On February 25th, 2025,  the Woodburn School Board failed to pass Resolution 25-001, Reaffirming Safe and Welcoming Schools for All.”  We need community support to pressure elected officials to defend the safety of all students, especially students being affected by current federal immigration enforcement.  This is the first step to ensuring we have a strong and representative leadership in our schools. 

We are not experts about exactly what has gone wrong here, but what we can tell you is that Rochdale Village is currently controlled by an unaccountable and potentially corrupt management company named Summit Management, which has had a stranglehold on pretty much all decision-making of importance here and has for many decades, under one name or another. We believe that their terrible financial decision-making on numerous occasions and their overall mismanagement have led directly to the crisis we are all now facing. Every time Cooperative residents ask Summit Management representatives why we are in such a financial mess, we get a different answer. They keep pointing to new causes without any accountability for their own actions or inaction. Below are just some of the reasons they have given: ● Summit Management, over many decades, without keeping residents fully informed or consulted, has arranged a crushing debt burden through a $195 million mortgage loan with Wells Fargo bank, which is a predatory balloon mortgage deal. Rochdale Village now has a huge multi-million dollar liability on this predatory high interest loan. In the January 2025 issue of the Rochdale Village Bulletin, the Cooperative's newspaper, they reported that Rochdale Village has a $31,626,760 liability in payments on their Wells Fargo loan, in part because a portion of their payments were deferred for 6 months between May and October 2020. After giving this temporary deferral, Wells Fargo, then massively and without warning, raised Rochdale Village's monthly loan payments by nearly 25%. ● Summit Management Company also has racked up a $13 million debt to the NYC Water Board on their water bills with large fines for late payment and non-payment. This large water bill is also obviously greatly increased by corrupt NYC Mayor Eric Adams' decision to push through a $1.4 billion hidden tax on the NYC Water Board which was then passed on to us in the form of the the highest water board rate hike in 14 years in early July 2024. ● At the most recent Board of Directors meeting, we also learned that Summit Management had negotiated a sweetheart rent deal that allowed Chase Bank, one of the largest banks in the world, allowing them to benefit from a lease deal that guarantees only an 8.3% rent increase over the next 5 years, or just a 1.6% increase per year. All of these generous terms are being offered to Chase behind our backs while Cooperative residents are at the same time being told that there is no alternative to forcing us to accept an historic Carrying charge rate increase of 22.3%-35% in just 1 year!!! ● We have also learned that Chase Bank is not the only sweetheart rent deal Summit Management has negotiated recently. Apparently, other commercial tenants like Key Food supermarket and others have signed similarly generous rental leases. ● On top of the lack of fair market income coming from these commercial tenants, Rochdale Village owns vacant property that has been vacant for many years and even worse has sold property that was converted into other forms of housing nearby that Summit Management claims they don't even have the sale paperwork for!  We are not aware of any other business would have the ability to survive if they conducted business this in this way. And Summit Management's complete lack of accountability and transparency obviously raises many ethical and legal concerns as well. ● Summit has also claimed that there is a crisis of residents in arrears on their Carrying charges going back to the COVID-19 pandemic. The latest numbers given claim a loss of $6 million in arrears on Carrying Charges as of June 2024. Personally, we believe that NY's elected officials at all levels must also take responsibility for and provide relief and aid for those in arrears due to COVID-19 and other economic or health issues, because without such an intervention, these residents will eventually become unhoused and will very likely need much more expensive aid and services from both NY City and NY State. Obviously, these economic problems and their causes are not unique to Rochdale Village. But, we believe that our elected officials must do whatever they can to support our community members and work with us towards a solution to this crisis that does not place the financial burden of all of these crises on the overwhelming majority of our shareholders, who played no role at all in the decision-making that led to these crises in the first place.  We also believe that increased oversight by elected officials of the ways in which Summit Management Company is running Rochdale Village is URGENTLY NECESSARY to prevent future financial mismanagement and crisis. Their complete lack of accountability and effective stranglehold of all decision-making power is completely unacceptable and undermines the very mission of the NYS Mitchell-Lama program, which was founded on the "Rochdale’s Principles" to build Cooperative and truly democratically run communities in which community members have equal voting rights and participate in all decisions. We ask for your leadership in ensuring that Rochdale Village remains an affordable housing option for those who need it most. We appreciate your time and consideration and look forward to your response on how your office plans to address these urgent issues. We prefer that you respond via email, as it is not feasible for our entire community to participate in a single phone call. Furthermore, we believe an in-person meeting is warranted to discuss these matters openly. Such a meeting would allow for full transparency, ensuring that the truth is clearly presented and that the current status of Rochdale Village’s business practices and financial management can be properly reviewed. We seek swift and thorough investigative action on our behalf to ensure that this community not only survives but thrives.

Please help the voices of the American people reach President Zelenskyy, the people of Ukraine, the US Government, and the world.

Dear Friends, At the present time we do not have any power to change the foreign policy of the USA.  But we do have the power to be a decent human being. Please share and join me. Thank you.

As part of the Project 2025 assault on basic and essential government functions, President Trump is dismantling the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Congress is not fighting back for us.. With recent firings at NOAA announced, information that is a lifeline in a weather emergency event is at grave risk. And, the potential that they may eliminate free public access to weather forecasts, hurricane tracking, wildfire alerts, and more would not just decimate the nation's premier climate science agency, it would undermine public safety and put lives at risk. People in the United States have invested tax dollars in NOAA for generations. It belongs to us, not the Trump administration. Don't let President Trump and Congress  dismantle this life-saving agency. Tell Congress to protect NOAA.

It is important to let President Zelensky, Ukraine and the world know that we, the American people, are not anything like Donald Trump and JD Vance. We have respect, compassion and stand with our allies.

This is extremely important! Elon Musk must not be allowed to have access to anything in our government.  Elon Musk and DOGE are not elected officials yet, they have unchecked power and access to things that even top officials have never seen. They are not finding fraud, Elon Musk and DOGE have not shown any proof. This is a coup that is taking place in real time. Elon Musk needs to have his citizenship revoked and DOGE must be stopped before it is too late for America to recover. I implore you to support me in this fight for our freedom, our constitution, our families, our freedom. 

Since day one, Trump has attacked abortion rights, issuing executive orders that attack access and cut federal funding for care, and now EMTALA is on the line. The very people who authored Project 2025 have called for the reversal of the Biden administration’s guidance that the law protects the right to an emergency abortion. Doctors and medical providers don't want to refuse patients emergency medical care, and they shouldn't have to risk going to jail for helping to save a patient's life. Sign the petition to call on the Trump administration to enforce EMTALA nationwide. 

This issue is particularly significant in light of the growing influence of certain religious groups seeking to assert greater control over governmental policies and the personal lives of individuals. While the action we are proposing may seem small, it serves as an important statement about the value of religious equality and the need to protect the principle of separation between religion and government. It demonstrates our commitment to ensuring that all individuals, regardless of their faith, are treated with respect and fairness. Furthermore, it affirms our resolve to stand up for these principles and to advocate for a society where religious freedoms are upheld for everyone.

Joy Reid made history as cable television’s first Black woman primetime anchor. A vocal critic of Trump and Republicans, Reid often went viral for her scathing commentary and analysis. “The ReidOut” has been on air since 2020, and its abrupt ending is a disappointment to viewers who have looked to the show over the past four years for its cutting interviews and coverage.  This decision is part of a disturbing trend by MSNBC of cancelling shows that feature Black women—including Tamron Hall, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Tiffany Cross. In this recent wave of cuts, MSNBC also canceled “The Katie Phang Show” and  “José Díaz-Balart Reports,” though Phang and Díaz-Balart will stay with the network.  Trump is already celebrating MSNBC’s decision, wasting no time to take to social media to denigrate Reid and the network. We need to be louder than Trump and conservatives trying to cancel prominent voices like Reid’s. Make sure MSNBC hears from us—its viewers—and let them know that Reid is a trusted and necessary voice in political commentary and deserves to stay in prime time.  MSNBC has more than a million viewers and is a trusted news source for many. We need them to do better and not only commit to centering on diverse voices in their reporting but on supporting diverse anchors and investing in their shows.  Call on MSNBC to reverse its decision and reinstate “The ReidOut” immediately! 

Meeting with constituents is a crucial part of every elected official's responsibilities. Face to face discussion is indispensable to real communication with our representatives.

Missouri is a reliably red state. Nearly all of our leaders in Congress are Republicans so why do they need to do town halls if they know they'll have your vote no matter what? America is under attack. This is not a left vs right or liberal vs conservative. This is farmers, doctors, nurses,  police officers, teachers, retail workers, veterans,  disabled citizens, every Missouri resident vs those gutting our institutions with no concern. This is corrupt. This is fascistic. This is the rich stealing from right under our noses so we need to have town halls to tell Josh Hawley, Eric Schmitt, and our Representatives in Congress how we feel about what they're allowing to happen. How they're standing aside and giving trillions of dollars in tax cuts that WE, the normal people,  will get to pay for. They do what's in their political interests and not their constituents because they know they have your no matter what. Sign this petition. Make them talk to us. Make them answer for what they are and are not doing. They work for Missouri,  not Musk.