Ferrer: My ‘One New York’

I am writing in response to The New York Sun editorial from February 10, “One New York,” which commented on my speech this week at Lehman College. We seem to have different visions of what one New York means.

You argued that we’re already one New York because working people interact with the vastly rich through philanthropic service and with daily encounters “in a taxicab, a morning hello to the doorman, sitting next to a stranger in the movie theater.”

My vision for one New York is much larger. At its core, it’s a New York that works for everybody regardless of their economic situation. And that’s not always the case today.

Right now working people are struggling to keep their heads above water in our city. Recent statistics show that middle-class salaries in New York often aren’t enough for families to pay for housing, childcare, and their health insurance.

It is estimated that a mother of two children in New York now needs $50,000 a year just to make ends meet. One in four New Yorkers under age 65 lacks health insurance due to skyrocketing premiums. And the average price for an apartment in Manhattan is over $1 million.

Too many New Yorkers are being priced out of their own city.

That’s why I believe building one New York is far bigger than a morning hello to the doorman. It means closing the gap of affordability in New York that’s squeezing the majority of working people out of the middle class.

That’s bad for the middle class. And it’s bad for a city whose working people are trying to work their way into the middle class.

I see a New York where everyone has an opportunity to succeed, where the middle-class expands, not contracts, where every child can get a good education in their own neighborhood public school.

As I said at Lehman College: We don’t want a city that’s an island of the wealthy few surrounded by the struggling many. We want a strong and growing middle class with enough room for anyone willing to work for a place in it.

New York is a great city. I believe it’s the greatest city in the world. It gave me and my family hope and opportunity. New York at its best should be a city that works for everyone.

That’s the one New York we should all want.

FERNANDO FERRER
Mr. Ferrer is a Democratic candidate for mayor.
Bronx

Racial Redress Still Sought

After reading Ken Magill’s piece, “From J.P. Morgan Chase, an Apology and $5 Million in Slavery Reparations” [Business, February 1, 2005], I was compelled to write and comment. Please allow me, a descendant of slaves and survivor of Jim Crow, one last word on this heated and controversial subject.

Among other things, Mr. Magill quoted David Horowitz, author of “Uncivil Wars: The Controversy over Reparations for Slavery.” Mr. Horowitz states that “these people,” reparation activists, will keep on going as long as respectable institutions like J.P. Morgan give them credibility. He also said that this is a definite boost to the reparations scam.

Why does one have to be a scam artist to believe in reparations?

Most hard-working, taxpaying black Americans realize that no check will ever be in the mail for slavery reparations, let alone the hundred years of Jim Crow laws, lynchings, burnings, castrations, segregation, degradation, stealing of property, oppression, poverty, redlining, profiling, and discrimination that followed our so-called emancipation. The list is endless.

Forty acres and a mule? Hell, right now, I’d take an acre and a chicken.

PAMELA A. HAIRSTON
Washington, D.C.

Why Not Divest U.N. Funds?

Re: “President to Deliver His Tightest Budget, As Democrats Balk,” Luiza Ch. Savage, Page 1, February 7, 2005. President Bush has proposed deep cuts in domestic spending in order to decrease the existing deficit. Well and good.

What puzzles me, however, is why Americans will see the loss of millions of dollars in aid to education, transportation, and other public services; at the same time their government sends billions of dollars to a corrupt and morally bankrupt United Nations. That body, now almost entirely populated by dilettantes and dictators, ought to be left to fend for itself. Why should America’s vulnerable suffer while Kofi Annan’s cronies continue to loot the treasury?

M.P. HARRINGTON
Manhattan

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