Protestors on the steps of Manhattan’s State Supreme Court
(Photo: Roy Murphy / NLN)

NEW YORK — November 18, 2014. On Tuesday, 50 protesters gathered in front of the State Supreme Court buildings in Manhattan to hold a “KXL=Game Over NYC” press conference. The event, one of many held across the country, was organized by 350NYC.org. It was designed to put last-minute pressure on the Senate, which voted on whether to approve the pipeline that evening. The vote failed.

 
Zephyr Teachout, who gained a third of the votes when she challenged Andrew Cuomo for the governorship, told the protesters, “They want a 1,700-mile pipeline to transport the dirtiest oil on the planet. The pipeline may not go through New York City, but millions of gallons of salt water did go through our subway system.”

 
New York city is cited as one of the three major cities in the world most threatened by the rising waters caused by climate change.

 

Zephyr Teachout addressing the protesters
(Photo: Roy Murphy / NLN)

 
Teachout said Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, the New York senators, should not just vote against the pipeline, but should speak out every day against fossil fuel use. She said that’s also true for New York governor Andrew Cuomo, former New York senator Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama.

 
“It’s time to stop digging, to stop fracking. The nation that poisons its air chokes itself,” said Teachout.

 
Alexis Smallwood, an activist with Rockaway Wildfire, a community organization that sprang up after Hurricane Sandy, lived through the destructive effects of the hurricane. She ended her speech by bouncing up and down and chanting, “We’re all fired up, we can’t take it no more!”

 

Bethany and Rufus performing at the protest
(Photo: Roy Murphy / NLN)

 
The Bethany and Rufus musical duo sang two spirited protest songs, helped by many of the protesters during the choruses.

 
According to 350NYC.org, the thousands of jobs the pipeline would create would last only one or two years. The CEO of TransCanada conceded that it will retain only 50 employees in the United States once the pipeline is finished.

 
The Keystone XL pipeline bill went down to a very narrow defeat: fifty-nine senators voted for the pipeline bill, one short of the 60 needed to clear a filibuster. Joining all of the Senate’s Republicans, 14 Democrats voted for the bill.

 
Legislation to force approval of the pipeline will likely make a comeback as soon as the new Congress is sworn in in January, when a bill will have more supporters in the Senate.

 
“Republicans are committed to getting Keystone approved,” said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on the Senate floor. If not today, McConnell said, “then a new majority after the beginning of the year will be taking this up and sending it down to the desk of the president.”

 

City Council member Brad Landers addresses protestors
(Photo: Roy Murphy / NLN)

 
BROOKLYN, NY - October 29, 2014. Three days after a protest march down Atlantic Avenue against the closure of the full-service hospital, New York State Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, and Comptroller, Thomas Di Napoli, approved the State University of New York’s (SUNY’s) plan to sell Brooklyn’s Long Island College Hospital (LICH) to a real estate developer.

 
The 157-year-old hospital served a fast-growing swath of Brooklyn stretching from Red Hook to Williamsburg.

 
The protest march of about 60 people included City Council member Brad Lander and Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez. A month before New York’s Comptroller Scott Stringer had said, “Brooklyn’s exploding population needs more health care services, not less.” And in July last year Mayor Bill de Blasio, while he was a mayoral candidate, was arrested while protesting the closure of the LICH.

 
SUNY has repeatedly said it had to shut down LICH and sell the property because the hospital was losing millions of dollars a month. However, evidence has emerged that LICH treated thousands of patients for free for almost two years, losing at least $100 million in revenues. It could not bill the insurance companies for that money because it failed to register its doctors with the companies.

Protestors on Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn
(Photo: Roy Murphy / NLN)

It is not yet known whether SUNY has to repay $140 million it borrowed from the Othmer Endowment.

 
“What happened to the Othmer Endowment money?” Lander said to the protestors. “Was the bidding process legal and appropriate? At so many points it appeared rigged,” he said.

 
SUNY Board Chairman H. Carl McCall says the sale will include “health care services for the community” in the form of an ambulatory care center. “This includes the construction of a new state-of-the-art facility and a total private investment by NYU Langone Medical Center of $175 million,” McCall said.

 
The march came after nearly two years of community protests and legal action. A coalition of community organizations, health care providers and elected officials has maintained that northwest Brooklyn’s growing population needs a full-service hospital, not a “walk-in” emergency department.