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New UFT-backed coalition will fight to preserve safety net

by Michael Hirsch

Oct 23, 2008 3:37 PM

There’s a new, fired-up coalition in town. One New York: Fighting for Fairness includes the UFT and 75 other unions, social service providers, education advocates and community organizations who want to protect the city’s core safety net — including public school education — in the wake of hard fiscal times. The coalition aims to defend needed services for poor and middle-income New Yorkers.

Some 400 representatives and members of community groups assembled on Oct. 10 to announce the coalition and deliver this message to the mayor and the City Council: in spite of the turmoil on Wall Street, city officials must not make the most vulnerable — from seniors to schoolchildren — pay for the expected revenue collapse.

“Given the magnitude of what is about to hit us, the safety net needs to be maintained and kids need an education regardless of what Wall Street has done to the world,” said AFT/UFT President Randi Weingarten.

The rally was held just two days after all city agencies, including the Department of Education, filed plans to cut spending by 2.5 percent this year and 5 percent next under orders from the city budget director.

Unless reversed, city education cuts for this year will total $185 million and for next year, $400 million. Those cuts will erode the $129 million that was restored to classrooms last spring after months of grassroots protests and lobbying by the Keep the Promises coalition, which included the UFT and other education advocacy groups.

In the current year’s city budget, services for children and youth, the elderly, the homeless and people with AIDS and legal services were already cut. The 2.5 percent reduction will mean cuts of $4 million from the Department for the Aging, $6.2 million from the Department of Youth and Community Development, $7.8 million from the Department of Homeless Services, $10.3 million from the Health Department, and $185 million from the Department of Education. Children’s services would face $20 million in cuts, senior services $4 million and social services $15 million.

“This is a coalition protecting the most vulnerable and it knows we can’t revisit the New York of the 1970s, when hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers were hurt,” said Weingarten. “Those of us who are history teachers know we are doomed to repeat history if we don’t heed its lessons. Even in tough times, we say, ‘invest in our children.’”

The One New York coalition wants the projected city budget gap closed in part through higher taxes on the wealthier. The coalition also argues that budget cuts will be a drag on the already hurting economy, while investing in community needs would provide a welcome economic stimulus.

Standing under a sign reading, “Keep our city alive — No budget balancing on backs of the poor,” S.J. Jung of the Young Korean American Service and Education Center said, “When the party was on, we were not invited. Now that the party is over, we’re invited to take care of the mess. We weren’t there for the profit sharing, but now they want us for the burden sharing.”

Andrew Scherer of Legal Services NYC, whose organization offers legal aid to the indigent, said that the demand for attorney services “and other human services will explode as low-income households face eviction and foreclosure, job loss, homelessness and hunger. ... Cutting resources that help mitigate the worst effects of the declining economy would be shortsighted at best and poor public policy at worst.”

Oliver Gray of District Council 37, which represents many of the lowest-paid city workers, said his union opposed cutting staff and services. “If we can find the money to bail out Wall Street, why do we then let people suffer? If cuts are needed, cut managers and outside contractors,” said Gray. “Don’t cut the workers.”

Other speakers translated how the threatened dollar reduction will mean senior centers closing or offering fewer meals to seniors, bed reductions at senior housing developments and reductions in eviction prevention to shuttered after-school centers, slashed funding for pre-K and drop-out prevention programs, reduced service at health clinics where poor children seek primary health care, shrunken infant mortality funding and cutbacks in heating assistance.

The coalition said a better budget-balancing idea means employing the principle of shared sacrifice — including raising tax revenue from the city’s wealthiest residents. Members also called for preserving investments in communities and services that will stimulate the economy from the bottom up and preserve economic stability for the whole city.

Reporting at the Oct. 15 Delegate Assembly on the imperative for the UFT to participate in the coalition, UFT Vice President for Career and Technical High Schools Michael Mulgrew warned that the economic crisis means a long period of joint struggle for the UFT and its community allies to see that the schools and other vital city services are not eviscerated.

“We need to educate our members as quickly as possible, because this union needs to mobilize quickly,” Mulgrew told the delegates. “We know there are people who will use this crisis to hurt this union and the people we serve and the children we serve in this city.”