Community and Elected Officials join thousands of construction workers in demanding safe job sites citing alarming rise in construction related deaths better training and improved safety on jobs

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New York City, January 18, 2017 - Citing the alarming rise in construction related deaths, thousands of hardhat construction workers, along with elected officials and community leaders, today called on the City Council to pass the Construction Safety Act, a series of bills that will provide for true professional training to improve the safety of all construction workers and the general public.

"If 30 people died at their jobs in the last two years in any other industry we wouldn’t have to fight for basic safety measures to be implemented in their workplace, but apparently for the safety of construction workers we do,” said Terry Moore Business Manager Local 46 Metallic Lathers and Reinforcing Iron Workers. “So we’re out here today doing just that, fighting for the right of every worker to make it home safely at the end of the day. The question for the administration if they choose to oppose this legislation is, 'How many more must die?'”

In the last two years, 30 construction workers have been killed while on the job. In the rush to cash in on the real estate boom, developers have ignored basic safety requirements and training on jobsites throughout the City. Today, the New York City Council took the long overdue first step in securing construction jobsites. Protesters urged the City Council to be the city's true progressive voice and remain vigilant in requiring stringent safety standards and rigorous training for all construction projects in the city.

“Today we say enough is enough,” said Mike Hellstrom, Organizing Director, for the 17,000 member Mason Tenders District Council, LIUNA. “Too many workers have left for work in the morning, never to return home. Today we make sure that the dead have a voice in demanding safe work sites for all construction workers, union and non-union. Providing a highly trained, safe workforce on a constructions site, whether they are large or small, is not a political or economic issue; it is a moral issue. Today marks a turning point in our fight for safe jobs. The Speaker and City Council are to be commended for the leadership they have shown.”

New York City Councilmember Carlos Menchaca (D-Brooklyn) said, “Some will call them (the 30 deaths) accidents but these were no accidents. These fatalities were because proper safety requirements were either not in place or ignored by site supervisors. They were ignored because something else is more important than safety, more important than human life.”

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Luis Colon, a Local 46 Apprentice and former Park Side non-union worker, spoke on behalf of all the workers who risk their lives every day, "When I started working construction nobody cared if I knew how to work safely or not, they just wanted to get the work done as quickly and cheaply as possible. I was injured at work, as were many of my co-workers. When I started working with Park Side Construction, one of their workers had just died on the job. People were passing around photos and laughing about how he didn’t know what he was doing, as if it was his own fault. I love what I do, I’m building New York, but construction is dangerous and I want to be around to watch my daughter grow up."

Earlier in the day, NYCOSH released the “Deadly Skyline” report attributing the alarming number of deaths to lack of training for the workforce. Of the 30 deaths over the last two years, 28 were at non-union jobsites.

"The ‘Deadly Skyline’ report illustrates yet again what we know to be true: preventable construction fatalities are on the rise in New York City and the only way to end this epidemic is with training and safety requirements for all workers,” said Patrick Purcell, Executive Director of the Greater New York Laborers-Employers Cooperation & Education Trust, GNY LECET. “Thankfully the wait is now over and meaningful construction safety legislation will be introduced in the City Council today that will ensure stringent safety and training standards. I want to thank NYCOSH for continuing to shine a light on the construction industry and how we can work together to protect all construction workers,” Purcell added.

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#2017 #arrests #CityOfficials #CivilDisobedience #ConstructionSafetyAct #ConstructionWorkers #CuantosMas #HowManyMoreMustDie #NewYork #NYC #NYCityCouncil #NYCUnionMade #PeacefulProtest #PeacefulResistance #Protest #rally #SafetyFirst #SafetyOverProfits #Union #UnionMade #UnionWorkers #WorkerRights

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Outraged Activists vow to "Drain the Swamp" by camping out at Goldman Sachs HQ in New York until inauguration day 

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New York: January 17th, 2017 - Hundreds of Activists launch #GovernmentSachs, a 3-day resistance with a sustained site of resistance and encampment in front of Goldman Sachs’s HQ in New York, to confront Goldman Sachs’s burgeoning influence on Capitol Hill; Solidarity actions against #GovernmentSachs are also taking place in California and Nevada.  

Trump won under a dangerous combination of racism and a populist message to “drain the swamp” and rid Washington of the political and financial elites, who he claimed were “getting away with murder” while “making a tremendous amount of money.” Yet, following his victory, Goldman Sachs now not only has an open door to the government, they are the government.

From the appointment of Steve Bannon (Chief Strategist) to Steve Mnuchin (Treasury Secretary) to Gary Cohn (National Economic Council Director) and most recently, Jay Clayton (SEC Chairman), we now have the most Wall Street driven administration in history. Under this Goldman regime, our policies will be dictated by the very same people that created the foreclosure crisis. They will continue to destroy our jobs, evict our families, criminalize our bodies and profit from incarceration, and put our land and water at risk.

As the movement to resist Trump  grows across the nation, hundreds of activists in New York City, California and Nevada will confront the very people pulling the strings on Trump’s administration and his cabinet: #GovernmentSachs.

From their investment on fossil fuels and the prison industrial complex to their role in the foreclosure crisis that caused the 2008 economic collapse, Goldman Sachs has played a key role in the extraction of wealth from low-income and middle-income families across the United States.

Through sustained actions in the lead up to Donald Trump’s inauguration, campers will illuminate Goldman Sachs takeover of our government and growing influence on every aspect of our economy.

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Some of those participating have already raised hell on Goldman Sachs, when on January 5th & January 12th they stormed Goldman’s lobby in New York and New Jersey respectively. On both occasions the activists were met with a disproportionate use of force. 

#2017 #Activism #Art #CivilDisobedience #DefendDemocracy #demonstration #DisruptJ20 #DonaldTrump #DrainTheSwamp #DumpTrump #encampment #GoldmanSachs #GovernmentSachs #LoveTrumpsHate #NewYork #NotMyPresident #NYC #occupation #PeacefulProtest #Protest #RejectPresidentElect #ResistHere #ResistTrump #ResistTrumpTuesdays #‎Solidarity #StopTheHate #trump #trumpvsallofus

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Chinatown & LES Reclaim Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Demand Mayor DeBlasio to Step Down for Racist Rezoning

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On January 16, 2017; The Citywide Alliance Against Displacement held a rally at City Hall to demand Mayor DeBlasio step down for promoting racist rezoning plans that target communities of color and to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.‘s legacy of fighting against racial and economic injustice all over the country. The Alliance said it chose this day to hold the rally to reclaim the day from politicians like Mayor DeBlasio who use celebrations on this day to cover up their own racist policies. 

The city is facing a crisis of displacement, as the city government has encouraged luxury developments in communities of color like Harlem, Williamsburg, Lower East Side and Chinatown, causing high-rent and real estate tax increase in these neighborhoods. As a result, tenants are facing evictions, small businesses are closing, jobs are being lost, and communities are being destroyed. Mayor DeBlasio, the so-called "progressive" mayor, nevertheless helps perpetuate the City's legacy of racism and displacement On the one hand, he refuses to pass community-led rezoning plans like the Chinatown Working Group rezoning plan that will protect all of Chinatown and Lower East Side. On the other hand, he imposes his developer-friendly rezoning proposals in neighborhoods like East Harlem, South Bronx, East New York, lnwood and Flushing, despite overwhelming community opposition to his plan. Last year, over 90% of community boards throughout the city rejected Mayor DeBlasio’s citywide rezoning policies.

Protesters also pointed to the numerous investigations on Mayor DeBlasio and his administration for his ties to the real estate industry and “pay to play” accusations. As numerous front-page stories have shown, the Mayor has hired real estate company staffers to formulate his housing policy, and given enormous power to people with close ties to developers and Wall Street firms. Therefore, it is not surprising that his housing plan reads like the real estate lobby’s wish list. The investigations of the DeBlasio administration has revealed a dangerous disregard for our communities and preference for developers who would displace us all. 

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The Citywide Alliance Against Displacement feels an urgent need to reclaim Martin Luther King Jr. from politicians like Mayor DeBlasio and those elected officials who stand along with him to push for displacement; they turn around and seek to use celebrations on this day as a fig leaf for their own racist policies. The legacy of Civil Rights should be one of ordinary people standing against injustice and racism, but the hypocritical stance of politicians and their puppets on this day has corrupted that legacy. 

At the event the Citywide Alliance Against Displacement presented their demands:

1. End racism in city planning. Pass community-based “People First” plans like the Chinatown Working Group rezoning plan.

2. End public funding for luxury development, such as 421-a. Instead, use public resources to preserve and build more permanent low-income housing.

3. Stop privatization of public land and assets.

4. Mayor DeBlasio and those in City Council who also collude with developers to step down.

#AffordableForWho #AffordableHousing #BillDeBlasio #CityHall #DeBlasio #displacement #Gentrification #HousingRights #humanrights #lanlord #LowIncomeHousing #MayorDeBlasio #NewYork #NOEVICTIONZone #NothingInnovativeAboutDisplacement #NYC #NYCMayor #OurCity #PictureTheHomeless #PressConference #protest #rally #RealAffordabilityForAll #rezoning #SaveNYC #tenantharassment #tenants #tenantsfightback #ThePeoplesResponse #Zoning

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Hundreds gathered at Trump International Hotel in New York to protest Republican efforts to destroy U.S. Healthcare System

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NEW YORK CITY – On January 15, 2017; Activists from the newly-formed anti-Trump group Rise & Resist staged a “cough-in” at Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York City, to fight against the radical changes to the American healthcare system proposed by the Trump Administration and Republicans. Twenty activists began loudly coughing inside the Jean Georges restaurant and then marched into the hotel’s lobby carrying signs reading “TrumpCare Makes Us Sick! We Need Obamacare!”

Outside the hotel, they were joined by over 400 activists chanting, “Healthcare Is A Right! Fight Trump!”

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Rep. Tom Price (Trump’s nominee for the Dept. of Health and Human Services) want to privatize Medicare, drastically cut funding for Medicaid and the Child Health Insurance Program, end funding for reproductive health services, and gut the Affordable Care Act.

“Trump and his appointees have shown career-spanning, active contempt for queer folks, black and brown folks, and poor folks, and have continually created legislation that puts our lives at risk” states Rise and Resist member Isha Racho, “their gutting of healthcare provisions is another example of how they do not value us, our lives, or our rights as Americans.”

Although neither Congressional Republicans nor the Trump Administration have even released a replacement plan, the Senate and the House have already moved to repeal the Affordable Care Act – commonly known as Obamacare – jeopardizing the insurance of over twenty million Americans.

“If we allow Trump and his congressional cronies, like Paul Ryan, to destroy the gains made during the Obama era” remarks Rise and Resist cofounder James Krellenstein, “millions of Americans will lose their health insurance and thousands of people will needlessly perish.”

Rise and Resist is demanding that Trump and Congressional Republicans cease their efforts to destroy Obamacare.

"As a person living with AIDS and cancer, I know how important the ACA is to people with serious illnesses and pre-existing conditions” explains veteran AIDS activist and Rise and Resist member Mark Milano, “the Republican zeal to repeal it without anything to replace it is heartless and cruel.”

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Rise and Resist is a group of diverse working together to directly assist and to protect the individuals and communities whose life and liberty are in danger following the 2016 election.

#2017 #Activism #ActUp #ActUpNY #AffordableCare #ColumbusCircle #DefendDemocracy #DefendHealthcare #demonstration #DonaldTrump #DumpTrump #GOP #HealthcareForAll #HealthcareIsAHumanRight #humanrights #LoveTrumpsHate #NewYork #NotMyPresident #NYC #Obamacare #PeacefulProtest #PeacefulResistance #Protest #rally #RejectPresidentElect #revolution #RiseAndResist #SinglePayer #‎Solidarity #trump #TrumpCare #trumpvsallofus #UniversalHeathcare

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Anti-Fur March 2017:  Animal rights activists get the word out that compassion is the fashion, and fur is DEAD! 

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Members of Caring Activists Against Fur (CAAF), Long Island Orchestrating for Nature (LION), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and other animal rights activists, voiced immutable opposition to the horrific fur trade, denouncing the confinement, torture and extraordinarily brutal extermination of innocent beings - all in the name of fickle "luxury" and transient, superfluous "fashion."

A couple hundred added their voices to a burgeoning group of energetic animal activists whose prime directive is to elevate public awareness about the plight of innumerable defenseless foxes, minks, raccoons, dogs and cats and other mammal victims of the gruesome fur trade, who are violently and systematically removed from their natural habitats, corralled into inescapable death camps, crammed into tiny, filthy cages for months in ALL weather conditions, beaten, stomped on, anally electrocuted, gassed, bludgeoned to death, even SKINNED ALIVE so that affluent first-world consumers can gleefully, obliviously parade around, morbidly draped in the skins that are, quite literally, ripped off these animals' backs as they helplessly writhe in overwhelming shock and agony 'til the final throes of death overtake them. These pathetic, skinless creatures will often suffer in mortal agony for minutes or hours - all for vain, pretentious, human notions of "luxury apparel" and "fashion."

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These groups run an ongoing campaign to STOP this insanity and work toward the total abolition of the global fur industry, making a vocal, public impact for the animals trapped and languishing in this insidious death trade, and to send a meaningful message to the heartless people who line their pockets with blood and entrails, who build their posh castles with the unspeakable screams of terror and suffering from countless innocent beings. 

#2017 #Activism #AnimalAbuse #animalcruelty #AnimalRights #AnimalsBattalion #CAAF #CanadaGoose #demonstration #FurIsMurder #FurTrade #LION #march #NewYork #NYC #PeacefulProtest #PETA #Protest #‎Solidarity #TheirTurn

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Health Justice Advocates Rallied Outside Trump Tower to Say “Hands Off Health Care” as Congress Moves Forward to Dismantle Access for Millions

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(New York, NY) – Advocates from across the U.S. who support a single-payer national health insurance program—aka improved Medicare for All—rallied outside Trump Tower this afternoon to kick-off their annual national conference, which is being held this year in New York.  As Congress moves to make radical changes to a variety of health insurance programs, they called on the incoming Trump administration to take a different direction, moving instead toward a universal health care program by improving and expanding Medicare.  During his election campaign, President-Elect Trump spoke of his support for Medicare, and prior to his candidacy expressed admiration for other countries’ national health programs and his affinity for something similar in the U.S.

Participants at the rally vowed to confront our nation’s new political leaders should they move to sharply curtail funding for and dramatically scale back health insurance programs.

"Nurses have a front row seat to observe the suffering of our patients from medical bills they can’t pay, loopholes they can’t fit through, and quality care beyond their reach,” said Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, President of the New York State Nurses Association.  “The Affordable Care Act relieved some of that burden, but to repeal it now without replacing it with a superior system, such as an expanded and improved Medicare-for-All, is like removing a band aid from a wound and watching the patient bleed to death.” 

“People like me who are living with disabilities often need long-term care, but in America we are forced into poverty to get those services through Medicaid.  That’s outright humiliation,” said Nadina LaSpina, a member of Disabled in Action of Metropolitan New York.  “Now the Trump administration and the Republican Congress are threatening to take even that vital program away from us.  Are we supposed to cry and beg for mercy?  No!  We’re going to fight back! We are not going to lose our rights!”

“We are fortunate enough to live in a time when we can see a way to finally end the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the near future.  However, this dream will not be possible without universal health care,” said Italo Medelius, a member of ACT UP New York. “AIDS activists like me have been demanding a national single-payer health insurance program for many years, and we will not rest until it's achieved. Si se puede!”

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After their rally, protestors marched to join a nearby rally of labor unions in support of members of the Communications Workers of America from upstate New York who are out on strike over health care benefits in their contract negotiations.

The Single Payer Strategy Conference kicks off at the Wyndham New Yorker Hotel at 7pm on Friday, January 13th, featuring guests like Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Health Commissioner Mary Bassett, State Senator Bill Perkins, Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, and former Ohio State Senator, Nina Turner. 

#Activism #ActUpNY #AffordableCare #DefendDemocracy #demonstration #DonaldTrump #DumpTrump #FirstAmendment #GOP #HealthcareForAll #healthcareisaRIGHT #humanrights #LoveTrumpsHate #NewYork #NotMyPresident #NYC #Obamacare #PeacefulProtest #PeacefulResistance #Protest #rally #RejectPresidentElect #revolution #RiseAndResist #SinglePayer #trump #trumpvsallofus #UniversalHeathcare

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NYC Fast Food Workers in the Fight for $15; New York City Council Members; Union members; and Community allies unite to oppose Trump’s Pick of a Fast-Food CEO for U.S. Secretary of Labor

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New York –In the run up to the Senate confirmation hearing of fast-food mogul Andy Puzder as U.S. Secretary of Labor, New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and other council members will join cooks and cashiers who are part of the Fight for $15 to lead a protest Thursday at the U.S. Department of Labor office in Manhattan.

New York City Council members are pledging support for working New Yorkers over the next four years and supporting a package of bills that will protect fast-food workers in New York City, ensuring they have adequate job protections that will provide much-needed stability for themselves and their families.

At a rally on Thursday council members will join with fast-food workers and allies to stand up for good jobs and their commitment to pass vital legislation that will create a Fair Work Week for fast food workers in the city. Council members have introduced three bills that require fast-food stores to give workers two weeks’ notice of their schedules and pay a “penalty” to workers if schedules are changed at the last minute; give current employees more hours before hiring new part-time workers to fill open shifts; and place restrictions on “clopenings,” the practice of requiring workers who close a store one night to come back a few hours later to open it the next morning. A fourth bill, the Fast Food Worker Empowerment Act, would require employers to honor workers’ requests to deduct voluntary contributions from their paycheck to a not-for-profit organization that could fight for the workers, their families and their communities.  

More than 30 City Council members have already signed on as co-sponsors of the bills.

Background on Puzder: 

Thursday’s rally is part of a nationwide wave of actions to denounce the nomination of a CEO who is a symbol of the very rigged economy Donald Trump vowed to fix.  Workers from coast to coast will rally against Puzder, who as CEO of CKE Restaurants presided over companies that stole workers’ wages, violated overtime laws and forced employees onto public assistance.  The protest in New York is one of two-dozen planned from coast to coast Thursday ahead of Puzder’s confirmation hearing next week. Workers will carry signs that read “I’m not a robot and yes, I will sue if sexually harassed” and “Andy Puzder makes more in a day than I do in a year,” In an interview last year, Puzder said he prefers machines to workers because they “never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex or race discrimination case.”  He has been an outspoken opponent of minimum wage hikes that would allow his workers to meet their basic needs. Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley found in 2013 that fast-food CEOs like Puzder cost taxpayers $7.3 billion per year in public assistance by holding down pay for their employees.

As labor secretary, Puzder would be charged with upholding many of the labor laws and regulations CKE routinely violated during his time as CEO. In 60 percent of Department of Labor investigations since 2009, CKE restaurants and franchises were found to have violated wage and hour laws. Since Puzder became CEO of CKE in 2000, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which falls under the DOL, has found 98 safety violations at Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s locations, with 36 of them capable of causing death or grave physical harm.

Since fast-food workers  launched the Fight for $15 over four years ago, the movement has won wage hikes for 22 million underpaid workers, including more than 10 million who are on their way to $15/hour, by convincing everyone from voters to politicians to corporations to raise pay. The movement, which has resulted in $62 billion raises for America’s workers, was credited as one of the reasons median income jumped last year by the highest percentage since the 1960s.

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With 155,000 members in eleven states and Washington, D.C., including 70,000 in New York City, 32BJ SEIU is the largest property service workers union in the country.

#32BJ #Activism #AndyPuzder #AntiLaborSecretary #demonstration #DonaldTrump #DumpTrump #FairWorkWeek #FF15 #FightFor15 #humanrights #LivingWage #LoveTrumpsHate #MinimumWage #MinWageRealityCheck #NewYork #NotMyLaborSec #NotMyPresident #NotOneStepBack #NYC #NYCityCouncil #PeacefulProtest #PeacefulResistance #DefendDemocracy #Protest #rally #RejectPresidentElect #revolution #RiseFor15 #SEIU #SEIU32BJ #‎Solidarity #trump #trumpvsallofus #Union #UnionWorkers #WeWontBackDown #WorkerRights

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