EDITORIALS
OTHER VOICES
Seeing the bigger picture
Working families owe
community activists a debt
of gratitude.
He sided with the working
class against the out of control
concentrated obscene wealth in
this city and country.
To give one of the richest men in
the country whose company worth
in the stock market is through the
roof any money whether or not give
backs were in the deal should never
have been offered.
And now we have a governor
who does nothing for the working
poor unless pushed by us, attacking
those who are going to the root of
income inequality.
Gov. Cuomo, as usual, along with
Mayor de Blasio went ahead made
a deal and expected it to fly without
any community involvement.
Well, I am very happy to say
working families rejected the deal.
And as more and more information
comes out about the deal working
families will see this rejection as
a victory against obscene wealth
and power.
Several articles in the NYT
and other sources say that the tech
industry is alive and well here in
New York City in spite of Amazon
going home. Google is adding
jobs to its workforce. Apple and
Facebook are very happy here with
the resources the city has to offer.
When is enough, enough?
The wealth created by
companies like Amazon depends
on us. The conveyor belts that
meander around their warehouses
carrying the packages into the
hands of the sorters and stackers;
the truck drivers who deliver
the packages.
Who developed and built the
conveyer belts? Where did the steel
come from? Who delivered the steel
to the factories that constructed
the conveyer system? These are the
questions working families need to
ask themselves.
Jimmy Van Bramer, his
colleague Michael Gianaris, and
all the community activists and
unions who saw the bigger picture
deserve our full and total support
as wealth along with the governor
come down on them and try to
discredit them.
What these champions of the
working class are addressing is
the growing homeless population,
the abysmal wages and working
conditions and the growing divide
between the 1 percent and the
rest of us. Are we ready to stand
with them?
Gabriel Falsetta
Forest Hills
WE CAN DO BETTER
Voter turnout was once again poor, this time for
the Feb. 26 special election for city public advocate.
After the stunning results of the June 2018 primary
that saw Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unseat veteran
Congressman Joe Crowley, it was believed that voter
turnout in New York City may be on the upswing.
But in the November 2018 general election and now
this week’s public advocate, we see that nothing has
really changed.
Given the political climate that has seemingly
divided voters across the country, it was reasonable to
expect an increase in voter turnout. That has not been
the case.
Granted, the New York City public advocate
election may not be as high-profile as some of the
recent — and future — elections, but it was important
nonetheless, and New York City voters dropped the
ball, with an abysmal turnout in Queens and its
neighboring boroughs.
Brooklyn City Councilman Jumaane Williams
scored a decisive win in the special election to fill the
public advocate office, which has been vacant following
the resignation of Letitia James, who stepped down as
public advocate after being elected as New York state’s
new attorney general.
Turnout for the election, which consisted of 17
qualified candidates, was horrendous.
As of press time, the BOE had tallied 402,778 votes
citywide. By contrast, 1,097,846 New Yorkers cast a
vote in the 2017 mayoral election — a race which had
an abysmally low turnout of 23 percent.
The public advocate serves as the city’s ombudsman,
an official designated to be a link between city
government and the people it represents. The public
advocate is recognized as a non-voting member of
the City Council, but has the authority to create and
introduce legislation.
Give this, voter turnout should have been much
higher. Instead, we barely eclipsed 400,000 total votes
throughout the city.
The only way to bring about change in our city is
through our elected officials. Now, more than ever, we
count on them to make the right choices.
With so much at stake, city-dwellers have a
responsibility to get out and vote. People often think
that one vote can’t make a difference. And while one
vote itself may not make a difference, if too many people
think that way, one vote could become thousands, and
that most certainly makes a difference.
We are calling on Queens citizens, and residents of
its neighboring boroughs to make more of an effort to
go out and vote the next time an election comes around.
There’s too much at stake to sit idly by.
ASTORIA TIMES ■ BAYSIDE TIMES
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