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State Senator Cordell Cleare Helps Harlemites & Migrants With Big Community Giveaways

Editor, Our Time Press
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State Senator Cordell Cleare Helps Harlemites & Migrants With Big Community Giveaways

New York Cares has a campaign talking about a “coat drive is a team sport.” Never was a truer word spoken.
Sen. Cordell Cleare rounded out the year 2023, feeding and clothing hundreds of Harlemites and new migrants, at busy community-sponsored events; including the adult African migrant winter coat drive at the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque, on 116th Street; and the Community Giveaway and Kwanzaa Candle Lighting Ceremony, at the Children’s Aid Dunlevy Milbank Center in the heart of Harlem.
Senator Cleare’s well-known compassionate concern had her practically embracing the whole community, during the holiday season.


On December 23rd, the Senate District 30 representative joined with community partners, as the historic Masjid Malcolm Shabazz hosted hundreds of adult migrants, and locals including women, and mothers with children. The staff at the masjid graciously assisted in every aspect, as the office of Senator Cleare distributed coats and food, and provided much-requested resources, including; halal food, and information about shelter, medical and mental health resources.
“We continue to service the needs of our new migrant community, hand in hand with our established Harlem residents,” said Senator Cleare. “I want to thank everyone who contributed, and all of our community partners, who provided warm meals, hats, gloves, and other accessories for over 400 individuals while supplies lasted.”

Governor Hochul Unveils ‘Back to Basics’ Plan to Improve Reading Proficiency

Editor, Our Time Press
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Governor Hochul Unveils ‘Back to Basics’ Plan to Improve Reading Proficiency

Governor Kathy Hochul yesterday unveiled her Back to Basics plan to improve reading proficiency in New York as a part of her 2024 State of the State. To transition New York to reading instruction that teaches students the foundational skills they need to become proficient readers, Governor Hochul will introduce legislation that ensures evidence-based best practices are used throughout New York. The Governor will also propose $10 million in state investments to train 20,000 teachers in Science of Reading instructional best practices, and announced an expansion of SUNY and CUNY’s microcredentialing programs for teachers focused on the Science of Reading, to ensure our current and future teachers seeking advanced education are best prepared.


Governor Hochul said, “We cannot continue to allow our kids to fall further behind by utilizing outdated and discredited approaches to reading comprehension. Our Back to Basics initiative will reset how schools approach reading, returning to scientifically proven techniques. Along with investments in teacher training programs, we are tackling this issue head on to make sure our teachers and kids are set up for success.”
The ability to read by third grade is an important indicator of a student’s future success. Students who do not achieve proficiency by the end of third grade are four times more likely to drop out of school, with dropout rates even more pronounced for students of color and students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Additionally, failure to ensure reading proficiency at an early age has a cascading effect, potentially derailing a student’s academic trajectory, impacting future earning potential, health, and wellbeing. Recognizing the urgent need to improve reading proficiency and ensure student success, more than 30 states have transitioned to a ‘back-to-basics’ approach.
As a part of her 2024 State of the State, Governor Hochul is announcing several initiatives to get New York kids back on track.


Governor Hochul’s Back to Basics reading plan takes statewide action to ensure that every school district utilizes instructional best practices grounded in the Science of Reading. Governor Hochul will seek passage this year of legislation to require that the State Education Department (SED) promulgate instructional best practices in reading instruction, and that school districts adopt those practices. This approach includes teaching phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, vocabulary, and comprehension. 
By September of 2025, all school districts will need to certify with SED that their curriculum, instructional strategies, and teacher professional development align with all elements of the instructional best practices.
Governor Hochul also announced $10 million for teacher training programs to ensure teachers are prepared to utilize evidence-based standards in the classroom. The New York State United Teachers and the United Federation Teachers have already begun training thousands of teachers in the Science of Reading, and this funding would support the training of 20,000 additional teachers and elementary school teaching assistants. 
To prepare New York’s current and future teachers seeking advanced education, Governor Hochul’s Back to Basics plan also includes enhancing and expanding the SUNY and CUNY Microcredential Program for Teachers focused on the Science of Reading.


SUNY Chancellor John B. King, Jr. said, “Governor Hochul’s proposed $10 million investment to support thousands of teachers in implementing the Science of Reading will enable generations of students to be strong readers, and successful citizens. SUNY is the largest training ground for and educator of New York’s teachers. We’re proud of the Science of Reading microcredential now in place at SUNY New Paltz, and we look forward to growing the program, the skills of our teachers, and the success of our students, further.”
Assemblymember Robert Carroll said, “Governor Hochul correctly names and identifies one of the root causes of our state’s literacy crisis – the use of curricula and approaches to teaching literacy not grounded in the science of reading. I have been a staunch advocate for following the science of reading and as person with dyslexia know first-hand how important the use of evidence-based methods are. The research is clear that all students do better when teachers are trained on the science of reading and evidence-based practices are implemented.

Census 2020: Wake Up Call for New York and Black America

David Mark Greaves
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First Published March 29, 2018, Our Time Press

By John Louis Flateau, PhD

The Census is an ancient tool of empire. In the Book of Numbers (census!) in the Bible’s Old Testament, there are several head counts of able-bodied males of the tribes of Israel to determine the size of their armies to wage war; and for taxation purposes to finance government operations. In the New Testament, — why was baby Jesus born in Bethlehem? Because his parents, Joseph and Mary, were required by Roman law to return to his stepfather’s ancestral home, Bethlehem, the house of David, Joseph’s lineage, in order to be counted in the Census of Caesar Augustus.

The US Census is the legally mandated national count of all residents in America, as specified in Article I of the US Constitution. The first Census in 1790 was supervised by Thomas Jefferson, and it counted 698,000 Africans, over 90 percent enslaved, and 3.9 million whites in the original 13 states. The US Census has been conducted every ten years, ever since 1790. The Census has several key uses. For one, it determines Congressional Re-Apportionment, that is, how many seats each state will have in the US House Of Representatives (all states have two US Senators each, in the upper House).

Thus, the Census also determines how many votes each state will cast for President in the Electoral College, which determines the US Presidency, — not the popular vote. We learned this in 2016 when Clinton won the popular vote, but Trump won the Electoral College vote. History repeated itself in four previous presidential elections: 1800, 1824, 1876, and 2000 (Bush versus Gore).

Four of the first five (5) US Presidents were slave owners from Virginia: Washington (No. 2, John Adams, was Washington’s Vice President from Massachusetts, and he did not own slaves); Jefferson, Monroe, and Madison. This “Virginia Dynasty” ruled significantly because Virginia was the largest slave-holding state in America, according to the Census; therefore, it had the single largest voting bloc in the equivalent to today’s Electoral College.

Black America went from 698,000 over 90 percent chattel slaves and white owner’s property in the 1790 Census, whose free labor built American agriculture and infrastructure, to 4 million slaves at the dawn of the Civil War in the 1860 Census, 90 percent slave and 90 percent held economic hostages by the Southern Confederate, treasonous Slaveholders. As told by W.E.B. DuBois, Eric Foner, John Hope Franklin, and other renowned historians, Black slaves were the massive, free labor machine of the world’s dominant plantation economy of “King Cotton,” sugar cane and other agricultural production, creating vast wealth for the few, exploding American Capitalism and increasingly dominating the global economy.

Black political and economic freedom didn’t last ten years from the post-Civil War period of Reconstruction to official the Black re-enslavement with the vicious political bi-partisan “Hayes-Tilden” Compromise in the presidential election of 1876. This pernicious political deal ceded to the Confederates, Lincoln’s assassins now reconstituted as the Southern Democratic Party, control over the temporarily freed Black population, state and local politics, economy, and government; and ceded the US Presidency to Lincoln’s Republican Party, which Black people unanimously supported. This political betrayal resulted in a reign of terror in the Black South, resulting in our mass exodus to the North, Midwest, and West Coast. In the largest mass migration in US history, over 7 million Blacks evacuated the South from 1910 to 1970, according to Isabel Wilkerson in her award-winning work, The Warmth Of Other Suns.

A New, Devastating US Citizenship Question on 2020 Census Form!

Today, in 2018, Black America is nearly 50 million strong, according to the US Census Bureau’s latest American Community Survey. After 400 years, we are still struggling to assert our constitutional, civil, and human rights, full US citizenship, and “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” New York State, with 3.6 million, has the largest Black population of any state in the nation. And New York is at a critical juncture leading up to Census 2020. State and City resources must be put in place now before it is too late.

The Trump administration, on March 26, 2018, just added a question to the 2020 Census Form without legally required pre-testing (last asked in 1950), which will likely trigger a massive Census undercount and have devastating political, economic, and social consequences for Black and other communities of color. To paraphrase, the new question is, — “Are you a US Citizen, yes or no ?”

America’s 50 million Black Diasporan population contains over 11 million Continental African, Caribbean, and Afro-Latino members. Any non-citizen whose papers or relatives’ papers are not yet in order will be highly skeptical about filling out a US census form, including this question, and submitting information to a federal agency, with President Trump’s Immigration raids raging all across America. And even if they don’t fill out the form or the citizenship question, the Census Bureau still knows their address, and Census employees will be sent after them (or Immigration agents?) to complete the form. Under penalty of federal law, fine, and imprisonment, the Census Bureau should not share this information with any other agency. But today, we are living in a new, unpredictable national governmental climate.

A census undercount means fewer congressional, state legislative, and city council seats; fewer federally funded programs and services; and less civil rights enforcement; on top of the political and policy mega-shifts in Washington. Nationally, $675 billion a year in federal funds, services, and programs are allocated using Census data, and $ 7 trillion is locked in by decennial census numbers for the entire decade. $53 billion a year in New York State and $20 billion a year in New York City are in federal funds and programs. A 2020 undercount means major federal cuts on top of Trump Administration federal tax and budget policies, which have killed mortgage interest deductions and other benefits for New Yorkers. Also, civil rights and voting rights enforcement are heavily reliant on census counts to ascertain levels of racial and gender disparities and discrimination. A racial/gender undercount of protected classes will undermine the case for proof of discrimination.

The Trump-Republican-controlled Congress cut the Census 2020 budget in half, from $14 billion in 2010 to $7 billion. It is imperative that New York State and New York City governments, as well as the philanthropic and private sectors, provide substantial Census 2020 education and outreach resources now, or New York is headed for a vast undercount with dire consequences. We are already projected to lose 1-2 more Congressional seats, from our present 27 seats down to 25, and a peak of 45 seats in 1940. New York, the Empire State, once had the largest Congressional delegation in America for 100 years. California passed us in 1970, Texas in 2000, and Florida in 2017. A minority/immigrant-based Census 2020 undercount will mean political power, public services, and civil rights enforcement reductions at precisely the very time when our voices and agenda must be amplified in today’s perilous public policy climate.

The Solution? The good news is that Black America now has a head, some lead time, and 18 months to counteract this massive political and economic attack on its national well-being and sustainability as the “nation within a nation” that we have been and are now. Many groups are beginning to awaken and organize towards Census 2020. We need every New Yorker to be counted in the Census 2020, regardless of race, ethnicity, income, age, religion, gender, mobility, nationality, sexual orientation, and immigration status. Black New Yorkers, among America’s historically most undercounted groups, must do our part. Or, we will lessen our voices in the corridors of power, reduce our fair share of the blessings of liberty, and by our negligence, betray the life chances of our future generations…

Climate Change: The Challenge of Our Era

Editor, Our Time Press
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Climate Change: The Challenge of Our Era

Earth is getting hotter at a faster rate despite pledges of government action

By Tereza Pultarova
www.space.com
“If we don’t want to see the 1.5 degrees C goal disappearing in our rearview mirror, the world must work much harder and urgently at bringing emissions down.”

The progress of climate change has accelerated in recent years despite political pledges to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
Average global temperatures are rising at an ever faster rate despite pledges by world leaders to tackle climate change, a new study has revealed.
The new study, released last week during a preparatory meeting for the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference that will take place later this year in the United Arab Emirates, found that the pace of global warming has accelerated in recent years despite political commitments to curb the progress of the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times.


Global temperatures increased on average by 1.07 degrees C (1.93 degrees F) in the decade from 2010 to 2019, but the average rise in the decade from 2013 to 2022 was 1.14 degrees C (2.05 degrees F). That means that the pace of human-induced climate change is accelerating at a rate of over 0.2 degrees C per decade. The researchers said that the still- rising levels of human-made greenhouse gas emissions are the main culprit.
In 2015, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, leaders from 195 nations agreed to work toward limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) compared to preindustrial times. Despite this agreement, emissions of key greenhouse gases are “at an all-time high,” the study found.
In the last decade, humankind has been releasing about 54 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide every year into Earth’s atmosphere through various industrial activities. The failure to curb these emissions means that humankind can now only release about 250 more gigatonnes of carbon dioxide before global warming reaches the 1.5 degrees C limit. In a previous carbon budget assessment in 2020, researchers found that humankind still had over 500 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide left to reach the threshold, which shows that without significant changes, the world will be through its global carbon budget in less than five years.
“Even though we are not yet at 1.5 degrees C warming, the carbon budget will likely be exhausted in only a few years as we have a triple whammy of heating from very high carbon dioxide emissions, heating from increases in other greenhouse gas emissions and heating from reductions in pollution,” Professor Piers Forster, Director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at Leeds University and one of the authors of the study said in a statement. “If we don’t want to see the 1.5 degrees C goal disappearing in our rearview mirror, the world must work much harder and urgently at bringing emissions down.”


The researchers describe the results as a “wake-up call” and stress that with every small increment in average global temperatures, the world is set for more frequent and severe weather disasters such as droughts, floods and tropical storms.
“It is critical that policy makers and the general public be made aware of how quickly we are changing the climate through our collective activities,” Professor Peter Thorne, Director of ICARUS Climate Research Centre at Maynooth University and co-author of the research, said in the statement. “Already since the IPCC assessment of the physical science basis in 2021, key numbers have changed markedly and we remain well off track globally to avert warming above 1.5 degrees.”
The study was published on June 8 in the journal Earth System Science Data.
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https://www.space.com/climate-warming-speeding-up-despite-pledges

Cut The (Budget) Cuts Mr. Mayor

Nayaba Arinde
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Cut The (Budget) Cuts Mr. Mayor

Community Advocates Demand City Use $8 Billion Surplus Instead

By Nayaba Arinde
Editor-at-Large
“Everything is on the table,” said Mayor Eric Adams at an “ethnic media” roundtable. He was referencing possible alternatives to his painful financial cuts hitting the five boroughs.
At the same time, New York City has an $8 billion rainy day fund. Mayor Eric Adams acknowledges it now. It’s raining. The influx of 150,000-plus migrants in the past year simply exacerbated an already dire crisis of under-served people in the city. Adams announced draconian 5% cuts across all city agencies last month in his notorious November Plan, including a $547 million shortfall to schools. The City says that the November Financial Plan Update is set to save $3.7 billion over the next two years.

Our Time Press asked if cuts to programs and -needed facilities were actually necessary.
“Nothing is off the table,” he replied. Apparently, efforts are being made to figure out if there are other money-saving solutions that would not impact the schools.
Mayor Eric Adams’ November Plan established that he would subject New York City to city-agency-wide $5 billion cuts by year-end and $7 billion in January.
The draconian cutbacks would hit school programs and activities, public parks and libraries, the FDNY, and the NYPD. And since when were church services held for the closure of libraries as they were this past Sunday?
Meanwhile, President Joseph Biden seems reluctant to give the Big Apple a decent slice of federal funds to help alleviate this national issue of tens of thousands of migrants being bused or even flown to blue states by Texas Governor Gregg Abbot and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
“DC has abandoned us, and they need to be paying their cost to this national problem,” Mayor Adams. “This is unfair what we’re doing to migrant asylum seekers, and it’s unfair what we’re doing to everyday taxpayers.”


It all seemed so promising in the beginning. The mayor was jetting off to D.C. fairly often. New Yorkers thought the money flow would be frequent. Not so fast. Those visits slowed down. As Politico.com said with regards to President Biden, “he hasn’t spoken to him in nearly a year.”
So Mayor Adams advised New Yorkers, “Don’t yell at me, yell at DC.’”

The Mayor insists that New York’s 2024 $111 billion city budget is not enough to cover predicted costs, and mounting city expenses will create a $7 billion deficit in 2025. He says that the city has already spent $1.5 billion on the migrant influx.

“We had 150,000 migrants. A new city moved into our city,” said Mayor Adams, “57 percent we were able to stabilize. 80 percent of those we gave the 30-day rule went on to stabilize their lives.”
Perhaps the cuts that will impact the entire city the most may just be the $547 million slashing to the school budget. The drastic measure inspired the lawsuit against the mayor’s administration and the New York State Education Department by United Federation of Teachers union head Michael Mulgrew, AFL-CIO, United Community Schools, and others. In their complaint filed last week in Manhattan Supreme Court, the plaintiffs argue that “state law protects education funding from the temptation of local officials to deprioritize education from other preferred policies or to use such funding as a political football.”

Wanting the cuts to be cut and the DOE’s $14 billion budget restored, they said their legal action is to prevent the “Mayor from violating these laws by unilaterally moving to slash the New York City Department of Education’s DOE FY 2024 and FY 2025 education budget by staggering amounts. The approximate $547 million in immediate budget…together with the further cuts proposed that may amount to close to $2 billion stripped from City schools this fiscal year and next, will have a far-reaching and devastating impact on teachers and New York City children.”

They balk at the Mayor’s “unverified estimate” of a $11/12 billion by 2025 migrant crisis bill. Citing the $8 billion unanticipated revenue increase, UFT president Mulgrew said, “We have historic reserves in the city of New York…and they keep making up these numbers. You will not fabricate this fraud upon this city.”
One issue rallying advocates say should be on the table is – repealing the lucrative tax breaks of big schools that are also real estate moguls like NYU and Columbia, and then there are the stadiums, and property owned by major religious institutions.
The mayor delivers his “Everything is on the table,” refrain. Yet, tapping into the surplus is “not sustainable,” he said, what with the non-stop flow of migrants coming in by the 1000s every week. “The entire country should absorb this, not just a few cities.”
Gothamist reported last week that as part of former transit cop/retired NYPD captain-now Mayor Adams, and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s subway safety push, “NYPD overtime pay for extra officers in the subway went from $4 million in 2022 to $155 million this year.”
“The budget cuts proposed risk doing harm to the well-being of all New Yorkers, especially our most vulnerable, “ said New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. “City Hall should stop suggesting that asylum seekers are the reason for imposing severe cuts when they are only contributing to a portion of these budget gaps, much of which already existed.”
Lander continued, “We must continue to press for more state and federal funding…our focus should be on helping asylum seekers file their Temporary Protected Status and asylum applications, obtain work authorizations, get jobs, move out of shelter and contribute to the economy — to avoid slashing services to them and all New Yorkers.”


The Comptroller’s Office “estimates that asylum seeker costs could total $465 million less than the City budgeted this year, and $1.61 billion less than planned for FY 2025. The Comptroller’s Office estimate of total asylum seeker costs in FY 2024 and FY 2025 is about 20 percent lower than what the Mayor projects over the two years.
“Scapegoating immigrants for those cuts is antithetical to the defining role of New York as a beacon of promise, inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty,” said New York City Comptroller Brad Lander.
Community advocate Paul Muhammad from East New York’s Mosque 7C, told Our Time Press. “The overall scheduled cuts to the city’s civic services, fire, sanitation, and police, along with defunding or short-funding supportive human services agencies and non-profits, will accelerate the erosion of safety and quality of life standards for the poor people of this City. The cost of maintaining this city should be shared by those who profit the most. Developers and real estate investors are receiving huge subsidies, low-interest loans and grants, and extremely favorable zoning laws.
“They benefit from federal, state, city grants, and tax abatements – some up to and over 20 years. But, local homeowners are facing higher taxes to pay for the City’s needs.”
An irate Mr. Muhammad advised, “Stop giving the developers billions in welfare now and losing billions in future tax revenues from. Say ‘No more’ to the City of Developers free ride.”
Bed Stuy native Professor Sam Anderson told Our Time Press, “The budget cuts are going to be devastating, especially around education. The schools are already in bad shape on many different levels. The development of public education is deteriorating in New York, and the $500 million budget cut is totally unnecessary.“
Anderson, a retired math and Black history professor, continued, “There is money available, but it is being directed towards tax right-offs for developers, investment in more gentrified areas, and so on. The budget cut to libraries is going to have a direct impact on our children in the next two years.”


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