LISTENER CANDIDATE
I am a long time listener to WBAI and a former producer for 10 years. Before retiring I had a long career as a social worker as I was always attracted to social justice issues. My parents were victims of the McCarthyite blacklist and the isolation I felt growing up turned me to searching for alternatives to the mainstream media.
During my career with the New York City Human Resources Administration I was one of the originators of the breakfast program and Minicap for disabled children. I designed the citywide co-terminality program that effectively decentralized social service delivery in the five boroughs.
In the 1970 and 80s I was also involved with the effort to allow women to be bus drivers and to end discrimination against women in the uniformed services.
During litigation on New York City pension benefits, I got the State to change interest rates from three to seven percent on workers money. And after 20 years of fighting politicians, city lawyers and commissioners, I forced the City to adopt sex neutral actuarial tables in the administration of pensions. The settlement the city agreed to resulted in $200 million being turned over to women who otherwise would have been cheated out of their rightful pension payments.
I was the first in the country to achieve this for a municipality.
Additionally I forced the City to equalize employment titles such as clerks and janitors for which there had been disparity between men and women in job function and pay.
In the early 1970s I also succeeded in getting New York City to discontinue forced maternity leave in the fifth month of pregnancy and I stopped the City practice of terminating women’s employment if they were in a provisional title and went on maternity leave.
I also got the City to discontinue forcing women returning to work post maternity leave to get permission to return to work from the city’s doctor.
I forced the City to allow pregnant women to use their accrued annual and their sick. Leave during their maternity leave. I forced the City to allow women to continue health benefits while women were out on leave and to allow women to take promotional exams while on leave.
Additionally, I instituted childcare that could be taken at any time after maternity leave terminated and I instituted disability payments for eligible women during their maternity leave.
I won childcare for men, a benefit unimaginable prior to my work.
At the end of all that I was tired of politics and retired. But the plight of WBAI has awoken my sense of responsibility to others and that is why I am running. I am for the expansion of WBAI and wish to see Pacifica become a real network and alternative to the poisonous right wing radio. I am opposed to the sale or lease of WBAI to MNN or any other entity.
Corporate free candidates, Corporate free news outlets are our last hope for a humane society.
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