Nonprofit connects formerly incarcerated with new careers
BROOKLYN, N.Y. (PIX11) — A non-profit teamed up with the city to help create careers for hundreds of justice-impacted New Yorkers, giving them careers as bike mechanics.
29-year-old Zarravon Quarry from Flatbush says that at the age of 16, his trouble with the law began.
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The death of a very close friend moved him to change his life. It wasn't easy, but Quarry had a powerful drive and a new ally.
Thanks to a city and a nonprofit, Quarry says changing his life.
The Hope Program aligned him with a program called Bike Path run by Bike NY. It's a 3-week training program for previously justice-involved people over 18 to become certified Bike Mechanics for Citi Bike.
Ken Podziba, the president and CEO of Bike New York, says it gives them a second chance and gives them a job right away with Citi Bike. A win-win, maintaining the city bike fleet and offering a fresh to a stable career.
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Politico
an hour ago
- Politico
Rival calls Cuomo a ‘sociopath;' ex-gov attacks Mamdani's ‘defund' rhetoric in final weekend of NYC mayor's race
NEW YORK — New York City mayoral candidate Brad Lander urged Democrats not to elect 'sociopathic' Andrew Cuomo. Hours later, the ex-governor slammed leading rival Zohran Mamdani for his past calls to defund the police. And Mamdani, on the defense from relentless attack ads, campaigned by walking the length of Manhattan on Friday night. While nearly 350,000 New Yorkers have already cast ballots, attacks flew on the final weekend of campaigning before Tuesday's Democratic primary. Cuomo leads nearly every poll, but Mamdani has been keeping the race competitive and is closing out the campaign with high energy among his supporters. Lander, feeling upbeat after a headline-grabbing week despite his third-place status, aimed his fire at Cuomo on Saturday. Lander stood beside Cuomo accuser Charlotte Bennett, whom the former governor sued for defamation, as he recounted how Cuomo apologized to the women who accused him of sexual harassment in 2021, before resigning, but now denies any wrongdoing. 'I don't have a license to practice psychology, but I believe that utter inability to take accountability or responsibility for one's actions is a sign of sociopathy,' Lander said. 'The Democratic Party should not elect sociopaths. It's a bad idea,' he added. Cuomo brushed off Lander's comment. 'Does anyone really care what he says?' he said at his own press conference Saturday. 'I said to the extent I offended anyone it was unintentional, and I didn't mean it, and I apologize. But that was (a) generic (apology) — to the extent I offended anyone.' Cuomo may dismiss Lander — 'goodbye and good riddance to the saddest, rudderless, least effective money burning operation we have ever seen,' Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi responded — but his supporters' lower-ranked picks could prove decisive in a primary determined through ranked-choice voting. Polling has shown that Cuomo receives a portion of Lander's redistributed votes when he is removed from the running, even as he's relentlessly attacked the former governor for months. Lander, the city comptroller, brought together Bennett and other former Cuomo employees who accused him of sexual harassment, a man whose father died in a nursing home during Covid, and state legislators and union leaders who battled with him in Albany. Former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who resigned amid his own sexual abuse scandal, even showed up and chatted briefly with Lander before the press conference on the vote-rich Upper West Side of Manhattan. Lander's aides said he had not been invited. 'I love this city and I want to help solve its problems,' Lander said. 'So far as I can tell, Andrew Cuomo despises this city and wants to try to redeem himself by pounding his fist.' Hours later, Cuomo appeared in the South Bronx alongside Leandra Feliz, the mother of Lesandro 'Junior' Guzman-Feliz who was murdered by gang members in 2018, to receive her endorsement. But a press conference to tout his plan to add 5,000 cops to the NYPD turned into an attack on Mamdani's calls to 'defund the police,' with his 2020 tweets plastered on posters behind the speakers. Cuomo read Mamdani's words from a 2020 X post, amid the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd: 'We don't need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD.' 'How are you going to get a police force to work for you?' Cuomo asked. 'To say those things is reckless and irresponsible, especially at a time when public safety is a major issue in this city.' Polls show New Yorkers generally rank affordability as a top concern, followed by public safety. Asked for his closing argument, Cuomo contrasted his years in office with the 33-year-old Mamdani's record. 'Experience matters. Knowledge matters. Accomplishments matter,' he said. '(Mamdani) said the job is to be a messenger. That's why you have a press secretary. The mayor is not a messenger.' Cuomo also campaigned Saturday at a street fair in the South Bronx, taking a photo with former state Sen. Rubén Díaz Sr., a prominent Trump supporter who opposes same sex marriage. He received cheers and a warm reception in a neighborhood that's supported him before, according to video shared by his campaign. Later, he rode on the back of a flatbed truck through southern Brooklyn with endorsers including City Council Member Susan Zhuang. Mamdani started his day Saturday at Al Sharpton's National Action Network in Harlem, with fellow mayoral candidates Lander, Adrienne Adams, Zellnor Myrie and Michael Blake. Mamdani charmed the influential civil rights leader by quoting Sharpton during his 2004 presidential run saying that some forces in the Democratic Party want progressives and people of color 'to voluntarily turn into invisible people' in the name of electability. 'To quote Sharpton in front of Sharpton,' Sharpton joked. 'That was a chess move there.' 'Zohran, you quoted him, but I marched with him,' Adams shot back, emphasizing her long history with Sharpton. Despite the positive reception he gets on the trail — including people asking for selfies Saturday in his home borough of Queens — Mamdani has been the target of $7 million worth of reported spending on attack ads from a pro-Cuomo super PAC. The TV spots and mailers, dub him 'too radical' and 'dangerous' for his inexperience, his criticism of Israel and his socialist politics. Friday evening, after riding Citi Bikes with Lander, Mamdani walked the length of Manhattan, a more than 13-mile journey he finished after 2 a.m. Passing through Times Square, Mamdani threw up his hands while dozens of supporters following along booed when a digital billboard from political betting site Kalshi showed he had a 23 percent chance of winning the race, to Cuomo's 77 percent. 'Gambling is haram,' he joked — forbidden by Islamic law. 'There were many who doubted whether we could even get 46,000 votes,' he said, reflecting on the surprising strength of his campaign. 'We now have 46,000 volunteers.' Emily Ngo contributed reporting.
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Yahoo
New York mayoral candidate arrested by Ice: ‘Trump is looking to stoke conflict, weaponize fear'
As the New York city comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was hauled away by masked Ice agents on Tuesday, all he could think about was whether there was anything more he could do for the man he was trying to help, an immigrant New Yorker named Edgardo. Both men ended up detained, but unlike Edgardo's, Lander's ordeal was over after a few hours. By the time the New York governor, Katy Hochul, marched him out of the courthouse – after proclaiming, of his arrest: 'This is bullshit' – videos and photos of the officers manhandling him had gone viral. The arrest of yet another elected official prompted widespread condemnation of another sign of the US's steady slide into authoritarianism. A host of New York politicians, along with a swelling crowd of angry New Yorkers, awaited Lander outside the courthouse in downtown Manhattan. (Andrew Cuomo, the former governor and mayoral race frontrunner, was a notable absence, though he did condemn the arrest.) 'I wasn't surprised there were a lot of folks outside angry both about the violations of the rights of immigrants and about Trump's efforts to undermine democracy,' Lander told the Guardian in an interview. 'The Trump administration has been very clear that they are looking to stoke conflict, weaponize fear, and undermine democracy, and here they are doing it,' he added. Lander was 'just fine', he told the crowd. He had lost a button in the commotion. But he would sleep in his bed and while no charges against him were filed, he would have had access to a lawyer if they had been. 'But Edgardo will sleep in an Ice detention facility God knows where tonight,' he said. 'He has been stripped of his due process rights in a country that is supposed to be founded on equal justice under law.' A day after the ordeal, Lander said he had no updates on Edgardo, a Spanish-speaking immigrant whom Lander had met just before they were both detained. Lander had been accompanying Edgardo as part of an organized effort to shield immigrants from agents who have been increasingly stalking them for arrest when they appear for their regularly scheduled court hearings. On Tuesday, the group watching proceedings at the court included four rabbis, in addition to Lander, his wife Meg Barnette, and other advocates. He's been showing up, he says, because people in the immigration court system are otherwise unprotected. 'This is one of the rights violations of this system,' he said. 'All these people in it with no lawyers and really no one, no advocates, no one looking out for them.' With early voting well under way and election day less than a week away, the New York City mayoral race is heating up – and Wednesday's arrest has significantly raised the visibility of Lander, a well-respected, longtime New York politician who has nonetheless struggled to gain recognition in what is largely a race between Cuomo and the leftist Zohran Mamdani. (Mamdani rushed to the courthouse on Wednesday as soon as news of Lander's arrest broke.) Lander, who like Mamdani is pitching a progressive vision for a more affordable city, is also running on his years-long experience with city government and his bridge-building skills. Lander is the third Democratic politician recently detained by Department of Homeland Security officials in connection with Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. In this distinction, he joins the California senator Alex Padilla, recently handcuffed and forcibly removed from a DHS press conference, and Newark's mayor, Ras Baraka, who was arrested while protesting outside an immigration detention center in New Jersey last month. Lander sees in the targeting of outspoken Democratic politicians the fulfillment of the Trump administration's promise to 'liberate' cities such as Los Angeles and New York. He said it was 'strange' to find himself a casualty of the administration's crackdown. 'But unfortunately not that strange, as Trump has named New York City on the list of places where they are planning to both ratchet up immigration enforcement and put pressure on elected officials.' In recent weeks Ice agents have been ordered to ramp up arrests, even without warrants. In a video of Lander's arrest, he is heard asking Ice agents multiple times for a warrant – which they do not produce – before telling them, as they place him in handcuffs, that they 'don't have the authority to arrest US citizens asking for a judicial warrant'. The Ice agents who arrested him knew he was an elected official, Lander said. He tried to learn more about them while he was detained. 'I asked a few questions just to understand who they were,' he said. They were also immigrants – one a Pakistani Muslim resident of Brooklyn, the other an Indo-Guyanese man from Queens. 'I asked about their shifts. I hear that Ice agents are working a lot of hours right now,' he said. 'Brad's arrest was shocking – not in the violence, not in the lawlessness, because we've seen this directed at immigrants and citizens profiled as immigrants – but in the decision from Ice to inflict that violence on a sitting elected citywide official,' said Sophie Ellman-Golan, an organizer with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, of which Lander has been a member for decades. Along with JFREJ, he has been working with Immigrant Act, another advocacy group, in shifts to accompany immigrants to court hearings. Lander has gained some momentum after challenging Cuomo during a recent mayoral debate and cross-endorsing fellow progressive Mamdani. But he consistently polled in third place in the race, well behind the other two. Lander called out the current mayor – Eric Adams, who offered little sympathy – of having 'sold out our city' through corruption. He said Cuomo 'made no effort whatsoever to reach out to most New Yorkers' and that he and Mamdani cross-endorsed one another 'because we fundamentally agree that Andrew Cuomo is utterly unfit to be mayor of this city'. He cited Cuomo's hesitation when he was asked in a recent debate whether he had visited a mosque. 'He has nothing to say to Muslim New Yorkers,' said Lander. 'He is an abusive bully who doesn't even love New York City and is just in it for himself.' While some of his supporters criticised him over the Mamdani endorsement – largely due to Mamdani's openly pro-Palestinian views – Lander said that there was 'an enormous outpouring of goodwill for it'. 'It really did prompt a sense of, 'Oh, politics could be not just about individuals looking out for themselves, but trying to build something broader that would build a more aspirational vision for the city, and help people come together around it. 'Obviously, I am putting my case out for why I will be the best mayor of New York City,' he said, citing recent endorsements as a sign his campaign is surging. But, he added, he also hoped to promote a politics 'that's trying to bring people together across divides, and in this case, having one Jewish New Yorker and one Muslim New Yorker cross-endorse in that way offers a hopeful project'. 'Whoever wins, I intend to continue to pursue that hopeful politics.'
New York Post
15 hours ago
- New York Post
Seniors find they have to have their heads on a swivel to stay safe
The most vulnerable New Yorkers are taking it on the chin – and everywhere else – as felony assaults against seniors have doubled since 2019, The Post has learned. The NYPD has recorded 1,228 felony assaults against people aged 65 and over so far this year — compared to only 608 in pre-Covid 2019. The shocking surge comes as assaults in NYC overall are slightly down, by .3%. Advertisement 7 Caregiver Krystyna Gajewska, 66, and Eileen, 87, make sure they're home by dark. Helayne Seidman Things have gotten so bad that some adult children have hired aides to keep their elderly parents from being Gotham's next crime victim. An Upper West Side resident and retired principal who identified herself as Eileen, 87, said her son hired someone to be with her when she takes walks. 'When you get to be 88, you realize you have to protect yourself from your environment in ways younger people don't know,' the octogenarian said. 'Because they are not as easily assaulted as somebody my age.' Advertisement Attacks on the elderly so far this year run the gamut from random punches to bludgeonings to slashings, according to the NYPD. Some of the most shocking include: A 66-year-old woman was struck in the head by a stranger wielding a golf club around 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 25 in an unprovoked attack in the subway system, police said. The woman was left with a gash on the left side of her head, police said. An 86-year-old woman was shoved from behind into a pole — breaking her teeth — in a random attack near the exit of Morton Williams on Third Avenue near East 63rd Street on March 23, cops said. A 67-year-old man was slashed in the the head by a stranger with a large knife while riding the subway in an unproked attack on a C train in Brooklyn on March 15, cops said. The suspect was arrested when passengers flagged down cops at the next stop. A 72-year-old woman was randomly kicked down a staircase at the Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Avenue subway station in Queens just after 11 p.m. March 1, cops said. The attacker said nothing before attacking the victim, sending her tumbling backwards down the stairs, cops said. The badly bruised victim was taken to the hospital. 7 A 67-year-old man was slashed in the head with a large knife while riding on a C train in Brooklyn. David Burns Advertisement The NYPD has made arrests in 962 of the 1,228 assaults on seniors this year — 78% of cases, a spokesperson said. More than half of the people arrested had a prior arrest record. The spokesperson stressed that the entire criminal justice system has to work to bring the assaults under control. 'The NYPD has played their part, arresting individuals who are assaulting vulnerable, elderly New Yorkers,' the spokesperson said. 'Our city must be safe for all New Yorkers, regardless of their age, and we need every aspect of the criminal justice system to play their part to ensure that we stop the revolving door for recidivists.' 7 Police were seeking a man who allegedly pushed an 86-year-old woman to the ground in Manhattan. DCPI Advertisement Poland native Krystyna Gajewska, 66, works as Eileen's caregiver, said the two are vigilant. 'The bottom line — we don't go at night,' she said. 'We stay home.' 7 A woman was struck in the head with a golf club in lower Manhattan. DCPI The caregiver called for more cops walking the beat. 7 Police made arrests in the majority of the assaults on seniors so far this year, according to the NYPD. David Burns 'Not sitting in the car — walking around, looking,' she said, describing what good cops do. 'There are so many [people] that have mental problems. There's so many homeless.' Upper West Sider Paul Trahan also makes sure to be home when night falls. 'I've made it a point to stay home at night,' said Trahan, 86. 'I'm not nearly as well physically able to deal with any such problem now. So that's all the more reason for me to stay home — and say the right prayers.' Advertisement 7 Paul Trahan, 86, only goes out during the day to avoid trouble. Helayne Seidman Bronx native Gloria Wiggins, 80, had some advice for seniors: keep your head on a swivel. 'My neck is killing me,' she said. 'I'm constantly looking around and watching.' Riverdale, Bronx, resident George Timko, 77, was saddened to hear about an increase in assaults against the elderly but said he didn't plan to make any changes to his life in the city. Advertisement 7 Bronx resient George Timko, 77, said that he wasn't aware there was an increase in assaults against seniors but that he still feels safe. Helayne Seidman 'I don't feel less safe,' he said. 'I've lived most of my life in the city … I go about my day in the city.' One policing expert suggested a public awareness campaign to make sure seniors know they're in danger. Advertisement 'You can't have a 100% increase mid-year without acknowledging that this is a significant issue,' said Chris Herrmann, a former NYPD criminologist who is now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. 'I wouldn't fearmonger and say 'stay indoors' but the more simple stuff,' he said. 'Spend more time in groups, be aware of your surroundings.'
