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| Save Our Children. Salvemos Nuestro Niños. |
Rally number two today. Parents and their children from all over the New York City rallied near City Hall this afternoon in a unified effort to voice their outrage to the Mayor about his proposal to cut child care subsidies for low income, working families. Sadly security limited the number of people allowed on the City Hall steps, and the press never showed. The en masse overflow of crowd surrounded the periphery and center of City Hall Park. Jewish, Black, Latino, and Asian American families chanted together, "Stop the cuts, stop the cuts!"
Eliminating day care does not lend itself to economic recovery. One toddler wore his backpack with a sign tacked on that read, "Don't balance the budget on my back."
It's truly frightening how decisions are made in the name of balancing the budget. For low-income, working families, most of whom are headed by single mothers, the child care cuts will mean having to depend on unregulated and unsafe child care whether with unfamiliar neighbors or extended family members. Or worse -- leave their jobs, go on public assistance, and enter homeless shelters. The Commissioner on Homelessness has said that with the economic hardships about to hit the most vulnerable New Yorkers, he proposes to build 70 new homeless shelters, not figure out how to help families put together a plan for work and permanent housing. With such financial stresses, children are more likely to experience neglect and abuse and enter the city's failed foster care system. All much more costly to the city than child care subsidies which help to keep families working, children safe and on a path toward educational and economic success.
sweet
innocent one
may she rest
in peace and bask
in joyful reunion
with her twin soul
