The bill co-sponsored by Councilman Oliver Koppell and 28 other councilmembers would require all employers in developments that receive more than $100,000 in city subsidies to pay workers $10-per-hour if the employer pays health care benefits, or $11.50 an hour if they do not. We’re encouraging young people to show up and call on their city council members to support this important legislation. With the administration’s economic development plan partially dependent on the growth of the service sector to meet the need for more jobs, the lack of regulations to ensure that they are fair-wage positions could contribute to the alarmingly growing gap between our top and lowest earners. Without this common sense legislation that has already been passed in cities like Boston, Los Angles and San Francisco, low-to-moderate income families will continue to struggle to meet the rising costs of living and as responsible citizens we should demand that our tax dollars are invested in development that addresses those problems. Like our fellow democrats at StoneWall, let’s demand that our city remains a place where good jobs can still be found by making your voice heard at the rally this Thursday. Come support the fight to make the living wage bill into law.

For more information or to find out how you can get involved please visit the homepage for the LivingWageNYC Campaign at www.livingwagenyc.org.

Stringer is the only mayoral contendor who raised much money in the past six months:

Mr. Stringer raised more than $600,000 this year, and he said he intends to carry over about $1 million from his re-election campaign last year.

“I’m gratified by the close to 1,000 people who contributed, and I’m moving forward,” Mr. Stringer said in an interview. “This is a long journey.”

Thompson has also made his intentions clear:

“It is definitely my intention to run for mayor in 2013 and we’ll begin that process in the latter part of this year,” Mr. Thompson said in an interview.

2013 is going to be an interesting year. If all five ran, we’d also have big fields in the comptroller and Manhattan Borough President races. Not that my political acumen matters much, but if all five ran and went the distance to Primary day, I would bet on Liu.

We are happy to announce the addition of the Honorable Christine Quinn, New York City Council Speaker, and Councilwoman Inez E. Dickens to our list of honorees. It is going to be a great night, with more guests to be announced, so you should come out. We’re also happy to announce that the New York Women’s Foundation’s Committee For the Future will be an honoree.

Our other organizational honorees are the Service Women’s Action Network, the White House Project, and Planned Parenthood’s Political Action Group.

You can join our facebook event here.

To join the host committee, please contact MYD Finance Director Alex Leopold: finance [at] gomyd [dot] com

The ticket pricing will be:
$20 for MYD membership and free admission
$5 for MYD members
$15 for non-members

You can purchase tickets securely online via ActBlue.

Towlroad

Over 1500 leters were delivered. See the quarter for scale reference!

Yesterday, MYD Prez Al Benninghoff and NYC City Council Speaker Christine Quinn took a trip to Albany. There, they hand-delivered a stack of over 1,500 letters from New Yorkers across the state asking their State Senators to support marriage equality.

For the past week, newyorkequality.com has been the focus of MYD’s grassroots campaign to get a marriage equality bill passed. The site launched last Tuesday, and to date, over forty thousand people have visited. The site is simple: look up the info for your State Senator, and either send a handwritten letter yourself, or MYD will print out the one you type up and hand-deliver it to your Senator in Albany.

As you can tell from the photo, a lot of people took us up on the offer. Countless others wrote in their own hand, entreating Senators to support legislation giving equal marriage rights to all.

MYD also made an appearance on CNN Live yesterday. Our very own Julie Blitzer (official title: Social Media Strategist; less official title: awesomesauce) joined the blogging heads at 12:15PM yesterday to share our thoughts on Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination and on California’s decision to uphold Prop 8 (boo!). Watch the clips here and here.

MYD Prez Al Benninghoff with City Council Speaker Quinn in Albany

Despite these and many other successes over the course of the past week, the campaign for marriage equality in NY is far from over. We have only 20 solid “yes” votes of the 32 needed for passage of the bill in the New York State Senate. So here’s what you can do (and yes, we know we’re starting to sound like a broken record but it ain’t over till the fat lady sings, or some clever political, metaphorical equivalent we can’t think of right now):

• Join us on Facebook and share it with your friends
• Follow us on Twitter (#nyequality) and retweet us @goMYD to help spread the word
• If you haven’t already, send a letter to your State Senator urging them to support marriage equality

Ready. Set. Click.