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Alex Salmieri takes photos and video at a socially distanced event on Staten Island. Your subscription supports the journalistic efforts of these staffers, who are on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis every day. (Staten Island Advance/ Jan Somma-Hammel)

A Special Note to My Neighbors,

We’ve been through a lot together over the years, our Advance family and yours. It matters not if you’re newcomer or native.

Staten Island news has been our thing since 1886.

We’ve seen raging brush fires level East and South Shore neighborhoods back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, while flood waters from the bay submerged those same neighborhoods after they recovered.

We’ve battled to close the world’s largest landfill in the ‘80s and ‘90s – and did it in 2001.

We’ve weathered blackouts and blizzards.

We fought a liquefied natural gas plant on our West Shore in the ‘70s and in ’73 mourned 40 lives lost in an LNG plant explosion.

We lived in a city teetering on bankruptcy. And survived a city gripped by crime at the same time.

We’ve mourned lives lost too many times. The year: 2001. The count: 275. Staten Island neighbors all, who perished at the World Trade Center. The year: 2012. We chronicled lives of families who lost everything to Hurricane Sandy, including 24 of those lives, while we raised millions of dollars – from you, our neighbors -- to help first the 9/11 families, and then the Sandy families.

We’ve suffered with our neighbors ravaged by drugs in the 2010s. We’ve brought you their stories, when they wanted them told. We’ve fought for stricter state regulations of prescription drugs, and won.

Yes, we’ve been through a lot. But nothing like this. Nothing like hiding from a killer whose advantage over us is that it’s invisible, and without cure. A virus that takes lives indiscriminately — more than 800 of our neighbors dead as of this writing. And more than 12,000 sickened. Those numbers grow not by the day. But by the hour.

A killer that is taking even more: Jobs. Businesses. Income. A killer that is bringing Staten Island, New York, America to its financial knees.

Your Advance family is here for you. Every day. Around the clock. Searching out what you need to know, bringing it directly to you so you never have to leave your home to get it. Online and in print.

But I come to you today, as I never have before, to ask for your help.

Reporters and editors of SILive and the Staten Island Advance are working around the clock, their own health at peril, to keep you informed about the progression of the virus in our neighborhoods.

They bring you stories of how we, as Staten Islanders, are soldiering on. They’ve lobbied the Health Department for more Staten-Island-centric data, and got it. They highlight restaurants struggling to survive, offering curbside pickup, with a side of disinfectant and toilet tissue for those in need. They profile first responders who have left their families – to protect their families. They tell the human stories of those we have lost like no one else is doing. They detail the struggles of our two major hospital systems, which now resemble war zones. And the innovative ways in which our fellow citizens are using technology to preserve the milestones of life that matter — birthday parties, weddings, even funerals.

Businesses are closing all around us. We cannot. We will not. Because you need us.

But we are not unaffected by a collapsing economy and our lifeblood – advertising – in this extraordinary time. It’s no longer news that news organizations have been challenged financially for years. But this pandemic has hurt our advertising revenue dramatically.

So many of you have called and sent emails voicing your support and your thanks. For that, we are deeply appreciative.

But we need your help. As you know, Advance print subscribers have helped with the cost of our news gathering for over a century. We thank them every day for their support.

Here’s how you can help our online digital work.

Beginning today, we offer digital subscriptions to SILive for a modest amount -- $10 a month. Subscribing is completely voluntary for now. We understand that many of you may be out of work, and the last thing we want at this critical time is to deny you access to news that could help save your life.

But if you can afford it, we would appreciate it enormously if you would contribute to the cause of supporting professionally reported, independent, local journalism that reflects and celebrates the strength, resiliency and diversity of our community by buying a SILive digital subscription.

Your money stays right on Staten Island, and your subscription to SILive directly supports the work of our newsroom. The stories we publish on our website, our email newsletters we deliver to your inbox, our text-messaging services, our mobile apps — and the salaries of our reporters and editors who are dedicated to keeping Staten Island informed.

Eventually, we may require all our readers to buy subscriptions for unlimited digital access. For now, though, if you value our coronavirus coverage — and all the other local news and information we provide 24 hours a day, 365 days a year — please support us by purchasing a subscription.

Local news you can trust is more important now than ever. Thank you for trusting us to deliver the news you depend on.

We are Staten Islanders. We are neighbors.

Brian

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