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Judge blocks part of Trump’s order, protests continue

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President Donald Trump’s order to restrict people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States sparked outrage and hit a roadblock late on Saturday when a federal judge said stranded travelers could stay in the country.

The emergency court ruling was cheered at Boston’s Logan International Airport, one of several major U.S. airports where protesters angry with Trump’s order gathered.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which sought the temporary stay, said it would help 100 to 200 people with valid visas or refugee status who found themselves detained in transit or at U.S. airports after Trump signed the order late on Friday.

The ACLU, along with several groups, filed a lawsuit on behalf of two Iraqi men who were en route to the United States on immigrant visas when Trump issued the executive order banning many Muslims from entering the country.

One of the men, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, was traveling on an Iraqi special Immigrant Visa and had worked as an electrical engineer and contractor for the U.S. government from 2003–2010.

Brandon Friedman, a former Obama administration official who commanded a platoon during the invasion of Iraq, said Darweesh had worked for him as an interpreter. He said on Twitter that Mr. Darweesh “spent years keeping U.S. soldiers alive in combat in Iraq.”

The other man, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, had been granted a Follow to Join Visa. His wife and 7-year-old son are lawful permanent residents residing in Houston, Texas, and were eagerly awaiting his arrival. Alshawi’s son has not seen his father for three years.

“President Trump’s war on equality is already taking a terrible human toll. This ban cannot be allowed to continue,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.

The judge’s order later on Saturday was a dramatic end to Trump’s first week in office, capped by the Republican president’s four-month ban on refugees entering the United States and a 90-day hold on travelers from Syria and six other countries.

Trump had promised during his campaign what he called “extreme vetting” of immigrants and refugees to try to prevent terror attacks.

He told reporters in the White House’s Oval Office earlier on Jan. 28 that his order was “not a Muslim ban” and said the measures were long overdue.

Senior officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told reporters they had not seen the ruling, but said the government would implement any appropriate orders.

In the ban…

The ban on U.S. travel for passport-holders of seven Middle Eastern states applies to airlines’ flight crew, the International Air Transport Association said in an email to carriers around the world on Saturday.

The email, seen by Reuters, said the executive order from the president caught airlines unprepared.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection briefed IATA in a Saturday afternoon conference call about the new rules, the email said, noting that passport-holders from states such as Iran, including cabin crew, will be barred entry to the United States.

Reaction from Turkey, Britain, Iraq

Trump’s sweeping ban on people seeking refuge in the United States is no solution to problems, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Saturday, adding that Western countries should do more to help ease Turkey’s refugee burden.

When asked by a reporter about Trump’s ban during a joint news conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May in Ankara, Yildirim said: “Regional issues cannot be solved by closing the doors on people. We expect the Western world to lighten Turkey’s burden.”

“You can build a wall but it’s not a solution. That wall will come down like the Berlin wall,” he said, adding Turkey has spent some $26 billion on sheltering refugees.

May, who met with Trump in Washington a day earlier, told the news conference that the United States was responsible for its position on refugees. She has previously said a “special relationship” between the United States and Britain meant the two countries could speak frankly to each other when they disagreed on issues.

Iraqi lawmakers have requested that parliament discuss Trump’s action.

Rinas Jano, a member of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said he made the request with several other MPs.

“We want officials from the Iraqi foreign affairs ministry to come to parliament to explain the U.S. decision and discuss the matter,” he told Reuters.

The Iraqi government has so far declined to comment on the executive order signed by Trump.

Yemen is “dismayed” by Trump’s decision, saying that the country was a victim of attacks itself, an official said on Saturday.

“We are dismayed by the decision to unilaterally ban, even for only a month, travel to the United States for people holding Yemeni passports,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

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Arctic cruise goes from Bering Strait to New York for first time

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The giant luxury liner was anchored just off Nome, too hulking to use the Bering Sea community’s docks on its inaugural Arctic cruise.

Instead, its more than 900 Arctic cruise passengers piled into small transport boats and motored to shore, where they snapped photos of wild musk oxen, lifted glasses in the town’s colorful bars and nibbled blueberry pie while admiring Alaska Native dancers at Nome’s summer celebration.

The Crystal Serenity’s visit to Alaska’s western coast is historic. At nearly three football fields long and 13 stories tall, the cruise ship is the largest ever to traverse the Northwest Passage, where its well-heeled guests glimpsed polar bears, kayaked along Canada’s north shore, landed on pristine beaches and hiked where few have stepped.

Some remote villages along the way are seeing dollar signs, while environmentalists are seeing doom. They say the voyage represents global warming and man’s destruction of the Earth.

The terrible irony with the Crystal Serenity’s voyage is that it’s taking place only because of climate change and the melting Arctic, said Michael Byers, a professor in the political science department at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The Northwest Passage, which connects the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, has long been choked off by ice. But melting brought on by climate change is allowing passengers to cruise up the Bering Strait and then head east toward Greenland over the Arctic Ocean before docking next week in New York City.

“And yet, by actually taking advantage of climate change, it’s contributing to the problem because the ship has a very large carbon footprint of its own,”Byers said.

The Arctic cruise ship left Seward, on the Kenai Peninsula, Aug. 16 with about 900 guests and 600 crew members on board. During its monthlong journey to New York, it will visit towns and villages in western and northern Alaska, Canada, Greenland and the eastern seaboard.

Smaller cruise ships, those that hold about 200 people, routinely make a port call in Nome and continue through the passage, but this ship is different.

“This is the game changer,”Nome Mayor Richard Beneville said. “This is the one that’s on everyone’s lips.’’

Nome spared nothing to make sure tourists off the high-end Arctic cruise liner — tickets cost more than $20,000 per person, with a penthouse starting at about six times that — felt at home.

The guests came to town in waves so they didn’t overwhelm the available services in Nome, population about 3,800.

They arrived at the small harbor dock and loaded into vans or school buses for their adventures, which included getting a gander at a herd of wild musk oxen that had taken up residence just outside town.

Other activities arranged for the Arctic cruise ship passengers were hiking and birding tours and helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft flights. Organizers even rescheduled the annual Blueberry Festival so visitors could enjoy a $5 piece of pie while watching traditional Eskimo dancers or browsing tables of seal skin gloves and wallets made by Alaska Native artists. The event took place a block from where the world’s most famous sled-dog race, the Iditarod, ends every March.

“Being at this festival here, the indigenous families that are here, I mean they are so proud of what they have, their handcrafts, their dancing, their music. They just love it, even with the hardships they have to endure, the prices they have to endure,”said Floridian Bob Lentz, who was traveling with his wife, Linda.

Charlie and Joan Davis of San Francisco signed up for the cruise within the first hour it was offered three years ago.

“We’ve been around the world many times, and this is someplace we’ve never been to, that’s somewhat unknown,”Charlie Davis said. “You know, just an adventure.’’

They weren’t alone in wanting to be part of the historic cruise.

“This is the longest single cruise we have ever made, and it is the most expensive cruise we’ve ever made because it’s many days, and it’s very expensive to operate up here,”said the ship’s captain, Birger Vorland. “And it’s the one that sold out the fastest; 48 hours, it was basically gone.’’

This cruise was three years in the making, and just about everything is unique to the trip, said John Stoll, a Crystal vice president who organized it.

The Serenity was fitted with special equipment to operate in the Arctic, including an ice navigation satellite system. Its operators even chartered cargo flights to northern communities to gather fresh perishables for the vessel’s five-star restaurants.

“The planning and the logistics that has gone into this ship has been nothing short of amazing,”Stoll said.

The cruise company is planning another Alaska-to-New York City voyage next August, catering to travelers like the Lentzes.

“We’re going off on a wildlife adventure right now, and that, to me, is what it’s all about in our twilight years — kind of experiencing things before crazy humans destroy it,”Bob Lentz said.

 

Entertainment, Featured Entertainment, Screen, Stage

Before Broadway, ‘Miss Saigon’ to appear on movie screens

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American audiences will get the rare chance to catch a sneak peek of the new Miss Saigon before it opens on Broadway next spring. They just have to go to a movie theater.

A filmed version of the musical’s live 25th-anniversary celebration in London will make its world premiere on some 175 U.S. movie theaters on Sept. 22, some six months before the same production with the same leading actors lands on Broadway.

The show captured the performance at the Prince Edward Theatre in London’s West End in September 2014 and was augmented by close-ups recorded a few months after the show closed there earlier this year.

The same stars — Jon Jon Briones as The Engineer and Eva Noblezada as Kim — are slated to appear when the show opens at the Broadway Theatre in March, but mega-producer Cameron Mackintosh isn’t worried the broadcast will cannibalize fans.

“It encourages business,” he said. “This is the greatest cinematic trailer for a theatrical production that’s ever been produced. I could be wrong, but I defy anybody who loves the show and isn’t bowled over by the film not to want to go.”

Miss Saigon, a tragic Vietnam War love story inspired by Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly, has songs by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg, who also wrote Les Miserables.

Mackintosh said he didn’t initially plan for a broadcast version of Miss Saigon, but was persuaded to capture the 25th anniversary of its West End arrival with a dozen cameras. A special finale was added that featured the original stars Jonathan Pryce, Lea Salonga and Simon Bowman — as well as Mackintosh making a surprise appearance.

He considered it one of the top three performances of Miss Saigon in its history. “Beyond just it being a wonderful performance, there was a sense of magic in the air,” he said. (As for Mackintosh himself, “I bounce around like an irrepressible ball.”)

He and his team decided to add documentary footage and fold in close-ups shot later. They reminded viewers it was a live event by not digitally removing the performers’ microphones and layering in shots of the audience going into the theater and their reactions at some scenes.

“What producer in his lifetime gets the chance to do a great show twice with two brilliant companies in two different productions? Not many people have ever had that opportunity,” said Mackintosh.

The final result is presented by Fathom Events, Universal Pictures and Picturehouse Entertainment. American audiences will see the same production from London directed by Laurence Connor and with its two stars. “They’re seeing what they’re going to get,” Mackintosh said.

When the revival finally arrives on Broadway, it will join other Mackintosh-produced works like The Phantom of the Opera and Cats, which returned this summer. (It will have missed his latest revival of Les Miserables, which closes next month after 21/2 years.)

“Thirty years on, to have my four great musicals of that era still firing on all cylinders is amazing,” he said. “I’m as enthusiastic about these great shows now as I was when I helped create them all those decades ago because, to me, they smell as if they’re absolutely freshly minted.”

 

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News, Political

Trump Tower is 10 stories shorter than Trump claims

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When a Virginia teenager began scaling the glass walls of Trump Tower in mid-August, journalists covering his dramatic climb live struggled to answer basic questions: Who was he? Why was he doing it?

And also, how many stories is Trump Tower anyway?

Does it have 68 floors, as the Trump Organization claims in its marketing materials, or 58, which is the figure listed in databases of tall buildings kept by organizations like the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats?

The height of Trump buildings, as measured in stories, has actually been a point of contention and some media scrutiny for years.

In a 2003 interview with The New York Times, Trump acknowledged that he had skipped 10 numbers when labeling the residential floors of Trump Tower. He said it was justified because the ceilings on the lower floors, which include commercial space and the tower’s grand atrium, were so tall.

“It was all approved,” the now Republican presidential candidate then said. “’I brought it before the various agencies and got them to agree that I could start the building at Floor 30, because it equated to approximately 300 feet above ground.’”

That same story noted that condominium buyers in other Trump buildings were sometimes required to sign documents acknowledging that their units were on floors lower than the ones listed on elevator buttons.

Trump business and campaign representatives didn’t immediately answer a question about the floor discrepancy.

But the most recent certificate of occupancy posted online by the city Department of Buildings, from 2003, lists the building as 58 stories tall.

When it comes to taking some liberties with the number of floors in their buildings, Trump has plenty of company among New York City real estate owners. Skyscrapers throughout the city employ similar creative floor labeling as a marketing tool.

And towers routinely mislabel their 13th floor as the 14th in order to appease superstitious tenants.

“Developers have a tendency to exaggerate the floor count,” said Ben Mandel of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats, noting an easy solution is to go with the height of the building as measured in feet or meters.

By that standard, Trump Tower is 664-feet tall.

 

Featured Lifestyle, Lifestyle, Pets

NY requiring adoptions for research cats and dogs

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New York is requiring universities using cats and dogs for research to offer them for adoption through animal shelters, humane societies or private placements.

The law applies to higher education research facilities that are tax-exempt or receive public money or else collaborate with institutions getting either public benefit.

It first requires a veterinarian at the facility to determine whether an animal is healthy and suitable for adoption once the research is completed.

Assembly member Linda Rosenthal, a Manhattan Democrat and lead sponsor, says animals used in scientific, medical and product research across the state are usually euthanized, though some institutions voluntarily maintain adoption programs.

She says beagles are commonly bred for research and used because of their docility.

The Humane Society of the United States says Connecticut, California, Minnesota and Nevada have similar laws.

Featured, LGBT, News, Progressive

Pride processions begin with portraits of Pulse victims

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Rainbow flags were held high along with portraits of the dead as thousands of people marched on June 26 in gay Pride parades tempered by this month’s massacre at a Florida gay nightclub.

Crowds of onlookers stood a dozen deep along Fifth Avenue for New York City’s parade. Some spectators held up orange “We are Orlando” signs, and indications of increased security were everywhere, with armed officers standing by. An announcer introducing state officials and guests also shouted out, “Love is love! New York is Orlando!” in memory of the 49 people killed in Florida. Elected officials turned out in force, as did presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

She walked several blocks of the march, joining New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Rev. Al Sharpton for a brief appearance at Stonewall Inn, the bar where a 1969 police raid helped catalyze the gay rights movement.

On June 26, with her Twitter handle appearing in rainbow colors, Clinton wrote: “One year ago, love triumphed in our highest court. Yet LGBT Americans still face too many barriers. Let’s keep marching until they don’t. -H”

Authorities had expected a larger-than-usual crowd, and 15-year-old Chelsea Restrepo, of Staten Island, was among the onlookers. She had brushed aside her father’s concerns about security to attend the march for the first time.

“What happened in Orlando made me want to come more,” said Restrepo, swathed in a multicolored scarf. She said she wanted to show her support.

Kenny Hillman, a 39-year-old Brooklyn filmmaker, was ready to roar his Triumph Bonneville down Fifth Avenue.

The transgender New Yorker said he hadn’t planned to come to the march.

“For me, I wasn’t going to ride because I have 17-month-old twins at home. But then Orlando happened, and seeing so many of my friends shrink in fear made me realize that coming here was more important,” said Hillman, wearing an anti-assault guns T-shirt.

New York’s parade was one of several being held Sunday across the country, along with San Francisco, Chicago, Minneapolis and St. Louis. They came two weeks after the nation’s deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

In Chicago, 49 marchers at the head of the parade each held aloft a poster-sized photograph of a different Orlando victim as the procession wound through the city. Above each photo were the words, “Never forget.”

Despite the somber start, parade-goers seemed as enthusiastic as ever once marchers and floats began moving, cheering and dancing along the route. Many participants said the tributes to the dead in Orlando didn’t dampen the energy and fun associated with the pride parade.

“It is another on a list of brutalities over the years (against gays),” said Joe Conklin, 74, of Chicago, as he sat on the back of a float waiting for the OK to move out. “We’re aware of Orlando but not overwhelmed by it.”

It was a similar feeling in San Francisco, where men in glittery white wings walked on stilts and women in leather pants rode motorcycles as the parade moved along.

Richel Desamparado, of Oakland, California, was marching and carrying a photo of Orlando victim Stanley Almodovar. She said she felt the need to remind people the fight for equality is not over. “A lot of my gay friends and relatives are still being shunned away by their families and communities,” said Desamparado, 31. “People need to remember we’re still fighting for equality.”

Sunday’s parades did have a new milestone to mark: President Barack Obama on Friday designated the site around New York City’s Stonewall Inn as the first national monument to gay rights.

Security was ramped up at the events. New York police deployed roving counterterrorism units and used bomb-sniffing dogs, rooftop observation posts, police helicopters and thousands of officers to provide extra layers of security at Sunday’s parade. Thousands of uniformed officers lined the route, supplemented by plainclothes officers in the crowd.

San Francisco spectators faced metal detectors for the first time, and more police than usual were keeping watch. Some participants didn’t welcoming the stepped-up security: Two honorary grand marshals and a health clinic that serves sex workers withdrew Friday from the parade to protest the heavy police presence.

Chicago police put 200 more officers than usual on duty for the city’s pride parade Sunday. Organizers nearly doubled their corps of private security agents, to 160.

At a gay street parade in Turkey, a prominent German lawmaker and outspoken gay rights advocate was temporarily detained Sunday when he wanted to speak publicly at the end of Pride Week. Turkish police have repeatedly in recent days prevented activists from participating in LGBT rallies.

For all the security and solemnity, some spectators at pride parades this month have made a point of making merry.

“We had fun. That is what gay people do,” comedian Guy Branum wrote in a New York Times essay after attending the West Hollywood parade. “Our answer to loss and indignity, it seems, is to give a party, have a parade and celebrate bits of happiness.”

Entertainment, Screen

‘Weiner’ is riveting fly-on-the-wall filmmaking

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“Weiner” is the compulsively watchable new film about Anthony Weiner and the implosion of his 2013 New York mayoral run amid a revival of his sexting scandal.

Director Josh Kriegman once worked for Weiner, who was forced to resign his congressional seat in 2011. And Weiner clearly hoped Kriegman and co-director Elyse Steinberg would be documenting an inspiring comeback.

At first, it seemed like they were, as the charismatic Weiner chipped away at public skepticism (if not the media’s) and climbed to the top of the polls. Then it all came crashing down, as more lurid photos and text exchanges emerged, some that occurred after Weiner’s resignation. And for some reason, Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin — a longtime top aide to Hillary Clinton, and current vice chair of her presidential campaign — let the filmmakers keep going.

As Kriegman himself asks at one low point, inches away from the miserable couple in their own kitchen:

“Why are you letting me film this?”

Why, indeed. But it makes for riveting filmmaking — as a portrait of a campaign in crisis, of a fascinatingly flawed politician, and especially of a marriage. Watch Abedin’s face as she stares at Weiner on the day the scandal breaks anew, disappointed and stunned, with no words spoken and none necessary.

We begin with a chastened Weiner, at the end of the race, reflecting: “I guess the punchline is true about me. I did the things,” he acknowledges. But he adds, sadly: “I did a lot of other things, too.”

And the film, which seeks neither to judge nor ignore Weiner’s actions, sets out to show it. A prelude includes footage of Weiner’s impassioned speeches in Congress, on behalf of 9/11 responders, for example. We see why voters liked him. Then we see that Twitter image of bulging underwear, the humiliating media coverage, the resignation.

Two years later, though, Weiner’s ready to try again. The early days of his mayoral campaign are encouraging. We see Abedin smiling, laughing, and quipping lightheartedly to her husband in an elevator: “I’m not crazy about those pants.”

We meet the campaign’s energetic and loyal young volunteers. We see the couple making fundraising calls, Abedin expertly buttering up her contacts, and Weiner exclaiming “Kaching!” when she succeeds. Suddenly Weiner’s leading in the polls.

And then the other shoe drops. We see campaign staffers in battle mode. Abedin’s face is drained of its smile — for the rest of the film. Nervously, she tells a packed news conference that she loves her husband, and they’re moving forward.

But of course they can’t. Weiner’s besieged with scandal questions. We watch a painful meeting in which campaign staffers express their hurt. Abedin, ever the pragmatist, suggests to Weiner’s visibly upset top aide that when she exits the building, “You will look happy” — lest reporters see her crying.

Can it get worse? Yep. After a painful, combative TV interview, Weiner watches at home and laughs. Abedin stares. “Why are you laughing?” she asks. “This is crazy.” Asked later how she’s doing, she replies: “It’s like living a nightmare.”

Then on Election Day (spoiler alert: he loses!) Weiner’s erstwhile sexting partner, Sydney Leathers, seeks to confront him. Aides conspire to avoid her by detouring through a McDonalds. In an excruciating exchange, Abedin is heard saying to her husband: “I am not going to face the indignity of being accosted by this woman.”

Weiner and Abedin apparently haven’t seen the film. One wonders if now, they regret allowing the directors such intimate access. Either way, the filmmakers have done a compelling job as flies on that wall.

“Weiner,” an IFC Films release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America “for language and some sexual material.” Running time: 100 minutes. Three stars out of four.

MPAA definition for R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Featured Lifestyle, Lifestyle, Pets, Political

New York proposal to ban declawing cats sparks debate

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For many decades, declawing cats has been a routine veterinary procedure, but this is no simple pedicure.

There’s anesthesia, pain medication and the amputation of the cat’s toes back to the first knuckle.

New York’s first-in-the-nation legislative proposal to ban the declawing of cats has sparked a heated debate among veterinarians and cat lovers alike, with some insisting it’s inhumane and others saying it should be allowed as a last resort for felines that won’t stop scratching furniture, carpets and their owners.

“None of us love the procedure,” said Richard Goldstein, a veterinarian at New York City’s Animal Medical Center and a former faculty member at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “But when the alternative is condemning the cat to a shelter or to death? That’s why we do it.”

The state and national veterinary organizations that say they oppose a ban on declawing do so because it’s often the only way for cats with behavioral problems to keep from being abandoned or euthanized, they say. Such medical decisions should be left to the professionals and cat owners, not lawmakers, they add.

It’s the reality of the procedure itself that has raised the backs of opponents. Unlike human nails, a cat’s claws are attached to bone, so declawing a feline requires a veterinarian to slice through tendon and nerves to remove the last segment of bone in a cat’s toes.

“It’s amputation. It is the equivalent of taking a cigar cutter and cutting the end joint off,” said Jenner Conrad, a California veterinarian who traveled to Albany this past week to lobby lawmakers for the proposed ban.

Brooklyn elementary school principal Lisa Fernandez said she declawed her own cat before she knew what it entailed. Students at her school are now participating in a lobbying campaign to urge lawmakers to support the ban.

“When I found out what it was, I was horrified,” said Fernandez.

The debate comes as Americans’ feelings about their four-legged friends continue to evolve. Another bill in New York’s Legislature would remove sales taxes on pet food, and lawmakers here voted last year to allow dogs to join their human companions on the patios of restaurants. Several states have now banned surgeries which remove a dog’s vocal cords. And all 50 states now have statutes making severe animal cruelty a felony.

“There’s a rising tide of social concern about animal welfare,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States. “We’ve proven that the American public is deeply concerned about the welfare of animals, the ones that live with them and the ones used for food production.”

Australia, Britain and several European countries already ban cat declawing. It’s also illegal in Los Angeles and some other California cities. Estimates are that about a quarter of all household cats will be declawed in their lifetimes _ though vets that spoke to the AP say it’s becoming less and less common.

At the Animal Haven shelter in lower Manhattan, associate director Kendra Mara said about 10 percent of the cats up for adoption are declawed. Some of the felines who have the procedure resort to biting instead, and some avoid using the litter box because the litter can aggravate their wounds.

“It’s never an easy adoption,” she said. “There’s always the need to work on the behavior issue.”

Manhattan resident Brian Gari, one of several cat owners interviewed by the AP, inherited his 10-year-old cat Kiki when his father passed away and declawed her because “he put his furniture in front of the welfare of the cat.” Gari said Kiki has problems using the litterbox, forcing him to put her into a room lined with newspapers.

“It’s a total nightmare. I have to work around the situation,” he said. “She’s very sweet though. But she’s completely screwed up.”

Vets who spoke to the AP said cat owners increasingly turn to alternatives — scratching posts, regular clippings or small caps that go over a cat’s nails.

The New York State Veterinary Medical Society, however, remains opposed to a full ban. President Susan Wylegala said the number of declawings at her Buffalo-area practice is less than 50 percent of what it was just three years ago.

“We’re seeing it in significantly lower numbers because vets are educating clients on the alternatives that are available,” she said. “It needs to remain that last option.”

Featured News, National, News, Progressive, Social Justice

Hundreds march across New York bridge for stricter gun laws

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Hundreds of people carrying photos of loved ones killed by gun violence marched across the Brooklyn Bridge on May 7 to rally for stricter gun laws and chanted demands for action.

The fourth annual march, held on the eve of Mother’s Day, was organized by the group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

“We are going to stand up and fight until our last breath because if we lose our children we have nothing left to lose,” said the group’s founder, Shannon Watts.

Natasha Christopher knows that pain all too well. Her son, Akeal Christopher, was shot in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood in June 2012 and died days later, on his 15th birthday.

“Gun violence destroyed my family,” Christopher said. “Nothing will ever be the same. But I’m here today to say that I have turned my pain and anger into action.”

The marchers, who went from Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn to City Hall in lower Manhattan, said they wanted stricter background checks for gun purchases and a ban on assault rifles.

“They keep saying we have good, strong gun laws, but for me, I don’t believe these laws are really that strong,” Christopher said.

Marchers, as they crossed the bridge, shouted, “What do we want? Gun sense!”

Oscar-winning actress Julianne Moore was among the crowd that rallied before the march. She said she was spurred to get involved to advocate for stronger gun laws after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults in December 2012.

“We’re really pushing for more gun safety regulations,” she said. “It is not an anti-gun movement. It is not a partisan movement. It is a safety movement.”

Other speakers at Saturday’s march and rally included Barbara Parker, whose daughter Alison Parker, a broadcast journalist, was shot and killed on live television in August 2015 by a disgruntled former reporter. Parker, whose daughter died alongside video journalist Adam Ward while working for Roanoke, Virginia, TV station WDBJ, said U.S. officials need to do more to enact a policy that background checks be performed for all gun sales.

The National Rifle Association, the nation’s largest gun rights lobbying group, opposes expanding background checks. The NRA says many people sent to prison because of gun crimes get their guns through theft or the black market and no amount of background checks can stop those criminals.

Under the current system, cashiers at stores selling guns call in to check with the FBI or other designated agencies to ensure customers don’t have criminal backgrounds. Some lawmakers want to expand such checks to sales at gun shows and purchases made through the Internet.

Featured News, News, Political

Watchdog cites polling irregularities in New York primary

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A New York City official ordered an audit of the city’s election authorities, citing deep concern over widespread reports of poll site problems and irregularities as voters cast their ballots in the state’s primary election.

New York Republicans and Democrats on April 19 held presidential nominating contests for the Nov. 8 election. Delegate-rich New York, the fourth most populous U.S. state, is a big prize for the candidates.

“There is nothing more sacred in our nation than the right to vote, yet election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls, told to vote at the wrong location or unable to get into their polling site,” city Comptroller Scott Stringer said on primary day.

Stringer said his office had received reports of polling stations that failed to open on time and were unable to tell voters when they would be operational. A voter in the borough of Queens reported a broken machine and staff instructing voters to place their ballots in a “slot” for processing at a later time.

In a letter to the New York City Board of Elections, the comptroller cited reports that polling staff were unable to operate voting machines, were giving out conflicting information and erroneously directing voters to alternate sites.

Of particular concern, Stringer said, were allegations of widespread removal of eligible voters from registration rolls and incorrect party affiliations on voter records. Stringer said eligible Democratic voters in Brooklyn fell by 120,000 from November 2015 to April 2016 without explanation.

Board of Elections officials could not immediately be reached for comment.