The Rent Is Still Too Damn High: Catching Up with Jimmy McMillan
Exactly 12 years have passed since Jimmy McMillan, then-candidate for governor, sat on the debate stage at Hofstra University and seared a six-word slogan into our vernacular.
McMillan’s famous phrase went viral that night—earning him immediate Saturday Night Live treatment—and continues to live on in endless memes and timeless headlines by capturing a fundamental fact of life for millions of New Yorkers then and now: The Rent Is Too Damn High.
“The rent really was too damn high,” McMillan, 75, said on a gray afternoon late last month. “And I knew it was going to get worse.”
Data Drop: How Deadly Was the First COVID Wave For Black and Latino New Yorkers? Through Freedom of Information Law requests, City Limits obtained data from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for weekly COVID-19 deaths from March 2020 to the end of July of 2022, offering a breakdown of fatalities by race/ethnicity for each week of the early crisis.Read the story.
Manhattan DA to Crackdown on ‘Systemic’ Tenant Harassment, Deed Theft Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg made good on his campaign pledge to create an investigative unit tasked with cracking down on landlords who harass tenants, developers that cheat government subsidy programs and speculators who swipe deeds from small property owners.Read the story.
With Homeless Population at All-Time High, Public Advocate Calls for Citywide Shelter Plan A bill introduced in the City Council this week would create a 15-member commission that includes people who have experienced homelessness to study current shelter locations, identify new sites and figure out how to pay for them. “Homeless New Yorkers come from every neighborhood in New York City and accordingly we need to equitably site shelters,” the bill’s sponsor said. Read the story.
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PODCAST: ¿Afecta el indulto por posesión de marihuana del presidente Biden a los inmigrantes? El 6 de octubre el presidente Joe Biden proclamó la concesión del indulto por el delito de posesión simple de marihuana a “todos los ciudadanos estadounidenses actuales y los residentes permanentes legales que cometieron el delito de posesión simple de marihuana”, dice el comunicado, dejando por fuera a inmigrantes. Leer el artículo.
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Madre | Marketing Supervising Manager MADRE is an international women's human rights organization and feminist fund that partners with community-based women's groups in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East who face war and disaster. This role is responsible for meeting key marketing performance indicators (KPIs) that year-over-year signify a growing and engaged MADRE audience. Learn more. Learn more.
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Opinion: It’s Time to Think Outside the Box to Solve the Shelter Crisis “There is a looming youth mental health crisis that must be addressed, and the professionals who educate our children have the knowledge and skills to help our young people. Suspending struggling youth only compounds the crisis, and we must reimagine school discipline to ensure that all students, regardless of race or ability, can thrive in their schools.” Read more. -Robert Mascali, former deputy commissioner for the NYC Department of Homeless Services and a vice president at Women in Need.
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