Tell us in person, Mr. de Blasio

The Red Hook Star-Revue invites Mayor Bill de Blasio to a community forum to tell us in person how he has saved healthcare in South Brooklyn.IMG_1510

This newspaper began publishing in 2010. By that time, Brad Lander had already succeeded de Blasio in the city council.  We did not get to know him as councilman.

We did finally meet de Blasio on a hot day last summer, spotting his small entourage walking up Hicks Street to join a LICH rally. Frequent rallies were being organized by the nurse’s union in their fight with SUNY Downstate. We became friendly with him, his spokesperson Wiley Norvell, and his assistant, Emma Wolfe. Attending LICH rallies became part of his campaign strategy, and we followed him through his arrest, his vigil at 97 Amity and his leadership at many pro-LICH demonstrations.

The future mayor said all of the right things, until at one point  he stopped using the word “hospital”, and starting talking about saving “healthcare.” Those paying attention noticed the subtle shift, but kept hoping that the hospital would be saved.

With the court cases now played out, resulting in LICH’s demise, we did not need to be reminded of the mayor’s failure.

Last week we were not only reminded, but jarred. A letter arrived in everyone’s mailbox telling us of the great job the mayor has done saving healthcare. A bit of research revealed that the mailing was executed by a mayoral advocacy group.

Local Assembly candidate Pete Sikora writes in Crain’s NY:

“LICH was indeed mismanaged and very poorly marketed, yet better management, marketing and some collaborative cost-cutting with doctors and unions would have saved the institution. Instead, people have already died as a result of the closure and over a thousand jobs are lost. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and SUNY were determined to sell the property to real estate developers. Sadly, greed—not the public interest—appears to have won the day.”

Please Mr. de Blasio – come back  to our neighborhood to  tell us in person what a great job you have done saving our hospital. You can pick the time and place.

 

Share:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

2 Comments

  1. Mayor DeBlasio certainly owes Red Hook a visit & an explanation but do you think even knows about this invitation?

    • gbrook@pipeline.com

      People interested and involved in politics read our paper. We will be publishing this request in the next print edition, out later this week. We think the question is not whether how might now about our invitation, but whether he would care. And trust that he would only make the visit if his public relations staff would think he might have something to gain.

READ OUR FULL PRINT EDITION

Our Sister Publication

a word from our sponsors!

Latest Media Guide!

Where to find the Star-Revue

Instagram

How many have visited our site?

wordpress hit counter

Social Media

Most Popular

On Key

Related Posts

Film: “Union” documents SI union organizers vs. Amazon, by Dante A. Ciampaglia

Our tech-dominated society is generous with its glimpses of dystopia. But there’s something especially chilling about the captive audience meetings in the documentary Union, which screened at the New York Film Festival and is currently playing at IFC Center. Chronicling the fight of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), led by Chris Smalls, to organize the Amazon fulfillment warehouse in Staten

An ode to the bar at the edge of the world, review by Oscar Fock

It smells like harbor, I thought as I walked out to the end of the pier to which the barge now known as the Waterfront Museum was docked. Unmistakable were they, even for someone like me — maybe particularly for someone like me, who’s always lived far enough from the ocean to never get used to its sensory impressions, but

Quinn on Books: In Search of Lost Time

Review of “Countée Cullen’s Harlem Renaissance,” by Kevin Brown Review by Michael Quinn   “Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: / To make a poet black, and bid him sing!” – Countée Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel” Come Thanksgiving, thoughts naturally turn to family and the communities that shape us. Kevin Brown’s “Countée Cullen’s Harlem Renaissance” is a

MUSIC: Wiggly Air, by Kurt Gottschalk

Mothers of reinvention. “It’s never too late to be what you might have been,” according to writer George Eliot, who spoke from experience. Born in the UK in 1819, Mary Ann Evans found her audience using the masculine pen name in order to avoid the scrutiny of the patriarchal literati. Reinvention, of style if not self, is in the air