Schedule of Presentations for Weekday Students

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Here is the schedule of presentations for weekday students:

January 13, 2008

Mędrzak, Marta: The New Yorker

Podhajska, Magdalena: Strawberry Fields

Gosiewska, Katarzyna: Statue of Liberty as a Symbol of NYC

Januszkiewicz, Katarzyna: Airports in NYC

Łoniewski , Dawid: Sports in NYC

Szuba, Grzegorz: Greenwich Village

January 20, 2008

Hejnrych, Kamila: Forest Hills

Jamorska, Sylwia: African Burial Grounds

Biernacka, Aleksandra: Early NYC as portrayed in the film Gangs of New York

Regucka, Karolina: Immigrants in NYC at the Turn of the Century

Debrowska, Irena:

Polkowski, Maciej: Stonewall

New York City and the Global Economic Crisis

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See NPR’s “This American Life” for an excellent introduction to the subprime mortgage crisis and the global economic crisis.  For an introduction to how cities are connected to the global economic crisis, see NPR’s Planet Money.

Read an article on how the effect of the economic crisis on NYC can spread across America’s Northeast:

… New York state and New York City are preparing to address big budget deficits. And that is bad news for the wider U.S. economy, especially as other powerhouse states reel from job losses and sizable deficits. Next door in New Jersey, tax revenue fell short of projections by $258 million for the first four months of the fiscal year, and state officials there last week said Trenton’s budget deficit could reach $1.2 billion, triple the previous prediction. Neighboring Connecticut’s budget deficit, meanwhile, could hit $6 billion over the next two years.

… Gov. Paterson has rejected calls for higher taxes on the wealthy — unlike New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has proposed tax increases.

New York finds itself in a particularly perilous spot because of its increasingly heavy reliance on the financial sector as its tax base… In New York City, Wall Street accounts for 5% of all jobs but could account for one in five job losses.

Mr. Bloomberg — who recently secured a term-limits exception so he can run for mayor again in 2009 — has said it will be a “number of years” before the city’s banking sector starts paying taxes again, and he has budgeted zero tax liability for the industry for the next two years.

One silver lining: Lower office rents and real-estate values could draw new businesses. Already, city officials have worked to cultivate the biotechnology, hospitality and tourism sectors.

On Bloomberg’s redesign of the law to allow himself to run for a third term:

Last week, Bloomberg signed a law increasing the term limit for elected officials to three four-year terms from two. The law runs counter to two public referendums, held in 1993 and 1996, that imposed the two-term limit.

Bloomberg, a former Wall Street trader and self-made billionaire who was elected mayor in 2001 and again in 2005, has said his financial experience would be invaluable when the city is bracing for lean times.

But in a civil rights lawsuit filed in federal court in Brooklyn, a group of elected officials and voters said that the term limits law denied voters “meaningful participation in the political process” because it overturns the two referendums by a legislative act, rather than by putting it to a public vote.

Welcome to the New York: The City and Its People Course Website

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This is the website for the course, “New York: The City and Its People,” taught by Dr. Joshua Kjerulf Dubrow and Dr. Irina Tomescu-Dubrow at the American Studies Center, University of Warsaw.  The course email account is newyorkcitycourse@gmail.com.  You can learn what the course is about, obtain downloadable and interactive versions of the course syllabus for weekday and weekend, get the assignments for weekday and assignments for weekend and the readings, and view useful links.