Our Perspective
Racial and Economic
Justice Forever
Intertwined
By Stuart Appelbaum, President
Retail, Wholesale and Department
Store Union, RWDSU, UFCW
Twitter: @sappelbaum
4 COURIER LIFE, JULY 3-9, 2020
Party time!
Park Slope assemblyman introduces
measure to halt open container laws
BY BEN VERDE
Park Slope Assemblyman Robert
Carroll introduced legislation on Monday
to pause the state’s open container
laws, as New Yorkers take to the relative
safety of parks, stoops, and outdoor seating
at restaurants to imbibe amid the
coronavirus pandemic.
The law would be in effect for the duration
of New York’s state of emergency
in sections of the state where bars and
restaurants are operating at reduced
capacity, and would allow adults to consume
alcoholic beverages wherever they
please.
“COVID-19 is changing the way we
eat and drink,” Carroll said. “It is time
we do away with New York’s anachronistic
open-container laws.”
Carroll argued that the state’s enforcement
of open-container laws are
ripe with disparities, wherein wealthier
New Yorkers are often given a pass
while cops crack down on younger people
of color.
“In New York, the police and others
turn a blind eye if the imbiber is drinking
a glass of wine while listening to the
New York Philharmonic on the great
lawn in Central Park,” Carroll said. “But
if you’re a young person on the beach at
Coney Island drinking a Nutcracker or
a beer with friends you can get a ticket.
That’s hypocrisy.”
The bill, which does not yet have a
co-sponsor in the state Senate, comes as
New Yorkers have moved almost all aspects
of socializing outdoors — including
drinking — where the risk of contracting
coronavirus is far less, yet not
nonexistent.
In the months before restaurants and
bars were allowed to move tables and
chairs onto sidewalks and they were
only allowed to offer alcoholic drinks
to-go, people enjoying a curbside cocktail
was a common sight in bar-heavy
neighborhoods like Williamsburg, with
some crowds outside bars growing large
enough to draw the ire of the governor.
Carroll argues that allowing bars to
sell drinks to-go but punishing customers
who drink them on the street is illogical.
“Where do we think these alcoholic
beverages are being consumed?” he
said.
While the current text of the bill allows
for it to expire after the state of
emergency is lifted, Carroll says he
hopes the governor extends it permanently.
“If the sky doesn’t fall, I would hope
he makes it permanent,” he said.
Thunderstorm topples trees,
causes damage throughout BK
A black car is crushed by a tree on Stuart Street in Marine Park. Photo by Todd Maisel
BY TODD MAISEL
A fast-moving thunderstorm that
swept through the fi ve boroughs late
on the afternoon of June 22 did a fair
amount of damage in Brooklyn.
Marine Park and Midwood were
among the hardest hit parts of the
borough, with trees toppled, utility
wires downed, basements fl ooded and
cars damaged.
Fire offi cials say some minor injuries
were reported in both areas.
The storm lasted about 20 minutes
before blowing out of the city, and giving
way to some bright rainbows in
the sky. More fl ash thunderstorms
are expected this week, as humidity
and heat are on the rise.
In America – and indeed the entire world – an
unprecedented and long overdue
conversation on racial justice is happening.
We are seeing sweeping changes in the way people from all sorts of
different backgrounds view ingrained racial injustices and the
consequences that result for people of color. It’s a societal reckoning
the likes of which we have never before seen.
And while the changes being made around the country show that
the protest movement is making a significant difference, it’s
important that we also focus on the economic issues that contribute
to systemic racial injustice in the U.S. It’s clearer than ever that to
achieve true racial justice, we need to address the underlying
economic conditions under which so many people of color live.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the poultry processing
industry, a low-paying, dangerous job performed almost exclusively
by people of color. The poultry workers who feed everybody from
California to here in New York face blinding fast line speeds, extreme
temperatures, dangerous, repetitive cutting motions that often lead
to debilitating injuries, and for the majority of them, who do not
have union representation, no voice to help make their jobs and their
lives better.
Poultry workers have gone so far as to call themselves “modern
day slaves,” and say management only cares about corporate
profits at the expense of the health and welfare of their workers.
The COVID-19 crisis shed a harsh new light on the treatment of
workers at these “modern day plantations,” with dozens of workers
dying and thousands infected. And while unions like the RWDSU
have been able to improve working conditions in union plants –
forcing implementation of better social distancing, more PPE, and
policies that encourage sick workers to stay home – the industry as
a whole has failed terribly when it comes to prioritizing safety
during this pandemic.
And that must change. America needs to start treating all its
workers – including people of color – with dignity, not just in poultry,
but in all industries across the country.
That’s just one of the many reasons that we support the Black
Lives Matter movement. We embrace this movement because it is
the morally right thing to do, and long overdue. Unions fight for
economic equality and for racial equality. We know that these two
things are intertwined, and we can’t have one without the other.
The RWDSU has a proud history of fighting for racial justice.
Today, we are proud to be part of the BLM fight. All
workers – from poultry workers in the South to
car wash workers here in New York – deserve
economic and racial justice. We will not stop
fighting until they are achieved.
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