<
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-12/mayor-eric-adams-introduces-a-new-york-twist-on-finland-s-baby-boxes>
"Two weeks before his election as mayor, Zohran Mamdani held about the cutest
press conference you can imagine: Surrounded by babies, and backed by a blue
climbing structure, he announced that he would launch citywide “baby baskets,”
welcoming the 125,000 babies born in New York City each year with a free
collection of essential supplies. Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso,
who sponsored a pilot program of 500 “Born in Brooklyn” baby boxes in 2022,
introduced Mamdani, saying, “This is a sacred act to have a baby … We want to
make sure the last thing you are thinking about is a box of diapers.”
Left unmentioned was the fact that, just a week earlier, Mamdani’s onetime
opponent, sitting Mayor Eric Adams, had launched his own baby box program at
four of the city’s public hospitals — two in the Bronx, one in Brooklyn, and
one in Queens — where more than 7,000 babies are delivered each year. The cost
of the NYC Health + Hospitals program is $2.6 million for year one, funded
through city tax dollars. The boxes themselves are provided by Welcome Baby
USA, a nonprofit organization founded by Sarah Gould Steinhardt in 2019 that
had already been providing a smaller number of care packages to Jacobi Medical
Center, one of the Bronx launch sites.
Welcome to the battle of the baby boxes. If the current program is successful
enough to warrant expansion, the city’s outgoing and incoming mayors may
disagree about who deserves credit. Infant New Yorkers and their less-stressed
parents are already the winners."
Via
Reasons to be Cheerful:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/what-were-reading-competitive-sport-spogomi/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
