NYC NOW - August 3, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

New York City college students will soon start helping some migrants file their asylum applications. Plus, trash bots are helping to keep downtown Brooklyn’s Albee Square a bit cleaner. Also, public health workers conducted a drill this week to practice how they would respond to a patient with Marburg virus. And finally, WNYC’s Jessica Gould highlights a new program that helps Brooklyn teens join the fight for the right to read.

Good evening and welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jenae Pierre for WNYC. New York City College students will soon start helping some migrants file their asylum applications. Deputy Mayor Ann Williams Isam says this will help asylum seekers get one step closer to reaching their goal. Asylum seekers arriving to our country are seeking to build the American dream. And here in New York City, we are working to give them a shot at that. Migrants generally have a year to submit their completed applications.

Undergraduate and graduate students from New York University and four CUNY schools are volunteering as application assistance through the fall. Some students will get extra credit for volunteering. More than 95,000 migrants have come to New York City since last spring. In downtown Brooklyn's LB Square, the area has been looking a lot cleaner over the last two weeks. That's because there's been some extra help from the so-called trash bots. WNYC's Kathleen Gonella has more. The bots are two trash cans attached to remote-controlled hoverboards with cameras on top. But collecting glitter isn't their only purpose. They're actually part of a Cornell tech study to better understand how people interact with robots in public space. At Albi Square, most people

like Keisha Trappier were amused with the bins on wheels. I think it's cute. Just as long as they don't become too advanced. Roboog garbage like that is okay. Robo people, no. Wednesday was their last day in downtown Brooklyn. Researchers hoped to try out the trash bots in all five boroughs. Stay close. There's more after the break.

NYC. New York City's public health workers are preparing for the Marburg virus. That's a severe hemorrhagic fever with symptoms similar to Ebola. WNYC's Caroline Lewis reports from a drill. All right, guys. good seal on our base pieces here. We're going to tape around your beautele seal once we're ready for that. In a tiny room at Gouverneur Health Clinic in Lower Manhattan, paramedics are taping

themselves into crinkly silver hazmat suits and putting on oxygen masks. The fake Marburg patient they're there to pick up and transfer to Bellevue Hospital is in isolation next door. In reality, the U.S. hasn't had a case of Marburg virus since a traveler brought it from Uganda to Colorado in 2008. But outbreaks in Equatorial Guinea and Tanzania earlier this year made it a good candidate for the city's annual emergency drills. The way that we built out the scenario is that the patient traveled to Kenya and did some cave exploring at Kittem Cave. They did see some bats.

Sarah Madad is the senior director of the special pathologies program at NYC Health and Hospitals. She says the likelihood of Marburg arriving in New York is very low. But people travel here from all over the world, so it's important to be prepared. In recent years, the city has also run drills to keep sharp on protocols for Ebola and Mpox outbreaks. Just leave it in the pool for now. After the fake patient arrived at Bellevue, he was rushed inside to the hospital's special pathogens unit.

A dedicated team from the fire department helped the paramedics decontaminate their hazmat suits before removing them. All right, once you're done with that, hand him a blue wipe so he could dry off his hands. Dozens of clinicians, firefighters, and public health officials looked on. The goal is always to identify areas for improvement. That's WNYC's Caroline Lewis. Book bands have swept the country in recent years. And while New York City has been relatively insulated from those efforts,

a new program helps Brooklyn teens join the fight for the right to read. WNYC's Jessica Gould has more. For 16-year-old Miri Bawa in Brooklyn, all that news about book bands at schools and libraries has felt pretty abstract. I can't really relate to that because we had books like The Hate You Give and books that were written by Black people and queer people. And I think about how I'm sort of privileged. But she knows that's the reality so many kids in states like Florida, Texas, and Missouri are facing.

And it's why she recently joined the Brooklyn Public Library. Library's Intellectual Freedom Teen Council. The teens meet monthly over Zoom to talk censorship and how to mobilize. You always think it can't happen to you until it does. And I think that's exactly what happened with me. Yvonne Torres, who's 18, is joining from his town in New Mexico. We had a group trying to attempt to ban books. In the spring, activists called for removing several titles from the local library's shelves, including the trans memoir, Never a Girl, Always a boy. And this book is gay, which is a guidebook for queer young people. Thanks to his involvement in the library's team council, Torres says he knew how to push back. I, along with a bunch of

other students, organized a group to go and fight that process. He testified at a Rio Rancho City Council hearing about how important these books are to help him and many others feel seen and safe. As an LGBTQ person myself, like showing that our humanity, our dignity doesn't have deserve to be in the library is a dangerous precedent. The Teen Council is part of the Brooklyn Public Library's broader efforts to protect students' right to read. Last year, the library started offering free e-carts to young people across the country who had trouble accessing certain books.

The Teen Council helped name the initiative, Books Unbanned. Karen Keys is the library's youth services coordinator. We definitely wanted to connect Brooklyn teens' youth across the country who were going through this. Even if Brooklyn teens aren't directly facing these book bands and challenges, they are often part of marginalized communities that are targeted in these bands. Another member of the Teen Council, Sinyi Hisen, says reading diverse books helps students develop empathy.

And I feel like as teens, we should be given the access to have information, but we have to make our own decision. We don't know we agree with it. She plans to start a book club featuring frequently banned books at her high school. this fall. That's WNYC's Jessica Gould. We're inching closer to the weekend. And if you want to celebrate the 50-year anniversary of hip-hop, well, the Big Apple is the place to be. New York City is hosting a series of free concerts and block parties to commemorate the birth of hip-hop. This Saturday, Black Girls Rock will host a live conversation at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with rapper Rhapsody

and actress and DJ D.D. D.D. Lovelace. They'll talk about the role of women in hip-hop's future. Also, on Saturday, KRS 1, Dead Prez and Jungle Brothers will perform at a block party at the intersection of Fulton Street and Washington Avenue in Brooklyn. And Sunday, Hot 97's T.T. Torres will moderate a live conversation between Grammy Award-winning artist and hip-hop pioneers, Sultan Peppa, at the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center. Go ahead and plan your weekend accordingly. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. We'll be back tomorrow. Thank you.