Brody's Notes... NYC's Homeless Kids Get Reprieve- City Restores Funding For Ali Forney Center

By Mark Singer (Washington DC) JAN 6 | NYC based blogger and freelance journalist, Joe Jervis, is reporting this morning that New York City Council Speaker, Christine Quinn, has announced that city funding to the Ali Forney Center has been completely restored. The center's principal mission is to assist the city's homeless and disenfranchised queer youth.

Jervis and LGBTQ equality rights activist David Mixner, had launched an intensive online campaign to convince city officials that defunding the center would lead to negative results and impact on the city's queer youth.
Upon hearing the announcement, Ali Forney Center executive director Carl Siciliano said:

This is wonderful news for the homeless youth of our City, particularly for homeless LGBT youth who would be disproportionately hurt by the proposed cuts. I am profoundly grateful to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the Council Assistant Majority Leader and Youth Services Committee Chair Lewis Fidler for their strong and dedicated leadership in seeking to have these cuts restored. Thousands of homeless youth have been protected by their compassionate leadership.

I am also deeply grateful to many members of the broader LGBT community who stood up and demanded that our most vulnerable youth be protected from these cuts. Many, many people called, wrote, and e-mailed the Mayor's office and expressed their concern and outrage. I do not think that the Mayor, in proposing the cuts, anticipated the depth of the commitment of the LGBT Community to protecting our youth who have been thrown out to the streets, and I am deeply moved by the caring that our Community revealed in fighting the cuts. I want to especially thank David Mixner, Mike Lavers and Joe Jervis for their efforts in bringing the harmfulness of the cuts to the attention of the LGBT Community.