Harlem Bespoke: Another post written in past celebrates the holiday season with uptown’s forgotten Jewish history.Did you know that Harlem was also uptown’s major Jewish neighborhood over a century ago? You can find clues from to this part of Harlem history by looking closely at some of the churches like Mt. Olivet Baptist on Lenox Avenue and 120th Street. The majestic Corinthian columns have a Star of David sculpted at the top detail and reveal that the historic site was once a former Jewish house of worship. Temple Israel was built back in 1907 but the neighborhood would dramatically change by a couple of decades later and everything was converted to the famous Baptist church by 1925 in the roaring twenties.
Today, the NYC Public Schools announced an important policy change to increase the participation of minority- and women-owned businesses (M/WBEs) in its procurement process. Effective immediately, the school system will have a goal of 30 percent utilization on M/WBE subcontracts on all NYCPS contracts going forward, and amount that totals between $10 and $12 billion…
After years of consumer lawsuits claiming Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder caused cancer. The pharmaceutical giant has proposed spending $8.9 billion to settle all of the cases, which number close to 40,000. The company continues to deny that talc in the product caused cancer but said it is willing to spend the money to put…
Mayor Eric Adams has officially decided to ink a five-plus year contract with Aetna to provide a Medicare Advantage plan for the city’s roughly 250,000 retirees and their dependents. The plan aims to save the city $600 million in claims, but some believe the move will cut into retirees’ established healthcare benefits.
“Our administration has never wavered in our commitment to provide retirees and their dependents with high-quality, sustainable coverage while allowing us to rein in the skyrocketing costs of healthcare and the strain it is placing on our city’s budget,” said Adams in a statement.
The mayor’s office said that the new Aetna Medicare plan will provide a lower deductible for retirees and cap out-of-pocket expenses. Additionally, the plan significantly limits the number of procedures requiring prior authorization.
The contract was approved by the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC) on March 9. This September, retirees that have Medicare will automatically be enrolled in the new plan.
President of NYC Organization of Public Service Retiree, Marianne Pizzitola, feels that this will force retired city workers into a plan they don’t want. She was advocating for the mayor to consider Option C, which allows retirees to opt out and receive traditional Medicare or medigap plan.
“It’s like I’m being forced or compelled to waive my city health benefits and by doing so I am losing my Medicare B reimbursements, in some cases my prescription plan,” said Pizzitola.
Pizzitola said that the opt out option that the city went with, HIP VIP Plan, is not available in all counties and some hospitals or doctors don’t accept the Medicare Advantage plan. She’s worried about co-pays for seniors, out-of-pocket costs, and useless perks. And she said, there are retirees with transplant or cancer treatments in facilities where Aetna is not in their network. She called the new plan “disingenuous.”
“We can help [the mayor] find wasteful spending in the city all day long but it should never be on the backs of a retired worker who’s disabled, infirm, who was made promises by the city that we would have premium free healthcare and a choice of our healthcare plan,” said Pizzitola.
She added that it’s especially disheartening considering the city workforce is primarily people of color and women of color and therefore many of its retirees are the same demographic. She said that many on a fixed income can’t pay rent or afford extra costs. “These are your ladies of color, mostly single seniors and are low-income retirees,” said Pizzitola.
Jake Gardner of Walden Macht & Haran, a lawyer who is representing the organization, explained that the public service retiree group has already filed suit against the city three times over healthcare. A little over a year ago, they challenged the city’s initial Medicare Advantage plan. The courts ruled in their favor. In 2022, they sued the city and Emblem Health for charging retirees co-pays for their senior care, which is against the law. That litigation is ongoing, but in the meantime retirees aren’t being charged.
“This is our third time in the last year and a half suing the city for their attempt to deprive elderly and disabled retirees of their healthcare rights and so this is really becoming an assault on their healthcare rights of retirees,” said Gardner.
Gardner said that the retiree group does intend to challenge this Medicare Advantage plan as well but could not reveal details at this time since the lawsuit has not been filed yet.
They are also proposing a bill that mandates a medigap plan to “protect” retirees’ healthcare. Pizzitola said if she can get the bill introduced she’ll name it after former Councilmember Mary Pinkett. In the 1970s, Pinkett championed retired civil servant and city employer healthcare coverage under the 12-126 code.
“With today’s historic award by the city of New York Office of Labor Relations, we’ll offer a customized Medicare Advantage plan that provides high-quality, affordable and convenient health care for City of New York retirees who’ve devoted their careers to serving New Yorkers,” said President of Aetna and Executive Vice President of CVS Health Dan Finke in a statement. “With nearly 60 years of Medicare expertise and experience, we stand ready to serve retirees through our network of primary care and specialty physicians, mental health providers and hospitals they know and trust.”
The contract is valued at more than $15 billion over the course of the first five years and four months. The MLC can negotiate the contract every two years.
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visitinghttps://bit.ly/amnews1.
The Nets’ 107-102 home loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves at the Barclays Center on Tuesday night could prove to be costly. They were 43-36 and the No. 6 seed in the Eastern Conference heading into last night’s game against the Detroit Pistons on the road, just one game ahead of the No. 7 seed Miami Heat, which was 42-37 and played the 76ers in Philadelphia yesterday evening.
Both teams have two regular season games remaining. The Nets will play both their games in Brooklyn. They face the Orlando Magic tomorrow and the 76ers Sunday. The Heat have the Washington Wizards on the road tomorrow and the Magic in Miami on Sunday. The Nets were on a three-game winning streak prior to falling to the Timberwolves. The eventual No. 6 seed is guaranteed a spot in the playoffs while the No. 7 seed will have to earn their way into the postseason via the Play-In Tournament.
They were led by guard Spencer Dinwiddie’s game-high 30 points. Forward Mikal Bridges deposited 24 but shot just 9-24. The Nets and Wolves remained close throughout the entire 48 minutes. There were 24 lead changes and eight ties but Minnesota closed out the final 2:36 of the fourth quarter with a 9-4 advantage after the score was equaled at 98-98 on a 26-foot step-back jumper by Dinwiddie. Forward Karl-Anthony Towns lifted the Timberwolves with 22 points, 14 rebounds, and five assists while guard Anthony Edwards had 23 points. Center Rudy Gobert finished with 12 points, 12 rebounds, and his signature sound defense.
“Yeah, I thought Rudy was really good,” said Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn. “Conversely to the last time we played them, where he pretty much stayed in drop [coverage] and allowed us to make those shots. He kind of switched some of those pick-and-rolls [tonight] and moved his feet a little bit and had some quality contests, which I thought was the difference in some of those looks for Mikal.”
On Monday, Bridges, who has been outstanding for the Nets since they acquired him from the Phoenix Suns in February in the Kevin Durant trade, was named the NBA’s Eastern Conference Player of the Week for games played from Monday, March 27, through Sunday, April 2. During that period, the Nets went 3-0 as Bridges averaged 33 points, 5.7 rebounds, 3.7 assists, and 1.3 steals in 38.3 minutes per game. It is the 26-year-old Bridges first Player of the Week honor of his five-year career.
Howard Schultz, the now-former Starbucks CEO, testified in Congress about how the specialty coffee company treats workers who are trying to form a union.
The coffee chains’ workers have been calling for management to bargain with its union reps at Starbucks Workers United (SWU) ever since the first Starbucks location was unionized in Buffalo, NY in 2021.
Shultz had stepped down as Starbucks CEO on March 20, 2023––two weeks earlier than planned. But he had been warned that he might face a subpoena to get him to testify before the senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee about his coffee chain’s treatment of union organizing efforts. He had been asked to sit before the committee by HELP’s chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt), who professed his concern about Shultz’ strong anti-union stance at a time when the coffee chain is seeing rapid union organizing among its workers.
In a written statement before Schultz came to testify, Sanders had pointed out in a committee report that “At Schultz’s direction, Starbucks has fought the attempts of workers every step of the way, resorting to delay tactics and significant escalation in union busting, including unlawfully firing employees, having the police called in response to a peaceful and lawful congregation of workers who were attempting to present their request for union recognition, and illegally shutting down unionized stores.
“Workers in America have the constitutional right to organize unions and engage in collective bargaining to improve their wages and benefits. For far too long, Starbucks and its multi-billionaire owner have acted as though those laws do not apply to them.”
When Schultz sat down for the senate committee hearing on March 29, Sen. Sanders accused him of trying to break the union and of trying to break the spirit of unionized workers:
“Do you understand that in America workers have a fundamental right to join a union and collectively bargain to improve wages, benefits and working conditions? Do you understand that?” Sanders asked.
“I understand and we respect the right of every partner who wears a green apron,” Schultz responded, “whether they choose to join the union or not.”
“Are you aware that NLRB judges have ruled that Starbucks violated federal labor law over 100 times during the past 18 months, far more than any other corporation in America?”
“Sir,” Schultz replied, “Starbucks Coffee company unequivocally––let me set the tone for this very early on––has not broken the law.”
Sanders then asked, “Are you aware that on March 1st, 2023, an administrative law judge found Starbucks guilty of ‘egregious and widespread misconduct,’ widespread coercive behavior. And showed ‘a general disregard for the employees’ fundamental rights’ in a union organizing campaign that started in Buffalo, NY in 2021. Are you aware of that?”
“I’m aware that those are allegations and Congress has created a process that we are following and we’re confident that those allegations will be proven false.”
“Mr. Schultz, before answering the following … questions, let me remind you that federal law at 18 U.S. Code Section 1001 prohibits knowingly and willfully making any fraudulent statement.”
“I understand that,” Schultz stated.
Sen. Sanders then went on to ask Schultz if he had ever taken part in attempts to threaten, coerce, discipline, intimidate, or fire workers who have tried to join a Starbucks union. Schultz assured that, while some people may have interpreted some of his actions as being so, he has never done that. “I’ve had conversations that could have been interpreted in a different way than I intended. That’s up to the person who received the information that I spoke to them about,” he said.
Ultimately, when Sanders asked Schultz point blank if the company could “make a promise to this committee that you will exchange proposals with the union so that we can begin to make meaningful progress?”
Schultz would only state that “On a single store basis, we will continue to negotiate in good faith. That’s what we’ll do.”
Starbucks workers and union representatives were also in attendance and gave testimonies at the hearing.
Starbucks corporate has accused the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) of colluding with SWU to promote union membership. While the NLRB has accused Starbucks of carrying out an anti-union campaign that has included employee surveillance and firings.
The same day Schultz testified in the senate, some 52% of Starbucks shareholders approved a proposal to have an outside organization conduct a third-party audit of its labor practices and investigate allegations of any anti-union tactics. A coalition of shareholders, including the New York City Retirement Systems (NYCERS) and other pension fund clients, pushed to ensure that Starbucks make a “commitment to workers’ rights, including freedom of association and collective bargaining.”
Also, on the day of Schultz’s senate testimony, two Starbucks workers were fired in Buffalo, NY. Two days later, a Starbucks shift supervisor in Buffalo who had become a prominent union organizer was also fired from her job.
“At Starbucks, it’s time for a change,” Portland, Oregon Starbucks worker Alicia Flores said in an April 3 SWU press statement. “Partners are demanding a voice on the job to improve conditions. Investors are demanding scrutiny of the company’s labor practices. Senators are calling for an end to rampant union-busting. That’s why across the country, we’re calling on the Starbucks board members who lead the direction of this company to turn the page on the union-busting tactics of Howard Schultz, respect partners’ voice through their union and negotiate contracts across the country.”
Tired of looking at the same décor and design day after day? Renovating your home is an exciting project that will make your space look new again. However, it can easily become overwhelming if you don’t know where to start. Are you wondering how to keep organized and manage your finances during a renovation? Have…
Early in the 2022–’23 college basketball season, the University of Connecticut Huskies men’s team emerged with the discernible appearance of a potential national champion.
On Monday night, their potential manifested into the program’s fifth title and the justifiable designation as one of the sports elite that now stands side-by-side with collegiate royalty. Only UCLA (11), Kentucky (8), and North Carolina (6) have more and UConn’s 76–59 victory over San Diego State ties them with Duke and Indiana. Kansas, which is a college basketball standard bearer, started in 1898; was coached by the founder of the game Dr. James Naismith; and has four. The Jayhawks immediately preceded UConn as NCAA champion, defeating North Carolina in last year’s finale.
Coming out of the Big East, UConn steamrolled through their six games in the NCAA tournament, picking off opponents by an average of 20 points per game, including a 28-point (82–54) dismantling of perennial power Gonzaga in their Elite Eight matchup. UConn went 31–8 this season and opened their schedule 14–0. Their first loss came on Christmas Eve against Big East competitor Xavier and started a challenging stretch of five losses in six games between December 31 and January 18.
All of UConn’s defeats this season were to conference foes. From February 18 until their crowning achievement on Monday, UConn was 12–1. Their lone setback was to regular season and conference tournament champion Marquette in the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden on March 10. The game foreshadowed the dominant performance that UConn’s 6′-9″ power forward/center Adama Sanogo would produce during his team’s decisive advance to the title.
The 21-year-old from the Republic of Mali in West Africa, who played in high school for Our Savior New American on Long Island and then the Patrick School in New Jersey, was virtually unstoppable. The First-Team Big East selection began the NCAA tournament by posting 28 points and 13 rebounds in UConn’s 87–63 opening round win against Iona and capped off his season by scoring 17 points and grabbing 10 rebounds versus San Diego State and being named the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player.
“He’s obviously cemented himself into the pantheon of the greatest big guys, with all the production and back-to-back first team all-league, and now this—to have the national championship—just puts him in a position in one of the most storied programs in college basketball,” said UConn head coach Dan Hurley.
Hurley added that Sanogo is among college’s historic big men. “He’s an all-time great.”
The 50-year-old Hurley has continued the legacy of a legendary basketball family from Jersey City, New Jersey. Patriarch Bob Hurley is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame for his 39 years of heading St. Anthony’s High School, where he won 26 state and four national titles.
Dan Hurley’s older brother Bobby was a two-time NCAA champion (1991, 1992) as the starting point guard for Duke and the seventh overall pick of the Sacramento Kings in the 1993 NBA Draft. He is currently the head coach at Arizona State.
Now the younger Hurley, who had stops as the head coach at Wagner (2010–’12) and Rhode Island (2012–’18), before taking the UConn job in 2018 after the controversial departure of Kevin Ollie, who guided the Huskies to the 2014 championship, has crafted his own distinctive identity.
Notable performances by established stars and aspiring All-Stars highlighted the start of the 2023 Major League Baseball season for the Mets and Yankees.
The Mets began in Miami last Thursday with a 5-3 win versus the Marlins, improving their franchise opening day record to 41-13. Ace Max Scherzer delivered a solid performance, going six innings and allowing three runs on four hits. However, opening day also arrived with bad news for the Mets. General Manager Billy Eppler announced that No. 2 starter Justin Verlander, last season’s American League Cy Young Award winner with the World Series champion Houston Astros, will start the season on the injured list with a low grain teres major (thick muscle of the shoulder joint) strain. There is no timetable for his return, but the Mets hope he will not miss more than three starts. They signed Verlander to a two-year, $86.7 million deal in December.
In Games 2 and 3 of the series against the Marlins, starters David Peterson and Tylor Megill respectively had strong outings in allowing just three runs in total but the Mets settled for a split, losing Game 2, 2-1 and taking Game 3, 6-2. In the finale of the four-game set, Kodai Senga, another Mets off-season signing, dazzled in his MLB debut, striking out eight batters and allowing one run in five 1/3 innings in a 5-1 victory. The 30-year-old Senga was a two-time Pacific League (Japan) strikeout leader and five-time Japan League champion.
The Mets opened this week getting bombed by a combined 19-0 facing the Milwaukee Brewers on the road, falling 10-0 on Monday and 9-0 on Tuesday. Starter Carlos Carasco was the losing pitcher on Monday while Scherzer gave up five runs in his second start on Tuesday. The Mets ended the three-game series at Milwaukee yesterday afternoon and will now host the Marlins for three-games at Citi Field in their home opening series with Game 1 today (1:10 p.m.). Afterwards, they will travel to San Diego to take on the Padres for three games next Monday through Wednesday.
The Yankees’ season began last Thursday with a three-game series against the San Francisco Giants in the Bronx and featured Gerrit Cole breaking a franchise Opening Day record with 10 strikeouts in a 5-0 win. Last season’s American League MVP Aaron Judge, who broke the AL home run record with 62, picked up where left off with his first of this season. Heralded rookie Anthony Volpe made his MLB debut and showed the versatility that has the organization and fans excited about what he can become by stealing a base every game against the Giants as the Yankees captured two out of three. “It’s been a whirlwind, but the best type of whirlwind there can be,” said the 21-year-old shortstop. On Monday, the Yankees defeated the Philadelphia Phillies in the Bronx 8-1 but were on the losing end Tuesday 4-1. They closed out the series yesterday and are in Baltimore to play the Orioles today, Saturday, and Sunday before meeting the Cleveland Indians on the road for three games next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
Since the beginning of the pandemic three years ago, more than 1.12 million Americans have died of COVID-19 infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). New York was one of the hardest hit cities, with the number of total and probable deaths more than 45,000. But how do we know that those were deaths from COVID and not deaths with COVID?
As of March 31, 2023, 38,764 of the 45,156 deaths in NYC were confirmed with a positive molecular test, which detects genetic material of the virus, while the remaining deaths —classified as “probable” — had “COVID-19 or similar” listed as cause of death without confirmation. This type of death reporting has led to some confusion about whether people are actually dying from COVID, or if COVID is listed on death certificates even if it was not the infection that resulted in death.
There are good reasons for this confusion. For example, how can we be sure hospitals are reporting accurately? And what about people who die at home without taking a COVID test — how are they accounted for?
One way of understanding the death toll is looking at how many extra deaths have happened during the pandemic, using a measure called excess mortality, or excess deaths. In an interview with the AMNews, Dr. Yea-Hung Chen, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, described one way of thinking of excess mortality: “It’s this thought exercise of imagining this magical world where the pandemic never happened…..It asks the question of ‘Had the pandemic not occurred, how many deaths would we have expected to see?’”
Dr. Jonathan Wakefield, a biostatistician at University of Washington and member of the Technical Advisory Group of the World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 Mortality Assessment Group, explained in an interview with the AmNews why excess mortality is a more “robust measure” for assessing pandemic deaths.
“In general, it is not straightforward to unambiguously define a COVID death. Not only do COVID COVID death assignment procedures vary from country to country, they also vary in time within countries as, for example, testing capabilities change, so to establish a COVID death is not always straightforward… Scientifically, excess mortality is more justifiable because it’s a much easier quantity to estimate: it’s more clear-cut, instead of ambiguous, and also can’t be politicized so easily.”
The data do show that COVID is causing excess deaths on the population level. Wakefield emphasized that “there is no question that there were a huge number of excess deaths in the United States.” The WHO estimates he worked on indicated that in 2020 and 2021, there were 932,458 excess deaths in the United States.As of this writing, the CDC places the total number of excess deaths in the pandemic period in the U.S. at 1.31 million: 215,527 more than the official death count from COVID.
One counter argument suggests that some of these deaths may result from other COVID-related events, such as restrictions put in place at accessing hospitals as a result of lockdown measures. Even if some excess deaths may have resulted from other pandemic-related issues, both researchers emphasize that COVID is the main culprit. Chen explained that the timing of excess deaths matters: According to the CDC, excess deaths that are not classified as COVID deaths “peak at around the same time as excess deaths,” a pattern that would be expected only if COVID is driving these deaths.
Another argument claims that hospitals are misreporting COVID deaths. The argument suggests that people are dying with COVID, rather than from COVID. Dr. Chen responded to this theory by saying: “If you look at out of hospital settings, you see this massive, massive difference between COVID deaths and excess deaths, and we think that is very indicative of underreporting of COVID, to the extent that even if there are isolated cases of this with COVID or from COVID being an issue in hospitals, it is far outweighed by the home deaths’ underreporting and also the likelihood that in-hospital reporting probably, in general, follows the CDC guidelines.”
Wakefield allowed for the potential of discrepancies in reporting, noting that across states and countries it is difficult to accurately count COVID deaths. He emphasized that this is why excess mortality is a valuable measure, particularly in a country with death records as relatively robust as the United States: “It’s impossible that this excess mortality doesn’t exist… The science is quite clear here. There was a huge excess.” For additional resources about COVID-19, visit www1.nyc.gov/site/coronavirus/index.page or call 311. COVID-19 testing, masks, and vaccination resources can also be accessed on the AmNews COVID-19 page: www.amsterdamnews.com/covid/.
