Carolers explain why banks are to blame for fare hikes

Money-losing gas fracking heavily subsidized and harmful -- same as oil, big surprise

DEC selling out to fracking industry - Times Union: "Moreover, fracking depends on massive, wealth-eating subsidies from public resources that will lower net New York wealth. For example, damage to state roads alone has been estimated by the state to cost tens of millions of dollars annually. Then there are the adjacent landowners whose property and business values fracking will crash, the environmental degradation of water resource, the lack of any offsetting tax revenues, and the disruptive effects on local services and housing markets of a transient oil patch work force.

Fracking also promises potentially devastating impacts on three critical economic development opportunities for New York: agriculture, tourism and green energy."

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Still 10,000 without power in the Rockaways

Battle for the Rockaways | The Indypendent: "Yet, underneath this veneer of forced, revenue-generating normalcy, the eastern area of the peninsula, where Casco and other working-class, mostly people of color live, is decidedly not back to normal. According to Queens State Senator Joe Addabbo, there are still 10,000 homes without electricity and heat in the Rockaways, and — according to reports by numerous on-the-ground organizers — the majority of those houses are in the poorer neighborhoods of Far Rockaway."

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Tanker Carrying Bakken Oil to Canadian Refinery Runs Aground - Bloomberg

Tanker Carrying Bakken Oil to Canadian Refinery Runs Aground - Bloomberg: "The first oil tanker carrying Bakken crude to Irving Oil Corp.’s refinery in Canada from Albany, New York, ran aground in the Hudson River, delaying the first of what is expected to be many voyages on the route."

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MTA: All fares go up in 2013; unavoidable | The Poughkeepsie Journal | poughkeepsiejournal.com

MTA: All fares go up in 2013; unavoidable | The Poughkeepsie Journal | poughkeepsiejournal.com: "“We are not the fat, profligate, out-of-control agency that people make the MTA out to be. We’ve done everything we can to control costs,” board Chairman Joseph Lhota said. “I agree with everyone that our riders pay too much of the cost.”"

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Communities hit by Sandy “form like Voltron” and fight back « ear to earth

Communities hit by Sandy “form like Voltron” and fight back « ear to earth: "The stakes are high for people in the Rockaways. More than month and a half after Superstorm Sandy, winter is setting in and many of the ten thousand residents of this Queens neighborhood still lack heat or electricity. Many have no hot water. And there’s another festering crisis: mold. "

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In 2009, Victor Bernace ran for city council on a single issue: #freetransit

View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.

Subways should be as safe as elevators

The Air-train at JFK Airport has sliding doors to protect passengers from the track area. Most subways around the world have such protection. Why not the U.S.?

Why no subway safety doors in the United States?

Thailand, Korea, France, China, Russia, Spain, Canada, are just a few of the countries where subway safety doors are found. In the U.S. a few airports have them, so we know how to do it. There is no excuse. 

Taipei, Taiwan. Passengers are screened from the tracks by a safety wall with doors-Wikipedia.

Fracking good for the climate? What a load of hot air - NY Daily News

Fracking good for the climate? What a load of hot air  - NY Daily News: "The fracking cheerleaders are misinformed. Drilling for natural gas has some disastrous environmental consequences. It will speed climate change, not help stave it off."

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#occupysandy video - we must get off fossil fuels

Relief Is Not Enough: Nov 14–20th Climate Solidarity Actions | OccupyWallSt.org

Occupy Sandy volunteers feed hungry FEMA workers

Relief Is Not Enough: Nov 14–20th Climate Solidarity Actions | OccupyWallSt.org: "In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, New Yorkers are showing the best of humanity, self-organizing to provide mutual aid in spite of the establishment's continued failure to turn the lights back on. Free kitchens were distributing hot meals within hours. Thousands of pounds of food, clothing, and other donations have been distributed across Red Hook, Staten Island, the Rockaways, and Coney Island. Cleanup of flood damage has begun, and volunteers continue to go door-to-door in the neglected buildings that still lack heat and electricity. Of course, this encouraging response does not minimize the true scope of tragedy this storm has left behind. We must continue to provide for each other and, as we do, show the world that another way of relating to one another is not only possible, but necessary in the face of economic and ecological catastrophe."

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#occupysandy is mutual aid, not charity

Occupy Sandy is a coordinated relief effort to help distribute resources & volunteers to help neighborhoods and people affected by Hurricane Sandy. We are a coalition of people & organizations who are dedicated to implementing aid and establishing hubs for neighborhood resource distribution. Members of this coalition are from Occupy Wall Street, 350.org, recovers.org, InterOccupy.net and many individual volunteers.
Click here to help

Occupy Sandy and the Latino Soul of Activism - ABC News

Occupy Sandy and the Latino Soul of Activism - ABC News: "In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, community-based volunteers led by Occupy Wall Street supporters have emerged to fill the void left by FEMA, and The American Red Cross. In less than a week, the Occupy Sandy grassroots movement has raised more than $264,000 in relief for New York's hardest hit neighborhoods, and established a network of volunteers and materials that is empowering people to rebuild their communities."

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Occupy Sandy Offers Aid to Hurricane Victims - The Local – Fort-Greene Blog - NYTimes.com

Photo: Gabriele Alfiero

Occupy Sandy Offers Aid to Hurricane Victims - The Local – Fort-Greene Blog - NYTimes.com: "The sanctuary at the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew on Clinton Avenue is brimming with donated clothes, children’s books and diapers. The church’s heavy wooden doors are open and the air inside is cool. Volunteers in wool hats and down jackets flit about, chatting with each other as they  assemble care packages with toothbrushes and toothpaste and load cars with cleaning supplies and bottled water to deliver to neighborhoods devastated by Hurricane Sandy."

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Occupy Sandy: Hurricane relief being led by Occupy Wall Street.

Occupy Sandy: Hurricane relief being led by Occupy Wall Street.: "... there wasn’t any kind of official decision or declaration that occupiers would now try to help with the hurricane aftermath.  “This is what we do already, “ he explained: Build community, help neighbors, and create a world without the help of finance.  Horst said, “We know capitalism is broken, so we have already been focused on organizing to take care of our own [community] needs.” He sees Occupy Sandy as political ideas executed on a practical level."

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Occupy Sandy Relief | InterOccupy Hub

Occupy Sandy Relief | InterOccupy Hub: "Occupy Sandy is a coordinated relief effort to help distribute resources & volunteers to help neighborhoods and people affected by Hurricane Sandy. We are a coalition of people & organizations who are dedicated to implementing aid and establishing hubs for neighborhood resource distribution. Members of this coalition are from Occupy Wall Street, 350.org, recovers.org and interoccupy.net."

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Free transit in NYC through Friday

Tracking Hurricane Sandy - NY Daily News: "Gov. Cuomo has announced that all subways, NYC buses, LIRR and Metro-North trains will be free through Friday."

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Transit Initiatives Are Giving a Boost to Businesses, a Report Says - NYTimes.com

Transit Initiatives Are Giving a Boost to Businesses, a Report Says - NYTimes.com: "In Brooklyn, where a parking area on Pearl Street was converted into a plaza, retail sales have increased 172 percent for neighboring businesses, compared with 18 percent throughout the borough."

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Is the Governor of New York Building a Bridge to Yesterday?

Cuomo’s Crossing – Next American City: " Nearly 300 public meetings and $88 million later, the state had a pretty good idea of what it needed to do — build a bigger bridge with mass transit facilities. Then, with a short press release and a quick news conference, everything changed."

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NYPD Issues More Tickets to Drinking Pedestrians Than Speeding Drivers | Streetsblog New York City

NYPD Issues More Tickets to Drinking Pedestrians Than Speeding Drivers | Streetsblog New York City: "NYPD issued more summonses for open container violations than for speeding in 2011, one of a number of law enforcement oddities revealed through data issued by police and compiled from court records."

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U.S. Taxpayers Are Gouged on Mass Transit Costs - Bloomberg

U.S. Taxpayers Are Gouged on Mass Transit Costs - Bloomberg: "Littlefield also argues that judges in New York routinely side with contractors in disputes with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. “In the private sector, if you rob your customer, you will suffer a hit to your reputation and possible losses in the courts,” he said in an interview. “Not so if you rob an agency like the MTA. Then it’s all rights and no responsibilities.”"

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Another good reason why public transit should be fare-free

Harlem teen says she was cuffed, held in MetroCard flap - NY Daily News: "Cops roughed up and handcuffed a Harlem student after mistakenly believing that the 15-year-old was too old to use a student MetroCard, the teen claims.

And now the NYPD has opened an investigation into the allegation, the Daily News has learned.

Alexis Sumpter, 15, wasn’t arrested or given a summons during the July 26 interaction — but she says she was shaken and humiliated by the experience.

“They called me liar,” she remembers. “Then they grabbed me by my arms and flung me up the stairs. I kept saying, I’m only 15 — why are you guys doing this?

“They said they didn’t owe me an explanation,” she said.

"

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#publictransit more than pays for itself in congestion savings

The Urbanophile » Blog Archive » The Cost of Congestion, The Value of Transit: "Obviously New York is far and away the winner with 63 hours of additional delay per peak period auto commuter if its transit system were discontinued. TTI puts the value of an hour of time at $16.30, so this translates into an average of $1026.90 in dollar benefits to each and every auto commuter in greater New York City from transit. That’s not nothing."

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Why we occupy. #ows

Great Recession erased nearly 40% of family wealth - latimes.com: "The Great Recession took such a heavy toll on the economy that the typical American family lost nearly 40% of its wealth from 2007 to 2010, shaving the median net worth to a level not seen since the early 1990s."

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Tax money that was supposed to be for #publictransit was "redirected."

In New York State, Transit Cuts Hit Seniors, Low-Income Residents Hardest – Next American City: "The study also found that while ridership increased, transit system operators have been squeezed by both decreased state and local funding and higher operating costs. Albany has repeatedly redirected funds earmarked for transit, and the only dedicated state funding source for non-MTA systems, the petroleum business tax, has not been raised since 2004. Because the tax does not rise or fall with the price of gas, revenues have stayed relatively flat over the years."

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Occupy Wall Street Supports Quebec Anti-austerity protests

Occupy Wall Street | NYC Protest for World Revolution: "Last week, the government of Quebec passed an emergency law (Loi 78) criminalizing the massive demonstrations and assemblies in an effort to stamp out the strike. The new law restricts demonstrations and orders the closing of some universities. Among other things, organizers must inform police of the route of any demonstration that includes 50 or more people 8 hours before the demonstration. Unions and student federations are threatened with fines of up to $125,000 if someone is prevented from entering an educational institution."

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Stop the oil wars

We Can Have A Better Life

We need a new system that keeps money and jobs in our communities, a system that focuses on local needs. Investment in local businesses brings local jobs. Community banks bring local investment. Local farming brings healthy food. Local energy generation will keep us out of foreign wars for oil and stop global warming. And a strong local community keeps our children and elders safe."

USA not broke! #occupywallstreet calls out banks for their thievery.

http://twitpic.com/9g61hn

Why do we let the killing continue? We can stop it if we want.

Cars claim innocent victims every day

Streetsblog continues to do the difficult work of reporting the horrors of the auto culture. Will you pitch in and help?

The NYC Mayoral Transit Stakes Begin — Stringer Backs Commuter Tax | Transportation Nation

The NYC Mayoral Transit Stakes Begin — Stringer Backs Commuter Tax | Transportation Nation: "Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer is the first likely 2013 New York mayoral candidate out of the box with a detailed plan for financing the city’s transit system.  It’s a a mix of solutions — but the gist is this, there should be more financing for transit, and not just from transit riders."

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MTA gives $2B a year to bankers

TWU Leader Won’t Disown Occupy for Fare-Beating | OccupyWallSt.org: "“Instead of using our tax money to properly fund transit, Albany and City Hall have intentionally starved transit of public funds for over twenty years,” the activists said in a press release. “The MTA must resort to bonds (loans from Wall Street) to pay for projects and costs,” they added, calling the agency “a virtual ATM for the super-rich.”

They pointed out that the MTA spends more than $2 billion a year to pay off its debt.

“This means Wall Street bondholders receive a huge share of what we put into the system through the Metrocards we buy and the taxes we pay,” they concluded."

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Successful Fare Strike This [Wednesday] Morning - Tens of Thousands Ride NYC Subways for Free | OccupyWallSt.org

Signs resembling Metro Transit Authority notices were posted  on the subway walls of stations around New York City. Photograph: strikeeverywhere.net

Successful Fare Strike This Morning - Tens of Thousands Ride NYC Subways for Free | OccupyWallSt.org: "This morning before rush hour, teams of activists, many from Occupy Wall Street, in conjunction with rank and file workers from the Transport Workers Union Local 100 and the Amalgamated Transit Union, opened up more than 20 stations across the city for free entry. As of 10:30 AM, the majority remain open. No property was damaged. Teams have chained open service gates and taped up turnstiles in a coordinated response to escalating service cuts, fare hikes, racist policing, assaults on transit workers’ working conditions and livelihoods — and the profiteering of the super-rich by way of a system they’ve rigged in their favor."

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NYC: If you give in to fear, the terrorists win.

photo

read all about it here: http://occupywallst.org/

Bloomberg says mass #transit should be free

It's Hizzoner to ride train - NY Daily News: "Bloomberg had responded with an engineer's detachment some people take as indifference. He noted costs would keep going up and that the money will have to come from somewhere."
...
"I would have mass transit be given away for nothing and charge an awful lot for bringing an automobile into the city," he said.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/hizzoner-ride-train-article-1.223682#ixzz1pAwzHgE7
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Petition: Metropolitan Transit Authority: Preserve the G Train Extension | Change.org

Petition: Metropolitan Transit Authority: Preserve the G Train Extension | Change.org: "The G links Brooklyn neighborhoods that otherwise are not readily accessible to one another by bus or subway. The MTA has severely cut the G train's route in Queens. The extension into Park Slope, Windsor Terrace and Kensington was one boost in service after years of cuts and fare hikes. The G train is our Brooklyn Local. We need to preserve the G train extension!"

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Fare Free Mass Transit in WNY – Is it possible?

Fare Free Mass Transit in WNY – Is it possible?: "Let’s now imagine a system without fare boxes on its buses and light rail cars, where passengers freely board these mass transit vehicles to go to work, school, or shopping (nationally these three categories comprise 75% of all mass transit rides). Further imagine the same system safely transporting our aging population, encouraging increased urbanization, reducing traffic congestion, avoiding the need for roadway expansion costs, parking lots, and also providing increased health and environmental benefits."

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What New York's Transit System Could Learn From São Paulo - Regional Plan Association

What New York's Transit System Could Learn From São Paulo - Regional Plan Association: "In addition to technology and design, the Metro also has generous staffing. At busy train stations, platform agents are located at every train door. Station agents also help less mobile passengers find their way around the system. There is a priority boarding car at the front of the train for elderly, pregnant women and the disabled. This system works because other passengers respect this rule, no matter how crowded the other cars are. The staff keep stations clean and safe — the metro has a clean-up policy which requires any dent or piece of gum on the floor to be immediately fixed or removed."

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175 show up for #occupy meeting in small NY town

Occupy Wall Street movement hits Orange County | recordonline.com: ""It's an amazing cross-section of people," said Weiss.

Attiya Awadallah, who attends SUNY New Paltz, said she was eager to hear what was on people's minds.

"It makes you feel like you're a part of something big," said Awadallah.

Subjects ranged from anti-forclosure home defense to stopping corporate personhood to taxing the rich."

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Public #transit is good circulation, cars are a clotting factor

NYSTEA | New York State Transportation Equity Alliance | Blog: "Transit is the circulatory system of our economy—without it people can’t get to jobs, to doctors appointments, or to the grocery store. Public transit is a public good—good for our environment, good for our economy, and good for helping underserved communities access their livelihoods and social needs."

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Buffalo: People fight back against #transit cuts

Metro Bus riders attack service cuts - News - The Buffalo News: "Metro Bus riders Thursday railed against the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority's plan to cut 22 percent of its bus routes by April 1, characterizing it as an assault on low-income citizens, the disabled and those without a personal means of transportation.

The forum, arranged by Assemblyman Sean Ryan, D-Buffalo, attracted a standing-room-only crowd of nearly 100 people to the community room of the Crane Branch Library, 633 Elmwood Ave., seeking to air their concerns and grievances over the proposed service cuts."

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Bus drivers and subway workers are the real environmentalists - NY Daily News

Bus drivers and subway workers are the real environmentalists - NY Daily News: "But the real reasons that New York is the greenest place on the continent are more humble. For one thing, New Yorkers live in smaller homes and apartments that take less energy to heat and cool and light. What really sets city dwellers apart, however, is the lack of cars in the driveway (or, in most of the city, the lack of a driveway at all). New Yorkers get chauffeur service — mostly not in long black town cars, but even longer silver ones on the subway.

Forget the EPA: If you want to understand what real fuel savings look like, consider the IND and the IRT and the BMT. The average Vermonter, living amid the woods in a state we think of as ecologically sensitive, uses 540 gallons of gas a year; the average Manhattanite uses less than 90. The last time all of America was at that level was in the 1920s and we were driving Model Ts."

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Politicians serve car culture, leave #transit dependent to suffer

Suffolk bus fares to rise in spring: http://tinyurl.com/6u5wgal

My letter to the editor at Newsday:

Dear Editor,

In response to your article, Suffolk bus fares to rise in spring I am appalled at this move. It only seeks to punish those who must use public transportation in order to get around. Those are people who cannot afford to drive, cannot afford to own cars, people who are disabled and our seniors.

I have spoken out on this issue at any given moment since there are no buses on Sunday and yet, they want to raise the fares? I have challenged each and every politician via the Net to go without their cars for at least a week and take buses to where they want to go. I want them to see how we live. It seems that politicians will fight to keep the cost of gas down for those who drive cars, and yet through this move they will sanction raising the fares on those who use public transportation. What this shows me is that they are not on our side.

I work on Sundays at a job that pays a little over minimum wage, and without buses, I must take a cab to work. Lindy’s cab company charges $9.00 each way. So, I am at their mercy. If there were buses on Sunday, at the current rate, it would only cost me $3.00 which is cost affective.

I say shame to those who seek this rate hike since it shows me that they do not care for the working poor, the disabled and our seniors. We will remember this the next time they want our vote.

Sincerely,
Mary MacElveen