Do Town Halls Rouse the Grassroots? 04 Mayor Rolls Out Budget 10 Midtown From 2,000 Feet Up 14
AT PACKED INAUGURATION, JOHNSON MAKES IT OFFICIAL Photo by Melissa Moore/ End Overdose NY
Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal speaks as a Jan. 31 press conference in Albany on reforming state drug policy.
Rosenthal Takes Lead in Drug Policy Rethinking BY NATHAN RILEY Upper West Side State Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal is emerging as a principal player among legislators aiming to unravel New York’s decades-old, counterproductive War on Drugs. From her influential post as chair of the Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Committee, she is lead sponsor on a bill offering care for drug users while they are using. “They need help, not our punishment nor our judgment” is the principle behind her proposal to legalize safer consumption spaces, facilities staffed by overdose prevention workers able to administer naloxone should a person using drugs bought on the street experience an overdose. “No one ever died in a safer injection site,” Rosenthal said at a Jan. 29 Albany press event. “Let me repeat that again, no one ever died in a safer consumption site.” Safer consumption spaces extend the logic of needle exchange programs, which provide injection drug users with clean syringes to prevent the transmission of HIV, hepatitis, and other blood-borne infections. Naloxone is a public health wonder. It restores normal breathing, and if you have guessed wrong and a person is drunk rather than high no harm is done. Users will overdose at safer consumption spaces, but they come out of the episode alive. Most importantly, naloxone is easy to use. It’s a nasal spray, so those aiding an overdose victim need merely stick the spray in that person’s nose and squirt. Only ROSENTHAL continued on p. 5
February 8 - 21, 2018 | Vol. 04 No. 3
Photo by Christian Miles
City Council Speaker Corey Johnson with Senator Chuck Schumer, who administered Johnson’s official oath of office at an FIT ceremony on Jan. 28.
BY EILEEN STUKANE Every seat in the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Morris W. and Fannie B. Haft Theater, capacity 700, was filled by the time City Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s formal inauguration opened on Jan. 28. In introductory remarks, Aleta Lafargue, president of the Tenants’ Association at Manhattan Plaza, said, “I know I speak for everyone when I say that if you’re on the West Side, Corey is much more than an elected public official. To so many of us across our district, he is a friend, a neighbor, a surrogate son, a mentor, a mentee, a role model, a fighter.” Mayor Bill de Blasio reminded the audience that after the Nov. 2016 election, “One of the people in this city who stood up the quickest, with the most fortitude, who started to organize his community to resist and to make sure values stay strong, was Corey Johnson.” He added that New York City was sending a message to the whole country “that an HIV-positive man is one of the great leaders of our city.” De Blasio talked about Johnson’s origins in a small town in Massachusetts and how 20 years ago he came out “in a world where almost no one did it, in a culture
and athletic culture that so tragically rejected people’s truth.” He referred to the close connection Johnson has to his mother who was unable to attend, and added, “Corey is not a moderate. You don’t do things in moderation. You do it with all your energy and heart and became an activist, a community activist, a fighter for LGBT rights, a civic leader, and the youngest community board chair in the city.” Before administering the oath of office, US Senator Chuck Schumer, like de Blasio, referred to Johnson’s childhood, specifically his upbringing in public housing. “His family struggled, and struggled, and struggled, but Corey had some inner strength, a great gift from God, and he became captain of his football team, and he came out and said, ‘I’m gay,’” Schumer said, lauding him as “a fighter to stand up for who we are and what we believe in.” Comptroller Scott Stringer, in what was perhaps a dig at the mayor, praised Johnson for his potential to make the Council a “Council of Independence.” Alphonso JOHNSON continued on p. 5
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