SEIU Local 1199 has endorsed City Council candidate Elizabeth Crowley, one of the Democrats running in the special election to fill Dennis Gallagher‘s seat.
The union is hugely powerful politically, particularly in special elections. So this is fairly big, if not all that surprising.
The one potential wrinkle: 1199 is working hand-in-hand at Read More
After speaking to reporters in Manhattan about the protests he’s organizing in response to the Sean Bell verdict, Al Sharpton was asked about a separate issue: Barack Obama’s denunciation of Jeremiah Wright.
Sharpton, a politician and reverend, said, “What Barack Obama did was a profile in courage,” and said it demonstrated the kind Read More
Later today, Al Sharpton and others will be meeting at the 1199 SEIU building on West 43rd Street to organize citywide protests in response to the Sean Bell verdict. The union will be represented by president George Gresham and executive vice president Patrick Gaspard, according to a spokeswoman.
The union’s involvement in the planned protests Read More
When Al Sharpton walked off the stage at his National Action Network headquarters in Harlem this weekend, television cameramen and reporters packed up their things and left too. But Terrell Taylor picked up his camera and got to work.
Taylor is a 38-year-old filmmaker who is working on a documentary about Sharpton, Read More
Tomorrow, Al Sharpton and others will meet at SEIU local 1199’s headquarters to plan citywide protests in light of the Sean Bell verdict, which seems to put the city’s most powerful union right at his corner.
But among the remedies Sharpton said he’s seeking from lawmakers in light of the Bell tragedy is a Read More
How much credit does Michael Bloomberg deserve for the relative calm that’s followed the Sean Bell verdict? It’s a question that’s more than just academic, given the potential for racially fraught episodes just like this one to have a defining impact on a mayoral legacy – and on a mayor’s political fortunes moving forward.
City Councilman Tom White said today he didn’t think the Sean Bell case is “black against white,” citing the racial diversity of two of the officers on trial (two were black, one was white).
Some, like State Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr., think otherwise.
When asked, State Senate Democratic leader Malcolm Smith seemed Read More
Shortly after Sean Bell was killed, Michael Bloomberg told reporters, “It sounds like to me like excessive force was used.”
Asked today at a press conference in Jamaica if he had misgivings about those words now that the police officers have been acquitted, Bloomberg said, “[That was] one of the more ridiculous questions I’ve Read More
Councilman Leroy Comrie is taking a hard line against the police officers and officials involved in the Sean Bell shooting.
Speaking to reporters after a press conference in Jamaica, Comrie said the Police Department should “remove the lieutenant, the commanding officer, the head of the division. They all need to be, I think, fired." Read More
Assemblyman Ruben Diaz, Jr. told me just now, "Once again it’s a travesty of the judicial system where it seems like this verdict is going to have black and Latino communities feel like the system works for some but not for all."
"What do we do now? What do we do now? What now?" Read More
