Uptown Radio

Residents gather outside City Hall to fight against the New York Housing Authority’s plan to lease land in the projects to private developers. (Ntshepeng Motema/Uptown Radio)

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INTRO: A new plan is taking shape that would change life inside New York City Housing Authority buildings. It would allow the Housing Authority to lease land to private developers. Some residents are protesting the idea, saying it would ruin their communities. Ntshepeng Motema reports.

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INTRO: These days most New Yorkers may have cellphones. But there are still 11,000 payphones on the streets and in other public places  in New York. And the City is not planning to abandon them any time soon. As Anna Goldenberg reports, there are even efforts to modernize them.

REPORTER

Mark Thomas has been fascinated by payphones since he was a child.

Bring up sound of walking here.

The 50-something artist lives in Queens. As we walk down Broadway in Astoria on a sunny Sunday afternoon, he has a story about nearly every payphone.

THOMAS

I just wanted to point this one out, because I got this one fixed. This one was out of service for like five years. I made a 311 complaint.

He steps into the three-walled metal booth, picks up the receiver and flicks the silver hook switch to get a dial tone.

Sound of beeping.

THOMAS

That’s not a dial tone.

OPERATOR

Invalid number. Please dial again.

THOMAS

Well, it worked for a little while.

The glory days of the payphone are over. But Thomas might be considered the keeper of the flame. He started a website called the payphone project in 1995. He collected numbers of more than half a million payphones across the country. The data was often used to solve crimes. That rarely happens anymore because most payphones don’t accept incoming calls. But making calls has always only been one way to use public phones. My walk down payphone memory lane with Thomas in Astoria gives a whole new meaning to phone sex.

THOMAS

These are great places to make out, by the way. My girlfriend and I, we like this one.

Fade down sound of walking.

Bring up room tone.

So are payphones often-broken, crime-busting, make-out-booths or public safety essentials? There are still situations when payphones do more than serve as a public refuge for private moments. Charles Jennings is a professor at John Jay College. He studies coordination and safety of first responders. Jennings says without payphones on the street, it could take too long to dial 9-1-1.

JENNINGS

You know, there are plenty of cases where people observe an emergency, they may not have a cell phone with them, and they have to, either go to somebody’s house, knock on a door, or find another means to get someone to make that call.

Jennings says there are at least two other instances in which payphones can be life-savers: During natural disasters, such as hurricane Sandy last year, cell phone networks were overloaded. Because payphones are landlines, they are a reliable form of communication. And then, there’s the subway. Even though the MTA is working on expanding underground wireless and cell phone service, Jenning says that payphones in the stations still serve an important function.

JENNINGS

The whole idea of if you see something, say something. Well, who are you going say something to, if you don’t have a way to communicate.

Fade down room tone.

Data from the City suggest that, on average, six calls a day are made from every pay phone in New York. And almost 2,000 emergency calls per day are placed from sidewalk payphones. Abandoning payphones completely is not an option for the City – but modernizing them is. This summer, the City will put out a call for proposals to get a new franchise partner for the City’s payphones. Stanley Shor from the City’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications says the payphone of the future might have both old and new elements.

SHOR

So that you still have the safety net of the emergency call but near the convenience of having wifi. We possibly have cell phone chargers, touch screens, various ways of someone using the city’s streets for telecommunications purposes.

To get a better idea of what a new payphone for New York might look like, his department launched a competition called Reinventing Payphones. The winners were announced in March. Last weekend, they showed off their inventions at a street fair.

Bring up sound of exhibition here.

The sidewalk in front of the New Museum at Spring Street and Bowery is filled with colorful stalls on Saturday afternoon. There is food, activists group – and lots of talk about payphones.

Bring up sound of windchimes.

WONG

So the noise you’ve just heard is the telephone collecting the sensor information and communicating it through the tones associated with numbers of the payphone. And that’s why we call it the Windchimes because it’s kind of the musical aspect of how this works communicating through the tones.

Nick Wong is an engineering student at Cooper Union and the project leader of Windchimes. His is the only group that has brought a life-sized prototype of their invention, for which they won the prize for best community impact. The phone looks and sounds almost like an old-fashioned payphone. He says there’s a reason the model looks old school.

WONG

So it works just like a normal telephone, so people are familiar with it when they step up to make a phone call.

Wong says there’s no handset because it’s the most fragile part of the phone. Instead, microphones and speakers are built into the wooden walls that are open on one side. On top, it has an environmental sensor, that can measure things such as temperature and air quality. That information could be helpful to city planners, health departments, and everyone else who wants specific environmental information from a location.

Fade down sound from street fair.

Wong’s model phone might not become the payphone of the future. But it is clear that communication on the streets will continue – in one way or another. This is Anna Goldenberg, Columbia Radio News.

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INTRO: A new multi-million dollar development in Bed-Stuy aims to increase affordable housing while providing supportive services for homeless families and former inmates. Jessica Gould report.

John Hoge and Glenn Santiago have lived together for 27 years. They got married in 2012 a year after gay marriage became legal in New York. This is their home in the East Village. (Camilo Vargas/Uptown Radio).

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Construction unions rallied to demand bigger payments from airline insurance companies to help rebuild the World Trade Center. The companies are currently help finance the new Freedom Tower, but the unions want insurers to pay for claims in a wider area of downtown Manhattan.

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For Columbia Radio News in New York, I’m Tony Maglio.

Former New York State Senator Shirley Huntley worked as a government informant in 2012.

The Queens Democrat secretly recorded seven elected officials, according to court documents. Prosecutors indicated that Huntley’s recordings may help bring charges against another, unnamed senator, and two other elected officials. Huntley resigned last year after pleading guilty to a corruption scandal in which she admitted to embezzling nearly $88,000. Huntley is scheduled to be sentenced on May 9.

Two former associates of New York City comptroller John Liu were convicted on Thursday for their roles in an illegal fund-raising scheme. Liu, who is a candidate for mayor, has not been charged with a crime and maintains his innocence.

LIU_ACT_NC1.wav: “They can look at anything and everything they want…voters of New York City.”

Police divers are searching for the body of a pilot on the bottom of the Hudson River. A World War II-era amphibious airplane crashed and sank on Thursday.

State police detected debris where the plane went down near the river’s east bank in Germantown – 40 miles south of Albany. Today, divers located the tail section. The pilot is presumed dead.

Tonight, the Knicks play the Boston Celtics at 7. The Nets host the Chicago Bulls tomorrow at 8 pm. It’s currently 62 degrees and clear. It will be 60s and sunny all weekend.

For Columbia Radio News, I’m Tony Maglio.

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HOST INTRO: Two of mayoral candidate John Liu’s former associates, Jenny Hou and Oliver Pan, have been found guilty of wire fraud and obstruction of justice. Lance Dixon spoke with Brigid Bergin, WNYC’s City Hall reporter, and she says everybody wants to know if his campaign is over.

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HOST INTRO:

The American criminal justice system seems pretty simple: After someone commits a crime, they’re convicted, sentenced and sent to prison. Time is served and people are released. But the disturbing fact is that 40-percent of the people leaving prison will be back.

But there’s another way of looking at crime and punishment – it’s called restorative justice. And as Christie Thorne reports, it’s a movement that’s taking off across the country.

–

[AMB: Fade Up and Hold Under, Driving in car with Vicky to scene of accident (Engine, Turn Signal)]

On a recent sunny afternoon, Vicky Ruvolo takes a right turn onto Sunrise Highway in Ronkonkoma, a quiet Long Island town. We arrive at a spot less than five minutes from her house. Vicky says this is where she almost died nine years ago.

VICKY RUVOLO:

See, I think it happened right over here at this miniature golf place.

Just before Thanksgiving in 2004, Vicky was driving home from a fun night out with her family. Four teenagers were approaching in an oncoming car. The kids were joyriding, on a shopping spree with a stolen credit card. As the two cars passed, 18-year-old Ryan Cushing hurled a large object out of the window, aiming it right at Vicky. It was a 20-pound frozen turkey…

VICKY RUVOLO:

That went into my windshield, hit me in the face and nearly killed me. I didn’t wake up until over a month later.

She was knocked out on the spot.

[AMB: Drop Out "Driving in car"]

Vicky’s injuries were so severe that she spent a month in a medically induced coma, and another five recovering.

It took the police less than a week to identify the teenagers. Ryan eventually turned himself in. He was facing up to 25 years in prison for first-degree assault and reckless endangerment.

VICKY RUVOLO:

He was going to be wasting his whole life – he was going to lose 25 years to sit and rot in jail for a stupid, ridiculous act.

Vicky didn’t understand the benefit of punishing Ryan. Her emotional struggle was just as challenging as the physical. Still in rehab, Vicky prayed. And she came to a realization: that she had to forgive.

VICKY RUVOLO:

Because that’s the biggest thing that people forget. Is that forgiveness, isn’t about that other person. It’s all about you. Because when you forgive you’re letting go of all that anger, that pain, that negativity. It actually releases you.

Vicky asked that Ryan be given leniency. She didn’t want him to spend more than 6 months in jail.

At the sentencing hearing, Vicky and Ryan met face-to-face for the first time. At the end of the day, Ryan walked over to where Vicky was sitting with her family.

VICKY RUVOLO:

And he stood in front of me and was just crying profusely, just crying. Talking through his tears just saying, “I never meant this to happen. I prayed for you every day. I’m so glad you’re doing well.”

Then, she hugged him.

VICKY RUVOLO:

The only thing I could do was coddle him like a child. And I told him, “Just take this experience and do something good with your life.”

In response to Vicky’s request, the judge sentenced Ryan to six months in jail, five years of probation and a year of community service.

Ryan spent that year working with Dr. Robert Goldman, who was the supervising psychologist at the Suffolk County Probation Department. Goldman had developed an innovative restorative justice program called TASTE.

[AMB: Fade Up and Hold Under, Vicky & Robert greet one another at restaurant (Waitress, Dishes)]

ROBERT GOLDMAN:

I was seeing children in the juvenile justice system graduate into the adult criminal justice system.

Goldman had spent a little over a decade as a criminal defense attorney. And most of his defendants were children. He noticed a problem. Not just in Long Island, but across the country.

ROBERT GOLDMAN:

Like Vicky, I really didn’t know what restorative justice was, I just knew what we were doing wasn’t right.

Restorative justice is an alternative to a purely punitive approach. The movement focuses on the needs of both victims and offenders and gives both parties an opportunity to heal and learn from a criminal experience.

Psychologist Jacques Verduin has pioneered several restorative justice programs in California prisons:

JACQUES VERDUIN:

Where you get to stare down your demons, confront your actions and name your victim in front of everybody. That’s tough on crime.

Verduin says that the current system isn’t doing anyone any good.

JACQUES VERDUIN:

You know, to run a system that is so heavy on custody and so little on creating opportunities for people to change their ways, is in many ways a disservice to public safety. It’s time for us to start investing in keeping people out of prison rather than in prison.

Right now, 1 in 34 Americans are under some form of correctional supervision – that’s close to 7 million people in prison, jail, parole or probation.

JACQUES VERDUIN:

Across the board, about 95 percent of all prisoners eventually get out. And they get out to be somebody’s neighbor. So how do you want them to come out? Punished, clueless, not having learned anything? Or educated, evolved and a bit more humble?

Ryan Cushing is a good example of the latter. Vicky still keeps in touch with him.

VICKY RUVOLO:

Now he’s off probation, now he’s got a job, he’s got his own apartment, now he’s paying taxes like the rest of us – instead of our taxes paying for him to rot in jail!

Vicky knows how much Ryan took away from the experience. She says that she gained, too.

VICKY RUVOLO:

I got my life, what better gift is there? And I was just glad that I could do that for him.

Right now, Ryan’s outcome is the exception and not the norm. But more and more restorative justice programs are being implemented across the country. And in New York City, the method is even being introduced in some schools.

Christie Thorne, Columbia Radio News.

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HOST INTRO: Another way to help former inmates re-enter society is through religious groups. Re-entering society after imprisonment can be difficult on the former inmate and his or her family. Amber Binion visited Riverside Memorial Church where religious organizations met to discuss the most effective ways to help ex-convicts find jobs.

Don Riepe of the American Littoral Society looks out over Jamaica Bay six months after Hurricane Sandy hit, May. 2013 (Katherine Jacobsen/Uptown Radio)

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HOST INTRO:

When Hurricane Sandy slammed into the shore of Long Island, it devastated humans as well as ecosystems along the Northeastern seaboard.  Six months later, Katherine Jacobsen went to Jamaica Bay to see how one of these ecosystems is recovering.

__

The Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge is made up of a sprinkling of islands, tucked behind the Rockaways in the Jamaica Bay. When Sandy hit, the storm surge sent water over the low-lying islands dismantling houses, docks and sand dunes.

Lincoln Hallowell is a park ranger at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. He says that he and his colleagues still aren’t sure what effect Sandy will have on the area’s wildlife.

Lincoln Hallowell:

It’s, it’s a different place. 

He stands in his office and points to a map that shows the area before the storm.

Lincoln Hallowell:

You can see… it looks like there should be something there, and up until Oct. 29, there was something there.

That something was a freshwater pond that was an important stopover for migratory birds and a walking path.

Lincoln Hallowell:

In just a matter of a few hours during the storm, that disappeared. 

But even though the freshwater pond and the sand dunes that kept it in place were washed away by the storm, environmentalists say that the wildlife in the area has been surprisingly resilient.  But they also say the sand dunes need to be rebuilt.

Arthur Lerner-Lam is a seismologist from Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

Arthur Lerner-Lam:

So, Jamaica Bay was almost a buffer for some of the populated areas inland. What do we learn from that? We learn that nature in some way can be used to protect the places where people live.   

The sand dunes at Jamaica Bay acted as natural shock absorbers.  Sand dunes are known as soft infrastructure.  That’s as opposed to hard infrastructure, like storm walls.  The walls can send the waves bouncing back into the ocean.  Lerner-Lam says, in a small inlet area, this means that the waves could hit each other, amplify and then crash into the hard structure again.

But Lerner-Lam says the dunes won’t survive a storm without the grasses that grow on top of the dunes.

Arthur Lerner-Lam:

Well, any vegetation, such as marsh grasses will actually hold the sanddunes in place, or at least the top layer in place.

In other words, the sand grasses keep the dunes from washing away.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is attempting to rebuild the dunes around Jamaica Bay in part with money allocated by Congress after the storm.  But the problem is, to restore all of these sand dunes, someone has to remove the junk that Sandy left on top of them.

Gerry Tiss is off the south shore of Long Island on a Saturday morning.

Gerry Tiss:

The orange and blue stuff is people’s docks that were blown apart. 

Tiss stands on his 4ft by 12ft skype blue wooden motor boat and points to a nearby sand dune.

Gerry Tiss:

It looks like a roof from that bayhouse that came from who knows where…

There’s no way that Tiss’s boat stands a chance of picking up the debris. And so he does what he can and scoops up pieces of washed up two-by-fours, plastic bags and the like.

The issues are similar, if not as bad, at Jamaica Bay.

Don Riepe is with the environmental watchdog group, the American Littoral Society.

Don Riepe:

You know, some of the pieces were too big, they have to be cut up… so you can see some of the debris left over by the storm.

Riepe and others say it’s the park service’s’ responsibility to move the trash   But Ranger Lincoln Hallowell says the Park Service has its own issues.

Lincoln Hallowell:

Part of the problem is, we lost a lot of equipment during the storm that hasn’t been replaced yet.  

Hallowell says even if the park service had the equipment, it wouldn’t be easy to remove the debris without disturbing the wildlife.

Lincoln Hallowell:

A lot of areas are environmentally sensitive so you don’t want to get a lot of areas with heavy equipment through there.  

Environmentalists hope the debris can be removed and dunes can be rebuilt before the hurricane season starts on June 1st.

Katherine Jacobsen, Columbia Radio News.

Champion Jon Jones, top, lands an elbow against Chael Sonnen during their UFC 159 Mixed Martial Arts light heavyweight title bout in Newark, N.J., Saturday, April 27,2013. Professional mixed martial arts is illegal in New York. (AP Photo/Gregory Payan)

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HOST INTRO: Mixed Martial Arts is one of the fastest-growing sports in America. But New York is one of only two states where the sport is banned. Tony Maglio tells us why 2013 may be the year that this changes. Or possibly why it won’t be.

If you’ve never seen a mixed martial arts — or MMA — match before, it can be tough to watch.

[Bring up UFC 121 ambi]

At a 2010 event in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC – which is the “big league” of mixed martial arts — the heavy weight champion is about to lose his title. The challenger and soon-too-be-champ is on top, hammer punching his face and head. There is blood on the mat, all the champ’s. He has a bad cut under his left eye. It’s over quickly. A first-round knock out.

It is this kind of spectacle that led New York legislators to ban professional combat sports in 1997. In 2000, the legislature also cracked down on amateur bouts.

[Fade out UFC ambi]

[Bring up gym ambi]

But that has not put a damper on the dreams of Anthony Pipola. At a gym in midtown, he sees becoming a pro MMA fighter as a way out of his current life.

[Fade down gym ambi]

Pipola: “Currently I dig holes for a living…and it kind of sucks. So I’d rather much try to beat the sh** out of people for a living.”

Pipola’s 31-years-old and from Queens. He’s currently 2-0 as an amateur.

Pipola: “The fighting’s the easy part, the training sucks. The dieting, the conditioning, the strength training, the living like a Buddhist disciple, pretty much removed from everybody and just concentrating on what you have to do – that’s the hard part. The nine minutes of fighting is easy.”

[Bring up gym ambi]

Pipola alternates between two-minute rounds on the heavy bag and wrestling with his coach. He trains six days a week for his next amateur fight on May 25 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. But he would rather fight in New York.

[Fade out gym ambi]

Some legislators, like Manhattan State Senator Brad Hoylman, want to keep the sport illegal.

Hoylman: “The reason I’m concerned about mixed martial arts is because I have a two-year-old daughter and the main venues where mixed martial arts at a professional level would be held are in my district.” 

And there are activists on Hoylman’s side. One group hosts a web site called UnfitForChildren.org. Let’s break those initials down: “U-F-C.” The site accuses Ultimate Fighting Championship of sexism and homophobia, and accused one of its stars of having made a ‘how-to’ rape video.”

Mixed Martial Arts can be dangerous, too. Aspiring pro Anthony Pipola certainly has had a few injuries.

Pipola: “Uch, about 7,341.”

all sarcasm aside…

Pipola: “None during fighting, all during training and my conditioning routines. Three broken noses, broken ribs, sprained my back, sprained my knee…

Since MMA in New York is illegal, any bouts that do occur are unregulated. Stephen Koepher is Pipola’s coach and owner of the New York Sambo gym. He says that means anything can happen.

Koepher: “There was an incidence where a gentleman fought on an unregulated show in New York, and he was banned by the Association of Boxing Commissions for having hepatitis. So he couldn’t fight anywhere else, but he fought here in New York where nobody cared to check.”

And that’s not even as bad as it gets. In the past year alone, there have been three deaths in amateur mixed martial arts. Last month, a 35-year-old fighter collapsed and died following an amateur bout in Michigan. There was no doctor on site.

Koepher and other critics of the New York State ban say that legalizing the sport would make it much safer.

Koepher: “And New York right now having a blank slate, actually has an opportunity to make some really important changes.”

It could also be a boon to the state’s economy: The UFC’s own study estimates that legalizing and regulating MMA in New York State would bring in $23 million annually and create over 200 new jobs.

In 2013, for the fourth straight year, the state legislature has taken up a bill to legalize the sport. The past three efforts failed. This year’s bill has passed through the senate and into the assembly. That’s where it sits now.

The reason the bill has been shot down over and over is … a union dispute 2500 miles away.

Culinary Union Local 226 is by far the largest union in Nevada. And it’s locked in a battle with the Fertitta brothers, who own Station Casinos in Las Vegas. The National Labor Relations Board found Station Casinos violated U.S. labor law 82 times in efforts to block the Culinary Union from organizing its employees. Stephen Koepher of New York Combat Sambo says there’s one more thing the Fertitta’s own…

Koepher: “They are also the owners of he UFC. So their beef in Nevada has dragged its way over here to New York. So both parties are sort of using New York MMA as a proxy battleground to take shots at each other. And New York, being a union-friendly state, obviously has some ears that are listening to what the union is having to say.”

New York Legislators are listening because this culinary union is a part of a larger union, UNITE HERE, which has a major presence in New York. Sources with knowledge of the situation in Albany confirm that it is union pressure that has killed the bill to legalize MMA in the past.

And remember that website “UnfitForChildren” which bashes the Ultimate Fighting Championship? That website is connected to Culinary Union Local 226. Though you’d really only know that if you emailed them. Which Uptown Radio did. No one at the website responded to multiple requests for comment, nor did the culinary union or UNITE HERE.

The bill is still up for consideration as the legislative calendar year approaches its summer recess.  And some backers are hopeful. But with only about four weeks left for the bill to get going, other backers say they’ve used up all of their optimism in the past.

Tony Maglio, Columbia Radio News.

Activists assemble on the steps of City Hall, May 3, 2013. They’re backing city and state bills that would create more oversight of the NYPD and ban the use of condoms as evidence in sex work prosecutions. (Camilo Vargas/Uptown Radio)

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HOST INTRO:

A New York State Senate Bill would ban the NYPD to stop using condoms as evidence of sex work, and a City Council bill would create a new NYPD oversight office. Activists for the bills gathered at City Hall to support the measures. Camilo Vargas reports.

——-

A bundle of legislation to reform the way the NYPD operates is currently making its way in the State Council. It’s called the Community Safety Act, and among its measures is the creation of an Inspector General for NYPD Oversight. The Measure has been endorsed by Mayoral Candidates Christine Quinn and Bill de Blasio. But the measure is opposed by current Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. They claim that the bill would add more bureaucracy to NYPD oversight.

At noon today, human rights, public health and anti stop and frisk organizations gathered at City Hall to push for passage of the Community Safety Act. They support the act because they believe it will end what they call police profiling of LGBTQ communities of color. And that it will end the NYPD’s practice of using condoms as evidence of sex work.

[Ambi of protesters chanting “Safe needles saves lives”]

Activists chant on the steps of City Hall protesting against the NYPD. They’re a coalition of HIV Aids, LGBT and human rights groups that oppose the city’s stop and frisk measures. They claim the NYPD confiscates condoms and needles, and use them as evidence to arrest and charge people of prostitution and drug use. A transgender hispanic woman gives her testimony for the crowd.

Transgender witness:

Porque en mi caso personal cuando yo iba para un club me arrestaron por andar un condon en mi bolsa.

She says she was arrested for carrying a condom in her bag as she headed for a club. She fears being arrested for carrying condoms sh   e got at a city health center. She is one of the cases documented by a study by Human Rights Watch. The human rights group interviewed 125 sex workers, LGBT individuals and outreach organizations, and found that because of the NYPD’s use of condoms as evidence, people at high risk of infections are afraid of carrying them.

Margaret Worth:

That the condoms that they have on them at the time can be considered evidence by police and by prosecutors.

That’s Margaret Worth, a spokeswoman for Human Rights Watch at the press conference. She says people in communities at high risk of HIV and STD infections sometimes believe that there’s a limit to the number of condoms they can carry, so that the NYPD doesn’t prosecute them for sexworkers.

Elizabeth Worth:

There’s absolutely no legal limit to the number of condoms a person can carry on them. Condoms are not contraband.

Elizabeth Lavenger, a spokesperson for the gay men’s health crisis says the measure of confiscating and using condoms as evidence of sex work contradicts the city’s policies of promoting condom use. The city’s health department actually hands out condoms for free. But what the city giveth, the city taketh away.

Elizabeth Lavenger:

People take those condoms and then almost immediately taken by the Police. So it’s money wasted that could be used to prevent infections.

The activists claim that these infection have led to a recent health crisis. Health officials recently documented meningitis and syphilis outbreaks among men who have sex with men in New York City. They also continue to record higher than average HIV infection rates in this group.

The organizations are also pushing for passage of the State Senate Bill sponsored by Senator Velmanette Montgomery, that would ban the use of condoms as evidence of sex work. The bill has received the endorsement of several public officials, including Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Haley. George Artz is the DA spokesperson:

George Artz:

The District Attorney has assigned his LGBT liaison to work with Senator Montgomery’s staff to support a bill prohibiting the use of condoms as evidence.

The bill is garnering support in the New York State Senate. Activists expect it will be ready for passage later this year.

Camilo Vargas, Columbia Radio News.

Women walk past a group of construction workers gathered on the street during their lunch break Thursday, Oct. 28, 2010, in New York. (AP Photo/Tina Fineberg)

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Host: It’s spring, and the weather’s finally warm. Time for sunglasses, summer clothes, and long Saturdays in the park. For women, breaking out the sundresses can also mean more catcalls. Emily Jones reports on efforts to fight back against that kind of harassment.

The nights have gotten warm enough that I can walk around my neighborhood – Morningside Heights – in just a light sweater. I’ve brought my tape recorder just in case. And sure enough, a white van slows down as it drives past me on 108th street.

Driver: Hey! Ready to go get some (indistinct expletive) tonight?

A few blocks away, a group of eight or ten young guys circles around me – slowly – as I pass through them. Every. Last. One. looks me up and down.

Boy: Yeah word, that’s what I’m sayin, eh?

When I don’t respond, or even smile at them…

Boy: You had a baaaaaad day

If you’re a woman in New York this is often just how the city is. In a study of New York social service providers, 86 percent said their clients report street harassment. International studies show anywhere from 70 to 99 percent of women experience harassment at some point in their lives.

Cameron: Any time I see a group of more than one guy walking together, it’s the first thing that goes through my head.

Jae Cameron works for a group called Hollaback that tries to fight harassment on city streets.

Cameron: And I think that’s the most exhausting thing, you know? Having to keep your gaze trained on the ground all the time. Otherwise something will happen.

Hollaback encourages people to “holla back” at their harassers by sharing stories online. Women often report feeling scared or violated – so much so that they change where they go, Cameron says.

Cameron: Every day I go through stories in New York of folks saying it is a problem and it stops them from like going to where they work or where they want to be or being with the people they love.

Efforts to stop harassment span the better part of a century. In the 1920s it was called the anti-flirt movement. It sought to protect ladies from so-called mashers, the scoundrels who pursued them on the street. More recently, some victims of harassment have tried flinging angry rhetoric back at the catcallers — literally, hollaback.

But Hollaback founder Emily May says that doesn’t always work, or feel safe.

May: And the reality is that it’s not our responsibility to have that perfect response. It’s the responsibility of the people who are harassing not to harass us.

May and other advocates don’t think simply banning harassment would work, for a lot of legal reasons. Instead, they want to teach potential harassers that catcalls and whistles aren’t ok. Holly Kearl founded StopStreetHarassment.org. She says since most harassers are men, the key to reaching them is other men.

Kearl: In our society a man’s voice has a lot more sway with other men than a woman’s voice does. It’s a sad statement but it’s true in a lot of cases, and so men can actually have a really big impact on changing other men’s opinions about street harassment.

Kearl says the best way to get through is to make it personal. She made a habit of telling her male partner every time she got harassed. Suddenly, the problem became real.

Kearl: They just may have a stereotype in their mind about who gets harassed and then they don’t really worry about it. But if they know that the women they care about are routinely harassed, I think a lot of them would care and would want to do something.

English teacher Ileana Jimenez has seen that transformation firsthand. She teaches an elective on feminism at Elisabeth Irwin High School in Soho — and street harassment is a central topic. She remembers the moment when one boy in her class suddenly understood his friends and classmates got harassed.

Jimenez: And he wrote about how, if this is happening to my friends, then it’s probably happening to my mom. And that’s kind of where he went one extra step on bringing it to a kind of close and personal level.

May from Hollaback thinks those kinds of personal stories can lead to policy changes. The group won a grant from the Knight Foundation to write a smartphone app that can map street harassment. The app will log when and where each report happens in a central database. Users will also have the option to have Hollaback send those stories to the local City Council member. May hopes all those reports will prompt council members to act.

May: You’re gonna organize a big fat rally and press conference around street harassment in your district. You’re gonna make a call for a major citywide investment in preventing street harassment – comprehensive education, curriculum, guides for employers, public service announcement campaigns…a major push.

Users will be able to download the new app this summer.

I’m Emily Jones, Columbia Radio News.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand speaks to media at the Union Square Pavilion on May 3, 2013. Gillibrand and anti-hunger advocates spoke out against proposed cuts to federal food stamp programs. (Max J. Rosenthal/Uptown Radio)

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HOST INTRO: Here comes the buzz. After 17 years in a slumber, hundreds of millions of cicadas are finally emerging across the Mid-Atlantic. Gene Kritsky is a professor of biology at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Ohio. He says to look out for them under your feet.

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HOST: Mayor Bloomberg announced the largest expansion to the City’s recycling program in 25 years earlier this week. Now rigid plastics, such as yoghurt containers, shampoo bottles, old toys and plastic hangers can now be recycled along with your water and glass bottles. Bloomberg says the rules are easy to remember.

Recycling_rigid_TC_BNC

If it’s rigid, recycle it. If it’s a plastic bag, no, that’s not rigid.

00:05

The new program means each year 50,000 tons of plastics will be recycled rather than go to the City’s landfill. The changes are possible through a partnership with SIMS Municipal Recycling which will open North America’s largest recycling plant in Brooklyn later this year.

Recycling_win_TC_BNC

Expanding our recycling program to include all rigid plastics is going to do a lot of good for our city’s environment, while saving taxpayers’ money. So it’s a win-win-win-win-win.

00:09

It could save the City up to $60,000 each year. Making it easier to recycle plastics could encourage people to recycle other things, too, such as paper and metal. The rules won’t be strictly enforced until July, but Bloomberg says you can start recycling today.

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HOST: Six months after Hurricane Sandy, nearly two-thousand people displaced by the storm are still living in hotels around the city. Both the city and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are ending their hotel program in the next month. Some evacuees will move into subsidized apartments. But, as Tenzin Shakya reports, others may be left homeless.

NARR: Miriam Alsaidi grew up in Staten Island and a year ago she says was getting by, living in her mother’s rental home. She had enrolled in a nursing program, and was only weeks away from taking her license test.  That was until,  Hurricane Sandy took over her life.

MIRIAM: What life is now is, we wake up, we live out of bags, and it’s such a headache. Whose clothes are in what bag, umm take the kids to school. I walk around and wander because we have nowhere to go.

NARR: Today, she is at her mother’s flood damaged home in Staten Island. The house is being renovated. The smell of fresh paint still lingers and the rooms are wide open, waiting for doors to be installed. It’s difficult to walk around from one room to another without stepping on something.

AMB—- STEPPING ON THINGS.

NARR: She has over a dozen trash bags full of children’s clothes and toys scattered all over the floor. Alsaidi is a single mother raising four children, all under the age of 10. They are usually a hand-full, and today she’s trying to stop her children from fighting.

AMB: Chaos. Her children are fighting over the I-phone and Miriam trying to calm them down.

NARR: Miriam’s family is one of the 346 families FEMA has been helping, paying for their hotel rooms since. But The federal agency has been trying to end the program for months now. Extensions are given needs, but Miram was cut off april 15.

MIRIAM: If it were me by myself, I wouldn’t complain. I can go, I can stay here if I want to. I don’t care about the toilet, I can walk to the gas station down the block, it doesn’t matter to me.

NARR: But She says she wishes she could do more for her kids.

MIRIAM: My kids you know their reality is. Oh where are we sleeping tonight, they ask me. Where are we going tonight? It’s just I hate it.

NARR: The Department of Housing and Urban Development has teamed up with FEMA in providing evacuees with the option of subsidized housing. But Miriam still doesn’t qualify.

MIRIAM: Housing, the problem with that is, I have no income so they can’t give me a house with no income.

NARR: Giselle Routhier is a policy analyst at the Coalition for the Homeless in New York. She says Mariam’s case is not special. In fact most of the families remaining in hotels now are classified as low income, which means they earn about $22,000 per family of four. Many evacuees are still dependent on temporary shelters. They can’t afford to pay rent.

ROUTIER: Many are could be forced to enter the shelter system where there already are a record number of homeless families from even before the storm. REALITY SAD: That’s going to be the reality for a lot of folks.

NARR:  just a few blocks away from Miriam’s mother’s house, on Midland avenue, is the lot where the home of Aiman Youseff   used to be. Now all that remains is debris and his dog in the backyard.

AMB: Come here daddy, whistles… more whistling and calling the dog.

YOUSEFF: Is it, is it possible you know, for a person to live in that house for 20 years and to lose everything, is it really you know.

NARR: Youseff’s place is two blocks away from the beach. He says he was in his home when Sandy hit. He remembers that day vividly.

YOUSEFF: The water was in the house six-feet, my mom was going under water. I dived into the water, took an extension cord from the outlet. I got my mom, and lifted her up.

NARR: Youseff and his mother made it to their neighbor’s second floor and survived the storm. His one-floor home however was not salvageable. The city demolished it shortly after. Since then, his family has been living in a hotel room funded by FEMA’s hotel program. He says he’s trying to pull together the money to  rebuild his home.

YOSUFF: I have in my account about $40,000 to build a $300,000 home. Ah, haha we need magic here, with this number Maybe I don’t know. Another zero will help but uhh I don’t know what to say.

NARR: Youseff was running a small electronics business from his garage. But with that gone, he’s going to have to start a new job. Because he was a homeowner, he’s able to secure an apartment for now. Routhier, of Coalitions for the Homeless, says some evacuees will not have that option. She says the city needs to understand the evacuees’ needs better, and until then the hotel program should not cut.

ROUTHEIR: We’re hoping… ummm asking the city, and pushing the city to extend this deadline until such when all families have been relocated into permanent housing.

NARR: The program was never meant to be a permanent solution. It is meant to give evacuees some time to get back on their feet; it’s been running for 6 months now. While this may work for people like Youseff, who’ll be able to rent, evacuees in Miriam’s situation will remain in limbo.

Tenzin Shakya, Columbia Radio News.

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HOST: All New York commuters love to gripe about their commute. The subway line people love to hate? The G train. It’s often called the worst train in the city – and it’s even the only line with its own advocacy campaign. Stephanie Kuo reports after years of complaints from riders, the MTA has agreed to look for ways to improve the G.

AMBI_G Train Station fade up at “rush hour,” then fade under NARR.

The G train station at Metropolitan Avenue is packed, with streams of people coming down the stairs onto the platform. It’s rush hour. Deon Brannan charges down the stairs as he hears the Church Avenue-bound train pull up – one hand holding down the top of his Yankees cap, the other swinging a black plastic bag holding his lunch. But he just misses the door.  AMBI_bingbong up full. AMBI_train departing up full then fade under NARR.

He throws his hands up in frustration.

DEION BRANNAM (0:10)

Aw man, I be mad. What goes through my head, I be mad. I be pissed. But I just gotta wait for the next one, you know?

He says the wait for the next one can be long.

DEION BRANNAN (0:07)

Oh, shhh—, like 20 something minutes. Yeah, like 22 minutes, you know?

Other G train riders agree. They have some choice words to say about the line.

WATERFALL MIX (0:05)

Late. Unpredictable – I would second that. Tardy. The most unreliable train in New York.

It’s not just riders who are complaining. State Sen. Daniel Squadron represents areas along the line.

SEN. DANIEL SQUADRON (0:11)

Right now, if there were a grade after F, it would be G. The G train has seen the highest increase in weekday service of any line in recent times, and it’s too often the orphan of the system.

The conventional wisdom on the G train is that it underperforms because it’s the only line that doesn’t go into Manhattan. It runs from Court Square in Queens to Church Avenue in Brooklyn. The most common complaint among G train riders is the wait between trains, which is known as “headway”.. The 2012 State of the Subway Report Card by transit advocacy group the Straphangers Campaign found the average headway across the subway system to be about five minutes during the morning rush. The G train runs about every seven. But after 9 a.m., the headway rises to 10 minutes, then as much as 15 to 20 during the afternoon and evening. That’s why the G has become known as the Ghost Train.

MATT GREEN (0:02)

It’s a spook. It’s like, it’s here and there and then it’s gone.

Matt Green is a member of the Riders Alliance, a grassroots organization that advocates for better transit. He does research for the Alliance’s G Train Campaign. Green says he’s found that riders can sometimes wait up to 45 minutes for a train. Riders also complain about overcrowding. G trains only have 4 cars instead of the 8 to 10 on other lines. Green says the problems with the line lead some riders to seek alternatives. But a lot of people who live along the G don’t have that option.

MATT GREEN (0:10)

Other trains, when they’re down, there’s alternatives. You can find another route. But when the G train is down, it’s really the one route people depend on.

But fewer people depend on the G than on any other line in the city. For instance, the busiest stop on the G at Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg sees about 13,000 riders a day. Compare that to the 195,000 who pass through Times Square every day. Green says because the line‘s comparatively small ridership creates a vicious cycle among MTA officials.

MATT GREEN (0:12)

I think they’re really focused on supply and demand. And if people aren’t using it, it’s sort of like a cycle. People aren’t using it because the service is bad. But we need people to use the train in order for the MTA to pay attention.

But more people are using the G train. The MTA reports that it saw the largest uptick in ridership of any line in 2012. That’s 2,000 more riders a day, or a little more than 4 percent. Neighborhoods along the G are booming. Williamsburg and Greenpoint are the fastest growing neighborhoods in the city. And the growth along that part of the G is going to continue.

HERBERT KLIEGERMAN

rapid growth

Herbert Kliegerman has been a real estate broker in North Brooklyn for 10 years.

HERBERT KLIEGERMAN (0:09)

We see young people coming in from all around the world. Young students, young people who are coming in for jobs and realizing that there’s an alternative to the Lower East Side.

AMBI_street fade up and under NARR.

Take one look around the intersection of Metropolitan and Union Avenues in Williamsburg, and you’ll see rows of new buildings – sleek, modern and slate gray. Young residents walk shoulder to shoulder along the sidewalk. Two subway stops away, Greenpoint is about to get a 10-building development that will bring at least 4,000 more residents to the area. Kliegerman says that growth is going to force the MTA to improve G train service.

HERBERT KLIEGERMAN (0:07)

Real estate goes with transportation. It’s a necessity. If it’s not addressed, we can’t have a future.

For now, some people who live along the G line have turned to the few alternatives that exist. AMBI_ferry up full then fade under NARR.

The East River Ferry makes four stops in neighborhoods served by the G. It takes riders either to Wall Street or Midtown in about 10 minutes.

MILENA TZANKOVA (0:)

I think it’s much better.

Milena Tsankova lives in Greenpoint and rides the ferry every day. It’s more expensive than the subway, but she says it’s more pleasant.

MILENA TZANKOVA (0:)

Well look at the view. It’s a great way to start your day and end your day.

It’s quite punctual. I only wish they had it more often.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel for residents who still ride the G train. The MTA agreed in February to review service along the line. This will be the third study of its kind. Transit advocates say that earlier reviews of the F and L lines led to improved service.

MTA spokesperson Charles Seaton says the transit authority hasn’t begun looking at the G yet, but will in the next couple of weeks.

CHARLES SEATON (0:05)

We always address service to meet ridership and right now, we just don’t know what we’re going to find at the G.

Even with all the complaints about the G, some riders say the line doesn’t deserve its bad reputation. Greenpoint resident Simone Cuevas says people are just too harsh.

SIMONE CUEVAS (0:12)

A lot of people hate on the G. They say it’s never there, it takes forever to come. No, it’s just like any other train. It’s nice. I like it just as much as any other – actually I like more than a lot others that are in the city.

In fact, according to the Straphangers Campaign’s Subway Report Card, the G is NOT the worst train in the city. That distinction has gone to the C train for four years in a row. The report card says the G actually arrives with above-average regularity. The MTA will report on how it thinks it can improve that when it releases its review of the line in June

Stephanie Kuo, Columbia Radio News