Driving in Manhattan will soon become an expensive proposition.

The budget approved in Albany in late March will introduce congestion pricing to New York City. Under the new plan, drivers passing south of 60th Street in Manhattan will be charged a toll that could range from $11 to $25 per trip.  

But the new tax  isn’t the only measure the city has taken to curb traffic congestion. On February 2, the city imposed a fee targeting for-hire vehicles like taxis, Uber, and Lyft rides. This charge affects a larger segment of the city, with any ride beginning, ending, or passing south of 96th Street costing an additional $2.50 for taxis, or $2.75 for Uber or Lyft. In addition to lowering traffic congestion, these revenues are intended to finance an overhaul of the city’s dilapidated public transportation system.

For New York taxi drivers, the introduction of congestion pricing compounds existing problems, as the industry has struggled to compete with Uber and other ride service programs.

Nusrat Arslan is new to driving cabs in the city, but already he has noticed that his profession lacks the prestige it once enjoyed. The medallions certifying taxi drivers, once highly coveted, have declined precipitously in value.

“Uber has killed this job, you know? I spoke to one of my friends yesterday. He had the medallion he just bought. $600,000 or something like this, now he’s selling it for $100,000, and no one wants to buy it,” Arslan said.

According to Arslan, the plunge in profitability has also led to a shortage of drivers, as few can afford to keep pace with the profession’s expenses.

“Every garage is full of taxis, no drivers to work,” he said. “Because you can’t even cover. If you work a shift, you can’t even cover the bills. That’s why nobody works in yellow cabs. They try to Uber. What I know is that this job is dead.”

Despite the burden the new taxes will impose on him and his fellow drivers, Arslan is also convinced that he has no political recourse. The outcome of a taxi driver lawsuit is still pending, but the surcharge remains in force for the time being. Arslan was no more confident about the request his fellow drivers sent to Governor Cuomo requesting a reprieve from the new $11 congestion tax. To him, the government has proven indifferent to the plight of the taxi business.

“When the city makes the rules, you can’t say nothing,” he said.

To emphasize his point, Arslan produced receipts from one of his previous shifts, taking note of all the surcharges the city passed onto his customers through him.

“Yesterday I made 30 trips,” he explained. “I started at 10 AM, finished at 1 AM. Surcharge $15, another charge $9, another charge $70. 80, 85…94 dollars for the city.”

Taxi driver Abou Batkar, said he felt hopeless in the face of new surcharges.

“They’re fighting, but we can do nothing,” Batkar said. “They’re making money on us.”

Batkar noted that he and other taxi drivers already provide significant tax revenues to the city. He fears the city sees people like him as a resource to be exploited.

“Every day, they are receiving $2 million from drivers,” he said. “Every day. You think they are going to put that down?”

But Batkar took solace in one thing. In the end, he said, wealth accumulated through exploitation and greed will prove fleeting.

“God is with people who are patient,” he said. “This money is not going to be helpful to them. Because anything you earn the wrong way will go away like garbage. Like the air.”

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Nestled into a compact segment of South Brooklyn, the Raymond V. Ingersoll Housing project is encircled by more prosperous neighborhoods. The Metrotech Center sits directly across Flatbush Avenue to the west, alongside NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering. But now, the Ingersoll Houses also find themselves at the center of a heated debate over the future of public housing in New York City.

The Ingersoll project is operated by the New York City Housing Authority, which is currently under fire for systemic neglect and abuse of its 400,000 tenants. Last June, federal prosecutors accused the authority of covering up appalling living conditions for public housing residents, including lead paint, faulty heating, and infestation by roaches and rats. The report ultimately led to the city government accepting greater oversight from the federal government as it moves to alleviate the crisis.

In Ingersoll, deprivation has taken the form of intermittent heating, which puts pressure on families with young children. Despite this, residents reject the pessimism that colors public perceptions of New York public housing. Resident Janai Tucker cited familial bonds and the project’s sense of community as sources of strength for its residents.

“Sometimes the neighborhood can be dangerous,” Tucker said. “But it’s like a family…it’s all built up off of family members. There’s people that lived in Fort Greene five years ago, and they have family in Fort Greene, so their kids can know people in Fort Greene.”

Dwayne Fussell, a former public housing worker, has lived in the Ingersoll project his entire life. And for him, the community’s prospects have improved significantly since the turbulence of previous decades, although heating remains a major concern.

“The heat and hot water is not as great as it used to be,” Fussell said. “I’ve seen that they’d dug up all the ground and put these big lime-green pipes down here, and I don’t see what it’s supposed to have done. But now, if you look they’re putting the right pipes down there. Now, the heat is starting to come up and the hot water’s starting to come up.”

These improvements haven’t completely remedied the situation, however. The main obstacle now, according to Fussell, is consistent heating.

“You need heat and hot water all the way around, from morning, noon and night,” he explained. “But it’s still not like that. At night, a person that has a child, an infant, in the house, why do you have to bundle up that infant in layers of blankets at night, when you’re supposed to have the heat at night? I went through this with my son. My son is 16 now – I went through this since then.”

More than anything, Fussell seemed to take heart from his fellow Ingersoll residents, and the communal spirit they embodied.

“You have a lot of productive people here in the projects that does good,” he said. “It’s not all as bad as everybody make it seems.”

One of Ingersoll’s productive residents is Michael Pabon. An Iraq War veteran, Pabon assists his neighbors as a carpenter and electrician. And after 12 years in the project with his wife and son, Pabon feels optimistic about the community’s future.

“NYCHA have improved, but they do have their faults,” Pabon said. “Living conditions at times are, bad. And that’s all with a phone call, within the system. You have to let them know what’s going wrong, what’s broke, and what a tenant can expect to get fixed. But other than that, this neighborhood has come a long way in the last 20, 30 years.”

Ingersoll resident Michael Pabon sees a bright future for the project’s residents. Photo by Teddy Haines.

Apart from NYCHA responsiveness, Pabon cited other improvements in the neighborhood’s quality of life. He pointed out recent construction of a laundromat and other amenities, as well as the project’s increasing ethnic diversity.

“Lot of nice Asians, Africans, Indians, there’s a big ethnic melting pot here, and for the most part, everyone gets along,” Pabon said. “You have those very few that unfortunately make the neighborhood not so nice. But we have to live with it, and we make the best of it.”

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Walk due east from Newark Penn station, and you’ll pass through the close-knit working-class community known as the Ironbound. Once a major industrial hub, this neighborhood has become known for its heavy Spanish and Portuguese cultural influence. And now, like the rest of Newark, it is also known for its hazardous water supply. State testing has found high traces of lead contamination in the city’s water supply, and Ironbound residents risk being overlooked as the municipal government moves to alleviate the crisis.

According to CBS, around a quarter of Newark children under six have lead in their bloodstreams. Lead poisoning is especially hazardous for children because it can stunt their cognitive development. The CDC warns that lead exposure can damage the nervous system, slow growth and development, cause learning and behavioral problems, as well as speech and hearing problems.

Mixed Messages from City Hall

The city government’s response to the contamination has been haphazard. Newark gets water from two main facilities, the Pequannock and the Wanaque. Initially, Newark officials distributed filters to residents served by the Pequannock water treatment plant, while insisting that homes serviced by the Wanaque system are safe. But this claim has come under fire, with a class action suit against the city accusing it of neglecting lead levels in areas served by the Wanaque, including the Ironbound.

Marco Germano, a bike program volunteer from the city’s Central Ward, is concerned that official reports make it difficult to pin down the source of the problem.

“I’ve heard mixed messages that the water that comes to our city is very good, but the pipes within the older buildings are contaminated,” Germano said. “On the flip side, I’ve heard that there’s issues with the water coming into the city, and the pipes in the houses just compound it.”

Despite his uncertainty, Germano expressed confidence in the city government’s response. He accepts Mayor Ras Baraka’s endorsement of the water supply, and given that Germano lives in a new building, he believes that its water supply is safe.

Residents of the Ironbound itself tend to be less sanguine. Jessica Valladolid of the Ironbound Community Corporation fears that a combination of industrial activity and official neglect make this segment of the city’s East Ward particularly vulnerable.

“We have a large population here, but very much underserved,” Valladolid said. “A lot of contamination because of the factories here. Now, we’re being told that the homes here also should be tested, which we assumed [had been done] already.”

Valladolid also expressed concern that other neighborhoods in the city were being prioritized more heavily than poorer and often undocumented residents of East Ironbound.

“The people going door to door and asking homeowners if they need to have their lead checked in their homes seems like it’s happening in a lot of different areas of Newark, but neglecting a lot of others, like the East Ironbound,” she said.

Ironbound’s Demographics Complicate the Issue

In addition to official neglect, Ironbound residents are also impeded by local regulations when they try to obtain filters for their water systems.

“In this community, we have a lot of undocumented folks and a lot of people that are not homeowners,” Valladolid said. “So they’ve been coming to this community center, and asking where to get their filtration systems from, being sent downtown and being rejected for not being homeowners and not being able to pick up a filtration system.”

This stipulation is compounded by what many in the Ironbound see as neglect from their landlords. Patricia Romero, a lunch truck worker in East Ironbound, doubts her landlord is even aware of Newark’s contamination problems.

“My landlord, I don’t think she even knows what City Hall is,” Romero said. “She doesn’t live here. She lives in New Brunswick. She’s okay with the building, but I don’t think she knows that the water’s bad.”

That said, Romero also feels that the tenants in Ironbound bear some responsibility for the neighborhood’s slow reaction to the crisis.

“This is the problem of the immigrant towns,” she said. “They don’t pay attention to this. They go to work, they come home, they go to work, they come home. And whatever happens around them, they don’t notice or they don’t care…And minority people here don’t own anything, they only rent. So they just keep going.”

“Even the landlords sometimes are immigrants, so they don’t pay attention,” Romero added. “They only pay attention to, ‘Oh, they raised my taxes!’”

Retired computer science teacher Lenny Thomas is concerned that city authorities haven’t tested for lead contamination as diligently as they should have. Photo by Teddy Haines.

For Ironbound, the community’s age is another risk factor. The neighborhood became a center of industry at the turn of the 20th Century, and many of its buildings date back to that era. Retired computer science teacher Lenny Thomas explained why water lines leading into the Ironbound are especially risky, even if the city’s service lines are clean.

“A lot of houses here are over a hundred years old,” Thomas said. “So they [were] built before they started worrying about lead, and they will have lead in them. That’s probably the reason why a lot of people use bottled water or filtered water already…they were the smart people.”

Among those smart people were Frank Gonzalez and his family. Gonzalez, a construction manager, relied on filtered water for years before the problem of lead contamination became a widespread concern in Newark.

“Our family…for a long time, we’ve never really used the tap water…right out of the faucet,” Gonzalez said. “We always use bottled water.”

Newark construction manager Frank Gonzalez has relied on filtered water instead of the tap for five years, ever since the birth of his first child. Photo by Teddy Haines.

Despite his precautions, Gonzalez still feels uneasy about the situation, since he has a five-year-old and a two-year-old at risk.

“The positive thing…is that for as long as they’ve been alive, we never really gave them water right out of the tap,” he said.

Residents Don’t Feel Their Voices Are Being Heard

One common theme in residents’ complaints is that landlords and the Newark government are unlikely to treat their predicament with the urgency it demands.

“They should change the whole system, but it’s not gonna happen,” said Patricia Romero. “Because it’s very expensive…They have to change the government, and the government is all in attracting business…everything else takes second place.”

Frank Gonzalez agreed, saying that official neglect of Ironbound is a perennial problem in Newark.

“I don’t think the Ironbound is ever well-served in anything,” Gonzalez said. “Because unfortunately, and I hate to say this, but unfortunately a lot of the residents in this area are not very proactive. They don’t stand up for themselves.”

Gonzalez argued that this civic apathy on the part of Ironbound residents manifests itself on other fronts as well.

“It’s not just this issue, there’s a lot of issues where people just let it slide,” he said. “We haven’t had street cleaning in months…garbage pickup is a problem, nobody ever seems to say anything, and it seems like it just keeps happening to this ward. The city of Newark doesn’t care about this ward, because they don’t get any heat for it.”

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Tuesday’s midterm elections were not the stinging rebuke of the Trump Administration that Democrats had been hoping for. The party has retaken the House of Representatives, gaining at least 27 seats. Despite this success, Democrats lost ground in the Senate, and the House results were not as clear-cut a victory as rosier projections had expected. These mixed results make the election difficult to categorize overall. More than anything, the election shows a country that is drifting ever further apart politically.

In the House, the results largely conformed to pre-election polling. According to FiveThirtyEight, Democrats won the majority of seats that leaned toward their party, Republicans won most GOP-leaning districts, and Democrats clinched a slight majority of the races pegged as tossups.

At the state level, Democrats saw gains in several key states. Pennsylvania stands out in particular, with Democrats gaining four seats in the wake of a court-ordered redistricting that made the state more competitive. In New Jersey and Virginia, Democrats built on existing advantages, winning three seats in each. Meanwhile, Democrats won two seats apiece in Florida, Iowa, Michigan, and Texas.

Overall, the House races accentuate the existing trend of urban-rural polarization. The three most surprising Democratic victories, NY-11, SC-1, and OK-5, all came from urban communities. The same applies to Georgia’s 6th District, which Republican Karen Handel narrowly won in last year’s special election. On Tuesday, the district voted in Democrat Lucy McBath after a hard-fought contest. Also, the two House seats Democrats won in Florida were centered on Miami-Dade County. These results suggest that the divide between urban and rural voters are only intensifying under the Trump Administration.

One other noteworthy trend in last night’s House races is the success for minorities in key races. The 116th Congress will see Native American and Muslim women to join its ranks for the first time. Native American candidates Sharice Davids of Kansas and Debra Halland of New Mexico won their races Tuesday. Two Muslim candidates also won, with Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar scoring victories in Michigan and Minnesota. Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also made history – at 29, she is the youngest woman ever be elected to Congress.

In the Senate, the Democrats faced an uphill battle to retake the chamber this year, with 26 seats up for reelection to only nine for the Republicans. With so many incumbents facing challenges, many of them in heavily conservative states, Democrats were unable to avoid significant losses. Joe Donnelly of Indiana fell behind early in the night and never recovered, while North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp and Missouri’s Claire McCaskill also lost decisively. Bill Nelson in Florida held on more stubbornly, and is currently seeking a recount.

Meanwhile, the Democrats saw little success from their limited opportunities to flip Republican seats. Beto O’Rourke suffered a narrow defeat in his challenge to Ted Cruz in Texas. Tennessee’s election was more clear-cut, with Marsha Blackburn besting Democrat Phil Bredesen. The race to replace Jeff Flake in Arizona has not been called, but Kyrsten Sinema trails Martha McSally. The sole Democratic Senate victory came from Nevada, where Dean Heller was ousted by Jacky Rosen.

Despite the mixed victory for Congress, last night’s most promising gains for Democrats came at the state level. Democrats won seven Governor’s races, as well as winning legislative chambers in at least six states. The gubernatorial victories ranged from bluer states like Illinois and Maine, to swing states like Wisconsin and Nevada, to a surprise victory in highly conservative Kansas.

The common thread across many of the gubernatorial races was dissatisfaction with unpopular incumbents. Illinois and Kansas voters blamed incumbents Bruce Rauner and Sam Brownback for catastrophically damaging the two states’ finances. Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Maine’s Paul LePage alienated voters with their abrasive approaches to governing. And in Michigan, Governor Rick Snyder has suffered for his mishandling of the water contamination in Flint.

Democrats also enjoyed two historic successes in last night’s Governor’s races. In Colorado, Jared Polis became the first openly gay man to be elected to a Governor’s mansion. And in New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham became the first Latina woman to get elected Governor as a Democrat.

Not every Governor’s race went well for the Democrats, however. Andrew Gillum narrowly lost his race in Florida, and Richard Cordray was bested in Ohio. Stacey Abrams hasn’t conceded defeat in Georgia, but she trails Georgia Attorney General Brian Kemp by 1.6 points. The loss in Florida is especially critical – Republican success increases the danger of favorable redistricting after the 2020 census, putting Congressional victories in the state even further out of reach for Democrats. This is less of a concern for Ohio, where voters approved rules for a bipartisan redistricting process earlier this year.

All in all, Tuesday’s results should still be considered a success for Democrats, albeit a qualified one. Republican control of the Senate will only exacerbate conservative influence in the judiciary branch, possibly for years to come. However, seizing the House of Representatives will let Democrats conduct investigations into Trump Administration misconduct, which may cripple the White House. Also, the House is responsible for the first drafts of all spending bills, giving the Democrats considerable sway over the federal budget.

Moreover, the Democratic success at the state level will improve their national prospects in future elections – many Congressmen begin their careers in state legislatures. The Trump Administration no longer has free rein to push its agenda, but that may prove the least of their worries.

The post For Democrats, a Mixed Success in 2018 Midterms appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

A crowd of hundreds gathered in Midtown with floats, rhythmic chanting, and the flags of over a dozen countries to celebrate the 33rd annual Muslim Day Parade this afternoon.  

Muslims say this yearly tradition is a way for them to come together and speak with one voice, to assert themselves in an often inhospitable political climate, and to relay their message to a wider audience.

For Mohammad Malik of Staten Island, this year’s march was his first, and he welcomed the opportunity to stand in solidarity with his community.

“The parade shows the unity of all Muslim ummah [community] in the United States and all over the country, and all over the world,” Malik said. “That we are united, that we convey the message of our prophet Muhammad,the message is peace.”

Malik, a 38-year resident of the United States, extolled his “awesome” experiences in this country, as well as his belief that the world belongs to every human being equally.

Before the procession began in earnest, there was a prayer session. The participants clustered on a long stretch of blue tarp to pay their respects. After that, the assemblage proceeded south down Madison Avenue from 38th Street.

The long tradition of the parade in the city has shaped the upbringing of many of New York’s younger residents. Farwah Tahir, a young woman from Long Island, has participated in the marches for a decade, ever since her childhood. For her, the parade is a fixture that brings New York Muslims together to enjoy themselves.

“It’s a way to unify,” Tahir said. “You meet new people from the community. Different ethnicities and different races, we all just come together.”

For the organizers of the Muslim Day Parade, the event forms one part of a larger strategy to enhance their community’s political engagement. A survey from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that 255,000 Muslims live in New York, around 3 percent of the city’s total population.

Properly mobilized, this constituency could prove effective in the political arena, they said. The organization website credits this kind of participation for the 2015 decision to recognize two Muslim holidays in public schools. To build on such successes, the organizers also touted the parade as an opportunity to help attendees register to vote and to learn more about civic responsibility.

The mood at this year’s parade was resolute and optimistic. Tahir Mian of Long Island has attended every year going back to 1985, and to him, there is no question that the community’s message is steadily winning through. He admitted that the parade “has its ups and downs,” but he expected a strong turnout this year.  

Mian stressed the point that as much as the parade offers an opportunity for New York Muslims to meet and engage with each other, it also provides them greater exposure in the city as a whole. More than anything, the progress on this front made him hopeful for the future.

“Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of local Christians, Jews, other people come to the parade,” Mian said. “People are getting more interested in it. People just want to see what it is. What’s the difference? We’re all children of Adam, we follow the religion of Abraham. This is the whole purpose of this parade.”

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Churchgoers at St. Paul’s Chapel in Lower Manhattan were greeted by an eclectic blend of music as they entered for today’s 17th annual commemoration of September 11th. The afternoon service, the Calling of the Names, honors the first responders who gave their lives at Ground Zero. In his introduction to the event, Reverend Bruce W.B. Jenneker credited songs as the glue that held together the different stages of the service.

“Pain shared is pain halved,” he said. “And pain experienced in the context of God-given music is pain that transforms us.”

For Jenneker, music is an art that alleviates bereavement by reminding us of our solidarity and shared humanity.

To underscore this point, the Calling of the Names was punctuated by songs in a variety of different genres. The performances ranged from traditional hymns and requiems to a flute recitation of Bach, a violin-driven rendition of Danny Boy, and even a piece from contemporary Christian singer Tauren Wells.

This was certainly a welcome message for Gloria Latona, a former NYU student assistant from Lower Manhattan, who attended her third annual service at St Paul’s yesterday.

“I remember 17 years ago, I was working at 34th Street and watched one of the buildings come down,” Latona said. “It’s a horrible, horrible memory. I will never experience anything (like that) in my lifetime.”

“I did have people that I knew who died,” she added. “I still cannot believe this could happen.”

Latona enjoyed the service, extolling the beauty of the church and the ceremony. For her, the choice of music was very apropos for the occasion, though she regretted missing the performance of Danny Boy.

Reverend Elizabeth Blunt cited the importance of honoring people of all backgrounds and all beliefs, something reflected in the commingling of traditional and modern expression through the service.

After just over an hour of requiems and prayers, the main event was heralded by the sound of a bagpipe. One by one, mourners approached the podium, each reciting a portion of the names of the fallen responders.

These speakers varied widely in age, from the elderly to a young boy born after the event he helped commemorate. As some of the mourners neared the end of their segments, they singled out individuals that they had known personally, ranging from New York police and firemen to military personnel and responders from out of state. One man from Newtown, Connecticut, drew attention to a victim from the same town.

Of course, for as much as those touched by September 11th vary in background, so too do their emotional responses to the trauma. Joan Jacobs, a Red Cross volunteer from West Point, admits that for her, the events of the day are less impactful.

“I’m fine with everything,” Jacobs said. “I’m military, so everything is okay. I accepted it.”

Despite her stoicism, Jacobs also enjoyed the service, describing the remembrances as “very gratifying.”

“The music was wonderful,” Jacobs said. “I’ve worked with hospice, so the dying, they’ve all gone home.”

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