Union Matters

More Staten Island workers want to form a union

By STEPHON JOHNSON

Amsterdam News Staff

With the high profile of the previous vote to collectively bargain, another Amazon warehouse on Staten Island wants its chance at history too.

Coming off a major victory for one Staten-Island based Amazon warehouse, another one wants its shot at history too.

At 526 Gulf Avenue (the location of an Amazon warehouse) on Staten Island, Amazon Labor Union President Christian Smalls, Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) President Sara Nelson, American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein and other members of the ALU’s organizing committee gathered to announce that ALU was successful in garnering the signatures necessary for voting to occur (2,500 people). Elections at the LDJ5 location of Amazon’s complex began on Monday.

Looking to follow in JFK8’s footsteps, the workers want to address working conditions that they feel aren’t conducive to getting their job done. Some of those conditions include “unreasonable” work scheduling that’s based on Amazon’s desire to efficiently distribute products and not the workers’ well-being.

The group at LJD5 also received public support from highprofile elected officials as well such as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“If you’re going to do business out here in New York, you got to treat our people right,” Ocasio-Cortez said to those in attendance. “It was the first domino to fall, the first one. We’re not gonna stop until the United States of America is union made.”

“What this whole thing is about is working people standing up,” added Sanders.

Staten Island’s condition is no coincidence. According to a recent ALF-CIO’s report titled “Dream on the Job: The Toll of Neglect,” 340

working people died every day because of hazardous working conditions. More than 4,764 workers were killed on the job from injuries alone. An estimated 120,000 workers died from occupational diseases. The job fatality rate was 3.4 per 100,000 workers. Musculoskeletal disorders continue to make up the largest portion (21%) of work-related injuries and illnesses, and Latino and Black workers remain at greater risk of dying on the job than all workers. During a video news conference, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, joined by other leaders including Bessemer, Alabama-based Amazon warehouse workers, talked about how these work conditions decimate families of color. “That’s tens of thousands of families losing a parent, a child, a sibling, every single year,” said Shuler. “Latino and Black workers specifically remain at greater risk of dying on the job than all workers. That is, frankly, unacceptable.” Back on the Island, Smalls, who was fired by Amazon in the early days of the pandemic for Another group of Staten Island-based Amazon workers wants to unionize. (Photo courtesy of Amazon Labor Union (Twitter)) joining a walkout in protest of work conditions, let the public know that this won’t be the only rodeo in the immediate future. It’s going national as well. “We got emails from Walmart, we got emails from Target, Dollar General, from Apple, from Starbucks,” touted Smalls. “We are going to take over the country.”

Unions and businesses both praise the Clean Slate Act

By STEPHON JOHNSON

Amsterdam News Staff

Post-budget talk among legislators in Albany has hit the ground. And legislators are looking to clean the floor behind them.

The Clean Slate Act is a bill that addresses the desire to amend criminal procedural law related to the automatic sealing of certain convictions. The legislation would end the prejudice and punishment ex-convicts face after serving time, such as being denied the ability to collect public benefits or being rejected for apartments and jobs.

In a statement, the Clean Slate NY coalition (consisting of groups, advocates, and businesses) said, “We applaud the Senate Codes Committee and Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins for advancing the Clean Slate Act on the first day of session post-budget, marking immediate momentum for the bill. This historic legislation would end the perpetual punishment that over 2 million New Yorkers face due to a prior conviction. With overwhelming support across the state, now is the time to break cycles of intergenerational poverty and allow all New Yorkers to contribute to their communities. We look forward to the bill’s passage this session to bring relief to New Yorkers who have been excluded from economic opportunity, stable housing, and higher education for far too long.”

The Clean Slate Act has received support from different spectrums of the five boroughs. JP Morgan Chase, Verizon, and the New York State Bar Association have joined forces with DC37, 1199 SEIU, Local 338 RWDSU, UFCW and Riverside Church and Trinity Wall Street Church.

Under the Clean Slate Act (S.1553C/A.6399B), introduced by State Senator Zellnor Myrie and Assembly Member Catalina Cru, “New Yorkers will be eligible to have conviction records automatically sealed 3 years from sentencing for misdemeanors and 7 years from sentencing for felonies, not including time incarcerathousing, and higher education. To be eligible for automatic sealing relief, individuals must have completed probation, parole or postrelease supervision, and cannot have incurred any new convictions or pending charges during the three or seven year waiting period. Sex offenses are not eligible for sealing.” Myrie said that it’s not a coincidence that this type of legislation has made it to the State Senate. It’s something that everyone can agree with. “Clean Slate has brought together the largest coalition of supporters for a criminal justice reform bill in New York State history: advocates and local governments, labor unions and corporate leaders, faith leaders and nine out of ten New Yorkers who agree people with conviction records should have a fair shot at employment and housing,” stated Myrie. “By advancing this bill, the Senate took a huge step toward safer, stronger and more stable communities and helping over 2 million New Yorkers who agree people with conviction records should have a fair shot at employment and housing.”

State Senator Zellnor Myrie (https://www.nysenate.gov photo)

The problem with education and how can we fix it

By CLARENCE WILLIAMS JR.

It seems that the American educational system is in a perpetual state of reform. Everyone agrees that current and past systems do not work, yet every so-called solution is another dead end. With each new sales pitch, textbook or academic initiative comes the same frustration. Our children are failing. PISA, the Programme for International Student Assessment, states the following: “The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.”

In repairing this broken system, we seem to be very clear on the what, somewhat fuzzy on the why and clueless on the how. This system of teaching and learning was not designed to serve the diverse population, social conditions, and the multitude of learning challenges we face today. Throughout my career as an educator and educational leader, one of the questions I am often asked is: How can we build a curriculum that will satisfy the needs of such a diverse population with varying degrees of academic exposure? I believe this question is at the core of our educational dilemma. Now depending on where we are on the political timeline, that question could be answered differently. If we were in the Industrial Age when our current education system was modeled after factories to produce the American workforce, the answer would be simple; either you succeed or drop out and get a job. If we were living in the era prior to Brown vs Board of Education, the solution would be, deal with the resources you have under the misconception of “Separate But Equal.” The modern era gave us No Child Left Behind. This standards-based platform held school districts accountable for their success or failure with state-wide assessments. This one-size-fits-all approach fails to address diversity and social challenges. NCLB is not a curriculum; neither is its counterpart, the Common Core Learning Standards. The Next Generation standards were supposed to right the wrongs of Common Core, however it is also a list of standards that poorly reflect diversity or pedagogical practices, doing very little to address how teachers teach. Today, Critical Race Theory tries to approach education from a lens of diversity and awareness. Unfortunately, it has become the latest political football in the game of educational reform that is an integral part of the polarized political landscape that is America, the result, stagnation, misinformation, and unending gridlock.

Part of the problem is we still categorize education as “General Education” and everything else is a subcategory or outlier. We need to start realizing that those subcategories and outliers are our student population. What is a general student? Merriam Webster defines general as: “Belonging to the common nature of a group of like individuals, GENERIC.” Our education system is anything but generic. The New York City Department of Education breaks down the following: 13.3% of students were English Language Learners 20.8% were students with disabilities

73.0% were economically disadvantaged

Race or ethnicity: 40.8% Hispanic 24.7% Black 16.5% Asian 14.8% white

This breakdown doesn’t even reflect the students with unclassified social emotional needs.

If we are going to rebuild this system, we must start from the ground up and understand who we are designing it for. This eliminates the need of forcing different groups into a curriculum that doesn’t fit or apply to them. These groups are the mainstream. It’s time we built reflective curricula and assessments for all students. Here is an example, ELA (English Language Arts) is broken down by age, grade and level, as are all major subjects. This means that every 3rd grader, roughly 9 years old, will be learning the same thing at the same time. Here’s the problem, in a class of 25 students, no two are

Wipe out student loan debt

It was good news for all Americans, especially for those still burdened with debt from student loans, that President Biden has signaled that he will use his executive authority to cancel some of the debt. Currently, a moratorium on student loans has been in effect since the outbreak of COVID19, and the news has come that the president plans to do more than extending the moratorium, which is still short of canceling the debt entirely.

During a recent meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Biden said he has asked his aides to explore options of broad forgiveness for federal loans, and that would go beyond his campaign pledge.

Even so, there is a bit of hesitancy on such a broad relief initiative, particularly its impact on the economy in this period of rising inflation. Biden appears to have his ear cocked to some of the concerns raised by a recent government watchdog report that has revealed stark failure in the student loan forgiveness program run by the feds.

According to the GAO (Government Accountability Office) it was indicated that an increasing number of student EDITORIAL loan borrowers who could have their loans “canceled under existing laws may miss out because of incompetence in the program.” For Richard Cordray, chief operating officer at FSA (Federal Student Aid), an agency of the Education Department, “this is really inexcusable,” he said in an interview with Yahoo Finance. “But what’s done is done. And what we’re trying to do here is take account of it and make adjustments for it as best we can.” Apparently, if Biden’s words ring true, the FSA has an ally in this quest, and perhaps this is the coordinated tandem we need to expand the number of student loans due to be forgiven more than 157 actually discharged of the nearly 8,000 eligible under existing laws. Mr. President, we know your agenda is laden with pressing issues, but this is a measure that thousands are entitled to and an executive move on your part would be a significant step toward relief of anxiety for many Americans struggling to make ends meet.

Elinor R. Tatum: Publisher

and Editor in Chief Kristin Fayne-Mulroy: Managing Editor Nayaba Arinde: Editor Cyril Josh Barker: Digital Editor

See FIX EDUCATION on page 29

Being sick and tired does not mean these shootings will stop

By JAMES B. EWERS JR. Ed.D.

It just means you are sick and tired, nothing else. I leave my house each day with a mixture of apprehension and caution.

There isn’t a panacea you get that rids you of these senseless shootings.

Living like this is a bit unnerving to me. We seem to be a society of shootings at times.

What happened to the good old days? The good old days are long gone and will never return. Of course, that is my opinion, and you may think otherwise.

If you think otherwise, then good for you. I bet you are not a valid senior citizen like me. I have seen a lot and so have other senior citizens and we have a different perspective.

We know what the good old days really were.

Those days allowed us to go into the public square and not have to worry about getting hit by a stray bullet. We didn’t see men shooting one another.

Back in years gone by, Black men settled their disagreements at the worst by fighting each other. Guns weren’t used or even seen.

In my neighborhood in Winston-Salem, N.C., I never saw a gun. There were no reports or talk about guns in the neighborhood.

Those were the good old days.

People sat on their porches and laughed and joked. They told tall tales which made you think, did that really happen? You see, we had great storytellers.

Before you think it was perfect, I will stop you and tell you that it wasn’t.

We had the police, and we had a fear of them. Yet there was not this monthly shooting of Black men by white police officers.

‘Driving While Black’ has become a sad but truthful axiom about what is happening to Black men by the police. We are being stopped and shot by the police. Strangely and unfortunately, these traffic stops have led to our untimely deaths in too many cases.

Most recently, we have seen another Black life end at the hands of a white police officer. On April 4, 2022, Patrick Lyoya lived his last day on Earth. He was shot by a Grand Rapids, Michigan police officer.

Patrick Lyoya was a Black Congolese refugee, and the white police officer has yet to be identified.

How did Patrick Lyoya lose his life? The reports say it was a routine traffic stop. More specifically, it was for an unregistered license plate.

It is my opinion that there is nothing routine about being stopped by the police. So, it begs the basic question of humanity, how do you lose your life over an unregistered license plate?

These types of incidents have me sick beyond words. It is reprehensible to watch this happening in America.

Peter Lyoya, Patrick’s father said, “My heart is broken to see an officer being on top of my son and to shoot him in the back of the head, my heart is really broken.”

I just wonder at that critical moment, was the officer’s only recourse of action to shoot him in the back of the head?

The Michigan Department of Civil Rights has requested that the Department of Justice launch an investigation. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Michigan is also involved.

Vickie Levengood, spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Civil Rights said, “At some point between late 2019 or sometime in 2020, we initially reached out to both agencies hoping to discuss options for collaborative investigations or some help in investigating this pattern or practice issue.”

This term, “pattern or practice” has come about because of what is happening from a social justice perspective in Michigan.

Let us pray for the family of Patrick Lyoya. They should not have this kind of pain and suffering. Patrick Lyoya should still be living.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not represent those of the New York Amsterdam News. We continue to publish a variety of viewpoints so that we may know the opinions of others that may differ from our own.

ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS

The rising cost of gas at the pump will likely change the summer plans for millions of hard working Americans. March inflation numbers are in and are now at a staggering 8.5% with the cost of everyday goods steadily rising making it harder and harder for struggling Americans to survive. This financial hardship is of course exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic as many Americans have yet to recover from the wage loss associated with shutting down the economy.

The current national average cost for a gallon of gas is over $4, up over 80 cents a gallon, which is a significant increase and is certainly not sustainable for most Americans. With the November midterm elections fast approaching, the question for the Biden administration and Democrats overall is simple one: how will their policy decisions impact the votes of everyday Americans?

Well the answer to that question is simple, without a dramatic shift in policy, Democrats can expect significant losses in the House with the possibility of losing the Senate which would effectively stall Biden’s political agenda, making him a lame duck president. It would be akin to the Obama losses in the 2014 midterms, which were catastrophic for Democrats not only at the federal level, but also at the state and local levels as Republicans, joined by a comfortable margin of swing voters, handed Republican politicians victory at every level.

Americans are tired of struggling and after two years of COVID restrictions resulting in their entire lives coming to a complete halt, people want help and they expect the president to deliver. Unfortunately, over one year into his presidency, Biden hasn’t delivered on his campaign promises and he certainly hasn’t improved the lives of the American people through his policy decisions. Perhaps the only success he’s had thus far is placating his loud, progressive base. However, this will certainly backfire come the 2022 midterms because their radical agenda simply isn’t consistent with what the majority of Americans, Democrat or Republican, want. In fact his administration has completely ignored the calls to “lead from the center” or reach across the aisle, which is exactly what he ran on. To date, the Biden administration’s decision making has revealed that his entire campaign was built not on the truth of bipartisanship, but more of the same. Despite his claim that he would unite a country that was vastly divided under the Trump administration the country is arguably more divided than ever and this has all occurred on Joe Biden’s watch.

The world is in flames with Russia’s unprovoked invasion into Ukraine and as China continues to expand their global footprint economically and militarily all while we’re debating gender terms and wokeness. The new Democratic Party is bad for America and America’s strength and leadership is being undermined by progressives who believe everything should revolve around the way they see their world and their “cultural norms” that seek to dismiss thousands of years of human tradition and values.

The American people didn’t give Biden power because they wanted high gas prices, instead they hoped that the former U.S. senator and two term vice president could work across the aisle with his former Republican colleagues to get America back to work and he has failed at every turn. The president has one job and instead of sticking to it, he’s tried to accomplish everything under the sun to appease a small but obnoxious and vocal left wing minority which is why his poll numbers continue to suffer. In fact, Biden’s approval number’s are so bad that only one other president in history has performed worse at this point in their presidency and that’s former president, Donald Trump.

The majority of American people can’t continue paying for gas to get to work at these prices but they simply just don’t have a choice which is why the politics surrounding this entire issue are so bad for the president. It seems Democrats are either blaming corporate America or Russia instead of talking about what they’ll do to make things better for everyday people.

Republicans have a case for the American people that Democrats haven’t made and that is, under their leadership, gas prices will drop, COVID restrictions will be lifted, permitting people to return back to complete normalcy. They will also lift burdensome restrictions and bureaucratic red tape that create unnecessary hurdles for entrepreneurs and new business owners who make up the bulk of new jobs in this country.

Republicans must immediately begin making their case to the American people that our unwillingness to become energy independent and our dependence on foreign oil, even if small, can have a significant impact on everyday Americans. They need to also work with oil companies on promising to pump more to increase volume, thus lowering prices. The midterms will be here before we know it and the Republicans have an advantage as the American people are now looking to them to turn things around.

Armstrong Williams (@ARightSide) is manager / sole owner of Howard Stirk Holdings I & II Broadcast Television Stations and the 2016 Multicultural Media Broadcast Owner of the year. www.armstrongwilliams.co | www.howardstirkholdings.com

Still thinking about Ketanji Brown Jackson

CHRISTINA GREER PH.D.

I am still thinking about soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. A few weeks ago, Judge Brown Jackson was confirmed by the Senate and will soon begin as the 116th Supreme Court Justice and the first Black American woman ever on the bench.

Many witnessed the lengthy Senate confirmation hearings where Republican senators asked Judge Jackson mundane and insulting questions over the four-day period. Their “questions” ranged from critical race theory, her personal feelings on religion, and whether she thought babies were racist. The Texas Republican senator even used his time to read from a children’s book in an attempt at a “gotcha” moment.

Judge Brown Jackson is by far one of the most qualified justices we will see in our lifetime. Her double Harvard degrees even made Republican senators and pundits opine as to whether she was “too qualified” to understand the Black experience. Luckily, three Republican senators crossed the aisle and aided the Democrats in securing a successful vote of Judge Brown Jackson. Some of the Republicans who helped confirm Judge Brown Jackson to the federal bench over a year ago could not bring themselves to vote for her as the tenure of a Supreme Court justice is a lifetime appointment.

The framers decided to make Supreme Court justices lifetime appointees since the president would rotate over the course of two four-year terms, members of the House of Representatives would stand for reelection every two years, and U.S. senators would be eligible for reelection every six years. Their intent was to make Supreme Court Justices the stable voice to interpret the Constitution and in our nation’s history a Black woman has never been confirmed to the bench…until Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Justice Brown Jackson ascends to the bench with a groundswell of support from Democrats, and especially Black women, who see this supremely qualified woman who has had to endure criticism from individuals who could not hold a candle to her qualifications. For example, Justice Amy Coney Barrett could not remember the five freedoms listed in the First Amendment during her confirmation hearing. She literally could not list the five basic freedoms that most law school students know and/or learn in the first week of law school.

Judge Brown Jackson personified the adage that so many Black parents have told their children for generations, “We must be twice as good to get half as much.” Watching Judge Brown Jackson answer questions with a keen eye on the Constitution and a reserve and calm that would have impressed even Job, reminded so many people of how far we’ve come and how far we still have yet to go.

Despite what Justice Brown Jackson endured, when she begins her tenure this summer I will delight in her hard work and the hard work of so many who helped her get where she is today.

Christina Greer, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Fordham University, the author of “Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream,” and the co-host of the podcast FAQ-NYC.