Dear Editor:
I am appalled at the realization that the health of my family and I are being used as pawns in an internal labor standoff. As years long users of the North Hudson Community Action Corporation Community Health Center at 714 31st Street, I feel personally violated when picketers and protesters jeopardize my family’s access to the Union City site of NHCAC, the County’s four premier ambulatory health care centers. Mayor Stack and NHCAC CEO/President Michael A. Leggiero have repeatedly underwritten and overseen comprehensive air quality tests, tests that have, without exception, shown the Union City health center has an above acceptable air quality.
The Mayor and Commissioner Leggiero have repeatedly spoken to the press and the public to keep us abreast of the latest air quality test results, yet certain union members care not for the facts, they care only about making some esoteric point to a contractor. How dare they risk our city’s access to affordable, quality health care for their own selfish aims? They claim they are doing it for "us," the center’s patients do not believe them.
Mayor Stack, Commissioner Leggiero and our elected officials have well earned our respect, loyalty and trust over the past several rocky years; let us not allow out-of-area labor disputes frighten us into believing wholly unsubstantiated rumors and hearsay.
I love my children, I love my life, I would not risk either if I did not believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the absence of air born asbestos. Let’s place our trust where it belongs, in the men and women we put into office to represent us, and let’s raise our voices together to tell the manipulative, selfish demonstrators they are not wanted here.
Maritza Perez