Brooklyn News Service reporter Deidra Brisco explores some of the drawbacks in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Excelsior Scholarship program, which provides free tuition at public universities to students with a household income of under $100,000 and, at a later stage, $125,000.
Student Nikki Orozova relies on vending machines at Brooklyn College for afternoon snacks. (Michelle Cummings)
By MICHELLE CUMMINGS
It’s noon and you’ve been on campus for an hour. You didn’t eat lunch because you woke up late and did not have time to stop on the way. Now, you’re trapped in class on an empty stomach until the 2:15 p.m. break. There is a vending machine just down the hall, fully stocked with goodies to tide you over. When the break finally arrives you make your selection and then horror of horrors, it gets stuck. The little spiral holding your item didn’t turn enough for the product to drop.
Alas, another student faces up to the afternoon rush for sugar.
For all the discussion on campus about good health and nutrition, colleges continue to sell snacks to students that are too high in sugar and salt, and don’t seem especially eager to provide healthy alternatives. Larger sizes for soda allow for higher prices, of course, and although bottled water is also offered, its price is similarly high. Options matter.
Researchers at Boston University recently published a study that shows excess sugar, especially from sugary drinks, can cause brain damage. According to the study, titled “Sugary Beverage Intake and Preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease in the Community,” soda is linked to brain shrinkage.
The most recent research from the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) suggests that people who drink sugary beverages frequently are more likely to have poorer memory, smaller overall brain volume and a significantly smaller hippocampus, an area of the brain linked to learning and memory.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average American consumes 39 teaspoons of sugar per day, three pounds per week and up to 13 pounds in one month. That’s 155 pounds per year, much of it in the form of sugar-sweetened beverages such as soda, sports drinks, iced tea and energy drinks. The American Heart Association recommends no more than nine teaspoons of sugar for men and six teaspoons for women per day.
On third floor of Boylan Hall, the Georgian-style building that houses Brooklyn College’s administration and many classrooms, the Pepsi vending machine is filled with 20-ounce bottles of sugary drinks. The Grape Crush has 71 grams of sugar, or about twice what experts say should be the maximum daily intake for men, and three times that for women. The Mountain Dew has 77 grams. Further down in the display, there are iced teas and juices that have less sugar – 33 grams for Brisk – but still well beyond anything that can be called healthy.
Sugar makes life sweeter. However, added sugar provides essentially no nutritional value. So, what is the difference between good and bad sugar? The American Heart Association defines healthy as naturally occurring “good sugar found in fruits and veggies.” When coupled with fiber, phytonutrients, vitamins and minerals, sugar is a great source of energy. Bad sugar is characterized by empty calories.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines healthy:
Empty calories in beverages and highly processed, packaged products is what you’ll find hiding in vending machines on most college campuses. The lack of healthy snacks is cause for concerns for some.
“Sugary snacks are not conducive to a learning environment,” said Maxinee Black-Arias, dean of nursing at the Manhattan-based Swedish Institute College of Health Sciences.
Offering convenient and nutritious options is no small task. Students have very little time between classes to stop by a cafeteria. Since hunger interferes with concentration, vending machines often save the day.
Some students would like more culturally relevant choices. Amber Ferrin, a junior at Brooklyn College, prefers plantain chips to potato chips. Ferrin is also concerned about price. Ferrin said, “75 cents for a tiny bag with like five chips in it versus a $2 larger bag with mostly air. Really? We need a happy medium.”
“There are no real choices in the vending machines, just junk,” said Black-Arias. “As leaders and proponents of health we must model better eating habits. Providing students with convenient, healthier food options shows we value nutrition and student’s overall health.”
But some options are available, said Joe Gallopini, director of food service at Metropolitan Food Services at Brooklyn College. “We offer healthy items like nuts, but they don’t sell nearly as well as candy and chips,” he said. Gallopini says that for some, vending machines often become the go-to snack source and that the choices made are not always the healthiest. “People who rely on vending machines are not the same people concerned about healthy snacks,” he said. “These are two very different consumers.”
Excess sugar consumption is linked to higher risk of heart disease. As national intake has increased, so have obesity levels. The Centers for Disease Control reportsthere are 86 million pre-diabetics in America and 29 million living with Type 2 diabetes. “The biggest problem we face today is overweight people. It is especially true for young adults. Gen X and Gen Y are the unhealthiest generations of young people and will likely tax the healthcare system with future obesity-related illness,” Black-Arias says.
According to the Healthy CUNY 2011 report, the consensus was that all would like to see healthier options in campus vending machines. Improvement such as snacks and chips that had been reformulated to have fewer calories, less saturated and trans fat, and/or salt were made. “In the past we have tried carrying healthier snacks like pop-corn, nuts, Nature Valley granola bars and Wheat Thins after the students complained, but then the product didn’t move,” said Gallopini.
About two years ago, students started a petition calling for healthier options in the vending machines at Brooklyn College. “Students need to know the power they have when they voice their frustrations collectively,” Diedra Brisco, Brooklyn College journalism major and senior, said. “There is strength in numbers.”
Metropolitan Food Service manages 100 standard vending machines on Brooklyn College campus. FastCorp Vending provides ice cream vending machines. What they do not have is a refrigerated machine that stocks healthier alternatives. Nutritious snack options such as fruit cups, hummus, cheese, Greek yogurt, kefir, chocolate covered nuts and organically dried fruit require refrigeration.
Demand for a healthier version of the vending machine may be met with surprising receptivity. Gallopini said that to change the vending machine options to add healthier snacks, “Just ask, we’ll stock it.” He said Metropolitan is open to brand-specific products and suggestions compatible with the current machines on the Brooklyn College campus.
One of the biggest challenges is meeting the needs of everyone. According to Carl Jeff of Vendrite, it is possible to offer students healthier snack choices without sacrificing convenience or taste. “The future of vending may rest in micro markets,” he said. “Reimagine a commissary-type micro market as an opportunity to effect significant change in the daily lives of most on the go students.”
Micro markets are a new food service option. Fair trade snacks, unsweetened beverages and fresh fruit are available 24/7 in a self-service system at Virginia Science and Tech.
Trips to the vending machines are inevitable. Can they be made healthier? In a study, published in the International Journal of Food Safety, Nutrition and Public Health in 2014, researchers conducted an experiment with 200 college students. Scientists replaced high-sugar, salt and fat snacks sold in two campus vending machines with healthier options to find out how students responded. The results suggest students who were aware of the healthier snack choices were excited to have alternatives. Promoting healthier choices did not affect sales.
“Students will consume what is available,” Black-Arias said. “ If we can influence this behavior with better choices, we can consider that winning.”
Brooklyn News Service reporter Lisa Flaugh explores efforts to return New York City to its one-time status as the world’s oyster capital.
Brooklyn News Service reporter Paul Frangipane explores what sanctuary status means to undocumented immigrant students at Brooklyn College. (Photo: Paul Frangipane)
By ALAIN GAILLARD
The soup kitchen starts serving food at 10:30 every morning. A few soup kitchen guests begin gathering outside the main entrance of St. John’s Bread and Life in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, a half-hour before the doors open.
After the doors open, the seats around the tables in the cafeteria start filling with guests who wait for their hot food in an atmosphere of familiarity. Everyone is engaged in a conversation; everyone seems to know one another.
One impact of gentrification in Bedford-Stuyvesant is that rising rent has caused more residents to turn to St. John’s Bread and Life for food, said Anthony Butler, the soup kitchen’s executive director.
The number of participants asking for hot meals has increased by about 5.5 percent over the last year, Butler said, while the number of participants in the food pantry and the grocery section has increased by 11 percent. “Folks are spending more and more money on rent and making choices between rent and food, so they are using our service because they don’t have enough money to make ends meet,” he said. “The cost of living, particularly housing, really squeezes everything, especially with the gentrification going on in Bed-Stuy.”
With a current population of 153,000, Bedford-Stuyvesant was named for Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch director of the colony of New Netherland before it was renamed New York. Before the gentrification process began in the early 2000s, the neighborhood was mostly inhabited by African-American and Caribbean immigrants, groups that moved in from Harlem in the early 1930s.
According to census data, the number of white residents increased from 2.4 percent in 2000 to 15 percent in 2010. Housing prices are also rising: for example, a tenant is paying $3,550 for three bedrooms in Bedford-Stuyvesant compared with $2,850 for three bedrooms in Flatbush.
Kenneth Gould, professor of sociology and earth and environmental sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center, explained that the first big gentrification push in Brooklyn was so-called bridge and tunnel gentrification. “This happened in places such as Williamsburg, which had good transportation access to points of employment or more affluent neighborhoods, but were not valued as much as those neighborhoods,” said Gould, who is also director of the Urban Sustainability Program at Brooklyn College. “From Williamsburg, people could access Manhattan faster than other neighborhoods.”
Sharon Zukin, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and at the CUNY Graduate Center, has conducted studies on the type of restaurants that do business in Bedford-Stuyvesant. She suggested that the neighborhood’s cultural diversity is seen in the offering of restaurants and the changes in the retail corridor of Fulton Street, which is one of the main streets.
Zukin explained that Bedford-Stuyvesant residents are very proud of their neighborhood, which is why low-income residents want to stay there despite rising costs. “The suffering of people who stay in Bed-Stuy is mitigated by their pride that the neighborhood is coming up,” she said. “Some benefits have been brought by gentrification, but these benefits may be outweighed by the economic cost, the psychological cost, and the feeling that their neighborhood is not theirs anymore”
This is an opinion shared by Gould: “Sometimes, homeowners can stay longer and enjoy some of the amenities, too. Although, they have their amenities at the cost of losing their neighborhood, and they start to feel like more of an alien in their own neighborhood,” he said. “This is where I live but I don’t feel like I belong to the neighborhood anymore. This restaurant isn’t for me, this supermarket isn’t for me, the culture of the street isn’t for me.”
Gould said Bedford-Stuyvesant is a popular place “because of its attractive housing stock so that the white affluent population could identify with the neighborhood as a place they wanted to move into. The other thing is that this is a low crime neighborhood,” he said.
To resist gentrification, Gould suggested that communities be more organized. “Well-organized communities with pre-existing social institutions like Uprose in Sunset Park, for example, are able to intervene in the public process and stop the rezoning,” he said. “They are able to modify and fight proposals. A community that is not organized, cannot anticipate and is totally vulnerable.”
Gould also suggested that more public policy intervention should be implemented to retain affordable housing. “We need rent control, stabilized rates. We need more affordable housing built, we need affordable housing maintained, we need more public housing, and we need the minimum wage raised well beyond $15 to meet to average rent in the city,” he said.
One sign of poverty is households in which families are spending half of their income toward housing. The result is that many families rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, to eat. SNAP provides food assistance for nearly 1.8 million low-income New Yorkers.
Anthony Butler
Butler thinks the expansion of programs such as SNAP can be important to tackle poverty. “If they increase the SNAP benefits, they could really reduce the demand in places like this [St. John’s Bread and Life],” he said. “If they increase the SNAP benefits we could get to a point where only the folks who are using places like this would be very disorganized; the kind of classic folks like the homeless, folks with significant mental health problems, significant substance abuse problems. SNAP does work.”
However, a SNAP expansion is not at hand. President Trump’s budget proposal is asking for big cuts in almost everything. According to Butler, the president’s proposal, if passed, will not have a big impact on St. John’s Bread and Life activities because the organization is 90 percent privately funded and receives very little federal money.
The main concern for Butler is the reduction of the money available for food stamps. Unless the hunger problem is really addressed, he sees a bleak future with more large organizations like St. John’s Bread and Life. “The problem is we still don’t have a minimum living wage in this country,” he said. “The minimum needed to live on is creeping up, which is why so many people working for Walmart are on food stamps. A great number of fast food workers are also on food stamps.”
Video: Alain Gaillard reports for Brooklyn News Service on how rising rents in Bedford-Stuyvesant have led more people to soup kitchens.
By JOSEPH DE LA CRUZ
New York City School Chancellor Carmen Fariña visited P.S. 58 in Maspeth this week to assure parents that their children would be safe from immigration agents after two officials were turned away when they attempted to inquire about a student.
“In our schools we protect our students and our families and want to reassure parents that no information is ever given to any federal agent,” Farina said.
The chancellor, who visited the school last Monday, stressed that any immigration official who attempts to obtain information on students would not only be denied but also kept outside the school building while the principal seek counsel from Department of Education’s legal division.
“We are assuring parents that not only were the agents never allowed beyond the front door, that in the future they will actually be kept out on the sidewalks,” she said.
The two agents from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services were stopped at the front door of the Maspeth, Queens school when they tried to enter the building on May 11.
Farina said the education department would be sending more guidelines to city schools so employees, “from the school custodian to the highest level of school administration,” know what to do if immigration agents arrive.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said the two officials who visited the school were not agents but representatives who were only there to determine whether a student was enrolled at P.S. 58 as a follow up for a benefits request.
They are officers who do not have enforcement powers or carry warrants. Only Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can carry out those tasks. At no time did they request to speak with the child, school officials said.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, the officers were able to confirm with the school’s administration that the child did not attend that school.
The Department of Homeland Security noted on Twitter that the its officers “were not barred from the property nor asked to leave.”
“I think it was a protocol that DHS was following that probably wasn’t the best considered in light of all the fear that exists at the community level right now,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on a live appearance of NY1’s “Inside City Hall.” “If an agent had to pursue information for an immigration application, well, that’s fine, but I think there’s better ways to do it than appearing at the door of a school.”
Schools in communities with large immigrant populations have been on edge since President Donald Trump took office and ordered stricter enforcement of immigration laws.
One school that has focused on the issue is P.S. 65 in the Cypress Hills section of Brooklyn.
“It’s a concerning issue because this is an immigrant driven community,” said Daysi Garcia, the school’s principal. “More most of our students come from immigrant families and half of them are immigrants themselves and who knows how many of them are here legally.”
Most of the residents in the community come from the Dominican Republic or other Latin American countries. Nearby neighborhoods such as Bushwick have already experienced federal immigration raids in several local businesses.
“We’ve had some parents that have consulted with us about possibly pulling their kids out of school,” Garcia said. “We had to reassure them that students are safe and don’t necessarily run the risk of being detained by immigration enforcement.”
Teachers have held class discussions about what to do if students go home and find that their parents are not there.
“We try not to worry them but we want them to know that the school is the first place they should go to if they’re parents aren’t home,” Samantha Quinones, an elementary school teacher, said. “We try not to scare them with ICE so we just tell them you know, ‘if you forgot your keys or no one is home yet from work’, we make it a universal issue rather than just ICE.”
Students in communities like Cypress Hills are often English language learners. Worrying about deportation is a distraction teachers argue their students cannot afford, especially during state examination time.
“My students have a hard enough time trying to keep up with the curriculum. They don’t need to worry about men and women in suits with guns coming to take them,” Quinones said. “I mean even the parents, some work two jobs and can’t even be as involved in their child’s academic lives because of time constraints and now they have to deal with the thought of having their family deported back to their country.”
Some students who were not born here have already gotten past the difficulties of assimilation and are now familiar with many of the American customs they have grown to love.
“Could you imagine being taken from a place that you’ve already gotten to know and love most if not all your life,” she said.
The Department of Education is taking steps to educate not just staff and faculties at schools across the city but also parents. Letters were sent to tell parents what the city’s school policies are, counsel was provided to help advise parents who may need a better understanding of how to deal with immigration situations.
“We have some resources like workshops that have been provided to us by the DOE that we can refer to parents who have concerns,” John Galassi, guidance counselor at P.S. 65,, said. “It eases the worries of these parents to know that the school community has their back on this.”
The city had previously ordered school employees not to allow immigration agents or FBI agents into their buildings back in February.
Officials said if Immigration and Customs Enforcement obtain a valid warrant, they’ll be allowed to execute it, but restricted only to the contents of the warrant a judge has signed off on.
New York City is considered a sanctuary city that has refused to cooperate with federal immigration crackdowns. had signed an order to stop federal funding to sanctuary cities if they fail to adhere to those policies but a judge in San Francisco blocked the order in April.
“We don’t expect for ICE to come looking for students at our schools, although with this administration you never know,” Garcia said. “But if they come we’ll be ready to deal with them.”
By ANDREW HUGHES
An American man who conspired with al Qaeda but later cooperated with government investigators was sentenced to 90 days in prison on Thursday.
Bryant Neal Vinas, a Long Island man, appeared in Brooklyn federal court where he was charged with several counts of terrorism. The al Qaeda recruit was accused of trying to convince terrorist leaders to carry out a bombing of the Long Island Railroad as well as a Walmart store.
Vinas pleaded guilty in January 2009 and already has served eight and a half years in prison. He could have faced life in prison but his defense attorneys said his cooperation merited a release from prison.
“We can proudly state that Mr. Vinas took the worst experience of his life and turned himself into one of America’s greatest weapons against al Qaeda,” said defense lawyers Michael Bachrach and Steve Zissou in a joint statement. ”He saved lives and he helped the Untied States government substantially dismantle what had been the greatest threat to our nation and to our Western allies.”
The prosecutors conceded that Vinas provided helpful evidence to use against the terrorist group.
Vinas was originally caught in 2008 on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, his capture kept secret due to the nature of the information he provided to U.S. officials. The terrorist organization welcomed him in 2007.
The son of two South American immigrants expressed sorrow in a statement to the judge.
“I would like to express my deepest apologies to the court,” said Vinas.
He also expressed optimism for the future: “I would like to turn a bad thing into a good thing.”
By JON REMACHE
New York lawmakers joined anti-Trump protestors on Thursday, vowing to introduce a bill to cut pension funds of companies that support President Trump’s stance on immigration.
The “Corporate Backers of Hate” campaign took place outside of JP Morgan Chase headquarters in Midtown and was led by dozens of demonstrators including members of the Churches United For Fair Housing and members of the Make the Road New York organization.
The campaign began at the start of the month after supporters criticized the profits nine companies earn by supporting the Trump administration’s immigration and worker’s rights policy.
“We’re going to be watching you,” said State Senator Gustavo Rivera. “The actions of this administration and the attacks on vulnerable populations are going to be resisted by the people here and the by the people all across this country that have already been resistant. But, If you profit from these actions we are going to be watching you and the repercussions are going to be real.”
Signs in Spanish said, “No more Deportations” and ‘wanted” signs featured a photo of JP Morgan Chase chairman Jamie Dimon’s face. Chase was accused by Make the Road New York executive director Javier Valdes of investing in immigration detention centers and private prisons.
“I am extremely embarrassed of what’s going on in our federal government,” added assemblywoman, Nily Rozac. “There’s only one way we can get answers to our questions and that is through our resistance and through our actions.”
A JP Morgan Chase representative declined to comment.
By STEVEN FERRARO
The wife and mother of a Queens mob group was sentenced to a seven year jail term on Thursday for smuggling cocaine to her family-owned pizzeria.
Eleonora Gigliotti appeared in Brooklyn Federal Court in front of Judge Raymond Dearie to be handed her sentence. Gigliotti pleaded guilty in January to smuggling 120 kilos of the narcotic. She, along with her husband, Gregorio, son, Angelo, and relative, Franco Fazio conducted crimes that would build an international drug operation between the U.S., Italy and Costa Rica.
From July 2014 to March 2015, Gigliotti was accused of making several trips trips to Costa Rica, where she would bring hundreds of thousands of dollars to an unknown supplier. Dearie noted early in the procedure that this particular sentencing was a difficult one – one that made him consult with multiple colleagues.
This was because of several factors, including her “mental problems” and status as a mostly upstanding, hard-working citizen, attested to by slew of letters sent to Judge Dearie by her family. These two points were exhaustingly argued by Gigliotti’s lawyer, Nicholas Kaizer.
Kaizer made sure the court knew how proud Gigliotti was of her restaurant in Corona, Cucino a Modo Mio. This place of pride was also the source of her drug operation – a point that Assistant U.S Attorney Keith Edelman used as a counter argument. Law enforcement found an arsenal of guns, ammunition, brass knuckles and over $100,000 in cash in the store.
This didn’t stop Kaizer from trying to get the judge to lower his sentence at the last minute. The defense attorney asked for 60 months in prison, because Gigliotti’s experience over the past two years has been hard. He added that his defendant wouldn’t even be in court if it weren’t for her toxic marriage.
Her husband Gregorio Gigliotti, he said, is “combative, volatile,” and has a “dynamic, explosive nature”.
Edelman rejected this by again stressing her “crucial role” in the drug operation. Although Dearie did not agree with the entire argument, he did note that Gigliotti might be in a different situation if she had not married Gregorio. Dearie continually expressed his sympathy for Gigliotti.
She was allowed to say a few words just before her sentence was passed. She expressed regret for her crimes. “I want to be a good mother and grandmother when I get out,” she said before mumbling the rest of her apology. She waved and blew kisses to the small group of family sitting in the court as she was being taken out.
A shattered family is an expression that describes the Gigliotti’s all too well. Matriarch Gregorio was sentenced to 18 years in prison last month. Angelo Gigliotti is still waiting for his sentence. He is expecting a minimum of 20 years behind bars. Fazio is being tried in his home country of Italy. His extradition is expected later.
By DEREK NORMAN, LOGAN WILBER & RAYCHELLE BALENTIEN
Thursday evening marked President Trump’s first visit to his home town since his inauguration, which resulted in the disruption of traffic, a heavy police presence and scattered protests across midtown Manhattan.
All for practically naught.
President Trump, scheduled at first to arrive at 3 p.m. and to meet the Australian Prime Minister at his hotel, drop by Trump Tower to pick up his wife Melania and join Malcom Turnbull and World War II vets aboard the aircraft carrier-turned museum the Intrepid, was delayed several hours after passage of his long awaited “repeal and replace” healthcare bill through the House of Representatives. . While the president celebrated at the White House Rose Garden, Turnbull cooled his heels in black tie awaiting Trump’s arrival, along with thousands of police officers and protestors on Manhattan’s west side.
The protests, organized by the Working Families Party, kicked off around midday along the heavily barricaded Twelfth Avenue sidewalks stretching from Dewitt Clinton Park down to the Intrepid, which is docked at Pier 86 on 46 Street. Among those attending was New York Public Advocate Letitia James, Paola Mendoza, director of the Women’s March, and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.
“Together we shoulder the responsibility of defending our democracy,” James told the protestors. “We are indivisible and we are inextricably tied together by the fabric of humanity. We are one and quite simply, we are the resistance. It is time that we rise, raise our hands, our fists, our voices and more importantly, it’s time that we defeat this administration.”
Trump, having cut cut short the original schedule, arrived at JFK airport as the sun was westering, choppered to the Wall Street heliport and motorcaded up the West Side Highway to the Intrepid, all of which slowed traffic on the west side, along with the waterways. Police boats intercepted a couple of Greenpeace vessels protesting on the Hudson.
Following his gala, Trump took a helicopter to his Bedminster Golf Club in New Jersey where he was expected to spend the weekend.
The dinner commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea, where the two countries fought alongside each other against Japan during WWII. Eight veterans who fought in the naval battle, now in their 90’s, attended, five of whom traveled 28 hours from Australia.
The dinner was the first time the two leaders met face-to-face since a phone call in February, where the two discussed an Obama-era dealt accept Syrian refugees, which Trump noted as “dumb” and raised questions as the smoothness of the future relationship between the two countries. Both in jovial spirits at the celebration branded the press accounts “exaggerated” and called the phone call “great,” according to Trump.
New York City’s highest officials did not attend the dinner. Mayor de Blasio declined the invitation, citing “scheduling conflicts” and Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters he was unsure if he was even invited.
Though the president only spent about four hours in the city, the police department had to shoulder what was roughly $300,000 in security expenses for locking down not only where the president had visited, but protestors at his Midtown residence of Trump Tower, where his wife and son still reside.
While the police department had its resources spread thin to cover other parts of the city, they had lined 16 sanitation trucks on Fifth Avenue to protect Trump Tower, an anti-terrorist tactic preventing vehicles from nearing the building.
Outside the tower, one Vietnam veteran from Staten Island, Bill Johnsen, was protesting the arrival of the president.
“I have seen the growth, if that is the proper word…” said Johnsen. “The development of the persona of Donald J. Trump over the decades and he has been if one thing, and perhaps one thing only, an egomaniac of the extreme sort. Selling the Donald Trump name is ultimately who he is.”
The late arrival of Trump naturally led to the president avoiding the peak of the protests. Earlier during the day at Dewitt Clinton Park, just blocks away from the Intrepid, police had cleared a barricaded path for the protestors to march as close as permissible to the meeting. Many people marched banging pots and pans, known as cacerolazo, a common South American form of protest, which is meant to represent the common people. Many immigrants joined in speaking out, some like Christina Jimenez, a Queens resident, who declared that Trump, a Queens native himself, was not welcome here. “He isn’t a real New Yorker, he’s a penthouse New Yorker. We are the real New Yorkers.”
Last Wednesday night, members of the Women’s March hung a banner off the side of the Intrepid, as well as the Staten Island ferry, displaying the words “#NOTRUMPNYC.” The banner on the Intrepid was taken down, but the banner hung on the ferry could be seen most of the day. Protests lasted well into Trump’s arrival, while many passing New Yorkers honked in solidarity with their activist neighbors.
“New York City is the epitome of what is good about this world – People of all faiths, ethnicities, races and genders, living in one place with no space for hate at all,” said James just before seeing off the protestors on their march to the Intrepid. “If you try to build a wall, we will knock it down and build schools instead. If you try to deny us federals funds, we will say no, because when ignorance prevails, the courts always step in with sweet and tender justice. I know these past months have been overwhelming and draining, but silence, my friends, equals death; a death to a nation founded upon liberty and justice for all.”
