75-Year Old Man Collapses and Hundreds, including Elderly, are Left Outside in the Cold In spite of pleas from her constituents to hold the public hearing about St. Vincent's Hospital in a room large enough to accommodate the hundreds of people expected to attend, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn assigned the hearing to a room that could hold only 40 people. As a result, hundreds of people, many of whom were elderly, were left standing outside in the frigid weather for hours behind barricades surrounded by at least a dozen police officers. At 9:30 a.m., a 75-year old man collapsed and was taken away in an ambulance.
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Hundreds told they would not be allowed inside to testify |
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Was the NYPD expecting riots at a public hearing? |
Christine Quinn, whose district includes St. Vincent's Hospital, purposely held this hearing in a small room to prevent hundreds of people from testifying against the plan to allow one of her biggest campaign donors, the Rudins, to build a luxury high-rise condo on the St. Vincent's site, which was zoned for community use. While hundreds waited outside in the cold, Rudin's cohorts were escorted into the building -- ahead of all of the people who had been standing in line. In response to a question from NYC resident Louis Flores who asked why people were being shut out of the public hearing, the head of Quinn's "Community Outreach Unit," Tony Simone, stated that all questions had to be directed to Speaker Quinn's press office. So much for community outreach.... By 11:30 a.m., four hours after people started to line up, all but about 50 people exited the barricades after being told that they weren't going to be given the chance to testify at this public hearing. In the video below, Tom Allon, the publisher of Manhattan Media and a 2013 Mayoral candidate, states, "This is not democracy. This is a sham." He also states, "Right across the street is the City Council Chamber that has hundreds of seats...They were trying very deliberately to keep this under wraps."
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Click picture to watch video |
Quinn's decision to sacrifice the health and safety of her constituents in order to repay her real estate donors is unethical and reckless. And the fact that she forced hundreds of New Yorkers, including elderly people, to stand outside in the cold for hours as a strategy to silence them is downright cruel and undemocratic . . . and typical of Christine Quinn. Also typical of Quinn was her decision to hold this public hearing on Super Tuesday, when the news media would be too focused on the Presidential election to cover this local story. Please share this information with your friends and colleagues who vote in NYC. If you would like to participate in the protest against Christine Quinn on Thursday morning at the Greenwich Village/Chelsea Chamber of Commerce breakfast, please send me an email. | 
