“Much of the city reports donor registration rates in the 30s, significantly below statewide levels, with the widest gaps in communities where Black and Brown New Yorkers are overrepresented on the waiting list.”

(Darren McGee/ Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)

This past year underscored the importance of continually strengthening the organ donation and transplant system. In New York, our state and community leaders advanced meaningful reforms to save and heal lives, maintain public trust in the system, and honor donors and their families. As a result, more than 3,200 New Yorkers received life-changing organ transplants this year, and more than 400,000 New Yorkers newly registered their consent to give the gift of life.  

Thanks to these concerted efforts spearheaded by Donate Life NYS, New York crossed an important milestone: for the first time, a majority of age-eligible New Yorkers were registered donors. That progress reflects critical work from the governor and legislature, the Department of Health, the Department of Motor Vehicles, and community partners across the state. But 50 percent registrations statewide—still far behind the national average—is not a finish line. It’s a starting point for what comes next. 

Our state’s need is urgent. More than 8,000 New Yorkers remain on the waiting list, and roughly 400 die each year due to a shortage of donors. We have more work to do to bridge this gap and ensure every New Yorker who needs a transplant can access one. 

Data clearly points to New York City as a priority. Much of the city reports donor registration rates in the 30s, significantly below statewide levels, with the widest gaps in communities where Black and Brown New Yorkers are overrepresented on the waiting list. The Bronx and Queens sit at 32 percent, and Kings County at 38 percent, rates so low that closing the gap would meaningfully translate into lives saved.

Donate Life NYS’ plan is grounded in trust and access. We are bringing the conversation about organ and tissue donation to New Yorkers where they live, work, and gather, while ensuring opportunities to register are woven into everyday life. In a region with profound transplant needs, saving lives depends on reaching people beyond traditional systems, through trusted voices and realistic touchpoints. By expanding how and where New Yorkers can learn about and say “yes” to donation, we aim to close gaps in access, honor donors, and deliver hope to families waiting for a second chance at life.

That work starts with community: engaging faith leaders, local hospitals, healthcare organizations, and trusted community leaders. In-person and online, we need to continue to spread accurate, life-saving information. 

Policy is also part of the solution. This year, New York State enacted the HEART Act, sponsored by Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples‑Stokes and Senator April Baskin, which allows New Yorkers on Medicaid to register at multiple transplant centers simultaneously. By providing the opportunity to register at a second transplant center, the HEART Act cuts wait times in half and reduces mortality rates by 20 percent. While not every legislative initiative will have the resounding, immediate impact of the HEART Act, any legislative lever that will save a New Yorker’s life is worth considering and enacting. 

Practical access to registration is also a proven strategy. Over the past decade, Donate Life NYS’s “Doorways to Donation” initiative has made it easier to enroll as an organ and tissue donor while handling routine tasks, including vehicle transactions, hunting and fishing licenses, and, uniquely in New York, when registering to vote. We’re grateful to the front-line staff, such as our state’s County Clerks, who have kept the conversation going at the counter in communities across the state. In the North Country and Western New York, steady education plus easy access has set the pace. Counties such as Hamilton, Jefferson, Ontario, Steuben, Schuyler, Tioga, and Chemung now lead the state in registration rates, creating an inspiring standard to replicate statewide. 

In New York City, this work demands a concentrated and intentional focus. Alongside city leaders, agencies, and community institutions, Donate Life NYS will open doorways to enrollment where they make sense for New York City residents. This is deliberate, long-term work: bringing the choice to register into familiar settings repeatedly, building trust, increasing comfort, and ultimately saving lives.

New York State reached 50 percent enrollment through a shared commitment: patient-centered policy, strong legislative and government support, deep community and statewide partnerships, and New Yorkers’ willingness to enroll when given the opportunity. That same collective effort will drive progress in New York City. As New Yorkers continue to learn that each registered donor can save eight lives and heal 75 others, they continue to choose to give the generous gift of life. 

We invite city leadership, agencies, and community-based organizations to continue and deepen their partnership with Donate Life NYS, working together to meet New Yorkers where they are, strengthen understanding of organ donation, and expand access so more lives can be saved and healed.

Aisha Tator is the executive director of Donate Life NYS.

The post On Organ Donation, New York City Can Make the Difference appeared first on City Limits.

Colin (Harry Melling) has an “aptitude for devotion.” It’s a quality that he discovers about himself, develops and ultimately embraces over the course of “Pillion,” Harry Lighton’s “dom-com,” an amusing, illuminating and daring romance about a dominant/submissive relationship that proves revelatory for our young protagonist.

“Pillion” isn’t quite a love story, but rather a coming-of-age tale, leather-clad. Based on the novella “Box Hill” by Adam Mars-Jones, the film follows a relationship between the sheltered Colin and stoic biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), who meet in a pub one Christmas Eve. Ray immediately susses out Colin for his potential qualities — his “aptitude,” if you will — and Colin keeps coming around, curious about the impossibly handsome Ray and the possibilities he presents.

The word “pillion” refers to the backseat of a motorcycle (and often those who might ride it), and Lighton invites the viewer to hop on the back of his hog for a kink-positive exploratory journey into the gay motorcycle gang subculture that Ray inhabits, all seen through Colin’s uniquely expressive eyes. Lighton doesn’t hold the audience’s hand or overexplain, he simply presents this world and allows us to learn the dynamics and rituals through observation, as Colin enthusiastically fumbles his way through Submissive 101 with the taciturn Ray.

But the anthropological aspect of “Pillion” is merely the backdrop for what is a period of personal discovery for Colin. He’s extremely close with his caring parents, particularly his mother Peggy (the great Lesley Sharp), who is dying of cancer. As his tight-knit family unit is fading away in front of his eyes, he clings to both the discipline and queer family that he finds with Ray; relinquishing all control in his relationship serves as a relief from his day-to-day routine writing parking tickets and sometimes singing in a barbershop quartet. Ray offers him sex, and danger, and access to an exciting new world, but in his rigid dominance, he also offers Colin freedom — from expectations, from decision-making, from quotidian drudgery.

We know Colin thrills to it, based on his reactions to the boundaries that Ray pushes. And Ray himself refuses to be pushed around. When Peggy bristles at the dynamic she witnesses between her son and his lover at a family dinner, Ray calmly informs her that just because she feels uncomfortable doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with their relationship. It’s an important moment in the film because Lighton is lightly domming the viewer in the same way: check any squeamish inhibitions at the door, because no kink-shaming is welcome here.

Lighton presents it all with unvarnished honesty, allowing the tension and humor to bloom in the clash between Skarsgård’s forthright Scandinavian brusqueness, and Melling’s awkward British charm. Lighton and cinematographer Nick Morris favor natural light, particularly in Ray’s sparsely decorated apartment — the visual focus is always on the relationship itself. The film gets aesthetically expressive in slow-motion sequences when Colin is riding pillion on Ray’s bike, capturing the sensual excitement of it all, the wild ride that Colin has chosen to take.

Lighton favors music for setting the tone and locating the story within the emotional tenor of mid-century yearning classics. The soundtrack is studded with unique tracks like a cover of ’60s love ballad “I Will Follow Him,” retro disco rock anthem “Bad Feeling” by Cobra Man, and a poignant performance of the standard “Smile” by Colin’s barbershop quartet.

But it’s the delicately wrought performances that allow us to walk hand-in-hand with these characters. Melling’s face and eyes reveal the sheer joy of surrender as Colin dives into Ray’s way of life; later, when he flips the script on his partner, Skarsgård’s inscrutable expression shields Ray’s emotions as he visibly resists any connection that might take a different form than the one they’ve built, chain link by chain link.

The edgy and explicit “Pillion” might be set within the parameters of a relationship that many would consider “alternative,” but the heart of it is the same as any love story that becomes a lesson in self-love. Not every relationship lasts, but we are changed by every one, and hopefully for the better.

‘Pillion’

3 stars (out of 4)

No MPA rating (contains graphic sex scenes, nudity and discussion of sex)

Running time: 1:47

How to watch: In limited theatrical release Feb. 6, expands Feb. 20

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Charges filed in the fatal shooting of a St. Paul man on Monday night allege both he and the gunman fired several rounds during a marijuana deal that went awry.

Eithan Armani Green, 29, of Minneapolis, was charged Friday by warrant in Ramsey County District Court with second-degree murder and possession of a firearm by an ineligible person in connection with the killing of David Lee Turner III, 23, in the West Seventh neighborhood of St. Paul.

Green was dropped off by a man at Regions Hospital shortly after the shooting with gunshot wounds to his abdomen and leg, the criminal complaint said. He remained hospitalized Friday in serious but stable condition.

A case against another man is under review for possible charges, a spokesman for the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office said Friday.

According to the complaint, police found Turner shot and slumped over in the driver’s seat of a Dodge Durango in the 100 block of Oneida Street just after 10 p.m. He had no pulse and wasn’t breathing, and was pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy showed eight gunshot wounds, including to his face, neck and chest.

Officers processed the Durango and recovered eight spent 9mm casings, three spent .40-caliber casings and nearly three pounds of marijuana.

Video surveillance from a nearby home showed the Durango and a Ford Escape pulled up on Oneida Street, between Superior and Michigan streets, at separate times.

A man, later identified as Green, got out of the Escape and into the Durango’s front passenger seat, the complaint said. Shots rang out a short time later, with windows on both sides of the Durango shattering.

A man wearing a dark-colored jacket ran from the Escape’s back passenger seat to the Durango and began rummaging through it. Green got out, “hopped around” and ran back to Escape’s front passenger seat. A driver of the SUV then drove away with Green, leaving the other man behind.

‘I shot him’

Officers were sent to Regions Hospital shortly after the shooting on a report of a man who’d been dropped off with gunshot wounds to his abdomen and leg. He didn’t have a wallet or a cellphone, but police identified him as Green.

Investigators found a phone number for Green, and records showed the phone was in the area at the time of Turner’s killing, then near Regions and Minneapolis, the complaint said.

Investigators discovered that Green’s phone was “pinging” in the area of the Minneapolis Police Department’s Fourth Precinct on the city’s North Side. They learned a man was arrested Tuesday in Minneapolis after driving Green’s car, where officers found a .380-caliber handgun and two cellphones. The man said one of the phones belonged to a friend.

In an interview, the man told investigators that he and Green had previously bought marijuana from Turner, and that both he and Green had used his phone to text Turner about buying marijuana from him, the complaint said.

The man said he drove the Escape, which belonged to Green’s girlfriend, to the meet-up spot the night of the shooting. He gave Green $350 to buy the drug, and Green got out and into the Durango. He then heard two different guns fire. Green ran back to the Escape and said, “I shot him,” the man told police, according to the complaint.

“(The man) asked what Green did to make (Turner) shoot him, but Green just asked (the man) to take him to the hospital,” the complaint read.

The man said he drove Green to Regions in the Escape and that Green left a Taurus 9mm handgun and his phone in the SUV before walking into the hospital. Officers later recovered the gun at an apartment belonging to the man’s girlfriend, the complaint said.

Green denied knowing Turner

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In an interview with investigators, Green said he was drunk and high and couldn’t recall how he was shot and where, the complaint said.

He denied shooting anyone and said he didn’t own a gun. He denied knowing Turner.

According to the complaint, when investigators told him the shooting was on video, he said, “I’m shot” and “Who shot me?”

Court records show Green has several felony convictions, all out of St. Louis County, including for first-degree robbery and fifth-degree drug possession in 2014; felony domestic assault in 2017; and aiding and abetting first-degree robbery in 2019.

By JULIE WATSON, Associated Press

SAN DIEGO (AP) — At least three people have died and three others have required liver transplants after eating the aptly named Death Cap mushroom that is proliferating in California following a rainy winter.

The California Department of Public Health is urging people to avoid mushroom foraging altogether this year because Death Cap mushrooms are easily confused with safe, edible varieties.

Since Nov. 18 there have been at least three dozen cases of mushroom poisonings reported, according to the health department. Many who sought medical attention suffered from rapidly evolving acute liver injury and liver failure. Several patients required admission to an intensive care unit. They have ranged in age from 19 months to 67 years old.

“This greatly exceeds the typical report of less than 5 cases of mushroom poisonings a year,” the department said in its public health warning.

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Experts warn that a mushroom’s color is not a reliable way of detecting its toxicity, and whether the Death Cap variety is raw, dried or cooked, does not make a difference.

Laura Marcelino told the San Francisco Chronicle that her family in the Northern California town of Salinas gathered mushrooms that looked like the ones she and her husband used to forage in their native Oaxaca, a state in Southern Mexico.

“We thought it was safe,” Marcelino, 36, said in Spanish.

Her husband was dizzy and tired the next day, but Marcelino felt fine, and they ate the mushrooms again, heating them up in a soup with tortillas. Their kids don’t like mushrooms and so didn’t have any. The next day, both adults, seasonal farmworkers, became ill with vomiting and stayed home from work.

Marcelino spent five days in the hospital, while her husband had to undergo a liver transplant.

People can have stomach cramping, nausea, diarrhea or vomiting within 24 hours after ingesting a toxic mushroom and the situation can quickly deteriorate after that, experts say. Early symptoms may also go away within a day, but serious to fatal liver damage can still develop within 2 to 3 days.

Death Cap mushrooms have been collected in local and national parks across Northern California and the Central Coast. Clusters have been identified in the Monterey and San Francisco Bay areas as well.

The public health department said those poisoned have included many Spanish, Mixteco, and Mandarin Chinese speakers and the state in response has expanded their warnings in different languages.

Children have been among those poisoned this year. Officials advise keeping an eye on children and pets outside where mushrooms grow, and buying mushrooms from trusted grocery stores and sellers.

Treatment is more difficult once symptoms start so doctors advise people to seek medical care once someone becomes aware that they have eaten a poisonous mushroom or suspect they have.

Craig Smollin, medical director for the San Francisco division of the California Poison Control System (CPCS) and an emergency medicine professor at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, said that death cap mushrooms tend to flourish between November and March in the state, though not usually to this extent.