Metropolis Council Speaker Julie Menin
John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit
Welcome to the second version of “Speaker’s Corner” — my month-to-month replace on the work of the Metropolis Council and the problems shaping our metropolis.
Since my final column, we’ve been engaged on a variety of points (together with negotiating the Metropolis’s FY27 finances, which I’ll have extra to say about within the months forward). At this time, I wish to concentrate on one thing particularly pressing: defending New Yorkers from hate whereas safeguarding our constitutional rights.
Considered one of my first selections as Speaker was to take definitive motion on this situation. Inside two weeks, we shaped a brand new Metropolis Council Committee to Fight Hate. And my reasoning was easy: hate crimes have skyrocketed in recent times. In 2024, anti-Muslim hate crimes skilled a terrifying 69% enhance. And in 2025, the variety of reported incidents that focused Jews was larger than some other group mixed.
In January alone, there was a median of 1 antisemitic incident a day throughout the 5 boroughs. That’s not a New York I acknowledge. It isn’t a New York anybody else does, both.
Behind these numbers are actual New Yorkers. Households strolling to providers at their native synagogue or mosque; kids on their option to college or the playground; neighbors going about their day by day lives. Some are afraid, some are nonetheless fearless. However all are conscious of that the setting has modified.
As New Yorkers, we are able to’t simply condemn rhetoric and wring our arms over the dangerous information. We have to take motion.
Final week, the committee had its first listening to on a package deal of payments targeted on confronting the damaging rise of hate – as a result of nobody ought to be focused for which religion they apply, what they appear like, or the place they arrive from. We went to work, making certain vital investments in safety infrastructure and Holocaust training, in addition to discussing laws surrounding the protected entry of New Yorkers to each homes of worship and colleges.
The core of the laws is straightforward: it requires the NYPD to determine clear tips for when buffer zones could also be vital close to entrances and exits of non secular websites and colleges. These plans could be designed to make sure individuals can safely enter and exit, whereas totally defending the First Modification rights of peaceable protesters.
Let me be clear: this laws doesn’t ban protests. It doesn’t create new crimes. And it doesn’t set up computerized mounted protest zones.
New York has all the time been a metropolis of protest and free expression. From the suffrage motion to civil rights to Stonewall, the 5 boroughs has been a bastion of freedom for not simply our nation, however the whole world.
Our means as New Yorkers to freely communicate our minds is central to what makes us the best metropolis on the planet. These first modification rights are sacrosanct, and we’ll defend them. However protest can’t turn out to be harassment – and free speech can’t turn out to be intimidation.
Nonetheless, when demonstrators outdoors Park East Synagogue and Kew Gardens Yeshiva shouted, “We need to make them scared,” they crossed that line and engaged in harassing conduct. Nobody ought to be made to really feel afraid to hope, to attend college, or to stroll into their home of worship.
That very same precept applies in all places: a mosque in Queens, a church within the Bronx, a synagogue in Manhattan, a yeshiva in Brooklyn, a Catholic college on Staten Island. New Yorkers of each religion deserve each security and freedom.
Our method to make sure each is balanced and constitutional. If a protest dangers blocking entrances or creating unsafe circumstances, the NYPD should publish a plan that protects protected entry whereas preserving peaceable meeting. It delivers transparency, accountability, and safety for everybody.
At a time when our democracy feels extra fragile, when world conflicts can heighten tensions right here at residence, and when division too usually dominates our politics, New Yorkers deserve stability, readability, and belief of their establishments.
That’s our job as your Metropolis Council.
New York is strongest after we rise up for one another. Which means confronting hate, defending constitutional rights, and making certain that each individual on this metropolis can dwell their life with out worry.
Julie Menin is the Speaker of the New York Metropolis Council.
