Yusuf Abdul-Qadir: what percent of the police live in the city?
Yusuf Abdul-Qadir: 5%, so 95% don’t live in the city.
Yusuf Abdul-Qadir: so when you say that the vast majority of the percentage goes towards salaries, et cetera, fringe benefits, that means that they take their money on 81, go to outside the city, pay taxes in those communities that have some of the best schools while we have an underfunded school district--
someone else: $60 million up.
Yusuf Abdul-Qadir: so i just want to put into context what we’re talking about, because it’s really easy to say, mayor-- and with all due respect, i like you. but that was a very politician answer.
mayor: sorry, what specifically?
Yusuf Abdul-Qadir: the, “we will consider, and we will look.” what we’re saying is we’re not interested in considering and looking. what we’re saying is, actually, there’s $50 million. commit to $20 million cut, because we’re sending money-- as the mayor of Syracuse, when you don’t have a tax base, you’re sending money out of Syracuse. and not just for 30 years-- for the rest of their life because their pensions, their health insurance, their families. so we are funding for other people’s communities to have the promise of the American dream while we are denying it in our community. that’s the context that you, as the mayor, have to look at this under.
so when we talk about renegotiating union contract, what we’re saying is you can’t play around with, “maybe, um, we will--” no. y’all got to go, because you don’t provide a service that is beneficial to the community, that is meaningful to the community. the services that you provide criminalize our community, impoverish our community, reallocate resources to suburbs. we are actually funding the suburbs, both in our police departments and in our schools.
and to be clear, just to be clear, it’s not just the fact of, like, the percentage of people. we’re also funding what race of people are on the police force, the percentage of race of teachers, as well, superintendent, board president. so we want to put in context, because it’s not just a class issue. it’s a race issue. we’re telling black and brown people and poor people, you don’t matter. the devil’s in the data and in the details, mayor. respectfully, it is not acceptable for us to be here considering.]
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