Viewpoint
Marching for peace as history repeats
A woman whose father was a top ballplayer in one of the World War II
internment camps for Japanese Americans, held out a baseball commemorating
his team’s championship season.
Japanese Americans who were
held in U.S. internment camps during
World War II, their children
and supporters joined the annual
Silent Peace Walk, also known as
the Awareness Protest, earlier this
month.
Dressed in 1940s-style clothing,
with some of them toting vintage
luggage that they or their parents
took into the camps, they marched
from Madison Square to Union
Toting the Japanese-American internment order and 1940s-era luggage,
the marchers strode from Union Square to Madison Square.
Square.
The silent vigil drew parallels
between the forced removal of
Japanese Americans to internment
camps and what is currently happening
to Muslim and immigrant
PHOTOS BY Q. SAKAMAKI
communities in New York City and
across the country today.
The previous day, Feb. 18, marked
the 77th anniversary of the internment
of Japanese Americans during
World War II.
‘Busway’ only way to be fair on 14th St.
BY DAISY PAEZ AND
JOSE ANTONIO ORTIZ-RIVERA
The section of the Lower East
Side to the south and east of
Delancey St. is among the least
subway-accessible in all of Manhattan.
That’s why local residents, especially
seniors, rely on buses to get around.
The M14A bus is particularly important
to the community since it connects
the Lower East Side to several subway
lines and serves more than 30,000
passengers weekly. It’s unacceptable
that the M14 (including the M14A and
M14D combined) is among the slowest
in all of New York City, moving at an
appalling 3.9 mph.
The urgency of improving the M14
line cannot be overstated. The Lower
East Side is undergoing signifi cant
transformations, with major construction
projects in the area forecasting a
greater need for adequate bus service.
Plus, the impending L-train “slowdown”
will have vast implications.
We know that services like Uber and
Lyft are chomping at the bit to fl ood
our neighborhoods in anticipation of
the L slowdown, ready to ferry those
fortunate few who have disposable income
to their destinations. Meanwhile,
tens of thousands of the rest of us will
be crawling along at slower speeds than
ever before as the M14 battles car and
truck traffi c.
How is that fair?
There are solutions to slow buses
but they just take courage to implement.
Comptroller Scott Stringer said
as much in his November 2017 report
“The Other Transit Crisis: How to Improve
the NYC Bus System”: “Slow
speeds are not the result of unavoidable
circumstances, but rather a product
of age-old institutional failures by
the city and the M.T.A. to maximize
the system’s potential. While bus riders
demand fast, reliable, frequent, connective,
accessible and legible public
transit, that basic level of service is too
rarely on offer.”
Everyone can’t
afford Ubers and
Lyfts.
Such failures are not acceptable, and
the fi rst thing the city could do to improve
our lives is implement the plan
it already has to improve M14 service:
It needs to stick to the original plan to
create a busway on 14th St.
Yes, the L train is no longer completely
shutting down, but the slowdown
will itself be extremely painful,
especially for residents like us who need
to get across town: Major slowdowns
starting at 8 p.m.; uncertainty whether
or not nighttime repairs will be complete
by morning rush hour; years of
disrupted weekend service; potentially
dangerous dust. The list goes on. These
things matter! Unless something bold
is done on 14th St., bus riders (who are
more likely to be lower-income or senior
citizens) will suffer the most.
The bus system and bus riders are
too often forgotten. But we can’t allow
that to happen this time. The stakes are
just too high for too many people.
The message from Lower East Side
seniors is this: Be bold, think of New
York’s bus riders. We need leadership
from our elected offi cials, now more
than ever.
Paez is Democratic district leader,
65th Assembly District, Part B; Ortiz-
Rivera is a member, Senior Advocacy
Leadership Team (SALT), Manny Cantor
Center
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