War in a Dress

An excerpt:

The sums are a pittance — spare quarters and dimes, perhaps less in some cases — left behind on the unwanted MetroCards tossed to the station floor.

But add a few together, the thinking goes, and a downtrodden rider might have enough for a swipe. Combine a few more, and perhaps a job seeker who is homeless can find his way to a few interviews.

And if there was a means to recover all of the more than $50 million in unused balances wasted annually by New York City’s transit riders? Then, Zachary DuBow thought, he would really be onto something.

So Mr. DuBow, 24, a consultant and recent New York University graduate, founded the Next Stop Project, in February. He would collect discarded MetroCards, ask station agents to aggregate the remaining balances into full-fare cards, and distribute them to needy residents — ideally partnering with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to gather the forgotten passes.

“Transportation is overlooked relative to food or health care,” he said. “But people need it to access those resources.”

In recent weeks, though, Mr. DuBow has found himself in an unexpected tussle with the transportation authority over the spare change. The authority has barred him from placing card-collection bins in stations and from soliciting card donations there in any way.

More information on the Next Stop Project available at their website.

Are you in college (or almost in college, but planning on being there soon)? Do you live in NYC? Are you free on the evening of the 7th? Do you have 5 bucks?

Here you go. And fuck it - if you don’t have the 5 bucks (and you ask me nicely/aren’t a grayface) I’ll spot you, just so you can figure out how to get as much cash for school as possible. Paypal is good like that.

ETA: if this event sells out before most people get to sign up, and someone from Tumblr goes, maybe you (“you” being “Tumblrite lucky enough to go to this next week”) would be willing to share some hacks on how to get more financial aid in a post? If you do, let me know and I’ll signal boost it for those who weren’t able to attend.

The only thing scarier than getting into college is finding the money to pay for it. Never fear terrified parents (and students). Financial aid abounds if you know where to look. This class will cover how to navigate the scary world of financial aid applications, little-known strategies and fiscal resources and what to do if you don’t get the scholarship you so desperately need.

You’ll learn:
* Where to find financial aid
* How the government decides how much they’ll chip in for you or your child’s education
* Hacks for becoming more eligible for financial aid
* How to access programs that the vast majority of students don’t know about

And let’s face it — It’s a lot more fun to muddle through tough financial questions together than to go at it alone. Join us for a night of financial aid Q&A with a heavy emphasis on the A.

(This class is focused on financial aid for undergrads.)

December 21st is the longest night of the year.

And it’s on this night, when the cold and the darkness seem most overwhelming, that communities across the United States come together to honor the lives of homeless men and women who passed away this year, and to draw attention to the fact that many homeless lives are cut short because we, as a society, can’t find a way to end homelessness.

This year, on Friday, December 21st, Picture the Homeless and Judson Memorial Church will be holding our annual Homeless Memorial Service, to come together to remember homeless New Yorkers who passed away this past year–and stand together to promote justice for homeless New Yorkers still living!

This is a powerful, deeply moving event, and we encourage all friends and allies to come join us!
 

Friday, December 21 at 6 p.m.

Judson Memorial Church

55 Washington Square South (SW corner of Washington Sq Park)

Click here for the Facebook event! And stay tuned for lots more details. For now, though, please save the date - and if you have any questions, or want to help promote this incredibly powerful event, please contact Sam (via email, or call him at 646-314-6423)

At 6:30 this morning, New York City fast food workers walked off the job, launching a rare strike against a nearly union-free industry. Organizers expect workers at dozens of stores to join the one-day strike, a bold challenge to an industry whose low wages, limited hours and precarious employment typify a growing portion of the U.S. economy.

New York City workers are organizing at McDonald’s, Burger King, Domino’s, KFC, Taco Bell, Wendy’s and Papa John’s. Organizers expect today’s strike to include workers from almost all of those chains, with the largest group coming from McDonald’s; the company did not respond to a request for comment.

But employees were clear about their reasons for walking out. “They’re not paying us enough to survive,” McDonald’s worker Raymond Lopez told Salon in a pre-strike interview. Lopez said he decided to join today’s strike because “This company has enough money to pay us a reasonable amount for all that we do … they’re just not going to give it to us as long as they can get away with it. I think we need to be heard.”

Lopez, a 21-year-old who’s been at McDonald’s for two years, said he makes $8.75 an hour as a shift manager (organizers say this isn’t a supervisory position). He works at McDonald’s and at two other jobs – catering and doing leaf work – while paying off student loans, pursuing an acting career, and helping to support his family.

“Everything we do needs to be fast, needs to be perfect,” said Lopez, and “when you’re actually there for eight hours smiling like you’re on the Miss Universe contest, it’s not easy.” He said McDonald’s supervisors “make us work off the clock all of the time” and “there is a lot of verbal abuse.” Lopez recalled a supervisor telling him, “Hey, if you don’t want me to treat you this way, then give me what I want.’”

New York Communities for Change organizing director Jonathan Westintold Salon the current effort is “the biggest organizing campaign that’s happened in the fast food industry.” A team of 40 NYCC organizers have been meeting with workers for months, spearheading efforts to form a new union, the Fast Food Workers Committee. NYCC organizers and fast food workers have been signing up employees on petitions demanding both the chance to organize a union without retaliation and a hefty raise, from near-minimum wages to $15 an hour.

When an NYCC organizer started meeting with McDonald’s workers across from his store, said Lopez, “It was a little difficult for me to believe that it was going to be possible” to change McDonald’s. “I didn’t pay too much attention to it … it took me two or three meetings to start trusting them.” But as the number of workers meeting with NYCC increased, “my faith in this whole deal grew as well.”

Columbia University political scientist Dorian Warren described companies like McDonald’s as poster children for the ways that “the nature and organization of work have changed” in the United States: “part-time work, contingent work, the inability to have control over one’s schedule … essentially no protections, and even where there’s existing protections, they’re not enforced … They don’t even approach living wage jobs,” and for most workers, “there are absolutely no benefits.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs “Combined Food Service and Preparation Workers, Including Fast Food” as the lowest-paid job category in NYC. State labor department data show the city’s fast food jobs have grown by 55 percent since 2000. Meanwhile, according to a report from the National Employment Law Project, McDonald’s profits have increased 130 percent over four years.

University of Pennsylvania sociologist RobinLeidner said Tuesday that an industry norm in which “virtually everyone is part-time” puts workers in a bind: “No one gets enough hours to trigger the legal protections, and to make them eligible for any health benefits … You can’t earn enough with one job, but given the unpredictability, it’s extremely hard to hold down more than one.” Leidner worked at McDonald’s (with the company’s agreement) as part of the research for her 1993 book “Fast Food, Fast Talk.” She recalled a store manager who “was pretty frank about saying if he had some problem with someone, typically what he’d do is reduce their hours until they got the message. In other words, until they quit.”

Leidner said the jobs are also “very heavily surveilled”: Customers keep workers on their toes, cash registers store instantaneous sales data, managers regulate employees’ expressions, and corporate officials pore over individual stores’ metrics in search of ways to boost profits.

NYC isn’t the only place fast food workers are in revolt. Today’s strike follows a founding convention held earlier this month by an linked organization, the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago. WWOC claims 200-some members in fast food and retail. Its most dramatic actions took place on Black Friday, when workers leafleted and demonstrated at major companies and dropped a banner inside of Macy’s (they also joined pickets in support of local Wal-Mart workers). “We’re getting all the workers together and we’re standing up against CEOs,” said WOCC member Brittney Smith. “Because there’s more workers than there are CEOs.” Smith, a college student who recently quit her job at the retail chain Express and took a similar job at American Apparel, said she now makes $8.75 an hour. “Some of the time I luck out and I can eat two meals a day,” she said. “But most of the time, I’m eating one.”

Like FFWCin New York, WOCC is a new independent union made up of workers tied together by a shared city and similarly low wages, not a single employer. Both FFWC and WOCC are backed by unions and labor community groups, and so far aren’t recognized by any employers. And they’re making the same demands: allow a fair process for unionization and start paying $15 an hour. Organizers say that could be achieved through union contracts with individual companies, or through joint bargaining with several employers at once. Either way, it’s a heavy lift.

As workers try to change their industry, will fast food companies retaliate? Organizers say they already have.

JoseCerillo, a 79-year-old who cleans tables and floors at a New York McDonald’s, told Salon he was suspended by the company on Monday after signing up co-workers on the campaign petition. According to Cerillo, management said the punishment was for violating a “no solicitation” policy. “They feel threatened because I’m organizing,” said Cerillo (he was interviewed in Spanish). He said he circulated the petition during break times and outside of work.

Cerillo said he got involved after receiving a phone call from an organizer at home a few months ago. “I was so happy,” he said. Cerillo, who has been working at a series of McDonald’s locations since 1996, said he makes $7.40 an hour, 15 cents above minimum wage. “It’s just not enough to live.”

Cerillo said many of his co-workers share his frustrations but are hesitant to get involved: Of around 40 other employees at his store, “about three” signed his petition. “They don’t want to lose their job,” said Cerillo. But he said he remains eager to keep up the fight: “I feel happy, and I want to fight more … I want to do something worthwhile.”

In recent decades, Warren said Tuesday, even the most effective U.S. unions have “had such a hard time organizing in their core industries,” where they already have members, “that fast food just got left out … no one was really willing to take the risk and invest in fast food organizing.” Warren said research suggests that the industry’s demographics – predominantly women and workers of color – could improve prospects for organizing.

On the other hand, Leidner noted that the extremely high turnover and the relatively small number of workers in each store would make organizing that much more difficult.

The structure of the industry will also play a role: most individual stores are franchisees, technically owned by an individual who holds a contract with the national company and pays them fees and a portion of revenue. Any individual franchisee that buckled to pressure to transform conditions or eschew union-busting could have that contract revoked (one exception: establishments in public buildings like convention centers, among the only places you can find a unionized Starbucks). At best, the franchisee relationship could provide organizers with an additional point of leverage, creating unrest in stores that could drive franchisees to press corporate for a resolution, and vice versa. But at worst, the franchisee structure could offer another lever for corporate to crack down on any uprisings while evading any responsibility.

The New York and Chicago campaigns evoke two strategies that have been long debated but infrequently attempted in U.S. labor. First, “minority unionism”: mobilizing workers to take dramatic actions and make demands on management prior to showing support from the majority of employees. Second, “geographic organizing”: collaboration between multiple unions to organize workers at several employers and win public support for raising a region’s standards through unionization. This campaign is also the latest example in which community-based organizing groups, which unions have long leaned on to drum up support for workers, are playing a major role in directly organizing workers to win union recognition.

NYCC’s Westin told Salon in a pre-strike interview that the goal of this work stoppage is to give expression to workers’ “energy and movement” and “anger around how they’ve been treated,” and “hopefully mobilizing the community, and mobilizing clergy, and mobilizing their fellow workers around them.”

Today’s strike also comes one week after non-union Wal-Mart workers escalated their unprecedented strike wave against the retail giant. Lopez said that, while he had already decided to strike, he drew additional inspiration from the Black Friday example. “I thought it was really ballsy for someone to do that,” said Lopez. “Which I admired.” Lopez said his decision to strike “got scary probably a couple days ago, when I realized the seriousness of this.” Despite that fear, he said, “I still believe in what I’m doing, so I’m going to go ahead and do it.”

“I don’t know what to expect” from the strike, said Lopez. “It’s such a unique thing. A lot of stuff could happen. It’s not going to be overnight.”

The Principles of the Free University

The Free University of New York City is an experiment in radical education and an attempt to create education as it ought to be. First conceived as a form of educational strike in the run up to May Day, 2012, the Free University has subsequently organized numerous days of free and open education in parks and public spaces in New York City. Our project is born out of a recognition that the current system of higher education is as unequal as it is unsustainable. With increasing tuition at public and private institutions, the increasing use of precarious adjunct labor, and the larger and larger amounts of debt that students are expected to take on, a university education is systematically becoming a rarefied commodity only available to the few. It is in this context that the Free University operates as a radical and critical pedagogical space. We collaborate on the following goals and principles:

• to be a cooperative enterprise working for a new form of education that re-defines what it means to be educators and students.
• to prefigure a more democratic, horizontal, and radical educational structure.
• to empower ourselves, each other, and our communities to become decision-makers in our own processes of self-education.
• to expose the inequities of the existing university system.
• to intentionally and conscientiously create educational spaces that are anti-oppressive, anti-racist, and anti-authoritarian.
• to fight against the casualization and precaritization of academic labor.
• to join others who see education as a form of direct action by withdrawing from the failing capitalist education system, and collaborating in the realization of a more accessible education for all.

In realizing these shared principles, we will reinvigorate the Commons by utilizing public spaces throughout the city. Free education is a right!!!

Asked yesterday for his thoughts on why the number of people in NYC homeless shelters is at a record high, Mayor Bloomberg said there’s a simple explanation: Homeless shelters are simply “so much more pleasurable. We have made our shelter system so much better that, unfortunately, when people are in it, or, fortunately, depending on what your objective is, it is a much more pleasurable experience than they ever had before.” New York’s shelters may not be as pleasurable as the fancy digs in Texas, but our homeless manage somehow.

On his weekly radio interview this morning, Bloomberg sought to “clarify” his statement by conceding that a homeless shelter is “not the Plaza Hotel.” And yesterday his point was that his administration has vastly improved the shelter system, which “was an abomination” before he took office. “People were driven around all night,” said Bloomberg. “The kids slept on benches. None of that happens again, so there’s less pressure on people to move out today.” Maybe they should consider cancelling the turn-down service?

But homeless advocates are in an uproar. Coalition for the Homeless Executive Director Mary Brosnahan said the remarks were “shocking and offensive,” declaring that Bloomberg had “systematically closed every single path to affordable housing once available to homeless families.” And Nicole Lee, a 22-year-old who has been in three or four shelters since April, told the Wall Street Journal the shelters were far from pleasurable: “Oh my God, you got rats, holes in the wall, critters, water bugs, roaches. Some places are too hot, some are too cold. They don’t let you have an AC so it gets real hot.”

The average stay for families in city shelters had jumped 30 percent during the 2012 fiscal year. According to the Times, more than 43,000 people, including more than 18,000 children, were counted in city shelters two weeks ago, an 18 percent increase from a year earlier. And the city added nine new shelters in the past two months, including a shelter in Greenpoint that some local residents are none too pleased about.

In response to Bloomberg’s remarks, presumptive mayoral candidate and public advocate Bill de Blasio said, “When it comes to families facing crisis, our mayor seems to be living in a fantasy world. Families are staying in shelters longer because the city has absolutely no exit strategy for them. Mayor Bloomberg needs to own up to the magnitude of this policy failure.”

Just gonna let that GIF speak for me.

The original story is on some sensationalist Margaret Mead type ish, but I don’t expect different from NYT. Glad for the info; I’m scripting an email to the Metro Desk.

Article courtesy of the Trans/Gender Identity Media Advocacy project 

NEW YORK, N.Y. — In response to a New York Times article called “For Money or Just to Strut, Living Out Loud on a Transgender Stage,” published online on the evening of July 24 and in the print edition on July 25, the Trans/Gender Identity Media Advocacy project (TIMA) is calling on all trans/gender-variant individuals and allies who are angered by insensitive, sensational reportage to action.

The article is part of a “summer nights” column series wherein New Yorkers and their nighttime hangouts are profiled by the paper. This particular piece follows the “T-girls” of Christopher Street from the perspective of author Sarah Maslin Nir, who paints a picture of “beauty,” and “buttocks-revealing shorts.” The article exoticizes the gender and sexual identities of its trans-women subjects, while alluding to a stratification between the presence of these women (who the column touts, are “mostly prostitutes”) and the neighbors who rent nearby studios for “$3,700 a month.”

“That Carolyn Ryan, Metro desk editor for (The New York Times) green-lighted a fluff piece on trans women, without even scratching the root causes for why these women find themselves susceptible on Christopher Street (in masculinized night space), does nothing to escalate the urgency of protecting New York’s most vulnerable citizens from material harm, from systemic discrimination, and from institutionally-sanctioned ridicule,” said Patience Newbury, community activist and editor of the Cisnormativity Blog.

“From this, The New York Times willfully fails to produce a humanizing climate for trans people, which in turn, vets a template for other local American papers to perpetuate against trans people and, egregiously so, trans women of color,” Newbury continues. “We are not amused.”

This is the second time in several months that the New York Times Metro Section has published a dehumanizing, patronizing account of the life of transgender women. In May, the paper published an article on the life and death of trans performer, Lorena Escalera, profiling her as a “curvaceous” curiosity rather than beloved daughter, friend and human being.

In response to outrage by the trans community, Ryan released a statement on behalf of the paper, saying that the NYT did not “mean any disrespect to the victim or those who knew her. But in retrospect…should have shown more care in our choice of words.”

The paper issued no redaction or correction and has yet to issue a response regarding “For Money or Just to Strut.” Clearly, there is a pervasive lack of understanding by the Times regarding the problematic nature of this type of reporting. As such, TIMA is calling on all trans/gender-non-conforming people and allies to contact the paper, write emails and call, inundate their inboxes with our voices. Let’s help encourage sensitive, accurate reportage of gender variant identities as expressed more regularly by the New York Times and all publications.

Call a representative at the Metro Desk through the NYT’s office of journalistic integrity at 212-556-7652 (press 3 for the Metro Desk) 
Email the Arthur Brisbane, in charge of journalistic integrity at the NYT: public@nytimes.com
Email the Metro Desk directly: metro@nytimes.com
Email Carolyn Ryan directly: cryan@nytimes.com
Email the managing editor: dbaquet@nytimes.com
Email the Executive Editor: jabramson@nytimes.com