Union Square Community Coalition presents:
Drawing
in Union
Square
with Jon Rettich, local artist
Second Sunday of each month,
July through September, 1–4 pm
SUNDAY
AUG. 11TH & SEPT. 8TH
FROM 1–4 PM
Bring your own sketch materials
(In a pinch we’ll have some
supplies you can use.)
Bring a stool for your convenience
or use park benches.
Bring water to hydrate.
ALL LEVELS WELCOME.
FREE TO ALL.
Location: Gandhi Statue
For more information call:
212-613-6235
Hope to see you there!
UnionSquareParkCommunityCoalition.org
Do you know
THESE MEN?
Edward
Pipala
Francis
Stinner
Gennaro
“Jerry” Gentile
If you have information regarding alleged abuse
or its cover-up involving these men, CONTACT US.
The NY Child Victims Act may be able to help you!
52 Duane Street, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10007 646-351-0587
The sign of an anti-vaccination protester who made it into the
rent-laws town hall.
‘Anti-vaxxers’ try
to mob rent forum
BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELLDOMENECH
Around 150 “anti-vaxxer” protesters
jammed the N.Y.U.
College of Dentistry lobby
last Wednesday evening — trying to
get into a town hall on rent laws.
The July 24 event was intended as
an opportunity for the public to learn
more about the Housing Stability and
Tenant Protection Act. On hand to
answer questions were state Senators
Brad Hoylman and Liz Krueger, Assemblymembers
Harvey Epstein and
Deborah Glick, and Councilmembers
Keith Powers, Carlina Rivera
and Keith Powers.
But the phalanx of protesters were
there instead to decry a bill passed
this year ending nonmedical exemptions
for vaccinations in schools. The
protesters also railed against a bill
proposed by Krueger that would allow
teenagers as young as 14 to be
vaccinated without parental consent.
Though some of the protesters were
able to enter the auditorium, many
were held outside by police or stayed
outside the building. The sound of
people pushing against the auditorium
door and shouts of “Let us in!” occasionally
interrupted the forum.
Protesters who made it inside periodically
shouted out, booed and
asked, “What about our children?”
at legislators as they answered questions,
before being hushed and told to
“get their own event” by others trying
to learn about the new tenant protections.
The bill banning nonmedical vaccination
PHOTO BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELL-DOMENECH
exemptions was sponsored
by Hoylman in the state Senate and
Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz
and signed into law in mid-June. It
repealed a section of New York State
public health law that allowed parents
or guardians who hold “genuine and
sincere religious beliefs” against vaccinations
to forgo immunizing their
school-age children.
“This is an anti-religion bill, antifamily
bill and anti-constitutional,”
said one of the protesters, a member
of New York Alliance for Vaccine
Rights. A New York judge recently
rejected a try to block the law in a
lawsuit challenging its constitutionality.
The protester said she traveled
from her home on Long Island just
to protest at the town hall, and that
she and other alliance members — in
an attempt to repeal the law — were
planning to protest at every future
public appearance of any of the politicians
who voted in support of the
bill.
The push to end nonmedical exemptions
for vaccinations in New
York came after measles outbreaks
in Brooklyn and Rockland County, in
predominantly ultra-Orthodox Jewish
communities that had been reluctant
to vaccinate their children, in
part due to “anti-vaxxer” propaganda
claiming the vaccines cause autism
and are made from aborted fetal cells,
according to The New York Times.
Since last September, there have
been 637 confi rmed cases of measles
in New York City and 372 confi rmed
cases elsewhere in the state.
Schneps Media TVG August 1, 2019 11
/UnionSquareParkCommunityCoalition.org