As an advocate for affordable housing, anti-gun violence measures, fair policing, equity, and social justice, Jumaane Williams is serving his third term on the NY City Council representing the 45th district in Brooklyn. Williams wants to see the Lt. Governor have a more active role in state policy and advocacy, more like a public advocate at the state level. GSD members endorsed his campaign at their May 15 meeting. [jumaanewilliams.com]
At last night’s regular meeting, Grand Street Democrats voted overwhelmingly in support of Brian Kavanagh’s re-election to the New York State Senate.
At last night’s regular meeting, Grand Street Democrats voted overwhelmingly in support of Yuh-Line Niou’s re-election to the New York State Assembly.
This past year we’ve petitioned for District Leaders, County Committee Members, and been part of the district convention to choose a nominee for our State Senate special election. On a democracy scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is Tammany-style selection by party bosses and 10 is Quaker town-hall consensus, each of these selection procedures gets a different grade somewhere in the middle.
Learning how all that works has been like sitting through Civics 101. And with a year of elections under our belt, we’re ready for Civics 102: electing judges to the New York State Supreme Court.
The NY Supreme Court is the state’s major trial court (not the state’s highest court, which is confusingly called the Court of Appeals). Candidates for Supreme Court appear on the November general election ballot. Before that, in late September, each major party nominates judicial candidates at a party convention. And before that, delegates to that convention are selected by voters on the primary ballot on September 13.
Any New York State resident who is an enrolled member of a political party can run for judicial delegate, but generally district leaders, local political clubs, and even elected officials in each assembly district endorse a slate of delegates and help them qualify for the primary. That’s where Grand Street Democrats — and you — come in. At our May 3 spring meeting we will ask the club to endorse 2 or 3 members who are interested in being judicial delegates and alternate delegates for 2018.
The responsibilities of judicial delegates include getting to know the people running for NY Supreme Court and attending the judicial convention (likely this year between September 18-24). At the convention, delegates will cast their votes for those candidates they believe would be the best choices for the Democratic Party’s nominees in the general election.
We’d also like you to commit to getting at least 50 signatures in June on the designating petitions that you (and all candidates for party or public office) need to have to qualify for the primary. Also: you must be a member of Grand Street Democrats to be considered for our endorsement as a judicial delegate.
Please let us know if you have questions about the role. And let us know if you’re interested, so we know before May 3 how much discussion time we need to set aside. And then please prepare a resume we can share and a brief statement about why you are interested in this role.
For more information on this position and process, you can review this helpful guide from the New York City Bar Association (particularly pages 25-27): https://www2.nycbar.org/pdf/report/uploads/20072672-GuidetoJudicialSelectionMethodsinNewYork.pdf.
Following a letter from local elected officials last week urging NYC DOT to address the ongoing traffic problem in our neighborhood, Grand Street Democrats District Leaders and other community leaders involved in January’s Traffic Town Hall have sent their own letter to DOT Commissioner Trottenberg asking for the release of traffic study data that was promised in 2017 and for the development of a strategy to address the traffic.
With new retail opening this fall at Essex Crossing, and especially the L Train shutdown starting in 2019, we need to develop a better plan to handle cars now so that the problem doesn’t get out of control.
Below is the letter we sent out today:
[View PDF]Commissioner Trottenberg,
We write to you about the intersection of Clinton Street and Grand Street on the Lower East Side. Significant traffic congestion at this intersection continues to impact the surrounding streets and neighborhoods. We urge the Department of Transportation to release data, progress, conclusions, and recommendations from any traffic study at this intersection conducted in 2017 or that is underway, and to commit to developing a comprehensive plan for community review that will route bridge traffic to wider streets with more capacity.
The conditions at this intersection and nearby streets continue to worsen.
• Narrow streets that approach the Williamsburg Bridge here are inadequate for the number of cars leaving Manhattan by this route.
• Gridlock at Clinton and Grand creates a backlog of cars in two directions, impacting East Broadway and extending up the FDR Drive as far as Houston Street.
• This bottleneck creates a safety hazard for pedestrians and bicyclists over several blocks.
• Incessant honking from frustrated drivers, often late at night, is a serious aggravation for residents.
• New construction of several high-rise buildings with active retail will compound the congestion problem within this traffic zone.
• The L Train shutdown starting in 2019 will have a big effect on these same streets, as non-HVO cars are diverted from the Williamsburg Bridge.We must make plans now to help this neighborhood accommodate its rapid growth. It is not appropriate to use this residential area as an on-ramp to the Williamsburg Bridge.
Sincerely,
Caroline Laskow
Lee Berman
Daisy Paez
Democratic District LeadersSandra Strother
President, Grand Street Guild Residents AssociationDoron Stember
President, Seward Park CooperativeVaylateena Jones
Lower East Side Power PartnershipNaama Laufer
President, PS 110 PTAJeremy Sherber
President, Grand Street Democrats
Update: Howard Stern has also signed the letter for the Hillman Board of Directors. [PDF]
Local elected officials this week petitioned DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg and NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill about the ongoing traffic problem at Grand and Clinton Streets.
State Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou, State Senator Brian Kavanagh, US Reps. Nydia Velázquez and Carolyn Maloney, Borough President Gale Brewer, and Councilmember Margaret Chin all signed the letter, writing, “It is critical that your agencies work swiftly with the community to find solutions to this ongoing traffic problem.”
The letter indicates that DOT will present findings of its traffic study at a Community Board meeting in May. No date for such a presentation has yet been announced.
Elected officials wrote to Commissioner Trottenberg almost 1 year ago, after a Community Board resolution, to ask for a traffic study of the area. On June 1, 2017, Trottenberg promised the study would begin, but no results have been released.
Earlier this year, Grand Street Democrats convened a Traffic Town Hall with elected officials to help make sure DOT officials understood the seriousness of the growing problem.
After the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando in 2016, local artist and GSD member Kim Sillen organized the Senator Portrait Project — images of the US Senators who take NRA money and vote against gun safety laws. Artists from around the country contributed to the project, and the images are clarifying: here are portraits of Senators with actual blood on their hands.
This week, the paintings are being shown at nearby BestWorld Gallery at 219 Madison Street. And on Saturday evening at 6:00 pm there will be a reception and silent auction to benefit the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Victims’ Fund and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
Kim says, “The NRA knows how easy it is to buy a senator. So we wanted to offer everyone the same opportunity.” She suggests the portraits would make great protest signs (or gifts for your NRA-supporting uncle).
Also included in the silent auction is an anti-NRA leather jacket by street artist Hektad.
As an official Democratic club, Grand Street Democrats has been asked over the past couple months to endorse upstate Congressional Democratic candidates and outer-borough State Senate No-IDC challengers. The GSD Executive Committee met recently to discuss our process of providing endorsements. After much discussion, we realized that the best use of our time and attention would be to focus our efforts on races in which our members can actually vote.
To officially endorse any campaign, we would need to follow the rules we established in our bylaws for fairness to all candidates: we need to invite candidates to meet with our members, then give members a chance to vote on an endorsement. We will go through this process for all important races that affect us directly, but to do it for every campaign looking for support is not logistically practical.
Nor is it effective — what does a GSD endorsement really mean for a Democrat not looking to represent the Lower East Side? Let’s face it, they’re looking to talk to local Democratic activists outside their district mainly for one reason: money. We can’t vote for them, but we can contribute, and they probably need all the help they can get. “Endorsed by Grand Street Democrats” is not really what they need, so we’re not going to waste your time trying to give it to them.
But contributions are important; so is awareness of races outside our corner of Manhattan. GSD wants to encourage this kind of political engagement. How can we give candidates the attention they deserve?
We will try to do this in a few different ways. First, we’re partnering with Sister District, a national organization whose goal is to direct volunteer energy from deep blue districts like ours toward competitive races around the country. Secondly, we are working with other local Democratic clubs to sponsor a No-IDC forum where you can meet these progressive challengers all at once. We’ll let you know when the details have been nailed down, but we think it will be an exciting, thought-provoking event.
And third, we will help promote events hosted by GSD members for progressive candidates. So if you really care about that race in Brooklyn/Columbia County/North Carolina, and you want to help raise some money for it, host a meet-and-greet and let us know about it — we’ll tell GSD members about it through our growing email list and our active Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts.
Promoting an event for GSD members to meet a progressive candidate is not an endorsement — but for those campaigns, it’s probably better than an endorsement; it’s definitely more effective and meaningful.
If you have other ideas, please let us know.
District leaders Caroline Laskow, Lee Berman, and Daisy Paez, along with other GSD members, joined a call last month with Luis Sanchez and Sean Quinn of the Department of Transportation to follow up from our Traffic Town Hall in January. There was very little new information on the call. DOT officials said they needed time to gather and analyze data from traffic counters that have been placed in several locations around the neighborhood.
Below is a letter from GSD President Jeremy Sherber to Sanchez and Quinn being sent today. Our goal is to set reasonable deadlines for DOT to deliver data analysis and new plans.
March 5, 2018
Luis Sanchez, Manhattan Borough Commissioner
Sean Quinn, Senior Director, Office of Bicycle and Pedestrian Programs
NYC Department of Transportation
55 Water Street
New York, NY 10041Commissioner Sanchez and Director Quinn,
Many thanks for continuing to speak with community members about the growing traffic problem around Grand and Clinton Streets.
First of all, I’d like to get a follow-up meeting on the calendar for the week of May 21. That should provide enough time to read preliminary data from traffic counters and for us to have a more meaningful discussion of possible solutions and how to present options to the community.
Are you free Tuesday, May 22 or Wednesday, May 23 at 10:00 am or 11:00 am?
Second, I want to make sure to emphasize a point that I keep hearing from neighbors, and that we tried to convey in our call last month. High-rise development in the area right around the Grand/Clinton intersection has only just started: residents and stores have yet to move in to the three buildings already constructed, two more buildings are underway, and three new developments have been announced all within the immediate area we are discussing. The new buildings will be constructed as-of-right, so DOT may never be asked to weigh in on their impact — but that does not mean they won’t have an impact. Any plan we make now to mitigate the traffic in this area must take into consideration the rapid growth these few blocks are experiencing.
The existing traffic problem creates a noise and safety challenge for our residential neighborhood. New development will only add to the amount of legitimate local traffic and to the people being affected by congestion. Next year’s L train shutdown will undoubtedly create even more traffic on these narrow streets. So the solution we are asking for is one that routes Williamsburg Bridge traffic around these blocks, not through them.
We shouldn’t have to wait years until construction has stopped to plan a better traffic pattern. Drivers need to be directed to major arteries like Houston Street, Essex Street, Allen Street, and Delancey Street. The smaller streets in this residential area are not an appropriate approach to the Williamsburg Bridge — and tweaks to signage and traffic light timing are not going to change that.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Jeremy Sherber
President, Grand Street Democrats
After speaking with Rep. Carolyn Maloney and her challenger Thursday evening, Grand Street Democrats members voted to endorse Rep. Maloney for re-election in 2018.
We’ll be petitioning to help her get on the ballot starting next week, and encouraging all Democrats in her district to vote for her in the congressional primary on June 24.
Rep. Maloney has a strong record of support for women’s rights, gun safety, and affordable health care. She’s fought for years to take care of 9/11 first responders. As a NYC public school teacher and member of the city council before she was elected to Congress, Rep. Maloney has a long history of progressive, active public service.