over the neighborhood’s political identity.Tanya, a white resident in her 30s who calls herself a “pragmatic leftist”, says she fell in love with Bay Ridge’s small-town feel when she moved in 10 years ago, but in recent years the conservatism has become “pretty in your face”. “Thin blue line flags, ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ banners, Maga hats, Trump 2024 posters can be seen around the neighborhood. There’s a house that has a big inflatable Santa in military fatigues every Christmas season, and another plays the national anthem off their balcony at the same time every day.” Last week, she says, some people set up a booth outside the grocery store promoting rightwing conspiracy theories. “I walked by them as fast as I could and didn’t engage. You can’t reach those people.”C, a progressive-leaning Bay Ridge homeowner in his 40s who asked not to use his full name, said that the neighborhood was filled with “old guard south Brooklynites” who “feel like they’re being forced out” by newer immigrants of color. These residents “don’t think they’re racists and are often kind and charitable people. But since I’m white they think they can tell me at the bar how ‘lack of education and role models lead Blacks into crime’, or how when we moved in they were ‘glad we weren’t Arab, Asian, or Mexican because they’re ruining the neighborhood’.”Bay Ridge’s liberal people of color mostly avoid confrontation. Chris Live, a 43-year-old left-leaning Black and Puerto Rican resident who grew up in the Afro-Caribbean neighborhood of Flatbush, tells me his friends warned him against moving to Bay Ridge 10 years ago. But he says he feels secure here: “People know you and tend to look out for each other.” He doesn’t take the conservativism personally. “If I walk into a bar and I see somebody with a Maga hat on, if that’s the only seat in the building, I’m sitting next to him, but I’m not going to engage.” Once, he encountered a drunk man in a corner store who made a racist joke using the N-word. “I’m pissed, but I just walked out,” Live says. “I thought, ‘This guy’s out of his mind. He doesn’t represent this neighborhood to me.’”How do you represent the neighborhood? The Democratic city councilman Justin Brannan, a 44-year-old former punk guitarist, says the divisions didn’t feel nearly as stark when he founded the Bay Ridge Democrats in 2012. “I was surrounded by Republican elected officials. We didn’t agree on much of anything, but we weren’t at each other’s throats and shit.” Trump’s election changed that: “It gave everyone this false license to be a complete asshole, and the national climate seeped into the local conversation. Now I can’t talk about how I got a pothole filled for Mrs O’Leary without someone spitting in my face about George Soros and Hillary’s fucking laptop or whatever. And it’s really sad that demagogues can turn people into enemies, when we’re not enemies.”‘I voted Democrat for the first time’: Guardian readers on the US midtermsRead moreBrannan – who signs his emails “Love all, serve all” – knows he may not be able to persuade Bay Ridge’s longtime rightwingers. But he and other local Democrats are worried about how newer arrivals might swing. The state senator Andrew Gounardes, a Bay Ridge Democrat narrowly elected in 2018, says he and Brannan have been “sounding the alarm for years” about southern Brooklyn’s rising conservatism. “In particular, we’ve been saying that the Democratic party needs to be investing more in connecting with and relating to Asian voters, who make up a growing population in southern Brooklyn. So it’s not a surprise that the day after the election, you see a sea of red, because the other party was the only party talking to these people.”To succeed in southern Brooklyn, they argue, Democrats should listen to immigrants, not deny their anxieties about safety. “No victim of a crime or witness to a crime wants to hear about statistics and data that says crime is low,” Brannan says. Instead, he suggests, Democrats should advocate for policing that treats communities of color “with dignity and respect” and emphasize rebuilding communities’ social safety nets, which were “blown wide open” by the pandemic. (As the city council’s finance chair, Brannan notes, he has helped Bay Ridge build four new public schools, and there’s a new hospital on the way.)The councilman points to other signs of progressive change, like Gay Ridge, a queer neighborhood organization formed by residents in 2019. This year, Gay Ridge hosted its first Pride event, which drew more than 1,000 attendees from across the city. The group has organized mutual aid efforts, game nights, and park cleanups – and is hoping to turn a strip of vacant storefronts near Bay Ridge’s Pier 69 into a queer business district they’re nicknaming “Gay Ridge Ave”.McKenzie Keating, a 49-year-old organizer who came out as trans three years ago after living in Bay Ridge for nine years, believes visibility is a kind of safety. “I love walking up and down Third Avenue. Even if it starts off in a negative place, people seeing me every day – with my partner, with my kid, with my groceries – when shit does go down, when they’re in that voting booth, hopefully they’ll say, ‘OK, who do I see as my neighbor? And I’m going to vote for their safety.”In the wake of the election, Sunset Park feels a little quieter. The temperatures have dipped, and outside the Chinese beauty stores and bakeries, Lee Zeldin signs have been chucked in the trash. So has a banner with big Chinese characters that reads: “If you don’t vote, don’t complain.”Despite the red wave here, Chu says her side remains the underdog. “No matter how strong the Chinese community, even if we were to get a dozen people elected among the state assembly and city council, that’s still a small, small portion. So unless we also get the attention of the non-Asian electeds, we’re not going to be able to affect policy.” It’s a point Lester Chang nods to as well when he tells me that his victory has made him “the highest-ranking elected Asian Republican in the state”. As a minority in the minority, he says, “the best I can do is be a squeaky wheel for my constituents and get those Democrats to come along with us and get things solved”.If there’s a part of New York where bipartisanship can work, maybe it’s southern Brooklyn. That’s what Chris Live tells me as we’re chatting on a windy afternoon outside his Bay Ridge home. In spite of the political tensions, it’s a great place, he keeps saying: “It feels like one of the last true neighborhoods, where, you know, your neighbors bring you food.” He adds that I should consider moving here.“My rent is good. It’s a friendly neighborhood, it’s a safe neighborhood, and I don’t attribute that to any political party. We have a lot of parks. A great view of the Verrazzano Bridge. And as long as the red wave didn’t turn into a red curtain, I’d be fine here for the foreseeable future.”TopicsNew YorkUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansDemocratsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      E Jean Carroll files new suit against Trump as New York sexual abuse law takes effect

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      E Jean Carroll files new suit against Trump as New York sexual abuse law takes effectJPMorgan and Deutsche Bank also face lawsuits in connection with Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking A New York law that temporarily allows adult survivors of sexual abuse to sue their abusers beyond the statute of limitations for civil claims came into effect on Thursday – and with it, the first of what could be hundreds of new legal actions.Among the first claims filed under the Adult Survivors Act (ASA), signed into law in May by Governor Kathy Hochul, is that of E Jean Carroll, a writer who accused Donald Trump of rape. Carroll filed an upgraded lawsuit against Trump minutes after the new state law took effect.Claims were also brought against JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank by lawyers acting for unnamed individuals who accuse the banks of turning a blind eye to alleged sex trafficking by the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in order to “churn profits”.The lawsuits, filed separately in a New York court, allege the banks “knowingly benefited and received things of value for assisting, supporting, facilitating, and otherwise providing the most critical service for the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking organization”.JPMorgan, the largest US bank, is accused in the suit of “financially benefiting from participating” in Epstein’s alleged operation by providing financial support from 1998 to August 2013.Deutsche Bank is accused of knowing it would “earn millions of dollars” from its relationship with Epstein. Both actions are seeking unspecified damages. A Deutsche Bank spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal the claim “lacks merit” and the bank would present its arguments in court. A spokesman for JPMorgan in London declined to comment to the Journal.Trump is running for president again – but these legal battles might stand in the wayRead moreAccording to Bradley Edwards, a Florida lawyer who has featured prominently in exposing Epstein’s alleged crimes and in seeking financial restitution from Epstein’s $577m estate, “Epstein and his co-conspirators could not have victimized without assistance from wealthy individuals and financial institutions”.The class-action suit against JPMorgan also names Jes Staley, former head of JPMorgan’s private bank, who was forced to step down as chief executive officer of Barclays after UK regulators shared with Barclays the preliminary findings of their inquiry into what he told the Barclays board about his relationship with the disgraced financier.“Staley made sure Epstein and his illegal sexual abuse organization was absolutely protected by the bank,” according to the lawsuit filed Nov. 24. Lawyers for Staley declined to comment, according to the Wall Street Journal. Bloomberg noted that “none of the allegations against Staley in the suit have been publicly proved”.In E Jean Carroll’s case against Trump, the former Elle columnist is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for pain and suffering, psychological harm, dignity loss and reputation damage.Carroll first made the claim in a 2019 book, saying Trump had raped her in the dressing room of a Manhattan luxury department store in 1995 or 1996. Trump responded to the book’s allegations by saying it could never have happened because Carroll was “not my type”.His remarks led Carroll to file a defamation lawsuit against him, but that lawsuit has been tied up in appeals courts as judges decide whether he is protected from legal claims for comments made while he was president.In her new claims, Carroll maintains that Trump committed battery “when he forcibly raped and groped her” – and that he defamed her when he denied raping her last month.“Trump’s underlying sexual assault severely injured Carroll, causing significant pain and suffering, lasting psychological harms, loss of dignity, and invasion of her privacy,” the suit alleges, adding: “His recent defamatory statement has only added to the harm that Carroll had already suffered.”Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said at a court hearing that her client “intends to hold Donald Trump accountable not only for defaming her, but also for sexually assaulting her, which he did years ago in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman”.Trump, who has denied the allegations against him, said in a statement that Carroll “completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City Department Store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her. It is a Hoax and a lie, just like all the other Hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years.”The JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank and Carroll lawsuits may be the first of dozens of new actions to be filed through the New York legal window. A previous two-year window, the 2019 Child Victims Act, saw cases brought that would otherwise have been beyond the statute of limitations, including Virginia Giuffre’s settled claim against Prince Andrew.Hundreds of lawsuits may now be forthcoming, including many by women who claim they were assaulted by co-workers, prison guards or medical providers, in part because it allows an institution like a hospital or jail to be held responsible.“I think there will be some very interesting cases that come about in the employment cases where powerful men, who were supervising women or overseeing women, sexually assaulted them and they will be able to hold their perpetrator accountable but also their employers,” the attorney Doug Wigdor, who has represented women in many high-profile civil or criminal actions of the #MeToo era, told CNN.The previous window, which limited new claims to child sex abuse cases, produced almost 11,000 claims, a New York state office of court administration spokesperson told CNN. It has been estimated that claims against the New York state prison system could include 750 women alleging sexual assault.New York’s department of corrections and community supervision said in a statement that it had “zero tolerance for sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and unauthorized relationships”.Also anticipated are new lawsuits on behalf of about 40 women who claim they were subjected to unlawful sexual abuse by the former Columbia University gynecologist Dr Robert Hadden. About 150 claims against the gynecologist have already been settled.Hadden was convicted in 2016 on sex-related charges in state court. He is due to be tried on federal charges of abusing female patients over two decades next year. He has pleaded not guilty.TopicsNew YorkDonald TrumpUS politicsJeffrey EpsteinJP MorganDeutsche BanknewsReuse this content More

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      ‘The US can still become a fascist country’: Frances Fox Piven’s midterms postmortem

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      Interview‘The US can still become a fascist country’: Frances Fox Piven’s midterms postmortemEd Pilkington The 90-year-old sociologist on ‘vengeance politics’, cruelty and climate change as she looks back on half a century of activismFrances Fox Piven has a warning for America. Don’t get too relaxed, there could be worse to come.“I don’t think this fight over elemental democracy is over, by any means,” she said. “The United States was well on the road to becoming a fascist country – and it still can become a fascist country.”The revered sociologist and battle-tested activist – an inspirational figure to those on the left, a bogeywoman for the hard right – is sharing with the Guardian her postmortem of the 2022 midterm elections and Donald Trump’s announcement of a 2024 presidential run. While many observers have breathed a sigh of relief over the rout of extreme election deniers endorsed by Trump, and his seemingly deflated campaign launch, Piven has a more sombre analysis.‘We dodged a mortar round’: George Packer on America in crisisRead moreAll the main elements are now in place, she said, for America to take a turn to the dark side. “There is the crazy mob, Maga; an elite that is oblivious to what is required for political stability; and a grab-it-and-run mentality that is very strong, very dangerous. I was very frightened about what would happen in the election, and it could still happen.”That Piven is cautioning against a false sense of security in the wake of the midterms would not surprise her many students and admirers. The co-author, with her late husband Richard Cloward, of the progressive bible, Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, has for decades sounded the alarm.She has raised red flags over the vulnerabilities of the country’s democracy, the inequalities baked into its electoral and judicial systems, and how poor Americans, especially those of colour, are forced to resort to defiance and disruption to get their voices heard. Now, with the Republicans having taken the House of Representatives, she foresees ugly times ahead.“There’s going to be a lot of vengeance politics, a lot of efforts to get back at Joe Biden, idiot stuff. And that will rile up a lot of people. The Maga mob is not a majority of the American population by any stretch of the imagination, but the fascist mob don’t have to be the majority to set in motion the kinds of policies that crush democracy.”To say that Piven has come to such a perspective through years of experience as a sociologist and anti-poverty warrior would be an understatement. She recently celebrated her 90th birthday, and her earliest political memories go back to the 1930s.Her first is from 1939. It was prompted by the Russo-Finnish war which, though thousands of miles away, spilled out on to the streets of her neighbourhood. She was brought up in the New York borough of Queens by Jewish immigrant parents from Uzliany, in what is now Belarus.“I was seven, so perfectly equipped to have a position on this issue,” she recalls. “Tutored by my father, I took the side of the Russians and fought with all the kids on the block.”Her next vivid recollection relates to the death of Franklin Roosevelt in April 1945. “When FDR died, the whole street was bereft, almost sobbing. And these were people who didn’t talk much about politics, immigrants whose perspective was very narrow, getting by for another day, another week.”Piven said she thought a lot about that communal mourning for FDR in the aftermath of the midterms with all their discord and rancour. “The thing about FDR was much bigger than partisan politics, anywhere,” she said.That shared grief over FDR’s death seems worlds apart from the acrimony of today’s politics – all the more so after Trump’s declaration that he is running for the White House again. She talked about the former president’s “performative politics”, and the way it incorporates what she called “the human capacity for cruelty”.Asked to point to an example of such cruelty, Piven referenced the attack last month on Paul Pelosi, husband of the Democratic speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. “This crazy man broke into the Pelosi home and attacked an 82-year-old man with a hammer, broke his skull. And there were actually politicians speaking to a mass audience and laughing at it.“As thinking people, we don’t pay enough attention to the human lust for cruelty. We are at a point in American politics where those aspects of our nature are being brought to the fore; Trump has been doing that for a very long time, and we have to stop it or else it will continue to grow.”What distinguishes Piven is not only her razor-sharp dissection of how American society fails its poor citizens, but also her determination to do something about it through activism. With Cloward, who died in 2001, she spearheaded rent strikes in New York’s Lower East Side through a group known as Mobilization for Youth, which she joined in 1962 and which became a prototype for Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty.More recently she helped to spawn in 2014 the progressive training program for movement organizers, Momentum. That in turn has seeded powerful grassroots networks such as the climate crisis disrupters the Sunrise Movement.The lengths to which she has been prepared to go in her own activism is captured in a photograph from 1967. It shows Piven scaling up the side of the maths building at Columbia University in order to join student protesters occupying the premises.“I was a fairly new assistant professor in the school of social work,” she explained. “An issue was bubbling among students and younger faculty about Columbia’s immoral, noxious policies with regard to the Vietnam war and participation in research for the defense department.”So up she clambered to join the occupation. No matter that in a couple of weeks she was due to face a crucial faculty vote on whether or not she would be granted tenure.The photo was published by Life Magazine and shortly after that, her troublemaking notwithstanding, she did get tenure. Being Frances Piven, however, she promptly quit the Ivy League university and transferred to Boston University, and from there to the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she remains a distinguished professor emerita.That leaning towards agitation – what she calls the power of “dissensus” as opposed to “consensus” – still burns strongly in her. In her academic writings, as in her on-the-ground organizing, she sees movement politics and seeking change through the ballot box as essential partners.“I don’t think any large-scale progress has ever been made in the United States without the kind of trouble and disruption that a movement can cause by encouraging large numbers of people to refuse to cooperate,” she said. “But movements need the protection of electoral allies – they need legislative chaperoning.”She sees that dual model applying to today’s struggle to confront global heating. “The action on the climate crisis has to defeat the fossil fuel industry which in turn is closely connected to many politicians. You have got to break that, and the only way I think in American history that kind of power has been overcome is by just shutting things down.”Ousted Republican reflects on Trump, democracy and America: ‘The place has lost its mind’ Read moreHer championing of such acts of defiance have made her a popular hate figure for the far right. Security guards were posted outside her university office after the demagogue broadcaster Glenn Beck published a photoshopped image of her with her hair on fire on the front page of his website TheBlaze.“Beck blamed everything on Richard and me,” she recalled. “Are you kidding! I wish I could claim that credit.”It’s been a long, rich life of political thought and action. I ask her to stand back a little, take in the big sweep. How does America look today perceived through the lens of her years?“It’s a very strange time in history,” she said. “It’s not only the strangeness of our politics, it’s global warming, the seas are rising. I just had yet another booster shot. It’s very weird – I do not make predictions.”It sounded like her answer was completed. But after a pause she started up again.“I do think that the only way to live is to live in politics. To me, it’s an almost life-transforming experience – to be part of the local struggle. Even a dangerous struggle. You make friends that never go away. You see people in their nobility, and you find your own nobility as well. I would not trade my life for anything.”TopicsUS politicsDonald TrumpSociologyNew YorkfeaturesReuse this content More

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      New York City mayor’s longtime friend now holds high-paid NYPD job

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      New York City mayor’s longtime friend now holds high-paid NYPD jobLisa White, who earns $241,000 a year, is one of a number of Eric Adams’s friends, family and former colleagues hired to top roles A career 911 dispatcher and longtime friend of New York City mayor Eric Adams who rented a room to Adams in her apartment in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights for four years now has one of the highest-paid jobs in city government, records show.In May, the NYPD appointed Lisa White as its deputy commissioner for employee relations, at a salary of more than $241,000 a year – a nearly fivefold boost over her prior salary there and almost as much as the police commissioner makes.In her new role, White attends to the health, wellbeing and morale of the NYPD’s 35,000 uniformed members, including their corps of chaplains, along with bereavement and other support services for families.‘Egregious acts of violence’: why is Eric Adams cracking down on subway buskers and mango sellers?Read moreCity Hall confirmed that Adams’s connection with White extended beyond a mere professional relationship, also characterizing it as a friendship that dated back decades and that involved sharing an address for years.Government payroll records show that White served as a 911 operator, formally known as a police communications technician, from 1995 through December 2019, when she retired with a base salary of just over $53,000. She is currently earning a pension of about $30,000 a year, on top of her current salary, according to the website SeeThroughNY.White’s bio on the NYPD website notes that “throughout her 30-year career with the Department, she served in positions within the Communications Division, including Interim Supervisor.” It also highlights her most recent job before her appointment as deputy commissioner, as a field supervisor for the US Census Bureau.White’s ties to the mayor run back for years – part of a pattern of appointments by Adams that demonstrates a determination to hire friends, family and former colleagues for top administration posts.City Hall spokesperson Fabien Levy said Adams played no role in White’s appointment.He said Adams and White both had a professional relationship and were also friendsfrom their time with the group 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, which Adams co-founded while he served in the NYPD.Levy said that before becoming mayor, Adams rented a room at the Crown Heights address.Prior to White’s deputy commissioner appointment, she served as a volunteer board member and treasurer for Adams’s Brooklyn Borough Hall-affiliated nonprofit, the One Brooklyn Fund, from 2014 to 2021, according to tax records and a conflicts of interest disclosure form she filed with the city this year.The bad old days: how policing in New York City turned back the clockRead moreAdams used the nonprofit not just to hold events and offer services to residents of the community, but also to tout his government work and bolster his standing politically. The fund raised money from businesses and distributed grant dollars to local groups.The ties between White and Adams go back further still, to at least the 1990s. Media clips indicate White served as a spokesperson for 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, which Adams co-founded to draw attention to and reform the NYPD’s interactions with the Black community.One news article published in 1999, about a protest by 911 staff over their equipment and working conditions, identifies White as a 911 dispatcher and a member of 100 Blacks. Representing that group, she did an on-air interview in 2000 with the radio show “Democracy Now” about a wave of sexual assaults in Central Park.Public records show that for years, White claimed residence at an apartment on the 20th floor of Ebbets Field Apartments, which is in Crown Heights and named for the Dodgers baseball stadium that once stood there.White made eight political donations from that same address between 2008 and 2019 – including two to Adams’s borough president campaign, state board of elections records show. The contributions to Adams, both in 2012, list her employer as “NYC Police Department” and her position as “Police Communications Tech”, according to city campaign finance board records. City payroll records confirm her title was “police communications technician”.In 2013, as Adams ran for borough president, he changed his voter registration – to declare his residence as the same McKeever Place apartment where White had also declared her residence.City board of election records show Adams maintained that he lived at the McKeever Place unit between June 2013 and March 2017.Last year, when questions arose about Adams’s real estate holdings and where he was living, his mayoral campaign spokesman also said that Adams lived at the McKeever Place address from 2013 to 2017.The mayor thinks New York gets ‘special energy’ from crystals. Is he right?Read moreWhite was also paid $1,000 in November 2013 as a consultant for Adams’s initial campaign for Brooklyn borough president – sent to her at the McKeever Place address. She surfaced once more to speak as an Adams political representative in July 2020, as he faced questions about law enforcement contributions to his budding mayoral campaign while protests against police brutality raged.Just days after Adams was sworn in as mayor on 1 January 2022, the NYPD dismissed its deputy commissioner for employee relations, Robert Ganley – opening the post that the department named White to in May.White didn’t respond to a message left at a phone number listed for her, and Ganley also didn’t respond.An unnamed NYPD spokesperson said her appointment fell within department standards.“Deputy commissioner Lisa White filed for service retirement from the NYPD communications section in 2019, after a 29-year-career with the agency,” said the spokesperson. “Her hiring was in line with the NYPD’s standards for identifying those best suited for their roles within the department.”Adams has unapologetically hired a number of close friends to top city posts, including David Banks as schools chancellor and Banks’s partner, Sheena Wright, as a deputy mayor.The mayor tapped Banks’s brother Philip Banks – who resigned as NYPD chief of department in 2014 amid a federal bribery probe in a case that later identified him as an unindicted co-conspirator – as deputy mayor for public safety, reporting directly to Adams.Adams also tried to give his own brother, Bernard Adams, a $242,000 gig as the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of governmental affairs, the New York Post revealed. City conflicts of interest prohibitions on nepotism forced Adams to significantly curtail his brother’s responsibilities and pay him only a nominal salary of $1 for overseeing his personal security.Another of Adams’s longtime friends from the police department, Tim Pearson, was quietly handed a $242,000 role at the city’s Economic Development Corporation overseeing public safety and Covid-19 initiatives.New York’s mayor is getting paid in bitcoin. But can he pay the bills with it?Read moreAt the start of his tenure, Adams brought on the longtime counsel for the Brooklyn Democratic party, Frank Carone, as his chief of staff, and later gave a $190,000 job to the husband of party chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who had staunchly backed Adams’s mayoral candidacy. The Adams administration has also brought on at least half a dozen former city council members who had endorsed his mayoral run – one of whom, department of buildings commissioner Eric Ulrich, recently resigned amid a federal probe into alleged organized crime and illegal gambling, according to the New York Times.When questioned about these and other hires, Adams has repeatedly maintained that he picks the best people for the job.Adams’s years living at McKeever Place in Crown Heights got little scrutiny amid the wider questions that arose last year during his campaign for mayor about his real estate holdings and where he actually lives.At the time that he was living at McKeever Place, Adams already owned a four-unit townhouse on Lafayette Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant and co-owned a co-op in Prospect Heights that he had bought years earlier with a woman he called a “good friend”.During the campaign, Adams repeatedly insisted that he had turned over his 50% share of the co-op to his friend, Sylvia Cowan, back in 2007 – but he acknowledged after the election and this year on city financial disclosure forms that he indeed still co-owned the unit. He has said he wasn’t aware that Cowan didn’t finalize the transfer of shares.In 2016, Adams bought a co-op in Fort Lee, New Jersey, with his current partner, Tracey Collins. At a later point, Cowan also bought a unit in that same building, one floor below Adams.Adams responded to the questions raised about his residence by providing the media with a tour of the ground floor unit of his Bedford-Stuyvesant townhouse, which is where he and his campaign spokesperson said he has lived since 2017.This story is posted in collaboration with The City.TopicsEric AdamsNew YorkUS politicsNYPDUS policingnewsReuse this content More

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      How a five-term New York Democrat lost a House seat to a Republican

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      How a five-term New York Democrat lost a House seat to a Republican Sean Maloney, head of the influential Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, lost by less than 1% – and redistricting may have been part of itJack Dunnigan stood behind the counter of Pickwick Bookshop, a venerable store he owns, with its homey smell of nobly ageing paper, in the picturesque, liberal riverside town of Nyack about 30 miles north of downtown New York City, and sighed.“I had a feeling he was going to,” Dunnigan said of the local Democratic congressman and national party stalwart Sean Maloney’s loss to his Republican challenger, Mike Lawler, in the midterm elections.Who were the big winners and losers of the US midterm elections?Read moreIt was a mild afternoon in the Hudson Valley, four days after Democrats did much better than expected nationally but took damaging tumbles in the elections in solidly blue New York, which helped Republicans win a slim majority in the House of Representatives. It seemed Dunnigan, 77, had known something Maloney didn’t. Maloney was a five-term congressman and headed the influential Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which describes itself as “the only political committee dedicated to electing Democrats to the House of Representatives”.Maloney had spent the election cycle using funds and Washington knowhow to shore up vulnerable Democrats across the country and then late on had to rush back to his own district for frantic campaigning when it emerged that he, too, was suddenly vulnerable. But to no avail – he lost, by less than 1%.Some blamed his strategy and ground game, others said he was unlucky, especially in the congressional redistricting this year that started off favoring Democrats in New York but wound up weighing in Republicans’ favor.When the maps were redrawn this spring, Maloney decided to run in New York’s 17th congressional district rather than his longtime, more urban, 18th district, even though that meant booting out the newer Mondaire Jones, his fellow Democrat and the incumbent congressman in the 17th district.Redistricting placed almost three-quarters of the constituents Maloney had represented for a decade outside his new, heavily suburban district.At his store, Dunnigan added: “I said, Well, this guy’s got a lot of clout but, you know, he built up a lot of clout in his area. I don’t think he had time to really build up that clout [in the 17th district], and he was trying to.”Bill Clinton stumped for Maloney last month in Nyack, but as a blue enclave the Democratic vote there was hardly imperiled. “I said: that’s impressive but you know, when you’re here, you’re preaching to the choir,” Dunnigan said.But the 17th encompasses all of Rockland county, home to several right-leaning constituencies: cops and firefighters who commute to New York City and Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities who often vote as a conservative bloc.“Sean Patrick Maloney really did not come to our community. In terms of campaigning, I feel like until early voting, I didn’t really hear him here,” said Rivkie Feiner, a Rockland county resident who practices Orthodox Judaism and owns a grant-writing company. “I did see in the newspaper once that he was locally within Rockland or within the district on a Saturday, but tens of thousands of us are Sabbath observant,” Feiner said in a phone interview. “So, you know, it wasn’t like any of us were at any of those events.” Maloney told the New York Times that he invited leaders of several majority-Hasidic villages to meet with him.Feiner, who advocated for Lawler on the ground, described herself as a lifelong Republican but who has “absolutely” crossed party lines for the right candidate. She said that Lawler had been providing excellent constituent services long before the election – including at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.Some felt that Maloney didn’t focus enough on bread-and-butter issues such as inflation and he didn’t take seriously enough Republicans’ discourse on crime – which was emphasized by the New York Republican candidate for governor, Lee Zeldin, who ran the incumbent governor, Democrat Kathy Hochul, uncomfortably close.Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political strategist based in New York City, said that in the 17th and other suburban districts where seats were flipped by Republicans, voters “cared about things that the National Democratic party didn’t seem to care about.” Or, at least, that they talked about a lot less.He said: “They included crime, because the [national] discussion was about abortion, but the subject in that district was crime – in the sense that New York City with all its ills might be encroaching on the people who live there, right? And economics.”Sheinkopf replied “probably not” when asked if Maloney or his party could have done anything to win his seat.“They couldn’t get past the Washington negatives and New York City, and the idea that New York City was creeping into their lives, and New York City would become the norm, which [to them] meant crime,” he said.Maloney’s office didn’t respond to a request for an interview. But he told the New York Times: “Suburban voters are always concerned about the state of New York City. In this case, they were told very negative things, even though in suburban areas north of the city we are blessed to have some of the safest cities anywhere and crime rates that are lower than just a few years ago.”However, Hochul only won by about six points in a state that went for Joe Biden over Donald Trump by 23 points in 2020, Shawn Donahue, an assistant professor at the University of Buffalo’s department of political science, noted.“Lee Zeldin may have lost, but he may have delivered the house to Kevin McCarthy,” Donahue said. “Democratic turnout was not good in a lot of parts of New York, Republican turnout was, which is a lot different than it was around the country, where both parties’ turnout was pretty good – and it seems like Zeldin’s relentless push on the crime issue really had a big effect in the suburbs.”Some of Maloney’s supporters in the district, like Dunnigan, weren’t shocked by his defeat.Amy Roth, a television producer who voted for Maloney, pointed out that “a lot of New York [District] 17 has turned red recently”.“Mondaire Jones used to be our guy and he wasn’t even allowed to run, so I think it was upsetting more than shocking. I think it was just like, you know, they’ve kind of screwed up,” Roth said. She also noticed more Lawler signs in the district and the campaign “seemed to knock on more doors”, she said.Lawler himself told the Guardian he felt that redistricting dealt a heavy blow to Maloney but added that voters were dissatisfied with Democratic heavyweights’ handling of inflation, crime and immigration issues.Still, Lawler thinks there’s a universe in which a Democrat could have bested him. “I think, obviously, given the close margin, Democrats certainly could have won. There’s 70,000 more Democrats than Republicans [in the district], but I think there’s a confluence of incidents that contributed to this,” he told the Guardian in a phone interview.“I represent a 2-1 Democratic district in the [state] assembly and I have a proven record of being able to reach across the aisle and get Democrats and independents to support me,” Lawler said. Maloney, on the other hand, was “primarily speaking” to his base, Lawler claimed. “It certainly would have been possible for him to win, and it would have been possible for another Democrat to win,” Lawler said. “But I think in this election, in this climate, we ran a very disciplined campaign and had a message that appealed to a broad coalition of voters.”TopicsNew YorkUS midterm elections 2022US politicsDemocratsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      What a relief I’ve been denied my favourite election day hobby – hating fellow Americans | Emma Brockes

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      What a relief I’ve been denied my favourite election day hobby – hating fellow Americans Emma BrockesWhen things going less badly than planned is a small win, the lack of a revival of Trump-backed candidates is cheering In the playground on Tuesday, we stood in a huddle and indulged in the primary joy of election day: loathing one’s fellow Americans. In New York, where I live, the only close race was the race for governor, where the choice between Kathy Hochul, the Democrat incumbent, and Lee Zeldin – a pro-Trump, anti-abortion Republican – threatened to mess with the very idea of the city.Early lessons from the US midterm elections as votes are still being countedRead more“You know who I really hate?” said a friend who had taken the train in from Long Island to vote.I did know. Democrats take more pleasure in hating other Democrats than in hating Republicans. “Andrew Cuomo,” I said.“Yup. If he’d kept his dick in his pants we wouldn’t be here.” A line that could, sadly, be applied to any number of men in American politics. “Now we’re going to end up with a Republican governor because people won’t vote for a woman.”That was midday on Tuesday, when it still seemed probable, per polling and received wisdom about the midterms, that the dominant party in government would suffer the most losses. Anxiety about the economy and inflation; the impression that President Biden is too old; the ugly face of Trumpism apparently not yet vanquished; plus the usual superstitions and defeatist instincts of the left: all led to a mood among Democrats on Tuesday that fell somewhere between panic and gloom.So we did what people in denial do: we told ourselves that, when the results came in overnight, the worst eventuality might actually – sound the counter-intuitition klaxon! – be for the best. A friend had a friend who was a political analyst at Brown (this was how the conversations on Tuesday played out), and she said that it would be no bad thing if the Democrats lost control of Congress because in two years’ time that would mean Republicans would have to carry the can when people voted in the presidential election.This kind of worked. But then there were the races that were so starkly depressing that no amount of fancy footwork could neutralise them. Chief among these was the Pennsylvania Senate race between Dr Oz, the rightwing TV host who said in a recent debate that abortion was a matter between “women, doctors and local political leaders”, and the Democratic candidate, John Fetterman.The importance of this race was underscored when both Biden and Barack Obama turned up to stump for Fetterman on Saturday, undoing all the detachment I’d managed to achieve about the midterms. Watching Obama do his thing in front of a stadium of people in Pittsburgh was intensely moving. It was also a hard reminder of how far we had fallen since 2008. Accustomed as most Americans are these days to seeing the apparent lunatic in any race win, Obama’s appearance seemed to guarantee Oz would ascend to the Senate.Fetterman won with 50.4% of the vote. Kathy Hochul won with 52.5% of the vote. That the size of the relief was so huge, on Wednesday morning, was an indication both of how slim the margins were, and how little we needed to feel some hope. By midday, while it was still unclear whether Congress would remain in the hands of the Democrats, it was apparent there would be no red wave. There was no big revival in support for Trump-backed candidates. And there were some hugely cheering results from the centre of the country, where for example in Kentucky voters defeated the anti-abortion constitutional amendment. For the first time in ages, it was possible to think warmly of people one was used to dismissing as nutters.There were some let-downs among the reliefs. JD Vance, the bearded memoirist turned ultra-right Republican, won the Senate seat in Ohio. Beto O’Rourke lost out once again to Greg Abbott in Texas, and Stacey Abrams was defeated in Georgia. The satisfaction of seeing Trump’s candidates underperform on Wednesday was, meanwhile, eclipsed in part by Ron DeSantis winning decisively in the gubernatorial race in Florida. DeSantis, a more credible version of Trump, remains the most dangerous indication that the movement is alive and well.Still, slight gains, or at least losses on a smaller scale than anticipated, made for a whiplash effect midweek. In the playground on Tuesday, as the kids ran around, we returned to the subject of all the people who were ruining the country. On Wednesday, it was time to feel something else: relief, joy and the disorienting novelty of things going better than planned.
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsUS midterm elections 2022OpinionUS politicsNew YorkKathy HochulJoe BidenDemocratsRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

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      AOC vows to champion LGBTQ+ rights after hecklers storm New York event

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      AOC vows to champion LGBTQ+ rights after hecklers storm New York eventHecklers were attacking a policy providing affordable housing for LGBTQ+ people The progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said she will stand up for LGBTQ+ rights after an attack by hecklers caused chaos during a recent speaking event in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York.The Democrat from New York met the heckles at the back of the Boys and Girls Club with dancing, the video of which has gone viral on social media.“AOC has got to go,” the protesters shouted in unison to the sound of a beating drum.These homophobes were yelling Westboro Baptist-style anti-LGBT+ slogans. What do you think I’m gonna do? Take them seriously?😂💃🏽🪩If you want to associate w/ their views, that’s your business.But NY-14 will ALWAYS have a champion for LGBTQ+ people on my watch. Period. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️💕 https://t.co/aFTp8hv8SH— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 23, 2022
      On Saturday, Ocasio-Cortez responded to the video, saying the hecklers “were yelling Westboro Baptist-style anti-LGBT+ slogans. What do you think I’m gonna do? Take them seriously?“If you want to associate with their views, that’s your business.”Referring to the 14th congressional district of New York she represents, Ocasio-Cortez added: “But NY-14 will always have a champion for LGBTQ+ people on my watch. Period.”A video online of the 19 October confrontation between Ocasio-Cortez and the hecklers showed one of them badgering her about how a policy providing affordable housing for LGBTQ+ seniors would discriminate against heterosexual people.Another heckler shouts “there’s only two … genders” – a concept that is discriminatory toward people who identify as non-binary.One heckler held up a homemade sign in support of Tina Forte, a rightwing candidate from Rockland county running against Ocasio-Cortez in the midterms.Last month, the local news outlet NY1 reported that Forte was at the US Capitol during the January 6 attack staged by supporters of Donald Trump.In a video posted on the day, Forte is seen wearing a pro-Trump beanie on the steps of the Capitol. The video showed her standing next to a large caricature of Nancy Pelosi, saying “we will not allow this election to be stolen from us” even though Joe Biden beat Trump in the 2020 presidential race.Hey @SpeakerPelosi this ones for you pic.twitter.com/0uWJwyP5I0— Tina40 (@RealTina40) January 6, 2021
      In response to questions about her whereabouts on 6 January, Forte has said: “I went there to shine light on the election. I did nothing. I didn’t participate in anything that went on that day, from what I see on videos or anything that they want to call it. I’m not going to say I regret it because I don’t.”As Forte’s campaign vows to “stop socialism”, Ocasio-Cortez is expected to easily win reelection to a third term during the 8 November midterms.Polls show the congresswoman holds a significant lead over Forte. Her campaign has raised more than $11m (£9.8m) while Forte has raised less than $1m (£887,995).Last week was not the first time that a video of Ocasio-Cortez dancing went viral. A video of her dancing on a rooftop while she was a student at Boston University went viral on the day she was sworn in to her first term in 2019, with her opponents on the political right wing trying to use it to embarrass her and her supporters, drowning out that criticism with positive reactions.TopicsAlexandria Ocasio-CortezUS politicsNew YorknewsReuse this content More