At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in our city this spring, a heartwarming civic ritual spontaneously arose, lifting spirits during a deep…
In 1973, I joined the New York City Fire Department after serving in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. I spent 28 years with the department, rising to…
New York City's Principals are demanding that Governor Cuomo take control of the city's schools because of the incompetence of Chancellor Rich…
Leaves are falling to the ground, but though the season has changed, the horrors and hardships of the pandemic have not. Its brutality continu…
You can't say I didn't warn you. I may have predicted a different cause (job elimination due to automation instead of a worldwide pandemic), b…
On Labor Day we recognize and honor the incredible achievements and many contributions of working people.
It appears that we have passed through the worst of the COVID-19 disease, but it still lurks in our communities ready to spring back at any mo…
My friend Tony Feliciano, transit worker 1984-2020, and a union man all his life, died a few weeks ago; he had just turned 61. While transit w…
Former President Barack Obama said: "When times are tough, we don't give up. We get up."
While the city government has threatened layoffs, the boom has already dropped at the City University of New York.
June 15 was a milestone in the history of policing in New York City. With the disbanding of NYPD anti-crime units, Police Commissioner Dermot …
As we continue to witness more primary election victories of young progressive Democrats, one could not ask for a better song title than The W…
In this time of economic turmoil, firefighters deserve stable pensions, not political gamesmanship
I am a mother and grandmother of a black son and grandson, and I have never been more afraid for their future than I am right now.
The week of June 7 marked the city's third annual "CPS Week of Appreciation," an opportunity for New Yorkers to recognize and thank the 2,000-…
The coronavirus pandemic has compelled us to take stock of the racial and socioeconomic inequities that have burdened our city's more than fiv…
As policy-makers debate when and how quickly we can reopen society with COVID-19 still plaguing us, it should be abundantly clear to those of …
When Arthur Goldberg, a long-time Transport Workers Union Local 100 officer, called to tell me that Arnold Cherry had died, the first thing I …
Who would ever have thought that a 2-hour movie you enjoyed with buttered popcorn and M&Ms—a movie that scared you silly the whole time it…
I am well, as are my wife and two adult sons. To say I am fortunate would be a stupendous understatement.
Our lives have been upended. We are all operating in uncertain times, knowing that our routines and circumstance could keep changing, day by d…
Part 1 of this essay concluded without my delving into its second question: Are the Democrats still a political party?
Three years ago I wrote in one of my initial Chief columns that “…there are only two political institutions that have even the remotest chance…
A new world of public safety is upon us, one that has been brewing for many years and directly affects each and every one of us and our famili…
Who would have thought that the tag line from a cheesy 1980s horror movie would provide the perfect description of the current state of the 20…
Nationwide, strikes are back in the repertoire of unions. Last month, public-school teachers in Dedham, Massachusetts, went out on strike desp…
The great author and philosopher George Santayana once observed: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Our Titans o…
Detectives Endowment Association President Michael J. Palladino last month submitted testimony on police and the use of force on behalf of the…
It may be the Dog Days of August, but it’s the chickens that have taken center stage by coming home to roost at the carnival we call the Democ…
Here’s a sad-but-true fact: labor unions in America are weaker than in other industrialized nations. Today, in America, just 10.5 percent of a…
Accountability must be demanded when, “Justice delayed is Justice denied.”
I recently listened to a year-old Gotham Gazette/Citizens Budget Commission podcast interview with NYC Labor Commissioner Robert Linn about th…
This year’s NYS legislative session was truly a wonder to behold. With a tip of my hat to our great troubadour, Bob Dylan, the truly significa…
You probably saw the pictures—60 veterans, well into their 90s, recently participated in the Normandy American Ceremony on the sun-drenched bl…
In the days and months that followed New York’s darkest day, the best among us responded to the rescue and recovery efforts without hesitation…
The late great Yogi Berra coined the phrase; the blues rocker John Fogerty used it as a song title on his 2006 concert album “The Long Road Ho…
It’s time to give New Yorkers a break.
March 25 will mark the 108th anniversary of one of the great tragedies in United States worker’s history: the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire…
We recently celebrated International Women’s Day 2019 embracing this year’s theme of Balance for Better. As we continue our Women’s History Mo…
No discussion about segregation in New York City’s public schools can be complete without reference to one of its most pervasive forms—academi…
I recently was ordering at a midtown Shake Shack when the cashier noticed my lapel, which was affixed with a United Probation Officers Associa…
On their 1979 seminal album “Fear Of Music,” Talking Heads lamented in the song “Cities” that their search to “… find a city to live in” had “…
Readers of this column have surely noted that I am frequently unsparing in my critique of the Democratic leadership and the labor movement. Bu…
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once declared: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those …
Michael Bloomberg wants to run for President, as a Democrat!
Even though Ralph Chaplin wrote the song “Solidarity Forever” in 1915 for the Industrial Workers of World War I, its refrain is as relevant an…
Within hours of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Janus v. AFSCME case, union-haters launched a shadowy misinformation campaign in an att…
In the Upper Missouri River basin, an area known as the “Missouri Breaks” is a landscape of steep cliffs on the side, and a muddy, shallow riv…
New York is the most unionized state in the nation with nearly two million union workers. Although private-sector unions make up the largest n…