Best of Brooklyn: Politics
From the styrofoam ban to the best graduation speeches at public middle schools, here are the best political mini-moments of the past year.
Best Ban: The Styrofoam Ban
Who needs styrofoam cups anyway? Not us, and definitely not our landfills.
Best Ridiculous Broken Windows Policing Arrest: When Two Men Got Arrested for Manspreading
Most Misguided NYC Institution of Higher Education That Also Has
a BK Campus: CUNY
Hiring superstar “professors” whose contracts involve no real teaching but total the salaries of ten full-time professors, piling up administrators making six figures while paring down full-time faculty to almost nothing, paying adjuncts almost nothing for doing almost all of the teaching, budget-nudging adjuncts into leaving just before they acquire rights, cutting courses while raising tuitions, giving students a worse ‘education’ from one year to the next: It’s all par for the self-corporatizing course at American universities anymore, private and public alike. And CUNY engages in all such “academic” inanity like true champions. Recipe for Implosion 101.
Best Proposed NYC Legislation: Gender-neutral Bathrooms
Best State Legislation Passed: “Yes means yes” Campus Sexual Assault Policy
Best (But Nowhere Near Enough) Prison Reform: Rikers Ends the Use of Solitary Confinement for Inmates under 21
Best National Legislation Passed that Made New York Pride Week Just About the Best Thing Ever: Marriage equality!
Best Middle School Graduation Speech Given by a Local Politician: Tie between Eric Adams and Scott Stringer
If we’re going to be cynical about it, we’d say that the reason Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer gave such rousing speeches at the 8th grade graduation ceremony at Park Slope’s MS 88 would have something to do with everyone being a voter. But we’re not cynical, because, honestly, these two consummate New Yorker politicians gave such rousing speeches (Adams even came with props!), that it humbled us, actually, because it was clearer than ever that sometimes the things we like best about this huge city is its small town feel.