NYC NOW - January 31, 2024 : Evening Roundup

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

A New Jersey man is facing criminal charges for allegedly leading rioters to breach the U.S Capitol on January 6th. Plus, a few early voters in New York share some issues that are top of mind in the upcoming special election to replace George Santos in Congress. And finally, WNYC’s Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky looks into health code violations at New York City public schools' cafeterias.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City. From WNYC, I'm Jenae Pierre. A New Jersey man faces criminal charges for allegedly leading the charge of rioters to breach the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. Authorities say 40-year-old Lee Giobe of East Ampton used a bullhorn to instruct rioters to push through a police line. He was released this week on a $100,000 bond. Giobe is the 40th person with ties to New Jersey charged in the deadly January 6th insurrection. In New York, more than a thousand voters requested early mail ballots in the upcoming special election to replace former congressman George Santos. WMY sees Bridget Bergen as some of those early voters what issues are top of mind.

Janet DeVidion of Jericho is backing Democrat Tom Swazi because he supports abortion. And she blames Republicans for not vetting Santos. They didn't even check his credentials. I mean, nothing. School, parents, his job, what he makes, financials, nothing. Jim Levy of Massapequa Park says his bills keep rising, like his $15 haircut. I walk in today and the sign says, January 1st, take it's $20. That's a 25% increase.

Levy voted for Mazi Pillup. We'll take a break here to give you time to put your snacks away, because our next story looks at which New York City's public schools' cafeterias have the most health code violations. Stay close. One fifth of New York City's 1,400 public schools have what officials call critical health code violations at their cafeterias. That's according to a WMYC analysis of health department inspections over the last three years. WMYC's Jacqueline Jeffrey Walensky has more. First things first.

If you're eating while you're listening to this, I'd suggest not doing that. That's because critical violations are the icky ones. Mice, roaches, flies. I found a warm in the salad. Are you serious? Yeah. It was like a small baby one. That's Queenie Cow.

She's a 10th grader at Stuyvesant High School. The school was cited for flies and mice multiple times since 2021. Health experts say it's those kinds of repeat violations that raise concerns about foodborne illness. Dr. Donald Schaffner is a professor of food science at Rutgers University. If the same facility keeps getting dinged for the same thing and they're not fixing it, like that's a sign that somebody doesn't have their eye on the ball. A total of 234 public schools were repeat offenders. For context, that's in a school system that serves hundreds of thousands of meals each day on average. Those meals are a lifeline for many families, especially the 15,

of New Yorkers who don't have enough to eat. The Department of Education said there hasn't been a documented medical issue related to school food, and school staff are really diligent about pest control. But Schaffner says that part of the problem could be that New York City has a lot of old school buildings. If you have an aging facility that doesn't have good infrastructure, you can have a great pest control program, but if you can't simply keep the critters out, then they're just going to keep coming in. Public schools are doing better than private schools when it comes to food safety. Inspectors found about twice as many violations per inspection at private schools compared to public schools.

City health inspectors visit each school at least once a year, and they're looking out for a huge list of possible offenses, everything from pests to missing CPR posters and uncovered light bulbs. Another Stuyvesant student I talked to, Luca Ottaviano, was pretty blasé about the reports of health. violations at his school. I mean, I've seen, like, mice and, like, in school before, but, like, I didn't really think too much of it. Like, it's New York City at the end of the day. Like, some of it is out of control. Mayor Eric Adams went all in on school lunch when he first took office.

Maybe the most famous change has been his Vegan Fridays initiative. Then in 2022, the education department invested $50 million into making 100 school cafeterias look more like food courts. The kids I interviewed were much more. passionate about the taste of the food than food safety. Francis Sullender, a sixth grader at Robert F. Wagner Secondary School in Long Island City, had a long list of least favorite menu items. Mushy green beans, weird, corn, pizza, and vegan chicken nuggets, which everyone hates. I've heard about the vegan chicken nuggets. What's the deal?

I mean, they don't taste like real chicken nuggets. They look weird and they're not very crispy. Students might get even more fed up with their lunches in February. That's when schools will stop serving popular menu items like fries and burritos due to a $60 million budget cut from the Adams administration. That's WMYC's Jacqueline Jeffrey Walensky. If you want to see how your school measures up, read the full story on our news website, Gothamist. For a lot of people, the new year is a chance to turn the page on the past and set their sights on the future.

As January comes to an end and we move even further into 2024, we're highlighting stories in our communities that focus on the idea of fresh starts. My name is Jovonne and Mark. I'm 55 years old. I reside in Central Harlem and my fresh thought is becoming a peer specialist. What a peer specialist is, is a person who's in mental health recovery. that had learned the skills, the coping skills, having this harm reduction approach, this trauma-informed approach. We're just people who've been there, done that, who can help someone else going through a similar situation.

I've lost two children and been diagnosed with all different types of diagnoses from severe depression, paranoia, schizophrenic. I didn't know how to deal with realities of life. of life after losing my boys. I wasn't able to function outside the home properly. You know, I was stuck. You know, I couldn't focus.

I was just left out there in the cold until I got introduced to Howie the Heart at Community Access. It's an advocacy center which trains individuals with lived experience in the mental health system for direct service, supervisor, or management, roles within human services. I found hope there at community access.

Like, you know, I'm not my diagnosis, but a person first. And I had to recondition my mental to believe that I can't be a productive member to society. I truly believe in my heart that especially is our agents of change. We help. We assist. You know, we don't tell people what to do. We show them.

I still have those things that happen to me. It's just the way I deal with them now and the way I dealt with them then are different. I've been through the trenches. Now I live for the living. Like I live to live. I want to make an impact. I want people to say, wow, she's come a long way. My name is Chantelle Jackson.

I live in the Lower East Side in Manhattan, New York. I am from the South Bronx, and I am 24 years old. When I was three years old, my father was incarcerated, and when I was 14, my mother was also incarcerated. And now I am being the person I needed when I was a child by working with teens affected by parental incarceration at the Osborne Association with CSO Portis. I work as a youth fellow. As a child, my father and I didn't have a relationship. because of familial boundaries. And as I got older, I want to say around 18, I took more initiative to establish a better bond in relationship with him

because as a child, I always felt more close to my dad. And now he's my best friend. And I don't know how I'd make it through life without him. as far as my mother, we always had a rocky relationship, but as an adult, I also took initiative to establish a better relationship with her, and now we do what we can to support each other, and I'm grateful for both of them. I did a lot of different things as far as, like, turning my pain into power. It really started with writing. It became my number one passion. It became my became a listening ear for me when I felt like I wasn't being heard throughout my hardships and

experiences. And it helped mold me into who I am today. A person that just wants to experience life in the most freeing way, I don't want someone to experience me and my energy and be like, oh, I know she's been through some things, some rough things. I just want to be creative, experience life, and be the best version of myself. Shantelle Jackson lives on the lower east side of Manhattan. She grew up in the South Bronx. And before her, we heard from Giovanna Mark, a peer specialist from Central Harlem. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC.

Catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Jenae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.