Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll find out about a Brooklyn nonprofit that won a $100,000 prize given by another Brooklyn nonprofit. We’ll also get details on a plan that would make New York the first city in the United States with free universal child care.
Michelle Dahl, who runs a public-interest organization that objects to intrusive surveillance, had no objections to some recent scrutiny that delved into her nonprofit. The group had asked for it, and it paid off.
Her group, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, was named a winner of a $100,000 prize from another nonprofit, Brooklyn Org.
S.T.O.P., as Dahl’s group is known, was one of five winners chosen from among 20 finalists that had submitted applications and undergone an intensive review. “From expanding safety and dignity for Muslim women to elevating youth civil leadership and protecting communities from harmful surveillance,” said Jocelynne Rainey, the president and chief executive of Brooklyn Org, “these organizations are moving our borough toward lasting equity.” The other winners of the award, the Spark Prize, are listed here.
Dahl said the prize comes at an important moment. “We’ve seen more aggressive policing, which usually involves higher use of surveillance tools that target communities, particularly ICE agents using live facial recognition apps on their phones,” she said. “It can be wrong.”
And, she said, such surveillance is conducted without warrants, which she said was illegal and unconstitutional. She said that S.T.O.P. — which started in 2019 in the Fort Greene apartment of the lawyer and activist Albert Fox Cahn — would use the money “to do more national litigation challenging this authoritarian use of surveillance technology.”
During the mayoral campaign, Zohran Mamdani criticized surveillance tactics. Dahl said she was “optimistic but very cautious” about how the Police Department’s use of surveillance would evolve.
“He has kept on Tisch,” she said, referring to the police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, an architect of the Police Department’s pervasive surveillance network. The system “has caused a lot of harm and overpolicing over the last several years,” Dahl said, “but we know that Mamdani has espoused views about public safety that go beyond the traditional view of security at all costs, so we’re hoping that he’ll put meaning limits on surveillance.”
Over the years, S.T.O.P. has also objected to other practices by law enforcement that it considered intrusive. Last year, the city agreed to a $17.5 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit in which S.T.O.P. was co-counsel. The two plaintiffs were Muslim women who said that the police had violated their rights after arresting them by forcing them to remove their hijabs before photographing them. The Police Department rewrote its policy in response to the lawsuit, permitting mug shots of people in head coverings like the skullcaps and wigs worn by Orthodox Jews and the turbans worn by Sikhs — as long as their faces were not obscured.
Brooklyn Org, which changed its name from the Brooklyn Community Foundation in 2023, is Brooklyn-centric and says that the borough’s nonprofits are too often shortchanged. The Spark Prize is an effort to address that, by channeling $600,000 to high-visibility groups: $100,000 to each of the five winners, and $5,000 to each of 20 finalists. Brooklyn Org itself got a $200,000 grant from NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital for the prize program.
Rainey, who is not involved in deciding who wins, said she had heard from the committee that chose the winners that S.T.O.P.’s work was “compelling” because it went beyond basics like food insecurity, affordability and direct social services in struggling communities.
“It’s thinking beyond day-to-day-needs,” she said, “and thinking about people being snatched off the street in struggling communities and wanting more for neighborhoods. We want them to experience the American dream. They need to have the same freedoms and the ability to move freely through the city. S.T.O.P. is an example of what can be accomplished.”
Weather
Today will be mostly cloudy with a high near 52. There is a chance of rain in the afternoon. Tonight, rainy conditions persist, and temperatures will drop to 43.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Jan. 19 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I know I acted wrongly. But I never assaulted anyone,” Harvey Weinstein said as a judge in Manhattan set a date for his third trial on charges that he raped an aspiring actress in a hotel room more than a decade ago.
The latest Metro news
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Mamdani is looking across the Hudson for ideas: Mayor Zohran Mamdani is eyeing Jersey City, N.J., for ideas as he looks to address New York’s housing crisis. Jersey City, a former manufacturing town, is now a place where construction is constant and rezoning is realized.
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Noem attacks sanctuary policies: Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, railed against New York City’s so-called sanctuary policies during her first visit since Mamdani took office. She also defended the federal immigration officer who shot and killed a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis.
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Flu cases drop: Preliminary data suggests that influenza is retreating after skyrocketing in December. But it’s too soon to say that the worst of flu season is behind us, according to the city’s acting health commissioner.
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Judge disqualifies a U.S. attorney: A judge barred the U.S. attorney in Albany from further involvement with a civil rights investigation of the New York attorney general, Letitia James. It was another setback for the Trump administration as it pursues James, who had challenged the prosecutor’s appointment.
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Can a Mamdani ally win a House seat? Assemblywoman Claire Valdez will face the Brooklyn borough president, Antonio Reynoso, in a Democratic primary race for the House seat being vacated by Representative Nydia Velázquez. The mayor and the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America are expected to formally endorse Valdez.
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Diet Coke on the rocks: Maze, a members-only club in Manhattan, is catering to a generation that feels that sobriety doesn’t have to be confined to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in church basements. The club features cozy club chairs and a restaurant that serves Instagram-worthy dishes — but no alcohol.
Hochul and Mamdani announce a plan to make child care universal
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who just took office, and Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is up for re-election in 10 months, are staking their political futures in part on whether they can create a universal child care system.
The initiative they announced on Thursday is important to each of them. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, wants to show that his affordability agenda is not just aspirational — and that he can force a policy shift by repeatedly highlighting the same issues. Hochul has the power to drive change — and can lay claim to a popular plan as she campaigns.
If it becomes reality, it would make New York the first U.S. city with free universal child care.
But the expansion that they outlined on Thursday is hardly a done deal. The State Legislature has to approve Hochul’s requests. She wants to spend $1.7 billion on the expansion plan, which would bring the state’s total spending on child care to $4.5 billion in the fiscal year that begins on April 1.
Her strategy of using existing state funds rather than raising taxes makes it more likely that lawmakers will go along. If they do, the city and the state would then have to face enormous operational challenges, including creating a unified system from the scattered network of child care providers in schools, day care centers and private homes.
The funding would help the governor work toward a goal of expanding child care to all 4-year-olds statewide by the fall of 2028. It would also enable Mamdani to make the city’s 3-K preschool program truly universal and to create a new free child care system for 2-year-olds, starting with 2,000 toddlers this fall and expanding each year after that.
METROPOLITAN diary
Uninvited
Dear Diary:
It was a sunny lunchtime in Lower Manhattan, and a group of us had gotten sandwiches and decided to eat them sitting on the side steps at Trinity Church.
As we sat there, a woman dressed entirely in peach (hat, gloves, suit, pumps) made her way through the tombstones toward us.
“You can beg,” she said, “but you’ll never get in here.”
— Susan Johnson
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post A $100,000 Prize to a Group That Watches the Way We Are Watched appeared first on New York Times.
