SCHOOL MOVE TO BE DECIDED JAN. 16
The Department of Education (DOE) has moved its Panel for Educational Policy vote on the relocation of Innovation Diploma Plus (IDP) from Dec. 20 to Jan. 16. The controversial vote will decide whether the high school will remain co-located with four other schools in the Brandeis Education Complex at 145 W. 84th St. or move to a soon-to-be-vacated building in Washington Heights.

The move was condemned by education administrators and local elected officials when it was proposed in October because they believed that the DOE was isolating IDP’s students, who are transferred to the high school because of poor performance elsewhere, to favor Success Academy, the education complex’s one charter school that hopes to expand in the building. DOE maintains that the move would be advantageous to students because they would have shorter commutes and be closer to the school’s partner nonprofit community development organization.

EXPRESS TRAIN DERAILS
Passengers on the A express train recently were stranded near 81st Street Station when the train’s last car derailed. According to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, an undetected broken section of the rail caused one wheel assembly of the southbound train to jump the tracks around 9 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 22, leaving over 400 straphangers waiting underground as a second train came to their rescue. The accident caused subway delays from uptown Manhattan to Brooklyn throughout the day by forcing the A and D lines to run on the local track. No injuries were reported, and service returned to normal in the evening.

CHRISTMAS TREE CLEAN-UP
The Department of Sanitation (DOS) is currently running a Christmas tree collection for mulching and recycling. Through Saturday, Jan. 19, the department is encouraging residents to leave their trees by the curb in front of their homes for pick-up. Tree stands, tinsel, lights and ornaments should be removed, and the trees should not be placed in plastic bags.

According to DOS, the trees will be chipped into mulch that will be distributed to parks, playing fields and community gardens throughout the city.

The Department of Parks and Recreation is also holding a “Mulchfest” next weekend, Jan. 12 and 13, at designated sites around the city. Residents can bring their trees to be chipped into mulch that will be used as ground cover for the city’s plants, and free mulch will be given to anyone who brings a bag to transport it.

THINKING OF SUICIDE? FREE COUNSELING AVAILABLE
In the wake of the Sandy Hook school shootings, the Samaritans of New York reminds the New Yorkers that it operates a free, confidential, 24-hour suicide prevention hotline in the city at 212-673-3000.

“The focus on the details of the tragedy, the memorials and the politics of gun control must also be accompanied by the need for greater access to mental health services for those who are depressed, experiencing trauma and/or experiencing some form of mental illness,” Samaritans said in an e-mail, noting that their service alleviates the intensity of the feelings that those in crisis experience and reduces their risk factors for suicide.

Samaritans of New York, part of the international suicide prevention organization that has centers in 42 countries, is the longest-running suicide prevention program in the city. They have answered over 1 million calls from people in crisis, and provide suicide prevention education programs for health providers and support groups.

What a struggle to write this column about the 20 first-grade children and six women educators shot to death by a 20-year-old male assailant, in a true safe haven—an elementary school in the low-crime town of Newtown, Conn. The Daily News’ front-page headline “The World Weeps” said it all.

Yes, the world weeps and now must work to prevent these unnatural, heinous and heartbreaking disasters where even young children and their teachers are shot to death by weapons which enable such cataclysmic acts of violence. Something must be done—whatever it takes to control and strictly limit their use—and we have to be willing to try the solutions.

Indeed, it would help if the world wept a little over every taking of innocent life, whatever the victim’s age—and if we heeded the research that finds that the violence so appallingly rife in today’s entertainment and arts does affect real-life behavior and attitudes.

Lamentably unheeded was how murder rates surged a generation after television was introduced. An American Medical Association report appeared in the July 27, 1992, New York Times Editorial Notebook piece, “The Television Time Bomb: Violence on the Tube, a Public Health Issue.” And murder and other fictional mayhem then were relatively mild compared to today’s standards. Standards? Yes, prevention means real concern about standards.

So let’s stop watching those low-standard programs, stop listening to low-standard music, too. Although it could use some Chanukah songs, 106.7 FM’s all-Christmas-music programming gets high ratings and is singable and peaceable. And something comparable is surely a year-round need.

And oh-so-critically needed is the heeding of experts such as former New York Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Baden, who warned that “everywhere medical examiners look—whether it’s automobile accidents, drownings, homicides, suicides, falls and fires—alcohol consumption is in the picture.” And on the evening of Saturday, Dec. 15, was it suicide that ended a woman’s life when she was struck by a car after falling from John Finley Walk onto the FDR Drive? I learned about this very nearby tragic event from an apartment house staff member. Radio traffic news only said, “Avoid the impassable FDR Drive”—and neither NY1 nor the papers has reported this violent death.

To “stop the madness”—and, in suicides, often great sadness—every act of violence should be reported, preferably in the paper of record. And reporters, editors and columnists must always note whether alcohol or other mind-altering drugs were involved.

The 19th Precinct Community Relations Officers haven’t yet gotten back to me on this case, but preventing such tragedies means knowing what caused them and, as a general warning to the public, making it known whether alcohol use on a holiday-season Saturday evening made this woman’s problems seem insurmountable.

Alcohol overuse can indeed cause temporary insanity, and a recent Times op-ed piece was right to say that Alcoholics Anonymous should not be so anonymous, because it can prevent so many human disasters. So the number to call is 212-406-0749—and you policy makers, especially, you must attend “open meetings” to learn how the sober life is infinitely saner, safer and, yes, even joyful.

And in working to overcome the madness that has the whole world weeping, we do not forget to help overcome the unprecedented and continuing hardships and losses inflicted by that natural disaster, Hurricane Sandy.

’Tis the season to be especially caring—and let’s take that care forward into the new year.

Last Friday, a lone gunman, identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, shot and killed his mother in her home, took her legally purchased firearms and proceeded to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he had once been a student. Lanza forced his way into the school and shot and killed six adults who worked at the school and 20 children, all ages 6 and 7, before committing suicide on the scene.
Later that day, Congressman Jerry Nadler issued a statement condemning the attacks and asserting that such unthinkable violence merits swift action on gun control laws.

“I am absolutely horrified by news of the cold-blooded shooting of dozens of children in Newtown. Yet another unstable person has gotten access to firearms and committed an unspeakable crime against innocent children,” Nadler said in the statement. “We cannot simply accept this as a routine product of modern American life. If now is not the time to have a serious discussion about gun control and the epidemic of gun violence plaguing our society, I don’t know when is. How many more Columbines and Newtowns must we live through? I am challenging President Obama, the Congress and the American public to act on our outrage and, finally, do something about this.”
Fellow New York Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who represents the Upper East Side and parts of Queens and Brooklyn, echoed Nadler’s call for action.

“Our first thoughts must be with the families of those killed and injured today. But we can no longer allow tragedies—like Columbine, and Virginia Tech, and Tucson, and Aurora, and Newtown—to occur over and over without finally taking meaningful action to prevent them from happening again,” Maloney said in a statement. “Together as Americans, we must engage each other in a civil discourse about ways to deter would-be mass killers who are currently able to legally purchase guns and ammunition more easily than they could register an automobile.”

Mayor Bloomberg also spoke forcefully in support of stricter gun control laws, and on Monday announced the release of a series of videos produced by the Mayor’s Alliance Against Illegal Guns. The 34 videos (the same number of Americans who die every day due to guns), which can be viewed on DemandAPlan.org, all feature stories from people around the country who have been personally affected by gun violence.

“Gun violence is a national epidemic—and a national tragedy—that demands more than words. We are the only industrialized country that has this problem,” Bloomberg said at a press conference at City Hall. “That’s why we need immediate national action, from the president and from Congress. It should be at the top of their agenda because what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School was, sadly, no aberration.”

Via Flickr / kcdsTM

Americans looking at the tragic events of the Newtown school shooting need to stop talking about mental healthcare entirely — for now. Yes, we have a woefully inadequate support system for the mentally ill and it should be fixed. But it is our rampant supply of firearms that enables the homicidally insane to take innocent lives down with them. Without this access, Friday’s killer would have just been a damaged mind in need of help. Without this access, twenty first-graders and six educators from Sandy Hook elementary would still be breathing. To focus on the “why” and ignore the “how” at this historical juncture is an act of deadly negligence.

Our country’s proliferation of guns is a scourge to our safety, our children’s safety, and to our freedom.

On average, 30,000 people are killed by gun violence in the United States each year. If you discount suicide, that number is closer to 12,000. An American dies every 20 minutes from a firearm.

In America you are 20 times more likely to be murdered by a firearm than in any other industrialized country — discounting Mexico, whose drug war boosted their homicide rate even beyond our own.

Anyone who thinks that our gun-related death toll is twenty times higher than other developed countries’ because we have so many more crazy people is practicing self-deceit. American children from the ages of 5 to 14 are 13 times more likely to be murdered by guns than are children in the rest of the developed world. That’s not our only unique statistic.

We also win first place for the number of guns in our homes. America has an estimated 270 million privately owned firearms. At nine guns for every ten Americans, we also have the most guns per capita. The runner-up is war-ridden Yemen, with roughly half as many.

The numbers are jarringly clear, and easy to interpret.

We are not the only wealthy country to ever harbor homicidal maniacs who commit mass shootings; we’re just the only one that consistently chooses not to do something about it.

On April 28, 1996, an Australian man murdered 35 people using a semi-automatic rifle. Less than two weeks later, The Australasian Police Ministers Council convened a special meeting and agreed to a national plan for the regulation of firearms. This agreement outlawed self-loading rifles and self-loading and pump-action shotguns, placed limitations on firearm ownership, and led to the buyback of over 500,000 guns.

The bill didn’t deprive everyone of their guns; it just cut the number of privately owned guns by twenty percent, which were also the types most commonly used in mass killings. In the two decades prior to the national firearms agreement, Australia witnessed 13 mass murders; since the law passed, they haven’t seen a single other case. Their overall firearm homicide rate has dropped by 40 percent.

Scotland has a similar story. In Dunblane, 1995, a 43-year-old entered a school with four handguns and murdered sixteen children. Two years later, the United Kingdom had banned the private possession of all handguns. Since then, the UK’s murder rate is 50 times lower than our own.

These countries acted immediately and saved countless lives.

Friday’s shooter fired up to eleven bullets into each of the six and seven-year-old bodies he targeted; he used one of the several semiautomatic guns his mother kept legally in their home. Needless to say, not a single shot child survived. Some point to Connecticut having relatively “strict” gun laws as evidence that gun control is not the solution.  But Connecticut having some of the “strictest” gun laws is a sign of national failure, not of “gun control” not working. Why did this person’s mother need semi-automatic weapons? Why does anybody who’s not at war need those? Having four such guns in your house, with a mentally ill son, is not “gun control.”

We do not have gun control.

But despite America’s overflowing history of shootings, what happened in Newtown was the first of its kind on our soil—a man massacring children still in primary school.

I’m in my early twenties. I grew up in the Columbine-era, when the image of the bullied teen in a trench coat and leather boots opening fire on his peers became a stereotype almost as quickly as it became fact. Columbine happened, and gun policy remained the same. Will the next generation grow up knowing the “elementary school shooter “ as a facet of their culture?

If we don’t demand that twenty children slaughtered in broad daylight on an otherwise typical school day be the bottom line, then there will never be a bottom line.

On Sunday, addressing the broken parents of Newtown, President Obama alluded to taking a stand against the gun epidemic: “I’ll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this,” he said.

“Let us carry on and make our country worthy of their memory,” he continued, referring to the twenty small bodies waiting to be buried over the following days.

Will we hold him to it?