14 SEPTEMBER 29 - OCTOBER 5, 2017 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP
EDITORIAL
DON’T LET PUERTO RICO
BECOME A FORGOTTEN
TRAGEDY
A human tragedy of incomprehensible proportions
is unfolding in Puerto Rico in the days since Hurricane
Maria delivered a direct blow to the island.
Puerto Rico’s population of 3.2 million is roughly
equal to that of Connecticut. The commonwealth is considered
American territory, and its population count
as American citizens. Yet the federal government’s response
to Hurricane Maria has been horribly unequal to
the effort made just weeks ago when Hurricane Harvey
flooded much of southeastern Texas and Hurricane Irma
ravaged Florida.
New York, as always, is stepping up to the occasion, as
the state and city governments — along with charities
and nonprofit organizations — are scrambling to bring
much-needed supplies and relief to Puerto Rico.
Make no mistake, however — the road to recovery
for Puerto Rico will be long. Basic infrastructure essential
to human life has been wiped out. The power grid
was obliterated; it will take months for it to be rebuilt.
Cellphone service is severely limited. Water supplies
are running low; water service is completely gone in
some areas. One dam, in particular, is damaged to the
brink of being breached, creating the potential for even
greater tragedy.
Puerto Rico has experienced something beyond the
worst-case scenario of a major hurricane.
Both Congress and the president were quick to act just
weeks ago to help the victims of Hurricanes Harvey and
Irma. The same sense of urgency, however, doesn’t seem
to be there for Puerto Rico, whose damage is much more
devastating.
FEMA said that there are 10,000 federal employees
on the ground to assist in the recovery. Airplanes and
ships with supplies are also on the way. The president
signed a disaster declaration and pledged to visit the
commonwealth, but he didn’t give a date of when that
visit would take place. Even so, the great devastation
in Puerto Rico requires that the federal government’s
response be significantly stepped up to save as many
lives as possible.
We urge our readers not only to donate what they
can to reputable charities assisting Puerto Rico such as
United for Puerto Rico (unicosporpuertorico.com), but
also to contact their local member of Congress and their
senators urging them not to allow the tragedy in Puerto
Rico to be overlooked.
Photo by Tracy Neiman
The scene in the Zocalo in Mexico City, where hundreds of volunteers congregated
in the wake of the earthquake, waiting for their assignments.
14 BROOKLYN MEDIA GROUP • MARCH 6 - MARCH 12, 2014
editorial A LOOK BACK compiled by
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Photo by Gardiner Anderson
And the award goes to… Bay Ridge, which
has provided the backdrop for many movies
and television shows over the years, from
“Blue Bloods” and “Saturday Night Fever” to
“Mad Men” and, in 2006, to “Then She
Found Me,” starring Helen Hunt and Bette
Midler, seen above in a September, 2006,
Home Reporter photo taken on location on
Shore Road at 77th Street. Midler performed
at the most recent Oscars, singing “Wind
Beneath My Wings” during the awards
show’s In Memoriam segment. “Then She
Found Me,” which also starred Matthew
Broderick, was also shot inside a historic
home on 88th Street.
Each day, thousands of people depend
on SUNY Downstate Medical Center for
emergency medical care and vital
health care services.
But this state-operated public hospital has been in
danger of being closed or privatized for more than two
years. Hundreds of jobs have been lost, and numerous
health care services have been cut or curtailed due to the
hospital’s ill-prepared “Sustainability Plan.”
Now, there is language in the 2014-15 proposed state
budget that would open the door to as many as five corporations
to operate SUNY’s public hospitals.
United University Professions, the union that represents
nearly 3,000 employees at SUNY Downstate, has been
fighting to keep SUNY Downstate a fully operational staterun
facility. However, UUP isn’t fighting the battle alone.
The SUNY Downstate Coalition of Faith, Labor and
Community Leaders has become an important ally. The
coalition has staged a number of rallies and protests over
the past 18 months to save health care services and jobs
at SUNY Downstate and keep it a public facility.
The latest such effort is a 48-hour interfaith fast. It
will begin Sunday, March 9, at 3 p.m., in front of
Downstate’s 470 Clarkson Avenue entrance. Interfaith
leaders and members of the community will participate
to show their strong support for this beacon in Brooklyn
and call attention to the threats it faces.
You can take part in the fast or find out more about it
by calling 718-270-1519, or sending an email to
Brooklyn@uupmail.org.
We strongly urge you to join our campaign. Take part in
the fast, or come out and show your support. Together, we
can deliver a strong message that SUNY Downstate must
remain a full-service, state-operated public hospital.
The threats facing SUNY Downstate are real. The
SUNY Board of Trustees has openly discussed the possibility
of closing SUNY Downstate. There is also language
in the Executive Budget, which would allow corporations
to control SUNY’s public hospitals; one corporation must
affiliate with an academic medical institution or teaching
hospital. SUNY Downstate has Brooklyn’s only
teaching hospital.
Privatizing or closing SUNY Downstate as a way for
the state to save dollars is shortsighted and unnecessary.
We believe the answer to Brooklyn’s health care shortcomings
lies in the “Brooklyn Hospitals Safety Net Plan,”
a UUP-backed initiative to stabilize and deliver health
care throughout Brooklyn.
This plan would preserve SUNY Downstate and save
several financially unstable hospitals in Brooklyn,
including Interfaith Medical Center, Brookdale, Long
Island College Hospital and Kingsbrook Jewish Medical
Center. You can see the proposal online at
http://www.brooklynhospitalplan.org.
It calls for the creation of a network of satellite ambulatory
care centers, and would be controlled by and affiliated
with 14 other Brooklyn hospitals. Downstate would
be the network’s hub, educating and supplying physicians
and medical staff to the care centers and working
with doctors at the other hospitals.
It’s a simple, effective plan and, if given a chance, it
will work.
New York has a responsibility to provide for the health
care needs of its citizens. The Brooklyn Hospitals Safety
Net Plan—our plan and the community’s plan—is a
viable, workable option for long-term health care in
Brooklyn.
That’s something that Brooklyn residents desperately
need.
Frederick E. Kowal is president of United University
Professions, the union representing 35,000 faculty and professional
staff at SUNY’s 29 state-operated campuses, including
SUNY’s public teaching hospitals and health science centers
in Brooklyn, Buffalo, Long Island and Syracuse.
With the city deciding to move forward on most of the
school co-locations approved late last year, as Mayor
Bloomberg prepared to vacate City Hall, parents in
southwest Brooklyn are not only disappointed but angry.
While the Department of Education under Mayor de
Blasio wisely opted to back out of a planned co-location of
a new high school inside Gravesend’s John Dewey High
School, the DOE decided to move ahead with two others:
the co-location of a charter school inside Seth Low
Intermediate School in Bensonhurst and another inside
Joseph B. Cavallaro Intermediate School in Bath Beach.
These – like others in the borough and the city – are
both fiercely opposed by parents, educators, students
and the local Community Education Councils, all of
whom contend that the co-locations would steal necessary
space from students already attending the schools,
and those who will be going to them in the near future.
While the city has said it only considers under-utilized
schools for co-locations, area education advocates say
that both Cavallaro and Seth Low are well utilized, and
likely to become more crowded as students now in elementary
school in both District 20 and District 21 move
up to middle school.
Indeed, District 20 is one of the most crowded school
districts in the city, so much so that the city built a host
of new schools for it in the past decade, with more being
planned, meaning that public school students in both
District 20 and District 21 are likely to feel the squeeze
should they have to share space with students from a
charter school.
That strikes us as patently unfair. While some of the
charter schools poised to open in September, 2014 may be
worthy additions to the city’s educational offerings, their
needs should not trump the needs of existing schools
with existing students. And, indeed, when a charter
school is put inside a public school, the process must
involve the school communities at both educational institutions,
and parents must also be involved.
The city must go back to the drawing board and come
up with alternative arrangements for the charter schools
planned for Seth Low and Cavallaro as well as other
schools where they are opposed.. The students who
attend those schools deserve no less.
guest op-ed
Keep SUNY Downstate open and public
BY FREDERICK E. KOWAL
Entire contents copyright 2016 by Home Reporter and Sunset News
Shaken and stirred:
Recollections of Mexico City
after the earthquake
BY HELEN KLEIN
HKLEIN@BROOKLYNREPORTER.COM
As an editor, I rarely let
my own voice be heard,
concentrating instead
on making sure that news articles
run without bias and that
opinion pieces reflect the writers’
or the paper’s perspective.
This time it’s different.
I was in Mexico, visiting the
pyramids just outside Mexico
City, on Tuesday, September
19, when a 7.1 magnitude earthquake
rocked the metropolis.
My daughter and I were
sitting on an ancient structure
just yards from the Pyramid of
the Sun when we felt the ground
move, lightly admittedly, but
definitively.
Five minutes later we learned
what had just occurred, and realized
just how lucky we were,
to be where we were on that day
of all days. We were out of the
danger zone, and had missed the
chaos and panic that followed
the quake — there are really no
words that I can muster up that
quite express my intense relief
on that front.
Nonetheless, returning to the
capital city that evening, we had
several days and ample opportunity
to observe the situation,
and were simultaneously saddened
and impressed by what
we saw. The loss of life was of
course the most excruciating
aspect of the earthquake, but
the loss of livelihood for many
residents of the city was also
significant.
My Facebook post the evening
of the earthquake reflects
my experience in the aftermath
of the cataclysm.
“So sad this evening in
Mexico City,” I wrote. “People
walking slowly, stores and
restaurants closed, debris in
places. We didn't see the really
devastated areas but what we
saw was sobering. The verve
seems to have gone out of the
city. People are in shock. Hard
to believe that just two days ago,
people were festive, enjoying
Sunday in Chapultepec Park
with their families. I grieve for
this city and its people.”
By the morning, the mood
through the city appeared to
have changed. The airport had
reopened the evening of the
earthquake (though a portion
of the terminal was sufficiently
damaged that it was still off-limits
four days later when we left),
and the Metro had reopened,
except one line.
Throughout Mexico City, we
saw volunteers — in hardhats
and carrying pickaxes as they
headed to areas where their
help was needed to move rubble;
set up at tents to receive and
distribute water, medicine and
other necessities to those who
had lost their homes; or ready to
carry supplies in cars, on bikes,
even on skateboard, wherever
they were required.
The resilience and solidarity
we witnessed were truly breathtaking
— the spirit of this city in
adversity was nothing short of
awesome, as crowds of people
pitched in to do what they could.
And, there was much to do
— not only working to rescue
those who had been trapped
when structures fell, but generally
making the city safe and
passable again. And, depending
on where you were, the scene
varied between minor damage
(as at our hotel on the Paseo de la
Reforma) and major devastation
(as in the Condesa neighborhood
where the damage was
widespread, and many streets
were shut).
Gradually, the city returned
to a semblance of its pre-earthquake
self. Museums reopened,
and more and more businesses
opened their doors. Nonetheless,
this is clearly a city and a
country in need.
We donated directly to the
relief effort on the ground, and
will donate more, and while
there are sadly many other
places in need of help right now,
thanks to the series of hurricanes
that has brought devastation
to Puerto Rico and other
Caribbean islands as well as
portions of the mainland U.S.,
I cannot forget our neighbor to
the south which is suffering.
For those who wish, a New
York Times article (http://
nyti.ms/2xyyh1M) provides
information on organizations
accepting donations.