White Paper on New York Health Act Savings for Localities

Annual Dinner Thanks and Cheers

UR Unions Coalition

HISTORY: ANNUAL DINNER, MAY DAY, VRA, ZPAC

The more things change, the more they remain the same, they say. But though we are still fighting so many of the same battles, we have not only stayed on the field but steadily moved forward, in ways our parents and grandparents could perhaps see better than we do now.

The more things change…! Metro Justice has been doing dinner fundraisers since we were Friends of Fight. But they haven’t always been Annual Dinners. Various older members have remembered spaghetti dinners of years past, and Denise Young was able to help me tie down a few details on those: they were held until sometime in the 1980s in church basements with kitchens (she remembers Immaculate Conception in Cornhill), and were considered more in the way of periodic dinner fundraisers than a specifically annual event. 

TELL VERIZON "NO" MEANS "NO!"

The effort to site a six story cell tower on Portland - across the street from this church - has once again arisen, zombie-like. Verizon’s special permit was denied by the City Planning Commission (CPC) last August, then again (in slightly altered form) on March 30th. This should have been the end of the matter, unless Verizon went to the trouble of making an appeal to a federal court with a claim that denying their special permit for their preferred location (in an under-resourced neighborhood where they were able to get a speculating landowner to do a deal) “effectively prohibits” them from providing cell service to the entire area, which is against federal law. They have not made a federal appeal. 

Instead, after the vote to deny the Special Permit at its March 30th meeting, a city lawyer asked our local CPC to vote on a determination that the denial constitutes “Effective Prohibition” of service, despite the fact that this local board has no jurisdiction in federal telecommunications decisions and this is not the correct legal route. When this vote failed, he placed the same question on the agenda for their next meeting. 

ANTI-WAR POTLUCK REPORT

At last Sunday’s potluck, 7 of us came together for an opportunity to discuss Metro Justice's previous work with the anti-war movement and future possibilities. The conversation was a frank one, that understood that we were not here just because of Trump but years of the executive office taking a stronger role in starting wars and Congress letting it happen.