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Mayor Bill de Blasio was exposed for having lied about defunding the NYPD by $1 billion, which could have been one source of possible funding for NYCHA

Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would use $1 billion in cuts to the NYPD budget to advance social justice. He lied. Now, NBC News has caught him increasing the NYPD budget by $200 million.

Mayor Bill de Blasio (WFP-New York City) was busted by NBC News in an investigation one year after the “defund the police” movement led to his promise to cut $1 billion from the budget of the New York Police Department and to use that funding stream, instead, to make “some transformative changes at the department,” in the words of Mayor de Blasio’s chief enabler, Council Speaker Corey Johnson (D-Chelsea).

Not only did the $1 billion cut made in June 2020 never materialise, but an additional $200 million was added to the NYPD budget in June 2021, according to NBC News.

Last year, outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city council moved to cut roughly $1 billion from the police’s $6 billion budget and invest it in youth and social services. De Blasio wrote in a tweet then that “Our young people need to be reached, not policed.” But just a year later, officials adopted the city’s largest budget ever, at $98.7 billion, for fiscal year 2022, which included a $200 million increase for police spending.

Mayor de Blasio has given lip service to the promise to promote racial and social justice.

In New York City, the #DefundTheNYPD movement, like respective movements across the nation, grew out of the George Floyd anti-racism protests in 2020. Mayor de Blasio promised to use the money to help youths and other social service programs. As Mayor de Blasio’s term in office comes to an end, nobody knows what happened to his broken promises for funding racial and social justice.

Mayor de Blasio has been accused of using his bi-racial family to co-opt the language of social movements and as a political cover to defend or expand race-based policing — even as he has rejected calls to hold the NYPD accountable for homicides and other acts of brutality committed by the police. As NBC News noted, Mayor de Blasio said, “Our young people need to be reached, not policed.” But that turned out to be another one of his lies. In a review of Mayor de Blasio’s two terms in office, the New York Daily News reported that Mayor de Blasio leaves behind a legacy of corruption and neglect on housing issues.

Fight For NYCHA have long argued that sources of Government funding could be found to fully-fund NYCHA. For decades, the racist divestment of public housing led to a gargantuan deficit in NYCHA’s capital repairs budget. Our funding ideas were workshopped and packaged as a People’s Budget that has been updated over time. One of the items in our People’s Budget was to defund the NYPD by $2 billion and to use that money to bond the capital repairs at NYCHA.

Duplicitous politicians and nonprofit groups continue to say they care about NYCHA, but then they corruptly take advantage of the lack of funding to benefit their donors. As Mayor de Blasio begins to reportedly wage a campaign for New York governor, he has awarded the RAD/PACT conversion at Fulton Houses and Elliott-Chelsea to the Trump billionaire backer and Hudson Yards developer, Stephen Ross.

Anonymous Message to NYCHA Residents

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Pack the Court on Monday morning as Fight For NYCHA makes one last effort to stop RAD/PACT !

It appears that Mayor Bill de Blasio should have put RAD/PACT conversions through the ULURP Process. But he didn’t !

Because protests have not worked, the last few members of Fight For NYCHA have sued Mayor Bill de Blasio (WFP-New York City), the City of New York, NYCHA CEO Greg Russ, and NYCHA to stop the RAD/PACT privatisation of public housing !

It’s been almost three years since Fight For NYCHA was formed. In that time, the activism to save public housing in New York City has been beset by division, sectarian politics, ego, obfuscation, and subversion. We had AOC refuse to stand-up to Mayor de Blasio’s use of RAD/PACT and the Blueprint to sell-out NYCHA. We had other Electeds approve of the sell-out of public housing, and they never faced any consequence for having participated in the sell-out of public housing. We had socialists and other sectarian groups promote the use of Section 8 vouchers to the disadvantage of public housing residents, which was shameful and a form of betrayal, because that was certainly no way to show class solidarity. Rather than confront Mayor de Blasio, some activists formed YouTube talk shows to promote themselves. Other groups, like Movement School, sought to use NYCHA activism as a cover for membership drives that was entirely divorced from a commitment to an outcome to saving Section 9 public housing. We also endured selfish political candidates, seeking to use NYCHA issues for their political campaigns, only to turn their backs once their campaigns floundered. Other political candidates, like Marni Halasa, used NYCHA activism for press clips ; it didn’t matter that she was leading/misleading residents in the wrong direction. All that mattered were her media mentions.

The lawsuit we filed was largely based on the lawsuit filed by Beep Gale Bewer (D-Manhattan) to stop the infill development at Holmes Tower, which she won after Mayor de Blasio backtracked from the unlawful plans for the real estate development in the Upper East Side.

We had no choice but to file this lawsuit after activism to mobilise public housing residents failed in New York City due to many “community groups” and nonprofit orgs running interference for Mayor de Blasio and other corrupt Electeds. Remember how one nonprofit hosted Council Speaker Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan) at a Black church in Brooklyn after it came to be known he supported the sell-out of public housing in Chelsea. Even after we exposed the truth of how some Socialist Democrats were collaborating with Mayor de Blasio in his scheme to end all Section 9 public housing, it came to a shock to many that it took direct action in the face of the DSA to put a halt to the Blueprint.

The lawsuit, filed as an Article 78 Petition, revealed that Mayor de Blasio’s implementation of RAD/PACT was illegal, since the way that Mayor de Blasio is rolling-out RAD/PACT conversions violate the City Charter and the New York State Public Housing Law. The City Charter and the Public Housing Law require large-scale projects, like RAD/PACT conversions, to be put through the ULURP Process. But Mayor de Blasio, NYCHA, CEO Russ, and the City of New York did not follow the laws. In respect of the RAD/PACT conversion of Fulton Houses and Elliott-Chelsea, the lawsuit made a showing that the de Blasio administration admitted that they decided to act outside of the ULURP Process.

As time passed, we knew that litigation, like this, would be our last resort, if social movement building failed in the face of sectarian opposition. We ask for support, as we make it clear that all other groups must set aside self-interest and self-promotion for the common good of all. And that means seeing to it that Section 9 public housing is saved from privatisation. This must be made a priority, at long last.

Pack the Court !

Date : Monday, Nov. 15

Time : 9:30 am

Place : Supreme Court, New York County, 60 Centre St., Room 130

Update

Updated 12 Nov 2021 13:55 The Defendants have filed motions to dismiss our Article 78 petition. We need to work together to put a stop to RAD/PACT once and for all !

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We got this : The New York City economy is under pressure from the pandemic, and our easy economic boycott can force politicians to do right by NYCHA

The Coronavirus pandemic continues to put pressure on the New York City economy, and our stay-at-home one day a week boycott can add to the stress of neoliberal politicians.

With Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) reportedly having passed a Budget Reconciliation that may include the funding to finally end the Federal Government’s racist divestment of public housing, we can say that the fight to save NYCHA may, at first blush, appear, with some qualifications, to be approaching an end. There still remains a big question about whether the Democrats are actually united behind a new era of economic justice, since Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) has said she opposes the $3.5 trillion spending measure.

Before we celebrate prematurely, let’s review how we got here. The U.S. Attorney’s Office began an investigation into the filing of false Federal lead paint certifications by NYCHA. The conclusion of that probe revealed a pattern or practise of routine neglect by NYCHA officials, and a habit of lies and deception. There was a lot of fake outrage, but there was little scrutiny focused on the Mayor, who appoints the top officials at NYCHA and who treats the public housing authority as a political patronage dumping ground.

The pennies-on-the-dollar Settlement Agreement that was the fruit of the Federal investigation into NYCHA created loopholes big enough for ongoing and continuing superclusters of corruption, like reports of fraud in the removal of lead paint, to cross over the event horizon into a supermassive black hole of an unaccountable bureaucracy.

At every turn, the movement to stop the sale of strategic public assets has been met with opposition, sabotage, or indifference. Our pro se litigation and, later, our amicus brief, were either thrown out by or not considered in the Courts. Politicians know how hard it is to organise NYCHA residents into a sustained social movement for economic justice. It’s very easy for them to divide tenants against each other with the appearance of political access or the never ending false promises of resident management corporations. Professional nonprofits or unprincipled activists with sectarian motives have, at times, aided dishonest politicians in this regard. But we have found a way forward !

The New York City economy is weakening due to the Delta variant, and this sets us up for the success of our economic boycott.

We admit we have had trouble in organising NYCHA residents. Our work at Fulton Houses and Elliott-Chelsea were undermined by politicians, including Mayor Bill de Blasio (WFP-New York City). The president of the resident council at Fulton Houses misled residents into believing that RAD/PACT would be in their best interest, and he was caught tearing down our flyers, interfering with tenant organising, which is unlawful, according to the Fair Housing Act protections against retaliation. Later, tenants were mislead into believing that forming a resident management corporation would be financially or politically possible, when it was neither. Other “community groups” deliberately mislead public housing residents into deëscalating any criticism of elected officials. In the end, RAD/PACT has almost become a fait accompli, since Mayor de Blasio has reportedly succeeded in issuing a Request For Proposal for the RAD/PACT conversion of the last parcels of public housing in the gentrified Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea.

Disreputable individuals used the pandemic to scare residents from participating in protests against then-Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss over her role in countenancing the allegations of abuse and corruption of RAD/PACT conversions. Marches against elected officials didn’t draw enough support from public housing residents, either, because community groups allied with elected officials wrongly informed residents that the Green New Deal would save them, when there was no reality to that proposition, either.

When all looked lost, it became apparent that doing nothing was the only thing we should be aiming for. During the pandemic, wildcat strikes took place as essential workers demanded personal protective equipment (PPE), paid sick leave, and health insurance benefits, amongst other demands. Expecting something larger than walkouts from labour unions is probably unrealistic, since they now largely act as get-out-the-vote operations for the Democratic Party. The true beginnings of a general strike must come from a non-union context, namely, from people experiencing extreme forms of economic oppression.

That is why Fight For NYCHA is putting our faith in residents, who intuitively know that the pandemic is not over and that the Government is seeking to continue the era of racial disparities into the future. Given all the sectarianism we’ve witnessed in public housing organising in the last two years, the political ideologies that have coöpted NYCHA organising can support the concept of a general strike against a capitalist economy that is exploitative and creates the kind of economic inequality that is experienced by NYCHA public housing residents.

Join our general strike !

With news that Mayor de Blasio has been so neglectful about the out-of-control Delta variant that the New York City economy has been driven into a proverbial ditch, we are closer to being able to convince the Government that it would be in their best interest to meet our demands for economic justice, i.e., passage of H.R.235, the fully-fund public housing bill that could put an end to the privatisation of public housing. Whereas we are focused on saving public housing, we can still build solidarity with others. We’ve already opposed vaccine passports as a way to oppose invasions of privacy and to uphold a respect for people’s right to self-determine their own medical treatment. Not coïncidentally, this position also proposes to slow down the restart of the economy.

How to join our general strike. It’s within our reach to keep us safe. Just pledge to : (i). stay home at least one day a week to decrease community spread of the Coronavirus, (ii). call 311 to request both KN95 face masks and meal deliveries from food banks, and (iii). follow Fight For NYCHA on Facebook and Twitter for more information. We will be holding a Zoom meeting soon. Stay tuned.

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