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Jobless Protest at Tree Lighting Gets News Blackout
By
John Del Signore
Published Dec 1, 2010
Modified Dec 1, 2010
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By
John Del Signore
Published Dec 1, 2010
Modified Dec 1, 2010
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Media outlets from across America and around the world looked on rapturously last night as tens of thousands LED lights were switched on the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. But despite all the journalists on the scene, it looks like only the Daily News noticed that there was another, less joyfully manufactured aspect to last night's festivities. Some 40 unemployed demonstrators were also at Rockefeller Center last night to protest the end of unemployment benefits, which will affect nearly millions Americans starting, oh, now.
Chanting "Merry Christmas! You're Fired!" the protesters carried signs that read, "Keep the Lights on for the Unemployed" and "We Need Jobs Not Another Korean War." By New Year's Eve, 95,000 people in NYC are expected to lose their benefits, and 200,000 will be cut off statewide. "Just in time for Christmas, people are going to lose their only lifeline that's let them hold onto a semblance of the life they knew," one organizer, Sam Talbot, 33, told the News.
Hold the phone, could that be THE Sam Talbot, the dashingly handsome chef and restaurateur whom you may recall from Top Chef and The Real Housewives of New York City? Well, we suppose it is tough making ends meet while he waits for his hotly anticipated new restaurant in the Mondrian Hotel to open. The 180-seat restaurant will be called Imperial No. 9, and highlight Talbot's interpretation of modern east coast seafood—Oh wait, this post is supposed to be about the poor unemployed people, not celebrity chefs! It's just so hard to stay focused on the bad news with all these glamorous stars. Anyway, unless lawmakers take action, 2 million unemployed Americans will be cut off by Christmas. Ho, ho, ho.
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protest
rockefeller center
sam talbot
unemployed
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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