Bigot Bell - Episode 3 - Discrimination Policies Violate Our Values

Bigot Bell - Episode 3 - Discrimination Policies Violate Our Values

Members of #ConnectingRainbows release Episode 3 of #BigotBell YouTube Campaign against #Yum!Brands and #TacoBell.

Women Pepper-Sprayed by NYPD

Peaceful Female Protesters Penned on the Sidewalk and Pepper-sprayed by the NYPD in a Show of Excessive Force.

Is City Council Speaker Christine Quinn going to denounce the NYPD for their use of excessive force against unarmed women ?

Troy Davis Protest NYC

Video of the flashmob protest one day after the execution of Troy Davis, a man believed to be innocent of the crimes charged against him. Protesters were harassed by NYPD, pushed and shoved, and one protester was peeled away from the crowd, shoved the floor, and arrested.

Is Mayor Michael Bloomberg sanctioning this kind of behaviour by the NYPD ? What is City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's opinion about the NYPD's use of weapons and vehicles against passionate citizen assembly in protest of the death penalty ? Activists worry that Mayor Bloomberg will again resort to mass arrests, the same way he wholesale violated due process and civil liberties during the 2004 Republican National Convention.

Sarge Shriver is Rolling in his Grave

Melanie Meyers, a real estate partner at the former law firm of Sarge Shriver, makes part of her case in this excerpt of her FAR Rezoning presentation before Manhattan Community Board 2 on behalf of the billionaire Rudin Family. Ms. Meyers is lobbying, on behalf of William Rudin, to demolish many of the buildings that comprise the St. Vincent's Hospital campus, so that Mr. Rudin may build luxury condos in the heart of the West Village.

Decades ago, Greenwich Village survived plans by Robert Moses to demolish a wide swath across the Village as part of his foolish plan to construct a cross-town highway to the East Side. Now comes Mr. Rudin, with his heartless desires to gut the core of the Village and replace it with more useless luxury condos.

During Troy Davis Protest, NYPD Use of Excessive Force

NEW YORK CITY (22 Sept 2011) -- At a passionate, yet peaceful flashmob protest and march, activists against the death penalty demonstrated yesterday in New York City one day after the execution of Troy Davis, a man believed to be innocent of the charges that lead to his execution. In this exclusive video, watch as how officers from the New York City Police Department carried weapons, used excessive force, and made at least one violent arrest during yesterday's demonstration.

At The Riverside Church, A Covenant To End DOMA

Invitation to Wedding and Covenant to End DOMA at The Riverside Church (Fundraiser)

On Sunday, October 30, 2011, TJ Williams and Brad Hover are to be married at The Riverside Church in New York City in a ceremony, which will include a prayer -- calling on President Barak Obama to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”) before the end of his second term in office.  TJ and Brad are calling this special prayer a Covenant to End DOMA. 

"My partner and I started planning our wedding before we even knew that marriage equality would be made legal in New York State. But we had faith that the laws would be changed in our endless effort towards achieving equality," said TJ Williams.

To raise money for the wedding and for the Covenant to End Doma, TJ has released the above YouTube fundraiser video. TJ and Brad need your help to gather leaders and speakers and others for a civil rights event, where President Obama will be asked to covenant with our nation's communities and its leaders to end DOMA before the end of his second term. All donations will be used for this service and for purposes of community-building around social justice.

Under the discrimination of DOMA, no state is required to acknowledge the legal same-sex marriages, even if they are legal in other states.  Participants in the Covenant to End DOMA are also hoping that this event will spur a conversation that would encourage unity between the African American community and the LGBT community, as we face the 2012 election year. 

Best Buy Was Price Gouging On Dasani Water Before Hurricane Irene Slammed Into New Jersey

As hurricane Irene bears down on the Jersey Shore, the Best Buy in Howell, NJ has taken it upon themselves sell cases of Dasani water for $40.56.

Best Buy Was Price Gouging On Dasani Water Before Hurricane Irene Slammed Into New Jersey

From theCHIVE :

At a time when it’s so important for these seaside communities to come together to help each other out (maybe even lower the price on water, eh), it’s disappointing to see a massive corporation like Best Buy not only assume zero social responsibility, but also go the extra mile to make a buck by selling bulk cases of water at the single bottle price during an emergency.

So I put it to you, Chivers. Is this ethical?

UPDATE #1: I just called Best Buy and spoke to one employee and a manager to confirm the photo. Both refused to answer my questions and told me I had to call corporate offices. My response was, ‘All you have to do is deny that you are doing this. It’s that simple.’
Neither party denied it. Instead I was rudely directed to corporate and then they hung up on me.

UPDATE #2: The manager of the Best Buy has responded and said, “… Sunday August 28th 2011, we will (be) price matching any local supermarket’s price for cases of water if they are needed for one day only as a gesture of good will.”

(One of the DJs for New Jersey 101.5 sent this photo to theCHIVE.)

Horse Carriages Work During Hurricane Irene Under Inhumane Weather Conditions

A horse-drawn carriage makes an illegal U-turn in the middle of a busy Midtown Manhattan street, on wet and slippery pavement no less, on a day when 370,000 people were ordered to evacuation flood zones in New York City.

Carriage Horses Working Despite New York City Shut Down #Hurricane #Irene

New York (27 August 2011) -- An hour ago, the government integrity watchdog and animal rights activist Donny Moss released the following statement by social media :

In spite of the evacuations, transportation shut down, the Mayor's plea to stay off the streets, and a law which states that carriages cannot work during "slippery conditions," carriage drivers worked all day. How does the ASPCA, which collects money in the name of helping the horses, allow this ? This industry is enabled and empowered by Christine Quinn, who has killed all bills to take these horses out of harm's way.

Animal rights activists have long complained that Ms. Quinn, the City Council Speaker, has no integrity at her core, and all of her talk about animal rights (much like all of her policies) are accompanied by touches of a legislative sleight-of-hand.

In a related e-mail newsletter to other animal rights activists, Mr. Moss remarked :

Dear animal advocate:

Several hours ago, portions of New York City were evacuated for the first time in history, and the largest public transportation system in the country was shut down due to Hurricane Irene. With conditions deteriorating, Mayor Michael Bloomberg implored New Yorkers to stay home for our own safety and so that emergency vehicles can easily navigate the streets. Downpours occurred throughout the day.

In spite of all of the above, and the law which clearly states that carriage operators cannot work during "ice, heavy rain or other slippery conditions," dozens of horse-drawn carriage operators were working as of 4:30 p.m. If history repeats itself, the horses will be forced to make the long, treacherous trip through the streets of midtown back to the "stables" when the storm intensifies.

As usual, the ASPCA, which collects an untold amount of money from donors in the name of helping the carriage horses, allowed the carriage drivers to leave the stables this morning and to work all day in the wet streets in spite of the law.

The ASPCA, which was founded to protect the carriage horses, continues to stand by and watch as the carriage operators to break the law. They mock -- instead of support -- the advocates who are working tirelessly to take the horses out of harm's way. And they continue to refuse to use their substantial clout, power and resources to shut this industry down, in spite of their own stance that horse-drawn carriages should be banned from NYC.

The horse-drawn carriage industry is also enabled -- if not empowered -- by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has blocked all efforts to take these horses out of Midtown, killing bills in committee before they see the light of day. In fact, Quinn has killed every meaningful animal protection bill introduced at City Hall since she became Speaker in 2006.

Following are pictures of horses working in the rain at about 3:00 p.m. today. Please share this information with your friends who donate money to animal organizations and/or who vote in NYC.

Thank you.
Donny Moss

Many restaurants were closed across New York City due to the dangerous weather conditions, but carriage horses were still being forced to work under inhumane street conditions.

Officials of the MTA New York City Subway ordered the nation's largest mass transit system to be closed at noon today, due to the dangerous wind and rain conditions in connection with Hurricane Irene, but Donny Moss reported that horses were still pulling carriages at 4:30 p.m. under dangerous street conditions.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed an evacuation order that demanded that approximately 370,000 people leave dangerous flood zones due to Hurricane Irene ; under these conditions, horse-drawn carriages were still working.

While businesses were closed and employees making preparations for Hurricane Irene, horses were lined up to pull unsuspecting tourists through dangerous Midtown traffic.

Riders were carrying umbrellas to protect them from the rain and wind, but horses were left to work completely exposed to the elements. Where is the humanity in this ?

A carriage driver holds up an umbrella to protect himself from the rain and wind, but the tired horse trudges through the elements as the city prepares for Hurricane Irene.

In a burst of rain from the outer bands of Hurricane Irene, a carriage driver uses an umbrella for himself, but he offers no protection from the elements to his horse.

A carriage driver wears a raincoat in a rainstorm from one of the outer bands of Hurricane Irene, as unsuspecting tourists are being driven through dangerous weather conditions. Meanwhile, the horse is being forced to work under inhumane conditions where everybody else is protected from the weather, but for the horse.

Still yet other carriage horse drivers are protected from the rain and wind by giant umbrellas, but there is no protection offered to the horses from the stormy weather arriving in New York from the outer bands of Hurricane Irene.

Hurricane Irene Penis Streaking [NSFW]

Weather Channel Live Report : Hurricane Irene Penis Streaking

Naked Man Bravely Shows Penis to Irene, Weather Channel [NSFW]

Read more about the Weather Channel/Hurricane Irene penis flasher on The Village Voice.

Quinn NYPD Raid Eagle

Is Christine Quinn going to hold the NYPD accountable for raiding the Eagle on the very night when marriage equality became law ? What kind of an LGBT leader is she, if she does not fight for our LGBT civil rights ? Join our Facebook page : Gays Against Christine Quinn.

Christine Quinn Mini-Me

Christine Quinn Uses City Council Funds (aka Taxpayer Money) to Reward Political Bosses

After City Council Speaker Christine Quinn got fluffed by NYTimes reporter David W. Chen, now comes Michael Powell, a columnist for the Gray Lady, who pulls back the curtain on Speaker Quinn's slush fund-tinged campaign for mayor.

Mr. Powell reports that Ms. Quinn was appointed Speaker of the City Council after she "charmed" political bosses from Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. At her coronation ceremony, she put Vito Lopez, the notorious Brooklyn political boss (who is the target of several ethical and corruption investigations) in the front row. Speaker Quinn has also scratched Mr. Vito's back in exchange for his political support. "The fates have smiled on Mr. Lopez’s social-service empire, the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council ; this year the Council sent more than $4 million its way," reported the NYTimes.

In a statement posted Facebook, a government integrity watchdog activist questioned why the latest NYTimes article stops short of probing the status of the federal investigation into Speaker Quinn's slush fund scandal.

"Instead of reporting on Quinn's criminal activity, the NY Times merely raises questions about her ethics and leadership: "But there are questions to be asked about her leadership, and not all cheery." Is it a fear of Bloomberg that prevents the Times from reporting on the well-documented budget and campaign corruption ?" Donny Moss posted on the social network.

This is how the NYTimes article ends :

Last year, a Council majority favored mandatory sick days for New Yorkers with less than a week of vacation. The mayor opposed it. Ms. Quinn killed it.

Some suggest that she has gotten lost in the game, that she can no longer recall the questions she once asked as an advocate. That sounds too definitive. Her arc is not done.

She affects nonchalance when described as a mayoral puppet: “You can call me Mini-Me. I don’t really care.”

The rub is that voters might care a lot.

Quinn NYT Infomercial Fluff

To find out how real journalists assess City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's record, one needs to look no further than the sensibility expressed in this blog post on True News From Change : NYT Sets the Definition on How To Judge and Pick the Next Mayor and It Fits Quinn

In his blog post, the journalist Gary Tilzer makes many astute observations about David W. Chen's infomercial fluff piece about Speaker Quinn, and perhaps this is the most sharpest of Mr. Tilzer's criticisms : ''It was the publisher of the NYT, along with the NYP and Daily News, that used their papers to support changing the term limits law to allow Bloomberg and Quinn to run for a third term. Mr. Chen does not challenge Quinn when she brushes off her term limits and other critics as 'naïve' ideologues.''

It's already been documented how Christine Quinn bluffs her way through important social issues.

What Speaker Quinn is doing by making her ''unapologetic'' ''move to the middle'' is selling out the working class families of New York City. Her policies favour real estate developers -- and come to the detriment, suffering, and mass displacement of working class New Yorkers. Speaker Quinn's vision of New York City is a continuation of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's vision : more glass and steel luxury condos and less hospitals, firehouses, public schools, and senior centers. Speaker Quinn wants to make life so unbearable to the average wage-earning New Yorker that we all pick up and leave town.

How do we know that Christine Quinn has sold out her values and beliefs and still find herself to be in a place of denial about it, so much so that she accuses her critics of being “naïve” ideologues ?

Speaker Quinn's ideas about leadership in New York, by supporting the luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's Hospital, which used to be the only full-service hospital with a Level 1 Trauma Center below 14th Street, is like GLAAD publicly supporting the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger. Not only would AT&T be in an even stronger position to undo net neutrality, but what is GLAAD doing by meddling in a telecom merger approval process with the FCC ? Likewise, why is a ''supposedly!! celebrated LGBT third-term politician like Christine Quinn rushing toward the ''middle'' of the political spectrum, if it means that she has to abandon her idealistic beginnings and instead now oppose paid sick leave and a living wage bill ?

"AT&T was one of the companies whose local representatives sits on the board of directors of the Tennessee chamber of commerce," wrote John Aravosis at Americablog. "You remember them, the group that endorsed and actively lobbied for the measure repealing gay and trans rights ordinances in the state, mandating it so that no trans person can ever change their birth certificate gender in the future, and banning any future civil rights ordinances for anyone in the future. That AT&T."

What does the intersection of St. Vincent's Hospital/Rudin Family Luxury Condo Conversion and the GLAAD/AT&T T-Mobile mega deals have to do with Christine Quinn and New York City politics ?

In each case, you see the erosion of core values of fighting for an activist's central reason for being : serving their constituency. But once you get to be so big, you can blow off you constituency as “naïve” ideologues (or drop the F-bomb on them, the way that one of her administrative assistants did).

If, throughout our nation's history, our goal has been to distribute power and authority equally among voters, then the voters, who have less choices on election day, get their voices muffled. Who is going to challenge GLAAD to focus once again on its original intention ? Who is going to put pressure on Christine Quinn to deliver on the community’s demands to stop all the hospital closings that are happening across New York City ?

It is not too much to expect that the people, who you elect to City Council, start to deliver something tangible for New York City voters.

• If you disliked how City Council members extended term limits without a voter referendum, then let her know : quinn@council.nyc.ny.us
• If you agree, that Speaker Quinn needs to hear the voices of communities, who are demanding that hospitals stop closing all across the five boroughs, then let her know : quinn@council.nyc.ny.us
• If you can no longer accept a weekly threat by Mayor Bloomberg to layoff teachers and firefighters, and to close schools and firehouses, then let her know : quinn@council.nyc.ny.us
• If you want Speaker Quinn to shut down her $50 million slush fund, then let her know : quinn@council.nyc.ny.us
• If you refuse to settle for City Council members, who take tens of thousands of campaign donations from real estate developers in exchange for what seems like pay-to-play real estate development deal approvals, then let her know : quinn@council.nyc.ny.us
• If you believe that Speaker Quinn betrays the LGBT community, then let her know : quinn@council.nyc.ny.us
• If you have your own issue, that you'd like to bring to Speaker Quinn's attention, then let her know : quinn@council.nyc.ny.us

Speak now, or forever hold your peace.

Quinn Plaza Hotel Protest

Christine Quinn - Plaza Hotel - Gays Against Quinn (Protest Video)

Over 20 activists gathered outside the Plaza Hotel in a demonstration against City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Watch as protesters speak against Christine Quinn to former Mayor David Dinkins' entourage and hand anti-Quinn literature to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

Some of us were there because of Speaker Quinn's use of a $50 million slush fund during a time when we live under constant threat by Mayor Bloomberg, that he is going to lay off teachers and close down fire houses. Others were there, because Speaker Quinn pushed through a controversial extension of term limits, allowing Mayor Bloomberg, herself, and others, to run for a third term in office. Still yet others were there because of Speaker Quinn's complete abdication of full civil rights for LGBT New Yorkers, do-nothing record over hospital closings, horrible animal rights record, and use of city staff for campaign work.

Please join us for a Third Anniversary Protest of the Term Limits Extension at 2 pm on Sunday, October 23, at City Hall.

Please also join our Facebook group : Gays Against Christine Quinn.

Hugh Carey, dead, 92

NYTimes Obituary : Hugh Carey, Who Led Fiscal Rescue of New York City, Is Dead at 92

From The New York Times :

Hugh L. Carey, the governor who helped rescue New York from the brink of financial collapse in the 1970s and tamed a culture of ever-growing spending, died Sunday at his summer home on Shelter Island. He was 92.

His death was announced by the office of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

“Governor Carey led our state during a time of great financial turmoil and pulled us back from the brink of bankruptcy and economic ruin,” Mr. Cuomo said in the statement.

As the 51st governor of New York from 1975 through 1982, Mr. Carey led a small group of public servants who vanquished the fiscal crisis that threatened New York City and the state — the direst emergency a governor had faced since the Depression — by taking on powers over the city’s finances that no governor had wielded before and none has wielded since. A liberal Democrat, Mr. Carey reversed the upward spiral of borrowing, spending and entitlement under his predecessor, Nelson A. Rockefeller, a Republican who had presided in an era of limitless government promise. ....

A-Rod A Fraud in Trouble Again? A-Rod, Jorge, Matt Damon Explain to NYers How to Live w/out Hospitals by Suzannah B. Troy Artist

http://m.nypost.com/f/mobile/sports/yankees/games_report_ordered_rod_poker_meet_VFr7PdJm16OTKqUYHMdcsL A-Rod called a fraud after steroid scandal, part of the wealthy elite that makes a fortune in NYC but finds every way to cheat so he does not have to part with the obscene amounts of money he should never have been paid the way he cheated on his wife caught in another scandal? A very emotional protest of People fighting to save yet another hospital this one in Queens should be contrasted with Juan Gonzalez's exposes on the Mets and Yankees Stadiums which continue to screw the tax payers out of mega millions. How does A-Fraud look himself in the mirror? Quite easily. With all that $$$$ he will always have good friends.


http://youtu.be/mGXR6cDbywg

http://nycculturepoppolitics.blogspot.com/2011/08/peninsula-hospital-closing-protest.html

A-Rod what do you have to say about our hospitals being closed?

Matt Damon and Jorge Posada, you told New Yorkers to Vote for mayor Bloomberg and I do not think either of you declare NYC as your resident.

What do you have to say to all the People of NYC that need hospitals and have none because Bloomberg and his puppet Christine Quinn sold the People of New York out to real estate developers?

Look at Christine Quinn’s list of donors for her mayoral run.
http://www.councilpedia.org/index.php?title=Christine_Quinn

What do New Yorkers do if they have a heart attacks through out New York City in the different boroughs with the exception of the Upper East Side where Bloomberg and some of the richest New Yorkers live?

Why did we bail out banks and did not ask them to repay the bail-outs and why no jail for the bankers? Why did they get billion dollar bonuses but no bail out for hospitals?

http://mayorbloombergkingofnewyork.blogspot.com/search?q=juan+gonzalez

Remember the 2 new Stadiums that tax payers were forced to help build yet most can’t afford a seat, popcorn, a hot dog? Well click the link above to learn more how the Stadiums are robbing us of mega-millions and now hundreds of parks dept. workers will lost their jobs just like all the hospital workers from so many of these hospitals.