Editorial
Editorial City Hall must take police reform order seriously
and to do so in consultation
with not just police offi cials
but the people the NYPD
serves — politicians, activists,
protesters, public safety
experts, the general public.
If the city doesn’t want
to change anything, Cuomo
said, that’s fi ne; they can pass
a law before April 1 affi rming
that what they have is fi ne.
But even if that’s fi ne with de
Blasio, it’s clear that the vast majority of
the City Council wouldn’t agree with him.
Should the city fail to meet the April 1
deadline, New York City will lose millions
upon millions of dollars in state funding at
a time when we need every dime we can get.
De Blasio cannot afford to play political
football with the governor on this one —
nor can he ignore the calls for signifi cant
NYPD reform. No more dithering or empty
promises; it’s time for de Blasio to get serious
and take action.
Op-ed
PHOTO BY MARK HALLUM
Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio in a sideby
side address on March 2, 2020 about the first coronavirus
case in New York City.
Path to Supreme Court ruling
began with Village activism
BY ANDREW BERMAN
As has so often been the case, ideas
put forward and championed in the
Village eventually fi lter their way
into the mainstream, in this case nearly fi fty
years later.
The foundations for the June 15 Supreme
Court decision, extending equal rights to
LGBT people across the country, were laid
down by activists and organizations rooted
in this neighborhood.
It’s always gratifying and amazing to see
how much the Village leads the country and
the world in terms of thought, ideas, and
action, especially in the arena of civil rights
and social justice.
The ruling, which has broad implications
given that only 21 states (along with
Washington D.C., Guam, and Puerto
Rico) prohibit discrimination against LGBT
people, in many ways had its origins in the
groundbreaking work of people and organizations
in Greenwich Village in the 1970s,
the years immediately following the 1969
Stonewall Riots.
Greenwich Villager Jim Owles, the fi rst
openly-gay candidate for public offi ce in New
York City, was one of the engineers behind
the very fi rst gay rights bill to be introduced
in the country, in New York City, which
became the basis for the subsequent federal
legislation and efforts to ban discrimination
on the basis of sexual orientation.
Owles lived at 186 Spring Street, a “gay
commune” of sorts in the early 1970s where
several gay activists lived and worked. Another
was Bruce Voeller, who also had an
extremely close relationship to the roots of
this historic ruling.
Voeller was instrumental in getting the
very fi rst version of this anti-discrimination
legislation introduced in Congress in 1977 by
Greenwich Village Congressmembers Bella
Abzug and Ed Koch.
Voeller co-founded the National Gay Task
Force in 1973 (now the National LGBTQ
Task Force), the fi rst national gay rights
organization in the U.S., and was its fi rst
director. From its founding in 1973 until
1985, the Task Force was located at 80 Fifth
Avenue at 14th Street in Greenwich Village.
Under Voeller’s leadership, the Task Force
not only got the federal anti-discrimination
legislation introduced (which would have
in essence extended the Civil Rights act’s
provisions covering race, sex, and religion
to sexual orientation, as the Supreme Court
ruling does in the area of employment), but
got the federal government to rescind its
long-standing and explicit prohibition on the
federal government employing gay people.
On the basis of these historic fi rsts, Village
Preservation sought landmark designation for
186 Spring Street in 2012. While the State of
New York found the building eligible for the
National Register of Historic Places, the city
refused to consider the building for landmark
designation, and it was demolished.
Village Preservation has been seeking
landmark designation for 80 Fifth Avenue
and several surrounding buildings based
upon their historic role in relation to the
LGBT and African American civil rights
movements and to the Women’s Suffrage
Movement — see here. However, the city has
thus far refused to consider these buildings
for landmark designation — more info here
and here.
To support landmark designation of 80
Fifth Avenue and other nearby historic buildings
connected to civil rights movements
and other important history, send a letter at
www.gvshp.org/mayor.
Andrew Berman is the executive director
of Village Preservation.
On June 12, Governor
Andrew Cuomo
threw down a heavy
challenge for New York City
and other localities across the
NYPD: Reform your police
departments by April 1, 2021,
or risk losing almost all of your
state funding.
Cuomo made the challenge
through an executive
order amid calls to end police
brutality and racial injustice
made during the ongoing
George Floyd protests. Every county and
municipality has been charged to reform
their police departments and pass a law
establishing those changes over the next
nine months.
Why threaten to withhold funding if
the localities don’t comply with the order?
Cuomo explained this incentivizes the
cities and counties to do what he believes
must be done: Modernize and reform each
local police department to better fi t the
needs and wants of the communities they
serve — and help put an end to the injustice
and inequality suffered by people of color.
Cuomo not only put the ball squarely in
City Hall’s hands, but he also fl ipped the
hourglass over. New York City is on the
clock. What will Mayor Bill de Blasio do
now?
We asked the Mayor’s office that
question, and the response was far from
inspiring.
They offered no specifi cs on how they’ll
comply with the order, saying only that
they would work with the state further.
To us, that seems to miss the points of the
governor’s order and related statements.
Cuomo has ordered New York City to reform
and overhaul, from top to bottom, the
largest police department in the country,
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8 June 18, 2020 Schneps Media
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