Abogados de Inmigracion

The Tom Suozzi for Governor Campaign is already driving home the critical point that the GED is vital to two and a quarter million adults in New York State. At the Black and Hispanic Annual Conference in Albany recently when I mentioned those statistics to him during a party, he said, “I know! Isn’t that horrible?” By the next Saturday, he was talking about the GED in his speeches. With slightly less than half of the Hispanic adults needing a GED and African Americans in great need, too, for the first time in history hundreds of thousands of people more may have access to help that has never been given to them. Gang members, unemployed people, our youth who have dropped out of school and some of them are hanging out on the streets, housewives who had their children early (teen pregnancy), Christians studying in Bible Institutes, people in prisons and former inmates, people working in low skill jobs for low pay, and immigrants who are legal and undocumented will have better access to programs because Tom Suozzi is leading the way. He has been described as fighting for the people and bringing the GED issue out into the open will benefit minorities and poor who need more education badly. He is blazing a trail that former governors did not try to create for the people. I think that Hispanics and African Americans will easily find in his plan for New York a program that will not leave anyone behind. Since people of all ethnic groups drop out of school, all people can unite to benefit the education of those people who have been denied so many of the benefits of a system that requires people to complete their education.

People love to take pictures with famous people and here I am at a party (years ago) with Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi. In the last several months, my message to Mr. Suozzi has been reaching him. I think that is an amazing accomplishment because many of us outside the system believe that officials in the national, state, and local governments are not paying attention to us and not doing a good job. And the polls show it. When a person, like myself, who is not part of an organization and is more or less just your average person, like tens of millions of Americans, and the County Executive pays attention, this is a great moment in democracy. I have talked with over a hundred elected officials and very few are paying attention to me. I have walked the halls of Congress and the Senate and only two offices among more than a hundred are participating with me in my GED campaign (Congressman Hinojosa and Senator Clinton). All of this will change soon because of the role Tom Suozzi is playing.

Tom Suozzi is not responsible for the education of people in his county, but he is speaking out a time when members of the Board of Regents (appointed by Governor George Pataki) are worried about the terrible statistics of graduation rate on Long Island. Many of these youth will fall through the cracks. My fear is that these same terrible statistics will reveal themselves in Westchester and many other counties upstate. It is time for all of us to unite around this important issue. We can really make the family and community stronger by helping those people who have been left out.

MARTIN N. DANENBERG
7 BLAZER DRIVE
ISLANDIA, NY 11749
GEDHOTLINE@AOL.COM
631-348-1341
www.geocities.com/gedhotline
www.ahorre.com/noticias