The Monroe Gazette Podcast

Pictured Above: A flyer for an event put on by a new local community group, Hudson Valley Caracoles. We’d like to encourage you to attend. Below, Little Dick Energy State Senator Skoufis tries to weasel out of supporting a bill he told numerous Orange County constituents that he supported. He’s not the only Democrat to do so, as you’ll see in today’s post.This man has no reproductive organs to speak of.Yasmine Farhang, whom we spoke to in this podcast interview below, commented on the State Senator’s response, sharing with us:Senator Skouffis’s attempt to rationalize his opposition to New York for All false flat. His rhetoric seeks to demonize New Yorkers by fear-mongering and mis-leading his constituents. He fails to recognize the beliefs that so many New Yorkers hold close - that the importance of keeping families and communities together is bound up with the importance of upholding due process for all. For years, ICE entanglement with state and local agencies has enabled the cruel separation of family members across our state - this includes many people who face disproportionate policing, as well as those who are convicted of crimes and serve prison sentences only to then face a cruel double punishment when funneled to ICE detention and deportation. The bottom line - New York resources must not be used to fuel a federal mass deportation agenda, especially when sending people to ICE is increasingly deadly. I reject Senator Skouffi’s attempt to divide us and we will continue to stand united in calling for New York for All.The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity. There may be errors as it was generated by an AI and read over by BJ, who usually misses a ton of typos on the first read through.BJ Mendelson, Editor of The Monroe Gazette: Hello everyone, welcome to another edition of The Monroe Gazette podcast. I’m your host, BJ Mendelson. We have two interviews to bring to you today. Both are related to New York for All and some of the activity going on in our community to promote bills such as New York for All and Dignity Not DetentionI just wanted to say something real quick. So I am working on finishing my book, How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos. It was supposed to be out in February. We basically went and ripped up the whole thing after Alex Pretti was murdered. I thought about doing it after Renee Good was killed, then when Alex Pretti was murdered, we got pushed over the threshold of … You know, needing to redo the entire book. So we rewrote it. We rewrote the entire thing. So it’ll be out. It looks like the end of May. I need to do a lot of stuff to get it ready.This is all a long way of saying that May is probably going to be a quiet month on the Monroe Gazette, just so that I can get the book out. My expectation is that things will be fairly quiet until about May 15th. At that point, I will be done. And then other people will hopefully get involved and finish up the actual production of the book and then I can move on to other things. And then at that point, I’ve been thinking of doing some major changes to the The Monroe Gazette Originally we had two goals. And the first goal was get Tony Cardone out of office, which we succeed in doing. And then the other goal was to sort of document everything that’s happening in South Blooming Grove and try to bring Joel Stern and Isaac Eckstein to justice. So, I mean, we filed three lawsuits so far, and that’s not counting the federal one involving the stolen election. And it doesn’t involve the one with like the 26 residents who are going to file suit to have the village actually audited, because there’s no way Thomas DiNapoli, in an election year, is ever going to release that South Blooming Grove audit. So we figured we were going to sue. My expectation is to focus on South Blooming Grove and then what’s going on over in Sullivan County with Kiryas Skever. I can’t cover everything. And so there’s, there’s a certain like Maginot Line. I don’t know how many of you know what the Maginot Line but like the Maginot Line was basically a barrier that the French created after World War I, where they thought that they would be able to keep the Germans out by building this big ass fortification, which of course did not work at all. It did not work. So I kind of look at [this situation] as crossing the Maginot Line. Crossing the threshold. And we’re definitely at the Maginot Line in terms of like the Monroe Gazette in terms of like its finances. I held on for as long as I could for about two years doing it at a loss. I can’t keep doing that. So in order for it to continue as a publication, it definitely needs to expand its scope a bit in terms of what it covers. So I’m kind of leaning towards just doing like this radical change of focusing again on South Blooming Grove, Kiryas Skever as opposed to sort of the local news. That doesn’t mean we won’t cover the local news. There’s certainly things that’ll come up that are important and that we’ll write about, but it’s just not something that I’m gonna spend so much time on. So I’m telling you this in advance.We’re gonna take a short break. We’ll be back on or around May 15th or probably after that when the book is done. And then after that, we’re gonna kind of…figure out what exactly the Monroe Gazette is going to be covering and what it’s not going to be covering because it just can’t, it can’t continue in the shape that it is. But for now we have two wonderful interviews that we’re going to share with you concerning New York For All. The reason why I went on this whole tangent is because something that really frustrates me is that people don’t want preferential treatment for the Haredi. But those same people don’t want the law to be applied to people that are here, quote unquote, illegally. Again, no one here in America is here illegally. Technically, we’re all here illegally. We’re living on stolen Indian land. That’s a whole other thing. But it doesn’t matter what we think. It doesn’t matter what you think. It doesn’t matter what I think, because what matters is what the Constitution thinks. And the Constitution thinks in the 14th Amendment that the law of the United States applies to everyone equally, regardless of whether or not they are a citizen. And so I kind of struggle with this thing of, you know, you don’t want preferential treatment for the Satmar which I understand, but at the same time, you’re saying the law shouldn’t count towards people that are here, quote unquote, illegally. So my thing, the reason why we talk as much as we do about New York for all, Dignity Not Detention, and some of these other things is because our philosophy at the Monroe Gazette is very simple: Everybody counts. Everybody.And that’s sort where we’re coming from in our coverage of South Blooming Grove plus Kiryas Skever plus things like New York for All. So I just want people to understand why we spend as much time talking about it as we do, because we think it’s important, because we think everyone counts. And with that said, let’s get right to those interviews.The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free; and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues in Southern Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help keep the lights on, we’re looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content, podcast audio, our behind the scenes Facebook group, and the ability to comment on posts just like this one.Interview #1 Yasmine Farhang Yasmine Farhang, Executive Director of the Immigrant Defense Project: My name is Yasmine Farhang and I’m the executive director of the Immigrant Defense Project. And for those who are not familiar with IDP, we have been around for almost 30 years and we fight for justice for immigrants who are impacted at the intersections of the immigration legal system and the criminal legal system.BJ: Can you give us an example of that? Because I try to explain to people that being here in a country, quote unquote, illegally is not actually a criminal offense. It’s a civil offense. Is that right?Yasmine: So IDP was born in the wake of the 1996 immigration laws, which passed Congress and were signed by former President Clinton, which were some of the most draconian immigration laws that kind of shaped the detention and deportation system that we have today. But what people might be less familiar with is that those laws also bound up the criminal legal and the immigration legal systems together to really try to use kind of the policing, the worst of kind of racist policing and the criminal injustice and the criminal legal system to also funnel people to ICE detention and deportation. So, at IDP, we have a really core principle and that principle is that everyone deserves dignity and nobody is disposable. And we know we also approach this work from a racial justice lens and we know that disproportionately black immigrants and immigrants of color are disproportionately impacted at the intersection of those systems. And so, you know, that has been our mission for the last 30 years. And of course, the systems that were built back then are being supercharged now.BJ: Previously we had Senator Andrew Gounardes is the co-sponsor of New York for All. He’s walked us through what the bill does and what it doesn’t do. I’d to hear your perspective on New York for All, why it’s important and what it does.Yasmine: Absolutely. So New York for All, it really is there in the name. it’s really about ensuring that all New Yorkers all around our state, no matter what county they’re living in, no matter what their immigration status are, can rely on the ability to participate in their communities and all the daily ways that immigrants do right through their families, through their workplaces, through their places of worship, through, you know, any other number of things without having to worry that local and or state resources are going to be used or the local and state agencies that they interact with every day, like local law enforcement, like shelters, like hospitals and schools, that those agencies are going to be used to funnel their information to ICE and that those agencies are going to be, putting them at risk of ICE detention and deportation.And this isn’t actually a novel idea. The idea of having these kind of broad prohibitions on local and state resources being used for a federal deportation agenda is not new. And in fact, the first Trump administration, many other states around the country passed legislation to do just that because one of the few things that states can do in the face of a deportation agenda as a mass deportation agenda as we have today, is to actually say, we’re not participating, right? We’re not going to be part of this harm. So the first Trump administration, we saw Illinois and Washington and Oregon and California pass these laws and we had this bill in New York back then and yet it never got over the finish line. And so here we are all these years later under a second Trump administration with obviously a more increasingly harmful and deadly and authoritarian reign every day.And yet this bill has still not passed.BJ: Right. Yeah. It’s outrageous to me. I asked Senator Gounardes why on January 7th when we have a democratic trifecta and everyone was back to work in New York State government, why wasn’t this passed on day one?It’s deeply frustrating and speaking of frustrating I wanted to read to you I was forwarded an email from the Monroe Town Supervisor Maureen RIchardson. There was a group of residents who have been pushing for a ceremonial resolution that the town would pass in support of New York for All because our state representative Senator Skoufis does not support New York for all. He says he does, but then we’ve also gotten reports from people where he’s alleged to actively try to undermine it so …We were trying to get like these ceremonial resolutions passed to kind of push Skoufis and the rest of New York State Democrats to support the bill because in Monroe, you know, we have about 40% of our population is Latino and we have a significant undocumented population that’s been terrorized by ICE since at least this summer. I’m just gonna read these to you real quick. So this is from the town supervisor in Monroe, Maureen Richardson, writing to a constituent. She said:“I have since looked into New York for All and I don’t support the bill. It does not appropriately address the issues at hand.”(She doesn’t say what the issues are)“… and limits the functionality of local police in any even perceived quote collaboration with federal agencies on immigration issues. This has been criticized as overly restrictive and imputing daily functions even by allies with experience in PD. So no, thank you.”BJ: I was really disappointed to see that and to read that. And I’ve heard that same criticism of the bill come up. So I was hoping you might be able to speak to that.Yasmine: I think fundamentally we know that all New Yorkers want safety, right? And there’s this way in which safety is talked about in a way that suggests that safety is about some people against some other people, right? And we know that that’s not true. And we know that, the way that safety is defined and who it’s for is really, really important. And, the New York for All Act is in fact a bill that’s about creating more safety for all New Yorkers.So when people think about sanctuary policies, whether it’s at the local level or the state level, I think often they think about this as a sort of special policy for some people when in reality these policies are critical to everyone’s safety, right? So if somebody is experiencing, unsafe conditions in their home, unsafe conditions in their building where they live with other residents, we want that person to report those conditions. We want them to share what’s happening and to seek help and to seek oversight of what’s going on. If somebody is experiencing labor exploitation, We want them to be able to report that and to expose that and to be able to seek help from relevant local and state agencies. And similarly, if somebody is a survivor of violence. We want them to be able to avail themselves of whatever services or programs they might need for themselves or their families. But if people feel that they cannot reach out for help, they cannot share information, whether it’s for themselves, for their loved ones, or for that neighbor, that puts everybody at risk. That puts everybody at risk of a variety of harms.And what we know from the work that we have done to document some instances of local law enforcement, police around the state in particular, colluding with ICE over the course of the past year is that often what we’re seeing around New York state are really egregious and very clear instances of racial profiling, right, of police, local law enforcement stopping somebody we know from the work that we have done, instances of local law enforcement police around the state in particular commuting with ICE over the course of the past year is that often what we’re seeing around the world state are really egregious and really serious instances of racial profiling, right? As we believe in your philosophy of stopping ostensibly because they want to question them or they are investigating something. But, you know, the ultimate conclusion is that they are handing this person over to ICE and that was often very clearly their principal goal in the first place. So we see that with many instances of policing and actually if you go to our website of immigrantdefenseproject.org, there’s a tab under resources for what’s called the New York ICE Collusion Watch. We have a map there where we’re kind of focusing on the police to deportation pipeline by really exposing these patterns, right? And you know, whether it’s a phone call from a local police officer that brings in an ICE agent or state troopers pulling someone over or, county signing a formal 287-G agreement, we’re seeing all the ways in which this police to deportation pipeline unfortunately is very, very active in New York.I want to just tell one story to kind of illustrate the harms. and this is a perfect example. Also, I think people are aware that we have, you here in New York City, we do have some protective laws, right, around sanctuary that were passed over a decade ago. They need to be strengthened. But we do have those. And yet when you leave the confines of New York City, what, you know, the collusion with ICE changes drastically. And just north of the city in Port Chester, New York. In January, there was a story of a community member. He was headed to the train on his way home from work, and he was stopped by Port Chester police on the sidewalk. And they informed him that they were going to give him a ticket for having an open container violation. Instead of giving him a ticket, they put him in handcuffs. They took him to the precinct. They asked him whether he had papers. And then they put him in a cell. And shortly after ICE came and detained him, and he was transferred far from New York, and he was in ICE detention for for months. Later, that open container citation that he was told he was getting in the first place, that was actually dismissed, Much later, that was dismissed. And I think this is exactly an example of sort of the way in which policing tactics are really being used for purposes of ensuring that they can funnel someone to ICE custody. So I think it’s certainly not the sort of racial profiling and kind of arbitrary decisions by police officer without any kind of state regulations restricting them is very dangerous for New Yorkers around the country. And then for those in the criminal legal system who do have convictions, right? And who are for being a sentence or who are on probation or whatever it might be for them to then complete their sentence or complete their probation or whatever it might be.And then from there, be funneled to ICE detention is a really cruel form of double punishment for people who should be able to go back home to their families, go back to their communities. And the loss and the harm that it causes not just to the individual, but to their family members, is really awful.BJ: Absolutely. And the thing I want to point out to listeners is we’ve seen both sides of the policing coin here in Orange County. On one hand, the village of Monroe Police Department. I personally find them to be trustworthy and transparent on this issue. And they’ve repeatedly told both the Monroe Gazette and other media outlets and the public that ICE just appears like they don’t have any communication with them. They don’t even know when ICE is going to show up which is disturbing, like on a whole, like that’s a whole other set of issues, right? Where you just have this rogue agency appearing. But on the other side, we have Orange County, which does house ICE detainees, over 100 of them at Orange County Jail, who lacks any sort of transparency. Like right now, we are fighting with them over FOIL requests for all of their communications to ICE and ICE representatives, which they will not share. So. It’s sort of this like, don’t know if I can completely trust the police given behavior like what we see with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. Let me ask you a little bit about this weak, watered down proposal from Governor Hochul. Could you explain that to listeners and why it’s not the way to go?Yasmine: We obviously have been pushing for New York for All for years. And, we thought that this was exactly the moment where the legislature and the governor would come together and recognize that this is the time for a comprehensive solution, We can’t have a piecemeal approach that creates some limited protections in some places and not in other places. And so, after the governor first announced her bill, the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, that bill includes a provision that would end 287-G agreements, these formal agreements between ICE and local law enforcement. And we know that that was a meaningful step. But when we look at the harms that we are seeing every day, like the story of the community member in Port Chester that I just described, none those would be protected by her bill. Because these are the actions of police officers that are making in counties and towns and cities that are making choices to engage in this kind of collusion with ICE, even without a 287-G agreement. And so we continue to sound the alarm bell that we needed New York for all in its entirety. And unfortunately, what the governor came back with, not once, but twice, was a proposal that would actually still empower the police to use their unfettered discretion to decide whether or not they’re gonna notify ICE of someone. So first she [Hochul] came out with a proposal using this kind of probable cause framework, That as long as the police officer has probable cause to make an arrest, that they can then notify ICE, share personally identifying information about someone. First of all, it’s deeply dangerous. It flies in the face of due process and presumption of innocence that all New Yorkers are entitled to, to funnel someone to ICE when they’ve just been arrested. But secondly, it would just give total deference to police officers to decide, whether or not they have the ability to notify ICE. So the governor came back with a second proposal that was arguably even worse. So that proposal essentially creates a way for any local law enforcement to only have to say that they’re investigating a crime in order to notify ICE.So that could be something as simple as, somebody is stopped in their car while driving. A police officer looks in the back seat. Maybe they see a bag. They decide that they, have a concern about that, they want to initiate an investigation, they can articulate this, and they can say, I’m now kind of investigating a crime; and I’m going to, as a result, I have the ability to notify ICE about this person. There’s no legal standard around what she was proposing. It’s really made up. It incentivizes the worst of racial profiling and discriminatory policing. And I think what’s worse is that we were trying to be sold on this as some kind of meaningful step to curtailing the collusion and the police to deportation pipeline when, in fact, it was actually taking an area where the law is currently silent and codifying a way in which police would be authorized to notify ICE. So it was actually not just not going far enough. It was taking us backwards. I think advocates and not just advocates in the coalition, but immigrant rights advocates, civil rights advocates, faith leaders, labor unions, you know, people responded very quickly and very robustly to these proposals and said, no, we don’t want this, right?We don’t want you to give law enforcement this kind of unfettered discretion. So our understanding as of yesterday is that that provision that’s in the budget that the governor was trying to sell us on has been removed. And so that’s great. And yet also it is deeply disappointing that we are in a position where we have to be fighting off these harmful provisions rather than celebrating a comprehensive bill.And, one other thing I’ll note is that we’ve also been tried to be sold on the idea that this is about protecting victims. And there was some language in this provision that sort of they would be able to exempt victims as though, police would be making that determination when they’re in these, in these circumstances. But the idea that police in any meaningful way would be making that determination about who they or aren’t funneling to ICE is really concerning. Often victims themselves face allegations. Not to mention there are cross complaints. It’s not a workable approach.Often victims themselves face allegations and not to mention that there are cross-complaints, right? So it’s not a workable approach. And the last thing I’ll say is that, you know, we are calling for New York for All we want it in its entirety. This is the long-term solution. But I would say that advocates have put forward more incremental ideas. That would be more about kind of creating more building blocks towards restricting collusion. But those have not been entertained by the governor.Anything that doesn’t hinge on an officer having unfettered discretion has been out outrightly rejected.BJ: And that echoes the other statement we have from Supervisor Richardson where she had forwarded the email that I was reading from to State Senator Skoufis’ staff noting her quote, “vocal dislike of New York for all because it removes local authority from local boards and police and how they choose to run their own locally funded police.”Where do things stand right now? Because people will be listening to this. Hopefully, they’ll be on strike. Tomorrow is May 1st. This episode will be out May 1st. No school, no shopping, no work for May Day.And ideally, I have a sneaking suspicion that the budget situation won’t be resolved. So if they’re listening to this on Friday, May 1st, what should they know about where are we right now?Yasmine: Well, one thing I want to say first, because listeners will be tuning in on May 1st, is that I think it’s one thing that’s been really incredible and encouraging to see is that we have seen a huge show of support for New York for All from labor unions over the course of not just the past year, over the course of the past several years. It was just before May 1st last year that a dozen unions wrote a letter to the governor and the Senate majority leader and the assembly speaker explaining that New York for All is necessary to protect workers, right? And to protect the right to organize. Unfortunately, we are here a year later without New York for all having having passed, but labor unions have continued to be some of our strongest allies. So I wanted to just name that. And then in terms of where things are at, we know that there is a package being negotiated in the budget that will have provisions that are related to immigration. And we know that there will be some things in there that people will celebrate. And some of those may be meaningful steps and some of them may be quite hollow and quite superficial in terms of actually having an impact to New Yorkers. We know that no matter what happens in the budget though, that we as a coalition and with our allies, we are going to be right back there in Albany after the budget for the rest of the legislative session. Urging our state leadership and the governor to take action. They may say they’re done, but we’re not done. We will see what the budget has once it’s completed, that is not going to dictate our continued organizing and advocacy to get the actual solution we need.BJ: My last question for you is for people in Orange County, it can be frustrating because we have a state senator who tells you he supports New York for All, but he’s alleged to be actively undermining it. And then we have three assembly representatives in Paula Kay, Chris Eachus, and Karl Brabenec. [And Brian Maher.]Brabenec being a Republican, he doesn’t support the bill. Kay says she supports the bill, but doesn’t want her name on it. And Eachus does whatever Skoufis tells him. So it can be really frustrating for Orange County residents when it comes to their state representatives.What can we do? What can people listening to this do that want to support the Immigrant Defense Project and want to help pass New York for All given our representative limitations?Yasmine: First I’ll say that we’ve been very lucky to have such strong sponsors on our bills. I, you know, we’re incredibly grateful to both Senator Gounardes as an assembly member, Reyes, for being such champions on New York for All. And I will say we have many champions and that is part of what has has kept up the momentum, right, who have joined us ⁓ in this fight.And then we know that there are those who might have their name on it, but are not really doing much else or who are actively opposing it. And what I would say is that, for people in communities with representatives who are turning away from this and not understanding how key this is, not to let them look away from the stories. We know, and again, folks should go on our website and check out our map, New York Ice Collusion Watch.It certainly is not comprehensive, right? This is through anecdotes and that we confirm once people share them and folks should feel free to reach out. But we want to make sure that people are humanizing kind of the impact and not letting their representatives off the hook. We saw the tragic death of Mr. Alam, earlier this year, would likely still be alive today if it weren’t for the fact that, local law enforcement had shared his information with ICE and CBP. And yet, we saw so many legislators say that they stand with him and with his family. We saw the say that she stands with his family. And yet, I think that hypocrisy needs to be exposed. And so I think I would tell people to make sure that they don’t lose accountability to their constituents. So make sure that those constituents who are impacted, whether it’s because they’re teachers or school, families who are scared or they’re in hospitals, whatever it is, that they go and they meet with them and they don’t let them off the hook.And that they call them and they email them and they show up outside of every space that they can to have their voices heard and that they join us in Albany. Because we are gonna be back. We’re not going anywhere. And so I encourage people to follow the immigrant defense project. They can follow us on Instagram and on social media. We also have a New York for All specific Instagram page. And we’re going to continue to, that’s NY4ALL, and we’re going to continue to keep people posted there.BJ: I strongly encourage people to check it out, and if you have a few bucks, make sure to contribute as well.BJ: We have an upcoming event on Saturday, May 2nd, I want to tell you about from three to seven PM called Seeds of Freedom. It’s going to be at Downing Park Lake in Newburgh, New York. All you have to do is look out for those red balloons. And I’m here with one of the organizers of the events. Would you like to take a moment to introduce yourself?Geleni Fontaine: Yes, thank you so much for having me, BJ. My name is Geleni Fontaine, and I’m with a group in Newburgh, New York called Semillas which means seeds. And we’re put together in order to create energy and support for migrant folks in our community and particularly people, families that are impacted by state violence. So we’re excited about having this free event in the park.BJ: Tell me bit more about the organization for people who might not be familiar.Geleni: Sure, we’re brand new. So we’re actually still in the process of creating a mission statement. But what matters to us that we’ve all decided on, that we’ve all discussed pretty thoroughly is that we want to be supportive of people who are directly impacted by the kind of violence that immigrants in this country are facing right now, the kind of terrorism really, particularly that’s impacting children and families.So we want to create events and spaces and conversations in which people are able to not just find different ways of plugging in to experiences that are resisting that violence, but also doing different things to support each other and themselves. So we want to create spaces that are healing spaces. And that’s part of the reason for having this event in the park onBJ: Was there a moment that triggered the creation of this group?Geleni: I don’t know if there was a moment that did. A number of us are involved in all different kinds of organizations and groups throughout the area. I think that particularly as the crisis started happening in detention centers and as we started thinking about how a lot of the leadership of some of organizations, particularly mainstream ones, is among White folks and people who aren’t directly experiencing this kind of violence.We wanted to create spaces to help move leadership up, from people who are most impacted. So I think that was the the kind of driving force behind it And and that’s something that we hope to to work on our what are our we’re actually as a group We’re not called semillas That’s the name of the event. Our group name is Caracoles which is snails. And for us, it’s a really evocative and wonderful image and metaphor because snails move slowly, snails create community. So there’s the idea of just kind of creating a pace in which everybody can move forward together. So that’s really what we’re about.BJ: I really like that because we constantly try to tell people that fascism isn’t defeated in some big climactic battle. It takes thousands and thousands of these little steps that you never see and never even hear about that finally take it down. It looks like it’s coming down all at once. And snails are perfect metaphor for that.Geleni: Yeah, absolutely. And coming from the earth. You know, really from the grass roots, from the ground up.BJ: I know it’s early days, but if someone is listening to this and they’re interested and they wanna get involved, what’s the best way for them to do that?Geleni: Well, I think one great way would be to come to the event if they’re able to. People who right now who are part of Caracoles are, know, most of us are in the mid Hudson Valley, but there are also a lot of us that have New York City roots. I think we have one member who’s in the Bronx, but yeah, but we’re creating different kinds of coalitions and relationships. So. We’re definitely open to including more people in that conversation.BJ: Is there any significance to the red balloons?Geleni Fontaine: I think the red balloon is just really to be visible so that folks can find us easily.BJ: Tell us a bit about what’s happening? So Saturday, 3 to 7, Downing Park Lake in Newburgh. What can people expect to do? Like what’s being given away?Geleni: Well, it’s gonna be a pretty mellow community space. There’s going to be community singing, different kinds of freedom songs, from various multicultural traditions in which people use singing together as resistance and community healing. So that’s gonna be a big part of it. We’ll also have a zine that’ll be offered for free that includes information about supporting different kinds of resistance against state violence, against migrant people, about building community power and healing. So that’ll be available. There’s going to be a seed planting stations, which will be really great. And that’s very much in keeping with our message and with this happening the day after May Day. And it’s, the event is about seeds, what we can grow together.So there will be a chance to actually grow something physical together as well. There’s also gonna be a children’s story time circle. There is a campaign called Read Them Home campaign that is in support of detained children in the Dilley Detention Center in Texas, and also detained children and families everywhere. So this is a campaign in which people come together and read children’s stories, in honor of these children and also promoting that kind of community space and those circles. So we’re having a family story time hour, that’ll be part of that Read Them Home campaign. I’m also, an acupuncturist. I’m going to be offering community acupuncture in the space. And I think that there’s also gonna be some food and probably a lot of other things, because it’s been growing, as more people have offered to support in different ways. So, yeah, and the weather looks like it’s going to cooperate. So we’re excited about that.BJ: Yes. I’m going to keep my fingers crossed because I know there was the event in Goshen and the weather was just terrible for that day.Geleni: I’ll mention we do have a rain date of Sunday, the following day. But I think both days are supposed to be cloudy but not rainy. So at least during the time of the event. So hopefully it’ll all go well.BJ: And it’s so for the rain day, would it be the same times from three to seven? Geleni Fontaine: Yes.BJ: And tell me just a bit more about the zine. Because I’ve noticed that this is, mean, this is something I remember from my twenties, back in the punk rock days of, you know, getting worried about music scenes, but I’ve noticed that a lot of the movements across the country are using zines as a way to, basically cut past, the corporate media. I would just love to hear a bit more about that.Geleni: Yeah, a number of folks who are involved in caracoles are artists. And one person particularly, Chivita, is someone who has worked a lot through the use of zines, the medium of zines, in different social justice spaces. So that became a little bit of a nexus for us. So we thought that we would have this event as a way to distribute the zines and also to include a lot of information about social justice movements and different kinds of support within community. We want to offer space and information that centers community care. So that’s a big part of the zine, including the history of different kinds of care. There is a piece in the zine that is about the tradition of acupuncture that developed in New York City in the 70s that was very much led by people of color liberation movements. So, you know, there’s information about that and about so much more, including resources. And we just want to make sure that that’s something that we can offer to communities.BJ: It’s such a great thing too, because it gives people something to take home. And that to me is incredibly powerful. You’re not just going to an event, you’re taking something home with you that you can continue your journey on.Geleni: Yes, and it allows people to share it too, which is great.BJ: Is there anything that I haven’t touched on about this event that you want people to know about?Geleni: I like to highlight that it’s free so that everybody is welcome and that it’s also family-friendly.BJ: Yes, I think that’s so important too, especially finding free stuff, what to do with your kids and your family on the weekend is always tough, finding something that, you know, I don’t want to say like going to the movies isn’t a positive thing, of course it is, but going to a community event with your kids, I think is something that could inspire them.Geleni: Definitely. And you know, another thing I’ll add is that we’re trying as much as possible to make it a bilingual space according to our capacity so that everything will be offered in English and Spanish. So it’s a bilingual zine. Services will also be offered in both languages. There will be interpretation available as needed. We can’t provide access to other languages, unfortunately, but we wanted to to do what we could. So that’s something that matters a lot to us.BJ: Absolutely. I mean, yeah, it almost goes without saying. Just the importance of making sure anything that we do as resistance work is accessible to as many people as possible. And that’s fantastic. That’s something that I hope other community groups listening or the volunteers listening keep in mind for their events as well.Geleni: Yes. Yeah, definitely.BJ: Is there anything about the group that you want people to know? how can they get involved? Can they find you online? Like what?Geleni: We don’t have an online presence right now. We’re very new, but we’re committed to continuing and we’re going to have a conversation when this event is over about what comes next for us. So we should be reaching out soon. And in the meantime, people can look for us in Downing Park.BJ: Seeds of Freedom, Saturday, May 2nd from 3 to 7 p.m. with the rain date of Sunday, May 3rd, 3 to 7 p.m. at Downing Park in Newburgh. Make sure you look for the red balloons. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

New articles on The Monroe Gazette are on hiatus until BJ finishes his book, “How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos.” It will be released in late May or early June of this year. If you would like a free .pdf or .mp3 copy of the book when they become available, subscribe to the Stupid Sexy Privacy newsletter here.Articles will resume on The Monroe Gazette in early May. Until then we’ll be running brand new episodes of the podcast. The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free; and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues in Southern Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help keep the lights on, we’re looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content, podcast audio, our behind the scenes Facebook group, and the ability to comment on posts just like this one.The following is the full transcript from this week’s podcast. The transcript has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity where neded.BJ Mendelson, Editor of The Monroe Gazette: Rory, thank you so much for joining us on The Monroe Gazette. we’ve had a couple of representatives from the Electronic Frontier Foundation on our sister podcast, Stupid Sexy Privacy. But because this is The Monroe Gazette podcast, I was hoping you could take a moment just to introduce yourself and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.Rory Mir, Director of Open Access and Tech Community Engagement at the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Yeah, I’m happy to and thank you so much for having me on. I’m Rory Mir. I’m the Director of Open Access and Tech Community Engagement at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF has been fighting for over 30 years now. I wasn’t there the whole time, but over 30 years defending our civil liberties online. Basically bringing digital rights into a digital world. So a nonprofit law firm constantly defending innovation, privacy, and I’m particularly interested in defending consumers from bad tech practices from tech companies.BJ Mendelson: The reason why we’re having this discussion on the Monroe Gazette as opposed to Stupid Sexy Privacy is because right now there is a provision in the New York state budget that the Electronic Frontier Foundation caught concerning 3D printers. Could you walk us through that?Rory Mir: Folks that are familiar with the New York budget process know a lot of things get wrapped up into the budget And as usual it gets delayed quite a bit. So we’re still pushing back on it right now. There’s a couple of provision impacting 3d printers which folks are familiar with 2d printers, but 3d printers for folks that aren’t familiar are kind of like hot glue guns that you tell a computer to control and that slowly builds up a shape in three dimensions. Often you see this being used by artists, making cool statues or cosplay costumes. It’s also really common in more commercial settings where people are making prototypes or researchers testing a new shape for things. So it’s really this cool technology that lets you fabricate things without going through big manufacturers and kind of iterate quickly and build up new creative ideas. So we’re fans of this open innovation that it brings to folks on the grassroots level. And what this provision and the budget does is threatens that basically. It curtails a lot of that expressive freedom by mandating a software that we think is dangerous, a print blocking mandate that is yeah so out of fear of ghost guns and people making firearms and firearm components with these machines basically New York State in this proposed budget would have a database of forbidden files and mandate — without any details I need to emphasize — a way for all of these 3D printers to not be able to print shapes that could be used in that context, which I think there’s a lot of good intention coming into this. People are concerned about gun violence and unlicensed firearms. However, when you speak to people who actually understand how these machines work and just the nature of making a 3D shape, it is not something that is possible. There are many ways that any algorithm trying to detect shapes can be undermined quite easily. So we’re concerned that while the people that are being targeted, the people who are trying to make firearms and similar components with these machines will be able to follow a quick tutorial to get around those blocks, the many, many other creators, researchers, innovators, that use and rely on these machines are going to be stuck with this technology that the only real way to do it is to have it be surveilling users and there’s no safeguards in those in the provisions for that. So we’re really worried about the impact that it’ll have on the lawful use of these machines and really just don’t want it to be rushed through this budget process without any safeguards or oversight for those regular lawful users.BJ: So let me break that down a little bit. Because I think the concern from the ghost guns came from the murder of the United Health Care CEO and the claims that Luigi Mangione may have used a 3D printed gun. But my understanding is it’s actually really difficult to make a functioning gun from a 3D printer. Is that right?Rory: Yeah, it requires a level of understanding the craft of it. Technically, you don’t even need a 3D printer. Homemade DIY guns have existed long before 3D printers because it is ultimately a simple machine that once you know how to machine it, you can do it. So 3D printers... You can make a cheap error prone one that might blow up in your hand if you don’t already have that existing knowledge of how firearms work and how to properly put one together. So while it is possible for someone to make one with a 3D printer, there is a level of know-how that has to go into it as well.BJ: Right, and I have to imagine, and this is all getting into hypothetical territory, but I have to imagine that if someone is particularly motivated to print a 3D weapon, that nothing is really going to stop them from doing it.Rory: Yeah, I mean, that gets into this mandated software on these machines. One of the things is that it is easy enough to alter it because it’s unlike something tightly regulated and standard like currency. People will point to you’re not able to print a dollar bill, but that is a very specific reference with very specific design standards. So being able to detect whether it looks like that is quite simple.With a firearm, you’re talking about a function. So any shape that can or can potentially serve that same function falls into that definition. And that gets even further complicated by the fact that with 3D printing, the machine only sees what you’re printing in the moment. So if you print something that has a lot of extra adornments, you can maybe shave it down to a core component. And likewise, if you... kind of print a bunch of pieces of a firearm and then later fuse them together, you can also make one that way. So the machine isn’t gonna see your intention, right? It’s only gonna be able to look at the file and that’s what makes it so easy to game if you are determined to make these firearms.BJ: Right, and so my concern here is the way that this software is described, sounds like, and just how you’ve explained it, it looks like it’s not specifically targeted at guns, it’s targeted at gun-like shapes, is that right?Rory: Yeah, so we’re seeing a few of these in different states that have slightly different language. The New York one is really less detailed than ones we’ve seen in Washington and California. It’ll be decided by a working group without peer review, which is concerning to us. So it could be loaded with people with financial interests on how this works.The thing that is shared across these bills is often the receiver of the firearm, which is the part that needs a serial number when you buy or alterations, which is even more abstract of simple shapes that can turn a handgun into a machine gun, you can make with literally a clothes hanger, or you can 3D print a shape that looks like that. And that is the same sort of abstract shape that is being implicated in these bills.BJ: You were kind enough to send me a bunch of material, which I read through. And I found that I was kind of lost as to what exactly the software does, who exactly would enforce the penalties and then the penalties themselves seemed kind of outrageous. Could you explain those to us?Rory: So in New York, a lot of it is really focused on the sellers. So a lot of the penalties will come to a seller who sells one of these machines that doesn’t have this mandated software on it. So that one of the things that really strikes me about that is that that extends to the second hand market that someone who has a printer today, if this passes in a few years might want to sell it to recoup some of those costs, or maybe get a new one. And then they would be implicated in these same penalties, which really range, but include potentially financial penalties or liability for anything that is done with the machine that is sold.BJ: I was kind of shocked at this suggestion that people would have to buy, [the 3D printers face to face.] So if you lived in our region and you wanted a 3D printer because you saw what was being done at SUNY New Paltz, or you are interested in resistance work where you want to print out whistles for detecting ice, that you would have to go and meet someone in person to purchase a 3D printer. Is that right?Rory: Yeah. It’s absurd. I feel that not only for the purchase, but for the delivery of the device. And there’s no exception to commercial folks. So this bill includes 3D printers as well as something called CNC machines, which are similar to 3D printers, but kind of do the opposite. They carve a shape out of metal or wood instead of adding plastic together. And those are very expensive. For machines that are typically used by huge industries, aerospace, automotive, medical, manufacturing, these huge commercial industries would also have this silly face-to-face requirement. But then the other thing I think of … I lived all over New York state in my life, including quite a bit of time in the Finger Lake region. And frankly, you having to drive to one of the few stores that has this, which, you know, I don’t know that I can only name a handful off the top of my head that even sell 3D printers. You have to drive there to buy it instead of ordering it online. And that has all the inherent limitations of having to be buying in person of whatever’s in stock. Whatever brands has a deal with that reatalor So there’s a lot of practical headaches for the people who want to get into and would benefit most, I think, from these printers, people who want to repair things without having to take it to the nearest shop or have things sent over from the other side of the world.BJ: Yeah, I mean, you mentioned the finger legs. I was just thinking of like a student at Alfred State having to drive a few hours to go and meet some random person to buy a 3D printer. It sounds like you’re buying drugs. That’s the thing that struck me was, you know, I feel like the marijuana dispensaries right now, I could just walk into one as long as I show my driver’s license. And I don’t like I don’t have this weird requirement that I can only buy it in person, face to face. So, who benefits from all this? This really seems to me like it’s more the tech companies are pushing this than people who are actually concerned about gun violence.Rory: Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear that the winners from this aren’t the gun safety advocates, but are the major makers of these printers and retailers that sell these printers that it would become far more difficult and burdensome for someone to break into the market once you have this sort of regime set up where you have to not only build this technology upfront in order to, again, this like magic bean technology of being able to prevent a firearm from being printed, but then the ongoing costs of keeping that updated, meeting the requirements and it creates this huge headache that would only really benefit from a handful of the biggest makers of these devices.BJ: And did you see that in the … I saw the California legislation that had been proposed and the Colorado legislation that had been proposed. Do you find that it’s the same group of people that sort of pushing this?Rory: I think there’s a lot of similarities on the gun safety side of it, which again, I think is well intentioned and I value gun safety there. But then I think a lot of the discussion on the industry side of it, of, it has been pretty secretive. We’ve met with one or two major manufacturers between these 3D printers, but they never seem to mention who they’re meeting with. So, you know, one can draw their own conclusions from that. But I think it is remarkable that the big printers have been so quiet on this, something that would impact their customers so negatively. [Emphasis added.]BJ: Right. You had a great term. I know what it means because we’ve interviewed Cory Doctorow So we’ve talked about enshitification quite a bit. But you used, I saw the term used by the EFF of an “enshitification lock,” which is essentially what this legislation is trying to do. And I was hoping you could explain that to people who might not be familiar.Rory: So I’ll actually back it up a little bit to talk about digital rights management software, which folks might not be familiar with. And there’s a pretty good analogy for this print blocking technology where … Basically, it is now a federal crime and has been since the DMCA passed to alter any code that exists to prevent copyright infringement. And this is what makes it difficult to move an e-book from one device to another. And people are, famously people know about it, restricting people’s ability to repair tractors like John Deere tractors. And a lot of that comes from having this code that has this special permission that makes it difficult for users to navigate around. So DRM gives manufacturers the special leverage over customers so that we can see it manifest in 2D printers with HP. Making it difficult to get ink for your printer. There is a DRM protection that you can only use the appropriate ink and that makes it more expensive to use the ink. And a lot of that is because of this special code that you’re not able to circumnavigate and just get the cheap ink that would be otherwise available.So by building this in and making it a mandate and tying it to the legal system, you’re creating not only a huge incentive but a legal protection for these anti-competitive practices on the part of the tech company making it.BJ: Yeah, and I think it’s I find it troubling that we’re not talking about doing away with that DRM in the budget, but we are talking about adding like additional DRM to these.Rory: Exactly. And yeah, again, with this one, it really creates this incentive of surveillance, right, because they are asking for this big abstract type of blocking that you can’t really do with the type of firmware that’s on these machines. And it would be difficult to do with the slicing software, which is the software you use to use the printer on your own laptop. So it’s really encouraging it all going to an AI analysis in a cloud somewhere, which means everything someone prints being sent and observable to these folks. Privacy violation. Chills speech.And it has a lot of practical considerations, particularly with commercial buyers with intellectual property theft. Those other extra risks that are being introduced by this.BJ: Was the Colorado law thrown out over free speech. Was that a successful lawsuit?Rory: So the Colorado law, right as it was reaching the finish line, removed a few provisions that were making it criminal to share the files for these gun components. And it was removed at the last minute by the governor due to First Amendment concerns. And I haven’t given as much attention to it, but that is also one of the provisions in this New York budget of making it a crime to, in certain circumstances, to share or to possess these files. So we have similar First Amendment concerns about what’s in the New York provision. That as nice as it’s, again, it comes from this sort of well-intentioned place, what if we can just mandate that things were nice, without the real practical considerations that criminalizing information doesn’t work. Someone who’s intent on getting these files or sharing these files are gonna find ways to do so, which we see with things like copyright infringement and piracy, that it’s not really a barrier, it’s just an extra charge to throw at someone when they’re already doing something that’s illegal. And that’s something I haven’t emphasized yet, but it is already illegal in New York to produce or sell one of these 3D printed firearms. So we’re just adding additional laws that hurt consumers for something that’s already illegal. [Emphasis added.]BJ: You beat me to it. was gonna say, isn’t it already illegal to like, make and possess these weapons? Rory: Yeah, as of I believe 2022, yeah, to, I believe it was passed in 2019. But yeah, to produce these firearms, these unlicensed firearms is already a major crime to produce or sell.BJ: It reminds me a lot of like the digital ID, digital driver’s license push, where I understand where some of it comes from, where you, okay, you don’t want kids to access horrible content. I completely get that. But in the process of, you know, quote unquote, protecting the children, you’re actually creating this huge digital database of everyone’s driver’s license and everyone’s face and all of the data that comes with it.And do you really want to be doing that right now when you have an authoritarian regime running the federal government? And so this to me, seems like sort of the same deal, right? There is a good idea. I’m adamantly against gun violence. The problem with guns is guns. I would get rid of all of them if I could. But to me, it seems like we’re not really solving the problem here. We’re just using the problem as an excuse to enrich certain companies and at the same time create yet another database, right, of stuff that you don’t necessarily, you might not, you might be listening to this thinking I have nothing to hide, but you might be, you live in a very fluid situation. For example, if you were to move to a red state and abortion is illegal, right, then if you print out material about abortion, you are committing a crime according to that state. So even if you, quote, have nothing to hide at the moment, laws like this have a tendency of coming back and biting you in the ass later.Rory: Yeah, yeah, it’s ultimately about defending grassroots innovation and user rights. And yeah, today it is something that feels very sympathetic and can only grow from there once this infrastructure is in place, right? Right now it’s about the safety of building something that is more inherently dangerous, but one could make a similar argument about the safety of printing your own repair parts, that do you really want people repairing their bicycles with a 3D printed component if, you know, maybe it would break and not be printed correctly? And then I think the natural next step is, of course, copyright. I’m sure many companies would like a way to prevent people from printing their own cheap alternatives to either commercial sold repair parts or even if you think about toys and things that a lot of people make 3D printers with, know, your toy Pokemon figurines might be blocked just because Nintendo doesn’t want people buying or building their own instead of buying from them. So I think there’s a core kind of creativity we’re defending here, even if it starts with something that is harder to defend, right.BJ: It’s one of those things where it’s, again, it’s all presented under, all of this stuff is always presented under the best of intentions. But once you start to look underneath, you start to realize, oh, OK, this is a little bit more than what you’re saying it is. Let me ask you in the time that we have left, what, well, I guess it’s a two-parter, which is what can or what is the EFF considering on this front? And what can people do that are listening to us, what can they do to get this out of the budget?Rory: Yeah, I think right now it’s such an important time to reach out to representatives since we’re in this prolonged budget. Going to Eff.org/3dprintNY is our action page that lets you easily message your assembly member and state senator with a customizable message so you can include your own thoughts and we’d encourage you to. And I think really it’s we’re in a state of it’ll pass any day now so taking that action now is really urgent. I think beyond that it’s not going to be the last 3D printing legislation we see other bills introduced that would require a criminal background check in order to buy a 3D printer.You know, and again, this is a fringe use of 3D printers. Right. And it’s also a fringe way to make a ghost gun, like overwhelming ghost guns are made from DIY kits that are mass manufactured. [Emphasis added.]BJ: Right, it’s not common at all. I think that’s something we should stress is that like the…Rory: So it’s a fringe from both angles. This is, we’re talking about a very small subset of people and to subject everyone to already face-to-face sales, but potentially as well, these background checks is pretty ridiculous and will just disempower local communities and local makers. So I think keeping an eye out for these other bills as they come up. But right now, we’re in a big mobilization push for this budget. Since, again, we’re on borrowed time. BJ: Rory, thank you so much. Where can we find you? I mean, you mentioned the Action page. How else can we get involved and support the EFF?Rory: Yeah, so if folks want to support EFF’s work, they can go to EFF.org/join and become a supporting member. If you want to follow me, I’m on a little site called Mastodon, false mirror at Masto.nyc. But yeah, I think following our work on the main site at EFF.org is probably the best way to keep in the loop. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Below is a transcript from today’s episode of the podcast. It has been edited for brevity and clarity. Above is a flyer for tomorrow’s event. We hope you can be there.The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free; and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues in Southern Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help keep the lights on, we’re looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content, podcast audio, our behind the scenes Facebook group, and the ability to comment on posts just like this one.BJ Mendelson, The Monroe Gazette: Hello everyone, welcome to another edition of The Monroe Gazette podcast. I want to let you know that on Saturday, April 25th, which will be tomorrow for most of you that listen to this, there’s going a national day of action stop other ICE warehouse detention centers. As some of you know, we for now have blocked 29 Elizabeth Drive here in the village of Chester from becoming a ICE detention facility. But you know, the fight goes on across the country.Tomorrow (Saturday) From 12 to 1.30 p.m. at the Orange County Government Center at 255 Main Street in Goshen, New York. There’s going to be a National Day of Action that’s organized by Indivisible Goshen, Rural Migrant Ministries, and Gateway House among numerous others. So we really hope to see you. As a lot of you know, even though we did block the ICE Detention Center from opening up in Chester; over in Orange County Jail in Goshen, they still have an entire wing that is dedicated to housing ICE detainees. So. ICE is not completely out of our community. All that said, I’m joined today by a representative of Public Citizen, which is one of the organizations that put this coalition together. Omar, I’m hoping you might take a moment just to introduce yourself and tell us what you do at Public Citizen.Omar Angel Perez, Rule of Law Coordinator at Public Citizen: Hi everyone, my name is Omar Angel Perez and I am the rule of law coordinator for Public Citizen and in this role I work with different grassroots and community organizations across the country. We’re focused on protecting democracy and the rule of law. And in this case, working with different partners, and primarily the Detention Watch Network organizing this day of action across the country.BJ: And can you tell us real quick, I know some of our older listeners might be familiar with Public Citizen from the days of Ralph Nader, but could you just tell us some of the other things that Public Citizen does that they might not be aware of?Omar: Yeah, so Public Citizen is an organization that has been around for 50 years now and its primary focus is the protection of democracy regardless who is in power and the White House and the Congress. In the last two, three administrations, we’re just keeping an eye on how the administrations have been conducting themselves in this case since the first Trump administration, Public Citizen joined other organizations on different occasions, beginning with a focus on preserving democracy in the country and protecting communities who have been under attack.BJ: And just full disclosure for people listening, I am a paid member of Public Citizen. I get the newspaper. I recommend that everyone join. Omar, can you tell us a little bit about what is happening this weekend?Omar: Yeah, so as we all know, because it’s been in the media a lot, the Trump administration has been expanding their capacity to target immigrant communities, regardless of their status.And we witnessed the deployment of national guard and ICE agents in different parts of the country, different cities taken over. I’m based in Washington, D.C. I live in Washington, D.C. I have two kids who go to elementary school here in the district. And We witnessed how ICE agents were literally taking over our streets, targeting our neighbors, arresting people. Arresting teachers, caregivers outside our schools. And that’s one way how this administration has been targeting our communities and neighborhoods. The other way they’ve been doing is expending their capacity by Republicans in Congress allocating more money to fund DHS and ICE. And expanding also the detention centers by buying warehouses across the country. We know because there’s a lot of reports out there about the horrible conditions. People are being in this detention center, some people calling them actually concentration camps because the conditions they are on there.BJ: Yes.Omar: Right like there are in Daly, Texas outside of San Antonio, there are incarcerated minors, minors who’ve been in, you know, with no way to be in contact with the loved ones, with their attorneys, like nobody knows what’s happening to them. We know stories of pregnant women with no access to medical care in these detention centers. There is a report that’s coming out about forced labor. People in detention, migrants have been forced to work through this program that ICE has in place and all that they get paid is like one dollar per day. And so there is these horrible conditions that this administration are …BJ: Wow.Omar: Keeping our people under. And now they want to increase their capacity to continue detaining people, churning people, and they want to expand their capacity by buying these warehouses, and with a capacity of detaining between 1,500 to 10,000 people. And these warehouses have no conditions to, like … They are warehouses. They’re not to, you know, house people. They’re there to store stuff, but not people. So we’re missing what’s happening right now. We just cannot imagine what will be the conditions these people are going to be held if they are allowed to, if they are able to expand their capacity by buying these warehouses and expanding these detention centers. So Public Citizen, the Disappear America campaign, Detention Watch Network and Indivisible, Move On are the core partners of this day of action that is started by a group of folks coming together and thinking, okay, what we can do in this moment to bring attention what is happening and also responding to the outcry of the community in different parts of the country? Pushing back this intention of expanding ICE capacity of detaining people. So we started basically with the idea of saying, okay, let’s organize the day of action. And then it went from that idea to like massively have a response from the communities across the country. And what we started, we’re thinking about, we’re going to have like one action, probably in DC, expanding out to almost 200 actions across the country. If you go to the mobilize page, you will see the map. And it’s, we’re talking about, you know, from Texas to Alaska, from Washington state to New Mexico, like it’s all over because people are tired of this situation and people are, speaking out after the horrible condition we witnessed people are in these detention centers.BJ: Absolutely. And I think it’s important to stress to people that even when the media moves away, they being ICE and DHS and the other federal agencies are still snatching people. They’re still snatching people in Chicago. What they did was they moved more towards like the outer rim of the city. I have a lot of friends in Los Angeles and we still are hearing reports every day of strong ICE activity. So even if the cameras are gone, it’s important that these events happen because I think people need to realize that it hasn’t stopped. ICE hasn’t gone anywhere. Even if you don’t hear about it in the news so much, they are still very active out there.Omar: Yeah, they are very, very, very active. As you say, just yesterday I was with a driver, happened to be this woman from El Salvador. And she was telling me how she has to like work multiple jobs now because her husband was detained just like a few days ago while he was on his way to work. And even when he was, he has a case, a legal case, and he was going through the process of the case, he was a team with another group of coworkers, and now he is being deported to Guatemala, a country that he left when he was a minor. He’s been in the country for more than 20 years, and what we’re seeing is precisely that, right? Like, they don’t care who you are.If you look at it as an immigrant, you are a target. Regardless what your status, regardless you have a criminal history or background, whatever it is. And I just want to say here, right, a parenthesis, people have this narrative about like the good and bad immigrant, who is deserving, who has a criminal record and all that. We need to remind ourselves since the Trump administration, they criminalize being an immigrant. They criminalize being in this country. Like, regardless the way how you came in, regardless how one was brought in when you were a kid. This dehumanization of immigrants by criminalizing everybody, right? And, and it’s very punitive. By doing that, they are violating basically all laws or processes or proceedings. They themselves don’t respect the laws that they have in place by the way they are acting.BJ: A number of studies have come out since the first Trump administration that demonstrates if you are here as an immigrant, you’re more likely to contribute to your community. You’re more likely to pay your taxes. You’re less likely to commit crime than an American citizen. It’s sort of like the we’ve allowed the the corporate media and the Trump administration to kind of tell people the opposite is true.Omar: Absolutely, yeah. we see also, I there are polls coming out almost every day that shows where the American people stand on this, right? Like, they are not only against the incarceration of immigrants, they are not only not happy about how this administration is handling the immigration, the immigrant issue, but they actually now are pushing against ICE. Like the polls are showing that more than half of the population are for the dismantling of ICE as an agency because the way, the violent way they are targeting our communities. And we witness, It’s not now, it’s not only, they are not only targeting immigrants, right? What we witness in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, they are targeting non-immigrants as well. So they’re targeting all Americans who are speaking out and pushing back against this administration.BJ: Yeah, and I think people need to know that the Supreme Court said, they call it the Kavanaugh stop, where if you’re not white, then you can be pulled over by law enforcement for suspicion of being here, quote unquote, illegally. So it’s something that poses a real risk. I think about Marimar Martinez, who was pulled over. They shot at her. They didn’t kill her, but they then tried to detain her after she was shot. They like absolutely were harassing this poor woman. And she’s here as a citizen and that did not stop them from hounding her. So yeah, you’re absolutely right to point out that it’s very easy to think, well, you know, they’re just going after quote unquote the bad ones, right, or the criminals, but nothing could be further from the truth.Omar: Absolutely, you’re right. you know, just earlier today, I was in communication with some partners a lot of the work that Public Citizen does is through the Not Above the Law Coalition, we work with also veterans groups, organizations, veterans …Something that I come across to recently is the story, a couple of stories of spouses of military members who’s being detained at the moment where the military members were reporting to be deployed to Iran. And there is this story of this guy who reported to his base with his wife and his wife. She in the country legally, but she is a resident and she’s like, you know, she’s waiting for her case. Well, guess what? While he was waiting, they were waiting, the ICE agent show up and detain her and now she’s in a detention and she’s going to be deported. So you think like, what’s the logic here? Right? Like they are, we’re talking about people who are serving their country, but this government is not even respecting their basic human rights and they’re targeting their spouses and relatives. So that’s immoral. I don’t even have words of how to describe this.BJ: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s criminal. It’s absolutely criminal.I think people need to understand that, you know, because the thing, we’re kind of a purplish area, right? So when we do events like the one on Saturday at 12 p.m. at the Orange County Government Center at 255 Main Street, sometimes we’ll hear people say, well, you’ve got to do it the right way.But what they don’t understand is the right way is broken. Like it was intentionally broken. The apps don’t work. We’ve completely understaffed our federal court that handles immigration cases. So people could be waiting forever just to get a hearing. And in that time ICE comes and grabs them. Let me just switch gears just a little bit. So here in Chester, we were able to, for now, stop ICE from acquiring a warehouse. They were dead set on it. There was a bipartisan, pretty ferocious backlash to it and ICE kind of backed away. But we still have this specter of, ICE could come back at any time because ICE lies. Pictured Above: Readers asked us for an update on the Chester Concentration camp. Above you’ll see ICE’s response to The Monroe Gazette on April 21st, 2026.BJ: And I was hoping you might be able to just touch on that a little bit, that this agency that is supposed to be the one handling it and allegedly protecting us is consistently lying to the point where you have a community like ours where we think ICE is gone, you we think that they’re not going to grab that warehouse, but it’s just constantly hanging over us that they can come back at any time.Omar: Yeah, that is true. If you pay attention, we pay attention, ICE became basically Trump’s private army. And they are just doing whatever he’s doing. If he’s saying that they need to, well, actually, it was [Stephen] Miller who said a quota of the things for today.BJ: Yes.Omar: So they need to fill that quota. They’re gonna go and do whatever they gotta do in order to meet that quota, but also they need a space where to send those people. And when you think about the polling, the number of deportations that are aiming towards, which I think the latest was like a million per year, they need to work with the countries they are sending, they’re reporting those people to.And that takes a lot of work and a lot of time. So it’s not something like easy that they were going to put people on the next plane, next flight, and then they get rid of them. That’s why they need spaces to incarcerate them. And not only that, right? They are a handful of private companies like GEO Group and others who are making profits out of the suffering of people on those detention centers. And they are signing like this huge multi-billion contracts with the government to run those spaces, those detention centers. And they’re doing it to us. So because all these reasons, they are gonna come back over and over because that is what they are told to do and that’s what they want to do, right? So for our communities, we need to continue being paying attention. We need to continue being in relationship with local elected officials. We need to continue being on those meetings and those spaces, continue speaking out, lifting our voices because they are going to try to find ways to go around us in order to buy those warehouses, open those detention centers, and those goes in detriment of our own local communities, right? Like the resources that we have, they’re gonna use it to ruin [the environment], and to run those detention centers. So we need to be paying attention to that constantly.BJ: What more can we do as people listening to us? Aside from becoming a paid member like I am, of Public Citizen, what are things that people can do to help kind of bang the drum on this?Omar: Yeah, so I think there are a lot of things that we can do, right? Locally, one is talk to your neighbors. You have an immigrant neighbor, check in on them. Just go say hello, ask how they are doing, what they need. If it is like any local mutual aid group, get connected. Go to talk to them, ask how you can help.There is a lot of need for now. There is a lot of people who are suffering in this country in this moment and they need your help. If you are a member of a church, even if you are not a member of a church, you can go to the local church and ask them if they are doing anything. If they don’t, you should talk to your pastor and say, hey, pastor, we need to do this. This is the moral call. And continue organizing, continue participating in these kind of actions and bring your friends. Bringing your own networks, build your networks. Right now the immigrants are the scapegoat. The next we know are citizens and it’s already happening. Something that I wanna put on people’s minds, people who are listening to us in this moment is if you are a citizen, don’t be sure that you are protected. Look around, just look around and what’s happening in this country. Because the next thing that I’m gonna wanna get rid of is your citizenship.BJ: Yeah, and you know, we already have three citizens that were killed. You know, like, factually we can, two of which was on camera. One was not, and then there’s also the Marimar Martinez shooting. So you have three that we know for sure that were killed and one that was shot. [Editor’s Note: Rene Good, Alex Pretti, and Ruben Ray Martinez were killed by ICE.] And that’s just what we know about. And that’s not even talking about, you know, I know that one of the deaths recently in these concentration camps, which is what I prefer to call them, was recently ruled a homicide.And the number of deaths reported by ICE since their founding. It hasn’t been higher than it is right now. And I always try to tell people, you know, what do you think they’re going to do with these warehouses after they’ve deported everybody? You know, like they’re going to, they’re not going to turn around and say mission accomplished. They’re probably going to go and start rounding up other people, myself included, as a journalist.Omar: Yeah, totally. that’s something that we have witnessed in other parts of the country, You look at history, history tells us a lot. And you’re right. They will continue profiting out of those spaces, out of those detention centers. So who are the next one after the immigrants? Just imagine a day without immigrants in this country. Who are going to be those ones who they’re going to put in those detention centers?BJ: Yes. Is there anything on this topic that I should have asked you or could have asked you and didn’t that you’d like to touch on?Omar: No, I just appreciate you. I appreciate the work that you do. And I appreciate everybody who’s taken to the streets this Saturday. We need you. Your community needs you. Your country needs you. this is the way how we are supposed to, to act and react in this moment. So thank you.BJ: Absolutely, and thank you for all you’re doing. And just a reminder for people listening, April 25th, that’s Saturday, 12 to 1.30 at the Orange County Government Center, 255 Main Street is going to be our location for the National Day of Action. Omar, thank you so much.Omar: Thank you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Below is the transcript from today’s podcast episode. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.***BJ Mendelson: Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Monroe Gazette podcast with your host, BJ Mendelson. We interviewed State Senator Andrew Gounardes today about the New York for All Act. There’s a lot of discussion going on about this bill, particularly in the town of Monroe, as you might have seen if you watch the two recent town board meetings. (Below, at 48:49 from this week’s meeting, you can see the bill being discussed by residents, and then at 1:03:18 you can hear the Town Board’s response as to why they are not moving forward with it.)BJ: We’ve been trying to get them [The Town of Monroe] to pass a ceremonial — it’s purely ceremonial, it’s not binding in any way, shape, or form — resolution that would encourage State Senator Skoufis and assembly members Eachus and Brabenec who represent Monroe, to endorse and support the New York for All Act. This is one of the things that Skoufis says he supports, but Skoufis says he supports lots of stuff. (Skoufis is not a co-sponsor of the bill in the Senate. Eachus, Kay, and Brabenec are not co-sponsors in the Assembly.)Like with any any of these politicians these days, you have to look at what they do and not what they say. So the jury is still out on that one. However, we did speak with Senator Gournardis. I do want to bring the interview to you. I think we had a great discussion. It’s a little brief.But it will bring you up to speed on the New York for All Act. Before we get to it, I want to let you know that this Saturday, April 25th is not only my birthday, but it is also another hands-off Hudson Valley stand-up event. So we hope to see you on Saturday at 1 p.m. at the corner of Lake Street and 17M in the town of Monroe. If you’re concerned about the corporate Democrats dragging their feet on passing New York for All, be there. If you’re concerned about why Congressman Pat Ryan does not support Medicare for All, be there. And if you have concerns about the village of Monroe, and there’s a lot to be concerned about with the new Melchiorrie-Mancuso axis, because clearly it looks like former mayor Mancuso is in charge and Alex Melchiorre is just there as a plant for the real estate developers …If you’re concerned about that, we also would like to see you Saturday, 1 p.m. at the corner of 17M and Lake Street in the village of Monroe. All that being said, let’s get to today’s interview.The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues both in Southern Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help us keep the lights on, we’re looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content, podcast audio, our behind the scenes Facebook group, and the ability to comment on posts just like this one.Our Interview With State Senator Andrew GounardesBJ Mendelson, The Monroe Gazette : Would you like to take a moment just to introduce yourself to people who might not be familiar?State Senator Gounardes: I’m State Senator Andrew Gounardes from Brooklyn, New York.BJ: And I know that you, we’ve talked before about New York For All, but for people that are just coming into this midstream, could you briefly explain to us what this bill does?State Senator Gounardes: Absolutely. So, New York for All is a piece of legislation that I sponsor that would prohibit any local or state government agency or any local or state law enforcement agency from colluding and conspiring with ICE for the purposes of immigration enforcement unless there is a signed judicial warrant by a federal judge. And why this is so important is because we’ve seen all across the state an increase in the circumstances and instances where local governments, particularly local law enforcement, are working hand in hand with ICE or CBP, which is Customs and Border Patrol, along many of our northern border communities. And they’re working hand in hand with them to carry out immigration enforcement. And that looks like a lot of different things. It could be that local law enforcement are arresting people on false pretenses, and then turning them over to ICE. It could be that local law enforcement is tipping ICE off to where undocumented immigrants might be, or sharing information about undocumented immigrants, and then kind of facilitating this dragnet of a draconian immigration policy that we’re seeing play out all across the country. And why this is so important to stop is because A, we just fundamentally believe that New York State resources and New York State personnel and our tax dollars should not be used to facilitate and contribute to this terrible immigration crackdown that is literally tearing families apart, especially because ICE is now one of the most well-funded law enforcement entities in the country. I mean, they have a $75 billion budget. Why do they need our help?And secondly, and this actually might be more important, it actually doesn’t help increase public safety when you let local governments or local law enforcement work hand in hand with ICE, because all that does is push people into the shadows and it tells them that they should not call local police for help, that they should not trust that when they call 911 for assistance, that they’re actually gonna be taken care of, that they should not go to a local public hospital when they need emergency care. And what could be more destabilizing to the safety of not only an individual, but to a whole community when you can no longer trust your local government? And that’s what we see happening play out all across the state, which is why New York for All is so critically important.BJ: Absolutely. And just so you can help me clarify a couple of things that popped up in Orange County. Recently, there was a protest about the agreement with Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus to house ICE detainees at OCJ, Orange County Jail. The county executive, when asked about the protest, said that legislation in Albany, such as New York for All, would end that agreement. Is that right? Is that how that works?State Senator Gounardes: So it would not be the New York for All bill, it would actually be the Dignity Not Detention bill, but the same premise applies. So Dignity Not Detention basically says that local governments cannot enter into contracts with ICE to use their jail facilities for immigration detention. So broadly speaking, he [Neuhaus] is correct. He got the name of the bill wrong, but he’s correct. We’re trying to both of these practices.BJ: In the town of Monroe, we’ve been trying to get them to pass a purely ceremonial resolution in support of New York for All. And one of the reasons they gave against it was that Hochul apparently has like this watered down version. So I’m just hoping you can clarify what the difference is between the actual New York for All and this watered down weak version that Kathy Hochul is pushing.State Senator Gounardes: Well, the governor proposed several weeks ago a measure called Local Cops Local Crimes Act, which would basically ban any formal agreement between the local government and ICE. These are known as 287-G agreements. Now, these types of agreements are where local entities enter into a formal partnership, it’s like a signed contract, about what they will or will not assist ICE with. And there’s different ways that this could take. There could be agreements to house immigrants in local detention facilities.It can be agreements to share certain types of information. It can be agreements to deputize your local law enforcement to act as ICE agents side by side with ICE, as we’re seeing in Nassau County. So the governor’s proposal is to ban those. And that’s good, and that’s important. And New York For All would also ban those. But we’ve seen so much collusion that is not formalized in a contract, like a 287-G agreement all across the state. Earlier this year, everyone has made national news, the Rohingya refugee in Buffalo, Nurul Alam who had a legal status to be here, he was a refugee with legal status, was arrested by the Erie County Sheriff on false charges, was held for nearly a year, and then was just simply turned over to Customs and Border Patrol. For whatever they were going to do with him and then five days later he showed up dead on the side of the road. The governor’s proposal would not address those circumstances. In Port Chester, West Chester County earlier this year, there was a young man driving to church and he was pulled over by the police for having tinted windows. Now, tinted windows, you if you have them, you get a ticket, you get a desk appearance ticket, you gotta show up.Just like if had a broken tail, you gotta show up, you gotta say, well, I fixed the window, I fixed the tail light, whatever. He was not given a desk appearance ticket. He was brought into the local precinct, he was detained, and then he was transferred to ICE for immigration detention. And last we heard he was in Louisiana trying to fight off his deportation. That’s the type of collusion that New York for all would prevent that the governor’s proposal would not put a stop to. And then just last week, the governor made another amendment to her proposal and she said, we would not allow local law enforcement to coordinate with ICE unless they had probable cause that an immigrant may have committed a crime. Now, that to me, and I think to many people, is highly problematic because that is such a subjective standard. And, you know, just last week in Brooklyn in a different circumstance, local police officers went into a bodega to arrest someone that they thought they had probable cause to believe was a drug dealer, they beat the living tar out of him, and they had the wrong guy. And we know that this story plays out time and time and time time time time again, right? I mean, local police make mistakes. That’s, you know, everyone’s human. But now we’re saying that if local police believe that an immigrant or frankly someone who looks like an immigrant may have committed a crime, we’re just gonna tell ICE.Without zero protections, without zero due process, without anyone being charged, without anyone being convicted, without any proof whatsoever, that’s highly problematic. And so we’re still trying to hold the line and push to ban all types of collusion because we know that that actually is going to be the thing that keeps people safe and that keeps communities stabilized.BJ: Absolutely. And it makes me nervous too, because the city of Newburgh just has an awful track record in terms of how it works with the residents of its city and its transparency. And the Orange County Sheriff also actively stymies FOIL requests concerning ICE and detainees. So when you talk about leaving it to these local police forces to make these decisions, that’s sort of just sounds scary. [At the time of this writing, Orange County Attorney Rick Golden is attempting to hold up a FOIL request placed by The Monroe Gazette concerning Orange County’s communications with ICE involving Orange County Jail. The Monroe Gazette will be submitted a FOIL appeal shortly.]Why wasn’t this bill passed in early January when everyone came back into session? It just seemed like such a, I mean, it’s a Democrat trifecta in New York state. It just seemed like a slam dunk. What held it up?State Senator Gounardes: Well, were trying, New York for All is an important piece of a much broader puzzle, much bigger puzzle. And there are many other things that we want to do to protect immigrant New Yorkers that are not covered by New York for All. For example, what happens when schools are involved, when children are removed from schools, when parents are separated from their kids, when someone, an ICE agent shows up at a school and a school staff member doesn’t know how to respond and they let someone in the building inappropriately.You know, there’s no guidance there. What do we do around other types of sensitive locations? Churches, hospitals, daycare centers, things like that. What legal recourse do people have when their civil rights have been violated by these ICE officers? Are there measures we can put in law to give people access to the courthouse whenever their civil rights have been violated by ICE, as we’ve seen happen across the country? So we had been working to put together a comprehensive immigration package, the centerpiece of which would have been New York for all with a couple of these secondary but equally as important pieces. And then the governor put out her proposal right after she dropped her, made her executive budget presentation. And then the immigration conversation got folded into the budget debate. And so we’re on this track right now where everything is being negotiated as part of the budget. The budget is nearly a month late and we only have a couple of weeks left before the legislature gavels out of session. And so this might be the only opportunities we have to pass as comprehensive a package of immigration protections as we can get this year.BJ: Right, and so then we only have time for one more question because I know you have to run, so just just tell us in brief where where are we right now as of this morning this recording and what can people do to help push it over the finish line?State Senator Gounardes: Well, right now we are still trying to push back against the governor’s proposals and to try to bring her closer to the New York for All side of the spectrum to say that there should be no instances in which local police are actively working with ICE. That local police are not creating fabricated instances of probable cause to turn someone over to ICE, that local police are not taking civil infraction matters and then turning them into criminal investigations to justify sharing information with ICE.I think that anyone who’s concerned about keeping ICE in check and anyone that is concerned about protecting ⁓ immigrant and non-immigrant neighbors alike need to make sure that they are calling the governor’s office and calling their state legislators, state legislators telling them that this is really important to them and that we should not sacrifice, be willing to sacrifice people’s safety under the guise of trying to do something that’s actually not going to protect people.BJ: That’s perfect. And for people listening, I can’t stress enough the importance of calling Paula Kay, Chris Eachus and James Skoufis, all of whom, at least in principle, support New York for All. I at least say they do, but some of them have given reasons that they won’t co-sign or sponsor the bill because they’re afraid of their constituents, apparently. So please do get on the phones. Senator Gounardes thank you so much for joining us this morning.Note to readers: We have reached out to Assembly Member Kay about her meeting with the Mid-Hudson Valley DSA concerning New York For All. Eric Feinblatt on behalf of the MHVDSA told The Monroe Gazette. We hope to get clarity on what her exact positions are, and how she will vote, on both NY4All and Dignity not Detention. A post on Dignity Not Detention is forthcoming.“Four representatives of Mid-Hudson Valley DSA traveled to Albany on April 21 to take part in the No Collusion, No Cages Advocacy Day and meet with Assembly Member Paula Kay about two immigration bills moving through the Legislature: New York for All and Dignity Not Detention.We had scheduled the meeting a week earlier, but were told that Assembly Member Kay would be unavailable all day and that we could instead meet with an administrative assistant. We sent the assistant our talking points and asked that they be shared with Kay in advance, so she could come prepared for a substantive discussion. When we arrived, however, it became clear that the “assistant” was actually an intern who was unfamiliar with both bills and said she could not speak on Kay’s behalf. This was the second time Kay had sent an intern to meet with DSA’s Solidarity Working Group.Kay then stepped out of her office, asked what the meeting was about, glanced at her schedule on a computer screen, and decided it would be better to join the conversation herself.Her answers were essentially the same as when I met with her five weeks earlier in Narrowsburg: she said she would support New York for All, though not sponsor it, but, as a former prosecutor, could not support Dignity Not Detention. That position seemed inconsistent and suggested a limited understanding of the legislation. When pressed, she shifted to saying that she had received significant constituency feedback opposing Dignity Not Detention, which raised further questions. Are her constituents really able to distinguish between these two bills so clearly? Is she?We asked whether, if enough phone calls, emails, and postcards came in support of Dignity Not Detention, she would reconsider. She did not give a direct answer.We left the meeting with the impression that Assembly Member Kay is making legislative decisions based on which way the political winds are blowing, though it remains unclear what is shaping those winds. Twice now, she has treated DSA’s request for a serious conversation about urgent state and national issues as worthy only of sending an intern.”State Senator Skoufis refuses to answer any questions submitted to his office by The Monroe Gazette. Assemblyman Chris Eachus does whatever Senator Skoufis tells him. If we hear from any of these people, we’ll update this story here and let you know. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

The Monroe Gazette is presented free without any advertisements or paywalls. If you’d like to be able to comment on posts, get subscriber only content like our podcast, and join our behind the scenes Facebook group, you can sign-up below. The cost is $120 a year or less than what you’re probably paying for Netflix right now. Your support allows us to keep this thing going.If you are interested in being a volunteer for the rally’s safety team on April 12th, reach out to me on Signal at bjmendelson.32 and I’ll put you in touch with the appropriate people.You can You can RSVP here for the April 12th event.And just a reminder for those living in Southern Orange County (Chester, Warwick, Tuxedo, Sloatsburg, Monroe, Woodbury, Blooming Grove, and Palm Tree) that Hands Off Hudson Valley will be having another stand-up event this Saturday, April 11th, at 1pm at the corner of 17M and Lake Street. All are welcome.Special note for Village and Town of Monroe residents: We are looking for Monroe residents who want to join us in organizing a resistance to the South Blooming Grove led takeover of our Village, as well as advocating for the Town of Monroe to pass the resolution announcing its support for New York For All. (The following podcast transcript has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.)BJ Mendelson, reporter, The Monroe Gazette: Well, hello everyone. Thank you for joining this free edition of The Monroe Gazette podcast. Usually these are reserved for subscribers only. I wanted to let you know that over in Goshen on Sunday, April 12th at 1 p.m. is going to be another Melt ICE event in Orange County. A lot of us have, I think we’ve all done the victory lap at this point of preventing DHS and ICE, for now, from setting up over in the Village of Chester. But as I keep trying to remind people that fight isn’t over.In an official statement provided by the Department of Homeland Security to the Monroe Gazette, they said at this time, being the keywords, they have no new concentration camps — They didn’t use those words. I’m using those words — to announce. But that doesn’t mean that they’ve necessarily abandoned the village of Chester. So a lot of us all did a victory lap, and now I think it’s time to sort of refocus. And I’m not the only one, because the local DSA chapter and a number of great organizations throughout our part of New York are organizing a rally. It’s called Melt ICE in Orange County. And again, it’s Sunday, April 12th at 1pm at the Village Green. South Church Street and Main Street in Goshen. So I hope to see you all there. Noel, would you like to take a moment just to introduce yourself?Noelle Peñas, New York Lawyers for The Public Interest: Hi, I’m Noelle. I’m the health justice community organizer with NLP New York Lourdes for the Public Interest and for years since about 2017 we’ve working to advocate for improved medical care in detention centers in New York State and then after repeated efforts to advocate for reform we realized ultimately there will never be adequate care in these detention centers and are not advocating for the closure of these jails so that folks can receive care in their communities.BJ: Now, when you say adequate care can you just explain a little bit about what that means when it comes to the people in the facility? What are they expected to get versus what are they not getting?Noelle: They should be getting the care that they would be receiving otherwise if they weren’t detained. ICE has also provided its own national detention standards for medical care. And so this is another standard of care that should be adhered to. But in practice, people are experiencing critical gaps of care. This includes lack of follow-up care for conditions that they experienced prior to entering detention. [Such as a] lack of proper medication, sometimes not receiving medication at all, lack of nutrition or language access, and also incorrect treatment. And we can go deeper into this as well. But overall, when people are requesting care, ICE has showed repeatedly that they are not adhering to the own standards that they provide.BJ: Yeah, and you know, there’s just published reports now about the number of people that have been killed while in detention at facilities across the country that are operated by DHS and ICE. And we’ve had anther guest on previously who represents a legal organization where she was saying, you know, Orange County Jail in particular, there’s questions of people not necessarily getting blankets, for example, to our food, for example, that would be adequate for their dietary restrictions. And so we’ve definitely been paying attention of issues at Orange County Jail in Goshen and some of the issues surrounding ICE. So just so people who are listening this understand, there is about, and this isn’t the exact number, but there’s about 470 total inmates at Orange County Jail and about 110 of them are officially ICE detainees. And how it’s supposed to work is they’re supposed to be kept in a separate wing, although reporting from the New York Times has indicated that at least on one occasion documented from the Times, someone that was supposed to be in what’s called the ICE wing was actually in the general population, which is not how that’s supposed to work. So, Noelle, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the report that came out, Denied Care, Denied Dignity.This is something that was circulated in Signal groups as we were organizing over what was proposed for Chester. And I think it kind of got lost in the shuffle. So I’m hoping you can tell us a little bit about the findings of the report.Noelle: Sure, I can share a bit of the background on how we started developing this report. This is our third report documenting the conditions of medical neglect in detention centers in New York State, specifically, Orange County Jail. For this report, this captured referrals that we received between January 2022 and May 2024. During this time, we received overall 92 referrals to our medical providers network. 37 of these referrals were for New Yorkers across the country. 19 of these were for clients detained in New York. And these were the individuals profiled in the report. And to share a bit more on our methodology for analyzing the medical data, the medical letters serve as a primary data source for this report. So we receive requests for medical legal advocacy for legal health assessments to our medical providers network.And upon receiving these requests for referrals, we’ll partner with volunteers for MPN to conduct medical records reviews, to also evaluate the adequacy of care provided, and then to identify any violations of established medical standards. We then work with these doctors who will synthesize their findings into advocacy letters that the legal teams then use to support their clients’ And so these are the letters we’re referring to that serve as a primary data source for the report. And for these 19 individuals, they each had critical gaps in their medical care while detained by ICE. And so we also worked with healthcare professionals to analyze the data from these medical letters and we found patterns that we ended up categorizing to four different types of failures of medical care, but they also overlap. Some examples we’ll share is when people come into OCJ, they will not receive follow-up care for conditions they had prior to OCJ. They’ll either have care that was supposed to be planned but was never completed, care that was provided only after significant delays, and sometimes care is never planned at all. What this looks like is, for example, someone has come in diagnosed with glaucoma in one of his eyes and he had already been prescribed daily eye drops to manage pressure and to prevent vision loss. But once he was detained, he was denied access to his medication and that puts him at risk of irreversible optic nerve damage and blindness. He was also withheld lidocaine or medication for post dental extraction pain. And in another instance, he was denied hemorrhoid treatment. So these are just overlaps of a denial of medical care. We’ve also seen people being given really insufficient pain medication treatment for, for example, for chronic back pain, someone was just given a mattress. Another patient was, another individual was denied anesthesia for a tooth extraction, which is a pretty very severe withholding of adequate medication care.We’ve also seen folks being denied necessary tooth extractions or receiving a botched spilling procedure which resulted in facial pain and swelling. Or they’ll be experiencing chronic pain and they’re just prescribed over-the-counter medication and they really need chronic pain management. And we also see this in mental health care plans as well.Another individual was suffering from major depressive disorder with psychotic features, but he was prescribed an antidepressant dosage that was way below the recommended therapeutic level. And that can lead to an escalation of psychotic episodes, suicidal ideation, or complete functional impairment. And these are patterns. Many times, folks will receive multiple instances or have experienced multiple instances of denial of medication or improper treatment.BJ: Yeah, it’s sort of astounding to me when you compound that with sometimes the lack of or inadequate access to legal counsel or the reports of people that were supposed to be seen by an attorney that then got shipped off in the dead of night without anyone knowing about it. Let me ask you … Because OCJ in particular has a history, right? Like it has a history of previously there was a hunger strike there. The New York City ACLU has previously documented some of the issues at OCJ. Did that play a role in selecting OCJ as the subject for this report?Noelle: We selected OCJ because the greatest number of referrals came to us from OCJ. It’s the primary detention center with lapses of medical care where we’re receiving referrals, unfortunately.BJ: Wow, okay. So, you know, and this is just my opinion. It doesn’t sound like Steve Neuhaus who is the County Executive, ever got the message, right? In terms of properly taking care of the prison population here. As I think I mentioned before we started recording that the Monroe Gazette has asked people to send ice scrapers to his office to encourage him to cancel the contract between Orange County and ICE DHS, which is, I’ve been told from members of the legislature, only he can terminate the agreement specifically. So it has to come from him. Let me ask, because these findings are alarming. Anytime anyone has been denied basic medical care, it’s a denial of their human rights. What steps were taken after the report was completed to share this with Orange County?Noelle: We reached out to organizations based in Orange County to share our report since local officials are more likely to listen to folks that are advocating based within Orange County. we’ve reached out to, alongside the Dignity Not Detention Coalition, have reached out to a couple of folks. We, from what we’ve been hearing through our work with the coalition … There’s been some interest and concern, but... many have taken more the position that further investigation is needed before action can be taken. We’ve also reached out to some outlets and have been able to speak about our report in a few with some local media.BJ: And what’s the response been like from the county itself in terms of the report? Because I remember looking through this and it came after we had already talking to a number of organizations that were reporting similar issues and had also mentioned the historical problems at OCJ. But what did the county say in terms of this report?Noelle: That I am not too sure of.BJ: Well, I can tell you from what we saw, I have to preface this. And I know we talked about it before I started recording. But so for people listening to The Monroe Gazette has documented a number of instances where we’ve submitted FOIL requests to Orange County. Orange County then delays them repeatedly. And we’ve caught County Attorney [Rick] Golden stating that there are no records for some of these requests, lo and behold, for us to have some of the records that he claims does not exist.We also pressed him quite a bit, and this is probably getting into the weeds, but there’s a court case that’s going on concerning Gonzaga Park and Orange County and claims made by the village of South Blooming Grove that Rick Golden was present at a meeting, which he publicly claims he’s not. There’s been, this is a long way of saying that we have concerns about statements that come from Orange County, statements that come from County executive Neuhaus, you know, we’ve documented him specifically on issues of immigration lying. For example, during his county address one year, he told the story of for some reason he was at the border. You know, for whatever reason, a county executive in upstate New York is at the southwestern border. You know, he claimed that he was down there in a man cross that allegedly had enough fentanyl on him. And this is a direct quote, to kill everyone in New York City. Of course, that wasn’t true.But that’s just to give people listening a kind of the context of what the response from the county when we do try to get answers from them on issues about OCJ or issues just about general operations. And the one thing I did see was Golden kind of dismissing this report saying that the findings weren’t true. But then the Monroe Gazette did reach out to him and said, OK, well, if you’re disputing this report that was put out, surely, you you you’ve issued some kind of response or you’ve talked to the people at NYLPI about about their findings. Pictured Above: The Monroe Gazette first reached out to Orange County to discuss the NYLPI report back in February. As of this writing in April, we have received no response from either County Executive Steve Neuhaus or County Attorney Rick Golden about the report.BJ: Has there been any communication with Rick Golden since the report came out?Noelle: No, they have not reached out to us.BJ: Yeah, that’s, I figured, I mean, I was kind of teeing you up for that. Yeah, but that’s just, it’s unfortunate and it’s frustrating. And so that kind of brings me to, you know, I mentioned the Melt ICE event in Orange County, which again is Sunday, April 12th at 1pm at the Village Green, which is South Church Street and Main Street in Goshen. So people that are interested in having Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus — who again is the only person who can do this, terminate the agreement between Orange County and DHS ICE to house detainees at Orange County Jail — they should come out. Let me ask you, after the report came out, has there still been investigations or exploration as to what’s going on in Orange County Jail? Is it still something that you guys are keeping track of?Noelle: Yes, in the sense that we continue to receive referrals from advocates representing clients detained in Orange County Jail. We received a as recently as last week. BJ: Oh wowNoelle: Yeah.BJ: What can people do, and this is really the next to last question for you, what can people do who are listening to this who are interested, I mean, obviously we’ll post to the report, we’ll make sure people can see it when we run the transcript for this. So we’ll make sure people are aware of it … But what can people do to help the work that you do and to also help the detainees at Orange County Jail?Noelle: I would encourage folks to join the groups that are organizing locally in Orange County to fight back for the closure of Orange County Jail.This includes the Dignity Not Detention Coalition, which is in contact with orgs in Orange County. The coalition is also running a hotline in Orange County jail where folks can reach out. I would also encourage folks to try to visit folks who are detained to join the letter writing events that the coalition host to join the phones apps as well to join in actions. Sharing about the issue to the elected officials continuing to raise the issue. I would say that really these detention centers were in our design to isolate people from community and to make them feel like they’re alone and that people have forgotten about them.And so what we can do as community is to show up and to let them know that we’re still fighting for them and that we haven’t forgotten and to continue to reach out. Show up and tell them that we’re still fighting for them and that we have a good bottom and to continue to reach out.And to try to fight for the passage of legislation that would terminate contracts with Orange County Jail because ultimately, while reforms would be great, while oversight and accountability would be great, the only way to really ensure that people don’t suffer is to terminate these jails. And you can do that by passing the Dignity not detention act and also related legislation like New York for All, which would, end collaboration between local government and ICE.BJ: Yeah, and just for people listening, you know, I keep I keep talking about the big five bills to protect us from the Trump regime. You know, it’s it’s New York for all. It’s the New York melt act. It’s the New York Dignity Not Detention Act. It’s the Privacy Act and it’s the Health Act. And currently our state senator, James G. Skoufis, does not support New York for all. He does support the melt act. Although I think that that seems to be reluctant on his part. And our state assemblymen for people that are listening to us in our typical coverage region, which is Monroe-Woodbury, your assemblyman, Chris Eachus who’s a Democrat, does not support any of these bills. And then if you live in one part of Monroe, you are unfortunately represented by Carl Brabenec who is one of the few Republicans who also does not support any of these bills. It’s frustrating to me that January 7th was the first day in a state where we have a Democratic trifecta, they did not pass any of these bills including New York for all. So I’m glad that you mentioned that because that’s, it’s infuriating to me. Like we have had all this time to pass these bills and as we record this, none of those bills have been passed, although it looks like the melt act will survive in some form. Let me ask you my last question. So specifically about NYLPI, what, if people are listening to this and they’re learning about you for the first time, how can they support the work that you do?Noelle: I would say get organized. The work that we do is because we’re fighting for the health and safety of our communities in New York, but any of the policies or reform that we’re fighting for can only be passed when our communities want it and are also pressuring our representatives to pass these bills. And the more we’re organized, the more we build collective power, the more effective our work can be.BJ: Yeah, I agree. We’ve been telling people to organize local signal groups with their neighbors. Is there anything that, you know, I didn’t ask you that you think is worth mentioning?Noelle: Concerning claims that the data is not being sufficient to potentially reveal any patterns at Orange County Jail, I would... I would say that the experiences of 19 people should be enough. And even if one person was experiencing this, should already because for some kind of urgency for investigation or accountability. And so I would hope that representatives with the ability to terminate the contract would see these experiences and for this to be enough. I’m not sure how many people, like how many people would be needed to establish a pattern is my question. I think the experiences of 19 people should already be sufficient.BJ: Our philosophy is that everybody counts. If it’s one person that has a problem, the problem should be addressed. I totally agree with that.Noelle: I appreciate all the work that you’re doing documenting this, not letting the pressure up and making sure that the support gets out there and does the work that needs to do.BJ: Well, thank you. Let me me put in one more point before we go. So again, Melt ICE in Orange County. It’s a rally to end Orange County’s contract with ICe for the ICE detention wing at Orange County Jail. There’s over 100 people that are held currently there. It’s a significant chunk of the OCJ population. So it’s incredible to me that we are holding so many people there often without them receiving their due process or adequate access t attorneys and to basic medical needs. So if you are as outraged as I am, it’s Sunday, April 12th at 1pm at the Village Green. That’s South Church Street and Main Street and Goshen. We’ll post the link for people who are interested in attending. You can RSVP here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Full Transcript Is BelowBJ Mendelson: Hello there. No, the book isn’t done, but I thought tomorrow was really important. So I thought I could burn some time that should be used to finish this book, to talk about No Kings instead, so hang with me. You might be wondering what’s going on in my area. There are events everywhere in Orange County. We will have a list of the ones that we’re aware of in today’s edition of the Monroe Gazette. I just want to talk to you about the one in Monroe, though.Local Event Details Beyond MonroeGoshen No Kings Event Details:* What: ‘No Kings’ Rally* When: Saturday, March 28, 2026* Where: Village Green, corner of Main Street and South Church St* Time: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PMWarwick No Kings Event Details:* What: ‘No Kings’ Rally* When: Saturday, March 28, 2026* Where: At Railroad Green* Time: 10am-11:30am Port Jervis No Kings Event Details:* What: ‘No Kings’ Rally* When: Saturday, March 28, 2026* Where: Veteran’s Memorial Park* Time: 12-2pmCornwall* What: ‘No Kings’ Rally* When: Saturday, March 28, 2026* Where: Cornwall Plaza Sidewalk 17 Quaker Av (Don’t go to Skoufis’s office. Boo him for trying to ban masks for protests and doing literally nothing to pass New York For All.)* Time: 12-2pmMiddletown* What: ‘No Kings’ Rally* When: Saturday, March 28, 2026* Where: 14 Old Church St.* Time: 11:30am-1pmNewburgh* What: ‘No Kings’ Rally* When: Saturday, March 28, 2026* Where: Colden Street & 2nd Street* Time: 12-2pmAnd of course …March 28th at 1 p.m. in the Village of Monroe on the corner of 17M and Lake Street.That’s going to be where, if you’ve driven through the Village of Monroe on a Saturday, you might have seen Hands Off Hudson Valley. There’s some other groups that have also been out protesting, but Hands Off Hudson Valley is there every other Saturday, And so that’s where you should go. Tomorrow at one o’clock, Village of Monroe. Right in the downtown, right where the mill ponds are, between the two of them, that’s where they typically gather.Full disclosure, I am a member of the steering committee for Hands Off Hudson Valley, although really all credit goes to Carol and Nora and Irene for all of their work, because really they’re the ones driving the bus, and I’m sort of like doing the best I can as I have time to contribute. So I think it’s important to go out if you’re in Chester, if you’re in Woodbury. If you’re in Woodbury, you can go to the one in Cornwall. If you’re in Chester, you can go to the one in Warwick if you’d like. We would encourage you to come on down to Monroe, though. We think that there’s a nice base here to build off of and it’s gonna be fun. We have 44 people signed up right now. Hopefully all 44 come.But even if they don’t, even if it’s five people, it’s still great. And this is why I want to talk about this and this is why it’s important. Here’s Why You Want To Come Out For Events Like No KingsI’m going to give you an example involving climate change. Most people in America right now know that there’s a climate emergency. It doesn’t matter if you’re like the reddest red Republican or the bluest blue Democrat. The majority of Americans understand and acknowledge that we are living through a climate emergency.The thing is, is that not a lot of people say it out loud. And the reason why is because they don’t see or hear other people talking about it. When you turn on the news, you don’t really hear about the climate emergency. When you’ve got a bad storm outside and you’ve got 60 mile per hour winds, you think, oh, well, that’s climate change. But we don’t talk about it. We don’t acknowledge it. We don’t acknowledge it because we don’t see other people talking about it. So the reason why an event like No Kings is so important is to let people know that they’re not aloneSo even if there’s five people tomorrow in Monroe, March 28th at one o’clock downtown, Village Monroe … Rven if there’s five people, those five people demonstrate to others that they’re not alone, that there is a problem, that there is something worth talking about. So just showing up has a lot of power. It’s not gonna fix things overnight. We’re not gonna end the climate emergency in a weekend. We’re not gonna, regardless of your political ideology, we’re not going to get rid of the corporate influence, which has made our politics so batshit crazy overnight, right? Like that takes a constitutional amendment and that’s not something that happens overnight.But by showing up, we start to walk down that road a little bit. And the more often these events happen and the more people show up, the further down the road we get. So it’s a starting place. So I know a of people sometimes go, why bother showing up? It won’t change anything. It does. The thing is, is that the change won’t happen overnight, right? Like nobody’s going to snap their fingers and change things. It’s going to be this constant drip over the next, God, I hope not three years, but it could very well be over the next three years, just this constant drip of people showing up and saying what’s happening is not okay. We need things to change. And the more people show up at these events, it gives permission to other people who are kind of on the fence, which is most people right now, if we’re being honest. That’s the key here. You showing up empowers others to show up too, and the more people who come out, the more powerful you are as a group.You’re either aware that there’s a national emergency right now, or you kind of suspect that something’s wrong, but you don’t want to deal with it, either because you’re busy, which I understand, totally get it, or because you’re afraid, which is most of us, or because you don’t know what to do, you don’t know what else to do. So by going to these events, you give permission to others to speak their thoughts out loud and share their concerns, and that gives permission for more people to tune in.No Kings isn’t designed to change things over night. It’s designed to give people permission to think and act as if there is a national emergency, because we know there is one. And the more of us that start to do that, the more power you start to build, the more power you start to build, the more that you can change things, whether it’s here on the local level, because there’s gonna be a big fight coming in the village of Monroe. Let me tell you, we’ll talk more about that next week.The only way any of these things change is by showing up. And right now, not enough people show up. Not enough people show up in the Village of Monroe. Not enough people show up in Blooming Grove. Not enough people show up in Chester at the Village. At the Village Board meeting. There was only three people at the last one on March 9th. If you want to change things, the first thing you do is show up. So what better place than tomorrow, March 28th, 1 p.m. The Village of Monroe in the downtown between the mill ponds, hands off Hudson Valley, is hosting our No Kings event. We hope to see you there. If you can’t make it, there are plenty of other events to join, including ones in Cornwall and Port Jervis and Warwick and Goshen. We’ll have all of that information for you. (See above.)Either way, we just want you to get out there. And if you’re thinking, well, you know, I voted for Trump, that’s okay. You’re welcome here too. This isn’t a partisan event. This is an American event. This is us as Americans saying that there’s a problem. So if you’re a Republican and you voted for Trump, you’re welcome here. If you are super liberal, like I am, you are welcome there. If you’re on the fence and don’t have a political position, you are welcome there. That’s how you build a movement. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Full Transcript From Today’s Video Is BelowPlease pardon the typos.BJ Mendelson: Why doesn’t Congressman Pat Ryan support a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United?Damn good question to ask, right? Well, here’s the thing. Tomorrow, March 24, from 5:30 to 6:30 is going to be one of those call-in town halls that Congressman Pat Ryan does. The phone number to call at 5:30 is 833-980-3644. That’s tomorrow, Tuesday, March 24, at 5:30 p.m.: 833-980-3644 to call into Congressman Pat Ryan’s town hall.We’ve tried in the past to get people to call in. We had dozens of people call in the last time he did this about South Blooming Grove. And, of course, the congressman’s people did not select any questions concerning South Blooming Grove because—Ever since the Monroe Gazette has been covering the tight relationship between Joel Stern, Isaac Ekstein, and Pat Ryan, there’s been no comment from Pat Ryan’s office on anything. Anything. The fake election? Nothing. The skipped elections? Nothing. The municipal water infrastructure crisis? Nothing. The hydrogen sulfide problem in the Village of Monroe that’s caused by the Village of South Blooming Grove? Nothing. So we had people call in last time, and they ignored all of us.But this time, think: if we all call in and we talk about one federal thing, you might actually get an answer. And it’s something that you should probably hear. So again, I’m going to give you the information one more time. Then we’ll be real quick about the constitutional amendment, and then I’m going to shut down.Tomorrow, Tuesday, March 24, 5:30 to 6:30—if you live in New York’s 18th Congressional District, that’s Congressman Pat Ryan—5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 24, call 833-980-3644 starting at 5:30. Again, it’s 833-980-3644.When you get through, ask very simply: “Why doesn’t Congressman Pat Ryan support a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United?” I know that’s a mouthful, but it’s an important question. That’s the way you want to ask it: why doesn’t he support a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United?Why Citizens United matters to you: if you live, say, in Woodbury, you just saw State Senator Skoufis spend over $20,000 supporting a far-right MAGA bigot named Brandon Calore. He was able to do that, Skoufis, through what was called an independent expenditure committee, which is basically the New York version of a super PAC. Citizens United was the tail end of about 200 years of basically giving liberty rights to corporations. That means treating the corporation as a person, saying that the corporation has a right to speech, and then saying that the corporation has a right to speech in the form of money that it can give to elections.In 2024, when we saw over $250 million spent by Elon Musk to support President Trump, that’s what Citizens United allowed. Congressman Pat Ryan has talked a whole lot about being a trust-buster and being against the big corporations and how tough he is on them. This is the test of that, because if he does not support a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United, you could say he’s full of it. Overturning Citizens United—yes, I know it’s hard to do a constitutional amendment—but it can be done. Remember, this country enacted Prohibition and then quickly repealed it.We can amend the Constitution, and we can do it faster than anyone thinks. We can do big things. You just have to raise your expectations. We as Americans need to start raising our expectations. So if Congressman Pat Ryan does not support a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United, you can say he’s full of it; he’s not going to do anything to curb the corporations.All of this matters because there will come a time when the current regime is out and MAGA is dead, and it will mutate into some crazed, extremist strain with a new name, I’m sure. There will be a day when everything we’re dealing with now will be in the past, and we will ask ourselves how to make sure this never happens again. There’s a longer answer to that, which is the second Bill of Rights. I don’t have time today to talk about the second Bill of Rights, but I can tell you one item in it: overturning Citizens United. If we can get private money out of our elections, you can take your country back from the rich oligarchs. It’s as simple as that. The oligarchs are the ones that fund the fascists in the first place.If you want to get big money out of politics—whether it’s in the Village of Woodbury where a state senator spent $20,000 supporting a far-right candidate, or the state level where the big tech companies clearly influence Governor Hochul’s agenda, all the way to the national level where people like Elon Musk spend hundreds of millions—if you want to stop that, you have to overturn Citizens United. More explicitly, you have to get all private money out of public elections. If there were a constitutional amendment, it should say that private money in elections is forbidden; we’ll get there—that’s a longer conversation.Again, if you live in Pat Ryan’s congressional district, which is New York’s 18th, I’m encouraging you to call and put his feet to the fire. Even though he’s running against, well, nobody knows—probably going to be some crazed MAGA fringe candidate—he’s basically going to run against nobody. It’s important that you still hold people accountable even if nobody’s running against them.Some will say the big fight is Lawler and we should all focus on Lawler. I hear you—that fight matters, and The Monroe Gazette will be covering what happens in Rockland County with Mike Lawler, because that could determine who controls the House. But that does not mean you let Pat Ryan off the hook. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.So that’s all I’ve got for today. Again, this is not a real record store, as you can see from my hand blurring—woo—it’s not real. I wish it was. That was a frequently asked question that we got.If you look at the transcript, there may be typos and errors; it was generated from an AI. If I had the time, I would stop and edit more, but right now I have to finish my book, so I don’t really have time to do that. Please forgive me if there are typos and errors in the transcript. I try to catch the egregious ones, but I don’t catch them all, obviously. I’ll be a little quiet this week because I need to finish the book. If something crazy happens, you will hear from me. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Well hey, it’s Friday. I usually try to do these in the morning and was not successful today. But I wanted to at least close out the week with something fun or at least something that you may laugh at that is more annoying for a reporter to deal with than anything else, but I find it entertaining. So about a decade ago, in fact, on December 20th, 2015, Jay Westerveld we’ll get to him in a second, proposed a monument in Sugarloaf for a state trooper that was murdered. His name was William V. McDonough. I won’t go into the whole thing, but it happened … my family moved here in the 80s. So it happened a decade before we even got here. But Officer McDonough is memorialized both in Monroe and Middletown, and believe in another place as well. And Mr. Westerveld, as he wants to do about a decade ago, started pushing for some kind of monument or memorial in Sugarloaf for Officer McDonough. Here’s the thing, both a decade ago and recently, if you read this week’s edition of The Photo News, Mr. Westerveld has not talked to the family of Officer McDonough. He has not obeyed their wishes that they do not want a memorial of any kind for Officer McDonough. They don’t want to commemorate where he was murdered, essentially. And yet, because Mr. Westerveld wants it … Here we are talking about, so what’s going on? Well, some of you remember back in September of 2024, we started an investigation into Mr. Jay Westerveld. So there’s like a litany of people who approached us that said that he was bullying them, that he’s made racist comments. We were told that he made racist comments towards the Chester Conservation Advisory Chair. We were told that he was bullying and harassing Riverkeeper. We were told that Mr. Westerveld was bullying and harassing Sustainable Warwick. We were told that he was bullying and harassing the actual Sugarloaf historical society and on and on and on and … like there is a laundry list of people that that wrote to us and said “What the f**k” and “this guy is an a*****e. Can you say something?” Can you write about it?”So we started digging around and in September 2024 we made a request to Mr. Westveld. He claims to be like in charge of all these different organizationsAnd so what we did was, under federal law, if you run a not-for-profit and someone says to you, I would like to see the last three years of your Form 990s, under federal law, they have to give that to you. Otherwise, you’re in a lot of trouble. And it raises questions of whether or not you are actually running a not-for-profit. Mr. Westerveld in those two years, has never, never turned over any documentation ever to show us his Form 990s, the Articles of Incorporation, the meeting agendas, the board minutes. Nothing.We’ve tried to find websites for some of these different organizations. They don’t exist. The one that he does use most often, which he calls the Sugarloaf Historical Society, which is not the actual official historical foundation that protects and preserves the memory of Sugarloaf and all the wonderful things that have happened there. He’s just sort of created like his own thing, essentially. That is the one that is incorporated, if you go looking, but...Again, we asked for the Form 990s. So like he’s filing something to the IRS, but he has not provided the documentation publicly for reviews, which is incredibly sketchy. We looked into the other claims involving the racist comments, you know, the poor behavior at meetings, throwing temper tantrums. Those have all been independently confirmed by multiple sources, but we don’t have like a smoking gun. (Meaning, there’s no recording to share of this behavior.)We do have this though …And if you’re looking at the screen, what you see right now is Mr. Westerveld promoting an anti-Semitic conspiracy about yours truly, wherein he’s saying that I filed for bankruptcy and I received big bags of money from the Satmar. So you can see, like, he’s implying that the Monroe Gazette represents some kind of psyop that’s funded by “them”, by the Satmar by the Jews, which is anti-Semitic. So I can say I have factual evidence of Jay Westerveld spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. His statements are factually inaccurate. They’re libelous, and we were ready to take him to court. We had a number of lawyers review Mr. Westerveld’s comments as well as talk to the people that he has attacked. Factually, we can say that he’s a bully. What we found in our review of his finances was that he does not have any assets. Kind of interesting, right? This guy has all these not-for-profit organizations and all these different groups that he claims to be running. He has not turned over his Form 990. And wouldn’t you know it, we couldn’t find any real assets either.So the question the lawyers were like was, well, what do you sue him for if he owns nothing or if he’s like hiding his money somewhere? And so we started to do some more digging and we noticed that Mr. Westerveld for years was telling people that he was a guest lecturer at West Point and at Columbia University. The Columbia University at West Point things are half truths at best, depending on how generous you want to be. I think they’re completely fraudulent. That’s my opinion. I taught once, for example, I did a guest lecturer once at SUNY Potsdam and I’ve given guest lectures at other institutions, including Marist College and Alfred State and down at NYU and down at Columbia University at their J-school. Like I’ve given guest lectures all over the f*****g place. Never once have I ever said that I was a continuing lecturer at any of those institutions. But for years, Mr. Westerveld and we’re gonna put up a copy here on screen so you can take a look at it, has presented a bio to the public saying, you know, that he’s a regular guest lecturer.What we were able to find is that Mr. Westerveld one time provided a walking tour at West Point and one time, again, as far as we can tell, offered a guest lecture at an adult extension school that linked to Columbia University. So he was not a guest lecturer at Columbia University. He gave one lecture, again, as far as we can tell, at Columbia University’s extension school one time over a decade ago. And yet that hasn’t stopped him from repeatedly telling people that he’s a guest lecturer at these two institutions.So we reached out to Columbia University and West Point for comment. Both of them said, “we can’t verify that this guy ever taught here.” We talked to the people at West Point off the record who adamantly said, you know, if this guy’s running around saying he’s giving guest lectures at West Point, that’s a problem. So I tell you all this because...There’s an article in the Photo-News this weekend and in the Chronicle and in the Warwick Advertiser. And I don’t know where else Jeanne Strauss put it. We could talk about the The Photo-News at length some other time, but there is a article or there is a letter to the editor in the The Photo-News where Mr. Westerfeld did not use his name. And I kind of wonder if that happened because we wrote to Jeanne Strauss and we showed Jeanne Strauss the anti-Semitic comments that were factually inaccurate that were posted and spread by Jay Westerfeld and some of his fake accounts that we’ve been made aware of. And so we said to her, you are a platforming a Nazi, essentially. Like this anti-Semitic conspiracy is virulent You’re implying that there’s like some Jewish conspiracy involving a Jewish reporter and the Satmar.So why do you, we said to Strauss why do you continue to platform a Nazi essentially? So this morning, if you look at the photo news, which is where I saw it, there is a letter on behalf of the Board of Directors of the Sugar Loaf Historical Society.We don’t know who those board of directors are as far as we know. It’s just Jay Westerveld. He did not put his name. He also claims that he’s essentially being derailed in some way that we should have a monument in Sugar Loaf for Officer McDonough, despite the fact the family has said, no, we do not want it. We do not want it. This man, this con man, and I have no problem saying to you right now. And Mr. Westerveld, I know you’ll watch this at some point. Feel free to sue me. Because I believe that J. Westerveld is an anti-Semite and a con man, and I got the receipts. And if he wants to use the memory of a brave man who served our community and was murdered in the line of duty, well, I think that just speaks volumes about him.Any chance that I get to take a shot at a con man and anti-semite Jay Westerveld, I will do it because I believe these people are dangers to the community and they’re vectors of disinformation and misinformation. And in the case of Mr. Westerveld, there is all, like I said, all litany of groups and people who have been bullied by him, who have been mischaracterized by him, who have been on the receiving end of letters to the editor that Jeanne Strauss has published without fact checking.The one that ran this weekend is another example of something that was not fact-checked and probably should have been fact-checked, but wasn’t. So I just think it’s important to call these things out. One other fun thing about Mr. Westworld, he’s tried to make himself a public figure. He claims that he invented the term greenwashing. There’s no evidence of that. He might have used it once in an essay that was published back in 1983, but it’s not clear how many people actually saw that essay. What is clear, however, is that he’s certainly taking credit for creating the word, greenwashing, but there’s no peer-reviewed research anywhere that he’s ever published. And so this claim that he’s an environmental expert does not hold much water. (I don’t dispute that he’s done work in the field, but based on his online behavior, I am skeptical of his overall expertise.)In fact, one of the organizations that I can factually say he started s**t with is Riverkeeper. And if you’re starting a fight with, I mean ... Riverkeeper isn’t perfect.But if you’re starting s**t with Riverkeeper, in this area, if you know the history, like if you know the environmental history of Southern Orange County involving Cornwall and Cornwall on the Hudson and the plant that they wanted to put there, and the huge battle that took place, which led to, I don’t know if it was the formation of Riverkeeper, but it was one of the early significant battles that Riverkeeper waged on behalf of this community. So if you’re talking s**t about Riverkeeper, I mean, that says a lot about you. (For more on Riverkeeper’s founding and action in Cornwall), see the recent documentary, “The Keeper”)So, Jay Westerveld is a con man and anti-Semite. I will say that every single day at every opportunity. He’s free to sue us because if he does, we get to depose him. And that also means that we get to talk to everyone that he’s ever bullied and we get to bring them to court as well. And believe me, these people have wanted a day in court with Mr. Westerveld. So, please bring it Jay.I hope you all have a great weekend. I know it was a rough week. Things are very challenging in the world right now.I was hoping this ridiculous story might bring you some entertainment or amusement. I don’t know if it did. It might have pissed you off if anything else. And so, you know, I just want you to keep an eye out for organizations and people like this because we need fact checkers and we need people to stand up and say, that’s misinformation, that’s disinformation. And so in the case of Mr. Westerveld and his … to me, it’s grave robbing. Honestly, like I feel like it’s a local anti-Semite doing some grave robbing to continue his quest to remain relevant.Leave this trooper alone. Leave his family alone. This has been some kind of like sick quest of his for over a decade now. We’re tired of it. We’re tired of the bullying. We’re tired of misinformation. And from now on, every single time his head comes out of the sand, we’re gonna be there to smack him back down. I’ll catch you on Monday.3.22.26 Addendum: I want to talk real quick about this specific part of a longer, b******t statement that appeared on the MAGA Free Warwick Facebook group. They don’t like our Hunter S. Thompson style presentation. Many Facebook groups admins don’t. We don’t blame them. But our style gets results, and so we must defend it whenever possible.Their statement followed my request for members of the group to write to us with their stories about Jay Westerveld. Something we encourage the Chester and Warwick community to do by emailing us at [email protected] part of their statement we took issue with is this:“When pressed for evidence, he made statements that were proven to be inaccurate, and when those inaccuracies were pointed out, rather than step back and consider new information, BJ waved off the corrections and persisted in his attacks." This was a statement made by MAGA Free Warwick’s moderator, Christopher Keelty and others moderators. And …It’s total b******t.There is no inaccuracy in our reporting about Mr. Westerveld. There is no evidence that he ever served as a guest lecturer at West Point and Columbia University. The video above provides screenshots to support our statements. We also invited, repeatedly, Mr. Westerveld to sue us if we said anything that wasn’t true. In two years since our investigation into him began, he has not done so.The reason we keep daring Mr. Westerveld to sue us is because he would have to demonstrate that we’re lying. Which we are not.We also provided Mr Keelty with screenshots from both West Point and Columbia University (below) which Keelty and the moderators conveniently ignored in their statement posted in the group. Keelty had asked if we had verification of statements by both universities. We did. He claims Westerveld has a screenshot showing that he taught one class, one time, a decade ago, at the extension school for Columbia University, which again, is not the actual Columbia University. Or at least the same Columbia Mr. Westerveld mislead people to believe for many, many years.And, as mentioned, Mr. Keelty also informed us directly that he / other moderators don’t prefer our Hunter S. Thompson-style presentation, and that Mr. Thompson was not a journalist. This too, is b******t.And it reminds me of Skoufis’s chief of Staff, Emma Fuentes, saying Frederick Douglas wasn’t a journalist. Both statements are moronic and historically inaccurate. Since the state of Journalism in America today is awful, we feel an obligation to speak up for Mr. Thompson.While he is known for fiction, other books concerning the Hell’s Angels and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 are considered modern classics in the field of journalism. Especially the latter book, which is often pointed to as the second best work of political journalism concerning an American presidential campaign. (The first book, by the way, is The Boys on The Bus by Timothy Course.)If you don’t want to take my word for it though, check out how Britannica refers to Thompson (highlighted.) See the word journalist?We asked Mr. Keelty to provide supporting documentation for his claim Hunter S. Thompson does not count as a journalist, which he refused to do. So, I guess it’s cool to make inaccurate claims about our reporting with no evidence. But when we ask for evidence of a claim made by Mr. Keelty and others, none was provided.Usually we’d ignore this, but for a group calling itself MAGA-Free anything, that behavior sure felt very MAGA-like: Slander the journalist with BS, not be able to support your claims when challenged.If anyone wants to come and take shots at our reporting? You better believe we have all the receipts. Here are the screen shots Mr. Keelty was provided with, that he then, with the other moderators, told the public “were proven to be inaccurate.” This is a libelous statement.The only other context you need for the below screenshots is that we had an extensive off the record conversation concerning Mr. Westerveld’s West Point claim, which is alluded to in the Columbia email below and explicitly mention in the video we recorded on Friday.To reiterate: West Point would be PISSED to learn Mr. Westerveld is still implying some kind of connection with them concerning his teaching there.We gladly take criticism. What we won’t take, from anyone, is an attack on the credibility of our reporting or statements to the public. People demanding a MAGA-Free anything should know better. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Village of Monroe Final Election ResultsWe can confirm as of 9:46pm the final tallies for the Village of Monroe vote are:676 for Alex Melchiorre. 548 votes for Neil Dwyer.730 votes for Joe Mancuso. 733 for Nancy Peifer, 487 for Andy Ferraro and 483 for Martin O’Connor.(Editor note: I have revised the numbers above on 3/19 at 3:42pm to reflect final tallies. Last night when this article published we only had the unofficial results.)So, congratulations Village of Monroe, you now have a MAGA Board, and guess who got the results and posted about it immediately?Full Transcript From Today’s Video. Please pardon any typos as this was generated via our podcast software. I’ve edited the transcript below for clarity, not spelling and grammar. I’ll come back and fix up any egregious mistakes asap.BJ: It’s Wednesday. It’s time for another recording and we’re going to cover three different things that are happening. It would help if I can speak. Three things that are happening that I wanted to talk about. We’re not going to do the Q and A every week. I might do it every other week because we have, sorry, I have a cat and the cat likes to lay in the microphone. So there’s always cat hair on this microphone. Pardon me. Okay.So there’s three things I wanted to cover in today’s video. We’re gonna do the Q &A maybe every other week, just so I have time, because if I do the Q &A, it’s like an hour long. And as you saw on Monday, when I post the Q &A transcript, it takes effort to read through for people. I might do it like every other week, just to give people a break. And in between weeks, I’ll come out here and I’ll talk to you about a couple of things that are going on. So.Mrs. Moslem vs. The Village of WoodburyFirst I want to tell you about the Post that went up yesterday, which was dealing with Mrs. Moslem who has been speaking at the Woodbury Village meetings and town meetings for as long as the Monroe Gazette has been around, which is about two years now. And after I published the article, there was just like a bit of a knot in my stomach because I...I felt like on one hand, I understand where Mrs. Moslem is coming from. I have a level of empathy that I have for her situation.So, you know, I can understand if my husband and son went away to prison for 96 months, I think it was, in one case, and a lesser sentence for Saeed Moslem I, you know, if I was Mrs Moslem and I believed that my son is a hero, which you saw her leave in a Facebook comment in the Better Woodbury, or For a Better Woodbury Facebook group, Mrs. Moslem was very adamant that she believes her son is a hero, so.I can understand trying everything to try to prove innocence, right? So on one hand, I get it. On the other hand, the concern is there doesn’t seem to be any sort of surefire link between the town of Woodbury, the village of Woodbury and Mrs. Moslem’s case. she, so if you watched the most recent meeting, which I think wasI’m looking at my calendar here. I think it was the Thursday, March 12th meeting in Village of Woodbury where they essentially, she just derails the entire meeting because lately I don’t know if you noticed, but since Mr. Freiband and Mr. Fabbro are gone, the Village of Woodbury meeting is now like a half hour long, which is fantastic. And also in town of Monroe, not to be left out, also now has much shorter meetings, which is kind of great.But at the meeting just recently, Mrs. Moslem had just this sprawling extended discussion concerning her case and her belief that the village, the creation of the village somehow led to it. still, I’ve read the email that she sent me. I still do not understand where the connection is between the creation and the town and the creation of the town and the village of Woodbury or the separation of Woodbury.into a town and village and defrauding the federal government. Because if you read the court documents that are in PACER, which is PACER.gov, which is sort of like the federal court lookup system, you can find all of the records involving the Moslem’s case. And what it looks like is that the case hinged on hours and hours of recording from a really shady accountant that they were working with. Now,I don’t like, I don’t know, you don’t know, she may not know what was going on with the context of those recordings, right? But the accountant that they were working with was Shady. He was an FBI informant. He did help other people inflate their income. Those people were also arrested, which is something Mrs. Moslem has not mentioned. And I think that’s important to point out because I think part of her argument that she sent me was, you know, they were dealing with an FBI informant. Well,He wasn’t an FBI informant when you started to work with him. He became an FBI informant about two years later. And at some point, he started to record conversations with Mr. Moslem and Mr. Moslem’s son, where they said, allegedly on the recording, that they basically knew what they were doing, and they knew it was wrong, and they just wanted him to do it. Again, without those actual recordings, I don’t know.what was said, but we know the recordings exist and we know the recordings exist because the accountant a year later, a year after Mr. Moslem and his son were found guilty, the accountant also faced additional criminal charges for another case. And when he was facing sentencing, the prosecutors that he had worked with wrote a letter on his behalf to the judge. And in that letter, they said the hours of recording that documented fraudulent activity on the part of Moslems is what led to that conviction. SoIt’s her opinion that there’s some kind of conspiracy. It’s her opinion that something untoward happened, but factually, at least from what the judge ruled. And, you know, look, if you look at Moslem v. United States v. Moslem and then Moslem v. United States, which are all the appeals, you just see the judge throwing out appeal after appeal after appeal. So does that mean she’s wrong?I don’t know. But it does at least suggest that whatever happened is not the business of the village of Woodbury and it’s not the business of the town of Woodbury. And that’s really important because if Mrs. Moslem for over a year now or over two years has derailed essentially or has used public comment to essentially, I feel this is my opinion, to essentially entrap the village of Woodbury or the town of Woodbury.She shouldn’t be allowed to do that. Like that’s not a thing you should be allowed to do. I had the same problem and many of you had the same problem where James Freiband when he was a village trustee, was constantly trying to entrap the village of Woodbury into lawsuits. You he tried that with the New York State Thruway Authority, where he was talking about stuff from the executive session. I’m just gonna take these glasses off, sorry. They’re just gonna bother me.So in New York state, thruway authority, took stuff that he had heard in executive session and like started blurted out during village meetings, like to try to, to get the New York state thruway authority to sue the village of Woodbury. That wasn’t okay either. So regardless of what Mrs. Moslem believes and regardless of whether or not there was a conspiracy, factually, we can say that the village of Woodbury played no role in that conspiracy and the town of Woodbury played no role in that conspiracy. And the person Mrs. Moslem alleges was the village attorney was not the village attorney. Does that mean that he did something shady? Again, this is something that happened almost 20 years ago and we’ve reached out to everyone for comment. The shady accountant, we reached out to him for comment. I don’t know if I can show you, I was gonna hold on my phone, but that’d be kind of foolish.We reached out to everyone for comment. We gathered all the facts that we could before we published our story.My issue is simply, you can’t. Public comment is something that I think people don’t think about a lot. Like they assume that they have the right to speak at a meeting. And, you know, on paper you should have a right to speak at a town and village meeting. But that’s not really how it works. Like public comment is not a right, it’s a privilege. Which is really fucked up. It should be right, but it’s not.And so at any time, a town or village, if you live in Woodbury or you live in Monroe, you’ve seen it with Tony Cardone, limiting people’s speech to three minutes. Public comment is something that a town or village can mess with. And so what you don’t want is someone abusing public comment in such a way that it creates an excuse for the Kathryn Luciani’s of the world and the Brandon Calore’s of the world or the Tony Cardone’s of the world to say, we’re just not going to let people speak. If you’re going to come up and repeatedly try to get us entrapped in your lawsuit, we’re just not going let you speak. And we’re not going let anyone speak, because that’s how it works. You can’t ban one person from speaking. You can ban all people from speaking. But you can’t ban one person. In the case of Mrs. Moslem we as the Monroe Gazette Wrote a letter to the town board and the village board, essentially arguing that while we sympathize with the case, know, any, again, if I put myself in her shoes and if I was the mother of a son who was in prison, and in prison for a long time, and, you he was in solitary according to the paperwork that I read, the federal case, and Mrs. Moslem filed an appeal in February of 2026 on Saeed Moslem’s behalf.So again, I have a lot of empathy. just, you don’t want people to use their own, whether it’s well motivated or not, you don’t want people to use their personal agendas during the public time. That’s your time. That’s your time to come and talk about the budget. And that’s your time to talk about taxes. And that’s your time to talk about issues that are affecting you that are related to town and village or city business. It’s not the time to...to litigate essentially, is what’s happening. And by the way, like there was another, I’m blanking on his name, but I don’t know if you remember, it was recently, there was another attorney that came during public comment, I think it was in November or December, at a Village of Woodbury board meeting. And he was kind of like, who do I sue? Because he was talking about the sewer moratorium. And that’s not okay either. Like I don’t think that’s right. So we wrote a letter to the Town and Village Board where we were like, listen, if you’re going to use public comment to entrap the village or the town, you really shouldn’t be allowed to do that. That’s not okay for anybody. Because let’s say, let’s put our shoes on, I’m sorry, let’s put ourselves where Mrs. Moslem is coming from, Let’s say, hypothetically, that the guy that she claims worked for the village of Woodbury actually did something wrong. Let’s assume, just for sake of argument, that he did something wrong. And someone at a village board meeting says, yeah, he did something wrong. Then Mrs Moslem could, pro se, file a lawsuit against them. She doesn’t need a lawyer. You can do it yourself. It only costs you like $500. What if she just files a lawsuit saying, the village of Woodbury engaged in conspiracy against my son.And here are the minutes from the village board meeting, right? That where someone said, yeah, that’s fucked up and that person did something wrong. So that’s my whole thing. But I just, felt uncomfortable because I didn’t want to feel like, I didn’t want to give the impression that we were singling her out because that’s not really what we were trying to do. We just, when people appear before, we don’t want people to ruin public comment. It is really like our, position of The Monroe Gazette is that public comment should be a right.It is not a right, it’s a privilege, which means that it can be taken away. And so you really, as a community, you really want to police yourselves a bit and say, all right, you you’ve been talking about this for over a year now, maybe it’s time to sit down and try another route. And, know, we’re not saying don’t fight the good fight. Well, what we’re saying is this is not an appropriate forum. So that’s, that’s the whole thing. I just didn’t feel right after I published that story.That rarely happens. We think a lot. And it is we. It’s not just me that works on this stuff. We put a lot of thought and care into the stories that we publish. even when we’re snarky, or even when it’s a character, B.J. Mendelsohn is a character, it’s Hunter S. Thompson writing a local news story. That’s the whole shtick of the Monroe Gazette that is what if Hunter S. Thompson could only write local news. Happening within like a 10 mile radius. And so that’s fun. And most of you get that. But occasionally, you don’t know where we’re coming from. Or if you don’t realize that the Monroe Gazette is that it has an exaggerated voice. It could seem mean spirited And so we just didn’t feel right about that. So that’s the whole thing. I don’t know where that goes. I don’t think it’s the end of that story. We are actually.Trying to get the recordings that were submitted in federal court. There’s apparently like 10 hours of recordings between the Moslems and this accountant. We’re gonna try to get that. I’m not necessarily gonna publish it, but I am gonna try to get it. So if this comes back up, for whatever reason, if the story continues, well, we at least have it and we can share it with you if we need to. We’re also gonna put in a FOIL request for everything having to do with Exclusive Motorsports, which is the name of the business.For example, Saeed Moslem was before the village of Woodbury Planning Board, and they were talking about these apartments and how many people are going to live in the apartments. I guess he made, Saeed made a flip remark about how many people could live there. it was something going to the effect of maybe there’s two to four people living there unless they’re Mexicans is essentially what he said, which is offensive.So I’m trying to get that as well because we did this. We did ask Mrs. Moslem to respond to, you know, your son said like she said her son was a hero and we were like, all right, well, your son made a racist comment at the planning board meeting. Like that’s part of this story. Like we can’t you don’t do you shouldn’t diefy anyone. But anyway, so we’re going to try to do some information gathering on that just just to see. Let put my glasses on for just a second.Because I just want to see if we’re actually like live streaming or if it’s just fucking me and saying that’s live streaming. Okay, so that’s that. Let’s go to our next story, which is the village of Monroe. How Alex Melchiorre Is Going to Fuck Monroe Residents This Time …I’m recording this at it’s 2.31 PM. At this time, the head count is not looking good for Neil Dwyer and Andy Ferro and Martin O’Connor. I don’t have the results.We will not have the results until about 9:15 or 9:30 this evening. A lot can change. know, people haven’t gotten back from work yet. So if you haven’t voted yet in the Village of Monroe, I encourage you to go vote. Let’s play But let’s play this out, right? The reason why I wanted to record this today instead of doing a Q &A is I want to talk about this. Like what happens in the Village of Monroe if you suddenly have a hostile mayor, right? If you suddenly have a MAGA mayor, which is what you’re looking at. There’s a lot of issues here. Chief among them is Alex Melchiorre is the Blooming Grove Chief of Police. Can he run as the Chief of Police and be the village mayor? So New York State Board of Elections was kind of like, you know, maybe, like they weren’t very, they didn’t write back and they weren’t emphatic. Like they were kind of like, you know,Maybe you should check with the County Board of Elections and see if it’s OK. Supervisor Robert Jeroloman and the Town of Blooming Grove didn’t have an issue with Melchiorre running. So that’s a whole different issue, right? So there’s this question I’ve gotten of, can you be the police chief and run for mayor in the neighboring municipality? And the answer seems to be maybe. But then there’s this other question of, OK, well, if you’re elected mayor and you were the police chief in Blooming Grove,How does that work? And that there seems to be a bit more documentation around conflicts of interest from the attorney general’s office. The Monroe Gazette has reached out to the attorney general’s office about is there a conflict of interest and if so, how is it remedied? If you’re watching this, you know the attorney general’s office kind of sucks. They’ve only ever gotten back to us once, no, twice in the history of The Monroe Gazette Like they have only ever replied to us twice. First was about a thing in Sullivan County.And then the second time was just recently where we wanted, we put in a FOIL request for a letter that the state AG had sent to ICE. And they got that right to us. within an hour or two that I put in the FOIL, the head of PR and communications for Letitia James got back to us. So, it’s not that they’re not reading the emails, clearly they are. They just choose to get back to us whenever they feel like it. So we did ask the attorney general’s office about whether or not there was an issue.with Melchiorre being police chief and mayor. The second issue is if you are the 40 % Latino population in the village of Monroe and you suddenly have a MAGA Mayor what happens? Does he fire Chief Guzman? Probably not because Guzman and Melchiorre apparentlyThey know each other. They’ve got a good relationship. I haven’t heard or seen anything that would indicate a change in the chief of police, which is good because Chief Guzman has been very good in communicating with the Latino community about ICE and about some of the issues. But there is a concern of, well, you know, before Dwyer wasn’t backing the Melt Act resolution, right? Like he wasn’t backing New York for All. Well, now you’ve got a MAGA mayor and you’ve got a MAGA majority on the village board.So you can just kiss that goodbye. That’s an issue. That’s a very big issue that we’re probably gonna have to spend a lot of time and resources just figuring out what’s going on there. Like who is speaking up for the Latino community in the village of Monroe? It’s not gonna be Alex Melchiorre So that’s another issue. And then there’s other complications, right? So like the Roscoe Smith property, the village of Monroe wanted to, or is, I never...I never quite got the status of this. My understanding is that they did file an eminent domain, but don’t hold me to that because I haven’t found any documentation to show that there’s an eminent domain proceeding. But now you’ve got this question of, if the village entered an eminent domain proceeding for the Roscoe Smith property, and suddenly you’ve got a MAGA board with the backing of Satmar landlords such as Avrohom Flohrand real estate representatives such as Lipa Deutsch, what happens to the Roscoe-Smith property? Because they wanted to subdivide that. does that eminent domain request get thrown out? That’s a question for the Village of Monroe residents to start asking. And that’s a question for us as The Monroe Gazette to investigate. So that’s a thing to pay attention to. And then there’s also other issues. So we talked about ICE. We talked about the eminent domain issue.Flohr and Deutsch have properties with about a decade worth of building code violations. I have a list of all of them. Some of the citations aren’t huge deals, to be fair. One of them is like, a tree was down. The tree is down on your property. Come get the tree. OK. I was looking for something a bit more concerning, honestly, when I put in the FOIL request for Flohr and Deutsch’s properties. And I was much more concerned about.Is there mold, right? Are they renting the property and there’s mold and the mold is not being treated? Are they renting the property and then are they harassing and taking advantage of the undocumented Latino community, right? Are they saying, if you don’t pay rent, we’re going to call ICE? Are they saying that, like, those are the things that we, as The Monroe Gazette we’re concerned with. What we got was instead a list of like code enforcement violations, which, yeah, those are legitimate. Like, I’m not, I don’t want to sound like I’m making excuses. Like if you are,wealthy enough to be a landlord, you are wealthy enough to take care of your property, period. And so I don’t want to sound like I’m dismissing it, but we were looking for something a more substantial and we just didn’t see it. But there are questions now of, okay, well, if you want to take the housing in the village of Monroe and you want to build on it let’s say you want to put in an accessory apartment. On one hand, there is a housing shortage. I just wrote a letter to the town board saying, I don’t want any Airbnb.Because every time you take a housing unit off the market and make it a rental, you’re making the housing shortage worse. So if you live in Southern Orange County and you’re like, I don’t want high density housing, you should be opposed to those Airbnbs It’s because every time it becomes a rental, that’s a house that’s come off the market, which means that there’s one more house we need to build. There’s one more housing unit we need to build. So on one hand, you know, if you say to me, well, we want accessory apartments because grandma needs a place to live. I totally get it. I totally support that.But then there’s this question of, well, is grandma really gonna live in the accessory apartment or is it gonna be someone who’s here that’s undocumented that you’re gonna take advantage of because they need housing and you know that they can’t get housing through other means because they’re undocumented. these are all things to be concerned with with the Village of Monroe.My other concern is this. a big issue in the town election was what happens with this IMA between the village and the town, this proposed IMA, where the village would offer police services to the town of Monroe at a rate of about $2 million. It was $2 million at start, and it would come down to about $1.87 million. That was the offer the village made. was like it was for 10 officers and new vehicles and... support staff and just all these things that you would need to expand. Is that going to happen under Alex Melchiorre? Because remember, Alex Melchiorre was hired, and I have to use the quotation marks because it was never really clear if Melchiorre was making money off of this. The Town of Monroe said no, but the Town of Monroe under Tony Cardone lied, so we don’t know.But there is a real concern of Alex Melchiorre was the one that was shepherding the arrangement between the town of Monroe and Paul Arteta, the sheriff who is pro-ice. So is Alex Melchiorre going to be amenable to a village IMA that provides police services to the town of Monroe? And if not, what does the town of Monroe do? So that’s a big issue. Like that was an election. was...That was an issue that I think played a massive role in, you know, because voters, if you’re watching this, you’re not in like in the 90 % of voters, right? Like you’re in that 9 % or even 1 % of like you’re engaged or kind of engaged. So you pay attention to local issues, but that’s not most people. Like most people only start to pay attention maybe a month, if that, right? Before an election. And so whatever’s top of mind that month, that’s why they call it an October surprise.In presidential politics. They call it the October surprise because that’s when the majority of people are paying attention. so the October surprise for Tony Cardone was this sheriff thing. And so now you’ve got people that voted for Maureen Richardson and Beth Stephens and Luis Rivera on this issue of we want the police force to police the town. And now you’ve got a hostile mayor.Right? Like you’ve got a mayor who is not for that. So what happens? And we don’t, you know, again, it’s 2:41 it’s not nine o’clock yet. We don’t know how the selection is going to turn out, but I’m just trying to game out now, or at least run scenarios by you of things to look out for if Alex Melchiorre wins. I mean, Neil Dwyer wins great. There, you know, there’s no secret that I have issues concerning ICE’s presence in the village of Monroe. I think that you, Monroe, the village of Monroe , well the town has already passed a resolution supporting the MELT ACT and I understand the town is also going to support a resolution for New York for All, which is fantastic, but the village wouldn’t, right? So you can just forget that under Alex Melchiorre. Like, it’s just not gonna happen unless you scream at him. I’m happy to arrange that screaming, so more on that. So it’s a long way of saying,The scenario here is very fluid. And the town of Monroe now, if, if Melchiorre and remember it’s not just Melchiorre, it’s Mancuso and Pfeiffer. So you now have a board majority. You have the MAGA majority if they went on the village of Monroe. And then you’ve got, you know, I’m sorry, you’ve got John Karl and Debbie Behringer left. I’ve got, I’m sure Mrs. Behringer is very nice. I have not met her in person. Maybe I have once. I have issues with Mrs. Behringer because during the sheriff debate, for three straight meetings. She just kind of sat there and let Tony Cardone and Dorey Houl lie to the town. And not once did she get up and say, hey, none of that was true, which I thought was really fucked up because she’s friends with Dorey and Tony and that’s fine. But when you’re an elected official, your job isn’t to protect your friends. Your job is to speak on behalf of the people that elected you. And on behalf of the people that elected you, Tony Cardone and Dorey Ghoul as I call her, are lying.And your job is the fact check. Your job as a village trustees is to get up and say, no, none of that was true. She didn’t do that. She didn’t do that at three meetings, three consecutive meetings. She did not do that. And then she got up to defend Sal Scancarello because we at the Monroe Gazette had asked about, you know, I think you know the story, if not, Scancarello’s son had a TikTok account and he recorded videos this summer at the Monroe Target, his son, not Sal Scancarello, where Sal’s son was like threatening to murder.Hasidic men, Samar men. And ⁓ that’s a real thing that people were upset about. And we asked him we said, do you want to apologize on behalf of your son? Or do you want to apologize to the Jewish community for these videos? And Debbie Behringer got up and was like, well, you got to bring your sons into it. And I’m thinking like, what the fuck, Debbie? That’s not what, I don’t care that his kid did it. I care that an elected official during a time of rising anti-Semitism across America had a son.Recording videos at the local Target where he threatened to murder Satmar men. Now, or not it was a prank, which I’m sure it was, I don’t think it was like an actual hate crime or an attempted hate crime, whether or not it was a joke, it doesn’t matter. nationally, there is a problem with anti-Semitism. So Debbie got up and that was the thing that she spoke about with Sal Scancarello’s son. like, as far as I’m concerned, if you live in the Village of Monroe, you should vote her out when she’s up. So she’s left over and then John Karl’s left over. And John Karl to his credit has been the one consistently that has talked about the hydrogen sulfide issue in the village of Monroe. Like he has, him and Neil Dwyer have repeatedly since 2021 emailed Orange County saying, there’s an odor, we know where it’s coming from. We know it’s South Blooming Grove. We know it’s because South Blooming Grove won’t turn on the ANUE system. And will you do something about it, right? Like they were the Neil Dwyer and John Karl were the ones banging on drum. And then Maureen Richardson picked it up. Rightfully so, because it is an issue, because Tony Cardone ignored it for years. So like John Karl is one thing, like he’s been pretty consistent about communicating this. And by the way, that hydrogen sulfide issue isn’t over.In fact, the issue is a little worse than people thought, not in terms of the hydrogen sulfide levels. So the hydrogen sulfide levels, at least I’m trying to think of the day. I saw documents going as far back as like January. I haven’t seen anything recently, but as of January, the levels seem tolerable. You occasionally smell it, but it’s not dangerous. But the issue is this. The issue is how we all thought, including myself.That the hydrogen sulfide was only coming out of two sewer grates, right? It was coming out of the one in the playground and it was coming out of the one across the street. You know, I took the bus for years across the street from what was Monroe taxi and then became The Depot and I don’t what’s there’s now, but that’s sewergrate where you stand to get the short line bus into the port authority was the other source of the emissions. As it turns out, it’s multiple sources. Like it’s not just those two manholes. The hydrogen sulfide smell is coming from many manholes in the Village of Monroe And that’s sort of that situation now. And so here’s another question to think about. Alex Melchiorre is buddies with Isaac Ekstein That’s a fact. There was a fire recently at 33 Tanger Road. Robert Jeroloman, the supervisor of Blooming Grove, disputes this story. But I’ve heard from multiple first responders that were on the scene that Melchiorre and Ekstein were palling around. And Melchiorre was telling anyone that would listen that Isaac is great and the media should be nicer to him.There was another instance where the NBC reporters came to George Kalaj’s house to talk to him about the helicopter and George Kalaj called Isaac. Ekstein blocked in the NBC reporters and then Ekstein called Blooming Grove police. And then within a couple of minutes, Blooming Grove police was there to question the reporters. Ekstein and Melchiorre are tight. So here’s another question. Ekstein and Stern have publicly said that they will not turn on the ANUE system, which would stop or at least cut down on the hydrogen sulfide problem in Monroe until Orange County drops its lawsuit over Gonzaga Park, which is not happening. I think we’ve bullied Neuhaus enough to where that case is not going to be dropped, or at least it’ll be suicide for Neuhas to drop that case. But what happens when you have a mayor of Monroe who doesn’t want to deal with the hydrogen sulfide issue, because it’s his buddy, who he doesn’t want to upset EksteinThat’s a real problem. And that’s something we have to think about. So more to come on the village of Monroe. It is deeply concerning. I’ve been on the phone. I’m supposed to work on my taxes today. I was supposed to. I had this whole day set aside where I was like, all right, I’m going to go and I’m to meet with some people. We’re going to talk to some local activists about me running for state senate as a write-in. More on that later. And then I’m going to come home and I’m going to work on my taxes. And that was my plan. And then …It’s just sort of been nonstop of talking to local elected officials about, OK, well, let’s say Melchiorre wins. How does that impact the town of Monroe? How does that impact the town and village of Woodbury? How does that impact the town and village of Chester? Can, for example, the town of Chester provide police coverage to parts of the unincorporated section of Monroe that’s on the border? And could the town of Woodbury provide police coverage to parts of Monroe and Harriman?So that maybe we don’t need to expand the village police, maybe we just create like these zones where maybe there’s some help from the neighboring municipalities, maybe it’s the IMA. Personally, if it was me, if it was me.I would take all of the police forces in Monroe, Woodbury, Chester, Blooming Grove, and Palm Tree if they’re interested, and Warwick and Tuxedo if they were interested, and even Cornwall if they were interested, and I would merge them. And I would say we now have a one unified municipal police force, and they police everywhere. They’re held accountable to a higher standard if you do that.I know people’s first reaction is usually, no, layoffs. And I don’t want layoffs. I want more police. I want more police. I want better paid police, better trained police. But I feel like we have all these little fiefdoms with the local police forces and we have all these territorial disputes and you have parts of Monroe that have no coverage. You have other parts of the area that have no coverage. And it seems to me that a simple solution would just be to unify the police.And have one agency responsible. That’ll never happen. That’s just me. I would love to see it happen. It will never happen. There’s too many egos involved. There’s too many fiefdoms involved. I don’t want to take shots at anybody. I don’t think it will happen. But I think it’s a good idea, honestly, because if you’re a town of Monroe resident, great idea, because you’ve got your police coverage. I also think for EMS and fire.I want those people paid. I don’t want volunteer firefighters and volunteer EMS in the 21st century, in 2026, in a world where no one can afford to live, let alone do much of anything else, including vote, including coming to town and village meetings. I want everyone paid. The only way to do that though is a merger. Do You Think This Is An Emergency Or Not?Anyway, the last thing I want to talk to you about is really two simple questions.The first one is this.If you feel, or the question should be, do you feel that we are living through a national emergency? Yes or no? Because a lot of people say no. And you can tell. You can tell with the ice and Chester thing. There was a lot of people who showed their ass. There was a lot of people that were like, know, it’s a Chester, we’re in Woodbury, that’s a Chester problem, why are we talking about a Chester problem?And it’s like, well, listen, dipshit, this is a constitutional problem first. And last time I checked, all elected officials are sworn to uphold the Constitution. So in our Constitution, I’m looking for my copy of it. I can’t reach it and be on camera at the same time. In the Constitution, you’ll notice it says people and it says citizens. And that is very deliberate. Like that was a deliberate choice by the founders of America and the framers of the Constitution and by the people who wrote the 14th Amendment.Like … Roscoe Conklin is a guy not a lot of people know. If you saw Death by Lightning on Netflix, actually here, do this. If you want to look for a fun watch, it was really good. It was a lot of fun to watch. But the bad guy is not really the bad guy in real life. So the bad guy in Death by Lightning, one of them is Roscoe Conklin, right? And he’s sort of this rival to Garfield who’s running for president, not.No, not Andrew Garfield, guy who played Spider-Man once. The other Garfield, the ran for president. Him and Conklin were at odds. And so if you watch Death by Lightning, Conklin is portrayed as a bad guy. But Conklin is one of the framers of the 14th Amendment. And Conklin was very clear in the wording of the 14th Amendment where he said, it says people, not citizens, all people.In the United States, the law shall be applied to them equally. That was an intentional choice by the founders or framers of the 14th Amendment. So when we talk about things like ICE, it’s a constitutional issue. And I don’t care if you are a MAGA Woodbury town board member, like Calore or if you’re MAGA mayor, like Alex Melchiorre if you do become mayor, because it doesn’t matter what you think. The Constitution says the laws of the United States shall be applied equally to people, period.For further proof of that, after the 14th Amendment was passed, the Supreme Court, people get mad at the Supreme Court, saying like, oh, look at them selling out to the corporation. But with the exception of the 1960s, 50s and 60s and part of 70s, there was like this brief blip. And there was a blip where the Supreme Court was like, we’re going to put people first. But before and after, the Supreme Court was putting corporations first.And they were always put in corporations first. And we can show that through the history of the 14th Amendment. Because the 14th Amendment says the word person and people and not just citizen, the rights of corporations grew after the 14th Amendment because the argument that was made repeatedly in different cases was corporations are people too. That was something that was implied a bunch of times. Other times it was outright stated. So the 14th Amendment says that people.You have to apply the laws equally to all people, which includes people that are here undocumented. And so, the question is, do you think we’re living through an emergency? And when the 14th Amendment is, that is the most important amendment, and I understand.Look, most people don’t go to college. College is expensive. College is as expensive as shit. And it shouldn’t be. So most people who graduate high school, they never open a history textbook. If you’re lucky, maybe they’ll pop open a book. Maybe if you’re lucky, they’ll watch something like Death by Lightning and they’ll see Roscoe Conklin and be like, all right, I would like to learn more about that weird gentleman who is a bad guy in this TV show, but in real life, wrote the 14th Amendment, which is the most important amendment in the Constitution. Most people don’t know. And so I understand when you start talking to them about the Constitution, that they just assume because they saw the Fox News or they just don’t know what the Constitution, what the 14th Amendment says. But it says people. It says people. And so if you acknowledge that we’re living in an emergency, you can’t behave as if everything is normal. And so that’s sort of my issue right now of I see a whole lot of people and I see a whole lot of elected officials, Skoufis among them. Not to single him out though, because it’s all of them. It’s all of them. It’s Hochul it’s Letitia James, it’s the Comptroller. Like it’s all of them. It’s Brian Maher, it’s Steve Neuhaus Like Neuhaus, for example, during the ICE thing, what did he say to you in his videos? He said,I’m more concerned about the protests. He was adamant, like he said, he was much more concerned about the protests than he was anything else. So there’s people that realize that we’re living through an emergency and people that don’t, and the majority of people are people that don’t. And that’s a problem because the situation that we’re living in is only going to get worse. The problem in New York is that New York state politics, they have what they call the big ugly, right? And the big ugly is essentiallyWe don’t, New York only does things by smushing it into the budget, right? Like if you want the laws to change in New York state, you have to find a way to get it into the budget, basically. And if it’s not in the budget, if it’s not part of the budget negotiations, then maybe, it gets passedbut that doesn’t happen all that often. Instead, if it’s not in the budget, it’s dead, at least for a year, right? Or alternatively, at the last, usually there’s a big push at the end of the session, right? Like last year there was a big push for the Package Reduction Recycling Infrastructure Act. I’m sorry, it’s P-R-R-I-A, I think is what its initials are. And so there were these calls at the last minute saying, you know, we need to pass this on the last day, but Speaker Heastie wouldn’t bring it to the floor.Because of course not, because he works for the corporations, because he thinks everything is fine. And so if you think that we’re living through an emergency, now is the time for you to plant your feet and start to speak up. Not enough people speak up. Not enough people speak up. I’m seeing the same people, and this isn’t anything against the people who come, God bless the people that come to town and village board meetings. Seriously, like I’m not even a religious person, but if you take the time every day to... participate in a town meeting or a village meeting. Thank you. But not enough of us do. And some of it, look, some of it is because we’re all time poor, right? Like we’re all being squeezed financially. Our lives are not designed to have time to participate in local government because some of us are working two, three jobs. Some of us cannot pay for groceries. And so, you know, I don’t have two hours to spend on a Monday night because I might need to work a second shift at a gas station. like that’s a real thing.But if you have time and you know that we’re living in an emergency, then I just want to implore them to speak up. Every chance you get, you plant your feet, you use your voice. Not enough of us are. And it shows. It shows because in a world where people plant their feet, in a world where people vote, and in a world where people organize, we don’t have these crazy situations like we have in Orange County where a couple of landlords, you mean to tell me a couple of landlords got pissed and so they’re going to get rid of the mayor so that they don’t have to pay like all these fines. That’s why we’re getting a new mayor? Really? Really. What about the fact that he’s MAGA? Well, that doesn’t seem to be a problem because the two guys don’t care. They only care about their money because money warps our politics and soThis is the time for you to get up and say, I’m not a corporation. I’m not a wealthy person. I’m not a real estate developer. I just live here. yeah, things are not normal. They are going to get worse. And until we start to behave as if there’s an emergency, things will continue to get worse. You should look carefully at your food that you’re buying at Shop Rite because the FDA cuts staff left and right. So who knows whether or not your food’s been checked?That’s a real thing. Do we have avian flu? We don’t know. ⁓ You might be, here’s another example that you might not think about of a way that this emergency has affected you. You might’ve noticed when you’re watching the weather where, weather people are notorious for getting it wrong. I used to do a lot of work in Chicago with the local media. And when I met the Chicago weatherman, shit, I’m blanking on his name. It was about a decade ago now.But the first thing he said to me was, BJ, it’s nice to meet you. Do you know what the most dangerous job in Chicago is? I said, what? And he said, weatherman. So weather people are notorious for getting it wrong, a blowing forecast. But if you watch the news, you might have heard something different where they’re saying, according to this model, listen carefully. The next time you listen to the weather, the next time you watch the weather on News 12 or NBC4 or any of local TV stations, listen to them carefully.Because you’re going to hear them say, according to this model. And the reason why is because the Trump regime has cut a lot of funding to the National Weather Service. so, for example, one of the things our government does is we put out weather balloons in the Pacific Northwest, because that could tell us which way the winds are blowing and which way the storm systems are coming in. We’re not doing that. We’re not, because someone decided it was too expensive and we didn’t want to do it. And so now we have these competing weather models that are giving us different information at different hours.So that is incredibly dangerous and very scary because we’re heading into yet another spring and summer of climate change and climate emergency where our storms are more powerful. You’re getting 50, 60 mile per hour winds, which are incredibly dangerous that could blow in without much notice or advanced warning. that’s, a lot of people, even if you’re the most selfish person, even if you’re like, the only thing I care about is my house and my property value. Okay, well, let’s play that out.If you care only about your house and the only about your property value, what are you going to do when 60, 70 mile per hour winds take down a tree and the tree falls on your house? And then you might go, well, FEMA is going to cover it. Well, guess what? FEMA has also undergone a lot of budget cuts. And if you look at what happened out in California with wildfires, if you look at what’s happening in Nebraska right now with their fire. They’ve got a huge fire. It’s the largest in their history. If you look at the Jennings Creek fire which we had in our region, yeah, we was eight miles away from Monroe. These are large scale problems. And if you think that the federal government’s gonna come and bail you out through FEMA, it ain’t happening. And that’s to blame Trump specifically, because I remember during Hurricane Sandy, I wasn’t here, I was up in Potsdam at the time, but I remember there was a lot of damage to my parents’ house. And FEMA basically said, yeah, the only thing we can pay for is like a casket.So FEMA has always had problems, always, always, always had problems, but now the problem is worse. And that’s the difference. So do you live in an emergency? Yes or no? I say yes. And if you think yes, it’s time for you to speak. And the thing you can do, the last thing I’m tell you is, and you’re gonna hear me say this a lot over however long we keep doing the Gazette. The thing you’re gonna hear me say a lot of this ...The answer to the question of whether or not you are organized is this. If you say to me, we are organized, the first thing I’m gonna say to you is, okay, well, that means you have a Signal group with 10 of your neighbors. And then the thing I’ve heard repeatedly is I don’t have that. Then you’re not organized. You’re not. You are either depending on Facebook, which is fine to a point, but you have to remember that Facebook does not reach everybody. Repeatedly since we’ve been doing the Monroe Gazette. I constantly do sentiment analysis, which is basically looking at what everyone is saying in the comments section of popular threads, whether it’s on Nextdoor or whether it’s on Facebook or whether it’s in For A Better Woodbury or whether it’s in Monroe Matters. And yes, I have burner accounts in different groups. I’m not going to tell you who those are. But I do use the burner accounts to lurk, essentially, and see what’s being said.And repeatedly, what you see on Facebook is not reality, not in our region anyway. Like it’s just not true. A great example of this is during the sheriff’s thing where, you know, if you went by like the threads on Monroe Matters, you would think everyone supported the sheriff. But if you went to the meetings, completely different story, completely different story. Like the people that came out, the people that actually live here did not want a PRO-ICE sheriff. And so... you have to have these Signal groups. These Signal groups are the key. This is how whoever you want to fight, whoever it is, whether it’s the real estate developers, whether it’s Trump, whether it’s bad Democrats, we have a lot of bad Democrats too. And I’m an independent by the way, I’m not registered Democrat anymore, so I’m not affiliated with them. So it’s anyone, anyone that you want to oppose or deal with. If you don’t have these Signal groups, you have nothing, because a Signal group allows you one, to organize and say, all right, we got a town meeting, who can go, who can’t go.If you can’t go, do you have five minutes to copy and paste this letter? If you can’t go, here’s a script to call Skoufis and tell him you should support the New York Health Act. And who cares if it’s too expensive because it’ll save billions of dollars in, I’m sorry, it’ll save us billions of dollars and millions of lives. That’s a fact. It will save us $4 billion a year once it’s fully implemented. That’s from the RAND Corporation. Like that’s not me pulling that out of my butt. That is from a very conservative think tank saying, yeah, New York Health Act will actually save New York State.Billions every year and it’ll save millions of lives. So it’s not acceptable for Skoufis to say, it’s too expensive. It’s like, yeah, we know it’s expensive, but we will make that money back. That’s why you invest. That’s why like any business owner will tell you that you eat shit the first one to three years that you’re running a small business, you will eat shit. Like you will not make a lot of money. But over the long term, over the long term, you will see a growth curve and you will start to see the money coming and then you will start to make up for the losses as long as you’re growing the business appropriately doing things you’re supposed to do. Anyway, so my challenge for you is this, you’ve made it this far and you’re listening to us and you think you’re organized, do you have 10 of your neighbors in a signal group? Because once you’re organized, you can do things like I just mentioned. You can also do things like spread actual information and correct disinformation. So for example, if you see like a crazy Tim Mitts post where he’s...I’m trying to think of some crazy, he has me blocked, so I’m trying to think of some crazy shit that I’ve seen from him recently. ⁓ yeah, where he’s like going on and on about Maureen, or I’m sorry, Supervisor Richardson. Saying she’s in bed with Satmar but she’s not in bed with Satmar. She has a better relationship with Kiryas Joel than Tony Cardone does. Whether or not you like that, that’s not for me, I don’t have a problem, but there are.A lot of bigots and anti-Semites, But within your Signal group, you would be able to discuss this without having to worry about astroturfing, without having to worry about someone with a fake account trying to persuade you, without having to worry about Facebook. Because people think if I post something on Facebook, everyone will see it. Well, it’s not the case. This is my field of expertise. I’ve been in this space. I’m a published author in this space, you know, my first book came out, social media is bullshit, like I know these algorithms. And people think if I post something on Facebook, everyone’s gonna see it. It’s just not the case. Facebook is constantly scanning for what they think the most engaging thing is to show you. And if you’re posting very calm updates about stuff that’s happening locally, Facebook is not showing it to people. If you’re posting like bad shit, crazy things, that’s the thing that Facebook’s gonna show people because rage and anger, you might have heard the term rage bait. That’s essentially what that is, right? Like rage sells. And that’s what Facebook shows you. So in a Signal group, you don’t have that problem. It’s one to one communication with people that you’ve vetted. If you can get enough people in that group and then get another, know, so the idea is this. You, if you organize it, you’re you’re the neighborhood captain. Your job then, once you have the 10 people, is to recruit other neighborhood captains and have them form a Signal group and have them form a Signal group of another neighbor. You see how this works? And then you scale up. You don’t want to too many people into one Signal group. That gets crazy. But you do want to have this constellation of local signal groups where information can hop from one group to another through the captains. Once you have that established, you will see some serious shit change around here. I promise you. If I had 1,000 people.A thousand dedicated people calling Skoufis every day to pass the New York Health Act. He would cave and say, oh yeah, it’s a good idea. If we had a thousand people call Neuhaus every day and say, no more ICE agreement with Orange County Jail, he will cave. The thing is, there is no local infrastructure. There isn’t. There’s a lot of well meaning people who set up a Facebook group. Or there are, but they’re a one and done, right? So a good example, and I’m not picking on anybody with us, we the people of Woodbury right? Did an amazing job. did, they did, that group did an amazing job with the petitions to the DEC. And what happened? They won. But then what happens? What happens to that coalition after you’ve won? Right? Because a lot of people think, okay, we won, it’s over. It’s never over though. It’s never over. This is an ongoing battle. This is a thing that requiresIf you want to live in a democracy, if you want to live in a place where all people, regardless of their citizenship, where all people, regardless of how they came here, what color they are, what their religion, whatever. If you want to live in a world that upholds the 14th Amendment, that says that all people count, essentially, is that everyone counts, then that requires constant vigilance. That requires staying in touch after you’ve won, staying in touch after you’ve elected your people, and saying, OK.Kathryn Luciani is coming back. We’re going to stop her. This person is going to run against Robert Jeroloman again. Jeroloman is up for reelection. That’s a big issue in Blooming Grove. That’s a huge thing that’s coming up is Supervisor Jeroloman’s reelection. Are you organized? Do you have that signal group? If not, you’re not organized. It’s a constant battle. It’s a constant fight and it’s exhausting.And I understand that. And that’s why you want these neighborhood groups, because you shouldn’t have to carry the load. The whole point of the group is that everyone is doing their part. Everyone is chipping in. Everyone is building momentum. Everyone has a role to play, as opposed to an amazing show of force ⁓ with We the People Woodbury. It’s about consistency. It’s about being able to continue to show up, even after you’ve had a victory and continuing to speak out and continuing to be organized. And that requires on the ground one-to-one organizing and we just don’t have it. So my project with the Monroe Gazette is gonna help this community build that. I didn’t answer any questions. I still spoke for almost an hour. I apologize. That was not my intent. I wrote down three things I wanted to talk about and here we are for an hour. So, man, there’s a lot happening. I wish. I truly, know, I, when Maureen, Beth, and Luis and Andrew, and Jackie, like just Martha, when everyone won, and Vernick. I’m sorry, I’m just blanking on everyone’s name, but when everyone in Woodbury and Monroe won, I was so happy, because I.Because I thought, OK, now I could just write about South Blooming Grove. Right? Like, now I can just focus on the fire, the big fire that we have to deal with, which is South Blooming Grove. It hasn’t worked out that way. And that’s not their fault. It’s just the nature of we’re living through an emergency and things like the ICE concentration camp comes up, right? And then things like, how do the police protect us? Because that’s next story that we’re working on, If you drive on 32, along 32 along Woodbury Commons are those flock safety cameras, which are constantly collecting and gathering information that goes to Woodbury police, just for example. And in that database, that database may be accessed by DHS and ICE.Do you want that? Well, I don’t know. But that’s another story that’s coming that we need to talk about. So because we live in an emergency, I haven’t been able to step back and take a breath. Because the thing I want to leave you with, you can’t put your head in the sand. You can’t. I’ve had this conversation with people where a lot of people just want to pretend that nothing is happening. But bad things are happening. I know that’s simplistic.but that’s the world we live in. And you might not know this specific bad thing. You might not have known about the weather thing until I told you. You might not have even thought about the safety of the deli meat. You buy at Shop Rite You might not have thought about algorithmic pricing and Shop Rite You might not have thought about Trump wanting Medicare to make decisions using artificial intelligence instead of a person, which would mean that some of you watching this maybe denied medical coverage, maybe denied coverage for a procedure that you need. You might not have known. And I get it because part of the game, right? Part of the game plan is just to flood everyone with so much shit at once that you don’t know what’s up and down. And so it’s very easy to put your head in the sand and say, all right, I’m just gonna pretend it’s not happening. But it is affecting you. It is impacting you and you need to plant your feet and you need to speak up. So I’m gonna shut up now. I will leave you with that. I will let everyone know on the Monroe Gazette Facebook page and through our notes, if you go to MonroeGazette.com and click on notes. There is a little section there that I update as I get stuff. So I’ll make sure to update that with some village election results and I’ll see you all next week with another video. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Tomorrow, January 14, at 6:45 p.m., is the Chester Town Board meeting. You will have two opportunities for public comment: at the beginning of the meeting and toward the end. Just an FYI that it’s a pretty packed agenda. So here’s my recommendation: If you are a Town of Chester resident specifically, I encourage you to speak during the first public comment period.If you are not from the Town of Chester and you can afford to do so, I encourage you to let the Town conduct its business and use that second public comment period.If you can’t attend, the Town of Chester broadcasts its meetings live on YouTube, and I’ll share a link alongside this video, which can be found here. You can copy and paste the script below and email it to the Town Clerk, Linda Zappala at [email protected] goal is to ask the Town Board to pass a resolution calling on State Senator Skoufis and Assemblyman Brian Maher to demand a vote on New York For All and the Melt Act, and pledge to vote in support of passing it.There are many bills we will need to fight for this year, but in terms of containing ICE’s presence in our community, these two are the most important.I’ll be back at the end of this week — or maybe the weekend — with another one of those long ass posts to talk about what this all means and where we’re going next in terms of the fight against ICE.Sample ScriptMy name is ________And I have been a resident of Chester since ____________***This evening, I am here to request that our Town Board pass a resolution at the soonest possible opportunity. Preferably, at the next Town Board meeting.That resolution should do the following:* Affirm the Town’s support for our Latino community.* Affirm that the Town does not support the operation of a concentration camp at 29 Elizabeth Drive in the Village of Chester.* Affirm the Town’s support for the New York For All and the New York MELT.* Request that State Senator James G. Skoufis and Assemblymember Brian Maher publicly call for both these bills to be brought to the floor in the Assembly and Senate and voted on at the soonest available opportunity.* Demand that Governor Kathy Hochul stop dragging her feet and sign both bills the moment they come across her desk.While these bills will not completely prevent ICE from operating in our community, they will limit the amount of cooperation received by ICE from our state agencies, counties, and municipalities; and they will also prohibit ICE from wearing masks while conducting immigration enforcement.I’d like to make just one final point before closing. If you are on this Town Board, and do not support New York For All and the New York Melt Act, you should say so this evening.We, as members of the community, have a right to know where you stand, and if you do not stand with the community now, you will not be an elected representative for long come election day.Thank you.***If you are not a Chester resident, say instead, “I have been a resident of the Orange County Community since _________ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Note: This article is a sequel to The Torah, The Talmud, and Rhonda Fabbro.10/29: If you thought this story was crazy, you’re wrong. It’s crazier. We made some updates throughout this post to further highlight the situaiton. At the very bottom of this article, you will also now find an up to date timeline of confirmed information involving the South Blooming Grove illegal election.Pictured above: Snapshot from the front page of The KJ Weekly’s Friday, Oct. 24, 2025, edition. From left to right, the translation reads: “Village of South Blooming Grove grants fresh four years of service to sympathetic Will Yedosh Leader’s Society.” The headline to the right reads, “Positive Village Election Result.” (“Will Yedosh” is an odd Google translation, but essentially means “Jewish Leadership.”) It’s not clear who provided The KJ Weekly with the news of the election.We again remind readers that Google Translate provides roughly 80% of the translation from Yiddish into English. This is important to note when browsing Ivelt.com or The KJ Weekly for information on South Blooming Grove or Kiryas Joel; Google Translate often misses the idioms, for example. You can hire a translator on Fiverr.com to translate Yiddish into English more accurately. Just make sure to specifically request inclusion of the idioms as, in my experience doing this, the translators often will remove them.Ivelt.com recently restricted access to the South Blooming Grove threads to registered users only; but you can, and should hire someone on Fiverr.com to create an Ivelt.com account for you. As stated previously, “Written and Spoken” appears to be Joel Stern’s burner account on Ivelt.com. For those looking for evidence of wrong doing — and the plan to turn the Village of South Blooming Grove into a city, which dates as far back as 2017 — Ivelt.com’s archives is a great place to start. (We recommend screenshotting and saving as much of it as you can, using a program like Hunch.ly, before Mr. Stern scrubs it, if he hasn’t done so already.)And of course, The Monroe Gazette’s archives is a good source of South Blooming Grove information, which you can only access as a subscriber. We put all content behind a paywall after 30 days, and only subscribers can listen to the audio edition for these posts. Paid subscribers also get access to our Private Facebook group, which I update throughout the week. And just an FYI: This week will feature a lot of interviews on The Finley, which is our free listener-supported podcast. This includes a conversation with LT. Gov. Antonio Delgado, County Executive Candidate Mike Sussman, and more. You can subscribe to The Finley where all good podcasts can be found. After the election is over, The Finley will go back to a once per week release schedule.The Monroe Gazette is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.Below: Village of South Blooming Grove Clerk Kerry Dougherty is confronted by resident Kelly Corduana Parzer on Oct. 23 about the lack of notice for the election held on October 22nd. The Monroe Gazette also recorded audio, that same day, of Dougherty giving the same reply to me and the other person that called, that she later gave to Mrs. Parzer about an hour or so later — that residents must email questions, and that she refuses to answer them in person or by phone. Note that there is confusion as to what newspaper the election notice went to, with some residents stating Kerry told them the Wallkill Valley Times (heard in the audio to The Monroe Gazette), while Kerry not correcting Mrs. Parzer when Mrs. Parzer said it was the Warwick Valley Dispatch. It’s unclear what paper got notice of the special election, if any. In the Parzer video you can see Mrs. Dougherty not bother to correct Mrs. Parzer when she asks about the Warwick Valley Dispatch. The Wallkill Valley Times confirmed to The Monroe Gazette they never received any documentation from the Village of South Blooming Grove concerning this election.Monroe Gazette Audio:Kelly Corduana Parzer Video:Update: On Monday, October 27th, the Monroe Gazette spoke with Kerry Dougherty, who claimed repeatedly that she was misquoted in the above videos. When we asked her to identify what or how she was misquoted, she did not answer.To avoid Mrs. Dougherty making that same false claim, we are posting the entirety of our discussion with her, recorded on 10/27. There is only one edit in the video, and that is where Mrs. Dougherty exited the room to get water where no conversation was had. At the time of this writing, Kerry Dougherty has not provided any details in response to our email; but read receipts confirm she received and opened it. We suspect — since disgraced Town of Clarkstown judge–turned–$75,000‑a‑year no‑show village attorney Scott Ugell can’t be bothered to attend meetings — that Nora M. Murphy and Laura M. Gulfo of Monaco Cooper Lamme & Carr PLLC have been tasked with preparing a legal response to residents’ concerns involving the election. That’s why we think Kerry is telling people to email her, so that the law firm can draft a response that Kerry can then copy and paste to residents.Most recently, Murphy and Gulfo oversaw, what we feel, is a blatantly illegal attempt by the Village of South Blooming Grove to annex land from Orange County’s Gonzaga Park, which resulted in a second lawsuit against the village by Orange County. So we’re not the only ones who think it’s illegal.Another lawsuit is making its way through the courts concerning the further taking of property South Blooming Grove does not control;And part of the Town of Blooming Grove’s case, involving the Clovewood property, also alleges the village illegally took land from the town. Pay attention to these court cases, as well as the original one filed by Orange County. We’re going to circle back to them at the end of this article.Finally, we caught Laura M. Gulfo red‑handed in an email, accidentally copied to The Monroe Gazette, preparing FOIL appeal responses for Mayor George Kalaj to sign.These responses appear to have been copy‑and‑pasted and never actually read by the mayor. (When we take South Blooming Grove back to court, this is absolutely something we’re going to bring up.)So, it’s our opinion that Mr. Ugell isn’t the only attorney that’s going to wind up before a grievance committee by the time this South Blooming Grove story concludes.If you or anyone reading this would like to file a grievance against Mrs. Laura M. Gulfo, Mrs. Nora M. Murphy, and Mr. Scott Ugell for their activities in South Blooming Grove, you may contact the committee atGrievance Committee for the Ninth Judicial District399 Knollwood Road, Suite 200White Plains, NY 10603(914) 824-5070In the case of Mr. Scott Ugell, we were told by the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct that, if he were to be arrested or found to be responsible for any wrongdoing, they would re-open their case against Ugell.When The Monroe Gazette successfully sued the Village of South Blooming Grove, Kerry Dougherty previously said in her testimony that she “didn’t get the emails” submitted with our FOIL requests; we believe that statement amounted to perjury. The Village of South Blooming Grove then repeatedly delayed releasing metadata that would have revealed whether or not Mrs. Dougherty committed a crime.Dougherty has repeatedly told residents she “didn’t get your email” during Joel Stern’s tenure as “village executive”, beginning in 2021 with allegations of voter fraud. So her current instruction to have people email questions to her about the election appears suspicious. A representative for the FBI informed Orange County Attorney, Rick Golden, that the FBI investigation into Yitzchok “Isaac” Ekstein’s alleged voter fraud remains open. We have a copy of this email to confirm the statement’s authenticity.South Blooming Grove residents are encouraged to contact the FBI’s Albany office concerning that voter fraud case and this new “special” election at:FBI Albany Field Office:200 McCarty AvenueAlbany, NY 12209albany.fbi.gov(518) 465-7551Joel Stern, George Kalaj, Scott Ugell, and Kerry Dougherty have never returned requests for comment to The Monroe Gazette on any of these matters, including this election.Active investigations into South Blooming Grove, that the public is aware of, include the New York State Attorney General’s office, the Orange County District Attorney’s office, the New York State Comptroller’s office, the New York State Department of Health, the Department of Environmental Conservation, the Orange County Department of Health, and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. You can read the full June 30th, 2025 letter from the Orange County Department of Health here.We’ll also circle back to this at the end of the article, because it involved Woodbury Village Trustee Matthew Fabbro, and his mother, the Un-Elected Village Trustee, Mrs. Rhonda Fabbro; who is one of the people running the Committee to Elect Woodbury Democrats.Pictured Above: Un-Elected Village of Woodbury Trustee, Rhonda Fabbro (left). MAGA CJ Graziano, the man running against Mrs. Fabbro’s son, the legitimately elected Village Trustee Matthew Fabbro, can be seen with his arms folded trying to look intelligent.Mrs. Rhonda Fabbro, the un-elected Woodbury Village Trustee, recently stated at a Woodbury Village Board meeting that any questioning of South Blooming Grove’s activities is anti-semitic. This statement was echoed at the following meeting by Committee to Elect Woodbury Democrats member, Valerie Hebel. Village Trustee Matthew Fabbro, has publicly refused to apologize for his mother’s statements. We’ll get back to this point at the end.The New York State Comptroller, between March 2024 and June 2025, conducted an audit of South Blooming Grove initiated after village residents complained about a second garbage pickup that nobody asked for or needed. Public Comment does not exist at South Blooming Grove Board meetings, beyond Public Hearings, and even then trustees are often on their phone while Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein tell them what to do. South Blooming Grove Village Planning Board meetings were also moved to Friday mornings at 10am, and no documentation has been provided to The Monroe Gazette via FOIL that details the rationale or reasoning behind this time change.South Blooming Grove is now harassing residents concerning the second garbage pickup. They’re now threatening to have Village property tax bill’s levied, and added to it, if residents do not pay.State Senator James G. Skoufis has claimed credit for the comptroller’s intervention; however, if you look at the weekly newsletters released by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, you will not find the audit of the Village of South Blooming Grove mentioned once between March of 2024 and June of 2025. The Comptroller’s office was also alerted to a late night move in March of 2024, orchestrated by Joel Stern, of files from the Village offices to the headquarters of his United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove. Something captured on surveillance camera footage that the Village refused to turn over as part of a FOIL request.As it turns out, Skoufis had little to do with Thomas DiNapoli’s investigation. The Comptroller’s office was made aware of the situation in South Blooming Grove with Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein going back as far as early 2021 because of the efforts of a former South Blooming Grove Village Board member. We have all of their emails to the Comptroller that demonstrates this.The comptroller’s spokesperson routinely stated to The Monroe Gazette that an audit was underway but repeatedly denied further comment and an interview request with Thomas DiNapoli about the Village of South Blooming Grove. In June 2025, the comptroller’s office went radio silent in response to requests by both News 12 and The Monroe Gazette on the status of the audit.The Monroe Gazette submitted a FOIL request for all comptroller records related to the audit after the radio silence began. Their FOIL response is due around November 18th. We’ll also note here that Skoufis’s office has said and done nothing about this radio silence from the Comptroller’s office, other than informing residents that his office contacted the Comptroller.The Orange County District Attorney’s office would not comment on the record when discussing South Blooming Grove; however, we do want to point out that David M. Hoovler can be seen here sitting next to Joel Stern at a re-election campaign event earlier this year. So you might want to consider voting for Alan Joseph for District Attorney. As if that whole Megan McDonald stuff wasn’t enough for you to not re-elect David M. Hoovler.Pictured Above: David M. Hoovler, third on the left, is seated next to South Blooming Grove “Village Executive” Joel Stern, seated second to the left at a David M. Hoovler campaign event earlier this year. The photo was posted by Joel Stern in his United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove newsletter.The Monroe Gazette has an active FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request in to the EPA to preserve and access all records related to the municipal water infrastructure crisis in the Village. The EPA has confirmed to The Monroe Gazette that it is actively investigating South Blooming Grove. Joel Stern, of course, has disputed this.The Village of South Blooming Grove is specifically obstructing the release of related FOIL requests involving Congressman Pat Ryan’s office and State Senator James G. Skouifs. A fun fact about FOIL in New York State: You can’t access much of anything your State Senator or Assemblymember does. But you can access their communications with local municipalities. For example: We did this previously with the Village of Woodbury to get a memo that State Senator Skoufis sent to Village Trustee Matthew Fabbro to read at a meeting. Further demonstrating that Matthew Fabbro does what he’s told by people without the best interests of the Village in mind.Under FOIA, you also can’t access much when it comes to your Congressional representative.State Senator James G. Skoufis has a standing policy not to answer questions from The Monroe Gazette. We still reach out to him for comment anyway because he’s the only State Senator Orange County has. We also like to mess with him when we do, because of his policy not to respond to any of our inquiries:Video Above: BJ Mendelson messes with State Senator Skoufis prior to their primary for the Working Families Party nomination in 2026.Just kidding.But. Yes. This part is true: State Senator Skoufis was sued in federal court for blocking a constituent, see: WAGSCHAL v. SKOUFIS. As of this writing, my personal account is blocked by Skoufis. So he has until October 31st to unblock me, otherwise we’re taking him to federal court. Pictured Above: Well-manicured State Senator, and man with delusions of a congressional run, James G. Skoufis (right) greets Yitzchok “Isaac” Ekstein at the staging area for the Jennings Creek Fire in the Fall of 2024. At the time this picture was taken, Mr. Ekstein was a subject of an FBI investigation concerning voter fraud.There is a WHOLE other controversy involving Mr. Ekstein and his South Blooming Grove EMS, it’s legitimacy, and so much more but … The New York State Department of Health, for over a year, has delayed releasing any records on the matter involving the Town of Blooming Grove EMS; and Stern and Ekstein’s EMS service’s attempts to crowd out the non-Satmar volunteer EMS that serves the entire community. I’m unable to write that story without these documents because the allegations made by Blooming Grove EMS can’t be substantiated without them.State Senator Skoufis Is The Kind of Democrat That Makes People Hate DemocratsIf we sound hostile to State Senator Skoufis, it’s because he’s embarrassingly full of s**t, bought and paid for by the real estate industry, has done less than zero for the South Blooming Grove residents — aside from a press conference and an email he copies and pastes to everyone that details his sagging interest in solving their problem, which I referenced in my voice mail.Skoufis also operated an independent expenditure committee, named Protect Monroe-Woodbury this year to support a Far-Right MAGA bigot (Brandon Calore) in his race to unseat the moderate Republican Woodbury mayor, Andrew Giacomazza. Every time we point this out, Matthew Fabbro and the Un-Elected Woodbury Village Trustee like to claim we work for the Mayor, saying we never criticize him. This isn’t true. We’ve been critical of Mayor Giacomazza’s handling of the Ethics Committee, re-appointing MAGA Tom Deluca to the Village Planning Board, and running with closeted MAGA weirdo, CJ Graziano. Mr. Graziano also made a concerning statement about how the previous Village Board conducts it’s business, that we’ll get to at the end of this article.Above: MAGA Tom Deluca was re-appointed to the Village of Woodbury Planning Board despite frequently posting far-right propoganda that could get the Village Planning Board sued.Why did Mr. Skoufis spend $19,600 to unseat the moderate Republican and replace him with a Far-Right Trump Supporter with a long, violent history of incidents. Including accusations of assaulting a disabled teenager in an ice cream shop parking lot because he was asked to mask up during the pandemic.This is a post the mother of the teenager made following the incident:The Answer Is …Because Skoufis wanted to consolidate the Town of Woodbury and Village of Woodbury to speed up the annexation of ACE Farm for Kiryas Joel, and Mayor Giacomazza stopped him. Brandon Calore, did not. Mr. Skoufis is also actively endorsing Democrats who support his mission to support this transaction, instead of Democrats working for the people, such as Vernick Alvarez.If Mr. Calore is successfully elected mayor in Woodbury, alongside a returning Mr. James Freiband and Mr. Matthew Fabbro — and Mother Rhonda Fabbro, because the Fabbros are a package deal — Mr. Skoufis will succeed in eventually getting the ACE Farm property to the real estate developers who lavish his $6M (and counting) campaign bank account with contributions.I share all of this with you because if you think State Senator James G. Skoufis is serious about helping the people of South Blooming Grove, you’re wrong. That’s why we took this detour into Woodbury.Let me continue to demonstrate why.Protect Monroe-Woodbury — Mr. Skoufis’s Independent Expenditure Committee — recently received $22,000 from Wolf Wercberger, Project Manager at Elite Concrete who has a checkered legal history, $2,500 from Douglas Land, who is listed as an Investment Banking executive for The Chesapeake Group, and $10,000 from Jacob Weiser, who is listed as an associate Kurzman Eisenberg Corbin & Lever LLP. Skoufis’s other Pac, Skoufis for New York also donated $2,000. So, of the $19,600 that was spent by a Democrat — who wants to run the Democratic National Committee — to promote a far-right MAGA candidate, Brandon Calore, we now know where much of that money came from. This amount of money also may substantiate claims that Skoufis hasn’t been truthful with the expenditures of the Protect Monroe-Woodbury Independent Expenditure Committee and also spent an additional ~ $15,000 to harass Monroe Town Councilwoman, Maureen Richrdson. This was done in an unsuccessful bid to promote the candidacy of David Rabbitts. We’ll have more on these specific Protect Monroe-Woodbury donors in an upcoming story.Mr. Skoufis continues to mess with Councilwoman Richardson through one of his employees promoting a write-in candidate for Town Supervisor.And, Yes … We’re serious about the Facebook thing.We get asked a lot by readers about whether or not a politician can block you. So let’s explain that before we move on …Skoufis has my personal profile blocked on his official State Senate profile, which a federal judge told him not to do to another constituent not too long ago. It’s against the law for a politician to block a constituent from their official profile. They can block you from their personal and campaign profiles. Even if they use their personal profiles for news.For example: Monroe Town Board member Dorey Houle updated only her Facebook Friends about the progress of brush fires and mini-fires along the Monroe-Tuxedo border during the Jennings Creek Forest Fire. Mrs. Houle then falsely tried to tell Monroe residents, during public comment at the October 20th Town Board meeting, that she was posting about “how hard she was working during the fire.” Nope. Dorey Houle lied again.She was updating only her friends about the fire — so, important Town information — on her personal profile and not updated Town of Monroe residents.Despite this: Mrs. Houle can still block you from her personal profile, which honestly is kind of scary in the event of another forest fire.Voter Fraud in the 2024 General Election?Above: Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein’s United Jewish Community 2024 campaign flyer for Congressman Pat Ryan. Below: Congressman Pat Ryan celebrates a grocery store opening at a controversial building development pushed through by Joel Stern to benefit (Stern is holding scissors and Ekstein is on his right), and tours the controversial Clovewood project that is at the heart of the controversey in South Blooming Grove:The Monroe Gazette has observed video of Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein — using their former Rapid Care property barely 100 feet from the Village of South Blooming Grove office where the 2024 election was held, gathering ballots from residents, entering the Rapid Care, and then potentially filling out those ballots. This video and other documentation was provided to the Orange County Board of Elections in November of 2024, but it does not appear that the OC BOE acted on that information, or shared it with the District Attorney’s office. We have placed a FOIL request with the OC BOE for all complaints concerning the 2024 General Election to see if they documented and reported these allegations properly. On the ballot was Congressman Pat Ryan, who is a frequent visitor to South Blooming Grove:Congressman Pat Ryan’s office has so far declined to answer requests from The Monroe Gazette concerning the status of the FBI and EPA investigations, as well as clarify his relationship with Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein, and their friends. We reached out to his press secretary for comment on the illegal South Blooming Grove election.Infamously, The Monroe Gazette called Pat Ryan’s office on Election Day 2024 to ask where he’d be, as we were given a tip that he would be in South Blooming Grove.Congressman Ryan’s office said they didn’t know where he’d be. As it turned out, Pat Ryan was in South Blooming Grove with Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein.Pictured Above: Congressman Pat Ryan with Village of South Blooming Grove’s un-elected co-mayors, Joel Stern (left) and Yitzchok “Isaac” Ekstein (right.) in a photo shared by Joel Stern’s United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove newsletter. The United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove newsletter is the only source for information in South Blooming Grove’s government, and it is not released in English for non-Satmar residents. (As of this writing, there appears to be no mention of the South Blooming Grove Village election held on October 22nd in this newsletter.)In the second photo, when reached by The Monroe Gazette to find out where Congressman Ryan would be on Election Day, his office said they didn’t know. As it turns out, AIPAC Ryan was in South Blooming Grove with Ekstein (left) and Stern (right.)Pictured Below: Please don’t think this is just a Democrat thing. House Majority Speaker Mike Johnson, while campaigning on behalf of MAGA Mike Lawler, visited Rockland County to meet with Hanhallah (yiddish for leadership). It’s doubtful Mike Johnson asked the Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum where that $94M in COVID relief money went. So, again, don’t think that Trump’s EPA and FBI is somehow going to “save you” from fellow Satmar, Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein. Stern and Ekstein are followers of Zalman Teitelbaum, not Aaron, but that’s a story for another time. (It’s actually the reason for South Blooming Grove’s existence, but this article is already approaching book-length. So we’ll skip this for now. In short, Zalman Teitelabum wants South Blooming Grove to expand and grow quickly, in order to circle Kiryas Joel and cut off its growth. That too, is why Aaron Teitelbaum and Kiryas Joel are pushing so hard for the ACE Farm annexation. This is why you can’t separate discussing Woodbury from discussing South Blooming Grove.)I mention this because many Monroe and Woodbury residents who are Republican say this to me all the time. “Trump is going to end the corruption!”Nope. Trump isn’t coming to help you either. Go look at the voting totals from the Village of South Blooming Grove and the Town of Palm Tree / Village of Kiryas Joel for Trump in the 2024 General Election.Governor Kathy Hochul’s office has not responded to multiple requests for comment about South Blooming Grove, and is also currently obstructing the release of requested FOIL documents. As we stated in our last post, yes, we’re going to sue Governor Kathy Hochul for these records, if we don’t hear back from her with an acceptable response, by October 31st. We have reached out to her office for comment on the election and will update this post if we hear back.The DEC has released (most) documents concerning South Blooming Grove which currently totals over a thousand pages. Woodbury Residents, Pay Attention To This …The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) did; however, redact an email exchange between the incoming and outgoing DEC Commissioners concerning South Blooming Grove. Woodbury residents might have heard the malevolent geezer, Village Trustee James Freiband — who is super popular in Gardiner, New York by the way — state at the October 23rd, 2025 Village Board meeting that the DEC Commissioner stated no petition — meaning the We The People of Woodbury petition, featuring over 800 Woodbury resident signatures — influenced his decision to award lead agency to The Village of Woodbury. You can see Freiband take shots at the petition in a recent campaign email below as well. If you attended the October 23rd meeting, you would have also seen Freiband again attempt to derail the Village of Woodbury’s efforts to serve as Lead Agency in deciding the annexation of ACE Farm. So, when this man tells you he’s a “no annexations” candidate, what he’s telling you is that you don’t matter. He thinks you’re a sucker and going to automatically vote on the “No Annexations” line. Aside from voting, the single most important thing Woodbury residents can do this election is tell their friends and neighbors that the No Annexations ballot line is a scam. One perpetrated by three fraudsters (Yoffee, The Fabbros, and Freiband) hoping you don’t realize that the No Annexations team actually supports the annexations.Just like he demonstrated in Gardiner, New York, Mr. Freiband works for the wealthy and the well-connected real estate developers, not you. So too does Matthew Fabbro, the un-elected Village Trustee Rhonda Fabbro, Brandon Calore, David Yoffee, Kelly Rinaldi, and Woodbury Town Supervisor, Kathryn Luciani.I think I would have been able to shake out more dumb statements form Freiband had MAGA CJ Graziano not started to shout and clap at me, along with Mother Rhonda Fabbro, but we got enough. I want people to understand something. If you ever see me go to a meeting and I’m shouting s**t, or I’m being disruptive and I’m making a scene, there’s a specific reason. And the specific reason is to get your elected officials to trip up and actually tell you the truth. Because that’s how you get the truth when it comes to a lot of these people. You have to push them. And if you don’t push them, they’re going to sit there and lie to you. I wish more people around here would do this, because there are way too many local politicians who sit there and gas light you week after week, and it’s time to get mad. What’s happening in America right now is not normal, and the time for being polite and passive is over. In CJ’s defense, I went on too long and should have stopped after I got the response I wanted from Fabbro. So, I apologize to everyone for going on too long. But not in CJ’s defense, he then got up and tried to provoke Freiband himself. He also may have confessed to violating New York State Open Meetings law in the process. This came when MAGA Graziano said he and the other board members would “hash everything out behind the scenes” so that there was no drama during the meetings.Yeah man, that’s called a violation of the New York State Open Meetings Law when you’re meeting outside of the view of the public. If Mrs. Burek and Mr. Graziano are re-elected alongside Mayor Andrew Giacomazza, they better commit publicly to not doing that s**t again at the soonest possible meeting. You discuss things out in the open, in full view of the public. That’s how a representative government works. Honestly, I didn’t have much of a game plan for Freiband because his malevolence makes it difficult to provoke him, which is what I wanted to accomplish. I give Freiband credit. I am a terrible liar. I cannot successfully lie to anyone. I start giggling and laughing. I just can’t do it. You’ll know immediately if I try to pull a fast one on you. So if I ever need to hire someone to lie for me, I’m hiring James Freiband.You can watch James Freiband get caught lying, above, to Woodbury residents, on camera and read about it here.And truth be told, my tactics did work — like they worked on Tony Cardone by making him start a meeting on October 20th by saying he’s not a racist. Despite the fact that more than one Town employee has accused him of repeatedly referring to them as “spics.”I also got him to stop a meeting dead in its tracks and say he has never taken a bribe from any real estate developer, which he’s been accused of doing.I also got Freiband to take out a piece of paper and state that he feels the petition had nothing to do with the DEC Commissioner’s decision, which I’ll tell you is patently false.Freiband’s statements at the October 23rd meeting was yet another attempt at gaslighting Woodbury residents. This time by pretending the DEC Commissioner is not a political appointee and somehow above playing politics in their memos and statements. B******TThe Governor hand picks the DEC Commissioner. It is literally a political appointment. If the Commissioner was not a political flunkie, I promise you, the Town of Blooming Grove would not have had to sue the DEC over the Clovewood permits.And Kathy Hochul isn’t going to put someone in there to upset the wealthy and well connected people that lavish her with donations. It is, after all, why the New York Health Act and the New York Privacy Act and the Package Reduction and Reycling Infrastructure Act have never been passed.Unless you bully them into doing their job, like hand delivering a petition with 800 signatures, elected officials and their political appointees will do nothing for you.So, remember friends: Bullying works when it comes to your local elected officials.And Now Back To That SBG ElectionMonths after our FOIL case, the Village of South Blooming Grove continues to be, mostly, unresponsive to these requests. The Monroe Gazette has submitted FOIL requests for the October 22nd, 2025 election results, notice to the public, and all other related documents including final vote totals. The New York State Board of Elections referred The Monroe Gazette to the Orange County Board of Elections for comment. The Orange County Board of Elections spoke to The Monroe Gazette off the record. But what we can say, because the Board of Elections spoke to concerned residents, is that Orange County was never notified by South Blooming Grove concerning the election. Thus far, the Orange County Board of Elections has not responded to our questions on the record, which include:1.Was the BOE aware of whom they were emailing at the address [email protected], the email, according to the Village Clerk, does not belong to the Village Deputy Clerk. The Village Clerk (Rosemarie Vega) does NOT have access to this email address.2. When the BOE was told by this individual that a referendum passed on October 20th, did the BOE inquire or ask for any further information on this referendum? I requested a copy from the Village Clerk this morning and she refused to provide it. (This was the referendum to move elections from March to October. The Department of State has told The Monroe Gazette that there is no notice, at this time, or any documentation received by South Blooming Grove concerning the change in election dates or related laws or referendums.)3. On October 16th, Joel Stern emailed requesting the Voter Roll for SBG from his UJC of Blooming Grove email, did anyone at the BOE inquire about the nature of this request given that it did not come from an official SBG email?4. The unidentified individual using the Deputy Clerk email asked for the pollbook no later than 10am on 10/22 (day of election). They received it at 2:29pm. Is there a time when this information needs to be received by in order to conduct an election that same day?5. Did the unidentified individual ask for any additional assistance for the Village of SBG in terms of voter machines or anything else?6. The Village Claims the election was held at Village Hall that evening, did the BOE know the location of the election that night?7. Has the BOE received any additional information (such as final vote tallies, who was on the slate, ect) after 10/22? What is the process to certify election results after they are held, if any, on the County level?South Blooming Grove did not ask for voter machines for the election either. A source close to the matter told The Monroe Gazette that South Blooming Grove claims to have passed a resolution allowing them to change the time of their elections from March to October, as depicted here: Despite this, no notice of the election was shared with the public or posted on the South Blooming Grove Village website about a referendum or the election itself. There is also no notice of an election in Joel Stern’s United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove newsletter that we have found thus far.Also, in the Kelly Parzer video, you can hear Kerry Dougherty admit that the elections are usually held in March. The rationale for a “special” election was not provided. “Special elections” can only be held under certain circumstances. Not to re-elect all of the incumbents.Emails and calls sent to the Warwick Valley Dispatch Times were not returned, inquiring as to whether or not they received an election notice from South Blooming Grove. The Warwick Valley Dispatch times does not have any mention of the South Blooming Grove Election on its website. The Monroe Gazette was also unable to track down a copy of this newspaper, and was informed by Warwick residents that it’s distribution is limited. Copies of it can be found at The Edenville General Store, for example.The Warwick Valley Dispatch — much like how Mid-Hudson News is owned by Trump Region 2 EPA pick, Mike Martucci, and The Photo-News is owned by Pro-Tony Cardone Jean Straus — has a sketchy history of its own. It’s owned by Steven Kitar, owner of Sam’s Meats in Florida — our Florida, Florida, New York, not the State — and is highly politically biased. For example, and this is relevant to our Monroe readers concerned about the Orange County Sheriff’s department and it’s ties to I.C.E. … here is a piece on the opening of Dorey Houle’s 2024 State Senate Campaign office. Can you guess who was in attendance? It was Orange County Sheriff, Paul Arteta. And here’s the kicker, Taylor Sterling, aka Joy P. Taylor, the Station Manager at WTBQ, wrote that article. She’s the one who has provided Tony Cardone with air time on the station to promote whatever he wants not related to the Town of Monroe. This time is claimed to be to promote the Town, which it often isn’t, and Cardone reimburses himself for his travel to WTBQ every time he goes. The joke about WTBQ is that it basically serves less as a community radio station and more of a propoganda arm for the Orange County Republican committee. Mrs. Joy P. Taylor, among many other aliases, was accused of running a fraudulent not-for-profit organizaiton known as Feeding Families.One Warwick resident told The Monroe Gazette that the Dispatch’s style of journalism is “repulsive.” Although to be fair, Woodbury Village Trustee Matthew Fabbro did say I was “disgusting” at the October 23rd meeting. So, maybe I shouldn’t throw stones …Except … Local Nazi, Jay Westerveld, briefly served as the paper’s editor and is cousins with Mr. Kitar. We will update this story if we here back from the paper, but we’re leery of anyone associated with Jay Westerveld given the virulent anti-semitic conspiracy theories Mr. Westerveld likes to spread.The Wallkill Valley Times confirmed that on October 9th, 11 days before the alleged referendumm was held to change the date of the election, that they received a flyer from Joel Stern — using his personal gmail account.Note that, while a referendum was NOT on the October 20th, 2025 Village of South Blooming Grove agenda, the Mayor’s property was:So, What Does This All Have To Do With Woodbury Village Trustee, Matthew Fabbro?This is the key to the whole story.But first …Early Voting has started here in New York. You can, and should, get your ass down to Monroe’s Town Hall at 1465 Orange Turnpike and vote during the following hours. Do NOT wait until Election Day. DO bring your friends and family.Look OUT for irregular voting activity, such as Mr. Pinchus Glauber, hanging outside of polling locations in Woodbury telling people how to vote. He was alleged to have done that during the June 2025 primary in Woodbury on behalf of Make America White Again (MAGA*) Mayoral candidate, Brandon Calore. A candidate Mr. Glauber frequently donated to. (Mr. Glauber declined to respond to requests for comment from The Monroe Gazette.)If you see that happen, report it to the police immediately. In years past, Tony Cardone and Dorey Houle have been accused of doing a similar thing during elections using Town owned vehicles to intimidate employees on election day. If you see something, photograph it or record it and send it to us anonymously using the Signal App at 646-331-8341.Either way, and no matter who is doing it, that sort of behavior is illegal.(*Remember: When we say MAGA, we’re not referring to all 77 million or so people who voted for Trump in 2024. MAGA here refers to the 30-35% or so of the American population that supports White Christian Nationalism, and other forms of fascism, replacing our democracy. It’s totally fine if you’ve voted for Trump because you think the Democrats suck. I think they suck too.)Speaking of which … Please don’t vote on the Democratic or Republican lines.Vote on the Preserve Monroe line if it’s available in your area, the We The People of Woodbury line if it’s available, and the Working Families Party line across New York state, including here in Orange County.The best way to show the Democrats you are NOT happy with James G. Skoufis, Kathy Hochul and Chuck Schumer is to vote on the Working Families Party line instead.With one exception, we endorse all of the Preserve Monroe and We The People of Woodbury CandidatesWe do NOT endorse the Kwyjibo, CJ Graziano, on the We The People of Woodbury line; however, we encourage you to hold your nose and vote for him in this specific election, in order to accomplish a specific goal of getting rid of the Fabbros (Mother Rhonda and Son Matthew) and James Freiband.We’ll remind our readers that CJ Graziano sucked so hard as a Village Trustee the first time, that given a choice between him and James Freiband, people stayed home. That is a factually true statement based on voting totals, no matter what dumb face Mr. Graziano wants to make whenever you mention it to him. And he makes a lot of dumb faces.That factually verifiable low turnout allowed our Satmar brothers and sisters to turn the tide of that election and get Jim Freiband on the board. You know what happened next if you’re reading this.It is unfortunate, and frankly sad, that Woodbury voters are now given the same choice in yet another village election cycle.You mean to tell me that, in a Village of nearly 12,000 residents, your options are a MAGA Supporter(Graziano) and two law breaking Village Trustees (Freiband and Fabbro)?And in Freiband’s case, one who’s votes represent a clear and present danger to the health and safety of their community? This man, Freiband, wanted to put your water and sewage into the same pipe!This is your choice, Woodbury? Really?REALLY?Shame on everyone who gave Woodbury voters this Giant Douche (CJ Graziano) vs. S**t Sandwhich (James Freiband) choice.Especially, by his own comments on October 23rd, Mr. Graziano doesn’t seem enthused to be running again.Well ok, a*****e, step aside and let’s find someone else who wants to be there. In fact, I’ll go out and say the best thing CJ Graziano can possibly do for Woodbury is get elected, and then immediately resign so that someone who actually wants to serve the community — and conduct their business in public — can do so. Anyone that is, except the Fabbros.But CJ won’t do that.Because CJ Graziano Is a Suckup I don’t know about you. But if someone just spent nearly $20,000 to defame my friend as part of a bid to hand over a big chunk of the local community to a real estate developer, I wouldn’t be kissing that someone’s ass. But that’s CJ Graziano for you. This isn’t about diplomacy either. Diplomacy does not work against bullies. CJ’s God, Donald Trump, has demonstrated that repeatedly. You can’t trust what he says. The correct thing to do is to stand up to the bullies and tell them, “No. We will not let you push our community around anymore in order to further fatten your wallet.”And if you want to see Mr. Skoufis’s deeply troubling post about the Woodbury election, I’ve included it below:(Note: Mr. Skoufis has my personal account blocked. He does not, yet, have The Monroe Gazette Page blocked.)And again, I want to point out the following statement from Skoufis:“Once the unacceptably- but unsurprisingly-acrimonious local elections conclude in Woodbury, I look forward to working with whomever takes office to ensure a fair and thorough review. More broadly, we must unite our extremely divided community that cannot continue to stand so divided and I am committed to working towards that end.”Not mentioned? The $19,600 Mr. Skoufis spent, funded by people with some connection to the Village of Kiryas Joel, to attack Mayor Giacomazza. This statement reads like an arsonist coming back to the scene of a fire, and then saying, “Whoa. Look at that f*****g fire!”I also hope you all feel empowered to take over your local Democratic and Republican committees in Woodbury, just like in Monroe, and make sure the barrel’s bottom is done being scraped here with these candidate selections. Because at this point, I don’t even think it has a bottom anymore. You’re tearing into the floor.As soon as this election is over, if Kwyjibo (CJ Graziano) gets a seat on the Village Board, we are coming after him. If you’re not up on your dated Simpsons reference, a Kwyjibo is big, dumb, balding North American ape with no chin and a short temper.Given Mr. Graziano’s tendency to threaten to rage quit boards he’s been elected too, such as in Highland Lake Estates and the Village Board during his previous tenure as a Trustee, we think that term describes him beautifully. (We also have questions about how often Mr. Graziano looked the other way in Highland Lake Estates concerning the efforts, or lack thereof, of the former Woodbury Building Inspector.)And if you’d like to start calling CJ a Kwyjibo, remember this is how you pronounce it: Kwi-Ji-Bo:Why am I telling you this?Pictured Above: Village Trustees Matthew Fabbro (Left) and malevolent geezer, James Freiband (Right.).Because I thought it was important to discuss one of Mr. Matthew Fabbro’s opponents before we talk about Mr. Matthew Fabbro and his mother. You see, Mr. Fabbro is like James G. Skoufis: A fake man in an expensive suit. A chinless incel who holds a hostile view of women. (Just check out his comment when attorney Amy Lavine was up for the role of ZBA Attorney for the Village. Mr. Fabbro referred to her disgustingly as “BJ Mendelson’s Personal Attorney.” Nope. Mrs. Lavine represented us, once, when we sued South Blooming Grove. And she won! She’s one of very few people who can say she stood up to South Blooming Grove and beat them.She’s not my “personal anything.” Yet here was Mr. Fabbro, trying to damage a professional woman’s career for political ends by making insinuations. I mean look, If I had to live at home with Mrs. Rhonda Fabbro — I’d be prematurely balding and angry at women too.But I digress …All of this is relevant because it answers the question about why nothing has been done about South Blooming Grove:Fabbro, like Skoufis, views everything in terms of politics and not in terms of people. Kathy Hochul’s New York State Democratic Party does the same.I will prove it right now when it comes to Matthew Fabbro.If you go and watch me grill Fabbro — before the Kwyjibo does the MAGA thing and shouts and claps at a journalist to silence them alongside Rhonda Fabbro — you’re going to hear him say something very interesting. Because I think, honestly, Woodbury voters, for the very first time — after nearly two years in office — finally got to see the real Matthew Fabbro. A petulant, spoiled child who feels entitled to this job as Trustee because Mommy told him so. I told everyone that South Blooming Grove had just held a potentially illegal election. I then read the following statement that was sent this week to a South Blooming Grove resident. It is the first time someone in SBG has not received the same copy and paste timeline from a Skoufis staffer that demonstrates Skoufis’s lack of interest in their problems. It says:Good Afternoon [Redacted],I hope this email finds you well. My name is Alana and I work in the district office of Senator Skoufis. I just read your email about the village inflating your property taxes to reflect the unwanted second garbage pickup fee. Our office is aware of the second garbage pickup issue. We have presented the issue to the State Comptroller’s office. The AG’s office has also been made aware of certain SBG practices. We have not received any meaningful feedback from the OSC at this time. However, our office is continuously discussing ways in which we can be helpful. SBG tying the second garbage pickup fee into taxes is a new piece of it that I have not heard yet and I am happy to escalate this to my team for further review. (Emphasis Added)Best Regards,--Alana Burnham-QuinonesConstituent Services SpecialistOffice of Senator James Skoufis (NY-42)45 Quaker Ave, Ste 202Cornwall, N.Y. 12518I asked Mr. Matthew Fabbro if he thought James G. Skoufis was anti-Semitic for referring South Blooming Grove to the Attorney General’s office. Matthew Fabbro immediately said no.I THEN asked Mr. Matthew Fabbro if he thought the FBI, the EPA, the DEC, the DOH, and other agencies, not to mention all the court cases, as well as the residents of Woodbury, were anti-semitic for raising questions about South Blooming Grove and Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein more specifically.He did not say no. Think about that.When I asked him if Skoufis was anti-semitic, he immediately said no.When I asked him if the people of Woodbury, were anti-semitic for raising concerns about South Blooming Grove, echoed and documented by all these agencies? HE DID NOT SAY NO.Matthew Fabbro also would not apologize for his mother’s comments. (His mother, also, did not apologize for her comments when given the opportunity to do so.)Matthew Fabbro waffled. He facilitated. Then he said I was disgusting and that I never ask him about “Village Business” in our emails to him. Not true.Here is just one of many, many examples from October 10th:Hello Village Board Members,Our apologies, we have additional questions now that the video of the meeting is live, and once again, we feel the need to email these to the entire board due to previous statements made by Trustee Fabbro that The Monroe Gazette is somehow working for the Mayor and not, in fact, doing our due diligence as investigative journalists.When we have questions of the other Village Trustees and Mayor, as they can attest, we get answers.The same is not true for these two men, and thus, here we are ...Trustee Freiband:-Trustee Freiband, we are concerned about your mental state and cognitive capacity. Do you believe that Maria Hunter and Jimmy Ng are running for office? We ask because your sense of time, including when you receive documents and how long you spend at Village Hall, was said to be inaccurate according to Village employees and residents last night.-You referred to Wayne Cort’s treatment by the Village Planning Board as “municipal extortion.” Can you be more specific?-Mr. Freiband, you have not filed any campaign funding paperwork with New York State, with your last reported donation coming in October of 2024. Can you clarify whether or not Mr. Corts has donated to your campaign?-Finally, we noted that there are now multiple members of the Woodbury Democratic Committee to refer to criticism of SBG as anti-semitic. Mr. Freiband, are Joel Stern and Issac Ekstein, or any other SBG official, a client of your wife’s PR and campaign consulting firm? I’ll note that SBG has an upcoming election in March of this year.Trustee Fabbro:-Your mother stated that she did not intend to speak last night. So then can it be said that she had no intention to apologize to the Jewish community and to Woodbury residents for her previous insensitive remarks?-We are again asking if you would like to apologize on behalf of your mother for making these insensitive remarks and offending the Jewish community.-Mr. Fabbro, you have also not reported any campaign contributions since October of 2024. Can you clarify why this is, and whether or not Mr. Wayne Corts has donated to your campaign? We’ll note that your mother’s committee received a $500 donation from Mr. Corts when you previously ran for office, and a mysterious ~ $1,200 donation from an LLC that same day.-Mr. Fabbro, when told you were a “Democrat in Name Only” and supporting a far-right MAGA candidate (Brandon Calore) you shook your head. So again we want to ask: Can you clarify your support of Mr. Brandon Calore given his endorsement of President Trump’s policies, which includes rounding up and deporting members of the Woodbury community? If you don’t think this is a legit question, I encourage you to speak with Dr. Norman some time about the fears expressed by Monroe-Woodbury parents about ICE right now. [Emphasis Added]Because if you look at the Village Code of Ethics, it clearly states that Village Trustees should not give a more than reasonable impression that someone else is influencing their decision making. And you’ll see both Fabbro and Freiband NOT answer my question about where the $19,600 went from James G. Skoufis’s independent expenditure Committee, Protect Monroe-Woodbury. [Emphasis Added]I asked County Executive candidate, Michael Sussman, specifically about Matthew Fabbro and Rhonda Fabbro’s South Blooming Grove cover-up in an upcoming interview that’ll be out this week on The Finley. So, stay tuned for that, because I don’t think the Fabbros are going to be too happy when they hear it.Both Rhonda Fabbro’s Committee to Elect Woodbury Democrats and James Freiband have not reported any campaign filings since January 11th of 2025. This is a crime under New York State Election law. We’ve reported both of them to the New York State Division of Election Law Enforcement.The Monroe Gazette FOIL’ed for text messages between Matthew Fabbro and Mommy Fabbro, and between James Freiband and Willa Freiband — who, reminder, owns a political consulting PR firm — about Village of Woodbury business. Both Matthew Fabbro and James Freiband told the Village of Woodbury there are no such text messages. We believe this is false, and opens the Village to a, minimum, $20,000 FOIL lawsuit. We’ve been told specifically in the case of the Fabbros by both Village employees and residents, that they have seen Mother Fabbro texting with Mr. Fabbro during Village Board meetings. Following our FOIL request, if you watch the video from October 23rd’s Village of Woodbury Board meeting, you’ll notice that Mrs. Fabbro sat directly in front of her son, as opposed to her usual location toward the back where she can send text messages. We thought that was really bizarre. I mean, beyond the fact that when you get elected to public office, nobody elected your mother. They elected you.We also saw Rhonda Fabbro and Matthew sending text messages during this meeting, so we put in a new FOIL request for texts sent and received that day and texts sent and received between both Fabbros concerning South Blooming Grove. What you have here is a coverup. Mrs. Fabbro isn’t calling Woodbury residents antisemitic because she’s an idiot — she may be. I don’t know. — She’s saying Woodbury residents are anti-semitic so that when or if Palm Tree and/or the Village of Kiryas Joel sue the Village of Woodbury over the ACE Farm annexation, the likely law firm choice of Whiteman Osterman & Hanna LLP will use it as evidence to claim Woodbury is antisemitic, and therefore can’t be trusted to make this decision concerning the annexation. Just like in Washingtonville. (Fun fact: Rhonda Fabbro’s best friend is Woodbury Public Library Board member, Cathy Schmidt. As we documented, Mrs. Schmidt hired this same law firm to cover up for instances of harassment by Schmidt of Martha Lopez. In the process, costing Woodbury taxpayers over $11,000. The Woodbury Public Library is currently refusing to process our FOIL concerning this incident.)So, to us, it sure looks like James G. Skoufis is having the Woodbury Democrats repeat his public facing claims that there’s “nothing to see here” as it relates to Joel Stern ($10,000 Skoufis donor) and Isaac Ekstein ($15,000 donor. $10k from him, $5k from an LLC he owns.)Because even in the face of a massive news story that demonstrates SBG’‘s disregard of the rule of law involving their election, both your elected and un-elected Trustees (Matthew Fabbro and Rhonda Fabbro) continue to insist you can’t criticize the village of South Blooming Grove without being antisemitic, and that you are if you do so.Why? Because there are Democrats who work for the wealthy and the well-connected, and there are Democrats who work for you. Skoufis, the Fabbros, Freiband, Yoffee, don’t work for you.In the face of corruption by wealthy real estate developers, both Fabbros insisted on covering up for Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein. Just like James G. Skoufis has, just like Kathy Hochul has.There are few things more disturbing and disqualifying then that. Aside from maybe Dorey Houle informing her pals about the progress of potential threats to their health and safety, but not her own residents.If you are in SBG and Blooming Grove, or if you’re in Woodbury, tell your friends. The Fabbros have made it clear they’re not working for your best interests and need to be kicked out of office. Even if that means voting for the Kwijibo. Just this once.Any adult politician who takes orders from their mother, just like Mike Pence, need to be kicked to the curb.And anyone providing cover for South Blooming Grove on the local and State level need to go too. Because we will not get action from the DEC, the DOH, or the Attorney General, until we have elected officials who are willing to call out bad behavior no matter where it’s found, and no matter who is doing it.That’s how we stop the ongoing White Collar Crime Spree in South Blooming Grove. By calling out the bad behavior clearly and specifically, and the people who are trying to cover it up.This is a problem that can be solved, but it takes massive collective action across all of Southern Orange County to do so.Updated SBG Timeline* In early 2021, not long after taking office in a controversial fashon, Joel Stern is appointed confidential assistant to the mayor, and Isaac Ekstein is appointed legislative aide. Stern then assumed the role of “Village Executive” and identified himself as such in emails to local, county, and state officials. Within the Satmar community, when “the mayor” of South Blooming Grove is referenced, it is Joel Stern that is referenced, not Mayor George Kalaj.* The Village of South Blooming Grove then attempts to change the terms of office from two-year to four-year terms; however, the Village fails to file this paperwork with the Department of State until late 2024, after missing the regularly scheduled Village Election of March 2024. In March of 2025, the Village Election is then skipped.* During the tenure of Joel Stern, the FBI, EPA, Department of Health, the Orange County Department of Health, the New York State Comptroller, the Department of Environmental Conservation, and the New York Attorney General’s office launches multiple investigations into activities by Stern and Ekstein. Multiple lawsuits are also filed.* On February 20th, 2025, Joel Stern provides testimony as part of a lawsuit between Orange County and the Village of South Blooming Grove, stating Mayor George Kalaj’s term of office expires in March of 2026. * On September 25th, 2025 at the Woodbury Village Board meeting, un-elected Village Trustee, Rhonda Fabbro, declares that any criticism of South Blooming Grove is anti-semitic. Mrs. Fabbro, her son (the actual elected Village Trustee), James Freiband, and Valerie Hebel are political allies of State Senator James G. Skoufis. Mr. Skoufis has repeatedly ignored or otherwise pushed off residents of south Blooming Grove who brought these numerous instances of malfeasance to his attention. Mr. Skoufis has also tried to downplay concerns about South Blooming Grove using the same language as Mrs. Fabbro, writing it off as “fear mongering” or “conspiracy theories.”* On October 9th, 2025 from his Gmail account, Joel Stern sends an ad to the Mid-Hudson Times announcing the election for 10/22/25* On October 16th, from his United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove email, Mr. Joel Stern asks the Orange County Board of Elections for the complete voter role of South Blooming Grove. We have this and other emails via a FOIL request.* On October 20th, Isaac Ekstein, using the Deputy Clerk email from SBG sent an email to the OC BOE stating that the election went well with 61 yays and 10 nays concerning a referendum to move the Village Elections from March 2026 to October 2025. Note that Joel Stern is copied on this email. This may have happened at the 10/20 VOSBG meeting; however, there is nothing on the agenda for that meeting concerning an election. There IS something on the agenda concerning the Mayor’s property, 58 Fort Worth Place: (*On October 27th, Kerry Dougherty is recorded stating Isaac Ekstein is a Deputy Village Clerk, and may have access to the email in question that interacted with the Board of Elections. However, no where in any budget or document (that we have found thus far) demonstrates that Mr. Ekstein is a Deputy Village Clerk. This also raises concerns about FOIL, because it would mean Mr. Ekstein has directly participated in processing records requests that he himself was the subject of.* Ekstein then informed OC BOE that the election would take place two days later, on October 22nd and requested a pollbook. (Note here that OC BOE stated to The Monroe Gazette that they had NO knowledge of the election. This email shows that the OC BOE was lying and had full knowledge of the election, choosing not to intervene.) * On October 21st and 22nd, there is an email discussion with OC BOE and the person believed to be Ekstein, asking for an updated pollbook before 10am on 10/22. (Mrs. Dougherty, when asked, did not have a physical copy of the pollbook, nor did she have a readily accessible digital copy that was requested from the Village.) We have now spoke with several residents that expressed concerns that Mr. Ekstein wanted the pollbook in order to forge signatures.* Mrs. Kerry Dougherty, when asked, has only confirmed an election was involved, that it was a “special” election, and that the incumbents were all elected to four year terms. (Note that the original law to change the terms of office from 2 years to four years was filed three years after originally passed in 2021 and it appears filed incorrectly from what I can tell.) Mrs. Dougherty, as you can see in the video in the post and audio of our call, refused to answer any additional questions, saying she would answer them by email. At this time, The Monroe Gazette can confirm Mrs. Dougherty opened and read our email on Friday, but has not replied. When asked on 10/27 when she would respond to our email, she gave no timeline for response.* The Kiryas Joel Weekly was informed of the election results by an unknown party (probably Joel Stern, but that’s a guess on my part) and published the news on its front page on Friday, October 24th.)* Governor Hochul’s office and Congressman Pat Ryan’s Office have not yet replied to requests for comment on this matter. State Senator Skoufos provided a weak ass reply to News 12 about the “questions” his office has for the Village of South Blooming Grove. Then, he put out the following statement on Facebook, failing to note that “Village Executive” Joel Stern donated $10,000 to Friends of Skoufis on 5/15/22. Deputy Village Clerk and Legislative Aide, Isaac Ekstein (the two men responsible for this election) donated a combined $15,000 that same day.Note: The Monroe Gazette called Matt Fascaldi, head of Constitutent Services, to report on the illegal Village Election on Thursday, February 23rd. Our call was not returned. Matt Fascaldi is currently on the ballot as a Democrat to be a Orange County Legislator in District 15. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Howdy.This is a very busy week at The Monroe Gazette. We just interviewed Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, and we have another interview coming with state Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas, and State Senator Andrew Gounardes.All of these interviews — and more — will be transcribed here and will air on The Finley. (The Finley is available, for free, where all good podcasts can be found.)I was also at the nearly four-hour Town of Monroe board meeting last night concerning the town’s proposed relationship with Friends of I.C.E., the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. So, today’s post is going to be a little shorter than usual. If you’re a masochist, you can watch the full meeting here:Once again, 99% of the people who spoke were against the town entering into the arrangement with the Sheriff’s department.The one man who spoke in favor of this deal began by saying Tony Cardone isn’t a racist and … Then made a series of racist remarks. (You can see that at 1:56:07)Mr. Cardone started the meeting by declaring that he never called anyone a “spic.” The Monroe Gazette has direct knowledge of a recording in which a town employee states that Mr. Cardone repeatedly used that slur to denigrate him.We also just received video, shown below, detailing the Town of Monroe Maintenance Department’s porn collection. An anonymous tipster tells us there’s been an ongoing sexual-harassment case, in the maintenance department, related to this porn collection. The tipster declined to give a name out of fear of retaliation from Mr. Cardone and Mrs. Houle. Both have a demonstrated track record of being vindictive. Just ask current Highway Supervisor, William Brown Jr. Note: This video is explicit and contains adult material. Viewer discretion is advised.Pictured Above: Porn alleged to be owned by the Town of Monroe’s maintenance department. But like, not even good porn. Weird boomer born, in magazines no less.“He Fills Their Heads With Lies!”That’s what Town Board member Dorey Houle said about The Monroe Gazette at the end of last night’s meeting. So, of course, we asked Mrs. Houle to comment on what, specifically, was a lie — don’t let our flip nature fool you; we fact-check everything before publication. And wouldn’t you know it, Mrs. Houle did not write us back.What I appreciate about her statement, and Scancarello’s and Cardone’s, is that they’re clearly losing it. Bullies do not like to be bullied.I hope you remember that: your elected officials work for you. You do NOT work for them.If you elect, whether knowingly or not, a bunch of bullies (Calore, Luciani, Luongo, Rinaldi, Cardone, Houle, Scancarello, Freiband, Fabbro, Skoufis, and Neuhaus), it’s your responsibility to push back until they do their job.And remember, their job is to represent you — not use you as a stepping stone to higher office. That’s what Dorey Houle has done. She was elected to the Town Board in 2021 without finishing her term on the Village Board. She said she would represent the village on the Town Board, did not do so, and then ran for state senate twice — accomplishing so little that all she had to run on was racist fear-mongering like this:I don’t go to meetings all that often, but when I do, I’m there to bully the bullies. That is literally the job of every journalist: comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I just prefer my phrasing.Regardless, I encourage you to do the same.Instead of investigating the porn collection. Or the second consecutive sexual harassment incident in the last two years. Or Mr. Cardone’s use of a hateful slang term for our Latino brothers and sisters, Tony Cardone, Dorey Houle and Sal Scancarello spent between $15,000 and $20,000 of public money to harass Councilwoman Richardson instead. That, by the way, was the “mysterious” agenda item — pictured above — that appeared late on Friday night and had no explanation provided. Mr. Cardone, much like the $750,000 he wants to spend on the Sheriff’s department, deliberately scheduled an agenda item to attack Councilwoman Richardson just prior to his re-election campaign, where she’s the challenger.How? Mr. Cardone hired an HR firm to manage the complaints Mrs. Richardson filed, one that would side with his version of reality.For example, one complaint involved Mr. Scancarello’s attack on Councilwoman Richardson at his “fascist food truck spectacular.” The HR firm hired by Mr. Cardone didn’t find any wrong doing, despite the evidence of Mrs. Richardson having to go to the emergency room, after Mr. Scancarello, a grown ass man, elbowed her in the chest.I asked Mr. Scancarello twice last night whether he had ever apologized for attacking Councilwoman Richardson; he made the face people make when they step on a LEGO., and did not answer the question, which then resulted in a tirade at the end of the meeting involving a “democratic judge.” Yes. Seriously. Watch at 3:35:48.Sal, you did tell me to “bring it,” (1:43:28) and I did. But like all bullies, after I brought “it” up, Sal, Dorey and Tony threw a massive temper tantrum, even blaming Councilwoman Richardson for my behavior.Mrs. Carol Hawxhurst — the person with a Cardone campaign sign on her lawn and the sole public supporter of Cardone’s stunt of involving the sheriff’s department at the October 6th meeting — also consoled the Town Board during public comment. According to direct messages viewed by The Monroe Gazette, Mrs. Hawxhurst claims to be the creator of Preserve Monroe (she is not) and to have been responsible for the Rye Hill land-preservation (she’s also not).Mrs. Hawxhurst also misstated the issue I raised about the Rye Hill purchase. Everyone — except Scancarello, Cardone, and Houle, who pushed the dinosaur–theme-park idea and went out of their way to make it happen — is happy the land is preserved. Me included.What we’re not happy about is Tony Cardone’s incompetence, which allegedly cost the town nearly $30 million and has contributed to a (so far) 14% tax increase since 2024. But I guess honesty isn’t valued by these people, judging by how much they cry when they are fact-checked.There’s only one person responsible for me: me. But because they’re afraid of me, Your Republican Town Board majority decided to gang up on Councilwoman Richardson like the gutless bullies they are. Good news, sports fans: early voting starts this Saturday at Monroe Town Hall at 9am. If you want to send two of the three clowns home (Houle, Cardone), vote for The Monroe Gazette’s endorsed candidates: Beth Stephens, Luis Rivera and Maureen Richardson. Sadly, you’re stuck with Slippery Sal Scancarello until next year. Don’t worry, much like I plan to do with Brandon Calore while he exists on the Woodbury Town Board, I’ll continue to remind everyone that Sal Scancarello is fully responsible for costing the town $30 million and for the 14% tax increase since 2024.Buckle up, Baldy.South Blooming Grove, FOIL, and Kathy HochulOk. There’s a lot going on with FOIL and South Blooming Grove. We’ve been quiet on that front because the village has stopped cooperating with our FOIL requests. When they do cooperate, they produce just enough to avoid a lawsuit but not enough for us to complete our story. For example, the village failed to hold elections in March 2024 and March 2025. After requesting the records in December, we finally received the Terms of Office paperwork they filed — which they filed it incorrectly with the State. That was almost a year after we submitted our FOIL.What we need is documentation showing whether the trustees were being paid on a two‑year term (as they should be) or a four‑year term (which Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein asserted). We’ve requested those records as well. The Department of State took no position on the incorrectly filed paperwork and essentially told The Monroe Gazette that South Blooming Grove residents have to sue to determine its validity.Another example: the village issued a Stop‑Work Order for Clovewood this summer. We received the order, but it’s mostly blank and there are no accompanying records we requested. So if you’re wondering why there’s a Stop‑Work Order, your guess is as good as mine.The most recent statement I received from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) sheds a little light on the situation there …DEC continues to closely oversee the site [Clovewood] and respond to community concerns. In response to complaints of turbidity in the Satterly Creek, DEC inspected the Clovewood site and issued five Notices of Violation since October 2024 – three for water quality and stormwater violations, and two for violations of the incidental take permit for endangered and threatened species. DEC’s most recent inspection was on August 21, 2025. DEC is actively directing the developer to come into compliance, continues to monitor the site, and will undertake all necessary enforcement actions to ensure the protection of public health and the environment.The Village of South Blooming Grove issued a Stop Work Order for the Clovewood development on May 7, 2025. The Village lifted the Stop Work Order on July 10, 2025, after the developer provided an engineer certification of sediment basins and a schedule of work. [Emphasis Added]. Please reach out to the Village of South Blooming Grove for additional information on their recent inspections of the Clovewood site.That engineer certification? We didn’t get it in our FOIL request either.The DEC is still being sued by the Town of Blooming Grove, and I have a lot of DEC documents to review. Unlike South Blooming Grove and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office, the DEC has been mostly good about providing records.The EPA, regarding South Blooming Grove’s water crisis, has not been as cooperative — but that’s a story for another time.We’ve reported before that Mid‑Hudson News is a rag published by Trump EPA Region 2 head Mike Martucci. Its editor, Hank Gross, committed journalistic malpractice in his “reporting” on a phantom ethics complaint in the Village of Woodbury. Despite being fact checked and presented with evidence about the erroneous claims in their story, Mid-Hudson News has never issued a correction.(Hey, Hank — still waiting for that report on MAGA Woodbury candidate Brandon Calore and the Orange County Ethics Board investigation into him. I know for a fact you were made aware of that ethics complaint multiple times.)If you read Mid‑Hudson News, you’ll also know the publication often serves as a mouthpiece for State Sen. James G. Skoufis, frequently publishing his press releases as news articles.You may have seen the story in which Skoufis criticized Gov. Kathy Hochul’s vetoes of his bills. If you missed it: Hochul vetoed roughly seven bills sponsored by Skoufis.Our responses:1. LOL.2. How can anyone re‑elect this fool, given that the governor just made it clear his name — and his bills — are mud?3. We don’t like Hochul, but her spokesperson calling Skoufis “a camera‑hungry clown” was spot on.4. AHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHHA. Eat s**t, loser.But on a serious note …Skoufis’s FOIL bill, which Hochul vetoed, would have actually broken the FOIL process and created ways for state agencies to avoid complying with the law. We’ll explain more in an upcoming interview on The Finley.That doesn’t absolve Gov. Hochul on FOIL though. Her office has obstructed, for most of the last year, two FOILs relevant to southern Orange County, submitted by The Monroe Gazette.- As we exclusively reported, Hochul had a representative in Woodbury before the public announcement discussing the ACE Farms annexation — asking how her office could help smooth the process for the Village of Kiryas Joel/Town of Palm Tree. We filed the following FOIL on April 28, 2025:Any and all records (emails, text messages, WhatsApp messages, Signal messages, notes, documentation, and other related errata) sent to and from Kelly Allegra and received by Kelly Allegra, concerning ACE Farms, Elozer Gruber, Acres Road II Holding LLC, The Town of Palm Tree, and the Village of Kiryas Joel from 1/1/25 to 4/28/25. 2. Any and all records (emails, text messages, WhatsApp messages, Signal messages, notes, documentation, and other related errata) sent to and from Jacob Adler and received by Jacob Adler, concerning ACE Farms, Elozer Gruber, Acres Road II Holding LLC, The Town of Palm Tree, and the Village of Kiryas Joel from 1/1/25 to 4/28/25Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office has repeatedly delayed this FOIL. The next date we expect to hear from them is Nov. 16. Based on their previous responses, we anticipate they will wait until about 6 p.m. on Nov. 16 (seven months after our request) and then ask for another extension.That brings us to the South Blooming Grove FOIL. If you don’t think The Monroe Gazette will sue Gov. Kathy Hochul, you haven’t been paying attention. On February 21st, we requested the following:Records Requested: All records (emails) sent and received by Jacob Adler, Director of Jewish Affairs, and Eva Wyner, Deputy Director of Jewish Affairs to the following domains:@[email protected]@ujcbg.orgFrom 1/1/21 to 2/21/25 concerning the Village of South Blooming Grove.Search Terms requested: Joel Stern, Isaac Ekstein, Village of South Blooming Grove, UJC, United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove.If you’re wondering why the director of Jewish affairs appears in both FOILs, it’s because Joel Stern specifically names Mr. Adler in his testimony for the Gonzaga Park court case (still ongoing). From what we understand from Stern’s testimony, Mr. Adler is the direct link between Joel Stern, Isaac Ekstein, and Gov. Hochul.Eight months later, Gov. Hochul’s office rejected our request for these records, citing:“Please be advised that responsive records have been withheld pursuant to Public Officers Law § 87(2)(g) because they constitute “inter-agency or intra-agency materials” which are not: statistical or factual tabulations or data; instructions to staff that affect the public; final agency policy or determinations; or external audits.”But here’s the thing:In the Town of Monroe, their roughly $11,000‑a‑month attorney, Brian Nugent, tried to rely on a blanket FOIL denial, claiming no records can be released because of the “inter‑agency exemption.” That’s not how the FOIL law works. You must release all responsive documents and then mark each document where there is a redaction, citing the specific legal ground for each such redaction.Joel Stern’s United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove is not a government agency. (This too is part of the lawsuit between the Town of Blooming Grove and the DEC, in which the DEC treated Stern’s United Jewish Community and the Village of South Blooming Grove as a merged entity. No such merged government agency exists.)Because the United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove is not a government agency — despite its name and despite representing a single Satmar group rather than the broader Jewish community — the inter‑agency exemption does not apply.We sent a FOIL appeal to Governor Hochul’s office on Oct. 10. They have until Oct. 24 to respond to that appeal; however, we will generously allow until Oct. 31 for her office to reply. If we do not receive a satisfactory response from Hochul’s office, we will proceed with legal action.One Last ThingWe’ve run into a problem.The Monroe Gazette reported that Town of Woodbury employees won’t receive raises in the proposed budget. The story: Town Supervisor Kathryn Luciani, Town Board member (and mayoral candidate) Brandon Calore, and their associates are slated for raises — but town employees are not.Other employees told us that sneaky title changes allowed select individuals to get pay bumps in the new budget, while others received nothing.Woodbury Town employees were reportedly told by Luciani and Calore that the reason they’re not getting raises is “because of the village.” That explanation is false, especially given the large tax increase this same town board pushed through last year, in part to fund Luciani’s generous salary for what is essentially a part‑time job.After we exposed Brandon Calore’s ties to South Blooming Grove through his employer, a company called CIOFFI (which is being sued by the Village of Woodbury), our Facebook account was taken down. That was back in June. Now, after we reported on the Woodbury Town Employees speaking out, our Facebook account was taken down again.I am not currently on Facebook. I used a burner account (Charlie Puddles) to alert some residents about this. At the moment, we don’t have access to our official Facebook account; a contact at Meta is looking into it.If you want to send us news anonymously, use the first two options:- Download the Signal app and message us at 646-331-8341 - Mail (no return address): The Monroe Gazette, PO BOX 5, 996 Route 17 Stop 2, Arden, NY 10910 You can also contact us at:- Email: [email protected] you see anyone on Facebook claiming to be me or The Monroe Gazette, they are not. If I get the account restored, I’ll let you know. Paid subscribers can also use the Substack chat function to reach us.P.S. If you live in Woodbury, I hope to see you at this week’s Village Board meeting. I brought hell to the Town of Monroe, and I intend to do the same this week in Woodbury. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Pictured Above: Photos taken by Woodbury residents and sent to The Monroe Gazette reveal that Woodbury Democratic Committee member Rhonda Fabbro—who shares a home with Village Trustee Matthew Fabbro—is supporting Make America White Again (MAGA) candidate Brandon Calore in his race for mayor of Woodbury.Note to Free Subscribers: If you want today’s podcast, you have to be a paid subscriber to listen to it either here, on Apple Podcasts or over on Spotify. All posts going forward will include a podcast. We don’t run advertising, so your subscriptions support The Monroe Gazette. Subscribers also get access to our full archives, and our private Facebook Group. The Facebook Group is often updated throughout the week with smaller news items as they come up.The Monroe Gazette is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.During the September 25, 2025, Village of Woodbury Board meeting, the unelected Village Trustee Rhonda Fabbro, mother of the actually elected Village Trustee Matthew Fabbro, made another unwelcome appearance, looking as if she had just crawled out of an eighteenth-century well. I can say that because at the end of this meeting, after being confronted by Woodbury residents for her asinine comments— which we’ll get to in a moment—Mrs. Fabbro said, “I don’t care if you make fun of me on social media.”So, here we are.Mrs. Fabbro, whom we’ve previously reported on, often doesn’t appear in person, preferring to text her son Matthew during Village Board meetings, instructing him on how to vote and what to say according to Village officials and Woodbury residents.While not a criticism, it’s worth noting that Village Trustee Matthew Fabbro still lives at home with his mother. It is reasonable to question whether he can go against his mother’s commands, given his dependence on her for shelter.Along with Valerie Hebel, who also frequently spoke in favor of positions taken by Village Trustee James Freiband at this meeting, Rhonda Fabbro is a member of the Woodbury Democratic Committee.I mention all of this because a significant portion of time at this meeting was spent discussing a local law that would extend Woodbury’s building moratorium for another six months or so. If you live in Woodbury, this moratorium does not impact projects already in development. If you still see a lot of development going on, that’s because these projects were approved before the moratorium was implemented. It’s important to note this, as during this meeting Trustee James Freiband, Valerie Hebel, and others tried to mislead Woodbury residents into thinking there’s plenty of water available, and that’s why the moratorium should be lifted.We’ll talk more about that in an upcoming edition of the podcast. For now, I want to share Mrs. Fabbro’s chilling and disturbing comments, which utilize a fifty-year-old tactic often deployed across Orange, Rockland, and Sullivan Counties, when the wealthy and well-connected, particularly those in the real estate industry, don’t get what they want.At 51:47 in the video presented in today’s show notes, Mrs. Fabbro approaches the podium. Mrs. Fabbro then immediately employs the tried-and-true tactic that State Senator James Skoufis often likes to use, claiming that any concerns raised about the environmental consequences of overdevelopment are “fearmongering.” Specifically, she said it is “fearmongering when we talk about South Blooming Grove,” a village that, just days before Mrs. Fabbro made this comment, was sued again by Orange County for illegally attempting to annex portions of county-owned Gonzaga Park. “Village Executive” Joel Stern has tried repeatedly since 2022 to build a road known as the Mangin Bypass. As we’ve covered extensively, Joel Stern, Isaac Ekstein, and friends in South Blooming Grove have been on an extensive white-collar crime spree since coming into office in early 2021. Despite this, Mrs. Fabbro continued, stating, “We are not living in South Blooming Grove. We do not have high-density housing in Woodbury.” While it’s true that Woodbury residents do not live in South Blooming Grove, South Blooming Grove’s unelected officials, Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein, have been active in meddling with Woodbury elections. This includes Isaac Ekstein allegedly requesting that Mordechai Kellner’s United Jewish Community of Woodbury release flyers and endorsements promoting mayoral candidate Brandon Calore, something that, until a recent change by the Trump Administration, would be illegal for a not-for-profit organization to do. Mr. Scott Ugell, the disgraced Rockland Justice who failed upward into a no-show $75,000-a-year Village Attorney gig in South Blooming Grove, also donated to Brandon Calore’s campaign. Mr. Calore is also employed by a company known as CIOFFI, which the Village of Woodbury is currently suing, resulting in an ethics complaint against Calore that is now under investigation by the Orange County Board of Ethics, since the Town of Woodbury does not have an ethics committee, refuses to create one, and last revised its ethics code to allow Supervisor Kathryn Luciani to employ her son at the Animal Shelter. Mr. Calore is accused of sharing information with CIOFFI by utilizing his position on the Woodbury Town Board. CIOFFI is also currently being sued by Orange County for assisting Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein in clearing part of Gonzaga Park to build the Mangin Bypass. Whether or not Mr. Calore assisted in that clearing work is unknown. Mr. Calore, despite frequent claims of being honest and transparent, says little during Town Board meetings, declined to answer The Monroe Gazette’s questions about his role with CIOFFI and relations with South Blooming Grove, and laughed off this question when asked by a Town resident. Mrs. Luciani also assisted in shutting down this discussion by saying it wasn’t Town business. If it’s not Town business to ask a Town Councilman about allegations that he abused his authority to aid his employer in a lawsuit, then what is?Back to Rhonda Fabbro …At 52:25, Mrs. Fabbro stated, “I don’t know why the residents who come to these meetings think that the Board is going to vote for high-density housing or vote against our water moratorium if it’s needed.” Here, we want to point out that Village Trustee James Freiband voted against continuing the building moratorium mere moments later, and that both Mrs. Fabbro’s son and James Freiband voted against granting the Village of Woodbury lead agency status in discussions involving the annexation of ACE Farm into neighboring Kiryas Joel—a project that would absolutely involve high-density housing that would impact roads, local infrastructure, and water availability for Woodbury residents. Mr. Freiband and Mr. Fabbro, despite voting against lead agency status for the Village of Woodbury concerning ACE Farms, are now trying to mislead Woodbury voters by running on a third-party ballot line called “No Annexations,” which is not only a deceptive fraud but also demonstrates the utter contempt and disregard that State Senator Skoufis and his friends on the Democratic Committee of Woodbury have for Woodbury residents. They think you’re stupid. Mrs. Fabbro, like her son throughout this meeting, as well as Mr. Freiband and Mrs. Valerie Hebel, demonstrated a willingness to deceive and bamboozle Woodbury residents on behalf of the wealthy and well-connected they serve. Don’t forget that last year, Mrs. Rhonda Fabbro was supporting Tyler Etzel Jr. and John U. Keleman, two men working on behalf of wealthy real estate developer Wayne Corts to put condominiums on the Falkirk Golf Course.Mrs. Fabbro concluded her remarks by stating, “I don’t like the finger-pointing,” which I guess means she doesn’t like being held accountable for her actions and statements. This makes sense, given that Mrs. Fabbro is best friends with Woodbury Public Library Board President Cathy Schmidt, a woman we’ve reported on who has had multiple violent outbursts, none of which she will apologize for, and has enjoyed relative impunity as the other Woodbury Public Library Board members, including Vice President Ellie Pastel—who frequently posts in Facebook groups praising libraries—have ignored not one, not two, not three, but four requests by Woodbury residents to investigate Mrs. Schmidt’s behavior. Pictured Above: Excerpts of FOILed legal invoices sent to the Woodbury Public Library on behalf of Whiteman Osterman & Hannah LLP to investigate claims of harassment involving Woodbury Public Library Board President—and Rhonda Fabbro’s BFF—Cathy Schmidt. Despite numerous documented complaints about Mrs. Schmidt’s violent outbursts and behavior, the Woodbury Public Library Board and the Town of Woodbury have taken no action nor investigated Mrs. Schmidt. The public did not know this incident involved Martha Lopez until Mrs. Schmidt herself violated yet another Trustee Ethics Statement by outing Mrs. Lopez in a Facebook thread.(Mrs. Pastel’s husband, Michael Pastel, heads the Friends of the Library non-profit and has refused multiple requests by The Monroe Gazette to provide the taxpayer identification number of this non-profit and any of its Form 990s, something all registered non-profits must do under federal law. Mr. Pastel was recently referred to the IRS over this matter. While we can and should support our public libraries, that does not mean we must support bad behavior by Board Presidents, their Boards, and associated family members. We need strong libraries and accountable people to run them, not whatever is going on in Woodbury, which is why you should not vote for any increases in the Woodbury Public Library budget until Mrs. Cathy Schmidt resigns her position.Fabbro went on to say, “I don’t like the insinuations, and I think it’s anti-Semitic when we bring up South Blooming Grove,” eliciting a groan from the crowd. She then waddled back to her seat. At no point did her son address his mother’s comments directly, nor did he apologize to the Woodbury residents whom his mother just labeled anti-Semites. Instead, in Part 2 of the video at 1:09:30, Mr. Fabbro said, “Let’s try to keep the temperatures cool over the next couple of months. [...] Let’s not let it get personal.” Again, Matthew Fabbro did not call out his mother, who was the only one to accuse everyone in the room of being anti-Semitic. Instead, Mr. Fabbro, like his mother, Hebel, and Freiband, spent the meeting gaslighting Woodbury residents and criticizing what he perceived as political commentary at the podium. While multiple candidates running for office spoke at the Village Board meeting, all of them were professional and respectful; Mrs. Rhonda Fabbro was not.This Week’s Bible LessonI’m kidding. We don’t do Bible lessons here at The Monroe Gazette. However, we have taken the time over the last two years to point out the over use of accusations of anti-Semitism when the wealthy and well-connected real estate developers don’t get what they want. (See: Joel Stern’s pal, Moche Halpern, suing the Village of Washingtonville, represented by Whiteman Osterman & Hanna LLP, the law firm that Woodbury Public Library Board President Cathy Schmidt spent thousands of Woodbury taxpayer dollars on to defend herself after she was called out for harassing former Library Board Trustee Martha Lopez.)We’ve also discussed the weaponization of claims of anti-Semitism by bad actors in both the Trump and Biden administrations. Biden was the first to label any criticism of Israel’s ongoing actions in Gaza, or the policies of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, as “anti-Semitic.” Under Trump, “anti-Semitism” was used as a pretext to strip billions of dollars in funding from colleges and universities across the country—funding that, by the way, supported research on vaccinations and treatments for cancer. So don’t buy into this notion that these colleges were “woke.” Remember that when you hear or see some Make America White Again (MAGA) fool use the term “woke,” it is often a coded word for n***er.(Speaking of that word, while not the subject of today’s story, we’ve received multiple reports of mayoral candidate Brandon Calore demanding a Black teenager be removed from his property while the teenager was going door-to-door to raise funds for a school-related activity. Mr. Calore allegedly told the mother accompanying the teenager and his friend, “Get that n***er off my lawn.” I’m not exaggerating when I say that the MAGA crowd doesn’t stand for anything beyond white supremacy. Mr. Calore has also never answered questions regarding whether he is a member of the local Proud Boys chapter.)What I want to do, briefly, is highlight some teachings from the Torah and Talmud, to demonstrate why Mrs. Fabbro’s comments are not only wrong but also insulting to Jews like me and antithetical to what Jewish religion and culture represent. I don’t know if there are any non-Satmar synagogues left in Woodbury, but if there are, they should ask Mrs. Fabbro to issue a formal apology to the Jewish community. Her comments were ignorant and insulting; by making a specious claim of anti-Semitism to disguise the ongoing white-collar crime spree in South Blooming Grove, she committed an actual act of anti-Semitism. Such ignorance should not go unaddressed.For those of you who aren’t familiar with Jewish law, as outlined in the Torah and the Talmud, here’s why I say this:-My fellow Jews and I are admonished to say little and do much. Therefore, getting up and making ignorant, self-serving public comments to cover up the crimes of local real estate developers (Ziggy Brach, Joel Stern, Isaac Ekstein, and others) is antithetical to what the Talmud teaches us.As Jews, we are told we are here to do good and to battle evil. Evil is genocide, like what you see happening in Gaza. But evil is also defined as putting financial interests ahead of the health and safety of community members regarding their water supply. Without water, there is no life, and we, as Jews, are taught that our most important responsibility is the preservation of all life. No water means no life. Claiming that there’s “plenty of water,” as James Freiband did and as Mrs. Fabbro implies, is misguided when, in reality, there isn’t enough water for Woodbury residents. Not long after Mrs. Fabbro made her statements, a drought warning was issued. As stated by the Fire Chief, there may not be sufficient water to protect Woodbury residents in the event of a devastating forest fire, such as the Jennings Creek Fire that occurred last year in nearby Greenwood Lake.Rabbis specifically, of whom Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein both claim to be—basically every male in the Satmar community, particularly in Hanhalla (leadership), is a rabbi—are obligated to fight for righteousness and noble causes. What is happening in South Blooming Grove, where non-Jews are treated with contempt, where neither Satmar nor non-Satmar residents have access to adequate water, where multiple instances of infrastructure failures are under investigation by the EPA and DEC, and where Isaac Ekstein remains under active FBI investigation for potential voter fraud—this is not righteousness. Pictured Above: Concerned Woodbury residents and South Blooming Grove can read the full letter from Orange County’s Department of Health here. What it IS is a mirror, demonstrating the same contempt for humanity that you see perpetrated by Netanyahu in Israel, whose unpopular government coalition is dependent on the Haredi to remain in power. That is why, when I’m asked, “Can’t we just negotiate with Hanhalla?” I always say no. Hanhalla will only do what is best for them, not for their own people, and certainly not for anyone considered “goyim.” Just ask the people living in Gaza.How can I say that? Because the Torah and the Talmud command all Jews to call out Bad Jews whenever we see them in the wild. They may make us look bad, but more importantly, whether you are Satmar or not, Bad Jews put all of us in danger. Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein have allowed anti-Semitism, real anti-Semitism, to flourish in Blooming Grove and the larger Southern Orange County community specifically through their illegal actions. Pictured Above: Orange County Executive, Steve Nuehuas, with Joel Stern (right) and Isaac Ekstein (left.) Allegedly, this photo was taken by County Attorney, Rick Golden, whom the four were said to have enjoyed “cigars on the mountain” together after Stern told Neuhaus about his plans to put a road through Gonzaga Park. Rick Golden has denied he was up on the mountain when asked by The Monroe Gazette.This is compounded by the repeated failure of Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus, Orange County District Attorney Hoovler, Congressman Pat Ryan, State Senator Skoufis, Assemblyman Brian Maher, Orange County Legislator Bonnelli, Attorney General Letitia James, and Governor Kathy Hochul to take any action against both men.One final point here: As Joel Teitelbaum said himself before moving his congregation to Monroe from both Brooklyn and Lakewood, New Jersey, “The law of the land is the law.” Neither of his nephews, who control the Satmar religious dynasty, follow this law, but it is commanded to all Jews that we do so. If the Village of Woodbury says there is no water, it is not within our purview to ignore that. If the Village of South Blooming Grove wants to violate law after law, it not only defies New York State law, but it also contradicts what we are commanded to do by our elders and God.It is not fearmongering to call out what Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein are doing in South Blooming Grove.It is not anti-Semitic to call them out. It is our duty and obligation as Jews, and as non-Jews concerned about the preservation of all life, to do so.It is anti-Semitic to twist and manipulate a culture and religion that Mrs. Fabbro appears completely ignorant of, in order to further the financial interests of a few real estate developers at the expense of her friends and neighbors.This behavior is unacceptable, and she should be called out by every member of this community for participating in this repeated attempt at gaslighting.I once again urge registered Democrats in Woodbury to rise up and take back their Democratic Committee, liberating it from these disgusting, ignorant people (the Freibands, the Fabbros, Etzel, Keleman, etc.). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

We’re back with a new podcast. Just a quick note that if you want to be able to listen to the podcast in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you need to be a paid subscriber to The Monroe Gazette; however, you can still listen to the episode here for free by clicking on the play button above. Paid Subscribers also get access to our Private Facebook Group here.Quick note about the Democracy Rocks August 17th event. It is SOLD OUT … But. You can buy tickets at the door the day of the show. Email [email protected] for more information.The Monroe Gazette is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Transcript Of This Week’s Podcast(The following transcript has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.)Pictured Above: Woodbury Town Councilwoman Gretchen Weiners, Town Councilman (and Mayoral Candidate) Brandon Calore, and Woodbury Town Supervisor Kathryn Luciani at a recent campaign fundraiser.Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of The Monroe Gazette podcast coming at you from the George Carlin Memorial Podcast Studio. I'm your host, BJ Mendelson.We have a great interview coming up with Zahava Wilson. Zahava is the committee leader for Indivisible Hurley / Indivisible Woodstock. So, you know, the same way we have an Indivisible chapter down here in Monroe, we also have a bunch of them all over New York State. So I'm gonna do my best to highlight some of the activities of the ones within the Hudson Valley, just so we can learn a bit more about them. We're gonna get right into our story real quick, because it's less of a story and more of a letter that we sent to the Town of Woodbury attorney, Rory Brady. I'm reading it just because there's a lot going on here, and it really could have been, and probably should be, a story of its own. But the Town of Woodbury, as you're about to hear, is obstructing a FOIL request, so.I'm reading this letter to you and we're going to publish it just so you understand what the FOIL request is. Then, depending on how they respond, that's really going to dictate what this story is because it's either:Option A: We're going to sue the Town of Woodbury or …Option B: They decide to process the FOIL and then we'll publish our story based on what the results of that FOIL are. So we're to get to our interview with Zahava in just a moment. I'm going to read you this letter and without further ado …Letter To The Woodbury Town Attorney, Rory Brady[Note to readers: Mr. Brady is the third Town Attorney since the Luciani-Calore Regime took power in January of 2024. He was preceded by Joseph G. Mckay, who left under mysterious circumstances, and Ed Thater. Mr. Thater declined to respond to requests about his departure as the Town Attorney.]Hi Rory,Our deadline for response has passed concerning the town's claim that the foil for metadata and email server logs from Mr. Calore are duplicative to our request for records for Mr. Calore’s specific communications with Mr. Cioffi and the company CIOFFI. [And just by way of background for people listening to us. Brandon Calore is a Woodbury town board member. He's also running for mayor of Woodbury. He is also employed by a company known as CIOFFI. And CIOFFI is important for the Monroe Gazette because they do a lot of construction work for South Blooming Grove. So there's a definite connection between CIOFFI and South Blooming Grove. And then there's this question of what Mr. Calore’s relationship is with South Blooming Grove, specifically with Joel Stern and Isaac Eckstein and CIOFFI. CIOFFI is currently being sued by Orange County for allegedly doing illegal construction work through County owned Gonzaga Park. So there's like an ongoing controversy here concerning CIOFFI, Joel Stern, Isaac Ekstein, and South Blooming Grove. Then you've got this guy running for mayor in Woodbury, who's kind of stuck in the middle of it. So everything Brandon Calore says and does is kind of interesting and important because one of reasons we started The Monroe Gazette was to cover South Blooming Grove because a lot of people just weren't. A lot of Woodbury residents, for years now, have insisted Woodbury was “The Next South Blooming Grove.” Those concerns make Mr. Brandon Calore’s relationship with the South Blooming Grove Brain Trust newsworthy.And one other thing just to mention about Calore, he's received donations from Scott Ugell, who is a village attorney for South Blooming Grove. He also received a campaign endorsement for the June 2025 primary from the United Jewish Community of Woodbury, which allegedly came at the behest of Isaac Eckstein in South Blooming Grove. Ekstein is the president of the United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove. Joel Stern is listed as the Founder of that organization.So there are these questions here of what is Brandon Calore’s relationship with South Blooming Grove. So let me get back to the letter …]“As you might not be aware, Mr. Calore has resumed working for CIOFFI. So the town's claims that there are no phone or email communications on his personal and professional devices and emails with the company or its owner is a bit laughable. Unless Mr. Cioffi and Mr. Calore communicate telepathically, there's a trail somewhere, even if it's in a text message, which we asked for as part of a FOIL request. So I disagree with the town's position. I believe the metadata request is substantially different as it's requesting all email metadata and server logs that Mr. Calore has sent and received over the last seven months. I believe this request will reveal at least two instances where Mr. Calore lied in signing a public officer's law certification, as well as reveal potential wrongdoing that should be referred to the Orange County Board of Ethics.” [And just again, this is me stepping outside the letter. So the town of Woodbury does not have a ethics board. So in Orange County, if you are a municipality like South of Blooming Grove or Woodbury, if you don't have an ethics board, then the Orange County ethics board has oversight. And the Orange County ethics board also has oversight for something like Monroe. And so, you if you read our last post, we covered how the town of Monroe ethics board is like packed with Tony Cardone friends. They've never actually issued an adverse ruling against Tony Cardone. And so the Orange County ethics board, my understanding anyway, is that they have oversight over the local ethics boards as well. So that's, that's what's going on here.]“Mr. Calore claims not to have any records or documents concerning our requests concerning both the town and village IMA discussion and any interactions with CIOFFI.”[And so here we have, when you do a FOIL request, one of the things you're supposed to ask for is a POLS certification, which is just the town official and the town clerk signing a statement saying, you know, they did a diligent search for the records that you requested.What we have at the Monroe Gazette are two of these certifications signed by Calore. And we also have two emails from him where he's telling the town clerk, I have nothing, which we know one of them is already a lie, right? Because we have other town records concerning the IMA where Calore was copied on them. So we've already caught him once. And so this request is looking to see if he's done it again.]The Luciani-Calore Regime’s Lack of Transparency“This town board has demonstrated its desire to not answer questions from the public during public comment, moved locations of the town board meetings, and often doesn't list its new location on its website.[Or if you look at the July 2025 in the know, you'll see that Supervisor Luciani just provides the time, but not the location.] “… Moved the time in the meetings earlier in evening when most Woodbury residents are just getting home. And that was all something that was done at the objection of town residents.”[the Monroe Gazette is covering that story as to why exactly the Woodbury town board decided to move abruptly. There's still not a clear answer as to why they did it. The town board claims that the landlord wasn't living up to their obligations. The landlord denies that. Other officials in Woodbury also suggested that the town's claims are false. We don't really know what the truth is there, so we haven't wrote that story just yet. Going back to our letter …]“… Time is also restricted to three minutes despite the sparse attendance and sparse agenda items. Questions are not answered by reporters nor are they answered when asked by residents. For example, Town Supervisor Luciani claimed a question related to the potential misconduct by town board member Calore involving CIOFFI was not town business. So residents and reporters will have to assume that town business is only what Mrs. Luciani says it is.”[I should probably explain here, I apologize, I keep like stepping out of the letter, but this is all, I think it's all important to know because there's this big ongoing discussion we're hearing about public comment. Now, over in South Blooming Grove, they took public comment away, which is something they, Woodbury, can also do. And I have a feeling if it wasn't an election year, this town board would absolutely take public comment away, but they probably won't because they know it's an election year. And if they do, then everyone running against them, and there's a bunch of people running against them, should and will absolutely campaign on that.So you can't ask questions at a town board meeting because this town board likes to claim grievance and victimhood every single time you ask them a question. And that's similar over in Monroe too, right? You can't question what the town of Monroe board (Houle-Cardone-Scancarello) does because the second you do, it's victim hood, it's grievance, it's complaints, or it's a lot of like, they do that Trump thing where like he will say something that he is doing as if you're doing it. And that's something that I've observed very frequently happening with both the town board in Monroe and this particular town board in Woodbury.So let's get back to the letter …]Attempts At Chilling A Reporter’s First Amendment Right“This town board has, as I've shared with you, defaulted to anti-Semitic attacks on myself and often utilizes sock puppet accounts to harass myself, town residents, and other public officials using names like Nat Bedford, which is alleged to be Mr. Calore’s campaign manager, Elias Cunningham.”[A lot of Woodbury residents think Nat Bedford is Elias because he, Nat, made some weird reference to his Italian grandmother, which people know Elias has. But again, there's no proof to suggest that he is Nat Bedford other than the posts sounding very similar. If you were to go and read like a Nat Bedford post and one of Mr. Elias's unhinged posts you’d see the similarities. Also: Nathan Bedford Forest is the founder of the KKK. So, if it IS Mr. Elias Cunningham running the Nat Bedford account, it’s probably worth asking Brandon Calore why he’s ok with his campaign manager cosplaying as the founder of the KKK.]“Robin Spiegel, Mr. Calore’s top individual campaign donor outside of his family, Pinchus Glauber, confessed to being Robin Spiegel.[You should know that Mr. Pinchus Glauber has declined to respond to requests for comments on the matter. And Mr. Calore claims that he's unaware of Robin Spiegel's true identity.]“And then there’s Denise Chance. The identity is unknown beyond its clear connection to Mr. Calore. If you go and look at the Denise Chance profile, you'll see that it's following the Calore campaign.”[And just by the way, I did a post about this elsewhere, but I didn't mention it on the Gazette. Denise Chance is actually a murder victim in Ohio. It's a cold case from about 30 years ago. So regardless of whether or not the Denise Chance character is a Calore campaign sock puppet, it is definitely a Woodbury resident because they were dumb enough to say so. And it's kind of distasteful that a Woodbury resident, who clearly supports Mr. Calore — whether or not they're part of the campaign is unknown — is using a murder victim's name to hide behind.So if you see the Denise Chance character pop up, you should know, hey, that's a 30 year old unsolved cold case that this person is using the murder victim's name to hide behind.]“I believe that the town's behavior has fostered climate of fear, hostility and retaliation. One employee was recently fired at the insistence of the town supervisor for making critical comments about her. Multiple town board members have resigned as well as multiple town employees. It's easy to lose track over how many people, for example, have resigned from the Woodbury Animal Shelter, but I have no doubt that someone is counting. The town of Woodbury's insistence on not fulfilling this FOIL request is infringing on my First Amendment right as both an area resident and as a reporter.And the attempts by Mr. Calore through the use of these sock puppets are meant to have a chilling effect on my speech. To Quote Mr. Calore …[ And just again, background, I, of course, you know, every time we publish a story, you have to talk to the people that you're writing about. And so we went and we asked Mr. Calore about Denise Chance and Nat Bedford and Robin Spiegel. And, you know, I said to him that you can't, if you are a sock puppet account on Facebook, you know, you may think you're anonymous, but someone could go to court with like a John Doe lawsuit and compel Facebook to overturn that information provided to you. And so Mr. Calore’s response was …“ You see, I want you to go full discovery and then we'll find out all your little secrets too. Go get your lawyers and whatever else you want to do. I really want you to proceed with legal action. I have nothing to hide, but from my sources, you certainly do. “And just by the way, anytime someone says “I have nothing to hide”, they absolutely have something to hide. He goes on to say,“Now I have questions for you. Does your chin hurt from falling down the ladder of life? You claim to be a best-selling author, you claim a lot. Now you're just an internet troll who allegedly lurks outside grocery stores. And while I spend time with my family and friends, I also loop in your head 24 seven.”[And you guys should know that Mr. Calore sent this to me on a Saturday morning. So if he has the full and active life that he claims to have, I seriously doubt that I would be getting these responses on a Saturday morning. ]“So given that Mr. Calore has dared me to pursue legal action against himself and the town, I'm writing to encourage you as the town attorney to speak with our attorney at your earliest convenience.I will also be submitting a new series of FOIL requests this week.”So that's the letter. Again, we don't know what direction this story will go in.We’re gonna see how the attorneys communicate, and either the Town of Woodbury will fulfill the FOIL request, or if they don't, we will sue them.We've talked before ,about doing this with the IMA and the town obstructing the FOIL requests. So we talked about potentially suing the town and then, you know, we kind of backed off from it because we got the documents that we asked for. And so this is another instance where the town is opening itself up to a lawsuit, which we do not want to do because it costs taxpayers money.But …If this particular town board is doing something wrong, it's our job to report on it. And if they're doing something wrong, and they're making you pay to cover up the fact that they're doing something wrong, that too is a story. I don't know if we'll necessarily be able to unmask the sock puppets within a FOIL lawsuit. I think that's a little out of bounds for a FOIL lawsuit. But we might also concurrently file what's called a John Doe lawsuit.And what that does is, like I mentioned, the John Doe lawsuit is something that you go to court and get a judge. And then the judge says, OK, you've got evidence here to compel Facebook to provide that information. And so what we might do here is we would file a John Doe lawsuit with the idea that Robin Spiegel, Denise Chance, and Nat Bedford are all working with or for Mr. Calore. Or there's always the off chance, because we're not sure with Denise whether or not you know, that's another town board member. And if we find out that it is a Town Board member, or it's, you know, that it is associated with Mr. Calore, then that becomes part of like the larger lawsuit. So there's a lot to find out. There's a lot to parse, but I want to let you know, we're always transparent here. I do enjoy the fact that Mr. Calore is apparently running scared because for a long time, he did not respond to anything that we said. And now all of a sudden, he's very communicative, which means that our job to report on what he's doing is clearly working. So, I'm sorry, that was a long tangent, but that's what's going on with Woodbury. We'll now go to our interview with Zahava Wilson. And I will see you soon with another interview this week.Interview With Zahava Wilson of Indivisible Hurley/WoodstockBJ Mendelson: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your organization.Zahava Wilson, Indivisible Hurley: Okay, so my name is Zahava. I started Indivisible Hurley/ Woodstock after the 2024 presidential election because I was so mortified with the results of that presidential election. We in Hurley. I was the head of the voter outreach for the Hurley Democratic Committee and we in Hurley had such an active outpouring of volunteerism and Ulster County in general did, for that election. And we had such high energy, such positivity. So many volunteers and when we knocked on doors everyone was on board, ‘yeah we're voting, we're voting up and down the ticket, Democrats.’ And so we won every race in Hurley except for the presidential race and it was just devastating. So I went on an Indivisible National Meeting right away in November and there was already over three thousand people on that call and some people couldn't even get on because it was was filled to the max and I was really inspired by what Ezra Levin had to say. I just right away started a local chapter. I reached out to Sarah Reeske, the Upstate head of the New York Indivisible Project, and to Lin Sakai, head of the Ulster County Indivisible Chapter. And I asked, should I take all of our people and join the already formed group or start our own?And they both said unequivocally to start our own because that's how we draw more people in by getting more local people and that is exactly what's happened. We keep gaining more people and a lot of people had no idea what Indivisible was and we really wanted to bring in people who maybe weren't so political, we're just very, very unhappy with those [election] results. And more and more people are seeing what is going on in this country and wanting to do something.BJ Mendelson: Was there something specific about the possibility of the Trump administration that sort of stood out to you that you wanted to make sure that you addressed?Zahava: Do you mean what was it about the Trump administration that was so upsetting?BJ: For example, for me, it was that at a lot of the rallies, people were holding up signs saying “mass deportations now.” So after he was elected, I said, OK, this is the kind of thing that is un-American and we should not allow. That's sort of what inspired me to act. I'm curious if there was like a specific trigger or issue where you were like, okay, this is this is the thing?Zahava: Yeah, I think for me personally, we saw who he was and what his intentions were his first term. And I knew about Project 2025. It was sickening to me what they were proposing. And we were literally knocking on doors and we had a sheet with with listing what Project 2025 was proposing and it was so egregious that people who saw it didn't believe it. Even Democrats didn't believe it. So I knew what was coming down the pike, the inhumanity of these attacks on immigrants, the complete capitulation to the billionaire class think it was those two things. I knew what was coming down the pike in terms of taking away services for the vulnerable and attacking the immigrant communities.So it was those two things.BJ Mendelson: What's it like at your stand-up events, at your local events? What's been the response?Zahava: I guess I would answer that by saying that we are finding that people are so grateful to have a place where they can take their anger, their fear, feeling of isolation, their frustration, and a place where they can act and also a place that they have like-minded people so they don't feel alone. When we started the group, that was one of the major things that we heard when we went around and asked people why they were here, why they joined, it was their feeling of isolation and being alone in this dark time. So I think that was a big …That was a big draw and that was a feeling that we got is, we can, instead of feeling desperate and powerless, we can come together and together we can create power. We can, as individuals we're not, we don't have so much power, but together we can make a huge difference.Democracy Rocks, August 17th In Woodstock, New YorkBJ Mendelson: And that's a good segue to talking about the event on August 17th, Democracy Rocks. So I hoping you can tell us a bit more about it, what's going on, what's planned for the event, and how people can attend?Zahava: Yeah, okay. So that was born out of, at one of our meetings, one of our members, Andrea Stern, just came up with this idea to do a concert. She said there's such a, you know, we need, she said we need inspiration, we need joy, we need something for people to look forward to and feel good about. And everybody at the meeting just immediately joined in and came on board with that idea. And so that's how it was born. And when we reached out to musicians, when we reached out to speakers, when we reached out to ask for certain volunteers, right away every single person responded, yes, absolutely. Just unequivocally, we had yes responses again and again and again.People really wanted to contribute and make this happen. And so the buzz is growing and we've already sold out half the tickets, all the reserve seating's already sold out. So the idea is really to bring people together for something positive and really spark more of a movement through joy and unity and optimism.[Editor’s note: We recorded this interview before I got sick, so between when we recorded it and when it aired, the event is sold out. BUT. Tickets will still be available at the door the day of the show. Email [email protected] for more information.]BJ: It's really speaking to the history of our region. But you know, the first thing when I saw Democracy Rocks, Woodstock, New York, I was like, oh, this is exactly calling back to the history of our region of political activism, which, you know, yeah, so I see some of the special guests. I see some of the performers. Can you just let us know a little bit about, you know, someone who is speaking and someone who's performing?Zahava: Okay, so we have Kate Pierson of the B-52s performing and she is another person who right away said, yes, she's one of our … Kate lives in Hurley and she has fame as being a really very, very well known rock band in the 80s, 90s.Then we have Gal Ann Dorsey who played with, who was the bassist for David Bowie and a lot of other really big name groups, the Indigo Girls. I'd have to look up the other bands she's been in, but she's been in a number of really well-known bands. And then Larry Campbell, Guy Davis, and then one of our local performing groups is The Bob Cats.BJ Mendelson: That's awesome. And so in terms of speakers, also have a really, you have a state assembly member, you've got an Ulster County executive, you've got representatives from NYCLU. So like who is someone that you're really excited about hearing from at that event?Zahava: You know, to be honest, I'm really excited about every one of those speakers. They're all just doing such great work. We were thrilled that Sarahana Shrestha, a New York State Assembly member, was willing to come on. She has a really big following, especially of young, progressive people, which we need. We need to build that coalition Jen Metzger is our county executive. She's incredible. She's doing a great job and she's really an inspiring speaker. The other speakers that you mentioned are also really doing great work for immigration, doing great work for Planned Parenthood, all of those things that are at risk right now. Not only at risk, they're being attacked.BJ Mendelson: And so a lot of people will wonder, so there's the tickets right now, reserve seating is sold out. So general admission, it's $30 in advance or $35 day of. And so people might want to know, okay, well, what are you gonna put the money towards? And I saw on the flyer something that I thought was pretty great, which is … I'm a big believer in billboards. And it's something that we see nationwide from Indivisible and other groups that they've used really, really effectively these pro-democracy billboards so was just hoping you might pull tell us a little bit more about thatZahava: So the idea of the billboard will be that it's on one of the very busy roads. as I'm sure you know, our region gets a lot of tourists, a lot of people come up for the summer. And then they come up for the fall, the leaf keeping, and then for winter, for skiing. So we have a lot of people coming up to our region to engage in our beautiful Hudson Valley. And so this billboard would be on the major road going into our area. And it will be a pro-democracy statement. We want to find one that's really, really impactful without being alienating. And so we're working on the exact right words and something that will really not only catch people's eye and make a difference to them, but then they will possibly want to go search for their own indivisible group.BJ: And so where can we get in touch with you? So I know it's indivisiblehurleywoodstock.org and [email protected]. Where else can they go for information on the event? Zahava: We have a Facebook page for the democracy rocks concert if they look that up they'll find that they can also go to the colony page and they can also go to our facebook page in addition to our website they can go to our Facebook page.BJ: And my last question is really, is there anything that I didn't ask that you'd like to highlight or let people know about?Zahava: Yes, I would just like to say that if you are someone who has not been very political, and you're not happy with what's going on, and you want to do something or even if you just want to be part of the community, then reach out to your local Indivisible group. It's an incredible resource. The National Indivisible has so much information and the idea is just to keep drawing more and more people into our fold. And you don't have to be from any kind of political affiliation. You just have to not want what's happening to our fellow community members who are really being …What's happening to our fellow community members is just horrendous and that's not who we are as a country. And I think the majority of the country does not want this. So if you are someone who feels that way, don't feel alone. Take that outrage and put it, bring it here to us and we will gladly welcome you into our fold. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

SummaryThe conversation delves into the implications of the MAGA Murder Bill on New York's healthcare system, particularly focusing on the potential loss of coverage for millions, the impact on retirees, and the need for advocacy for the New York Health Act. The discussion emphasizes the importance of community mobilization and legislative action to ensure comprehensive healthcare coverage for all New Yorkers.TakeawaysThe MAGA Murder Bill creates a significant budget deficit in New York.Over a million New Yorkers may lose their Medicaid coverage.The New York Health Act aims to provide universal healthcare.Retirees are becoming more engaged in healthcare advocacy.Community mobilization is crucial for legislative change.The New York Health Act could save billions annually.Healthcare costs will decrease for the majority of New Yorkers.Advocacy efforts need to be persistent and organized.The New York Health Act would cover services currently excluded by Medicare.Legislators need to hear from constituents to act on healthcare issues.KeywordsMAGA Murder Bill, New York Health Act, healthcare coverage, Medicaid, healthcare costs, advocacy, legislation, retirees, healthcare access, community mobilization This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

SummaryThe conversation centers around the Plastic Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, discussing the challenges faced in legislative advocacy, the influence of lobbying, and the financial implications of related projects. The speakers emphasize the importance of community engagement and the need for constituents to actively participate in the legislative process to support environmental initiatives.TakeawaysThe Plastic Reduction and Recycling Act aims to reduce single-use packaging.Lobbying from the oil and plastics industry poses significant challenges to environmental legislation.Community engagement is crucial for the success of environmental bills.Financial implications of projects like the sewer plant can burden local taxpayers.The influence of a single assembly member can impact legislative outcomes.Constituents should actively reach out to their representatives to advocate for environmental issues.The bill faced opposition from powerful lobbying groups.Transparency in government spending is essential for accountability.The need for a fair distribution of costs among large corporations and taxpayers.Grassroots organizing can amplify the voices of concerned citizens.Chapters00:00 Introduction to Beyond Plastics and Judith Anke02:18 The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act03:00 Legislative Challenges and Lobbying Efforts04:47 Engaging Local Representatives for Environmental Advocacy07:42 Interview with Assemblymember Kay18:00 Introduction to Legislative Advocacy19:06 Challenges from Lobbying Industries21:38 Community Safety and Legislative Proposals This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

As promised in our Sunday post, here is our podcast interview with Chester Town Supervisor, Brandon Holdridge, Chester Town Clerk, Linda Zappala, and Chester Town Board member Bob Courtenay. The reason there’s a Republican Primary has less to do with State Senator Skoufis’s Protect Monroe-Woodbury, and more to do with former Town Supervisor, Bob Valentine, looking for revenge. In the Fall of 2023, Bob Valentine lost to current Town Supervisor, Brandon Holdridge, by 604 votes (1586 to 962.)In today’s episode — which we’re making available for free — we discuss the Town of Chester Republican Primary, currently underway (see Early Voting information below), and what makes Bob Courtenay and Linda Zappala the most qualified candidates in the race. The Monroe Gazette has endorsed them both. We are also still investigating concerns involving Mr. Valentine’s Valcon America Corporation and its connections to wealthy real estate developers with interests in Chester during Mr. Valentine’s time as Supervisor.In today’s podcast, we also discussed Chester’s transition to a Ward System — something Monroe and Woodbury absolutely need to implement — an update on ownership of the Sugar Loaf Performing Arts Center, and what’s next in terms of land preservation in the Town of Chester.Linda Zappala also gives a great, and very detailed answer, concerning what it is a Town Clerk actually does. Most people have no idea. Neither does the Village of South Blooming Grove Clerk. But that’s a different story … This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Transcript(A note to readers: The Transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity. We’ve also added a few things, such as the new super sketchy Protect Monroe-Woodbury mailers that State Senator Skoufis is responsible for. If you’ve missed our coverage of Mr. Skoufis’s violation of New York State Election law as it relates to Woodbury, you can read our most recent story on it here.)Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of The Monroe Gazette brought to you from the George Carlin Memorial Podcast Studio. I'm your host, BJ Mendelson. You know, I was watching the June 5th Town of Woodbury Board Meeting and I wanted to share something with all of you. While it's true I don't live in Southern Orange County half the year, for example — the George Carlin Memorial Podcast Studio is based in Los Angeles — When I am here, I help take care of three disabled adults. They all live here and what happens in Monroe, Woodbury, Chester, and Blooming Grove impacts them. So every time you see someone, like the unelected Woodbury Village trustee, Rhonda Fabbro, tell people “He doesn't even live here." I want you to know something. She's right. But my family does. They've been here since 1988 and we can't all be as fortunate as Rhonda. You see, Mrs. Fabro has a son over on the Woodbury Village board and she tells him how to vote. Isn’t that special?I'll also point out to you that over in Monroe, former State Senator Skoufis intern, Brandon Bernard, is running for town board and he also doesn't live here half the year.Pictured Above: Fellow Part-Time Monroe resident, Brandon Bernard, stands in the center. Next to him is the weird a*****e who won't get off people’s lawns, Paul Phelan. On the right is David Rabbitts, looking at the one person in the room who could still have a successful political career after the Town of Monroe Democratic Primary is over.So, someone should tell the local Democrats that you can't have it both ways. You can have people use their voice to speak up for those who are unable, regardless of where they may be, or you can't. Before we move on, I just want to say, I'm sure Woodbury voters this November will make the right choice and send both Fabbros packing. That said, I was a little disturbed by what happened during the public comment portion of this Town of Woodbury meeting.The Monroe Gazette consulted with multiple attorneys, including the town of Woodbury’s attorney, for this story. Here's what we were able to learn.Yes. A Town Attorney Can Shut You Down.-A town attorney can cut you off during public comment and they can also remove public comment entirely. That's what happened over in South Blooming Grove.That doesn't make it right. We don't think it's right. But in New York, it's important for residents to know that public comment is a privilege, not a right. That said, if you're like me and don't like the Town of Woodbury forcing you to speak for only three minutes, you can and should absolutely run every candidate out of town who refuses to fix that. If you are running for town board, you can and should tell people you want the public to be able to speak their mind. Preferably in more time than it takes to show commercials between innings at a Mets game.We hope, and I don't think it's out of line to state this, that the Woodbury Town Attorney agrees that these rules and guidelines can be explained better, and we hope that at an upcoming town board meeting, they will be clarified respectfully by the Town of Woodbury. For example, you CAN record Town of Woodbury Board meetings. As long as you don’t get in Brandon Calore’s face, for example, and say something like, “I know you drink and drive. How many beers did you have on your way to this meeting?”I also feel, and I hope you agree, that the town should be asked to clarify why they feel public comment should be limited to three minutes, especially when the attendance at town board meetings are often on par with a Brandon Calore ice cream social for disabled teenagers. (And if you don't get that joke, I'm happy to explain that Mr. Calore was accused of assaulting a disabled teenager in an ice cream shop and then legitimately sued the mother of that teenager for telling people what he did. This is the man who wants to be your mayor. And Calore is also the primary beneficiary of mailers being sent out by James G. Skoufis's Protect Monroe Woodbury. Did you see these “cool” new ones?Above: The latest round of deceptive mailers sent by State Senator James G. Skoufis, and his employee — and former Door Dash Delivery Driver — William J. Alexander. We reached out to Woodbury Village Trustee Susan Ciriello for comment. Here’s what she told The Monroe Gazette about these deceptive fliers created by Mr. James Skoufis:Here are the facts. For fiscal year 2023/2024 the Mayor's Salary was 36k. For 2024/2025 it was raised to 42K, a 6k increase. Was it a secret or hidden? No. First, it is a separate line item on the budget under the caption of Mayor. Second, the salaries of elected officials are on the Summary page of the Village Adopted Budget which was available at the public hearing and on the Village website. Third, it was discussed in our budget session in executive session, where all 4 trustees were present. I was in favor of the increase. Why? Andrew has consistently demonstrated a deep commitment to serving the Woodbury community. He is accessible and responsive at all hours, often monitoring social media to stay attuned to residents’ concerns and promptly addressing issues as they arise. His leadership is results-driven, and his efforts have led to tangible improvements in the quality of life across Woodbury via infrastructure development, repair and maintenance, open space initiatives, climate smart initiatives and community engagement. He has shown tireless dedication to protecting and preserving what makes our community special. And to put it in perspective, the 6K increase resulted in MY personal village taxes increasing by $1.96 FOR THE YEAR or .16cents per month. (Emphasis added.) With regards to the budget, for the 2025/2026 budget, we were under the tax cap override.For the 2024/2025 budget, we were over the tax cap. This was because of the new ladder truck that arrived way ahead of schedule that we needed to take delivery of. Per the April 11, 2024 VB meeting minutes: "Mayor Giacomazza stated that money was in the budget for the initial down payment (of the fire truck). He stated the truck was ordered in February of 2023 and was supposed to take three years; however, it will be ready by the end of this year, meaning the Village has two less budget cycles to pay for it." I am personally disheartened by the amount of time, energy and money that is being spent on these dirty politics.”If you want to know more about Protect Monroe Woodbury, we've basically spent like the entire week at The Monroe Gazette talking about it, and we still have like three more articles to get out about Protect Monroe Woodbury, so there's more coming.Here’s the most popular one: Remember here, we are dealing with lawyers. So, yes. It is semantically confusing from a legal perspective, to have an independent party line that shares the name of a petition, and then ask an attorney to try to decide in real time what is and what is not political because of that confusion. I hope that makes sense because that was like a mouthful. In this case, we're talking about how We Are Woodbury is both an independent ballot line and the name of a civic group circulating a petition. This confusion is nobody's fault. It's actually good marketing. I'm just pointing out the fact that within the context of a town board meeting during public comment, it can be confusing. We have to fight smart. And the important thing is, if you're going to go and start a fight with someone, you want to be able to control the terrain that you start the fight on.So when you go into a town board meeting, and this is just an example using Woodbury, it could be like any town board, you don't control that terrain. And so you have to fight smart. And fighting smart is, okay, I know the rules, I know how to work the rules, but if I create an opportunity to be shut down, I will be shut down. That's what I mean by “we have to fight smart.” You want to avoid creating those opportunities to be shut down.Now …In the context of Woodbury, you're dealing with Mr. Skoufis, a well-funded real estate developer, and in some respects, the infrastructure of the New York State Democratic Party. I'll give you an example of what I mean. Did you notice the education equivalency requirements for Yeshivas were delayed another year in a recently approved budget? I hope you did, because the Governor did that to help her chances at reelection. You may also be aware, I hope, that the governor sent a representative from her office to speak with Woodbury officials about the annexation of Ace Farm. So pay attention. These actions by Hochul are not coincidental. When you don't control the terrain, you create opportunities to be shut down. And they will shut you down. In this case, the town is right to point this out [the confusion over We Are Woodbury as a Political Party and as a Civic Group]. A broken clock is right twice a day. It's also true that the town is involved in litigation concerning Ace Farm, and you better believe anything they say can and will be used against it. Probably by the same law firm Woodbury Public Library Board President Cathy Schmidt spent Woodbury taxpayer money on to utilize.So they [The Town] can't really comment on this stuff as a town board or during town meetings. The town is also right to point out that We Are Woodbury is a third-party. That means that any comments made on behalf of its candidates, for example, gets into the realm of political commentary. Something that's currently prohibited under the rules. That said, if you don't like that, and I don't, you can and should, if you feel strongly about this, demand that the town board revise public comment. They can absolutely give you more time to speak and allow for any manner of speech as long as it's not a verbal assault on the senses. Which is what happens practically any time a member of the Committee to Elect Woodbury Democrats opens their mouth. Also, while we're talking about the Committee to elect Woodbury Democrats, can we talk about the suits? Like what's going on with this? Why are they all wearing suits? It's like I'm looking at a pod person that was hatched in Skoufis's office. What is happening here? Nobody else is wearing a suit but you. You look like a freak. Anyway, sorry … It's just been a pet peeve of mine for a while now. It's incredibly stupid. It's also disingenuous. You represent a working-class town. This isn't Manhattan. You don't need to wear a suit for your Village of Woodbury board meeting, okay? Trust me. What does that mean for upcoming Woodbury meetings? If you want to specifically criticize a town board member for not doing enough for Woodbury without mentioning the petition, you could certainly do so. For example, Deputy Supervisor Gretchen Wieners has missed a bunch of meetings.Does she think the town board is a part-time job? Where is she? Another example: Mrs. Kelly Rinaldi is the unelected town board member who replaced another unelected town board member. If you recall, the last guy quit under mysterious circumstances that were never explained to the town. He replaced ANOTHER Town Board member who also quit. It’s almost as if there’s a pattern forming …Mrs. Kelly Rinaldi can be seen at this meeting, nodding her head at everything Mrs. Luciani says. I personally find that to be alarming.Like the aforementioned Village Trustee Matthew Fabro, if Mrs. Rinaldi isn't capable of independent thought, she probably shouldn't be on the town board.Now, if you want to discuss the petition concerning Ace Farm, it's best to explain to the public watching the meeting the benefits of signing such a petition and then remind the public where and how they can do so. You see the difference? This way you're not calling people out, you're not calling out the town, and you're not getting into a fight on terrain you don't control. Listen, I read the Art of War like every four months. So if you don't want to take my word for it, you can go and pick up a copy of the Art of War for yourself.You always fight a battle on terrain you control. You see the difference between going to a town board meeting and calling someone out for not supporting an annexation petition versus going to a town board meeting and saying, this is our petition, this is what it does, this is what you'll get if you sign it, this is how you sign it. You see the difference? Sell people the brownie, not the recipe. That's not my saying, by the way.I stole that from a much smarter woman who advises political candidates, proving once again that women are smarter than men and I am a d*****s. So all I can do is offer you the feedback. It's up to you now to act on it. So I'll leave it to you, people of Woodbury. And if you don't live in Woodbury, and you're like, why am I listening to this? It's true in Monroe too. You only got three minutes to speak in Monroe because Tax Hike Tony doesn't want people speaking. And if he sees you coming, he'll even cancel public comment, which we've seen him do.So it's not just the Woodbury thing. I'm just using Woodbury to highlight the point that you want to fight smart at these things. If you have an adversarial relationship with something like the Woodbury town board, you don't control that terrain. You can certainly fight them. You don’t have to pick your battles. That’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying is that you have to do it a specific way. And if you do it the wrong way, it looks bad.And Now A Quick American History LessonI'm just a journalist giving you my opinion. And if you're like, “BJ, journalists aren't supposed to give an opinion” … Can I just tell you, and this isn’t in the script, so I'm probably gonna get myself in trouble here and ramble … But I think it's a really important point. I was watching the broadcast on CNN of Good Night and Good Luck, which was really good. If you haven't seen the play, the movie is not as good as the play, the play is better. So anyway, it was on CNN and then they had this panel and they had these two schmucks on the panel, and I'm not gonna name names, but one of them was like, “we need less advocacy journalism.” And so, The Monroe Gazette is what you would call advocacy journalism. It's not what you would call “traditional journalism.” But here's the thing. Throughout American history, if you go way back, back to the time when they had pamphlets before newspapers, you know like so Thomas Paine, Common Sense, that was a pamphlet. That was journalism. That's what constituted journalism in America up until the technology improved. And then you started to have private printing presses and then you started to have newspapers.And the newspapers up until the 1870s were also advocacy journalists. You had the newspapers in the South that were like praising the Mexican-American war and saying, “We need to take this territory from these godless heathens because they're brown and we're white and we're better.” That's seriously what they were saying. In the North, you also had people calling out slavery. You had William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator. And later you had Frederick Douglass's newspaper. So you had newspapers and they were all giving you their opinion. Up until the 1870s, that dynamic starts to change. And what happens is you get the Associated Press, and I'm not going to go into the whole history of this because it would take like an hour, but you get the formation of the Associated Press. And the Associated Press is basically like, OK, we can form a business cartel by creating standardized news. And they did this, by the way, to tilt the presidential election. This wasn't done out of the kindness of their hearts. This wasn't done to better inform the public. The origins of the Associated Press were to help tilt a presidential election. So at the same time this is happening, you start to get mass advertising. And so the combination of the Associated Press and then later people like Hearst and mass advertising led to what is now “traditional journalism.” But really that’s a way of saying corporate journalism. News that’s meant to be packaged with advertising and, usually, be as bland as possible. And if you're a baby boomer, you grew up with this.But that’s NOT what you had throughout American history. What you had throughout American history up until the 1870s, until about let's say 2008 was a blip. And now we're back to what's advocacy journalism. What's actual American journalism. So lwhat The Monroe Gazette does is actual American journalism. Not the “voice from nowhere” style that you get from The Photo News or Mid-Hudson news, which allegedly are not slanted. Even though they both totally are. That's a blip in terms of American history.So I just think it's important because we hear people talk all the time about like, “we need less advocacy journalism.” We actually need more of it. Because journalism itself is an act of activism and it's important. And the reason why I tell you all that is I wanted to touch on one last thing before we go. And I also wanted to explain, sometimes we get questions about why The Gazette sounds the way it does, why it talks the way it does. It's definitely got its own attitude. It's definitely not at all like a voice from nowhere, neutral, Associated Press-style media outlet. But what I'm trying to convey to you is that what we do here at the Gazette is actually rooted deeply in the tradition of American history and American journalism. And the thing that we sometimes call “traditional journalism” or what is derisively called corporate journalism, historically, is a blip. Let’s Talk About What’s Happening In Los AngelesAnd so I want to touch on this because we are based in Los Angeles part of the year. And so I've been very distracted and upset with what's happening. You know, I lost a lot of time this week making sure friends and family are okay and making sure that the people that need support got support.So if you watch Fox or even CBS News, you might see a Waymo car on fire and be like, my god, Los Angeles is burning. And that's not what's happening. So I just wanted to point out real quick a few things I think are really important. First: One in eight Americans live in California. So. Much like the Wild West, what you picture is the “real America”, kind of like “traditional journalism” is nonsense. It's not the real America. You know, we think about like, "the farm and white people and going to church and then going to your town board meeting.” That we’re told constantly this is the real America, but it's not. In the 21st century, one in eight Americans lives in California. If you want a picture of what America looks like, I encourage you to visit Los Angeles.So that's just what, like I've seen that a lot this week. People trying to paint Los Angeles like some radical far left liberal city. And it’s not. LA is many, many different communities fused into one. And everyone is doing their own thing most of the time.The second thing I want to tell you is that California is the largest economy in the United States. So what happens in Los Angeles in particular, like for example, a lot of the stuff that you get in stores here in Monroe first probably originated over in the Port of Los Angeles, and then made its way over on the truck. And so we have California, the number one economy in the United States and in the world, California is the fourth largest economy. So what happens here is really important. And so when you see these depictions in the news of like LA being on fire or things being crazy. Like that's, it's very deceptive and it's not at all the reality. And I think it's also important to point out how economically important Los Angeles is. So if the Trump administration wants to mess around with one of the world’s largest economies? Don’t think that you’re going to be any more safe in your little red bubble.For example, let's say you are some of my conservative friends and I've had these conversations where you might not like a lot of the stuff Trump is doing, but you do like the immigration stuff. You do like the crackdowns. You know, I encourage you to think and look at what's happening in Los Angeles and California just a little bit more critically, because what's happening is not what the president had promised. They keep saying “Promises made, promises kept” and it’s just another form of gaslighting. No promises have been kept. We just got more chaos and higher prices everywhere. On everything. For no reason at all.Yes. I know. Some of you will say “but I didn’t vote for that!” If you were paying attention to his rallies, like in July, they had signs that said Mass Deportations Now. So you kind of did.But I don’t fault you. Here’s why: Because despite those signs, the Trump team was also telling people, “oh, you know, don't worry, we're only going to go after like the bad actors.” That's not what's happening in Los Angeles. What's happening is that you've got people working for ICE who are just sitting in school parking lots, in Home Depot parking lots, and they're rounding up children, they're rounding up pregnant women, like they're not going into the gang areas. You know, like on the ground in Los Angeles, I can tell you that we have not seen ICE go into where the “bad hombres” are. They're not doing that. They're instead like bothering people who are outside of the Home Depot looking for work. And that's not exactly what was promised or advertised. So I just want you to think for my more conservative friends about what that means and what's really happening here. Because if they can disrupt one of the world’s largest economies without any thought? Just to menace non-white people in order to “own the libs” and excite their dwindling number of supporters? It just demonstrates that the MAGA people aren’t looking out for you; and that they never were.So the third point is, I think if you live in Monroe, and you're, we're kind of spoiled by New York City, because New York City is tightly packed, right? New York City's got a high density and everything is right on top of everything else. And LA isn't like that. LA is almost 470 square miles. So it would take you driving from Monroe to Monticello 11 times just to cover the geographic distance that comprises the city of Los Angeles. So when you see stuff on the news, and it's like, oh, LA is burning, and things are crazy, and it's like, no, dude, these are very small pockets within the city. So in downtown, that's where the National Guard is. So you see some of that. But that's not the city.So we get crazy stuff like “we're going to liberate Los Angeles” and “Los Angeles is burning and the city is on fire.” It's not. It's just not. It's just not actually true. So I thought that was important. You know, I've been thinking about this all week. None of this was in the script, but it's been on my mind quite a bit. And like I said, the George Carlin Memorial podcast studio does come to you from Burbank. I just thought it was important to touch on that because these things do have an impact on what happens in Southern Orange County here in New York. It’s all interconnected, whether or not your friends who were brainwashed by MAGA want to believe it or not.Everyone Counts or No One CountsI think a lot about the fictional LAPD detective Harry Bosch. His philosophy is the same philosophy I have, which is that everyone counts or nobody counts. And if you look at South Blooming Grove, clearly New York State has decided that nobody counts. And if you look in Los Angeles and you look at the treatment of people that … regardless of how they got here, they are protected by the 14th Amendment. They do have rights under the 14th Amendment and clearly the federal government has said nobody counts. And so if you live in a world where nobody counts, then as you've probably heard by now, that means you WILL be next. Not could. Not potentially. Not hypothetically. You WILL be next. MAGA just hasn’t got around to you. But it will.And I just think that that's something that you should think about. So, okay, back on the script.One last thing before we go. This Saturday's nationwide mass protest known as No Kings. There are multiple locations across Orange County. The first event takes place in Warwick from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. The next events will take place simultaneously in Newburgh, New Windsor, and Goshen from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. I'm going to repeat that. Newburgh, New Windsor, and Goshen from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. I kind of wish there was a centralized one, but...Yeah, what are you gonna do? Finally, over in Middletown, there's a No Kings event from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. So, conceivably, if you are really worked up about the stuff like I am, you could start your morning in Warwick from 10 a.m. to 11:30, you can make your way to Newburgh, New Windsor, or Goshen, your choice, from noon. To 2 p.m. And then over in Middletown after you're done there From 4 p.m. To 6 p.m. You can sign up here to attend the one that works best for you. Just punch in 10950 into the Map and you’ll get all the locations and further details.It's clear from the events happening in our home city of Los Angeles that the Trump administration is looking to quell dissent using the military and National Guard. The freedom to assemble and the freedom to protest are foundational to our republic. So whether or not you agree or disagree … The thing I keep trying to stress to people is that this isn't Democrats or Republicans. This is a specific group of people known as MAGA and MAGA is a traitorous, un-American, and seditionist movement. That's who we're talking about. We're not talking about Republicans. And we're not talking about the corporate Democrats who suck, too. Like I said, when you go to these events, if you want to hold up a sign that says Schumer sucks? Let me know, because I will absolutely hold one up. And if you've got one that says Hochul sucks or Skoufis sucks, I will hold one up. Again, I just want to stress, I don't want people to make this a Democrat, us and them, Republican thing. It's not.People are out to protest the Trump administration specifically. These actions by the Trump administration again illustrate that there is no fidelity to our constitution and that the MAGA movement, as I said, is traitorous, seditious, and un-American.If you want to show everyone how much you love America and what true patriotism looks like? You grab yourself an American flag and head on out to your nearest No Kings event. It's time we take back our flag, our government, and our country from this un-American movement and those who support it. I'll see you there. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Transcript for today’s podcast:Hello and welcome to another edition of The Monroe Gazette, coming to you from the George Carlin Memorial Podcast Studio. I’m your host, BJ Mendelson.This week’s episode features an interview with Keith Williams, who is a Community Organizer with For The Many in Dutchess County.For The Many is a grassroots, people-powered organization working, to make New York State government more responsive.And as our listeners know, New York State is anything but when it comes to the needs of non-Haredi residents in Orange and Rockland County.That’s why I thought it would be useful to highlight organizations such as For the Many.I think it’s important, when you’re dealing with a situation like South Blooming Grove, that you know what options you have. For The Many is just one option. There are others. I’m going to find them and share them all with you as I can.I also wanted to talk with Keith Williams because, right here in Southern Orange County, we have a real problem with wealthy real estate developers controlling our local elected officials. For example: In Monroe, you have Town Supervisor Tony Cardone and Town Board members Dorey Houle and Sal Scancarello. For proof that they’re controlled by the developers, just look at their constant delays at passing, and ultimately the watering down, Monroe’s New Tree Code.In Woodbury, you have Town Supervisor Kathryn Luciani, Town Councilman Brandon Calore, and Village Trustees James Freiband and Matthew Fabbro.These are all Democrats and Republicans that don’t represent you. They represent Haredi developers like Ziggy Brach and non-Haredi developers such as Wayne Corts.Across our area, there’s often very little pushback to this. Sure we see complaints on Facebook. And when you talk to people at Shoprite, they tell you they don’t like the overdevelopment.But a lot of these people? They also don’t do anything about it. I’m not blaming them. This isn’t easy. And like I just pointed out, this isn’t a Democrat or Republican problem. Both parties are corrupt. That’s true in Southern Orange County. That’s true in Albany. And that’s true in Washington D.C.That’s the bad news. The good news is, you have options. For The Many is one. Here’s another: This Saturday, June 7th at 1pm over at the corner of Lake Street and 17M from 1pm to 2pm, rain or shine, will be another Indivisible Monroe gathering.If you have a problem with the overdevelopment, you should be there.If you have a problem with the corrupt Democrats and Republicans in our community, you should be there.Otherwise, you’re just wasting everyone’s time with Facebook comments. Facebook is not a solution. In fact, it’s very much part of the problem. That’s why I only use it to get people offline. I’m using the machine against itself, and you should too.These Indivisible events, like the one on June 7th, are non-partisan and welcoming Democrats, Republicans, and Independents living in the Southern Orange County area.And I want to stress again, these events are for protesting BOTH parties. So if you want to bring a sign that says Schumer Sucks? Let me know! I’ll come and hold one up too.I stress this point because every time anyone says something about Trump, the response you usually here is, “Well the Democrats suck too.” And those people are absolutely, positively, 100% right. The Democrats Suck.The difference is, the Republicans claim to represent the working class while, actually only working for the wealthy.The Democrats work for the wealthy, but can be forced to work for the working class. You see the difference?We can change one of those parties for sure. I don’t know yet if we can change both. I hope so. But right now I’m not too enthusiastic about it.So, if you live in in Monroe, Woodbury, Chester, or Blooming Grove, these events, like the one on June 7th at 1pm over on the corner of Lake Street and 17M, are for you. If you can’t make the event on the 7th, I have good news. There will be another one on June 21st, at the same time and in the same location.And yes, stay tuned for more information on local No Kings Day events in our area. So far there is one planned in Rockland and three in Orange County for the national day of protest on June 14th.These Indivisible events are meant to protest the MAGA President and the Congressional Republicans enabling his agenda, like our Congressman next door, Mike Lawler. That’s absolutely true.But. And, for the Republicans listening, I want you to hear me on this: These gatherings are ALSO designed to protest against the Schumer Democrats like Senator Kristin Gillibrand, who voted yes on Trump nominees like Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who is currently making it unsafe to fly. And she is also pushing BS cryptocurrency legislation in the Senate, which does nothing for anybody except violate our constitution’s emoluments clause and make the Trump family wealthier.Remember, friends, while this is not financial advice, you should know that all forms of cryptocurrency are just another Ponzi scheme. You should not put any money into this, and you should fight like hell to make sure your pensions and other investments are not tied up with it either. If you think the Global Financial Crisis triggered in 2008 was bad, just wait until this crypto bubble bursts. Again.Senator Gillibrand isn’t the only state Democrat working for the wealthy instead of the working class. Here in Southern Orange County, State Senator Skoufis has completely abandoned the people of South Blooming Grove. He is also currently meddling in both the Monroe and Woodbury elections on behalf of wealthy real estate developers. You see, Mr. Skoufis thinks the wealthy real estate developers are going to buy him a Congressional seat, once Congressman Pat Ryan decides to run for higher office.And so, Senator Skoufis has set up a new committee to attack those who oppose handing both Monroe and Woodbury to the real estate developers.Meet Protect-Monroe Woodbury: James G. Skoufis’s Latest ScamHelp Us Help You Stop Protect Monroe-WoodburyWe’re looking for 100 paid, monthly subscribers to support The Monroe Gazette. It costs less than a Netflix subscription, and you get:-Access to our Private, Troll Free Facebook Group.-Access to the complete archives of our newsletter.-The ability to comment on articles just like this one.-Support actual local independent journalism and not the junk The Photo-News gives you.-An ad-free experience when listening to our podcast.-And more!Sounds like a deal? Want to help keep your local community from getting overdeveloped by a small group of wealthy a******s aided by State Senator James G. Skoufis? Knowledge is power, baby.Call It What It Is: The Big Beautiful Bill is the MAGA Murder BillNot to be outdone, our Democratic Assemblyman, Chris Eachus, also refuses to support the New York Health Act. This is despite the fact that, right now in Washington, the so-called Big Beautiful Bill — what we’re calling the MAGA Murder Bill — would cut up to $800B from Medicaid and, through an obscure law known as PAYGO, up to $500B in Medicare. That means, if this Bill is passed as proposed, people in our area who receive either Medicare or Medicaid coverage could expect to pay more for their medications, have fewer conditions covered by their insurance, and be unable to see their doctor.So what’s Chris Eachus and James G. Skoufis doing about this? Nothing.Because neither man, and Chris Eachus’s Chief of Staff David Rabbitts — currently running to be Town of Monroe Supervisor — support the New York Health Act. If that makes you mad, it should, and you should come out on June 7th to protest this. Like I said, these events are for everyone. If you don’t like Democrats and Republicans working for the wealthy instead of working for you, then come on down to one of these protests. You are welcome there.And just real quick before we move on, I want to stress that these cuts are only being made because there’s very little actual waste, fraud, and abuse to be found in these programs. That was the whole gimmick, you’ll recall, with Elon Musk and DOGE. He’d find the waste, fraud, and abuse, and in return, those savings could be used to fund the Trump Tax Cuts.But Musk couldn’t find that waste, fraud, and abuse, could he? That’s why he got the black eye, allegedly, after Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent allegedly assaulted Musk. Why was he alleged to have assaulted Musk? Because Bessent, like everyone else in MAGA Land, thought Musk was going to save everyone $2T. He didn’t. In fact, Musk ignored bipartisan letters from Senators like Elizabeth Warren who encouraged Musk and DOGE to work with her in eliminating waste and fraud.As I hope you know by now, that $2T number got revised all the way down to $20B. And the cuts Musk did make? It’s on track to kill hundreds and thousands of people by eliminating the food and medicine they were receiving through USAID. Those cuts also weakened America’s soft power, giving an opportunity for China and Russia to increase their global influence.So let’s be clear: In exchange for that $180B of alleged cuts? Musk made the world a less safer place for women, children, the elderly, and our men and women in the armed services. Our military is now going to have to deal with potential conflicts that will stem from the loss of our influence and aid.Plus, there’s all this damage you and I now have to deal with:Here’s what Musk did do instead: Musk appointed his flunkies all over the government, stole your data, and cancelled every single investigation into his businesses. And that Golden Dome scam Trump is currently selling you? The one Ronald Reagan wasted nearly $500B on in the ‘80s? Most defense experts agree that the missile defense system, as proposed, is completely impractical. But you know who benefits from it? Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which would receive billions in no-bid government contracts to build a system that won’t keep you safe.That my friends, is why, always and forever, you should not drive a Tesla, use Twitter, or patronize any of Musk’s businesses. And the first thing that should happen when the Democrats retake the house? All of those investigations Musk’s businesses should be restored, Musk and his friends at DOGE should be investigated for violations of The 1974 Privacy Act, and Musk should be deported.We can have nice things in America. We can have nice things in Southern Orange County.But you have to organize. And you have to ask for them.Otherwise, you get situations like the one involving Medicare and Medicaid. Because of DOGE’s failure, in order to fund Trump’s tax cuts for the rich, the only place to make equivalent cuts to offset the loss in revenue is with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.That’s because neither Democrats or Republicans wants to make the bold move and cut the real sources of waste, fraud, and abuse, which includes our spending on immigration enforcement and in our defense budget. Remember, there was a very conservative bipartisan bill on reforming our nation’s border and immigration system. President Trump killed it, and then bragged about doing so, to get himself elected.Now, I’m not saying resistance doesn’t exist in Southern Orange County. Monroe has the Preserve Monroe ballot line featuring Maureen Richardson, Louis Rivera, and Bethany Stephens, and Woodbury has the We The People of Woodbury line, which features Tara Burek and current mayor Andrew Giacozomma. All candidates, by the way that James G. Skoufis’s Protect Monroe-Woodbury is now running attacks on.It’s our responsibility to support these candidates, and to organize ourselves to ask for what we want.We can have nice things here in America. And we can have nice things here in Southern Orange County. But you have to get offline. You have to join a protest event. And you have to start organizing. That’s why I thought it was important to speak with Mr. Williams today. So let’s let’s get to our interview.Interview With Keith Williams, For The Many Dutchess County Community OrganizerPicture provided by For The Many from the May 1st May Day Event in Newburgh.(The following transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)Keith: My name is Keith Williams. I was born and raised in Newburgh, New York. I now live in Poughkeepsie. I work at For the Many as the Dutchess County Community Organizer. I'm a proud member of the Mid-Hudson Valley Democratic Socialists of America. I've been working since I was 13 and I've never seen a job treat anyone fairly. And it was when I was at Amazon and I got injured, I started talking to some of my coworkers and we started organizing and fighting for our rights and what we deemed as, just normal human treatment that we should be offered. And for a company like Amazon, such a big company like Amazon, to fail on a daily basis to meet the basic needs for their employees, like providing water or long enough breaks, it was ridiculous.They asked me if was I willing to speak up and I was like, always, like this needs to be known like if they're willing to do this and in broad daylight, they shouldn't be afraid to have it be told in broad daylight also. And you know every every March on the Boss, you know every talk, you know that the teamsters needed somebody, I was always there, they were like, you know, do you want to go to Albany? I was like, absolutely!And that's one of the reasons that I met For The Many. Met Jonathan. Going to New York City to speak about Amazon's treatment of its employees. You know, it was a great time. I got to be on such a big public stage. Eventually, we went down to Washington, D.C. and … Once again, my friend from Amazon got me involved with Caring Majority Rising during the election. And I did an awesome job there. You know, they told me, and Jonathan said that he saw that drive that I had with the Teamsters, that drive that I had with Caring Majority, and was like, you would make a great addition at For the Many. And it was December of … November of last year when I started working for them, and it's been amazing. BJ: That's awesome. Let me, I want to go into a little bit more detail just so people understand your journey at Amazon. Do you remember what you were doing when you first applied to work there? Like what was it that brought you to Amazon in the first place? Keith: You know, you're always hearing about Amazon [was a] great place to work. I that you could make so much there. And, you know, like I was totally sold on what they were selling because they were everywhere. Amazon was everywhere. And I had worked at other warehouses and I was like, you know, if I want to get the best treatment? I'd probably go to the people that have the most money to facilitate that. That their machines would be in better condition, that their warehouses would be in better condition. And because it was such a, in the public eye, a company, you know, what could they be doing wrong that people didn't know about? But when you have such a big machine like them, like so much goes on unnoticed, and it wasn't until like I got hurt that the curtain really fell. I was like, they have no idea what they're doing. Unsafe Conditions at Amazon WarehouseBJ: So let me, because we're going to get to that in a second, but people hear like these horror stories all the time about the day to day that you can't even go to the bathroom without someone monitoring it, for example. So I'm just curious, what was the day-to-day like before the injury happened? What are the things that you experienced where you were kind of like, oh, this doesn't seem right?Keith: To know exactly what the employee was doing every second and if that every second wasn't put towards Amazon's product moving through that warehouse, that they took issue with. That they never, anytime they did say, oh, here's what you need to do, they would always move that line.And then when that wasn't enough, then they started to just be like, oh, it goes on a scale. So if someone's picking 100 [items] per hour, we need all of you to do that too. It was like, it's like some of these people […] They're a stamped as a robot, like a version T-TEC X22. And then they're all going to perform exactly the same. That's what they wanted. And it was brutal. And there was one time when I forgot my water bottle. It was on a hot day. They were like, stay hydrated. And I was like, hey, I don't have a water bottle. It's like, you guys have bottles of water. And the manager was like, no, go ask Safety. And Safety was like, no, that's kind of like your manager thing. And I went back to my manager. They said, you have the water. And it was like, this is a big company, and there's no place that somebody can get water, but they want us to stay hydrated. And there's no air moving in the building. You go up and there's like a heat haze and you can feel the difference. And you got people passing out while they're in the air and their thing is ‘take better care of yourself.’ And it's like, or you can just change the conditions? You know, pump that AC a little bit, spend that extra, you know, billion. And yeah, that's all we were asking for was like little adjustments and they were like, come on. BJ: Let me ask you about the Safety Inspectors. Keith: Yeah, so there are six to eight individuals to have all this training protocol. So when I was, I had a box fall on me. I informed my supervisor and we were at the back of the warehouse. So it's about 200, 300 feet to the front. And I just got, you know, struck in the head and he was like, ‘oh, walk up to Safety.’ And so, like, here I am just trying to deal with the pain and like they have these golf carts … Safety had these golf carts. That they're supposed to provide, and like no one was alerted.And then when I do meet a Safety guy I'm like ‘hey!’ He sees me stumbling [and asks] ‘hey are you okay?’ I'm like I'm on my way to Safety because a box just hit me and then he's like alright I'm gonna walk you up there and then the guy sits me down.And he's like, all right, he's going to take care of you. And then I get asked the same questions, the same five questions, like what happened? What were you doing? Who was there? By five different people. And then I got asked if you know, if aspirin and [a] ice pack was going to be enough? If not, then it would have to be a whole report.And my manager would then have to get involved. I was like, I'm in pain. I would like to go see a doctor.So I spent the next hour and a half in there. Answering the questions again once the managers came in, because I had to answer them again once the managers came in. And the guy who was supposed to be processing the claim had never processed a claim before. So he didn't know quite what to do. And so I was like, instead of sitting here in pain, can I go to urgent care and then come back? And he was like, yeah, and then we should have everything figured out. And then I spent an hour and a half in urgent care. I came back. They still didn't have everything figured out. That's crazy. And it was just like, I don't understand is … You guys are saying you have five people getting hurt per day but you don't have the people here to be able to facilitate that? And he was like all right you can head home because I wanted to go pick up my medication. My pain medication. And go home. He was like ‘all right in 48 to 72 hours you should receive a phone call’ and I got referred by the urgent care to go see a specialist. I tried to call to do that. And it was like, we need your worker's comp number. So I go back to work the next day. And they're like, hey, I need my worker's comp number. They said you should at least have that. And once again, the same guy was like, oh, no, no, 48 to 72 hours, they're going to contact you. And they're going to give you that. But luckily for me, I guess the one person that did know their job happened to also be there and said, no, if you filled out that form the right way, his worker's comp number should have been the first thing to spit out that would allow him to do everything while the claim is set in place. And then I had to wait another hour for her to do it the correct way.BJ: You mentioned five people get hurt a day. Did you see this happen? Did you see other people get hurt and have this similar... Basically, it sounds like a circus, right? It doesn't sound like they know what to do when someone gets hurt. Did you see this happen more than once? Keith: Absolutely. Each time I was there, we had at least one or two people come. And this is what was actually said to me by the safety person. They said that we don't have enough safety staff. We have five people getting hurt per day. We are overloaded, understaffed, and undertrained. And like we even said in a talk with the manager, like we understand that that's a problem. And that should be sent up the chain. But we as workers still deserve 100 % of the care that Amazon offers.And they [management] were just, you know, just threw their hands up. They were like, ‘we could only do what we can do.’ And I was like, why isn't that a valid excuse when we say that as people? You're a whole billion-dollar company, but we as people can't be like, ‘hey, I'm doing all I can today.’ And yeah, it got to be like, where does our grace come in? You guys just constantly get to not complete your job but still have a job. What they can do is hire more people to help. BJ: So let me ask you, you get injured, and what happens next? How did Amazon treat you after you were injured on the job? Just Keep Pressing The Enter KeyKeith: So they basically said that they didn't have any work for me. Because work duty is determined by a computer, and they put my injury into a computer, and then that computer spits out what I'm able to do that day. And that computer was like ‘nothing.’ And so like other employees, I was set to just be like in this human circus in the middle of the warehouse where we just sat at a computer and pushed the enter key over and over again until something popped up on the screen. There were times when we'd go three whole days and nothing would pop up on the screen.And that's where we were. And people were just looking at us like, ‘what are they doing?’ Even other managers who were visiting were like, what are you doing here? And I was like, I was told to be here. And it got to a point to where it happened like three days in a row, and to where a different person was like, what are you doing here? Why are you sitting here? Then I went to HR about it. I was like, this is ridiculous. That we're told to sit here, but we're being questioned, ‘why are we sitting here?’ Like this building has rooms, like we could sit in a room and press this, but you have us in the middle of the warehouse, in this open warehouse, like a human zoo to be looked at.People were just cracking jokes about, ‘how's the finger from pressing the button today?’ and that's what we were subjected to.BJ: When were you first approached about joining a union? Keith: Yes. That's when I told them that I knew every business can do improvements, but I didn't know Amazon was blatantly disregarding their own rules, disregarding government rules, and disregarding humanity’s rules. I was like Amazon needs a union. It desperately needs it because there's so many people that go in and out of here. Some of them have life long injuries and life-changing injuries and Amazon is just spitting them out. Just being like, oh no, we're great, we're great. It was like you want it faster? You want it bigger? We can do it and we're just... turning out broken humans for Amazon's billions.BJ: What was it like participating in the first march? You mentioned the March on your Boss. What was that like for you to be part of that? Keith: I'm not gonna lie. It was terrifying. But seeing everyone there and standing up like you weren't alone and seeing that...you know, the whole manager's demeanor change. They know that they can't just give us that one excuse and send us on our way. Not with all of us there demanding answers.Like that pushed back against the fear of going up there and it filled me with this sense of purpose and sense of belonging. It's like, we can do this. It was like them and all their power and all their confidence before now completely changed.No Kings in RhinebeckPictured Above: Video from the May 1st May Day Parade held in Newburgh.BJ: Yeah it seems that people don't understand the power that they have. Like you can stand up to bullies. And so speaking of which, on June 14th in Rhinebeck, I know you're going to give a speech as part of the National No King's Day protest. So I want to ask you a little bit about that event and share a little bit of what you want to talk about then. Keith: Yeah, so. That's a huge day. Like normally, I didn't know too much about Flag Day. I knew that the Army was, celebrating the Army being created. And then I heard Trump's plans for that day and it's like, that is the wrong message to send right now.When a good portion of the world is under the boot of, like you know, government-sanctioned terrorism. It's like the first thing you're gonna do is show people bombs? That was not the thing to show the future. It was like, when has that ever been a thing? It's like a movie scene. That's the thing you see in movies, leading up to our doom. And so I felt the need. I was like, I have to say something and I didn't want to hold back this time and be call Trump something he's not. And you know, basically sugar coat it.It's like, no, this man is a child throwing a fit and he's mad because he can't get his way. And that has never been okay for someone like this to do this normally. So why is it ok for such a prestigious position like president of the United States to behave in this manner?BJ: Absolutely. Now, let me ask you, I read the statement you sent to For The Many, and you mentioned your kids a few times. And I was just curious, what would you say to them about the work that you've done about standing up to Amazon and speaking out against the Trump administration? What is it that you would like to share with them? Keith: That my hope is that I've prepared them enough and shown them the right way and that you don't have to beat other people down to be powerful. You don't have to … like kindness is the best thing that you can show the world because the world is a reflection of you. And that you're my chance to try to make a little piece of the world better. And I've always wanted to make sure that, in spite of anything that has happened to you, anything that you've gone through, that you can always choose to be different. And that it's never too late to change and to stay and always try to strive to be a hero to those around you.BJ: I think that’s a message we all need to hear. Where can we learn more?Keith: So yeah, we have our monthly community meetings. We had our recent one here in Poughkeepsie. ForTheMany.org. All our socials @ForTheMany to see what we're all about. And to see the victories that we have had and the fights that we're in. I feel that For the Many is more than anything letting people know that you have this power and we're gonna be with you to the end. And we just want you to be a part of it.(A note to Monroe Gazette readers: We’ve reached out to Amazon’s PR team to ask for comment on the conditions at their warehouses in Orange, Duchess, and Rockland County and will update this post to include their response, if any.) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Ok Woodbury residents, as promised: Here are the steps you can take to help preserve as much of the ACE Farm property as possible.Here is the We The People of Woodbury Petition This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

In the pilot episode of The Monroe Gazette podcast, host BJ Mendelson discusses the importance of voter turnout in New York, particularly in light of the upcoming primaries. He highlights the challenges faced by local candidates, including Councilwoman Maureen Richardson, and emphasizes the need for community engagement and activism to influence political outcomes. The episode delves into the dynamics of local politics, the significance of the Monroe Democratic primary, and the actions taken by Richardson to advocate for her constituents.TakeawaysVoter turnout in New York is critically low, ranking 43rd out of 50 states.Engaging voters is essential to electing better candidates.The upcoming primaries are crucial for local political dynamics.James G. Skoufis is a controversial figure in local politics.The Monroe Democratic primary features a race between Maureen Richardson and David Rabbitts.Richardson has faced significant challenges and opposition in her role.Activism can lead to tangible changes in local governance.Community engagement is vital for influencing political outcomes.The podcast aims to inform and mobilize listeners around local issues.BJ encourages listeners to participate in the electoral process. TitlesEngaging Voter Turnout in New YorkThe Stakes of Upcoming PrimariesSound Bites"This is American politics. This is hand-to-hand combat."Chapters00:00 Introduction to the Podcast and Voter Engagement02:54 The Importance of Voter Turnout in New York05:30 Analyzing the Monroe Democratic Primary Candidates08:15 Challenges Faced by Councilwoman Maureen RichardsonKeywords:Monroe Gazette, New York politics, voter turnout, local elections, primaries, political candidates, Maureen Richardson, James G. Skoufis, activism, community engagementLinks:New York State residents can request an early mail ballot here.Eachus Chief David Rabbitts Is Endangering Your Health & SafetyTranscript:Hello and welcome to the pilot episode of The Monore Gazette’s new podcast. Recorded from the George Carlin Memorial Podcast Studio. I’m your host, BJ Mendelson.If you don’t like how things are going in New York State, I’ve got something you can do. There are primaries coming up in June. You can go to this handy website, linked in today’s show notes, and get yourself an Early Mail Ballot.If I was running for office?You better believe that every single person who signed my nominating petition is getting an email, or a postcard, or another visit to their door — preferably all three — to make sure they signed up to get their Early Mail Ballot.New York State currently ranks 43rd out of 50 in terms of voter turnout according to data provided by the New York Public Interest Research Group .So as you might have guessed, voter turnout for these primaries? They are incredibly low.This is by design, according to NYPIRG’s Legislative Director Blair Horner, whom we spoke with while putting this story together.In short, New York’s electoral system is designed to keep powerful incumbents from both parties in place.That’s the bad news.The good news is that the way to counter low voter turnout is to make sure everyone that’s signed your petition is engaged and motivated to get these Early Mail Ballots.Why? Well because when we all vote, you don’t get crappy candidates elected. It’s really that simple.Let me give you an example:President Trump was not elected by an overwhelming majority in 2024. The 2024 presidential election was actually one of the closest we’ve had since World War 2.President Trump was not elected by an overwhelming majority in 2016 either.The 2016 election was decided by an arrogant Clinton campaign that didn’t bother to visit key battleground states.In 2024, millions of Democrats who voted for Biden in 2020 stayed home. The reasons are a bit more complicated to explain. Other than to say, the corporations were telling Vice President Kamala Harris what to do, not the voters, and everyone saw through that. People in both parties were also understandably upset at the coverup over Biden’s failing cognitive abilities and the genocide in Gaza.So the stakes for Southern Orange County voters in the 2025 June Primaries couldn’t be higher.State Senator James G. Skoufis wants to be your future Congressional representative. Ideally, once Pat Ryan decides to run for Governor. (Why would Pat Ryan consider doing such a thing? The majority of New Yorkers, including Democrats and Republicans, consistently have said through polling data that they do NOT want another Kathy Hochul term, If Hochul gets re-elected next year, it’s going to be specifically the fault of the New York State Republican Party. For running someone who isn’t normal. Nobody wants to vote for a Nazi and that’s what Congresswoman Elise Stefanik is. A nazi.In the case of Skoufis, he plans to get to Congress by selling out everyone he can to the wealthy real estate developers in our area. Which is why, if I lived in Tuxedo, I’d be especially nervous, by the way. Since the State Senator has just interjected himself into the local school board election.A good Rule of Thumb when it comes to James G. Skoufis is that, if he put out some announcement saying he didn’t do something? The odds are good that he did it. If I lived in Tuxedo, I’d start asking around to see what else our malicious State Senator has been up to.But here in Monroe and Woodbury, we can say factually say that Skoufis is actively involved with these primaries. After all, He has nothing else to do since Monroe Gazette readers joined other concerned New Yorkers and defeated Skoufis and Hochul’s Pro-Trump, fascist ban on masks. If you look at the new budget agreement, you’ll see instead of a mask ban, there’s now a new misdemenor charge instead.I mean, Skoufis could be fighting to bring univeral healthcare to all New Yorkers through the New York Health Act.He could also be meeting with Woodbury residents to hear their concerns about the annexation of ACE Farm by the Village of Kiryas Joel. But instead, our corrupt Schumer Democrat is focusing his time and energy on petty grievances. He has a score to settle with Woodbury’s maroyr. And he has a score to settle with Monroe Town Councilwoman, Maureen RIchardson.So In today’s episode, we’ll take a look at the Monroe Democratic Primary for Town Supervisor.Here we have a race between Monroe Town Councilwoman, Maureen Richardson and her team, and Schumer Democrat, David Rabbitts and his team. Mr. Rabbit’s team features a man who refuses to get off people’s lawns when asked, Paul Phelan, and someone who conclusively does not live in Monroe full time, that’s Brandon Bernard. These are your James G. Skoufis candidates, and if you want to send a message to Mr. Skoufis, this ticket must be defeated.David Rabbitts, by the way, went to his FIRST Town of Monore meeting this month. FIRST. If you can explain to me how someone, who has never been to a Town board meeting, and apparently didn’t know where the Town Hall was even located, is qualified to be your Town Supervisor, I want to know.Please. Send me an email at [email protected]. I am dying to hear this explanation.That goes double for people who like David Rabbitts: Please do email me what it is exactly that you like about him.Because so far? He’s lied to the public, exhibited total ignorance about the position he’s running for, and endangered the health and safety of every New York State resident in his capacity as Assemblyman Chris Eachus’s Chief of Staff. For more on that story, click on the link in the show notes below.So I gotta ask these David Rabbits fans: You like him why exactly? And listen, I know. Some of you have said, David is a nice guy. And maybe he is. But this is American politics. This is hand to hand combat. It’s been that way before the Revolutionary War, and it’ll be that way long after most of the country is uninhabitable because of Climate Change.And for Mr. Rabbits to potentially commit fraud just to get on the ballot for this Democrstic primary? I question how nice he really is.That brings us to Councilwoman Maureen Richardson. Some of you may just not like her. And that’s ok. You do you brother.But I also have to ask, if you’re in that boat, what exactly is the problem?Because I hear a lot of “BJ doesn’t write anything bad about Councilwoman Richardson” from the David Rabbitts people.This, unsurprisingly, is something reporters here a lot when they don’t write about every single politician. But the truth is way more boring. When a politician does everything they’re supposed to do, we have very little to write about.For example, over in Woodbury, you’ve never heard me criticize Sue Ciriello and Vic Ferrelli, two of your Woodbury Village Borard Trustees. The reason doesn’t involve any sort of conspiracy. They just haven’t done anything wrong, spiteful, malicious, or evil. Unlike some of their friends on the Woodbury Town Board like Brandon Calore.Never forget dear listeners, Brandon Calore allegedly assaulted a disabled teenage girl in an ice cream shop, and then factually sued the mother for telling people that he did.In Councilwoman RIchardson’s case, I just don’t have a lot to write about. And if you’re being honest with yourself, and putting personal biases away, you’d see that.Haing watch nearly two years of Monroe Town Board meetings, here’s what I’ve observed.Every time the Councilwoman has spoken up at Town Board meetings? She’s been shouted down. This includes behind closed doors at executive sessions. Because Cardon and Houle have been so loud, that despite these sessions being private, you can clearly hear them screaming at her.The Councilwoman has also been bullied and outright assaulted by fellow Town Councilman, Sal Scancarello. And if you’re wondering what the deal is with some of these local Republicans physically assaulting their rivals and residents, you might want to take that up with Soft on Crime Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler.Listen, Supervisor Cardone has wasted hours of town taxpayer time preventing Councilwoman Richardson from literally doing anything she was elected to do.So again, I gotta ask: What would you like me to write about with concerning Councilwoman Richardson? Seriously. Because this has been the story, repeatedly, throughout her tenure.The worst thing I can say about the Councilwoman is that I have no idea what kind of Town Supervisor she would be.That’s because she hasn’t had much of an opportunity to do anything. Cardone has literally restricted who she can talk to and what parts of the Town Hall complex she can enter.None of that is her fault. That’s Tony Cardone, Dorey Houle, and Sal Scancarello’s fault.And let me tell you something, despite almost two years of this nonsense, that also hasn’t stopped the Councilwoman from working on behalf of Town of Monroe residents. For example, Dorey Houle and Tony Cardone knew about the dangerous hydrogen sulfide gas on the children’s playground at Airplane Park for years. They did nothing. After The Monroe Gazette broke that story? Councilwoman Richardson wrote to the DEC, and got it taken care of.Mr. Rabbits? You know what’s going to happen if that dude loses in June? You’re never going to see him again. But the Councilwoman has already demonstrated, repeatedly, that she’s in this fight. So, as a registered Democrat, I’m going to get my Early Mail Ballot, and I’m going to vote for Councilwoman Richardson in the primary. You should too. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe