https://www.city-journal.org/radical-politics-ny-community-organizations
In September 2018, activist groups around New York rushed to denounce the Trump administration for considering making changes to the “public charge” rule for noncitizens. The changes would add food stamps, Medicaid, and federal housing vouchers to the programs that count against immigrants when the government determines their future status. The New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) staged a protest outside the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, joined by the African Services Committee and the Chinese-American Planning Council. Executives of the three organizations were arrested after they sat down in the middle of Delancey Street and blocked rush-hour traffic.
New York City has long been fertile ground for political protest, of course, so these events were not unusual—though the city’s protest culture has gone into overdrive since Trump’s election, with rallies, marches, and demonstrations becoming a frequent backdrop around Manhattan. Civil-society groups, along with elected officials, activists, and unions, typically organize these protests, which run the gamut from standard political rallies to civil disobedience. What most New Yorkers don’t realize, though, is that many of the protests, including NYIC’s action last year, aren’t simply the work of civic-minded private citizens. On the contrary: they are funded, sometimes lavishly, by local and state government—that is, by taxpayers. New York is home to a host of such groups, which, in the Trump era, have expanded their charitable missions to include near-constant political activism. Whether they agree or disagree with these efforts, New Yorkers should understand that they’re paying the bill for them.
New York City spends about $95 billion annually. Not counting Medicaid spending, the city allocates about 13 percent of its outlays to human services—including homeless shelters, senior centers, youth recreation, adult literacy, foster care, and many other programs tailored to the needs of New York’s 8.5 million people, 43 percent of whom live below the city-measured poverty line. The city contracts with nonprofit organizations to provide many of these services. Most homeless shelters, for instance, are run by nongovernmental organizations. Similarly, nonprofits provide public defenders to indigent defendants. Individual contracts with these large groups—such as the Lutheran Social Services of Metropolitan New York, Inc., which deals with vulnerable children—can run to hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
