The Villager

Page 1

0

15465

10500

9

The Paper of Record for Greenwich Village, East Village, Lower East Side, Soho, Union Square, Chinatown and Noho, Since 1933

March 29, 2018 • $1.00 Volume 88 • Number 13

Small business leader says odds of S.B.J.S.A. vote are small: 50-to-1 BY SHARON WOOLUMS

U

nlike his predecessors, Spe a ker C h r ist i ne Quinn and Melissa Mark-Viverito, the City Council’s new speaker, Corey Johnson, has promised a solution to end the crisis of Downtown Manhattan’s small businesses closings.

Small business owners, fearful of facing sky-high rent increases, hope the solution Johnson promised will be the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, which was reintroduced last week by its new prime spon sor, C ou nci l me mb er Ydanis Rodriquez. SBJSA continued on p. 8

Never backward! But a change of direction for the Pride March BY LINCOLN ANDERSON

T

he Pride March will be switching things around this year. The festive annual event celebrates L.G.B.T. pride and the birth of the gay rights movement at the Stonewall Rebellion in the Village in 1969. Traditionally, the he procession

has started on Fifth Ave. in Midtown and ended in the Village. This June, however, the cavalcade will go in the opposite direction, starting near the Village and finishing on Fifth. Specifically, the march will kick off on Sun., June 24, at noon at W. 16th St. and SevPRIDE continued on p. 5

PHOTO BY MILO HESS

Students cried out in protest against gun violence at Saturday’s massive march.

Students rage, register voters after FL shooting BY SAR AH FERGUSON

I

brought my 9-year old son to the March for Our Lives in New York City last Saturday. I came to stand in solidarity with the students of Parkland, Florida, and their plea to end the gun madness in America. I came to be counted, even if protesting the slaughter of schoolchildren seems such a redundantly obvious thing to do.

A welcoming empire of wine ...p. 4

The march was hearteningly huge — with some 200,000 protesters dutifully filling up the blocks along Central Park West that were cordoned off with police barricades. Not bad, considering the main event was in Washington, D.C., where anywhere from 200,000 to 800,000 people rallied, depending on whose estimate you believe. At W. 77th St., I led my son Chris and his friend James through a thick crowd of peo-

ple staging anti-Trump singalongs. “Hey, hey, N.R.A., how many kids did you kill today?” chanted a group of high school students nearby, echoing the Vietnam era taunt of L.B.J. The New York City march was organized by a group of Columbia University students who put up a Facebook page for the event and then became its de facto leaders. But they MARCH continued on p. 6

Villager croons to commuters at bus hub........p. 10 Retiree on running errands, e-revolution........p. 15 www.TheVillager.com


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.
The Villager by Schneps Media - Issuu