Nate's blog

Harlem Hospital workers rallied today to stop proposed cuts in the number of doctors on staff. A few hundred people came out to a rally across the street from the hospital, one of New York City's 11 public hospitals and one of the few health care options for the uninsured.

The Doctors Council SEIU, which represents physicians at Harlem, called the demonstration in protest of a layoffs as the hospital ends its affiliation with Columbia University Medical Center. For the past 60 years, CUMC has been contracted to provide medical staff: currently, 20 out of out of 220 physicians will likely be laid off. Another 20 to 30 doctors plan to resign in protest. The doctors' concerns were outlined in two "Open Letters" to the City's administration and to Columbia University (first printed in the Amsterdam News and reproduced below.

The Committee of Interns and Residents SEIU and a few DC37 locals also turned out members. The list of speakers included a "Who's Who" of Harlem elected officials: David Dinkins, Al Sharpton, Charlie Rangel, State Senator Bill Perkins, local NAACP President Hazel Dukes and Charles Barron.

Last friday there was a march and rally outside the Mets - Diamond Backs game at CitiField in Queens, NYC. The NYPD forced the rally to confine itself to a small pen across the street from the stadium, behind a fence and under a subway platform. As a result, the rally itself was almost totally unnoticeable for fans getting off of the train and going directly into the stadium (let alone if you parked in the lot right next to the stadium); could see or even hear the few hundred people gathered at that spot.

However, dozens of us abandoned the rally point and walked around the plaza outside the stadium passing out flyers about SB1070 along with big signs to hold up during the game (NO SB1070! BOYCOTT ARIZONA!, etc.). This was pretty effective, and i'd bet that almost everyone entering the stadium from the subway at least saw that something was being protested, and that it had something to do with immigration and Arizona. In addition to those efforts, there were about a half-dozen others who had bought tickets to the game and went in with carefully planned direct action. All student activists, mostly from CUNY, four people dropped two big banners off of the stadium, and another two jumped into the field and sprinted across with Mexican flags and t-shirts about SB1070. I didn't even know this was happening until i saw folks later who showed me the press coverage of the protests (see below, including some GREAT full-page photos published in the Daily News on Saturday).

Turning luxury condos into truly affordable housing. Undocumented immigrants voting. Living wage economic development.

On Tuesday, Sept.

Over the past month, there have been 132 people arrested (and hundreds more in supporting protests) in 20 cities around the country, all demanding a single-payer healthcare system, or Medicare for

I am finishing a Masters in Social Work in New York, and have been very involved in student organizing at my school.

Friday it was announced that New York State government’s bank, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, will bail out Wall Street big-shot bankers at Bear Stearns. Perhaps fittingly, Lee Bollinger, the Columbia University President who’s behind one of the biggest land-grabs in the city, is on the Board of Directors of this bank.

*Title taken from James Baldwin essay by that title (1984)

By the time I graduated high school, I saw that the rural area of Pennsylvania I grew up as the epitome of racism…and homophobia. Not much room for liberal “we-love-diversity”. I left there hating the whole area: it was dead, backward, close-minded, bigoted and all that. Arriving in New York for college, I thought I was in heaven, a far as “lets-all-get-along” diversity goes. That lasted about one subway ride, and I soon realized that New York is at least as harsh on people of color as my high school was, but in different ways and with lot more power to beat people down. By the end of college I was thoroughly disgusted with the white people of gentrified New York that didn’t have much in common with the working-class and poor rural white folks I grew up around. I moved to Harlem and, like my parents did back home, started getting involved in some of the community groups.