You Should Protest at City Hall Today for Adult Literacy Programs

Today in City Hall Park — from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. — advocates for adult literacy will be protesting the Mayor’s proposed budget. You should feel free to join them!

The City’s money for literacy programs is a tiny, tiny part of the budget, but it’s constantly being hacked at. All told, just $13 million in proposed cuts (in a $65.7 billion budget) impact thousands of people who are trying to master English.

The City should be throwing money at literacy, to make it the greatest city it could be. That something like a third of New York City residents aren’t fully literate in English is a waste of human capital.

And so now literacy-minded folks have to go make the case, so the City Council can restore at least some of this program money.

Last year, at budget time, of course, we looked at the importance of literacy programs. 1 in 3 New York City residents is an immigrant, and half of residents speak a first language other than English in the home. But also, nearly half of people who use adult literacy services in New York are native English speakers who have, by and large, been failed by the school system.

The proposed budget comes to $65.7 billion; it addresses the City receiving a billion less from the country and the state. The City’s official deficit is $4.6 billion.

To Bloomberg’s credit, he constantly reiterates that both the state and the federal government keep more money than they send back — and budget cuts can be viewed as entirely Albany’s fault. This is true! And state money for literacy programs is also being cut.

It’s also true that the business-friendly mayor has a role in this, due to his position that if you don’t play nice to big corporations, they’ll leave. (For where? Bethesda? Detroit? Los Angeles???) Did you know that business taxes in New York City create less than $6 billion in annual City income — only 15% of the city’s tax revenue?