While parents, activists, and politicians protested on the steps of the mayor's office against his decision to shut down daycare centers, Mayor Bloomberg himself walked right by them without acknowledging their posters and signs.

"Save our children!" cried the protesters, raising their voices when they saw him pass by.

The demonstration opposed the mayor's plan to take away 17,000 spots for children in daycare centers. If the plan is approved, the number of spaces in daycare centers that have been eliminated over the past five years will rise to 31,000 – or half of the total number of spaces available in 2006.

The protesters created an emergency coalition to save the daycare centers. The coalition aims to convince the City Council to reject the mayor's plan and to persuade the mayor to restore the available number of spots for children.

Of the 56 politicians that make up the City Council, 21 would have to vote against the mayor's plan in order to prevent spots from being eliminated.

For Miguel Reinoso, a 53-year-old Hispanic man who attended the demonstration, saving daycare centers isn't a political issue. Reinoso is raising his three grandchildren, ages 4, 6, and 9, in Bushwick, Brooklyn. He is afraid that if he can't secure a spot for the youngest one, Essence, that he will lose his job at a bodega, and then his apartment.

"If they take away daycare, what will I do?" Reinoso asked anxiously. "My message is that they stop these budget cuts because there is money. The ones who are suffering the consequences of these budget cuts are African Americans and Latinos. I'm speaking not only to parents but to all New Yorkers – we have to fight for the rights of the children!"

Communities with a greater need for daycare centers will be disproportionately affected by the changes.

In Washington Heights, a neighborhood with a large Latino population where there are not enough spots for children, 370 children would lose their subsidized spaces. The effect would be similar in neighborhoods with high rates of unemployment, like in Mott Haven, in the Bronx, where 502 subsidized spots would be cut.

City Councilmember Annabel Palma, of the Bronx, said, "We are organizing parents and asking them to reach out to their neighbors. We want them to call the mayor's office directly and to tell him that this is an attack on low-income communities and that he should not make these cuts."

A spokeswoman for the Administration for Children's Services (ACS), Elysia Murphy, said in a press release, "The city recognizes that these service cuts will be a challenge for the families affected and we are working with parents to search for alternatives. We must take action now to deal with a $90 million deficit."

Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, ripped up the letter that thousands of parents received from ACS informing them of the change. He said, "This is not the right thing to do. We can't take children's rights away simply because of a few budget problems."