Union Matters

Nurses speak of worker shortage at medical center

By STEPHON JOHNSON

Amsterdam News Staff

While the mayor has lifted the mask mandate in schools and other businesses, the nurses who went through the worst of the pandemic need reinforcements of the humankind.

Last Thursday, nurses at the Maimonides Medical Center held a rally on the corner of 48th Street and 10th Avenue denouncing staffing shortfalls at the facility that day. From the emergency room to ICUs to Med-Surgical floors, Psychiatric care, etc., members of the New York State Nurses Association have also battled COVID-19 variants. NYSNA President Nancy Hagans, RN, said that her constituents are being spread thin.

“As a safety net hospital, Maimonides plays a central role in the delivery of care to Brooklyn patients,” stated Hagans. “But the hospital is understaffed on virtually every unit, impeding essential care to patients. As nurses, we are entrusted by law as patient advocates. We are duty-bound to call out Maimonides management to address RN staffing by hiring more nurses, to put in place effective retention policies and put the hospital on a path to ensuring quality care for all patients.”

Nurses spoke on how their colleagues have quit due to being overworked and are struggling with retention.

“We do not have enough nurses to do the job—a job that has become extremely difficult, even dangerous at times,” stated Kristen Curley, RN, Stepdown/Telemetry. “We work under a threat to patient safety.”

Holding up placards that read, “Safe staffing saves lives,” NYSNA officials, nurses and supporters lamented the lack of support they’ve received while handling the city’s sick individuals. The New York Post reported that, according to records, Maimonides’ CEO Kenneth Gibbs made $3.2 million in 2020; Jacob Shani, chief of heart surgery, made $3.5 million; Patrick Borgen, department of surgery, made $2 million; and the chair of cardiothoracic surgery, director of interventional cardiology and a cardiologist made just below $2 million dollars.

Michelle Williams, RN, Mother-Baby Unit, said that there are no breaks for her or her colleagues and it leaves them exhausted.

“With four couplets [mother and baby] I am able to provide care to both mother and baby,” stated Williams. “Unfortunately, on the night shift, I have a caseload of 6 couplets. That’s why I call the RN staffing ‘very poor’ in the unit. To care for all the mothers and babies we sometimes have to split the work. With couplets split up, I have ended up with as many as 15 babies assigned to me. This is wrong, because we run a risk of not getting all necessary care to the babies.”

Charmaine Malcolm, RN, Medical-Surgeon, said that if feels like no one is listening to them.

“The work has been soul crushing,” said Malcolm. “There has been a sense of intimidation. If you mention you’re short-staffed, you a get a look. I felt silenced.”

Housing Works, respect your workers and negotiate!

Stuart Appelbaum

President, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, Twitter: @sappelbaum. www.rwdsu.org

Housing Works—which employs more than 600 RWDSU members at housing units, thrift stores, healthcare, and other locations throughout its sprawling operations in New York City—is hurting its employees by failing to negotiate a union contract in good faith, which the RWDSU has alleged in a new unfair labor practice charge filed with the NLRB. It’s outrageous conduct, but unfortunately, fits the recent pattern from an employer that has fought its workers—and betrayed the organization’s progressive roots—throughout the workers’ entire organizing campaign.

Housing Works was founded in 1990 by several members of ACT UP to provide supportive services for people living with HIV/AIDS. But during the workers’ organizing campaign, Housing Works has behaved more like an insensitive corporate behemoth than a progressive organization with activist roots. And now, during negotiations, we are seeing Housing Works’ management dive back into the same bigbusiness anti-union playbook.

For almost a year, Housing Works employees have been trying to negotiate their first union contract. They are seeking safer workplaces, a voice on the job, and more manageable caseloads so they can give Housing Works clients—some of the most vulnerable members of our communities—better care. Housing Works is stalling on even the most basic foundations of a union contract, including agreements on sufficient layoff notice and protections and guaranteed livable wages for workers in New York City. They fail to appreciate the bargaining committee’s concerns on important issues, such as creating manageable caseloads, health and safety training, safe workplaces, and providing unpaid mental health leave for workers who may suffer mental health traumas on the job.

They reject the union’s wage demands but employ high-priced lawyers as their contract negotiators. Management even showed its contempt for workers by taking too long to engage productively in conversations about workers’ preferred pronouns, which is painfully ironic considering Housing Works was founded by LGBTQ activists during a global health crisis. Over 30 years later, amidst another global health crisis, Housing Works is dismissing workers’ health and safety proposals and proper staffing concerns, and making it clear that despite the workers’ successful union organizing drive, management wants to pretend that nothing has changed.

On top of it all, Housing Works has wasted valuable time by providing the bargaining committee with bad data for wage negotiations. As a result, the RWDSU filed an unfair labor practice charge against Housing Works on February 22, 2022 with the Brooklyn office of the NLRB for bad faith bargaining.

Housing Works employees started their grassroots campaign to unionize with the RWDSU because they wanted to be able to do their jobs better and provide better care for Housing Works clients. These workers make a real difference in the lives of the people they serve, and now, they want a union contract to make a real difference in their ability to provide for themselves and their families, and provide proper care to their clients with the protection, safety, and respect that they deserve. Housing Works needs to live up to its progressive roots and ideals and stop behaving like the worst of corporate America.

The message is clear to Housing Works: stop stalling and start taking your employees’ concerns seriously and pay them what they deserve.

32BJ praises Biden for Supreme Court nomination

By STEPHON JOHNSON

Amsterdam News Staff

U.S. President Joe Biden nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the U.S. Supreme Court. She’d be the 116th associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. 32BJ leader Kyle Bragg was quick to praise Jackson, a Black woman, for her record and the president for his pick.

“Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is an exceptional choice by President Biden to serve on the Supreme Court,” stated Bragg. “She is an incredibly qualified jurist and a universally respected legal mind whose record demonstrates her respect for civil rights, voting rights, worker rights, and human rights.

Jackson was born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Miami. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and graduated cum laude at Harvard Law School. While attending Harvard Law School, she became the editor of the Harvard Law Review: the same publication that former president Barack Obama became the first Black editor of in the publication’s history.

“Through her exemplary service, Judge Brown has climbed the judicial ladder—a career she set out to achieve the moment she graduated from high school and stated that her life goal was ‘to receive a judicial appointment’ one day,” continued Bragg. “Her ascension to the highest court in the land will send an unmistakable message to the American people that the circle of opportunity in this country now extends a little wider, and that young Black girls can achieve their grandest dreams.”

On Wednesday, Jackson held her first meetings with elected officials Senate Judiciary Committee Chairperson Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky).

Officials at the Democratic National Committee called Jackson’s appointment another example of Biden delivering for the Black community especially in the judicial realm. The president has hired nine Black women to federal appellate courts.

Nicole Austin-Hillery, president and CEO of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Incorporated (CBCF), said the appointment was the perfect way to end Black History Month.

“Her nomination is timely as we end Black History Month, celebrating the contributions of Black Americans and march into celebrating outstanding women for Women’s History Month,” read their statement. “Milestones like these have been hard-won by years of back-breaking, often unrecognized work of ordinary women and activists and should be celebrated. This moment is a step along the path towards equality, and even though we have a long way to go, inspiring women like Judge Jackson and this ground-breaking nomination gives us hope.”

But not all were happy with her nomination.

Judicial Watch, a conservative legal watchdog group, said that Jackson’s nomination was an affirmative action hire and called for an investigation into Biden’s “discrimination” and a rejection of the nominee. “President Biden has bowed to pressure from his radical base and has selected a judicial activist to fill Justice Stephen Breyer’s seat on the Supreme Court,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a statement. “Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has a long record of left-wing activism both on and off the bench.

“Disturbingly, President Biden seems to have selected Judge Jackson under a process that excluded potential nominees simply because of their race and sex.”

But other (local) political figures came out in support of Biden’s nomination. Rep. Tom Suozzi (D–Long Island, Queens) said that Jackson’s nomination was a tip of the cap to her hard work.

“An outstanding and historic choice! An accomplished lawyer, Judge Jackson will be a phenomenal Supreme Court Justice,” stated Suozzi.

Bragg agreed.

“Our country is stronger when everyone can reach their highest aspirations and Judge Brown is an example of what America, at her very best, can be,” he stated. “We strongly support her appointment and urge the U.S. Senate to confirm her nomination—without delay.”

Reflections back & forward on 10th anniversary of Trayvon Martin murder

By PROF. MARK S. BRODIN

“White people go around, it seems to me, with a very carefully suppressed terror of Black people—a tremendous uneasiness. They don’t know what the Black face hides. They’re sure it’s hiding something. What it’s hiding is American history. What it’s hiding is what white people know they have done, and what they like doing.’’ James Baldwin

The acquittal of George Zimmermann for the killing of Black teenager Trayvon Martin nearly a decade ago shocked many, and continues to do so. Yet it is just one more notch in the gun belt of one of the oldest characters on the American scene, the white vigilante. Sometimes acting under the cover of a “Neighborhood Watch,” as in the case of wannabe cop Zimmermann, sometimes highly organized as in the Ku Klux Klan, sometimes on the pretext of a “citizen’s arrest,” as in the case of Ahmaud Arbery’s executioners, and sometimes as a freelancer, like acquitted killer Kyle Rittenhouse—the one thing that these “protectors of the realm” can almost always count on is nonaccountability. These heirs to the cowboy posse need only read from the scripted exoneration narrative— “I believed my life was in danger, so I had to kill.” Done. Go home. From the Fugitive Slave Law to Texas’ anti-abortion bounty hunter statute, we have delegated to civilian actors the function usually served by government, thus circumventing constitutional protections, constraints, and review by courts. This is not to say that state actors always stay their hand—the Klan acted with the complicity of deputy sheriffs and police in many of the infamous killings of the Civil Rights era, including the three young men in Mississippi in the violent summer of 1964. Rittenhouse is now a celebrated hero among many in this troubled nation, with Republican politicians competing to hire him as their intern. He no doubt will receive a long standing ovation along with the January 6 insurrectionists at the next State of the Union address by a president from that corrupted party. How do we find our Republic—the “City on a Hill,” the “Beacon of Liberty,” the model for pro-democracy activists the world over—back in the shoot-em-up Old West of our childhood cowboy films? The culprits are too numerous to name. Most prominent among them are the politicians of both parties who cower at the NRA’s bluster while we became a nation of far more guns than people.

And then there was the nearly all-white jury that acquitted Zimmermann in the face of overwhelming evidence that his self defense story was pure fiction, concocted after he stalked the terrified high school student nearly half his size on that dark rainy night in February 2012 because Trayvon looked “suspicious.” i.e., a Black youth in the gated community, the kind of punk who “always get away with it,” as he told the 911 operator (who warned Zimmermann to remain in his car until the police arrived, to no avail). In truth, Trayvon was returning to the home of his father’s fiancé with snacks to watch a basketball game; he died seven yards from his destination, a bullet from Zimmermann’s 9mm pistol in his heart

Often ignored are our overly generous and easily satisfied self-defense laws. A relic of a bygone time before the Supreme Court invented a Second Amendment individual right to bear arms, something that would shock its framers who wrote it to assure the militias of the day could protect the new nation against attack. It now assures that the Rittenhouses among us can walk freely through our streets with military firearms and, if challenged, shoot to kill without consequence. They’re simply “standing their ground.”

Thankfully some jurors are beginning to see through the charade, as in the Arbery trials, where the killers were convicted in both state and federal court. But accountability for civilian brutality remains the exception.

Prison activist George Jackson observed many years ago with regard to police killings that, “Anyone who can pass the civil service examination today can kill me tomorrow. Anyone who passed the civil service examination yesterday can kill me today with complete immunity.” Rittenhouse, Zimmermann, and how many others, have added another dimension to our vulnerability to sudden unprovoked violence—shooting by our fellow citizens, who need not pass any such examination, but must merely learn the exoneration narrative.

Till bill passes in the House After more than 200 failed attempts, the EDITORIAL Emmett Till Antilynching Act was finally passed in a House vote 422-3. This makes lynching a federal crime in the U.S. The act becomes a law just as Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, the home state of the young Till who was savagely beaten to death in 1955, plans to retire. Now, it’s onto the Senate where there is sure to be a few more rejections from GOP members.

Passage of the act in the House came to mind as President Biden delivered his state of the union address, where he noted that two other pieces of legislation need to be passed—the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Bringing lawbreakers into court facing charges of lynching is one thing, getting voters the protection and guarantees they need to exercise their franchise is quite Professor Mark S. Brodin is a professor of law and the another. former associate dean for academic affairs at Boston Col-

And with the midterm elections looming ever lege Law. He can be reached at brodin@bc.edu. closer and the GOP and its cronies doing all it can to block voters, getting these measures into law be- What I remember when testing African diaspora comes increasingly important.

Yes, it took a number of times to get the Till bill immigrant communities for COVID-19enacted and hopefully approved, and let’s hope it doesn’t take as long to deal with these pressing pro- By HALIMATOU KONTE posals.

We have here lately witnessed several positive de- I found it impossible to celebrate Black velopments in the courtroom and electoral arena, History Month in February 2022 without reand this is just the kind of momentum we need to flecting on how the pandemics of our time, make sure the Democrats hold on to Congress. Of like COVID-19, affect the health and human course, it will be an uphill battle, but as Biden said rights of African diaspora immigrant commuon Tuesday evening, we Americans have met every nities—my communities. crisis as an opportunity, an opportunity for possibilities. As a pulmonologist, I treated people infected with tuberculosis, cancer, and other respiratory diseases at Fann University Hospital in my home country of Senegal years before I responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York. For 10 years, I practiced pulmonology and infectious disease on the wards at Fann, a renowned institution that sits at the top of the Senegalese Ministry of Health’s hierarchical and tiered system of hospitals. Little did I know that this clinical practice in Dakar would prepare me for the frontlines of a battle against a novel coronavirus in New York at African Services Committee (ASC), a multi-service human rights agency in Harlem that provides health, housing, legal, social welfare, education, nutrition, and advocacy services to immigrants, refugees, and asylees from across the African diaspora. However, I must urge the public health community to pause and reflect on how this virus shaped the health and human rights of populations close to my heart and home: African diaspora immigrant communities in New York. These communities have been at greater risk of exposure to COVID-19: more than 54% of essential workers in New York are immigrants. As essential workers in New York during the COVID-19 pandemic, African diaspora immigrant communities have cared for the sick and elderly, cleaned public spaces, and delivered meals throughout all five boroughs. Greater exposure to COVID-19 led to a greater number of COVID-related infections and deaths in New York. When they became infected with COVID-19, many of these uninsured and undocumented immigrants avoided care for fear of cost: of the more than 8,200 New Yorkers who died from COVID-19 due to

See COVID-19 on page 29

Reflections on Judge Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court

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

President Joe Biden’s nomination of U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to fill the Supreme Court seat to be vacated by Associate Justice Stephen Breyer at the conclusion of October Term 2021 has predictably begotten misconceived commentary.

For starters, many Democrats insist that the liberal judicial philosophy of Judge Jackson should not factor in the Senate confirmation process. All that should count are her glittering credentials and accomplishments.

But not so fast. Have Democrats, including President Biden, forgotten the sordid Democratic tactics to defeat Judge Robert Bork’s nomination for alleged conservative philosophy coupled with vilification featuring claimed support for back-alley abortions and segregation?

Biden can be summoned against himself. In November 1986, then-Senator Biden related to the Philadelphia Inquirer that if a well-qualified conservative like Judge Bork was nominated for the Supreme Court, “I’d have to vote for him, and if the groups tear me apart, that’s the medicine I’ll have to take.” But on June 28, 1987, Senator Biden, then-chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, turned like a human weathervane after Judge Bork’s nomination by President Ronald Reagan.

Biden led the opposition. He mischaracterized his earlier support for Judge Bork as conditioned on his filling a conservative seat, a belated epiphany that conveniently put him in the good graces of his Democratic colleagues and special interest groups. Senator Biden acknowledged that Judge Bork “is a brilliant man.” But the senator decried the prospect of “six or seven or eight, or even nine Borks’’ on the Court, a throwback to Senator Roman Hruska’s immortal salute to mediocrity: “[T]here are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation…We can’t have all Brandeises and Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that.”

This is not to say that judicial philosophy should predominate the confirmation process of Judge Jackson. Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 76 that Senate confirmation was to vet nominees for cronyism, competence, or corruption. Moreover, the president represents a national constituency whereas senators are parochial. Supreme Court Justices expound the Constitution and laws for the nation, not for individual states.

Judge Jackson deserves the support of Senate Republicans notwithstanding her liberal politics. Her credentials are in the same league as Judge Bork’s: Harvard, Harvard Law School, clerk to Justice Breyer, eight years as a U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Columbia, and service on the U.S. Court of Appeals since 2021.

In supporting Judge Brown Jackson’s nomination as a District Court Judge, former Republican House Speaker and Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan effused: “Our politics may differ, but my praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, for her integrity, it is unequivocal…She is an amazing person, and I favorably recommend your consideration.”

President Biden inexcusably diminished Judge Jackson’s nomination by announcing in advance that he would appoint a Black woman. No other candidates need apply. Thereby hangs a tale of the betrayal of Martin Luther King Jr.’s hope for a color-blind society which judges by the content of character not skin color. Dr. King echoed Justice John Marshall Harlan’s stirring dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): “But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.” Or as the late Justice Antonin Scalia instructed: “In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American.”

In 1964, the Supreme Court invalidated the ballot identification of candidates by race to discourage combustible racial bloc voting. In Anderson v. Martin, the Court explained, “We see no relevance in the State’s pointing up the race of the candidate as bearing upon his qualifications for office.” It is axiomatic, as Chief Justice John Roberts elaborated in 2007, that “The way to stop discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race.”

Fast forward 58 years and race has become the be-all and end-all of liberal politics confounding Dr. King’s message that our deliverance is in color-blindness. Majority-minority electoral districts are drawn on the insulting assumption that all Blacks think alike and sport identical political preferences. Race is routinely employed as a readily manipulable “plus” factor in college or university admissions to achieve campus or classroom quotas. The Orwellian view that practicing racism is necessary to extirpate evil has taken hold.

The Supreme Court’s docket exhibits an openness to reconsidering these racist assumptions. The Senate Judiciary Committee should question Judge Jackson’s commitment to a color-blind Constitution in confirmation hearings, but not how she might vote in any specific case. She should also be asked about stare decisis and justifications for overruling precedents.

But Republican Senators should support her confirmation irrespective of her leftleaning judicial philosophy based on her qualifications, simpliciter. The temptation to bork Judge Jackson should be resisted.

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

Happy Women’s History Month

CHRISTINA GREER PH.D.

I don’t know about you, but this past Black History Month was an emotional mixed bag. I like to spend the month of February reflecting on the major accomplishments of Black people, past and present, in the United States and abroad, those who I know and those I will likely never meet. Last month we saw killings of unarmed and innocent Black people…again. We also saw the nomination of the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson. I had so many emotions last month that I am still processing how I will incorporate and extend Black History Month into Women’s History Month this March.

Similar to Black History Month, Women’s History Month actually began as National Women’s History Week. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued the first Presidential Proclamation declaring the Week of March 8. It wasn’t until 1987 that Congress passed Public Law 100-9, designating March as “Women’s History Month.” Each year Women’s History Month has a theme and the theme for 2022 is “Providing Healing, Promoting Hope.” According to the National Women’s History Alliance, the theme is meant to be a tribute to the work of caregivers and frontline workers during the pandemic. The theme is also a “recognition of the thousands of ways that women of all cultures have provided both healing and hope throughout history.”

As a Black woman, I like to think of Black History and Women’s History Month as a two-month celebration and reflection. Black women have been and continue to be the backbone of the Democratic Party and democracy in this country. I am currently completing a book on the amazing efforts of the late Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, organizer and Mississippi freedom fighter Fannie Lou Hamer, and current Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Each time I sit down to work on my manuscript, I am in awe of the bravery, intellect, and courage of these three women. How they each fought (and in Stacey’s case continue to fight) for the true ideals of this nation.

So, who are you choosing to celebrate this Women’s History Month? Will you take time to write a note to a girl or woman in your life? Will you donate to a female political candidate who is trying to make our society better? Will you express your financial support and shop at a womanowned business? There are so many ways we can exercise concrete actions to make this month a true reflection of our appreciation for the contributions of women in our lives and our communities.

No matter how you choose to celebrate, please take time to recognize the many ways women continue to contribute to the functioning of our society across the globe. To quote Audre Lorde, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”

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.