New Yorkers stopped voting because they no longer feel Government Does Not Service Their Needs
Many residents feel disconnected from city politics because they do not understand how their government works. Problems including homelessness, poverty, lack of affordable housing and the closings of small businesses have been proliferating for years with no solutions. Pay to play corruption is everywhere. How do we elect leaders in our government to fix these and other problems? How is NYC progressive if it has suppressive voting laws that keep low voters turnout?
NYC's dwindling voter turnout hits new low - NY Daily News
The percentage of mayoral votes has dropped nearly every four years for decades - 13% 2017 - 93% 1951How the NYS Election Law Suppresses Voter Turnout, Helps Incumbents and Takes Power Away from the City's Neighborhoods
The New Tammany Hall is Made Up of Party Bosses and
Unelected Lobbyists Most Times Working Together
Low Voting Caused by NY’s Undemocratic Voter Suppression Election Law Has Empowered Modern Political Bosses into a New Tammany Hall, Cutting the Voters Out of Elections, While Enriching the Campaign Consultant Lobbyists and Political Party Bosses
Tammany Hall Still Runs NYC's Political Parties in 2018
Almost Nobody Votes in Party Elections . . . Most Party Bosses Stay in Power for Decades with No Challenges
How Party Bosses, Not Voters, Pick Candidates in New York
It's Party Bosses — Not Voters — Who Often Fill Vacant Seats in the State Legislature
Squadron's Sudden Resignation Hands His Seat To The Party Bosses ...
Party Boss Has Firm Grip On Judgeships The uninitiated might imagine that judges in New York City ascend to the bench by destiny, the only sound the swishing of their black robes. But the selection of judges may be one of the few areas of local politics where back-room deals are still the rule, and where the county political leaders exercise the greatest control.
Many Local Activists and People Involved in Their Local Community Groups Do See How the Effectiveness of Their Cause Will Benefit If Their Add Their Voice Inside the Democratic Party to the Issues They Care About.
Groups Working for Issues in NYC Should Not Do It As Outsiders in the Democratic Party
Run for Your County Committee! - Veterans Alliance
Affordable Housing and Tenant Leaders Must Run for County Committee
People Working for Better Schools Should Also Be Running for County Committee
Groups fighting for Seniors Should Have their Members Run for County Committee
Groups Fighting for Property Tax Relief Should Have their Members Run for County Committee
Groups Seeking to improve the Subways Should Have their Members Run for County Committee
Neighborhood Associations Seeking to Improve Their Community Quality of Life
Lobbyists Campaign Consultants Funded by Developers and City Contractors Have Centralized Politics, Sucking the Power Out of the City's Neighborhoods . . . Blocking Local Leaders From Running
Low Turnout Elections Has Enable, Given More Power to Lobbyists, Party Leaders Who are Funded by Developers, Unions and Other City Contractors to Control Who Gets Elected in Local Elections
Local leaders who want to solver the real problems like affordable housing, better schools and help for mom and pop businesses have a very hard time getting elected.
Shadow lobbyists Corruption Were At the Center At the Both the Skelos and Silver Trials
he Lobbyist's Shadow Government
Corrupt Money Pours Into Incumbent Pols
Governor pulls in real estate contributions through 'egregious' loophole
Mr. Right Now: de Blasio Continues Wooing Real Estate ...
De Blasio 'doesn't recall' $100K donation in alleged pay-to-play scheme
Lobbyists have stuffed their pockets under de Blasio - New York Post
De Blasio solicited donations in exchange for meetings with major lobbyist’s clients but didn't report it - Daily News
Lobbyists Were At the Center of the Pay to Play Corruption in the Silver, Skelos, Percoco Trials and de Blasio Has His Secret Agents Lobbyists
Hundreds of Democrats rally to oust Manhattan Democratic Chair Keith Wright
Hundreds of Democrats rally to oust Manhattan Democratic Chair Keith Wrigh
The Forgotten Virtues of Tammany Hall - The New York Times
Party Leaders Have Now Been Joined by Lobbyist Sometimes Working Together to Control Who Gets Elected
Old time Tammany Halls' Boss De Sapio lobbied for affordable housing, protecting neighborhoods from developers and for lower subway fairs. Political Boss De Sapio kept his power by delivering votes to politicians. District Leaders in the Tammany Hall era needed to not only deliver government services and jobs to voters in their districts. They also needed to protect their neighborhoods to keep their deliverable votes high, from the developers who were trying to raise rents and displace residents. Today's Gentrification displacement and low voting in local elections created a campaign consultant lobbyists shadow govt that has taken power out of the local community by controlling who gets elected. A cabal of developers, government contractors and unions elect local candidates who then run the government to benefit the groups that helped elect them.
undreds of Democrats rally to oust Manhattan Democratic Chair Keith Wri
City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York | Books | Nation ...
The Forgotten Virtues of Tammany Hall - The New York Times
The lobbyist-consultants gain power by using money from the developers and city contractors to drive out local candidates. They use the
Walmart model of destroying local competition of independent candidates who can fight the pay to play corruption for the needs and concerns of the community. This Walmart-like takeover of local political campaigns sucks the power out of NYC's once strong neighborhood control. Super tall buildings all over and no leaders to fight the special interests that are destroying affordable housing, mom and pop stores and ignore homelessness, poor education, broken subways and other quality of live problems. As Jack Newfield, the late great journalist wrote in his book The Permanent Government: to fix NYC, we need to empower the people of New York to take back the control over political parties from party bosses bottom up, block by block, electing candidates who will fight for the needs of the people and the neighborhoods they live in.
Andrew Cuomo Goes to Albany, Where Lobbyists Are Waiting (Voice, Barrett, 2010)
Only By Occupying the Local Democratic Party Can We Begin to Take Back NYC's Govt and Elections
Community involvement is also the only way to fight pay to play corruption in Albany and City Hall. Albany refuses to change NY's Suppressive Voting Laws because low voting helps incumbent politicians, consultant lobbyists and party bosses win re-election. Voting in NYC is at its lowest--only 13% voted in the Democratic Primary in 2017 for mayor or city council. By comparison, in 1951 voter participation was over 90% for these seats. In 2016, only 4% of new Yorker's voted in the 2016 democratic primary for their district leader, county committee and democratic party chairman.
NYC had an abysmally low voter turnout in Tuesday's primary election
Jimmy Breslin on His Mayoral Run With Norman Mailer ... - NYMag
NYC Needs to Empower the Neighborhoods and Its People Like Mayor Lindsay Tried 50 Years Ago
The 1963 City Charter, adopted during Wagner’s third term as Mayor, extended the neighborhood governance concept to the other boroughs, establishing 'Community Planning Boards' throughout the city. Eventually, these came to be known simply as 'Community Boards.' In 1989, the voters of New York City ratified new Charter provisions, changing how City government deals with the budget, land-use matters, and service delivery. The Community Board’s important roles in all of these areas were either expanded or reaffirmed by the new Charter.
The Political Bosses Who Run the Board of Election Removed Thousands of Bernie Sanders Voters and Got Away With It
How the County Committee Works
The NY Democratic Party is governed by committees of citizens who are registered Democrats, from the state level down to the block you live on.
The largest national parties (Democrats and Republicans) are mandated by the state to have a committee of party members in each of New York's 62 counties. In NYC, there are separate County Committees for each party in Kings, Queens, Bronx, New York, and Richmond Counties. County Committee Members Are Elected by Voters In Each of the City's Elections Districts (EDs). There are Almost 10,000 EDs in the city.
How the Bronx County Committee Has Been Abused
Squadron Departure Spotlights Importance of County Committee
Every two years, Democrats in each assembly district elect two district leaders: one male and one female
These District Leaders Choose the Party Boss
Who Server Their Needs Not the Communities
Fix NYC wants the county committee to pick the party leader
Who Server Their Needs Not the Communities
Fix NYC wants the county committee to pick the party leader
OLD TIMES DISTRICT LEADERS The District leaders are able in a hundred ways to benefit their
followers. They try to get them work when they are idle; they provide
amusement for them in the shape of picnics and steamboat excursions;
and, in exceptional cases, they care for them when suffering from want
or sickness; and they are always ready to help them when they have
fallen into trouble with the representatives of the law. They thus get a
very strong influence over a large class, the members of which are
ordinarily fairly decent men, who work with reasonable industry at their
trades, but who never get far ahead, who at times fall into want, and
who sometimes have kinsfolk of semi-criminal type. These men are apt to
regard the saloon as their club-house; often, indeed, the saloons are
the headquarters of the District political organizations, and become in a
double sense the true social centers of neighborhood life.
The District Leaders and Boss Make Up the Executive Committee of the County Committee
Fix NYC plan would transfer the power of the executive committee back to the county committee.
There are 21 Assembly Districts in Brooklyn, and When All the Seats are Filled, the Executive Committee has 42 members
Fix NYC believes that the party executive committees are controlled by the political bosses who have too much power.
County Committee Members are Elected By Elections Districts
Each election district (or ED) is made up of a small number of city blocks. Each ED has two (2) to four (4) seats in the general membership of the county committee; so when all the seats are filled, there are approximately 3000 members.
Squadron Departure Spotlights Importance of County Committee
Our Un-Democratic County Committee
The political bosses ensure that a vast number of the seats on the county committee are left unfilled, undermining our goal of broad participation in the county decision-making. These political bosses usurp the power of the county committee by using proxies of county committee members they elect to control what the county committee does. Instead of representing the needs of Brooklyn residents, the county committee operates as a private country club by representing the interests of political bosses.
- Select judicial candidates for Supreme Court
- Select the Democratic Party's nominee in special elections
- This one is particularly important, since one (1) in three (3) current New York state legislators were chosen in a special election!
- Help Create the Democratic Party Platform (currently not being used at all):
- Spearhead Ethics Reforms in Both City Hall and Albany
- Reforms to NY's Voter Suppression Election Laws Ethics
- Fight Developers
- Push for Better Schools and Health Care
- Fight Air Pollution and Traffic Safety/Congestion
- Neighborhood Planning and Zoning
- Education and Police Oversight
- Reduce Sanitation and Parking Tickets
- Organize local neighborhoods
- And more!
- Up until recently? Show up once every two years and hand the power over to the party boss.
You Need Petitions to Run for County Committee and Other Party Offices
Petitions Start June 5th and Run Through July 12th 2018
you will only need 3 to 20 signatures from the ED!
5% of the registered Party Voters in That ED
How to Run for District Leader
1 male and 1 female from each of the Assembly Districts need only
500 Signatures from the AD
Maps of the Assembly Districts
Look Up What Election and Assembly District You Live in
No, Seriously: What’s a District Leader
The District Leaders coordinate the party's functions in the district: arranging for poll workers to staff sites on election day, collecting signatures to get Democratic candidates on the ballot, communicating community needs to Democratic elected officials, organizing the local get-out-the-vote operation, and representing the neighborhood on the county party executive committee. Unfortunately, it is all too common for District Leaders to neglect these basic, grassroots party-building activities and instead focus on getting their favored candidates elected to local judgeships. If you would like to know more about what I have done since being elected leader
Who Chooses Supreme Court Judges
Judicial Delegates Pick Supreme Court Judges From A Convention Held Right After the Democratic Primary.
To become a Judicial Delegate you will only need 500 Signatures from your Assembly District! All 6 of the Judicial Candidates From the Same ED Can Appear on the Same Petiton
A Convention Made Up of Winning Judicial Delegates (about a 100 delegates) Meets Once After the Primary to Nominate Supreme Court Judges
Who Really Picks New York's Judges? | Brennan Center for Justice
Voter Suppression in Deep-Blue New York - Bloomberg
How Party Bosses, Not Voters, Pick Candidates in New York - NY Times
It's Party Bosses — Not Voters — Who Often Fill Vacant Seats in the State Legislature
Special delivery:Time to consign undemocratic boss-driven special elections to history (NYDN) Let these be the last two contests conducted under New York’s
grossly undemocratic special election law. That statute cuts out the
usual party primaries, thereby empowering Democratic and Republican
bosses to put whatever loyal soldiers they choose on the ballot. Voters
get no real choice about who represents them — especially in places
where one party dominates, as Democrats do in most of New York City.
McGoven;s 1 Primary Lesson Still Rules
40 Years Ago George McGovern Presidential Race Pull Out Tens of Thousands of New Voters in A Primary Which Caused A Lot of Albany Incumbents Lose
An Expensive and Unnecessary Election(NYT Ed)
The extra New York State primary will cost state taxpayers $50 million
for their trouble. New York State is poised to put voters through
another needlessly
expensive election year. Instead of taking the sensible route — one
primary to pick party candidates and one general election to pick
ultimate winners — New York is scheduled to have an extra primary. That
means three elections when two are enough. The extra primary will cost
state taxpayers $50 million for their trouble. The
Assembly was right to challenge this scenario with a bill providing for
federal, state and local primaries on the fourth Tuesday in June (the
24th this year). That gives officials plenty of time to count ballots
and announce nominees for the November general election. It also allows
the state to comply with federal law that requires primaries to be held
early enough so that troops overseas can get ballots and mail them back
in time to be counted. The
Senate, however, has yet to agree to a single June primary. Its members
want a federal primary in June and a separate state and local primary
(which would include their own primary elections) in September. It’s
been that way for 40 years, and the Senate, which is now almost evenly
divided between the two major parties, seems intent on resisting change.
The city’s minor parties are controlled by inner circles that elect the same leader for decades. The Conservative Party Leader
Michael Long has run his party
which has had the third line on the ballot for over 30 years. The
Working Families Party has also had the same leaders since it as
founded by labor bosses 27 years also. An addition
to New York's election law written in the Tammany Hall era of 1947,
prohibited members of one party from running in another party. It was
called the Wilson-Pakula law, aimed squarely at left wing Congressman Vito Marcantonio. The law
gave party bosses the power to cross-endorse, or choose not to endorse,
a very useful tool for party leader to get favors from mayors and
governors. Without left wing Marcantonio the right wing conservative
party would not have been able to deliver it 328,605 votes in 1995 to
Pataki, the margin of victory in defeating Mario Cuomo. Rudy Giuliani was
elected mayor in 1993 with the help of the votes he received on a Liberal Party line and Mike Bloomberg had to pay off the five GOP bosses
to run as a Republican because he was not registered in the party. In
the 2013 election Senator Malcolm Smith tired to buy the GOP line using
the Wilson-Pakula law. Smith and GOP party leaders are now in jail for
their plot to buy and sell the party. In 2009 After Bloomberg change the
term limits law to allow him to run again, he still needed the
Wilson-Pakula Law to add the Independence Party's 150,073 votes to win.
A campaign operative who used the million Bloomberg gave to an upstate
county committee controlled by the independence party to run his
campaign, to buy his home, when to jail.
McGoven;s 1 Primary Lesson Still Rules
40 Years Ago George McGovern Presidential Race Pull Out Tens of Thousands of New Voters in A Primary Which Caused A Lot of Albany Incumbents Lose
Party Machines Have Total Control Over Picking Judges At Judicial Conventions
Political Bosses Sausage Factory Electing Judges in NYC
Party Puppets Rubber Stamp The Political Bosses Pick for Judge
"A
dozen delegates, in recent interviews, said they could not even
remember the handful of candidates they had nominated for the State
Supreme Court last year. They said the convention, as always, had been a
carefully scripted event lasting less than an hour. Whether
the candidates were potentially outstanding judges, the delegates said
they never knew. Before the convention, the party never makes an effort
to inform them about which candidates are going to be nominated. In
fact, the names are often secret." NY Times 2003
For
decades in New York, the law has required that political parties
nominate candidates to run for State Supreme Court at judicial
conventions, not in primaries. The conventions are attended by delegates
who are elected on the neighborhood level and who are supposed to
evaluate candidates before offering the best ones a spot on the November
ballot. In
theory, the conventions are intended to help achieve the civic goal of
allowing citizens, through their votes, to decide the makeup of the
state's highest trial court. But in practice, according to legal
experts, prosecutors and even the delegates themselves, the conventions
have long been highly cynical exercises, just another cog in the
operations of political party machines. There
is, for instance, often no debate about candidates, and party leaders
wind up dictating nominations, frequently handing them to loyalists who
have donated to the party or worked on campaigns. In
fact, the nominating conventions have received so little attention that
the City Board of Elections says it does not even keep an official
record of those who serve as convention delegates -- the people legally
charged with helping determine who gets on the bench.
Who Really Picks New York's Judges? | Brennan Center for Justice 2015
'Smoke-Filled Rooms' Still Rule New York Judicial Elections - WNYC ...
NEW YORK STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS ET AL. v. LOPEZ TORRES ET AL.
Longtime Bronx DA Secures Nomination for Judge - Norwood News
Judicial Sausage Factory Continues, Almost Nobody Noticed
Convert the 59 Community Boards into
100 NYC Local Town Halls
As City Proceeds with Two Charter Revision Commissions, A Cautionary Tale from Los Angeles
The Brief, Half-Serious, and Sort of Visionary Political Career of Jimmy Breslin
2. We should change the way Community Board Member are chosen. Right now the 50 members to the board are chosen by the local councilmember and borough president.
3. We should make any County Committee member from any political party a voting member of their local Community Board.
4. NYC needs to change the present redistricting of elected officials districts, judicial district and municipal functions—schools, police, etc.—which was designed for the convenience of various central departments or the political machines into 100% overlapping cohere districts.
5. Independent Neighborhood City Halls need a share of the city's budget to hire its own professionals and budget on its own.
6. Local City Halls will work a a genuine means of contact with public life, we average citizens can go to complain about issues like homelessness, get help in organizing tenant or block party organizations and give suggestions on how to improve city services.
8. Reforming the campaign finance law and adopting Seattle’s ‘Democracy Voucher’ system of public financing of campaigns. Public financing for all state and judicial elections.
9. New York City residences should have a recall option to remove corrupt citywide elected officials or those not doing their job.
New England Town Meetings | Participedia
New England or 'Open' Town Meetings are public forums that promote participation in local governance. Town meetings allow residents to voice their opinions on public issues and deliberate and vote on laws and budgets. "Proponents of the town assembly emphasize that it is the purest form of democracy
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