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How District Attorneys Must Step Up to Support Survivors


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A rally for survivors (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office doesn’t currently have prosecutors dedicated to combatting sex crimes. Yes, you read that right. Assistant District Attorneys responsible to victims of sexual violence simultaneously work in the Trial Bureaus and on sex crimes. This means that staff are overloaded, victims are not being put first, and the system churns rather than addresses the root causes of the violence. 

As a survivor of sexual violence and as a prosecutor whose career has been focused on just processes and just outcomes, together we have thought a lot about how to best reform a sex crimes unit. In order to center survivors and fight the public health crisis that is sexual violence and gender-based crimes, a modern sex crimes unit must start by reorganizing its staffing and priorities in order to rebuild its reputation.

Here are some key steps to take in reform:

Be unequivocal about special access
Recent reporting showed how Linda Fairstein used her privileged access on behalf of New York elites to influence the outcome of sex crimes cases. This behavior and the DA’s responsiveness further stacks the deck against survivors and denies accountability. We must foster an environment in which more survivors feel they can safely disclose abuse and there is not even the perception of conflict or favoritism. This starts with refusing to take campaign donations from any lawyer who appears before the DA’s office. Leadership must be unequivocal about special access.

Focus and expand the staff
Dedicate staff to the Sex Crimes Unit who can develop deep expertise. And, have the team report directly to the DA. Staffing will include a significant number of non-attorneys, such as social workers, medical professionals, investigators, and others to help utilize the trauma-informed processes to foster an environment in which more survivors feel they can safely disclose abuse. Believing survivors means supporting them in many ways. This also means including ADAs and staff who themselves are survivors of sexual assault. Lived experience, empathy, and cultural humility are assets in this fight. 

Mend strained relationships
We know that sexual assault is the most underreported violent crime in the country. We must build trust by centering the survivor. Staff the Sex Crimes Unit 24/7 so that survivors can always find support. Build back trust from the survivor and allied communities by stepping up to always be there. Create a meaningful staff partnership with the NYPD so that if victims contact them first, DA staff are involved at the very beginning of an investigation. Survivors should never be denied justice because of a tug of war between branches of law enforcement.

Reduce siloes
Throughout my career, I (Alvin) have done “connect-the-dots” investigations that look at systems of unlawful conduct: i.e. the hostile work environment at The Weinstein Company; New York Dioceses of the Catholic Church’s role in facilitating and covering up sexual abuse (which led to a recent lawsuit accusing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo and three bishops connected to it of engaging in a years-long cover-up of sexual abuse by priests). This holistic approach is a sharp departure from the status quo. Staff need expertise not only in investigating individual sex assaults, but also investigating complicit entities.

DAs must look at the account of one survivor as part of a bigger picture with the possibility of serial misconduct, complicity by other individuals or an entity, cover-up activity like lying or obstruction, and laundering of funds to facilitate sex offenses. The office must rigorously track complaint data to look for trends, use of banking and financial services information to track money flows, and use of required business records to establish false filing cases. White-collar crimes can no longer be seperate from sex crimes because siloed offices hurt survivors. This approach will also help identify powerful groups who sought to protect their reputations by ignoring warning signs or even hiding violent criminal activity perpetrated on people they were supposed to protect. 

Prosecutors’ offices are about power — how it is exercised and on whose behalf it is wielded. Our experiences with the criminal legal system, while very different , have shown us both that there are two systems of justice — one for the wealthy and powerful and one for everyone else. It is time for this to end.

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Alvin Bragg is a candidate for Manhattan District Attorney and former Chief Deputy Attorney General in New York State. Marissa Hoechstetter is an advocate and sexual assault survivor. On Twitter @AlvinBraggNYC & @MHoechstetter.

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To Build a More Inclusive New York, We Need to Reform County Parties


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New Yorkers (photo: John McCarten/City Council)


As Governor Andrew Cuomo continues to face a barrage of scandals, from sexual harassment accusations to his catastrophic mishandling of the state’s nursing homes during the darkest days of the pandemic, many New Yorkers rightly wonder how the governor and his confidantes have managed to amass so much power in the first place. It’s long been a “best-kept secret” in New York politics that the Democratic establishment, including Governor Cuomo, controls our city’s and state’s politics with an iron fist.

There is an important and overlooked piece of this puzzle that renders politicians like the governor essentially untouchable: the county-level Democratic parties. Until we reform the county party system and put power back into the hands of the people, a small group of elected officials, like Governor Cuomo, will continue to hold too much power, insulated from the constituents they claim to serve, and acting only in their own interest. 

Fortunately, there are clear reforms we can make to the county party system to democratize the Democratic Party and build an open, progressive, and accountable party. 

First, county parties must allow for real engagement from rank-and-file Democrats, instead of consolidating power to serve a narrow range of entrenched interests. That means genuinely opening meetings to rank-and-file members — and soliciting and valuing their input, something that is all too rare and actively discouraged by party leaders these days.  

In December, for example, the Brooklyn Democratic Party held its organizational meeting. A large and diverse coalition of members sought to pass rules to open up the process and encourage participation. Instead, what followed was a 25-hour meeting over two days, where people were silenced on Zoom, points of order weren’t allowed, and hundreds of people were disenfranchised. Bizarre irregularities also arose in vote tallies for several proposed rule changes. 

That sure doesn’t sound democratic, but that’s exactly how the county party wants it to be. The very same Brooklyn Democratic Party used the pandemic as an excuse to not hold meetings at all.

Second, we also need to reshape the County Committee structure to ensure the party is accountable to members. The County Committee is an elected body that decides county party business, including voting for party leadership, passing a party budget, and voting on other resolutions. In my work with New Kings Democrats (NKD), we recruited progressive candidates to run for County Committee, and created Rep Your Block to make it easier to do so. The party establishment fiercely opposed these efforts, even sending people door-to-door to canvas for proxy votes while claiming to be from NKD — and actually taking their votes for the party-aligned candidates. 

That proxy voting system effectively allows party bosses to hold hundreds of votes in their pockets, ostensibly from community members, and use them to quash unwanted, but necessary, reforms. We need to overhaul and replace the proxy voting system to give community members just as much of a say as party leadership. 

Third, we need to minimize the ability of party leadership at all levels to put its finger on the scale and unfairly influence elections. Recently, State Democratic Committee Chairman Jay Jacobs issued a scathing statement criticizing candidates who dared mount a progressive primary challenge against Rep. Carolyn Maloney. Instead of lambasting grassroots activists and unleashing bad-faith attacks against anyone who rightly asks questions of incumbent candidates, the Democratic Party should welcome debate and disagreement. The same is true of county parties, which exist to protect incumbents and entrenched interests, at the expense of democratic values.

While these sound like minor changes to a complicated system, they are necessary steps toward our goal: To create a Democratic Party that represents its members and encourages their participation. They may not change our politics overnight, but they will loosen the stranglehold a small group of powerful politicians has on our political system. 

We need to transform our county parties from being transactional vestiges that benefit those at the top, to responsive, accountable organizations that fight for the people. New Yorkers want politicians that represent their interests and their communities. We can start by reforming our county parties and giving the grassroots a chance to grow. 

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Brandon West is a candidate for City Council District 39 in Brooklyn. On Twitter @brandonwestnyc.

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The Other Civil Rights Revolution of 2020 That We Must Now See Through


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Pride (NYC Mayor's Office)


While millions of Americans marched for Black Lives and racial justice in our streets during a year of racial reckoning that was 2020, a quieter civil rights revolution was taking shape in our courtrooms, culminating in a Supreme Court decision last June that shifted the tectonic plates of the fight for LGBTQIA+ rights. With a new President who has been a leader in this fight and transgender students becoming the latest target in the GOP’s culture war, now is the time to ensure the full promise of this decision touches the lives of the LGBTQIA+ community, starting with where they live.

I write this as a public servant deeply committed to LGBTQIA+ rights and as the former Housing Secretary under President Obama, when I was the first sitting Cabinet member ever to endorse marriage equality. I believe the next frontier in the fight for gay rights must begin with housing those who are most vulnerable: LGBTQIA+ youth, seniors, immigrants, the formerly incarcerated, and people of color.

Since the towering civil rights laws were written in the 1960s, a fundamental question has run through the legal underpinning of the gay rights movement: does discrimination on the basis of sex, which underlies the movement for gender equality and is clearly prohibited by these laws, also apply to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity? Without a clear answer to this question, LGBTQIA+ Americans had been largely orphaned from the protection of our justice system.

But then last June, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.” Before you counter that this earth-shifting statement came from a Supreme Court that still included Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, understand that these words were written by Justice Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, for a 6-3 majority. With this potentially durable victory at the highest court in the land, we must press forward to advance the cause of LGBTQIA+ rights, and the agenda begins at home.

The new federal administration has taken the most critical first step to enshrine the promise of the June Supreme Court decision by extending its reasoning to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which was passed just weeks after the assasination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Bostock v. Clayton County interprets the language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and applies it to workplace discrimination. But because the Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in housing, both public and private, on the basis of sex, the logic of the decision’s conclusion will be applied to the later law as well. Now the federal, state and local government must make this promise real by enforcing the law.

Here in New York City, the results of the recently completed National Transgender Discrimination Survey make clear that many of these city residents continue to struggle on the housing front. Among the city residents who completed the survey, 8% reported being evicted, 19% denied a home or apartment, and 18% becoming homeless as a result of their gender identity or expression. 

The next critical step the Biden-Harris Administration should take is ensuring HUD’s Equal Access Rule remains the law of the land. Created by two Obama housing secretaries, myself and Julian Castro, the rule requires equal access to HUD programs without regard to a person’s actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status. Lasy July, Trump Housing Secretary Ben Carson issued a proposed rule that would replace it, using the specter of transgender people accessing homeless shelters and other services based on their gender idendity, rather than the gender they were assigned at birth, to demonize transgender people and curtail LGBTQIA+ rights. Since the proposed rule was not finalized in the closing days of the Trump Administration as expected, the Biden-Harris Administration should take immediate steps to withdraw the proposed rule and reestablish the original Equal Access Rule.

Finally, our federal, state, and local governments should work together to extend the promise of the Fair Housing Act and Equal Access Rule into lasting change by ensuring the most vulnerable LGBTQIA+ people can find decent, safe, affordable housing. After all, ending discrimination is not enough if the historic damage of intertwined inequality isn’t attacked head on. LGBTQIA+ youth are more likely to end up homeless than any other demographic, and aging transgender and queer people are the most susceptible to housing discrimination. Other at-risk groups include the formerly incarcerated, immigrants, and people of color, and COVID-19 has only magnified the systemic inequities that face them in New York City and across the country. 

In New York City, we should be proud of examples like True Colors, the first permanent supportive housing for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth with a history of homelessness. Now we must build on them. With President Biden’s American Rescue Plan providing more than $20 billion in emergency rental assistance and the American Jobs Act proposing more than $200 billion for housing, we have a chance to translate victory in the courts into real change in the lives of our neighbors. By partnering with new HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge, who is committed to putting equity first, New York City can become a beacon for the rest of the nation. Housing is a basic human right. It’s time we make that promise real for our LGBTQIA+ community.

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Shaun Donovan is a candidate for New York City mayor. He served in President Obama’s cabinet for eight years, first as Housing Secretary and later as Budget Director, and as Housing Commissioner for Mayor Bloomberg. On Twitter @ShaunDonovanNYC.

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