NYC NOW - May 11, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

A Westchester District Attorney is moving to dismiss more than two dozen convictions that were the result of arrests made by the Mount Vernon police department. A few dozen migrants arrived early Thursday morning to a hotel in Orange County. Plus, new contracts ratified by Rutgers University teachers this week marks a major triumph for the unions and an end to a year of negotiations. WNYC’s Karen Yi reports these union gains could inspire other higher education labor fights. And finally, WNYC is meeting some of the people committed to gardening in New York City.

Good evening and welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jene Pierre for WNYC. Westchester District Attorney Mimi Roka will move to dismiss 26 convictions that were the result of arrests made by the Mount Vernon Police Department. The DA's office launched an investigation into the police department in 2020 after WNYC published secret recordings from a whistleblower revealing detailed accounts of corruption. George Joseph broke the story for WNYF.

NYC back then, he's currently a reporter for the news site, The City. Joseph says this kind of move by a DA is rare. The district attorney is not only moving to vacate the convictions because of alleged misconduct, but also because of alleged failures by prosecutors to share evidence with defense attorneys. Now, it's up to a Westchester County judge to decide whether the charges will be dismissed. The Justice Department is also investigating charges of corruption in the Mount Vernon Police Department. Several dozen migrants from New York City arrived at a hotel in Orange County by bus early Thursday morning. It happened right as Title 42 is about to expire, a temporary immigration policy that allowed U.S. officials to turn away migrants on the grounds of preventing

the spread of COVID-19. The Adams administration is paying a hotel in Newburgh to house a group of adult men seeking asylum for four months. The mayor sent the bus over the objections of Orange County Executive Steve Newhouse, who issued an executive order trying to prevent hotels in the county from accepting migrants. The Republican County Executive is calling the process a disorganized disaster and blames the mayor and governor Kathy Holkle. The city decided not to send a bus slated for Rockland County after a judge issued a temporary restraining order on the plan. Officials say only adult men seeking asylum are being asked to volunteer to leave the five Burrows.

Stick around. There's more after the break. The faculty at Rutgers University made their new contracts official this week, marking a major triumph for the union and an end to a year of negotiations. Under the agreement, teachers will get a boost in pay, and some workers will receive additional job security. These big union gains could inspire other higher education labor fights, though they're not all likely to win. WNYC's Karen Yee has more.

The historic teaching strike at Rutgers last month came as labor actions on other university campuses were surging. Nearly 50,000 University of California academic workers are off the job right now. Temple University Graduate Students Association hit the picket line. The faculty are on strike at two Illinois universities, Chicago State and Eastern Illinois down in Charleston. At Rutgers, three faculty unions representing 9,000 professors, graduate researchers, clinicians, and adjuncts canceled class for five days. That included tenured professor Evie Shockley. She says when she told her students she was on strike, they burst into spontaneous applause. Shockley is a distinguished professor of English,

who has been teaching since 2005. She picketed alongside her lower paid colleagues, graduate workers and adjuncts who were at the forefront of the union's demands for better pay. All of our working conditions depend on each other. And adjuncts won the biggest concessions from the university. We've always been ignored and invisible. You know, like the kind of the secret of the university. Amy Heiger is the president of the Rutgers Faculty Adjunct Union. She says seeing adjuncts secure better wages at the University of California and NYU

inspired their fight. Everybody watches each other. And we kept saying that they're winning big over there. They're winning big over there. It's our turn. It's our turn. And I got people involved. Rutgers won't be the first to pay adjuncts a minimum of $8,300 a class.

But with universities increasingly relying on them to teach core courses, other unions will be looking to Rutgers as an example of what's achievable. So says Tim Cain, an associate professor of higher education at the University of Georgia. It helps to emboldened other unions to say, look, we can ask for these things. We can demand these things and we can fight to get them. Kane says there's been about a dozen strikes in higher education this year, which is on pace to be the highest since the mid-1980s. He says the more unions win, the more pressure universities face to meet worker demands.

A union contract in one place can affect the conditions in other places, both unionized and otherwise, if they still want to be competitive. But labor experts say that. the Rutgers strike was unique because it included the entire teaching staff. William Herbert studies higher education collective bargaining at Hunter College. He says mobilizing workers across occupations to get stronger contracts is a return to the kind of organizing that happened right after World War II. Towards what sometimes referred to as wall-to-wall unionism, which is trying to bring unity among various occupations in support of each other. No contract.

No peace. key to the Rutgers union win was Governor Phil Murphy. The governor who has positioned himself as a pro-labor progressive called university officials and union leaders to negotiate at the State House under his watch. He even agreed to fund some union demands. Tom Harnish from the state higher education executive officers association says what happened at Rutgers might not be as easily replicated in less union-friendly states, where leaders might be less willing to help finance a deal, or at regional colleges facing declining enrollment. The state funding is absolutely critical.

The new investment in higher education in a period of robust budget surpluses has actually been fairly underwhelming. As union activity on campuses increases post-pandemic, Redgers could also be an example of how unions can take on issues beyond pay and benefits. The unions convinced Rutgers to stop withholding diplomas and transcripts from students with unpaid fees, such as, parking tickets, though they didn't convince the university to freeze the rent on its housing properties. Up with wages, down with track. Freshman Izzy DeFlease joined her professors on the picket line along with hundreds of other students. She's studying costume design and says it was worth missing a lesson on designing the

jacket from the Broadway show Hamilton to not only fight for her teachers. I have a lot of loans going out right now. We want to be able to live where we learn and we want to be able to live where we were. also to fight for what her generation expects from their future employers. That's WNYC's Karen Yee. New York City is home to hundreds of community gardens, and most of them are springing to life. The majority of these green spaces were once abandoned lots

that volunteers have now reclaimed. All this week, WNYC is meeting some of the people committed to gardening in New York City. I originally was gardening on my rooftop and I had some problems with my building and had to move the garden off the roof. I mean, I've always had my hands in the dirt ready to go. My name is Kim Yim and I'm the president here at Pleasant Village Community Garden in East Harlem. It is a nice oasis to get away from just all the busyness and hectic outside. A lot of trees, lots of flowers, lots of birds.

There's a big Puerto Rican presence here. very multicultural and diverse. What inspired me to get involved here was just the need to grow food. I was in a time of my life where I just needed to save money, and it was just economical for me to grow food for myself. So I started doing it that way. I mean, I'm a fanatic about plants, so anything that you put a little seed in the ground and it sprouts,

you know, it's just a fascinating process. So anything to help that along. Some of the things that I've grown here have been tomatoes, your typical cucumber, peppers, stuff like this, but we also have a fruit orchard, so we produce a lot of fruit, and then we also have eggs from chickens, so that's another plus. I think this garden brings the community together. When people walk by, we all know who our neighbors are, you know,

so it brings a sense of closeness to everybody here in the neighborhood. I think people feel safe because of the garden. and lots of kids run around. COVID hit, and that took a turn. So I just spent most of my days here in solitude almost, working and tending to the garden, and just making sure everything was maintained during that time. We do a lot of parties in the summertime,

let's say someone's birthday. I definitely remember mine was really great last year. They all surprised me, and the whole membership was here. And it was nice. It's definitely really great when, Everybody's here enjoying food and fun and music. Kim Yem is president of Pleasant Village Community Garden in East Harlem.

Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday. Three times a day. We'll be back tomorrow.