Month: December 2021

In statements Tuesday afternoon, both Moya and Adams, who are Queens Democrats, projected victory in the coming contest for speaker. The body will officially vote on one speaker—who essentially sets the legislative agenda and liaises with the mayoral administration—after its members are sworn in at the beginning of the year.

City Council members Adrienne Adams and Francisco Moya both claimed to have secured enough votes from their colleagues to win the speaker seat on Tuesday, sending the once-crowded race to lead the lawmaking body in a puzzling direction.

In twin tweets Tuesday afternoon, both Moya and Adams, who are Queens Democrats, projected victory in the coming contest. The body will officially vote to choose one speaker—who essentially sets the legislative agenda and liaises with the mayoral administration—after its members are sworn in at the beginning of the year.

“After much discussion and collaboration with my colleagues, I am honored to have received the necessary votes to become the next speaker of the New York City Council,” Adams announced in a Tuesday afternoon tweet. “As speaker, I look forward to being a partner with every member to help advance the needs of our communities. As a member of the Council, I will always prioritize my colleagues, labor, and the people of New York and have an open door for every voice.”

Today is a historic day for New York City. After much discussion and collaboration with my colleagues, I am honored to have received the necessary votes to become the next Speaker of the New York City Council.

— Adrienne Adams (@AdrienneEAdams1) December 14, 2021

“I am humbled to announce that our diverse coalition of Council Members and leaders from across New York City has collected a majority of votes to elect the next speaker of the Council,” Moya, the reported favorite of Mayor-elect Eric Adams, said in a tweet. “I look forward to leading this body into a brighter future for our great city.”

I am humbled to announce that our diverse coalition of Council Members and leaders from across New York City has collected a majority of votes to elect the next speaker of the Council. I look forward to leading this body into a brighter future for our great city.

— Francisco Moya (@FranciscoMoyaNY) December 14, 2021

Neither official immediately addressed the differing statements in responses to City Limits Tuesday.

READ MORE: The NYC Council Speaker Candidates on Their Legislative Priorities

Days before the close of the year, speaker aspirants—which included Council members Adams, Moya, Diana Ayala, Justin Brannan, Keith Powers, Carlina Rivera, and incoming Council member Gale Brewer—have worked to lobby their colleagues for the post.

On Monday, the New York Daily News reported that Ayala, Brannan, Brewer and Powers had dropped out of the race and opted to support Adams. The move was aimed at weakening Moya’s bid for the seat, the Daily News reported, following reports that the Mayor-elect, Eric Adams, was lobbying for him to be speaker.

The post A Tale of Two Speakers? Adrienne Adams And Francisco Moya Both Declare Victory in Race to Lead Council appeared first on City Limits.

The news sets up a competitive primary for Assembly District 37, which includes Astoria, Sunnyside, Ridgewood, and Queensbridge, and iterates an increasingly familiar dynamic in Queens politics: a seasoned incumbent facing off against a relative political newcomer.

Lifelong Astoria resident and software developer Huge Ma, best known for developing “TurboVax”—the platform launched last year that aimed to connect New Yorkers with available COVID-19 vaccines—has announced he will challenge longtime Assemblymember Catherine Nolan in the June 2022 Democratic primary.

The news sets up a competitive race for Queens Assembly District 37, and iterates an increasingly familiar dynamic in Queens politics:a seasoned incumbent facing off against a relative political newcomer. Nolan, the current deputy speaker of the Assembly, was first elected in 1984, five years before Ma—who turned 32 on Tuesday—was born.

This time, however, the underdog is already a fairly well-known figure in the district. Ma’s website TurboVax, which is no longer active, streamlined a tangle of sometimes-clunky city and state resources for booking vaccine appointments. Splashy profiles (and a cheeky nickname, “Vax Daddy”) accompanied the spring 2021 launch of the tool. The experience prompted the decision to run for office, Ma said.

“After I shut down TurboVax, I thought deeply about my place in the world,” he said Tuesday. “TurboVax was a deeply intense experience for me, but I think I realized that I was so fortunate to have the right skills and the right opportunity to build the tool and serve my neighbors. And now, when I’m thinking about the seat in the State Assembly, I do believe that we have an opportunity to use my platform and advocate on behalf of the needs of my neighbors.”

The district includes Sunnyside, Queensbridge (including NYCHA’s Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing development in North America), Ridgewood, Long Island City, Ravenswood, and Woodside.

Nolan, who withstood previous primary challengers last year, did not immediately return City Limits’ requests for comment, but told news site THE CITY she is “ready for anything.” Mary Jobaida, a Long Island City resident who ran against Nolan in 2020, has said she intends to run again for the District 37 seat next year.

If elected, Ma told City Limits that he would focus on developing and implementing unique solutions for some of the city’s biggest problems, including a changing climate, unreliable transit, and increasingly unaffordable housing, health care, and higher education.

“Until more housing can be built, we must strengthen renter protections to prevent further displacement,” Ma said in plans posted to his website. “We should streamline fully-affordable developments and experiment with new models of social housing. We must buttress NYCHA with iron-clad guarantees that public housing stays public. And we should support creative new initiatives such as the Western Queens Community Land Trust that aim to protect public space.”

Ma supports expanding Right-To-Counsel eviction protections statewide and overturning New York City’s ban on single room occupancy apartments, and is calling for an audit of the state 421-a tax program, which he said offers “questionable public benefit.”

Additionally, he wants to ban the installation of gas stoves and heating systems in new construction and renovations, and has pledged to reject “fossil fuel infrastructure” like National Grid’s proposed natural gas pipeline in Brooklyn and NRG’s controversial proposed Astoria power plant, which was rejected by the state in October. . He also wants to fund resiliency infrastructure throughout the district, including upgrades to drainage systems.

“I truly want to go to Albany to attack those top-line issues that I mentioned with urgency and creativity,” Ma said Tuesday. “And I want to build a New York that lets any New Yorker live with dignity. I believe that housing is a human right, I believe that healthcare is a human right. And that we really need to take an urgent look at climate. I am focused on that, and I think those are the biggest needs for my constituents.”

The post Huge Ma, ‘TurboVax’ Creator, On Why He’s Running for Office in Queens appeared first on City Limits.

Temperatures matched the previous record high of 68 degrees on Dec. 11 just before a strong wave of rain and wind swept through overnight.

The National Weather Service expected a strong cold front carried by the high winds from the southwest through the northeast of the D.C. region. That same front developed storms that devastated several states across 200 miles of the midwest.

Northern Virginia residents between Tysons and Reston also saw some power outages caused by the storm system. Dominion energy confirmed outages for roughly 4,000 in areas west of Dulles and east of D.C.

Some power outages are estimated to end some time between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. while others outages have no estimated restoration time.

Add in a wind advisory that averaged 30 mph gusts, with up to 40 mph in some places, as well as some showers and potentially thunderstorms in spots, and you’ve got a bona fide spring day.

It’s go time for the damaging wind gusts. That squall line that is now moving through the northwest suburbs will have the potential to take down a bunch of tree limbs. @WTOP #DCwx #VAwx #MDwx pic.twitter.com/SDvYQkIatA

— Matt Ritter, WTOP Multimedia Meteorologist (@MetMattRitter) December 12, 2021

The National Weather Service warned that these conditions could produce damaging winds.

Strong winds are expected today and tonight. A line of showers (perhaps an isolated thunderstorm) may cause damaging winds, especially this evening. See map for more details. pic.twitter.com/dRMqVm2OBA

— NWS Baltimore-Washington (@NWS_BaltWash) December 11, 2021

 

Mild temperatures will grace the area through the first half of the work week until topping out at around 60 on Thursday, per Ricketts, which will be followed by some rain and another cold front at the start of the weekend.

Forecast

Saturday night: Windy, with a cold front coming in once the storms end in the evening.

Sunday: Breezy, seasonably cool. Highs in the low 50s.

Monday: Mostly sunny, slightly milder. Highs in mid to upper 50s.

Tuesday: Sunny, warm. Highs in mid 50s.

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Two extraordinary women were honored at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library Saturday for their heroic efforts on the home front during World War II.

Susan King, 97, of Baltimore, Maryland, and Hilda McDougald, 101, of Washington, D.C., are among the estimated 600,000 African American women who worked in industry and government during World War II.

The women’s stories are among those told in the documentary “Invisible Warriors — African American Women in World War II,” King and McDougald were featured guests at a screening of the documentary at the library, which was co-sponsored by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

“Baltimore city in 1942 was highly segregated,” recalled King, who went to work at Eastern Aircraft in Baltimore, riveting parts for the Navy’s F4F Wildcat fighter plane. “It was the first time we, as Afro-American girls, were able to eat in a cafeteria with white workers,” she said.

King could be considered a real life “Rosie the Riveter” — the celebrated icon of World War II that represented women working in the national defense industry, while men were called away to battle.

But King and the rest of the “Invisible Warriors” faced the added challenge of racism as they helped aid their nation in winning the war.

McDougal’s life had already taken her from the cotton fields of Louisiana to business school in New Orleans, when she heard a clarion call to join the war effort.

“The professor came and said that they needed so many people to come to Washington. So I was one of the ones that was picked… I worked for the Treasury Annex,” McDougal said.

Outside of the U.S., the efforts of these women to help win the war hasn’t been lost.

Netherlands Ambassador Andre Haspels was on hand at MLK Library  to award these women certificates of appreciation on behalf of his country. During much of WWII, the Dutch were besieged by Nazi forces, and are grateful today for the immense effort it took to defeat them.

“It’s important that we remember their role in the second World War … not only the challenge of doing, let’s say, ‘men’s work,’ but they also had to fight racism, they had to fight sexism, so they actually had a double-under privileged position. And you need stamina, you need strength to really play that role as they have done so.”

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Chantell Prestcott-Hollander was a military wife who was home alone when someone attempted to break into her home. Her ex-husband was deployed at the time.

She said fast thinking and an angry dog saved her life that night.

“It was a wake-up call that the self-defense I had done as a kid just wasn’t what I needed, wasn’t what was going to save me,” Prestcott-Hollander said.

She began searching for Krav Maga schools. Krav Maga is a self-defense system popularized by and taught to the Israeli Defensive Forces. It combines a variety of forms of martial arts and defensive fighting techniques.

Prestcott-Hollander said when she found the right place, “It was love at first punch.”

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She and her husband Ehren Hollander have been teaching Krav Maga locally for over 12 years. She’s the founder and owner of The Strong Her Initiative and Program Manager of Krav Oz in Germantown, Maryland. The Strong Her Initiative and Krav Oz coordinate to work with universities such as Georgetown, American, and Gallaudet.

They give seminars to teach women the basics of self-defense and offer practical techniques that the average person can use during a violent attack — grappling, wrestling and learning how to strike, throw a good punch or a good kick if you need to.

She said their goal is to reach women of all ages with their initiative.

“We would like every single woman to have access to this knowledge and have a chance to feel what it’s like to defend themselves and to feel strong and powerful in their body,” Prestcott-Hollander said.

They train women to make smart decisions if they come face to face with an attacker — how you can use your body as a weapon to create space and time to escape.

They also discuss preventing and avoiding an attack and the mindset of predators.

“Own your space, ” Prescott-Hollander said, “Walking with that confidence is everything.”

She said they don’t believe in telling women when and where to go, but she gives the following tips.

“If you’re out late at night, use your phone, share your location, let someone know where you are at [and] park in well-lit areas,” she said.

Prestcott-Hollander also noted that situational awareness is key.

“Being distracted and isolating any of our five senses is something that can put a woman or anyone at a greater risk of potentially being attacked,” she said.

What is the predatory mindset? They help women understand the psychology of an attack. She urges women to look for signs, such as someone discounting their “no.” That, she said, is potential predatory behavior.

Violence isn’t random, Prestcott-Hollander insists. Predators pick those they think cannot or will not defend themselves in many instances.

To find out more about the Strong Her Initiative, you can visit their website, send an email to info@strong-her.org or call 301-349-1249.

Krav Oz
20300 Seneca Meadows Pkwy, #110
Germantown, Maryland 20876
info@kravoz.com

This is part of WTOP’s continuing coverage of people making a difference in our community authored by Stephanie Gaines-Bryant. Read more of that coverage.

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