Hundreds of New Yorkers Rally for A Peoples Budget

PSC members, community groups, and electeds urged the City Council to hold its ground on critical city services, including CUNY, while President Davis stood with Council Members calling for a fully functional education system.

PSC members rallied alongside hundreds of New Yorkers and elected officials at City Hall Thursday, June 20, ahead of an upcoming vote on the FY25 New York City budget. At the rally, advocates called on City Councilmembers to resist the Adams administration’s draconian budget cuts and pass a budget that restores full funding to CUNY community college and truly delivers for New Yorkers.

Mayor Adams has made seven rounds of budget cuts since taking office. He has cut funding to CUNY community colleges by $95 million, leaving the colleges short 400 faculty and staff and students without critical academic and programmatic support.

The People’s Plan (TPP), a coalition of more than 50 organizations, including PSC/CUNY, organized the rally. TPP sent a letter to the New York City Council calling on Councilmembers to tap into additional budget powers if they’re not able to reverse the Mayor’s most harmful budget cuts in negotiations. In addition to an up-or-down vote on the budget, the Council has the power to pass its own budget or amend the Mayor’s. PSC First Vice President Jen Gaboury recently called on the Council to use the same budget powers to save CUNY in an AMNY op-ed.

As PSC members and coalition groups rallied for a People’s Budget outside on the steps of City Hall, PSC President James Davis joined members of the Council inside City Hall in the rotunda to demand that the Mayor revers his cuts to the City’s early childhood education systems.

“Those are our families! Those are going to be our students—those little ones—in one generation. And the parents who need 3K, who need PreK, those are our students as well,” Davis said. “We need a fully restored budget for early childhood ed. We need a fully functional education system, a system that meets the needs of working families.”

The PSC and 14 other unions are calling for the restoration of $170 million in Program to Eliminate the Gap cuts to 3-K and Pre-K, and pushing for additional investments, including $60 million to fund 4,000 extended day and extended year seats in 3-K and Pre-K.