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70,000 rally to protect communities

by Michael Hirsch

Mar 19, 2009 5:04 PM

Demonstrators surround City Hall to demand no cuts to services, fair share tax reform, wise spending of stimulus dollars

[For more photos, go to the “70,000 rally to protect communities” gallery]

With upwards of 70,000 labor union members and community groups flooding lower Broadway on a frigid late afternoon on March 5, New York City showed once again that it is a town that cares.

As the nation’s official jobless rate hit its highest mark since 1983 and with all but five states facing massive budget shortfalls, parents, advocates and New York’s labor movement came out in force to demand that the city and state drop plans to cut funding for core programs in education, health care and social services.

Those plans would make school children and the city’s most vulnerable residents carry the burden of the economic crisis on their shoulders, demonstrators said.

And that, as speaker after podium speaker declared, “affects us all.”

One hospital worker’s sign in the burgeoning crowd summed it up: “Bronx Lebanon Workers Against All Kinds of Injustice.”

The crowd, overflowing barriers set up by police to corral participants, stretched from the southern tip of City Hall Park and north past Canal Street. It gave notice that there are viable alternatives to basic service cuts and layoffs.

Chief among the alternatives was fair-share tax reform that would increase state revenues by imposing an incremental progressive tax on the state’s top 5 percent of earners — roughly those earning more than $250,000 annually.

That modest adjustment in the tax rate of the state’s wealthiest — judged to be less than $100 per year for many high earners — is estimated to generate $6 billion in added state revenue annually, a good portion of the state’s $15 billion deficit for the coming fiscal year.

Demonstrators also demanded that the federal stimulus dollars be well-spent, going to the classroom and direct student services, to hospitals, food pantries, homeless services and to child care and senior centers, among others.

Addressing the crowd, UFT President Randi Weingarten called the economic crisis “a moment of truth. Do we protect our communities or not? Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and millions of Americans have been affected by an economic crisis caused by others. It wasn’t working men and women who caused this collapse.”

Weingarten appealed to those who prospered during the nation’s boom time to share the burden of hard times.

“We ask you to pay a little bit more,” she said. “Pay a little more so New York can avoid gutting the critical services and programs that our most vulnerable need.”

In addition to a huge contingent of UFTers — many wearing white UFT stocking caps against the late afternoon’s biting cold — those unions sizably in attendance included AFSCME District Council 37, with members wearing green jackets reading “Everyday Heroes,” and 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, also wearing white stocking caps.

SEIU 32 BJ, representing the city’s building service workers, sent a large contingent, as did the Communications Workers of America, United Auto Workers and numerous Teamster locals.

Community groups visibly in attendance, many of which are part of the One New York: Fighting for Fairness coalition, included ACORN, the Alliance for Quality Education, Citizen Action, the Citizen’s Committee for Children, the NAACP, the Hispanic Federation, the Educational Alliance, United Neighborhood Houses, Make the Road New York, the Working Families Party and hundreds of local community organizations.

UFT Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Michael Mulgrew and ACORN Executive Director Pat Boone shared the emcee duties, charging up the crowd by leading chants.

Among the more than 30 speakers — seen as well as heard by the swelling crowds far from the stage via two jumbotrons and giant loudspeakers — was DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts, who faulted the city administration for “wasting $9 billion out of a $60 billion city budget on outside contractors.” That was work her municipal-employee members could be doing.

DC 37’s Faye Moore added that the budget crisis was turning New York “from a city that cares to a city that could care less.”

Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress, the NYSUT-affiliate representing educators at City University campuses, said the crisis wasn’t an act of nature, but was caused by bad decisions. Now “CUNY is being brought to its knees by budget cuts,” she said.

Teenage student Selah Brown of the New York City College of Technology agreed that the wealthiest should pay more taxes. “When I’m on top, I’ll pay more, too, to help students like me succeed,” Brown said.

Michael Fishman, president of SEIU Local 32 BJ, whose large union includes 5,000 school cleaners, said that “cutting back on jobs and services is not the answer during an economic crisis.” He, too, advocated “higher taxes on the very wealthy.”

George Gresham, the 1199 SEIU president whose health care members’ jobs and ability to serve patients will be eviscerated should the governor’s Medicaid cuts go through, suggested that “the governor is ill-advised” in thinking that a modest tax rise on the wealthiest New Yorkers will cause a capital flight out of state.

“The rich will not leave New York,” Gresham said. “Where will they go?” he asked wryly. “To Iowa?”

After rally-goers were urged to send faxes to their state legislators in support of the demonstration’s demands, one state senator notified the UFT that his office had been deluged by more than 2,000 faxes. He ordered the union to “cease and desist” from “interfering with state business” or there would be consequences.

In response to the threat that he would send capital police to enforce his order. Said UFT Secretary Michael Mendel, in reply, “Just spell my name right.”