News & Events
City Tech Salutes Caprio, Adams and New York's
Labor Movement at 2002 Best of New York Award Dinner
From left, City Tech Foundation Chairman Martin Jaffe, Amalgamated Bank President Gabriel P. Caprio, and City Tech President Fred W. Beaufait.
You didn't have to look far to find the union label at New York City Technical College's Best of New York Award Dinner 2002. More than 350 union officials and other guests filled the Crystal Ballroom at Tavern on the Green to capacity for this annual fundraiser for scholarships and other student assistance programs.
Those honored included Gabriel P. Caprio, president and chief executive officer of Amalgamated Bank. Founded in 1923 by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and now owned by UNITE (Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees), Amalgamated was the first lending institution in the country to make affordable banking services widely available to working men and women. It is still known as "America's labor bank."
The college also saluted Lillian Roberts, executive director of District Council 37; Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress/CUNY; Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers; and the rank and file of 1199SEIU.
Alexander Reznik, a City Tech radiologic technology program graduate and former pianist with the Leningrad Concert Orchestra, accepted on behalf of the 1199SEIU membership. "I used to be part of another union," Reznik mused in reference to the former Soviet Union, "but I'd rather belong to 1199 any day."
NYPD Lt. Eric Adams, a City Tech alumnus and co-founder and president of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care
The college's 2002 Distinguished Alumni Award went to the NYPD's Lt. Eric Adams '84, president of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, an organization he helped found that monitors the impact of law enforcement policies and practices on communities of color citywide. Adams is also a former chairman of the Guardians, the NYPD's official black fraternal order.
From left, City Tech Foundation Chairman
Martin Jaffe, UFT President Randi Weingarten, PSC/CUNY
President Barbara Bowen, DC 37 Executive Director Lillian
Roberts, City Tech alumnus and 1199SEIU member Alexander
Reznik, and City Tech President Fred W. Beaufait.
"Long before I traveled to Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa," Adams said in moving acceptance remarks, "I met people from those parts of the world in my classrooms at City Tech. Today, City Tech is doing for thousands of other young people what it did for me. It is showing them that there is a world beyond the 'hood.'"
New York City Technical College enjoys a special historical relationship with organized labor. Collective bargaining in American higher education was born on the City Tech campus in Downtown Brooklyn in the years immediately following the college's founding in 1946. Thousands of graduates of City Tech's technology and occupational teacher education, human services, nursing, health care-related and other degree programs are members of 1199SEIU, DC 39, PSC/CUNY and the UFT.
Sponsored by the City Tech Foundation, the first
Best of New York Award Dinner was held in 1982. Past honorees include
the NAACP's Kweisi Mfume, Thirteen/WNET's William F. Baker, CWA/llO9's
Tony Matarazzo, and baseball legend Henry "Hank" Aaron.
Photo courtesy of Ken Brown
