To find out how real journalists assess City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's record, one needs to look no further than the sensibility expressed in this blog post on True News From Change : NYT Sets the Definition on How To Judge and Pick the Next Mayor and It Fits Quinn
In his blog post, the journalist Gary Tilzer makes many astute observations about David W. Chen's infomercial fluff piece about Speaker Quinn, and perhaps this is the most sharpest of Mr. Tilzer's criticisms : ''It was the publisher of the NYT, along with the NYP and Daily News, that used their papers to support changing the term limits law to allow Bloomberg and Quinn to run for a third term. Mr. Chen does not challenge Quinn when she brushes off her term limits and other critics as 'naïve' ideologues.''
It's already been documented how Christine Quinn bluffs her way through important social issues.
What Speaker Quinn is doing by making her ''unapologetic'' ''move to the middle'' is selling out the working class families of New York City. Her policies favour real estate developers -- and come to the detriment, suffering, and mass displacement of working class New Yorkers. Speaker Quinn's vision of New York City is a continuation of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's vision : more glass and steel luxury condos and less hospitals, firehouses, public schools, and senior centers. Speaker Quinn wants to make life so unbearable to the average wage-earning New Yorker that we all pick up and leave town.
How do we know that Christine Quinn has sold out her values and beliefs and still find herself to be in a place of denial about it, so much so that she accuses her critics of being “naïve” ideologues ?
Speaker Quinn's ideas about leadership in New York, by supporting the luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's Hospital, which used to be the only full-service hospital with a Level 1 Trauma Center below 14th Street, is like GLAAD publicly supporting the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger. Not only would AT&T be in an even stronger position to undo net neutrality, but what is GLAAD doing by meddling in a telecom merger approval process with the FCC ? Likewise, why is a ''supposedly!! celebrated LGBT third-term politician like Christine Quinn rushing toward the ''middle'' of the political spectrum, if it means that she has to abandon her idealistic beginnings and instead now oppose paid sick leave and a living wage bill ?
"AT&T was one of the companies whose local representatives sits on the board of directors of the Tennessee chamber of commerce," wrote John Aravosis at Americablog. "You remember them, the group that endorsed and actively lobbied for the measure repealing gay and trans rights ordinances in the state, mandating it so that no trans person can ever change their birth certificate gender in the future, and banning any future civil rights ordinances for anyone in the future. That AT&T."
What does the intersection of St. Vincent's Hospital/Rudin Family Luxury Condo Conversion and the GLAAD/AT&T T-Mobile mega deals have to do with Christine Quinn and New York City politics ?
In each case, you see the erosion of core values of fighting for an activist's central reason for being : serving their constituency. But once you get to be so big, you can blow off you constituency as “naïve” ideologues (or drop the F-bomb on them, the way that one of her administrative assistants did).
If, throughout our nation's history, our goal has been to distribute power and authority equally among voters, then the voters, who have less choices on election day, get their voices muffled. Who is going to challenge GLAAD to focus once again on its original intention ? Who is going to put pressure on Christine Quinn to deliver on the community’s demands to stop all the hospital closings that are happening across New York City ?
It is not too much to expect that the people, who you elect to City Council, start to deliver something tangible for New York City voters.
- If you disliked how City Council members extended term limits without a voter referendum, then let her know : quinn@council.nyc.ny.us
- If you agree, that Speaker Quinn needs to hear the voices of communities, who are demanding that hospitals stop closing all across the five boroughs, then let her know : quinn@council.nyc.ny.us
- If you can no longer accept a weekly threat by Mayor Bloomberg to layoff teachers and firefighters, and to close schools and firehouses, then let her know : quinn@council.nyc.ny.us
- If you want Speaker Quinn to shut down her $50 million slush fund, then let her know : quinn@council.nyc.ny.us
- If you refuse to settle for City Council members, who take tens of thousands of campaign donations from real estate developers in exchange for what seems like pay-to-play real estate development deal approvals, then let her know : quinn@council.nyc.ny.us
- If you believe that Speaker Quinn betrays the LGBT community, then let her know : quinn@council.nyc.ny.us
- If you have your own issue, that you'd like to bring to Speaker Quinn's attention, then let her know : quinn@council.nyc.ny.us
Speak now, or forever hold your peace.
