28 The QUEE NS Courier • JANUARY 8, 2015 for breaking news visit www.queenscourier.com editorial letters IDENTIFY THIS PLACE Go to www.queenscourier.com and search “Identify This Place” to find out where this is THE QUEENS Victoria Schneps-Yunis Joshua A. Schneps Bob Brennan Tom Topousis Amy Amato-Sanchez Nirmal Singh Graziella Zerilli Stephen Reina Ron Torina, Jennifer Decio, Cheryl Gallagher Liam La Guerre, Cristabelle Tumola, Angy Altamirano Katrina Medoff, Eric Jankiewicz, Salvatore Licata Cliff Kasden, Samantha Sohmer, Elizabeth Aloni Cristabelle Tumola Demetra Plagakis Louise Cavaliere Celeste Alamin Maria Valencia Daphne Fortunate Victoria Schneps-Yunis Joshua A. Schneps Publisher & E ditor Co-Publisher Associate Publisher Editor-In-Chief VP, Events, Web & Social Media Art Director Assistant to Publisher Assistant Art Director Artists Staff Reporters Contributing Reporters Web Editor Events Manager Senior Acc ount Executive Classified Manager Controller Office Manager President & CEO Vice President Schneps Communications, 38-15 Bell Blvd., Bayside, NY 11361 718-224-5863 • Fax 718-224-5441 www.queenscourier.com editorial e-mail: editorial@queenscourier.com for advertising e-mail: ads@queenscourier.com Entire Contents Copyright 2014 by The Queens Courier All letters sent to THE QUEENS COURIER should be brief and are subject to condensing. Writers should include a full address and home and office telephone numbers, where available, as well as affiliation, indicating special interest. Anonymous letters are not printed. Name withheld on request. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, AS WELL AS OP-ED PIECES IN NO WAY REFLECT THE PAPER’S POSITION. No such ad or any part thereof may be reproduced without prior permission of THE QUEENS COURIER. The publishers will not be responsible for any error in advertising beyond the cost of the space occupied by the error. Errors must be reported to THE QUEENS COURIER within five days of publication. Ad position cannot be guaranteed unless paid prior to publication. Schneps Communications assumes no liability for the content or reply to any ads. The advertiser assumes all liability for the content of and all replies. The advertiser agrees to hold The Quens Courier and its employees harmless from all cost, expenses, liabilities, and damages resulting from or caused by the publication or recording placed by the advertiser or any reply to any such advertisement. Mayor de Blasio must suport the police The meeting between the mayor and the heads of the five police unions will hopefully begin what will be a period of meaningful dialogue, supported by positive and constructive actions. Our police officers risk their lives each and every day to protect the people of our city, and their jobs are certainly not easy ones, especially with what has been going on over the last several months. The mayor needs to unequivocally state his full support for our men and women in blue. It is so important to have the full support of the mayor in this situation. Also, the protests that have been occurring over the last several weeks need to be significantly toned down. The police are protecting the rights of those protesters, yet there have been incidents of violence directed toward them by some of these protesters, who are looking to further exacerbate an already tense situation. Police Commissioner Bratton has been doing a very good job, and also must have the full support of the mayor. Let us hope that 2015 will be a year of much improved relations between our police officers and the mayor. PBA President Pat Lynch is also doing a great job — he stands up for the rights of his members, and always speaks honestly and sometimes bluntly. John Amato Fresh Meadows PUBLIC SCHOL TEACHERS EDUCATE ALL KIDS As public school educators we embrace children from all the world and they mean all the world to us. Our arms are open, our minds are open, our hearts are open, and, not being charters, all our schools are open to them. Without exception. We treat all children as potential prodigies. We take no child for granted and we accept none as lost. All our kids are fit to teach and meant to learn. No child is “damaged goods” to us. No matter their fortune of birth or breaks in life, they are ours as gifts, never to begrudge but always to serve. They are our bounty. We are public school educators. It’s not easy. It demands order, imagination, infinite patience, tolerance and a big repertoire of teaching strategies. And as we are relentlessly assailed by the charter industry and other propagandists for privatizing education, we keep our “eyes on the prize.” “Profit” is our bottom line also, but our concept of “profit” is reckoned in substance of spirit instead of financial yield. As they carp, snipe and slander, we build bridges. As they stroke fallacies, we fortify our idealism with results in the classroom. As they fuel the assault on public education, we celebrate our kids and their future. Such is the duty and dividend of our profession. Our children are our inspiration. Wherever their origin on the map of needs. Regardless of odds and obstacles. The homeless, the emotionally disabled, the wheelchair-bound, the innocents scarred by war, the non-masters of language, the acutely beleaguered and the chronically afflicted. All the inexpedient kids who don’t test well and the ones inconvenient to the budget axe men. No kid embarrasses us. We don’t hide them, make excuses or expel them and they don’t fall by the wayside because, unlike private charter schools, there is no public school “wayside.” We are public school educators, after all. It may sometimes be an unthanked job, but it is never a thankless job. Ron Isaac Fresh Meadows Gov. Cuomo must balance neds of the entire state Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio have a lot in common with the late Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller and NYC Mayor John Lindsay from the 1960s. Both Rockefeller and Cuomo dealt with mayors who wanted equal billing on the political marquee. Lindsay and de Blasio’s urban agenda is dependent upon both increased state and federal assistance. This conflicts with governors who have to worry about all 62 counties making up New York State. This creates problems for governors who harbor presidential ambitions. Larry Penner Great Neck VISIT QueensCourier.com FOR MORE STORIES FAREWELL TO MARIO CUOMO There are some elected leaders who loom so large over our lives that they seem bigger than life. Mario Cuomo was one of these rare leaders. And so, even though our former governor was at an advanced age and even though we knew he had been seriously ill, it came as a shock when he passed away on New Year’s Day. Cuomo, in most New Yorkers’ minds, will always be the feisty, pugnacious Queens guy who wasn’t afraid to stand up for what he believed despite the prevailing political winds. We’ve known that about Cuomo since he first emerged as a leader who could solve big problems in Queens 40 years ago when a battle over low-income housing in Forest Hills had become a citywide controversy that he managed to solve. The nation learned about Cuomo’s fearlessness on a summer night in 1984 when he delivered the keynote speech at the Democratic Convention in San Francisco. The newly-elected Democratic governor electrified his party when he delivered his “tale of two nations” speech. For so many of us, Cuomo has remained that figure at the podium — stirring a nation’s soul even when the currents of conservatism were running like rapids across the land. He once told an interviewer that the words he wanted used to remember him after he was gone were: “He tried.” We’d take it a step further and say, “He succeeded.” Mario Cuomo will be missed. BEWARE THE HIGH PRICE OF CHEAP GAS Who doesn’t like filling up their car without having to take out a mortgage on the family home? We for one are enjoying these retro prices at the pump. And so, it seems, are most Americans. Cheap gas, thanks to our friends at OPEC and Saudi Arabia in particular, have been partly responsible for an economic boost for the nation. Already it seems that we’ve forgotten the sky-high prices of just a few years ago. More Americans this year are returning to their gas-guzzling ways, as Detroit reports a steep rise in the sale of new sport utility vehicles and big trucks. But don’t get too comfy in the front seat of that SUV. Once America’s domestic energy production falls off — undercut by cheap oil imports — expect to see OPEC push prices back up, putting us at square one all over again in the battle to end foreign oil dependence.
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