A day after State Senate GOP leader Dean Skelos said he would refuse to bring de Blasio’s plan for a vote, Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife Chirlane ramped up their call for universal pre-k, turning to the base in an urgent call for a vote in the Senate.
“They can’t accept the possibility of no vote on something that the people of New York City have spoken for so clearly,” Mayor de Blasio told a wildly supportive crowd at the famed Bethany Baptist Church in Brooklyn Tuesday morning. “They can’t accept the notion that New York City will be treated like a colony that doesn’t even get to decide its own future.”
“Look at every public opinion poll. The people of New York City have spoken,” said the mayor. “When you have a majority like that, it’s supposed to rule the day, isn’t it? And political machinations are not supposed to overcome that kind of majority,” he added, leading the crowd in a standing chant of, “We want a vote!”
“It can’t be business as usual. Your congregations have to feel this in a way I can only describe as personal. People have to feel like this is about their survival and their children’s survival, because in fact it is,” the mayor continued. “We are all brothers and sisters in this fight. We will accept nothing short of victory.”
“Make no mistake, this is the defining civil rights issue of our day,” NYC’s First Lady Chirlane McCray added. “Universal pre-kindergarten and after school programs are essential to our children’s future, are essential to our future.”
Speaking to reporters following the speech, Mr. de Blasio said, “Reverend Sharpton and I – and so many other people who care about just basic fairness – reject the notion that we would be deprived a vote on such a central initiative, on something so fundamentally important to the people of this city. So we’re going to fight to rectify this. And there’s a lot of time on the clock, and the bottom line is Albany simply must provide us a vote on this issue. The people of this city demand it, and I think – it is shocking to me that in the year 2014, that Senator Skelos thinks he can sweep this under the rug.”
Mr. de Blasio added that he was “miffed” by Mr. Skelos’s surprising move. “I am miffed, because I had spoken with Senator Skelos several times and understood there would be ongoing discussions to see if we could work forward – work on a plan to go forward together,” he said. “This was quite a surprise to me that he would not allow a vote. It’s not a shock, again, that he would have differences on the issue, but I thought we were all trying to work together here to find the solution that would serve our children – and obviously that’s not the case.”
(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)
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Holder thinks that toieivah marriage is the civil rights issue of the day, and this guy thinks that universal pre-k is the civil rights issue of the day. I guess the term “civil rights issue of the day” is fairly meaningless now.
Anyway, this guy can’t get anything done. He’s a lame-duck mayor already, and he only just got elected.