War Stories By Phil Cohen

During April 1995, the North Carolina District of ACTWU held its yearly conference in Greensboro’s spacious union hall. The delegates and staff were blown away by the choir providing entertainment. The twenty-three singers and one electric keyboard player named Kenneth Stanley all worked at the Whiteville Apparel suit factory in Eastern North Carolina and were members of Local 1077.

Editor’s Note: This is an open letter to NYS Assembly Member Tony Simone, NYC Council Member Erik Bottcher, and Congress Member Jerrold Nadler Chief of State Robert Gottheim, following the recent Town Hall held at P.S. 33 in Manhattan regarding NYCHA’s plan to to privatize and demolish the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses. You can read more about that plan here. For the record, upon review of the available transcript, kindly note that only one of the 7/9/25 CB4 Town Hall Panelists, Robert Gottheim, Congressman Nadler’s Chief of Staff, mentioned the expression, “In an ideal world.”

By Lizette Colón

I woke up this morning with the following  phrase roaming in my mind and soul: “..In an ideal world…”. It was a phrase used several times by you, as the invited elected officials to the CB4 Town Hall held last night at PS 33.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Mayor Eric Adams may have announced his decision in June to abandon efforts to push 250,000 municipal retirees and their dependents into a profit-driven health insurance plan nobody wants—but ever since then, Hizzoner and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams have been batting around the ultimate fate of retiree health care around like a ping-pong ball.

By Bob Hennelly

Across the country and here in our region local and state governments are scrambling to assess the damage from the passage of President Trump's so-called "Big Beautiful" bill. The new budget bill strips 17 million Americans of their healthcare and shrinks the vital food stamp program—all to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers and corporations while exponentially increasing spending to execute Trump's mass deportation program by making Immigration and Customs Enforcement the nation's largest law enforcement agency. 

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of WBAI’s Front Line Voices, host Rebecca Myles explores the impact Trump's so-called “Big Beautiful” tax bill will have on working families with Sarah Anderson from the Institute for Policies Studies. India Walton also discusses her unsuccessful run for Mayor of Buffalo as a democratic socialist and what it may portend for Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani’s run for New York City mayor.

By Joe Maniscalco

Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic Party mayoral primary with 56 percent of the vote in large part because younger New York City voters are sick and tired of the Democratic Party Machine and it’s fossilized goon squad of neoliberal freaks who’s sole purpose in life is to neuter working class power.

By Bob Hennelly

On the latest episode of "What’s Going On?” Vinnie Variale, president of DC 37 Local 3621—the FDNY EMS officers union—talks about Mayor Eric Adams’ handling of NYC’s deepening EMS crisis where response times have risen in excess of ten minutes for the most serious life threatening situations as calls volumes continue to surge.

By Steve Wishnia

More than 100 days after he was abducted from Maryland by ICE agents and shipped to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is still in jail. After nearly three months of using lies and stalling to evade court orders for his release, the Trump junta brought him back to face highly questionable federal charges of human trafficking.

By Joe Maniscalco

War has never been good for working class people anywhere in the world and it isn’t good for working class people anywhere in the world now.

Roughly two hundred people assembled in Times Square this past Sunday afternoon for an emergency street action challenging the Trump administration’s unconstitutional bombing of Iran over the weekend. Similar emergency demonstrations were also held in dozens of places around the United States.

By Steve Wishnia

“Medicaid!” “Saves lives!” health-care workers chanted in call-and- response outside New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Washington Heights June 23. The overhead passageway between two buildings provided a bit of shade but no protection from the 93-degree heat. “Keep the hospitals open,” called out a woman with “Healthcare Hero” on the back of her shirt.

By Bob Hennelly

On this episode of “What’s Going On?’ we talk more about the big victory New York City municipal retirees have won in the fight against Medicare Advantage with New York City Organization of Public Services Retirees Marianne Pizzitola.

By Joe Maniscalco

Despite Mayor Adams announcement on Friday that he is abandoning the Medicare Advantage push, New York City municipal retirees will continue to “hound” uncommitted City Council members until they finally sign onto legislation protecting the Traditional Medicare and MediGap benefits they earned on the job.

By Steve Wishnia

Uber and Lyft drivers rallied outside the gates of City Hall June 18, calling on the City Council to pass a bill that would prohibit app-based cab companies from “deactivating” them—cutting off their access to the app—without just cause, and set up a city-run procedure for them to defend themselves before they get sacked.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced today that his administration is abandoning the Medicare Advantage push—at least for now.

“We’re announcing that we're not moving forward with the Medicare Advantage plan, specifically because the mayor, over many months, has heard from retirees that they're worried about whether it'll be affordable for them,” Spokesperson Liz Garcia told Work-Bites on Friday.

By Joe Maniscalco

Walmart, the largest employer of women and people of color in the nation didn’t exactly have a stellar track record on racial equity before the family-controlled operation decided to roll back its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion programs in the wake of the Trump administration’s DEI vendetta.

By Steve Wishnia

“I’m somewhat surprised to see this hearing kept on the schedule,” Marc Freedman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told an Occupational Safety and Health Administration panel June 16, the first day of two weeks of hearings on federal heat-safety rules proposed by the Biden administration last year. President Donald Trump suspended consideration of all pending regulations in an executive order Jan. 20.

By Joe Maniscalco

“Oh, you silly civil servants…your big mistake was believing what you were reading and what you were told throughout your whole career working for the City of New York—thanks, though, for helping out during 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, Covid, and all the rest of it. You’re the best, God bless!