How New York City’s next speaker, Julie Menin, can – Latest News
Dear Councilwoman Julie Menin,
Congratulations on securing enough votes to change into the next New York City Council speaker.
It’s a vital achievement, one many New Yorkers welcomed with a sigh of aid given your rival’s progressivism.
Most Gothamites didn’t signal up for the radicalism obvious in Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition staff and are craving not sweeping social change however a moderating power to counter the insurance policies which have already left our streets and subways much less protected, our metropolis more costly, our colleges much less efficient and our communities more divided.
As a candidate for City Council and Manhattan district lawyer and as a Community Education Council president, I’ve talked to people for years about their precise issues.
New Yorkers throw within the towel and depart our great metropolis once they lack actual security, business-friendly legal guidelines, good jobs, reasonably priced rent, wonderful colleges and improved high quality of life.
Let’s begin with public security.
Just final week, we’ve seen a younger NYU scholar stalked and assaulted on Sixth Avenue by a serial attacker of younger girls, a Soho boutique robbed of $1 million value of merchandise and a Molotov cocktail tossed in a West Village store.
You should acknowledge and publicly help the pressing need to repeal bail reform, preserve the NYPD gang database and stop the proposed Department of Community Safety.
As speaker, you’ll have the platform to make a forceful case to Albany legislators and the governor to lastly finish bail reform.
Julie LP Media
It’s previous time to repeal law that places recidivists on our streets again and again.
You can additionally rally your council colleagues and construct a coalition to demand the NYPD gang database stay in place.
And Mamdani’s ludicrous Department of Community Safety, which is an unconvincing fig leaf for an additional attempt to “Defund the Police,” is a nonstarter.
Reject Mamdani’s inexperienced initiatives. Congestion pricing is a tax and never a panacea for cleaner air or crowded streets.
Stop taxing working-class New Yorkers whereas pushing us in the direction of much less protected, much less clean, much less dependable subways.
New York’s Democratic Socialists of America trumpet Mamdani’s election win. @nycDSA/X
Likewise, Mamdani’s schooling plan must be checked.
His transition staff is rife with warmed-over Bill de Blasio educrats who need equity over excellence and progressive lip service over significant outcomes.
As a mother of a New York City public-school graduate and three present college students, I’ve seen firsthand how the push to remove and water down gifted packages, finish specialized-high-school entrance exams and oppose any meritocratic program degrades our colleges and harms vibrant college students from all backgrounds, particularly these from low-income households who depend on advantage to climb the ladder.
Instead, champion insurance policies that reward arduous work and excellence and reject the equity-at-all-costs mantra.
You are additionally not a average should you bow down to the gender cult.
You co-signed a scathing May 20, 2024, letter with some of the town’s most radical politicians accusing me and different public-school dad and mom of being “hateful and discriminatory” merely for asking the public-school system to review the 2019 gender pointers that permit boys to take part in women’ sports activities and enter women’ locker rooms and loos.
We requested elected leaders to hearken to “female student athletes” whereas reviewing coverage that instantly impacts them.
That is neither hateful nor discriminatory, however ignoring and silencing women is.
Author Maud Maron has talked to New Yorkers for years about their precise issues. Gabriella Bass
Finally, you could stand firm in opposition to Hamas sympathizers who’ve infiltrated progressive politics and whose Jew hatred Mamdani is normalizing and platforming earlier than he even takes workplace.
Park East Jews couldn’t get into their synagogue as a result of they’re Jews.
Your bland assertion saying “congregants” need entry to their “house of worship,” noting, “Protests must have reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions,” adopted the Mamdani playbook of by no means saying “Jew” or “antisemitism.”
That’s inexcusable.
Most not too long ago you’ve been silent about a Holocaust survivor who was advised he wasn’t welcome to talk to Brooklyn center schoolers as a result of of his supposed “views” on Palestine.
You need to make it clear all college students in every single place would benefit from listening to from a Holocaust survivor in 2025.
Your silence helps those that wish to silence Jewish views and rewrite historical past.
Your speakership is an alternative to steer the council and the town towards a more smart path.
But moderation isn’t a label; neither is it a relative time period.
It’s a dedication to insurance policies that work for almost all, not the extremes.
I urge you to rise to the event. The metropolis is watching.
Sincerely,
Maud Maron
