The People’s Money— Your Money to Improve Your Community

BY HON. ERIC ADAMS MAYOR OF NYC

Have you ever looked around your neighborhood and thought—it would be great if we could have a community garden here, or maybe more afterschool programs for students, or special services for seniors? Now, you can bring those ideas to life. “The People’s Money” is the first ever citywide participatory budgeting process run by our Civic Engagement Commission (CEC), and from today until June 25th, all New York City residents ages 11 and olderregardless of immigration status - can vote on how to spend $5 million dollars of our city’s budget. To do so, go to our website: on.nyc.gov/pb and vote on projects that your fellow New Yorkers have proposed.

You can vote on projects for your borough, and the residents of 33 equity neighborhoods can vote on one additional project that will be funded in their neighborhood. The projects have been carefully selected from hundreds of proposals that were brain- stormed by New Yorkers in workshops across all five boroughs earlier this year. In fact, the CEC facilitated 523 Idea Generation sessions across the city in which 12,344 New Yorkers participated. If you have ideas that you would like to suggest, please consider participating in this phase of the process next year.

Participatory budgeting gives you a direct say in the future of your community. You decide how our money is spent. Participatory Budgeting strengthens our democracy and deepens civic engagement. I championed the program as Brooklyn Borough President, and as mayor, I have made it even bigger, giving New Yorkers more money to invest directly in their communities.

Some of this year’s proposals include: a youth multicultural arts program in Manhattan; workplace skills training for adults with autism in the Bronx; an intergenerational mentoring program in Brooklyn; a young entrepreneurs program in Queens; and a women and young girls health center on Staten Island.

Proposals in the equity neighborhoods include: teaching Bed-Stuy history in Bedford Stuyvesant; coding 101 for BIPOC youth in Fordham Heights and University Heights; food access support on the Lower East Side and in Chinatown; multilingual job fairs in Corona; and outreach to unhoused people with disabilities in St. George, Stapleton, Port Richmond and Tompkinsville.

Most projects can be implemented in a year. So you don’t

Pearl Phillip Contributing Writers

Linda Nwoke

Victoria Falk

Travis Morales

Mary Campbell

Janet Howard

Chris Tobias

Telesford have to wait endlessly to see the results. The winners will be announced by July and the CEC will work closely with the organizations to make sure that all projects are completed successfully.

You may have voted on Participatory Budgeting projects through your City Council Member, but “The People’s Money” is the first citywide process, and it uses mayoral funds.

Don’t miss this opportunity to vote on how to spend $5 million of your money. Visit on.nyc.gov/pb and vote today. p

HEART 9/11 Union Volunteers Help Train the Next Generation at the High School for Construction Trades, Engineering and Architecture

HEART 9/11 and team leaders from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3 and NYC District of Carpenters Council are working with seniors at the High School for Construction Trades, Engineer- ing and Architecture (CTEA) in Ozone Park, Queens, where the next generation of young men and women are educated in preparation for college, technical school, and apprenticeships. Every Saturday over the next four weeks, the stu- dents are getting hands-on training with skilled labor union members while building an 8' by 8' shed up to code. Work includes bas ic framing, outlet, switch installation, sheet rocking, and roofing. p

Strippers Join the Fight

continued from page 4 voted 17-0 in favor of joining the Actors’ Equity Association. It makes Star Garden the first unionized strip club since the now-defunct Lusty Lady in San Francisco and Seattle. That 1996 union campaign was later the subject of the documentary “Live Nude Girls Unite.”

Lusty Lady shut its doors in Seattle in 2010, and three years later in San Francisco, making Star Garden if not the first then at present the only unionized strip club. But given the highprofile nature of the campaign – and the impact of union drives among young staff elsewhere – I believe that there is a high chance that Star Garden won’t be the last strip joint to unionize.

Rusty nails and broken glass Star Garden is the latest in a string of organizing breakthroughs. In 2022, 2,510 petitions for union representation were filed with National Labor Relations Board elections – a 53% increase from 2021 and the highest number since 2016. And petitions for union elections have continued to in- crease in 2023.

Just as at Star Garden, many of the recent union victories have occurred in workplaces that previously seemed resistant to labor drives. Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joe’s, Apple retail stores, REI, Ben & Jerry’s, Chipotle and Barnes & Noble are among the big-name companies that have seen staff unionize for the first time since workers voted to unionize at Starbucks in Buffalo in December 2021. And evidence suggests that a successful union drive leads to more. Workers at over 300 Starbucks stores have now voted to unionize, and their efforts have inspired young workers throughout the low-wage service sector.

But in other crucial ways their campaign chimes with that of the other new union drives than have occurred recently in the United States. Star Garden employs the same kind of young, self-assured workers that have contributed to the dynamism of union campaigns at Starbucks, Trader Joe’s and others. Most of the dancers are in their 20s and 30s, and they have proved assured spokespeople for the union during the campaign’s extensive coverage in traditional and social media.

Youth-driven campaigns

In contrast to past generations of union drives, it is young employees that are spearheading the new push for unions. And they are doing so independently, with less outside mobilizing from established union leaders. The Star Garden workers self-organized and repeatedly pressured management to act on their concerns before deciding to petition for a union election with Actors’ Equity Union.

Moreover, the issues cited by Star Garden workers as evi- dence of a need for union protection – sexual harassment by customers, unresponsive management and an unsafe working environment – are in many respects just more extreme versions of the problems that have driven many retail and foodservice-sector workers to mobilize.

Anti-union tactics

In common with workers at Starbucks, REI and Trader Joe’s, the Star Garden dancers concluded that having a union and collective bargaining was the surest way to remedy such problems. And like many of those other workforces, the Star Garden strippers faced a long battle against management to achieve that goal.

The organizing campaign lasted for 15 months as a result of company’s efforts to fight worker organizing and then prevent a union vote.

Workers voted in a National Labor Relations Board election in November 2022, but management opposition prevented the labor board from counting the ballots until last week. Among other tactics, the owners of Star Garden are alleged to have retaliated against workers for protesting an unsafe working environment and claimed that the workers were continued on page 5