NYC NOW - Evening Roundup: Judge Weighs Request to Dismiss Adams’ Case, Trump Moves to End Congestion Pricing, Captions at NYC Movie Theatres and a Community Champion

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

A judge will soon decide whether to drop the corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Plus, the Trump administration is withdrawing federal approval for congestion pricing. Also, WNYC’s David Furst and Ryan Kailath discuss a city ordinance requiring captions in most movie theaters for a certain percentage of screenings. And finally, we meet the creator of Compassionate Cleaning, which provides cleaning and remodeling services to underserved communities across the five boroughs.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Jene Pierre. A federal judge says he'll soon decide whether to drop the corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. District Judge Dale Ho held a hearing Wednesday in Manhattan Federal Court about the Justice Department's request to dismiss the case. The judge asked meticulous questions of acting deputy attorney general Amil Beauvais and the mayor's attorney. He said he was trying to get a better understanding for the reasons for the dismissal. Bill Vay ordered federal prosecutors to drop the case. In a letter, he said it was distracting the mayor from cooperating with President Trump's immigration crackdown.

Judge Ho did not say when he'll make his decision, but he said it's not in anybody's best interest to let his deliberations drag on. The Trump administration is moving to end congestion pricing, the program that's been tolding drivers who enter the busiest parts of Manhattan since January. The Federal Department of Transportation sent a letter to Governor Kathy Hockel saying that they're going to revoke federal approval for the tolls. The Federal Highway Agency approved the tolls under the Biden administration. In his letter, DOT's Secretary Sean Duffy cited concerns over the tolls being an unfair burden on drivers. Hockel also expressed similar concerns last year when she delayed the implementation of the tolls at a higher price. New York City movie theaters have captions now.

We'll get into why after the break. Have you been out at the movies in New York City lately? Well, you've probably noticed that your movie now has captions, not just subtitles for a foreign film, but English captions. It's becoming increasingly common because of a city ordinance requiring captions in most theaters for a certain percentage of screenings. My colleague David First talked about the accessibility feature with WMYC's Ryan Kyloth, who starts by sharing when this move actually went into effect.

So in 2022, this city law took effect, which, you know, it's a no-brainer accessibility issue. Yes. People who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can't enjoy the movies without captions. For years, there's been a method called closed captioning. We've heard of it. At the theater, that means you go to the counter. You get this little device. It's a screen on a very long neck.

And you put it in your cup holder. It sinks up the captions with the movie. I talked to some hearing loss advocates and big movie fans. One of them has been doing that for years. He said, you know, it's super annoying. It doesn't always work. You have to travel all over the theater. And also it immediately marks him out as different from everyone else in the theater.

So works but not that well. This city law requires open captions as opposed to closed. And that just means they appear on screen, just like subtitles, you know, rather than needing this clunky device. just the way it looks at home on the TV when we have the captions on. So what does the law require exactly? It's extremely long, a bunch of rules and exceptions and carve-outs, but, you know, basically any modern movie theater with lots of screenings should offer a quarter of them with captions up to a maximum of four a week for each title. And the caption screenings have to be spread out between, you know, like peak hours, nights and weekends, along with the less popular

showtimes. There's a carve-out for small theaters that don't show that many movies in a week or theaters that show old movies where captions might not be available or, you know, that project on film, a bunch of exceptions. Is that something we should start thinking about before we head out to see a movie that check in advance to know which screenings are going to have captions or not so we can make decisions? Yeah, another part of the city ordinance is that theaters are supposed to advertise it very clearly.

And they generally do level of clarity, you know, if you're using it. something like Fandango. The little caption thing might be buried. If you go to a website, it might be more prominent. So you got to look a little closely sometimes, but you should be able to tell. And we're not trained to think this way, right, when we spontaneously think, oh, let's pop in and see a movie. Exactly. That's how I end up in these caption screenings all the time. Well, how are theaters handling this? Is the requirement affecting their business at all? That was a big fear on the industry's part, that, you know, customers would hate this. All of those caption showtimes would be empty.

In fact, there's a trade group for cinema operators. They came out against this bill, said it wasn't necessary. We don't have hard data about how it's going, but, you know, just for one example, I talked to film at Lincoln Center. One of the execs there told me they were nervous when this rolled out, but it's actually been super smooth. They haven't noticed any change in their attendance patterns. Nobody's, you know, spending boycotts on caption screenings. They were anticipating more pushback than they've gotten.

The exec there told me, you know, every now and then someone will complain. They didn't realize it was a caption screening, and the theater just exchanges the ticket and moves on. The thing is not every theater is complying with the law. The city agency that enforces this told me they've investigated five theaters for not having captioned screenings when they should. The law says every violation should come with a fine up to $500, but the city, they told me, has not issued any fines yet. Yeah, and maybe a byproduct of all of this is that, A lot of people really like it. I think my wife would like this in the theater.

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing about this law. It's an accessibility measure, but people who are learning English appreciate captions. People on the autism spectrum for whom noise and, you know, lots of sound can be difficult. Or people that we both know who just prefer them. Yeah. I can see a world where the culture shifts on this. And, you know, eventually we have as many caption screenings as not or more. That's WMYC's Ryan Kyloth, talking with my colleague David First.

Countless people in New York City are making differences in their communities. We're calling them community champions, and it's time to highlight one of them. Let me introduce you to Davina Furbert, the creator of compassionate cleaning, which provides cleaning and remodeling services to underserved communities in New York City. I started compassionate cleaning in March 2019. We do cleanings for underwentals. underserved communities such as NYCHA and people who are suffering from mental disorders, our mental illnesses.

And two years later, we expanded from cleaning to also doing rental-friendly makeovers for NYCHA tenants. The first time a lot of my customers see me is on social media. I'm not too professional crisp khaki pants, white collared shirt, embroidered logo. I'll show more of my personality. and if I know other people have the same experience as something that I have, I'll share that experience as well because some people they think, oh, your house must be super duper neat.

Like, you must hate a crowded house. Look what you do. No, I'm a person too. So I show some of that, like me cleaning up my own apartment, just so people can be at ease. It's like it happens, especially in this city. Like people have like two and three jobs trying to just pay rent. So I try to just show my face, talk.

They can hear my voice. And I feel like that's the part that gets the people like, okay, muletter in. I would say there aren't a lot of cleaning services that would go into these conditions that we do. They don't care what your apartment looks like. They don't care who you are. They just hurt NYCHA, and they're like, no, because of the stigma.

When a client reaches out to me, we talk about what they need because every client is different. We see what they want to do with whatever they have in their home. We sort through the things. and spread it out so we can see what's at the bottom of it. That's something that's really important that we do because my clients, they usually have pictures, birth certificates. I even got asked about a wedding ring one time.

And there's so many things in this pile of what somebody would see as trash. It's just everything just mixed together. Passionately cleaning has grown so much over the years. People in other cities, even other countries, have been reaching out telling me, like, oh, I've seen what you do. And I think it's really, really, like, needed. Because regardless of where you live, you know, everybody has something going on whether you can see it or not. Davina Furbert is the founder of Compassionate Cleaning LLC.

Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.