Over the past few issues of the Manhattan Times, we reported on the effects of the city’s budget gap of billions of dollars. Library services are on the chopping block. Funding for education is evaporating. City day care center directors and workers staged a one-day walk out.

We also detailed what we could of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s sketchily drawn plan to shutter 11 token booths in Northern Manhattan. Both local City Councilmembers raised issues of safety and vandalism should some stations lose an extra set of eyes and ears.

Last week, all but one of our district schools suffered the ignobility of knowing a uniform curriculum will be force-fed to them in September when Mayor Bloomberg takes raises the victory flag over his successful conquest of the public education system. Our school district will be dissolved and folded into a regional division including schools in Harlem and the Upper West Side where students have little in common with ours other than needing motivation and support to excel academically. Sadly, our much admired superintendent, Dr. Jorge Izquierdo, does not currently fit into the future plans for our children as his name cannot be found on any new organizational chart.

The one thing we haven’t reported on, however, is outraged protest by our readers.

The silence has been, well, deafening. Is it because we have accepted the financial fate of the city’s shortfall and trust that our votes were well-cast, securing the best-qualified individuals to captain our city through economic straits? Perhaps the opposite is true--that we have become too disenfranchised to voice a complaint, numbed from political spin, broken like a campaign promise. Still others may believe our deep-pocketed mayor will ultimately bail the city out, personally writing a check to save social programs like he did for several cultural organizations, as was reported in the New York Times last week.

Let us not forget what people, organized, can accomplish. Last weekend, millions of citizens of humanity rallied around the globe―including in our streets―to still the war machine. True, their heroic efforts may not prevent a second Persian Gulf conflict. But time will tell what the impact of one more voice of protest―or one million more―will be. The point is they made the effort. They did not go quietly. Their stories were told. Their issues considered. Even here on our humble pages.

Are the residents of Northern Manhattan outraged by the direction their city is heading or are they confident their interests are being cared for? Our letter opener is ready.