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JANUARY 27, 2022 | The Jewish Home
Sheldon Silver Dies at 77 Defeat the Mandate March
Several thousand people marched in Washington, D.C., on Sunday against vaccine mandates. They called for “freedom” against the “tyranny” of forcing Americans to procure the Covid-19 vaccine. A number of major U.S. cities including D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Boston have implemented citywide rules requiring residents to show proof of vaccination at certain establishments, such as restaurants and gyms. The peaceful protest started around noon at the Washington Monument and headed to the Lincoln Memorial, where it remained while a series of speakers took to the steps to share their experiences of the past year and their reasons to call for an end to the vaccine mandates. “Mandates and freedoms don’t mix, like oil and water,” one speaker said. “Breathe. Inhale G-d, exhale fear,” another said. Between 30,000 and 35,000 people attended the protest, demanding an end to vaccine mandates and passports and a call for reasonable debate and the power of informed consent. “You’re going to hear a lot of people talk about on the left say this is a big, anti-vax rally – it’s people coming in to deny science,” march organizer Will Witt, an author and political commentator for nonprofit PragerU, said last week before the rally. “But this march is about the mandate, and this march is about the Draconian measures that we’re seeing all across this country right now, especially in places like D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco.”
Former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver died in federal custody this week at the age of 77. An Orthodox Jew and Democrat who represented New York’s Lower East Side, Silver died at a hospital near Otisville Correctional Facility in upstate New York, where he had been serving a 6 1/2-year sentence on federal corruption charges. He had been treated for cancer and recently had back surgery at a federal prison hospital in Massachusetts. Silver had been serving time for using his clout in state government to benefit real estate developers, who rewarded Silver by referring lucrative business to his law firm. Silver’s 2015 arrest and conviction sent shockwaves through New York’s Jewish establishment, where he was well-known and generally highly regarded. Silver first won a seat representing Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1976. He became Assembly speaker in 1994, a powerful position that made him one of Albany’s “three men in a room” negotiating annual budgets and major legislation with the governor and state Senate leader. He was known to observe Shabbos even during the marathon negotiation sessions that preceded annual budget deadlines and the end of legislative sessions. In all, Silver served as speaker during the tenure of five New York governors, from Mario Cuomo to Andrew Cuomo. “For more than two decades, he held back a tide of repressive legislation while advancing an agenda that provided equity, justice and opportunity for all,” Democratic Assembly member Kevin Cahill of the Hudson Valley said in a statement. Silver gave up his leadership position following his arrest in January 2015 and lost his legislative seat
