The following information was authorized by the Committee: Rivers For New York
Why Are We Running For City Council 2021
MAKE THEM ACCOUNTABLE!
To all the residents of South East Queens
We need a representative who will “Bring accountability back” to South East Queens. After ample prayers, reflection, and discussion with family, local community, and friends I felt empowered to run for City Council.
I am a married father of three children, and a home owner in Saint Albans for the last 27 years. I am a former United States Marine, NYPD retired Lieutenant with 23 years of service, a Licensed financial service provider of 27 years, and a community activist.
My 23 years of experience with the NYPD has lead me to do community work throughout Brooklyn, Queens, and the South Bronx. During my final position within the department, I held the title of Lieutenant Integrity Control Officer (ICO).*
*(My duties included the development of an Integrity Control Program suitable and responsive in the exchange of information for self anti-corruption purposes. I managed the integrity for the Sergeants, Police Officers, and the civilian workers of the entire Command.)
As a licensed Financial provider of 27 years, I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours across the kitchen table educating, and assisting every day families on how to save and accumulate money for retirement.
As you view our website, you will see true advocacy. I am asking you to support my campaign to bring about change in our community.
My platform is based on the community’s needs:
The Challenges we face in our District are not being addressed. Our schools are inadequately educating our children. School Digger data sources reveals (see:https://www.schooldigger.com/) that our local schools are struggling in comparison to schools in other districts. Additionally, we have a lack of affordable housing, more than our share of shelters, and higher property taxes than more affluent neighborhoods.
EDUCATION
To advocate for comprehensive educational programs ( academic, vocational, and STEM) at all levels. While I totally endorse STEM programs, we must advocate to re incorporate Vocations back into our public schools.
Vocational training programs for young adults, and ex-offenders. JFK airport is currently in a ten plus billion dollar expansion, we must advocate for Port Authority to spend more money in our community to support additional training in Vocations needed for our residents.
Quality after school experiences, tutoring, and recreational.
VETERANS
Increase funding for the Mayor’s office of Veteran’s Affairs
Work to increase transparency in Veteran’s Court.
Veteran’s Court exits to honor their military service and support Veterans involved in the criminal justice system.
HOUSING
Real Affordable Housing (no more warehousing people in hotel/shelters) fight to have local affordable housing reflect local Area Median Incomes.
Fighting against up zoning and re-zoning of single-family zones. Fight for lower ratio to value tax payments on single family homes and cooperative apartments in our area.
Stop illegal foreclosures throughout South East Queens
SMALL BUSINESS PLAN
While walking through the neighborhood, I have witnessed the traumatic impact of Covid-19 on small businesses in Southeast Queens. I have had the pleasure and opportunity to talk to many small business owners over the last 6 months. The greatest challenge I find is the lack of information being forwarded to the owners. It is my intention once elected to make greater efforts to increase access to pertinent information such as the Payment protection program, the New York Loan Fund and Local enterprise certification program, readily available to help small businesses thrive.
INFRASTRUCTURE
Work on upgrading our hospitals, water, sewage, for growing population.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
Continue to lobby for environmentally friendly Waste Transfer Stations.
see website for additional advocacy on Waste Transfer Stations.
PUBLIC SAFETY
Look to improve Quality of life issues. NYPD- reform, by way of reducing the responsibilities of the Police. We know from statistics 17 to 20% of all police shootings involve someone with a mental health issue. We would like to implement a concept of Crisis Assistance helping on the streets. (crisis response) By placing a psychology clinician and a medical clinician in a radio patrol vehicle and have them respond to non violent unarmed calls for people with mental health issues.
DEVELOPMENT OF AN ECONOMIC INCUBATOR
To, In general, support small business, young adult financial literacy and employment, to generate venues where the talents from southeastern Queens can prosper and work for the people in southeastern Queens. Properly trained people from our neighborhood in modern skills such as, Electrical, Pluming, Carpentry, Roofing, Solar Panel Installation, maintenance, and Masonry, Who would then be encouraged to open up small shops within the neighborhood to service our neighborhood.
DEVELOP A COMMUNITY RESOURCE HUB
Where community residents can have access to representatives from multiple city agencies. Giving residents ways to address such issues as Human resources, Dep issues, property tax issues.
I greatly appreciate all your past support. I know together we can work to shape the future of southeastern queens into a great place to work and live. I look forward to continuing to work on behalf of our community. It is time to make it official.
To donate to our cause, click on the link below.
https://www.nycvotes.org/campaigns/anthonyrivers/contributions/new
COVID – 19
The first case of COVID – 19 was confirmed in New York State on March 1, 2020
I empathize with all whom may have lost someone, or knows someone whose life was lost to COVID – 19. You have my heart felt sorrow.
On march 07, 2020 the governor of New York declares a state of emergency. On March 22, the governor of New York declares a stay at home order. On May 14, 2020 Amid the ongoing Pandemic Governor Cuomo announces five regions will reopen.
Our needs are at best minimally addressed. Affordable quality health care should be accessible to all residents. This rational for this is evidenced by the manners in which the Southeastern sections of Queens has been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The health of your neighbor can have an impact or change health of every member of your personal family. During this pandemic, information, testing sites, availability of treatment, vaccinations etc. were all lacking. Additionally, we find out that some of our long term care residents have been exposed to Covid-19 unnecessarily, and or given questionable treatments without their knowledge, or authority of a guardian or family member.
Even in these uncertain times our advocacy didn’t falter.
During the shut down of the City, many people of our community suffered hardships and became unemployed. Brother Oster Bryan, from Community 1st. took the initiative and contacted William Shah Sawyer of, Inner City Tech. a food provider of box lunches. Brother Bryan called me and asked if we would like to participate in several food drives to help our people of South East Queens. We delivered food to the following locations.(Rising Star Baptist Church, Mt Olivet Baptist and Queens Tabernacle Church) on several different days.
Waste Transfer Stations
During my campaign in 2017, I received complaints about the air quality in and about Liberty Avenue and 172nd. Street.
I spent 2019 with several community activist to organize and reform the way waste transfer stations conduct business in our district.
We People for the neighborhood, along with CommUnity 1st., were contacted and asked if we would join a coalition of activists who were opposed to the way carting companies were conducting business in our area. The coalition was lead by an organization called N.Y.C. Environmental Justice. We immediately signed on to aide the group in anyway that we could. This meant going to and participating in several planning meetings.
It was determined the way Royal Carting company processed trash was virtually non compliant to newer regulations .The result of their practices was the horrendous odor that were permeating the surrounding community.
We participated in several protests to bring public awareness to the environmental injustice taking place.
The coalition worked in a tireless fashion to bring about change. We met with councilman Antonio Reynoso of Council District 34 who was sponsoring the waste zone bill. We provided pictures that substantiated numerous violations at the carting company. This and several additional meetings helped Councilman Reynoso revise his Commercial Waste Zone bill. The revised bill, which has been signed into law, contains language that reduced the amount of trash that can be processed at the location.
never doubt what ordinary citizens banning together can accomplish.
2018 Why are taxes so high in South East Queens?
We have had increasing taxes in SEQ for the last 25 years, upon further investigation by many organizations, it was determined the current NYC tax system is totally unfair to class 1 home owners in communities of color. There have been several news papers that have written articles on this subject (see links below).
In April of 2017, a coalition called Tax Equity Now NY which included the NAACP, and several others teamed up with the firm Latham & Watkins to file a class action suit. The group charged that city’s property tax system is racially biased and favors the affluent over the working and middle-class.
Mayor De Blasio, feeling the pressure of this and past law suits, finally convened a NEW YORK CITY ADVISORY COMMISION ON PROPERTY TAXES. The Advisory Commission’s objective was to give public hearings, to understand the improprieties of the current tax system. On October 03, 2018, I found out about this public hearing and placed my name on the list to speak. The Co-chair of the commission was Vicki Been, she was previously the head of the NYU Furman center. This is relevant because the Furman center conducted research and published a paper about the inequities of the current tax system, based on race. I added this information to the blog because, upon returning to the Furman center website, the paper has since been removed. If you go to the link you will see me verify this publication on video. My appearance time on the video is about 1 hour and 25minutes into the public testimony.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSpDlM5Yqng&feature=emb_title
2018 Dedicated to Men’s Health
In 2018 after the election I took a short sabbatical from politics.
I concentrated my energy on my personal health, workout regiment. It is a known fact ( according to the CDC ) only 23.2% of adults over the age of 18 meet the Physical Activity Guidelines for both aerobic and muscle strengthening activity. I believe personal health is a life style and should be listed right under your family and belief in God. It is for this belief I have always incorporated working out into my life style. My particular work out regiment consist of training three to four times a week. During the course of the year in June of 2018, while running on the treadmill I began to have some sporadic palpitations (shortness of breath). In good shape and having a strong male ego, I quickly attributed these short disruptions to improper breathing, eating too close to work out time, and lack of proper rest.
These irregular disruptions continued from June through August, and as always I found reason to ignore them. On August 16, 2018 while at the gym I fell down a flight of concrete stairs. In my attempt to break my fall, I extended my left arm to protect my head and face. While this did prevent me from receiving serious injury. This motion resulted with me completely severing two tendons in my left shoulder. The fall I had taken now required surgery to fix.
Before you have to have surgery, you are required to get a pre surgical exam. This is to ensure you are capable of withstanding the procedure. It was during this pre surgical check I was administered an Electrocardiogram (EKG). During this process it was determined there was something drastically wrong with my heart. I went from needing surgery on my shoulder to needing to see a Cardiologist immediately. (To shorten my story) I was diagnosed with a condition called Ventricular tachycardia.(A condition in which the lower chambers of the heart beat very quickly). This is a condition if untreated can lead to death. I chose a procedure called ablation to remedy the problem. The procedure took approximately four hours, after my heart was as good as new. I was subsequently cleared for my shoulder surgery January 2, 2019, and after six months of grinding rehabilitation it also is as good as new.
I am sharing this story because, we as black and brown men often place low priority on our health, we put off Doctors appointments and ignore symptoms. I was previously included in the same category. Thinking I’m in great shape I made excuses for my difficultly in breathing while exercising. It took me falling down a flight of stairs to be properly diagnosed.
The moral of this story, Black and Brown men if you feel something is abnormal or out of the usual, please get it checked right away. The life you save may be yours.
Save Our Community
For decades southeastern Queens has been a thriving community that produced generations of homeowners, entrepreneurs, entertainers, and legendary professionals. It is still a community that produces many independent business persons, media personalities, professionals, city administrators and even Olympic medalists.
With all of the outstanding achievers that these communities have produced and still has to offer; we could be so much more, if we had community advocates with a vision to develop projects that would maximize the potential of our youth and the millennials while sustaining quality programs for our aging population.
Opportunities to resist the destruction of educational programs, the continuous implementation of homeless and hotel shelters, not to mention the lack of community centers for our youth are items that our electeds have failed to advocate for.
Our community needs representatives who will maintain an effective challenge against developers and government policies that seek to negatively impact our community.
To resist the city’s practice of placing an unfair share of minimally supervised, underserviced, shelters in our neighborhoods; I took the lead for a coalition of community groups that collected thousands of petitions, staged weekly protests and challenged the process in the Supreme and Appellate Court as well as presenting complaints to the New York State Attorney General’s office and the United States Attorney Generals office.
I believe that city resources that flow into our neighborhoods should be used to:
- Improve our educational infrastructure – Providing comprehensive & vocational programs and facilities for students in our community.
- Increase the availability of truly affordable housing – Decreasing the need to warehouse people in hotels and homeless shelters is more economical and improves the quality of life for all involved.
- Development of an economic incubator – To, in general, support small business, youth employment and to generate venues where the talents located in southeastern Queens can prosper and work for the people in southeastern Queens.
- Develop a community resource hub – Where community residents can have access to representatives from multiple city agencies. Giving residents ways to address such issues as the lack of or over enforcement of regulations and policies such as police community relations, and DEP issues of lead in our drinking water and environmental injustice.
WORDS THAT DON’T MATCH DEEDS ARE MEANINGLESS……Doing what was done before will not bring different results. Addisleigh Park, Cambria Heights, Hollis, Jamaica, Queens Village, Saint Albans and Springfield Gardens are names of neighborhoods in southeastern Queens that can lose their integrity if we don’t have someone who believes we are worthy of true representation. Please help me Save our Community by voting for me on Primary Day, September 12, 2017.
As your councilman, I, Anthony Rivers, will be an advocate for this community,
PEOPLEFORTHENEIGHBORHOOD@Gmail
SAVE OUR COMMUNITY.
WHY ARE WE RUNNIG FOR CITY COUNCIL
People have asked our team of petitioners, “Why is Anthony Rivers running for City Council?”
The answer, we need an ADVOCATE FOR SOUTH EAST QUEENS.
Have you noticed how the quality of the neighborhood services changes as soon as you cross Jamaica Ave.? Ask yourself the following questions.
Why are homeless shelters constantly being placed on our side of Queens instead of adhering to the fair share policies?
Why are High schools being collocated (multiple locations in one building) in our neighborhood? but, function as one school on the north side of Queens.
Why don’t our schools function well?
Why are property taxes going up in our neighborhood, while other communities get property tax exemptions?
Why the streets aren’t cleaned and paved?
Why are senior citizen centers being closed?
These are just a few questions that come to mind.
The reason we’re running, we realized our incumbent has not challenged the Mayor, Borough President, or District Attorney on any issue that directly impacts our neighborhood. He stands with a lot of people, but seldom rolls up his sleeves to fight against anything that has a negative impact in our community. (click on link to mayors meeting)
These are the reasons Anthony Rivers is running for City Council. We are grassroots, we don’t seek multiple endorsements. (every endorsement equals less control) Why have we decided to put my name out front?
I would like to say, my name may be on the ballot but I don’t consider it my seat. It is the community’s seat.
We are fighting for goals and objectives for our community.
We need SEQ to come out and vote on September 12, bring control back to the people.
This gets Worse, to further substantiate collusion the incumbent is using the attorney Frank Bolz on his petitions.
Frank Bolz, for those who don’t know (see link to Daily News Article) is the very same attorney who works to keep control over the entire democratic party in queens county. You wonder why nothing gets done in our community, this is the reason. (please read daily news article)
New York State Attorney General
The N.Y.S. Attorney General is Eric T. Schneiderman. The State Attorneys General has a Civil Rights Bureau. People have asked us, what have we worked on since the court case on Hollis Ave? I didn’t feel the need to publish our struggle but, since you have inquired I will oblige.
On December 10, 2014 Community Board 12 filed for a moratorium on the further building or expansion of homeless or other problem facilities. This was based on the fact, CB12 has 40% of all such facilities in Queens, while CB11 has ZERO. We also used the Mayors own words spoken while interviewed. (Queens Press March 11, 2016, conducted by T. Dowd) When asked if he would support a bill that would limit the amount of supportive housing in a single community, the Mayor said no. The Mayor is quoted ” I think that is a policy matter not a legislative matter”
March 29, 2016 we filed a discrimination complaint ( correspondence number 2016-1281021) with the New York State Attorney Generals Office against Mayor DeBlasio, and his administration on behalf of South East Queens. We compiled facts pertaining specifically to Community Board 12, CB12 at the time had 32% of all the shelters in queens by comparison to CB11 (Auburndale, Little Neck, Bayside, Douglaston, Douglas Manor, Hollis Hills, Oakland Gardens) which has ZERO.
April 06, 2016 we received conformation of the complaint. On May 26,2016 we received an unsigned letter of rejection. On May 31, 2016 We (People For The Neighborhood, Community 1st., and The Saint Albans Civic) visited the Attorney Generals office. We were met by Office Manager Melisa Smith, she stated the rejection letter was a standard response and assured us someone would contact us in regards to our complaint. On June 02, 2016, we received a phone call from Attorney Jessica Attie who discussed our complaint and stated she would contact us in the future in regards. After waiting three weeks with no response we visited the Attorney Generals Office for a second time and was met by security with no contact from the AGO’s office. On June 21, 2016, we received a call from Shiann Headen (Paralegal from Attorney Generals Office) who stated she would be in contact with us in regards to our complaint. On July 25, 2016, I called the AGO, spoke with Shiann Headen who stated she had made several attempts to contact me with no response. (THIS WAS A BLANTANT LIE) we ended the conversation in disagreement. On September 03, 2016, We received a phone from AGO, attorney Jessica Attie stating she is not pursuing our complaint. We believe this is in direct violation of the Attorney Generals duties.
On September 20, 2016, we filed a complaint with AGO, Public Integrity Bureau referencing the above matter and, have not heard a response to this very day.
On November 10, 2016 we filed a complaint with U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division.
On January 27, 2017 the D.O.J responded, (I’m paraphrasing) The D.O.J. has no authority to take action on allegations concerning the denial of other rights related to housing that are not covered by the Fair Housing Act.
We are private citizens acting on behalf of our community, can you imagine if our electeds worked together to protect the community they serve.
This article published by the Daily News further substantiates the corruption South East Queens is subject to.
The article itself is more than self explanatory but, if you need further explanation as to how this directly affects our neighborhood, I suggest you also click on the second link (Latest articles about PFTN) Look at the judges name who handled our Supreme Court case the second time. This judge was so biased, he refused to even hear the case. He(judge Naham) made all parties involved submit there petitions in writing, Why are Elected Officials in S.E.Q. doubling as District Leaders? The answer to control the Supreme Court process. This has a direct affect on our community.
People For the Neighborhood 