Transcript: Jo Anne Simon NY-10 Max Politics Interview
Jo Anne Simon at an abortion rights rally
Max Politics Podcast: Jo Anne Simon Runs for Congress in the New NY-10
Recorded July 12, 2022
Listen to the audio here, or at Max Politics wherever you get podcasts.
Democratic primary day: August 23, 2022
District: Lower Manhattan & parts of Brooklyn (see map here)
Transcript:
Ben Max: [Longer intro...] Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, thank you for being here. Welcome. How are you?
Jo Anne Simon: I’m great. Good to speak with you again this morning Ben.
Ben Max: Yes, we’re speaking here on the morning of Tuesday, July 12, and some listeners may know, last night I moderated a candidate forum in the race at a church in downtown Brooklyn. So we’ve spoken just hours ago in person and it was broadcast over zoom. So a quick turnaround here for us, but now we get to have a more extended conversation about you and your campaign. So start us off a little bit with just the broad rationale for running for Congress. Why are you doing this? Broadly speaking, what brought you into this race?
Jo Anne Simon: Well thank you, Ben. What brought me into this race, I think what brought everybody into this race, was the court's ruling that there would be a new congressional district that kind of changes the landscape of the 10th congressional district, as well as the 12th in Manhattan. And so when Congressman Nadler made his decision to run in the 12th, where he lives, this race was made open. So when I looked at the map of this race, I realized number one, my entire district was within the district.
Other districts that I had worked in and advocated in throughout Western Brooklyn, communities I had worked with over the years were also in this district, and I knew the issues. I am an issue person. I've always been about the intersection of our neighborhoods and our communities, and working within those communities to ensure that their voices are heard, and that Congress was a new way for me to serve those communities and the additional communities in Lower Manhattan.
Ben Max: And why Congress instead of the Assembly? What is it that appeals to you about being able to potentially represent these communities at the federal level? Is there something that is drawing you, is pulling you other than the trips to Washington, D.C. instead of Albany? What's drawn you here interested in Congress instead of the Assembly?
Jo Anne Simon: Well, so much of the challenges on the ground for New Yorkers are often a result of federal policy, federal funding decisions, federal rights, for example. And so I'm in a district where it's both bridges, the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridge come into my district. I have a major interstate highway. Those decisions and the funding of those decisions, or the lack of funding of the infrastructure, are critical issues to the folks I represent and anybody who's in that Western Brooklyn corridor. The Gowanus Canal Superfund Site is in my district. That has been something that we worked on getting for for many years, and that is an EPA Superfund site. So the federal issues on the ground are very. Housing is another major issue that affects my district, as well as everybody's district. The lack of support that the federal government has given to public housing and other housing programs over the last several decades has really made so much of our housing unaffordable and untenable. So those are big issues at the federal level that also affect all of us here in New York at the ground level, and because I have that experience in working with communities, city, state, and the federal government, for me, this was a natural move to sort of connect those dots in a fundamentally different way than you can from a single Assembly district.
Ben Max: Gotcha. So we'll get into more of what you want to do if elected in a moment, but let's talk about your Assembly tenure. You were elected in 2014, so you've been there several terms now. What would you say are your top accomplishments in the New York State Assembly?
Jo Anne Simon: Well, I would say a couple of things. Number one, I'm very proud to have been part of the effort that really passed codification of Roe vs. Wade in the state Legislature. That was something that we heard all the time we didn't need to do because of Roe in the Supreme Court, we’d never overturn it. Many of us knew that was not going to be the case, and so we fought very hard to ensure that we had those rights here in New York. And all of the amplification of those rights and the ability to welcome people to New York for that kind of care is something I'm very proud of having been a part of. I've also passed the “red flag” law in New York. We passed it several times in the Assembly. I’ve passed it twice before we had a Democratic Senate and were able to get it passed in the Senate. It is really the strongest such law in the country. It is quite protective of anybody's rights under the second amendment, but it is also very specific about the criteria that needs to be met and the evidence that needs to be submitted to the court in order to get those guns away from people who shouldn't have them. And that protects New Yorkers, and I'm very excited about the way we are currently expanding and really mandating that law enforcement actually refer those cases to the court as opposed to making a decision based on what was perhaps a different standard under criminal law, which really doesn't apply. The red flag law is a civil procedure, so there's no criminality involved at the time that that petition is made to the Supreme Court and the evidence brought to the judge.
I've also this past year passed a groundbreaking supported-decision making so that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have as much control over the decisions that affect their lives as possible. But you know, a few years ago, I passed a bill that requires that school districts be able to use the words dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia, in and around the IEP process for students with disabilities. And that is something that school districts had been telling parents they were not allowed to do for about 40 years. We changed that and have really opened the door to more such progressive changes with regard to addressing the needs of kids with reading disabilities, as well as just reading in general in New York. So I've been working very hard on those issues, and I'm very proud of my work to pass that seminal bill. I closed the LLC loophole. I have a bill for zoonotic transfer of viruses, which sounds a little wonky, but you know, climate change, deforestation, loss of habitat, that is encouraging all of these viruses to mutate and to jump from one species to the other. We need to be doing what we can do here to ensure that that doesn't happen in our country.
Ben Max: Let me quickly jump in there. Just explain that a little bit more, what would that do in New York? And that's a proposal, not something that's passed?
Jo Anne Simon: Well it's passed in, the Assembly, I believe, but it hasn't taken off in the Senate. It’s a two House legislature. So it's a bill I'm working on, I mean it's not a bill, we're still working on that issue. But the more you hear about this latest variant, the more that is evidence that we need to start making decisions differently. We have a lot of these rare species that are getting imported into the country illegally or they're getting imported into the country and it's not yet illegal. We want to make sure they're not coming into New York. We don't want to feed that crisis. And as more states get on board with doing this kind of legislation, then it will bubble up and become easier for I think, passage at the federal level, to really look at how climate is impacting our health beyond the ways that we all know about, which is pulmonary disease and asthma, and, so many of the implications in the way our children's cognition is affected by the toxicity on our environment. We know about those things, but we're not paying as much attention to what we're doing to actually encourage or allow new variants of various viruses. COVID has been terrible, and we have learned a lot about it, but we haven't learned as much as we should. But COVID isn't the last one that might come around, and we need to be much more intentional about the work that we do in that area.
Ben Max: Let me ask about the red flag law. You noted that you passed it previously. And then recently, after the massacre in Buffalo, it was tightened up here and, as you said, sort of requiring law enforcement to file in civil procedures. There are clearly some challenges with implementation around the law. Just looking back at that and evaluating that, where do you see the gaps there? Is that something that once this was signed into law by then Governor Cuomo, there should have been more done to ensure stronger implementation and education in localities and among the state police and local law enforcement? Was there something that needed to be followed up on in terms of implementation there?
Jo Anne Simon: Yes, I think so. Senator Kavanaugh carried the bill in the Senate. We were really trying to work with the administration on getting the various agencies that might be involved in these circumstances to work together to ensure that there was better public education. And just recently before the shooting in Buffalo, in fact, I was talking with the Governor's office in the Speaker's office and some folks in the Senate about the need for a massive public education campaign, so that people knew about their rights under the extreme risk protection order bill. And because in fact, it's not just mass shootings, I mean we want to eliminate those. It's also other interpersonal violence, and it's also suicide. So when you look at some of the counties have really gotten behind implementing that. Suffolk County, for example, has been the lead user of the red flag laws’ protections compared to other counties.
And I think a lot of it has to do with — if you have a member of your family who is saying the kinds of things that are warning signs for gun violence, they may be purchasing weapons, they may be stockpiling ammunition. Most people don't know what to do. If you look at Parkland, for example, the mother went to the cops and said, ‘My kid needs help, can you talk him out of this?’ He hadn't done anything wrong at that point, and the cops can't do that. Right, they might sit him down and have a conversation, but they have no authority, and people don't want to get their family members in trouble with the law. So also, they may be fearful themselves. So it is important that they know that they can go, for example, to law enforcement, or they can talk to the school authorities. Very often to just the school authorities that also get wind of the concerns of young people who may end up getting an illegal weapon, but when they're making threats of violence of various kinds. So the schools are often in a position to know this information. They too can file a petition with the Supreme Court in every county to seek an extreme risk protection order.
And I think that the fact that law enforcement has filed most of these petitions goes to the fact that law enforcement may come into contact with folks earlier, but also, they can be a great repository and a safety valve for those people who aren't quite sure how to do it themselves or are fearful of doing it themselves. And so, law enforcement should know how to do that. The Office of Court Administration has a very, very well rounded page on how to file for an extreme risk protection order. It's very user friendly. It is designed to be used by people who are not lawyers. I think that's a great way we need to make sure people know about that, but I'm also not unmindful of the fact that for some people, it may be a daunting process, and I think that that's where law enforcement can step in and have their attorneys filed this civil petition for extreme risk protection order and get guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them.
Ben Max: The state Legislature holds a limited number of oversight hearings. Do you think there should have been more oversight from your Legislature on the implementation of the red flag law or even just broader gun measures that have been signed in the last several years? Obviously, when Democrats took control of the state Senate in 2019 and you had the Democratic majority of the year part of the Assembly, the Democratic governor, then Cuomo. And you then had full control of state government. There was a flood of legislation passed. So many things that were given attention and passage and new budget allocations and a lot of different things. So there's always sort of a limited calendar for what gets chosen. But would you, looking back, would you say there should have been more oversight about the implementation of this and other gun regulations?
Jo Anne Simon: With the benefit of hindsight, that sounds like an idea. I think that the real issue in the initial stages of, and remember this was effective in August of 2019, so it's not a law that's been around for a very, very long time, was really focusing on getting the word out, and that's going to be really handled by state entities and differently in different counties throughout the state. I think you could see, for example, in Suffolk County, Suffolk County really took it seriously and went about educating people, and really using that process. So I think number one, there's always an issue with implementation and how much we support that and in what way.
I think that what we have seen also in some instances is once legislation is passed, that sometimes the administration doesn't follow through and for example, I can cite to part of the New York SAFE Act, and the fact that there was supposed to be a registry for bullets, bullets for handguns. That you can only buy a bullet for a handgun you owned. That will help drive registration. About 5% of our firearms in New York State are actually registered. But in fact, once the bill was passed, the Republican conference really didn't want that database to be developed, and so there was a memorandum of understanding between the governor and the Republican leadership in the state senate to kind of not move forward with that. Governor Hochul has recently canceled that memorandum of understanding, and we are focusing on building out that database in a fundamentally different way than it was before. So sometimes it's the public's interest, sometimes it's the Legislature, which doesn't administer laws, doesn't implement laws ourselves, and the agencies may or may not be as collaborative with the Legislature as we would like in some cases, but also, sometimes it's from the administration's actions as well, and that that issue with the database has been a big one — it’s been one we've been concerned about for quite some time. I'm very glad that Governor Hochul has taken the lead on that.
Ben Max: Let's talk about what you want to do in Congress, if elected, what are some of the top priorities? Obviously, at this forum we were both part of that occurred the night before we're speaking here, we're talking again on Tuesday, July 12, 2022 here, hosted by a number of Brooklyn democratic clubs. We were discussing things related to voting rights and protecting women's reproductive rights, climate, a variety of the very high-profile issues, of course, that especially given recent Supreme Court rulings, are particularly top of mind for many voters, especially Democratic voters. But what do you want to highlight for people listening here in terms of your top priorities if elected to Congress? Are there specific bills that you just want to become part of, hopefully in your mind, a majority in the House that helps push through? Are there specific under the radar pieces of legislation that you'd want to highlight for people or things you would look to introduce that don't exist already? What do you want to highlight for folks in terms of your top priorities if you were to head to the House?
Jo Anne Simon: Number one, I think what needs to be top of mind for everybody is climate. I certainly support the Green New Deal and those efforts to build into Build Back Better and the infrastructure plan to fund what it is we need to fund to achieve a healthy and safe environment. We have a long way to go in doing that, and there are, without a doubt, there will be other bills that can be brought to the floor and other appropriations that we can advocate for to effectuate that. And climate goes to issues like our housing, right. This federal government has not supported public housing and other innovative programs. And so for example, we need to keep fighting for that $40 billion that will help make NYCHA livable again, and moving forward with additional federal programs. Right now, they have section 202 housing, for example, that really prioritizes low-income communities, as well as people who are seniors and people with disabilities. So we need to strengthen the laws that we have and also fund those things in a much more constructive way because climate is affecting all of us in all of the areas of life, and so I think we have to really sort of look at that as kind of part of the linchpin to the way that our people live our lives, right. So all of the flooding, all of the fires out west, all of this is really about climate change and the failure of the federal government to have pursued that. And that is often as you know, something that has been a very divisive issue politically, and I point the recent decision in West Virginia vs. the EPA, where I don't know who is supposed to guard against greenhouse gas emissions then the EPA, I mean, it is only in their name, Environmental Protection Agency, and the environment is very much impacted by greenhouse gasses.
So we are going to have to, I believe, codify what it is we need to do, that the Supreme Court has said that the EPA didn't have the authority to do, so that's one approach. I think we need to really deal with this issue of of access to abortion and pass the Women's Health Protection Act, and also ensure that we look at other ways that we can protect people who are seeking care. Very pleased that the President has come out and said that the states cannot just allow women to die. When the life of the mother is at stake, that the Supreme Court's ruling doesn't apply. I think we can also do a lot at the executive level. We can talk about the use of our Native American lands, we can talk about the use of now there’s a doctor in California who wants to do abortions on boats, right, that you can have a medical ship and provide that care. It's being done in other countries. I think that's a great way of kind of evading the issues of certain states that have really banned or all but banned abortion rights. So we need to be creative, and I'm looking forward to working with people on coming up with solutions for these issues. And I think if we just codify Roe vs. Wade and and expand that in the Women's Health Protection Act, that will make a big difference because the Legislature, which is Congress, has a right to pass federal laws and the Supreme Court can't overrule a federal law that is constitutionally passed.
Ben Max: Interesting. The politics of Washington are obviously very fluid right now. There's the question of whether, if you're elected to Congress, it's all but certain that a Democrat will be representing this new district, of course, at some of the highest Democratic enrollment areas of the state. But the question of balance of power in the House, in the Senate, these are up for grabs in the general election that will be coming this fall. But let's just say in the current landscape, that something close to it remains, it's not a given by any means, but the Democrats continue to have a slim majority in the House and a tie breaking vice presidential majority in the U.S. Senate. What do you make of those dynamics? Because there's people who obviously think — you get some of this in Albany, too, that the far left of the Democratic Party is pulling the party a little bit too far to the left at least a little bit and people saying that that's turning off a lot of moderate voters and you have Latino voters and Asian voters in in some significant numbers moving towards the Republican Party on some issues. But then you have, of course, a couple of the more moderate to conservative U.S. senators who had been holding up certain priorities of the President and Democrats. What do you make of that landscape? And what do you see, again, just assuming the sort of current landscape, which which will obviously change by next year, but what do you make of that landscape and the path forward for Democrats with these narrow majorities and how to get to agreement on some big ticket things to deliver for Democratic voters and the public?
Jo Anne Simon: One thing I think that is true is when you're in a Legislature, just because you think you're right, doesn’t mean it sells well. But I would say, the right has a very effective echo chamber. And I think that you see that with the migration of recent immigrants, particularly Asian immigrants, are often very conservative. And their notion of socialism is China, which is, in my mind, more fascist and socialist. So I think some of the language we use is misunderstood by certain groups of people, number one. And the other thing, I think, is that the Democrats have been a big tent and we have always had these internal conversations, and we are much more likely to have those internal conversations more publicly. That is something that the Republican Party doesn't do, right. They will talk amongst themselves, but you know as Hillary Clinton once said years ago, the Democrats need to fall in love, but the Republicans fall in line. And I think what we need to do is really respect and honor everybody's views in the Democratic Party.
We need to listen to each other, and I think we have so much more in common than not. So I think a lot of what it is that kind of makes it seem like the left is too left, etc., is often some of the media coverage, and it's also led by the Republican echo chamber, right. The reality is that there are many things that they just deliberately misconstrue and miscommunicate about that aren't real, and we need to be better at combating that. We need to be better at saying ‘No, that is not the facts. The facts and the data and the science show X, they do not show Y.’ And so you saw that with one of the referendums last year no fault absentee voting, which we have fought for years so that people don't have to be sick or out of town to vote by absentee ballot. Mail in voting was something that all of the red states had and most Republicans states, it's all by mail in ballots, right? But they've demonized that. And so they went around and started campaigning that this would allow for ‘illegal aliens,’ to vote. It absolutely had nothing to do with that whatsoever. But the Democrats were caught flat-footed, they didn't properly educate, they didn't realize early enough that there would be this campaign to misconstrue and misrepresent what this would do. And we're not taking that lying down and we're moving forward on doing it again.
Ben Max: All right, we're in our last few minutes here with state Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, who represents the 52nd assembly district in Brooklyn, which covers a significant stretch of the new 10th congressional district. And she's running in that Democratic primary, which is happening in August. Speaking of the sort of politics of the race, you represent this assembly district that's within the new congressional district. It is a very high turnout district. It delivered you. You ran for Brooklyn Borough President last year, it delivered you a very strong showing in that race. This is an even more crowded field here in the congressional primary. What's the sort of path to victory? How much do you need your assembly district to really come through for you in this race? And how do you sort of see where your other stronger areas of support might come from? How are you branching out into Manhattan in this race? Just a few thoughts on the sort of politics and your path to victory here. What do you make of it?
Jo Anne Simon: Well, I think that, yes, the 52nd AD, I have been the top vote-getter in the state for the last three terms, so the AD 52 does vote. In last year's race, I won the 44th as well, and there's a lot of commonality in those communities. And here's where my community experience really matters. People know me — not just the people in my district — because I was leading on those issues of street safety early on, on environmental justice early on, on working with communities on those issues that we share in common, whether they were in what is now the 52nd assembly district or not, because I worked with with communities throughout Western Brooklyn and in and around downtown Brooklyn, which is also another assembly district, part of it, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill have traditionally been a different assembly district. Folks know me and they know my work. I have been like them in the trenches. I've been that person in the auditorium looking to get my voice heard with officialdom, whether it's an agency or elected officials, and so I know what people's concerns are and I am always there listening and working with people.
I'm very accessible. I have these “Java with Jo Annes” all the time. People know they can come to me. People who come to my “Java with Jo Annes” are often people from outside my assembly district because they have questions about something that affects their district that also affects mine. And similarly, when I've been out campaigning, people have said, ‘I'm not in your district, but you and your staff helped me with my unemployment benefits last year when nobody else would.’ So that to me is meaningful, and I think that people respond to that experience. But I also think, for example, that folks in Manhattan have very, very similar concerns, right. Resiliency is a big issue. Housing is a big issue, development and the development of enough affordable housing and the displacement of people. Whenever there's a big project being done, people are inevitably displaced. How do we counter that? How do we ensure that people are not pushed out of the neighborhoods that they built their lives and their homes and raise their families there? That young people can afford to live in the communities that they were raised in? That is something that we need to work together on. These are thorny issues, and when you've been working with people consistently over the years, people hear that message. I believe, for example, that is one of the reasons why I was just endorsed by the Downtown Independent Democrats, which is the largest Democratic club in Manhattan, as far as that goes, because what I'm talking about resonates with them and their lives. They want someone who will fight, and someone who will listen to them and work with them, and be able to read between the lines on so many of these proposals.
There are a lot of things that sound like good deals, but you really have to look at them to see if they're all they're cracked up to be. And if they're not, then you need to find effective ways to ensure that that project becomes more responsive and doesn't end up doing damage that none of us really want. So I think that I have a message that is resonating with people in both boroughs, and that is my path to victory. I also think this district, we've never had an August primary before. We've had September, so there's been a lot of summer campaigning certainly in the past, but never in August. And so it's going to be an issue where people who are those primary voters, those people who are most deeply engaged, those people like the constituents in my district that come out and vote, rain or shine, they will come out and vote in primaries. That data shows that the double prime votes, that could be triple primes in this race, we don't know, 30% of them come out of my district, and 60% of them are women. So the demographics and the turnout numbers also are key to my path to victory.
Ben Max: In this crowded race, your Assembly district coming in big for you could be almost all you need. All right, I just want to get to a few other things here. This is sort of a rapid fire, let's call it a lightning round type of thing. Just a few quick questions, short answers, if you don't mind. You are keeping open the possibility of appearing in the general election for your Assembly seat. Is that correct?
Jo Anne Simon: Yes, I’m on the ballot as you know. If I am successful in the congressional primary, then the lawyers will figure that out. And the governor would call a special election to fill the seat.
Ben Max: Right. I mentioned in the introduction, Representative Mondaire Jones moved to the district just a few weeks ago. You've been in the district, as you've noted, since the early 80s. You've been in the assembly for seven, eight years now. What do you make briefly of him moving into this district to run? Do you think that's fair game, or do you do you know, does that sort of make you bristle at all?
Jo Anne Simon: It's unusual. I think that you see that in some of the questions that people are asking. He's going to run his race. He's going to have to bring his experience to bear and convince the voters of the 10th congressional district that they should be voting for him. In the meantime, I'm focusing on my race.
Ben Max: And Mayor Bill de Blasio, the former mayor is in the race as well obviously. He has much deeper roots in the district than Mondaire Jones. Briefly, how do you capture your assessment of his record as mayor? If you're asked about it, your sort of clear answer to people on the street. What do you make of his record in eight years as mayor of New York City?
Jo Anne Simon: I would say it was mixed. He's done some excellent things, but it's been mixed in other ways. I think that he would say that himself. I think his communications and his speed of decision-making has been problematic in a lot of people's minds, and frustrating if nothing else. I have been personally less happy with the way this city has stepped up and taken responsibility for the work it needs to do and the Gowanus Canal Area, because it's a responsible party and has significant obligations under the federal remedy that in my mind, they have dragged their feet on for way too long. But again, the former mayor will make his commitments, and he will campaign. He has the benefit of 100% name recognition. I think that my community roots are different than his. As you know, I didn't come out of politics, he did, and I am making my case to the people on the ground who are going to be in those voting booths. And I'm confident that I can compete.
Ben Max: Last couple and these could each be a half hour discussion, but just for the sake of the record here. Do you think it's time for the Rikers Island jails to be under a full federal receivership? Just just yes or no is fine and we can discuss further at another time. But there's obviously a monitor and there's questions about whether there should be a receivership. Mayor Adams has argued against it and they've gotten a bit of a reprieve from the courts. But do you think it's time for receivership for Rikers?
Jo Anne Simon: I do think it's time. Obviously, the court has given the administration a little more time, but I think it's moving in that direction.
Ben Max: And lastly here, you mentioned public housing earlier. We discussed it a bit at that forum last night. But short of tens of billions of dollars coming from the federal government from NYCHA, and I understand you and any of your competitors here in this race would be fighting for that in Congress, and it could come. But separate from that, short of that, is there a NYCHA rescue strategy that you're particularly supportive of other than tens of billions of dollars coming from the federal government? There's the new NYCHA Preservation Trust that you and your colleagues just passed and the governor signed into law, so that will help raise some money. But beyond that, do you support some affordable housing infill development in NYCHA? Do you support a lot more sales of air rights? Do you support the Rental Administration Demonstration program? Are there any NYCHA-related strategies, any one in particular that you support?
Jo Anne Simon: Each of these ideas have issues that I think need to be further developed, so it's very hard to say in a quick answer situation. I do not believe we need to be privatizing public housing. The NYCHA Preservation Trust, in fact, is still public ownership. I think there's some misunderstanding about that among tenants, and certainly their lack of trust in NYCHA is well deserved. But I do think that we were able to come out with an approach that gave a lot of autonomy to the residents of NYCHA housing and preserves the public ownership of NYCHA. Infill housing, that's been proposed, it’s been proposed in one of the public housing developments in my district, it hasn't happened — I think that's a good thing. Part of the problem is if you look at the way NYCHA developments are built, there was sort of a theme in the urban design of that, which also means that it's much harder to actually do viable infill developments from a position of light and air and open space. And so I think that it seems to be one of those ideas that looks good on paper, but not very much in the implementation and the doing of it, and it's not happened, and for a large portion, it's been very little of that that's actually occurred. Sales of bear rights, again, that goes to who's gonna buy those air rights. If it's a big developer that is not going to consult with community in a real way on the ground, I think that's a problem. We need to look really at what it is we mean by these things and how they could end up furthering displacement, for example, in the unaffordability of neighborhoods. I think we don't look at that seriously enough, in the beginning when we're first talking about these ideas, and we need to do that much more.
Ben Max: All right. Well you weren't you weren't in a rush, so I wasn't gonna rush you there to give answers on meaty topics here. We've covered a lot. There's still plenty more to get to down the line, but Jo Anne Simon, assemblymember and running for the Democratic primary nomination in the new 10th congressional district, thank you for the time and and be well.
Jo Anne Simon: Thank you so much, Ben. Nice to speak to you again.
***
by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
@tweetBenMax @GothamGazette
Transcript: Yuh-Line Niou NY-10 Max Politics Interview
Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou (photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Max Politics Podcast: Yuh-Line Niou Runs for Congress in the New NY-10
Recorded July 19, 2022
Listen to the audio here, or at Max Politics wherever you get podcasts.
Democratic primary day: August 23, 2022
District: Lower Manhattan & parts of Brooklyn (see map here)
Transcript:
Ben Max: [Longer intro...] Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou, thanks for being here and taking the time. How are you today?
Yuh-Line Niou: Thank you so much for having me. It's always good to be on your show.
Ben Max: Thanks for joining me, good. So, we're speaking here, as I said, just after former Mayor de Blasio announced he's dropping out of this race. This is not where I expected to start with you, but why don't you share your reaction to the news of the former mayor dropping out of this primary?
Yuh-Line Niou: I think that it’s democracy, and everybody should be able to run, and I just wanted to say, I guess, for the last 20 years plus, I believe that he has been a public servant. I know that being in public service myself, it's not easy, and it's a really, really difficult choice to make for what you want to do with your life to make sure that you're serving people and serving your constituency. So I wish him well, and I think that I appreciate that he was willing to put over 20 plus years of his life into service.
Ben Max: Any sense of what you think sort of did him in with the voters of this district in particular. This is a district home to his original political base, which seemed to have sort of left him or he left it sometime during his mayoralty. A lot of sort of disillusioned progressive Brooklyn voters who elected him to the city council, helped elect him public advocate, mayor. What do you think, and you are now something of a progressive standard bearer in New York, you have the endorsement of the Working Families Party, which Bill de Blasio helped to start, what do you think did the mayor in, in terms of his relationships with the sort of progressive base of at least Brooklyn where he came through?
Yuh-Line Niou: I'm not actually sure what would have been any kind of trigger or anything like that, but I definitely think that it's really important to hear your constituents, hear them out, and be willing to listen, and I think that there's a lot of issues that people might not 100% agree on, or even vehemently disagree on. But I think that what is really important is to make sure that we actually have the ability to be able to have somebody who's listening, who's always willing to sit down, actually have the time, make the time. It doesn't matter where they are talking to you from, but to meet them where they are, meet all of your constituents where they are, and to be willing to listen to all the issues and understand why somebody thinks the way they do, even if they disagree with you. And I think that it's really important to take that time, and I think that over time, people as they are in different positions might have a harder time reaching people, and maybe that could be a frustration. I know that as an assembly member, I definitely have always tried to make that time, but I know that there are moments when people are frustrated with me even when we used to be able to talk all the time, and sometimes it makes it so it's harder for us to be able to reach each other. It doesn't mean I don't care, and it doesn't mean that I don't regard everybody's thoughts, but I could understand how sometimes it's harder.
Ben Max: All right, we can talk with others and maybe the former mayor himself about all that another time. But let's get into your candidacy here for the new 10th congressional district of New York, which as I said in the introduction, includes a big chunk of Lower Manhattan — part of what you represent now in the assembly — and a big swath of Brooklyn. So why are you in this race? Broad strokes, we'll get into a bunch of specifics. But what drew you to this race? Why are you running here for Congress?
Yuh-Line Niou: I mean, obviously, our entire country right now is in crisis. I really am seeing that a lot of people are very scared. We have a lot of people who are getting killed every single day. When it comes to mass shootings, our country has experienced more mass shootings than there are days of the year. I mean, even during July 4, we've seen two mass shootings, where children lost their parents. One little boy lost both of his parents and one girl lost her mom. And people are losing their rights. We saw in Buffalo, how horrifying it was, and people are really suffering. And we have lost our bodily autonomy. I think that right now, we really need to continue to fight for our rights as people. I've already represented part of this district in the state assembly for the past six years, and I think I've represented it really well. 100% of my Assembly district, as you had mentioned earlier, is inside of this NY-10 district, and I really want to continue to represent my neighbors, my community, because I think that right now, our country is in this moment of apathy, right, where a lot of times, it's just like these horrible things are happening to us and we feel like we can't do anything to change it. But as a young person who's just started working in public service when I was in, I guess, in college, I really realized that there are a lot of times when people make it seem like there's some big secret to accessing government, but it's really just that there are powerful people that are in government right now, that don't want us to realize that we actually have the power to make the changes that we want to see. And so I know that it's important for us to run because we are then showing that when we mobilize and come together, we can make government work for us.
Ben Max: Who in the district are you most focused on sort of trying to make sure that their voices are heard? Like many congressional districts, there's a lot of different communities and a lot of different neighborhoods in this new NY-10. A big chunk of the voting population is white, but there's two Chinatowns in the district, including the one you represent currently in Manhattan. There's two large, more than two large Latino neighborhoods. It's a diverse district, there’s an Orthodox Jewish part of Borough Park. How are you thinking about sort of being a voice for the residents of this district, and not all of those residents are voters in the Democratic primary, but who are you looking to sort of really hear out and represent and appeal to in this district?
Yuh-Line Niou: Of course, there’s the vote, but then also the fact that when you're representing any district, when you're representing in any seat, you have to represent everybody who's inside that district, and you have to also be willing to hear everybody out. And again, I think it's really about being a good listener and being somebody who's willing to go and meet people where they're at. And for me, I tend to look at making sure that things are accessible for all, and you and I have talked about this at length before, but I think that it's so important for us to be able to have the lens of looking through all legislation and all representation as ‘Is this going to help with social justice? Is this going to make it so that we have ecological and environmental justice? And is this going to make it so that we're looking at things with disabilities centered in our conversation? Or is this making it so that we are actually looking at economic justice?’ We have to ask those questions. Let's close the racial wealth gap — does this make it so that we are making it so that things are more just for every single person, right. And I think that when we are looking at all of these pieces, I think that we have to be fighting for those who are the most vulnerable in our communities, because when we do that, we are then uplifting everyone. When we build a ramp, everybody walks over it or goes over it and uses it, and whenever we are talking about language accessibility, we're making it so that everybody can have access to services, right. So everything needs to make sure that we have to speak to the most vulnerable at all times, and I think that that's really kind of where I'm coming from when it comes from legislation and representation.
Ben Max: In your original answer and while you're running, you got at some of the big issues that a lot of Democrats especially are focused on right now. But are there specific policies that you would most champion in Congress? There is a lot of agreement, and in many Democratic primaries, especially in New York City on a lot of the big stuff: protecting abortion rights, advancing more gun control, some of the things you refer to. But what would be top priorities for you if you were elected in terms of policies and areas to focus on?
Yuh-Line Niou: Yeah, so one of the things that I would definitely be focusing on, which I think a couple of other legislators have already looked at, which is making sure that we are looking at social infrastructure spending. I think that really passing the Green New Deal, taking our fight for working people in Albany to the halls of Congress. We can really build an economy that really works for regular New Yorkers. One of the biggest things that I speak on all the time is trying to fully fund our public housing. When we are in Albany, I will say that I pushed and pushed and pushed to make sure that our state took some responsibility for our public housing. And when I was elected, I wrote a letter to Carl [Heastie, the Assembly Speaker], making sure that every single one of our elected officials who represent public housing in their districts was on that letter, and we were able to finally get $100 million for the very first time for capital dollars to spend from Albany. And we continued to fight every single year and we got more and more dollars until now, we have put over a billion dollars into public housing. But every single time I fought for public housing on the state level, people told me this is a federal issue, and this is why we don't need to fund it, and this is why we can't fund it, etc., etc., etc.
They gave me a ton of different excuses, but the biggest the biggest thing that I think that we need to do is make sure that we are fully funding our public housing because we have divested, our federal government has divested for decades, from our public housing, and it's really, really important that we are making sure that we are funding all of our capital needs. It means passing the Green New Deal to direct federal funds to protect our public housing. They have a whole Green New Public Housing Deal inside of it. And they also have a Green New Public Schools inside. This is Jamaal Bowman’s bill inside of this package, and this is something that would be so helpful to all of our schools right now, because as we know, some of our schools have aged infrastructure. And also, we haven't talked a lot about the ventilation, the way that it's been so important for us to have that ventilation for so many of our students because of COVID. These are different ways that we can really bridge that gap. And I also think, obviously, we have to really deal with some of the climate change issues that really plague Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, and shore up the defenses of our small businesses while creating strong union jobs in the process. This is really, really good stuff inside of the Green New Deal. And it also means doing in Congress what I did in Albany, which is winning our community a larger share of government support for that true affordable housing, to ensure people who live and work in us can keep their head above water. And obviously, if we work together, we can make an economy that works for all New Yorkers.
Ben Max: In a democratic supermajority in the State Assembly, you've been one of the voices on the left sort of really trying to push the conversation in that more leftward progressive direction, voting no on a number of budget bills, really trying to say ‘This is not enough, we should be increasing taxes on the wealthy further,’ and investing even more money in services and programs and public housing and so forth. Would you see yourself playing a similar role in Congress, given the current landscape? And again, for the sake of a lot of this discussion, we can sort of assess the current congressional landscape. There's a chance obviously that Democrats lose the house majority in the coming elections. But in terms of that role and that sort of progressive left voice, how would you see yourself in the House?
Yuh-Line Niou: Yeah, I mean, I think that there's obviously a need for political courage right now, more than ever, in our Congress. And we have a majority in the Senate, we have a majority in the House, and so obviously, we also have a Democratic president. And I think that it's really about making sure that we are people who have that political courage in order to fight for the things that we desperately need because we don't need to save seats — what we need to do is save our people. And so I always think that it's really important that we vote for somebody who's willing to stand in front of our people and make sure that they take the hits. I think that one of the biggest things for me is that I know that progressives are going to fight like hell to keep the House majority. We always have, we always will, but if there's a risk of losing it, we still have an important role to play. And one, even in the minority, we can be a roadblock to conservative overreach. Two, we can be a voice of moral authority in the face of attacks on our rights or giveaways to the wealthy. And three, we can develop policy and legislation that will improve people's lives when we take the majority, which we will.
And I have worked across the aisle in Albany, obviously, to get legislation passed, but I think it's important to be honest about what bipartisanship means when we're talking about the congressional level, and when we have sitting Congress people who actually voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election results, and electeds who actively planned, promoted, and participated in a violent attack against our democracy. And if people in our government are actively working against our democracy, I'm not really sure what achieving a bipartisanship even looks like when bipartisanship is obviously only possible when the party across the aisle isn't actively working to undo our democracy or violently harm their colleagues in a fascist coup. And I'm happy to obviously work with anyone who can pass that litmus test.
Ben Max: Some of what you're saying about courage and about having the majorities and about having a Democratic president. What do you make of federal leadership, Democratic leadership? Senate Majority Leader Schumer, who obviously is from Brooklyn, Speaker Pelosi, President Biden. Is part of your campaign here for Congress about the need for generational change, is it about the need for some sort of critique those leaders, that they haven't really adapted or adjusted to the modern Republican Party that they're really dealing with? And in some ways, obviously, Schumer and Pelosi have recognized that, and in some ways, Biden seems to have come around to recognize that, even though he sort of ran on the idea that he could get Republicans to return to more bipartisanship. They've had a couple of bipartisan accomplishments on infrastructure and the recent gun legislation, but it's part of your pitch here about the need for generational change in Congress. Are you someone who would definitely be seeking a different speaker of the house than Nancy Pelosi if you were in the House majority?
Yuh-Line Niou: So for me, I think that I'm somebody who's always spoken truth to power. Iit didn't matter if it was against my own leadership or the governor, right, and I think that I've been very honest about everything that I've seen. I spoke up against Cuomo, I did, I spoke up when I felt like the austerity budget was going to kill us. And I felt like we lost a lot of lives because instead of passing a budget that would be something that was going to make us healthy, happy, and whole again, we were cutting and slashing health care funds and social services, and education dollars in the beginning of a worldwide global pandemic, right. We were doing that, and we should have been investing in our communities. I feel like that goes to show that I want to be able to, no matter what, be accountable to my constituents and the people who chose to have me represent them, and I think that that's the most important thing. Even if it means speaking up when it's uncomfortable, even when it means speaking out when people want you to toe the status quo line, and I think that it's important for us to have somebody who's willing to do that.
Ben Max: Let me throw a couple of the some of the common criticisms of you and see what your responses are on these two things. One is, one way to frame some of this, as you said, is sort of having courage and speaking out and speaking truth to power. But some people say, ‘Well, you're always you're always sort of saying no to everything,’ that you're always saying ‘This is not enough,’ and vote no uncertain budget deals, oppose specific projects in the district. What's your response to that critique that you're sort of never willing to sort of get to yes and make more compromise, and not never obviously, that's sort of a overstatement, but that you're sort of too hesitant to come along and get to some compromises and almost always opposed to things.
Yuh-Line Niou: I am very rarely opposed to things. I think that's why the things that are shining out are really the times when I do say no, and I think that I do say no to things that need to be said no to. I think that a lot of times when you're seeing a budget like that, and you're seeing that there's education cuts that are making it so that students, when you know, kids are not going to be able to go to school in person and they're going to struggle. You can't skim, you have to make sure that you're speaking out when you know that it's a healthcare crisis and you see that the governor is taking away healthcare dollars and underfunding, like you need to say no. And if you are seeing that, you know that in the future, that social services are going to prevent worse deaths or prevent harm to people, that you have to say no. I think that there are moments when that is the courageous thing to do. And I think that if somebody's paying attention, then they would say no to, but I think a lot of times things are happening and people aren't paying attention. And I think that because I pay attention and I read everything, and I try to be really thorough, and I try to raise the question, and if those questions are not answered, then I can't be OK with this until I have my questions answered for these particular issues. And I think that every single time when I have had the courage to go out and fight for folks, I'm just really trying to shine a light on some of the places where people are not given the ability to shine the light on the normal darkness and opaqueness of government. And I would say that it's really about accessibility, trying to talk to my constituents first about what is happening, and then I think that because of my speeches on things, because of my clarity on the reason behind something, people are actually more involved and have more say in the process. And I think that that's always something that's good in government.
Ben Max: How do you think about this district, this congressional district, and it obviously expands quite a bit into Brooklyn and other parts of Manhattan than you currently represent. But about bringing more housing into the district, and the debate over what it means to sort of be progressive on housing issues. You hear from some people, for example the chair of the City Council housing committee, Pierina Ana Sanchez, who is talking about the need for more housing everywhere and of all types. But then there's a pretty strong sort of left-leaning group of people on many issues who are very often opposed to a lot of new housing development, and largely because they say it's not affordable enough. How are you thinking about that with respect to this larger 10th congressional district and the importance of housing development broadly and affordable housing within that conversation?
Yuh-Line Niou: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the biggest things is I am very much in, I think in a lot of ways, in both those cans. We do need to build a lot more housing, and we need to make sure that it is deeply affordable, permanently affordable, and also something that people can afford, because I have seen all over my district, a lot of luxury housing that people can't afford. And I think that it's really important for us to be able to be sure to build affordable housing and make sure that people have those programs. And I will say that we have a lot of housing developments that go on in lower Manhattan. Density is obviously not an issue with me, and I think that it's something that is important. It lowers the carbon footprint, it helps to make sure that we have a lot more people being able to come and go easier. We also have the very, very important thing of having more units on the market, right.
Obviously in Lower Manhattan, we have buildings that are even on top of buildings. But what I do think is really important is people don't realize how many developments are going on that people don't really have any say over. But I do think that it's really important that if we do on the city level have any kind of public space or kind of public housing or anything like that that is built there, then we have to make sure that people can actually afford it. And I think that we have to make sure that things are deeply affordable, permanently affordable, and if something's taken away from somebody for public good, then we have to make sure that we replace it with another public good, right. And I think that it's really important for us to be able to be vocal when the community has any pushback, because we represent our people and we have to make sure that we're representing what the people want out of all of these different developments, and I think that that's the most important thing. I think that it's really about making sure that we have a neighborhood that works for everyone.
Ben Max: As I mentioned earlier, there's a couple of pretty large majority Asian communities in this new 10th congressional district. One of them is Manhattan's Chinatown, which is currently in your assembly district. By no means making a plurality or a majority of voters in this new district, but the new district does combine those two significant heavily Asian communities. How are you thinking about representation and Asian representation in Congress as part of this run? And forgive me, but as part of this question, we've seen some movement of Asian American voters towards the Republican Party in New York City and elsewhere. How are you thinking about that and what's at the root of that? And as a progressive, how are you thinking about sort of winning over some of those voters who might be disaffected from the Democratic Party who are registered Democrats most likely?
Yuh-Line Niou: So first and foremost, that's several questions and I will try to take it. I love them, really important questions. So first and foremost, this district actually designated by this special master included both Chinatowns on purpose, both the Brooklyn-side Chinatown on Bat Dai Do [8th Avenue] is what we call it, and also in Chinatown here in Lower Manhattan, which we call it Táng Rén Jiē. And so we have both of our Chinatowns voting together for the first time and an open primary, and it's really important because if we have this opportunity to be able to have Asian American representation, that's really what this district was kind of slated for by the special master. But if we don't actually win this seat, then for 10, 20, 30, maybe years, we might not be able to have another opportunity to be able to have another Asian American representative from New York on the congressional level. And here in New York, we obviously have one Asian American on the congressional level — Grace Meng, she's amazing. But we also have not had another American representative ever, so I think that it's really important that we do have that representation because nationwide, Asian Americans make up over 7% of the country's population, and yet we have less than 1% of representation here in Congress. And so I think that it's really important for us to be able to have more Asian American representation because as we know, it's important to be able to have diverse lenses in order to make better policy.
And so during this time especially, we saw such an increase in anti-Asian hate, antisemitism, we have seen Islamophobia in a way that we can't even describe. There's so much hatred going on throughout our country that it's really important that people recognize that a lot of times when we're seeing this kind of hatred, this kind of fear throughout, the purpose of that kind of terrorism, that kind of hatred, is to make us afraid and to make us not show up for things, not run for things, just to hide, I guess. And I think that's why it's so much more important that we have visibility and that we have somebody who's running that looks like us and helps us to be able to break some of the stereotypes and break some of the hatred and the perpetual foreigner syndrome that our country buys into, right. And I think that it's really important for us to be able to have those conversations as well.
I will say that I am not surprised by folks being disillusioned with the Democratic Party when it comes to our Asian American communities because I will say that during this pandemic and for many, many years before it, we have not had the representation to really be able to speak for our communities in a way that matters. Until I was elected in our New York State Legislature, we didn't even have line items for our community organizations, for our Asian American community organizations in our budget. We had no set aside funding for our Asian American groups as a whole, and I felt like that was something that needed to change and we were able to bring, for the first time, when it was very apparent to me when we were talking about legal services for our immigrant communities, and there was funding for everybody except for the Asian American groups, I was shocked. And it was called the Liberty Defense Fund, you can look it up, it was put together by the IDC actually, and I was shocked that Asian Americans were not included in that funding. And so I fought to make sure that we had some dollars. And Carl [Heastie, the Assembly Speaker] actually, to his credit, gave us 300,000, and said that was a start and that I could fight for more later. So then I fought for more later, we got another 600k. And then we were finally able to get last year, $10 million to our Asian American organizations for the first time ever in the history of the nation, probably. And then in California, they actually copied us and were able to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars to our Asian American communities.
And then this year, we were able to double what we were able to give for Asian American communities and anti-hate work to 20 million. So it was really incredible to be able to see and I was able to triple the dollars that our yeshivas got for protections like against hate crimes, so some of the dollars for cameras, etc. These kinds of dollars are really important so that we can stop the hatred that we are seeing, and so that's why from my end, I'm not surprised by the Asian American population getting a little bit more disillusioned with how little we've protected them. The anti-Asian hate is really, really scary and frightening, and I think that it's really important for us to be able to provide the resources in order to combat it.
Ben Max: I kind of want to try to get to a few more things in our last five or so minutes here. Just quickly, one more on that. There seems to be, and again, it's hard to quantify exactly, but there seems to be some gap between some portion of Asian American communities and the progressive vision around divesting from police funding to go to some other community programs. And again, maybe if you're saying some of this work you've done to target some new funding into programs that actually benefit in Asian American communities, then people might see some of that differently, but there seems to be a bit of a gap, again not in totality, but some portion of Asian American communities here in New York City around that progressive push. How do you sort of try to bridge that gap, because you have been much more firmly in the camp of ‘Let's move funding away from law enforcement into more community programs?’”
Yuh-Line Niou: Yeah, I think that it's about educating everyone on why it's so important that we have funding for the programs that are really important in helping with ending poverty, creating community safety, like real community safety, and we have to talk about safety as something that's important to all of us in this in the real community safety sense. Because when we're talking about changing what safety, in that conversation around safety, to really talk about what actually keeps us safe. It’s not having somebody respond to you after something horrible has happened. It's about making sure that we're preventing these horrible things from happening and it's supposed to be, ‘Hey, if you have somebody checking in on you,’ if we have a lot of people making sure that there are services for folks who need them, and then if we have services for folks who are also wanting to make sure that they can have mental health services or the ability to be able to talk about what's happening inside the community. It will help us to be able to have more of an ability to fight back in the sense of really just prevention, right. And I think that the more education that we have, the more representation that we have, the more diversity that we have in our representation, the more that we will actually be able to cover the things that cause it so that people don't get services.
One of the biggest things is language access. Right now, our government and our law enforcement, we don't have people who are speaking our languages actually helping us on the ground, right. And I think it's really hard when you have like an app or something telling you something, or you don't hear somebody talking to you because you don't understand that they're speaking to you. And I think that it's really important that we are talking about how we can get more of those services. Majority of the cases that we get in our office are really like somebody just needing some translation help to get the services that they already qualify for, right. And so I think that it's really important to help us to be able to get those kinds of services going and then making sure that our government is actually able to get us to things that we need. That biggest thing, again, being funding towards our community organizations in order to be able to provide them.
Ben Max: Alright, thank you. So let's try to get a little clarity on something that blew up related to you in the news recently. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that's focused on Israel, the disapproval of actions by the Israeli government and other issues. You told Jewish Insider that you believe in the right to protest as a fundamental tenet of Western democracy, so I do support BDS. Then I saw a tweet from a Jewish community leader, Alexander Rapaport, who said that you told him and others in the community that you are against BDS. Can you clarify your stance on this, and just try to sort of give us where you stand on this issue?
Yuh-Line Niou: So first and foremost, that tweet. I think that it was maybe made in joking, I don't know. But that was not, yeah, I did not say enough things. I will say that I am adamantly committed to the safety, security, and well being of all Jewish people, whether they live in my district in New York, in the United States, in Israel, or anywhere else in the world. I have dedicated my personal and public life to fighting for all targeted communities impacted by bigotry, by white supremacy, and nationalism, and that has and will always include my Jewish neighbors. And when it comes to Israel and Palestine, I support the BDS movement’s right to political speech. I was very, very clear about that, including boycotts and economic pressure. I also share the movement's commitment to human rights. I think that that's for everyone in the region. I know that boycotts are tried to and respected and constitutionally protected, non-violent tactic for human rights and social justice movements, and I think that it's really important that we be able to continue to be able to utilize that tool, right. And so from the movement against like South African apartheid to my own mentors’ biggest causes was the great boycott in solidarity with the United Farm Workers to the Montgomery Bus Boycotts to fight segregation. I think that it's really important that we are able to have that political speech, whether it's towards our government or our government’s relationships with other governments.
Ben Max: And in giving full-throated support for the right to do these things, do you also consider yourself a supporter of that BDS movement?
Yuh-Line Niou: I mean, I personally, myself, , I think that it's really important for us to know, I believe our tax dollars should never be used to violate human rights, which is why I also support legislation that would prevent federal funds from going to the persecution of Palestinians or to the construction of settlements. And I think that the only way that we have a voice in this is the direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians are going. We have to make sure that they are the ones who are actually, since they're closest to their own pain, obviously, that there are many things that they can do, and I think that they have to be the ones to make that decision. This issue is one that's personal to me. Some of you may know the story of Rachel Corrie. She was a young activist who was killed by an armored bulldozer while protesting for Palestinian rights. She was my classmate and she was my friend, and she was part of a movement and that movement obviously deserves the right to be heard. And so here's the bottom line, I'll just say it out loud that I will be a strong voice in Congress against occupation and in support of equality, justice, and a thriving future for all Israelis and Palestinians. So I think that the only way we get there is through direct negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians themselves.
Ben Max: OK, thank you. Last few things and these are things I'm asking all the candidates in NY-10, and they’re sort of a quick, final little lightning round of quick answers. You don't have to give a whole explanation here and I want to let you go on time. Do you think it's time, and again, you're up to get into a rationale, but do you think it's time for a full federal receivership of the Rikers Island jails? There's a monitor in place and there's questions around whether there should be a receivership. Do you think it's time for that? Yes or no?
Yuh-Line Niou: I think that it’s time to close Rikers. I think that we don't need to even, I mean…
Ben Max: There’s going to be some time between now and the closure, though. So the question is the Adams administration has asked for more time, presented a plan. Obviously, the new mayor's only been in office six or seven months, and they got a little more time. But do you think it's time for the federal government to play an even more active role here?
Yuh-Line Niou: I think so. I mean, in the sense that we have more and more people dying, every single day, we have something horrible coming out of Rikers. We've had, I believe, 11 people have died since the beginning of this year, I believe, in Rikers, and that is not something that should continue. We need to do something about Rikers and I believe that Rikers needs to close. We cannot keep on kicking the ball down the road or the can down the road, I think that's the terminology for it. But we can' keep on waiting. Rikers Island is a human rights atrocity.
Ben Max: And I mentioned earlier, Representative Jones has moved into the district just a few weeks ago. Do you take any issue with that, or do you, again, do you think it's a little bit different, it’s a democracy and he didn't even have to move into the district to run. But do you take any issue with that, given that a lot of the other candidates in the race are people who have had a long-standing commitment to the district?
Yuh-Line Niou: I mean I think that again, it's a democracy, everyone can run, but I think that our constituents probably would like somebody who knows their issues and cares about the things that they've gone through, knows where the bathrooms are in their apartment layout. I think that it's really important for us to be able to have a representative who is speaking for all of us and is willing to make sure that we have somebody who wants to continue to get to know and listen to our constituents. And I think that when we have neighbors that we already know and already know the issues that they care about, it makes a big difference in how we represent them.
Ben Max: And lastly in this little round here, other than tens of billions of dollars for NYCHA, which obviously you've made clear you would fight for at the federal level and there's lots of potential NYCHA money in Build Back Better, which has stalled in Washington, obviously. You and others in the race would obviously fight for that. Other than tens of billions of federal dollars going to help NYCHA with its huge need of capital repairs, is there one NYCHA revenue raising strategy that you support? Is there anything other than major amounts of federal aid, state aid as you've talked about fighting for and securing, but is there any other NYCHA-related strategy to raise revenue that you support?
Yuh-Line Niou: Yeah, so actually, Nydia Velázquez has a standalone bill to fully fund public housing, it's also a very good bill, the Green New Housing Deal is also one way of being able to also fully fund our public housing, and then of course, there is the addition to the Build Back Better plan, also fully funding our public housing. And I think that we need a lot of different bills to take the chance of being able to fully fund our public housing, but I think that the most important thing is that we find more and more mechanisms in order to be able to get those dollars to our state and to our public housing residents who are seeing that their homes are making them sick — no hot water, no heat, mold, lead, paint. It's really, really devastating every single time. I know that whenever it gets hot, I'm going to get calls to try to figure out how they can cool their apartments. Whenever it gets cold, I already know that they're going to have hot water and heating issues. And every single time that it happens, it's been devastating. So we've had we've seen fires happen when seniors who have Alzheimer's or something who will turn on and open their stoves for heat and forget that they had them turned on or open. I think that it's really important that we are preventing those kinds of accidents.
Ben Max: Alright, Yuh-Line Niou. Democratic candidate in the new 10th congressional district of New York, including parts of Lower Manhattan and a big swath of Brooklyn. Why don't you take a closing moment here, a closing minute, anything we haven't touched on or any message to the NY-10 voters who are listening that you want to leave them with after listening to this conversation. Go ahead and take a minute, and then we'll say goodbye.
Yuh-Line Niou: I just want to say thank you so much Ben for having the opportunity to be able to talk to you and be able to deep dive into so many of these issues. I think that it's really important that we are very much having these discussions in order for people to see who they want to be able to support for the new NY-10. Again, I think that right now we need to have that political courage and we have to make sure that we have somebody who's willing to fight for us, fight for us continuously, and make sure that we are standing up in this moment where our government is needing that voice more than ever. And so I hope that you'll all vote for me. You can go to nioufornewyork.com in order to make sure to look up and find out and hear more about all of the things that are happening in our race. Again, that's nioufornewyork.com. Thank you so much.
Ben Max: All right. Yuh-Line Niou represents the 65th assembly district in the New York State Assembly that includes parts of Lower Manhattan that are part of the new 10th congressional district where she's a candidate in the Democratic primary coming up in August. Primary day is August 23. Get that on your calendar, whether you're in the 10th district or not. And if you're an eligible Democratic voter, you can still register to vote in these races. The state senate and U.S. House primaries coming up in August, and then of course, the general election in the fall that will also include the winners of the assembly and statewide primaries that happened in June. It's another busy election year here in New York. Yuh-Line Niou, thank you very much for the time, appreciate it, and be well.
Yuh-Line Niou: Thank you so much. Bye Ben.
***
by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
@tweetBenMax @GothamGazette
Transcript: Carlina Rivera NY-10 Max Politics Interview
Carlina Rivera (photo: John McCarten/City Council)
Max Politics Podcast: Carlina Rivera Runs for Congress in the New NY-10
Recorded June 1, 2022
Listen to the audio here, or at Max Politics wherever you get podcasts.
Democratic primary day: August 23, 2022
District: Lower Manhattan & parts of Brooklyn (see map here)
Transcript:
Ben Max: [Longer intro…] So we have Carlina Rivera with us today. Welcome.
Carlina Rivera: Thank you so much for having me. What a great kind of rundown of what's been happening in New York City politics.
Ben Max: Thanks. You know, it is hard to keep it concise. I didn't there, but I tried to keep it as narrow as possible. You are in the City Council now. You've been on the show in the past. You represent the 2nd City Council district, including the East Village, Lower East Side, and other parts of Manhattan. You chair the criminal justice committee in the City Council. Last term, you chaired the committee on hospitals, lots of work there that we'll get to, but you're here in a new and different capacity, and you're making an announcement.
Carlina Rivera: Yes, I am running for Congress in NY-10, which is a fantastic district that includes neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn, including where I was born and raised in the Lower East Side. And I'm here to let people know, I am very, very excited about this. I am someone who really believes deeply in public service. I truly care about doing this work. I think I have a record of results, and I am someone who wants to make New York a city everyone can see themselves in. I get the job done. This is my home, and the community is behind me. So I'm really excited to move forward and to, as you mentioned, engage in what's going to be a very hot and busy summer. And I'm excited to do that with all of my neighbors, my friends, my family from Brooklyn to Manhattan, people that I know that I have a local perspective that NY-10 I think really wants from their representative, and I want to be the member of Congress that does both — that really understands how universal issues affect people across the country, but that has a very, very nuanced and local understanding as to how to get things done. And of course, how to build coalitions to make sure that we have a really, really balanced approach to how we're taking care of families.
Ben Max: So many of these congressional districts are very big, obviously, and I ran through a little bit of what this new NY-10 looks like with some big chunks of downtown Manhattan. Some of those have some similarities. There's of course different neighborhoods, different demographics. You already have that even in a City Council district, which is smaller. And then we get into Brooklyn, and there's various and diverse communities in Brooklyn. When you're looking at this new congressional district and you're seeking voters' approval in the Democratic primary coming up in August now, and you want to represent this congressional district. How do you describe this district? What are some of the ways you're thinking about the people and the neighborhoods and the communities that you're seeking to represent here?
Carlina Rivera: This was a very highly engaged district. These are people and families that take voting very, very seriously. I also think that they look at their congressional members, their representatives, as very local positions. They want someone who is going to understand what's going on like in their streets and on their block. And understanding that housing, jobs, reproductive rights, acting on climate change, public safety, these are some of the top issues that we discuss every single day in the council, but of course, when I'm at community meetings, when I'm checking in with folks. So I think there is just an understanding that right now, the future of New York is up for grabs.
I think I'm the candidate to lead us there. I'm a homegrown candidate of fierce commitment to my community to fighting, to bring resources into our neighborhoods, especially for those who are struggling, and that I've stood up to powerful interests in the past. This is a place where I have a lot of memories too. I have memories of going to the matinees on Sundays at Cobble Hill Theater where my mom and family came from Puerto Rico, they landed in Brooklyn. Going to Fulton Street, shopping at A&S, it's now a Macy's, visiting my family and friends, and Sunset Park, and of course all of the memories I have playing basketball on the west side, visiting small businesses and restaurants in Chinatown. My entire life has taken place in these amazing neighborhoods, and now to have this rare opportunity to be able to be their representative in Washington is something that I'm really excited about. I think New York is at a crossroads, and I'm running for Congress to turn my love for New York into a vision for the city that everyone can see themselves in. I think even before the pandemic, people were wondering, they felt very, very transient in their jobs and in their homes. Is there going to be a future for me here in New York City? I have those lived experiences living paycheck to paycheck, having student debt, looking for a job, filing for unemployment during economic crisis and instability, and I'll be a tireless advocate for New Yorkers. I'll drive new and creative solutions as the city rebounds from the pandemic and rebuilds for the future. And I understand the city's most pressing problems, but also our limitless potential.
There is so much talent here in New York City. There is really a time right now to, of course, deliver a just recovery, but to also think about, alright, how can we take some of these solutions and some of the things and the accomplishments that I've had on the local level, and it can certainly translate to solutions for communities and people across the country. Some of my housing work and really changing the whole conversation around building affordable housing by bringing deeply affordable mixed-income housing to two of the highest opportunity neighborhoods in the country at no cost to taxpayers. I think a lot of the work that I've done around healthcare and specifically reproductive rights, leading the change to create the first municipal program in the country to directly fund abortion care. And in terms of public safety, which I know is at the top of the agenda for many folks, increasing investments in some of these strategies to law enforcement that include community-level programs and violence interrupters. I've visited the stand up to violence program at Jacobi Hospital where they're treating gun violence as a public health issue. So these are programs that are working that I've really been advocating for and want to take some of those skills and of course, my lived experience and my absolute love for the city, and I love to do that as the Congressmember for NY-10.
Ben Max: There's a little bit of an interesting dynamic developing in this race. Yourself, Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou, Mondaire Jones, who as I said in the introduction is a member of Congress now but from quite far away now coming into run in this district, that there's sort of this younger generation of elected officials here. And then there's the former mayor, maybe the former Congressmember Elizabeth Holtzman. But regardless of your competition in this race per se, how much are you thinking about, even more broadly, for the Democratic Party for the federal government sort of needing a new generation of leadership? And what does that mean in concrete terms in terms of like policies that you'd fight for? People sometimes will run on the idea of sort of generational change, but their policies are not really that different from the older generation that's currently in office, they just want to sort of take out an incumbent. You're not running it against the incumbent here, but how do you think about sort of the need, if you think there is one, of sort of generational change within the Democratic Party, within the federal government? And if that's something you're thinking about, how does it manifest on the policy level?
Carlina Rivera: I think a lot about how some of my policy work has been able to take on some of our biggest issues. One thing that's really important that's finally at the forefront of the national conversation is climate change. I fought for and passed the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project, which is a $1.45 billion plan to protect the east side from future disasters and storm surges, and that was such an emotional, intense time after the hurricane, and our community really came together to figure out ‘OK, how can we best protect ourselves?’ And I think issues like this influence national and even international policy, and I think these are some of the issues that we're really trying to figure out how can we work on a local level. I mean that even in the federal way. Even as a congress member, you have a local responsibility to your folks.
Many of us are going to say, of course, we want to codify Roe. In New York City, I led the change to create the first municipal program in the country for abortion access. That is something that should be replicated across cities, and certainly will have to, especially in these kinds of times when reproductive rights are under attack. When I think about our vision as a city, revitalizing our city is my top priority in our pandemic recovery and beyond. I think for what I bring that's really unique to the role is that I'm the only candidate with a strong existing constituency in the district, and I have, I think, the clearest path to building a district-wide coalition. The support for my run from a very diverse NY-10 and the city leaders is a clear sign that we have momentum and I think that they're excited that I'm someone who is just very energized by the possibility of our city and of our communities.
There are great candidates running all over the state and all over this country, and we certainly have a lot in common in terms of our national agenda on gun control, on codifying Roe, on getting big money out of politics and enabling someone with very, very humble beginnings like myself to run. What I come to is the issues New Yorkers face continue to grow and my record proves that I'm well equipped to help deliver solutions as a member of Congress, just like I have as a member of the City Council, but that New Yorkers are certainly very hungry for leadership and vision that's as bold as it is pragmatic in taking on those fights. And so, I think I've used my platform, kind of my own identity, to try to talk about these issues that are really affecting us in a very, very deep way. I think what is exciting and what I think people have really kind of responded to when I'm talking to them about my run is that I just have a love for my city and I'm deeply grateful for all the support that I've already seen. To run for Council and now for Congress and what an honor it would be. I'm a homegrown candidate, I'm from the neighborhood. I think people want to see someone who does have bold ideas, but who also has a very nuanced understanding of the local issues.
Ben Max: Let’s come back to local issues in a second. In terms of going big, going bold on the national level. If you're elected to Congress, if Democrats keep control of the House, obviously, those are our significant ifs that will play out over the course of this election. You're one of hundreds in the majority. If that happens, in the minority, it's even harder to get your priorities done. But let's say you are a member of the House in the Democratic majority. What are the one or two things at the top of the list where you would want to go big and bold with Democratic leadership, let's just say in the House, in the Senate, in the presidency, where those issues where you would really want to use your voice, whatever it can it can help a crew in terms of political momentum to really have the country go big and go bold?
Carlina Rivera: I don't want to name a whole bunch because I’m sure you have other questions for me and we have limited time. I mentioned the reproductive rights movement, the fight for abortion access. I think what we've been able to do in New York City with the first municipal abortion access fund, and it's since been replicated in other cities like Austin. We're learning from Austin too, right, they went ahead and they included something like transportation expenses. I think these are things that we can sort of influence in a national way that will hopefully lead to ultimately codifying Roe. I think that is such an important issue, and yes, it reverberates. It has consequences for other issues, I think that include just civil rights in general and treating people as full people, as real citizens.
Cities are not structures, cities are the people that lead them have to center our humanity first and foremost, so I think reproductive rights is certainly a big issue and that just is healthcare in general. As you mentioned, I was chair of the committee on hospitals, and the work that we did in terms of addressing some of the systemic inequities that a lot of us knew was already there, and how the money flows into our hospital systems in a very disproportionate way, and the largest municipal healthcare system in the country is Health + Hospitals. And so who they serve and how they're supported by the federal government is incredibly important. Health care and reproductive rights are very important. I mentioned climate change. I think some of the work that I've done not just on something like the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project, but in the Council, we passed the Climate Mobilization Act. A lot of people call that the Dirty Buildings Bill, which was to address the emissions from our very inefficient buildings here in New York City. I think it also goes to how we're prioritizing mass transit, green infrastructure, so really first prioritizing our cyclists and our pedestrians and investing in mass transit. I know where those transit dollars should go here in New York City, whether we're extending the Second Avenue subway, looking at how to make sure that Brooklyn, Queens, some of our other boroughs have the same sort of concentration and focus in terms of infrastructure money, and making sure that we're designing cities for people. I introduced and passed Open Streets. That's been a national model in terms of how we reclaim our open space and redesign it.
And then ultimately, housing, I can't tell you how, I guess encouraged that I am that housing is really finally kind of going to the top of the national agenda of how people are suffering in terms of access to housing and overall affordability. Whether it's making sure that our communities are actually contributing affordable housing to the overall stock, especially in cities that are in crisis like New York City, but that's being felt across the country. So how do we amp up mass production? How do we ensure that people with vouchers aren't being discriminated against? We really have to talk about treating public housing as part of our general infrastructure, so the way that we mentioned hospitals and transit or like the MTA, that's how we should talk about public housing. There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of families, people that are living in public housing here and across the country, and their apartments are in disrepair and they're living in such terrible conditions. It's just not the New York way, and we have to care for these families and I think that that is certainly one of the best examples of affordable housing, and we have to go further. And we have to make sure that we're preserving, and of course, really stepping up the supply and that production.
Ben Max: Other than a massive amount of federal funding for NYCHA repairs, which obviously plenty of people are advocating for and is something that there's obviously a big chorus pushing for, but hasn't happened. But other than that, is there one lever on NYCHA that you really want to see pulled or pulled further than it has been pulled? Is there something related to public housing that you would really try to move ahead on, or maybe there's something that's already moving ahead, but you want to accelerate beyond just a huge big old allocation towards NYCHA.
Carlina Rivera: This is I think the question that a lot of us struggle with, because yes, we can all agree we need a giant influx of cash. I mean, New York City alone needs $40 billion, and I thought what an opportunity there would have been to fund it as we were discussing kind of the American Rescue Plan and hopefully Build Back Better and those infrastructure bills that can bring this large influx of cash. I hope that people can admit to actually walking public housing. I have walked all of the developments in the Lower East Side, in Brooklyn, in Red Hook. I feel like until people actually see and understand what these families are going through, they have to do everything in their power, in their capacity to make sure that these families are supported to make their own decisions, whatever that may be in terms of their development. These tenant association leaders and public housing, specifically in NYCHA, they're usually women, women of color, and they do this day in and day out, countless hours, they do not get paid. And all of this is to take care of the families there who have been really neglected for a long time.
So what are some of our solutions? I know there have been some legislative solutions being explored. I've certainly tried to do what I can as a councilwoman, funding the renovation of parks, making sure that their dollars are going in for things like making sure the compactor is moving because there's a big trash and rat problem in our city. So I think people really need to walk public housing and understand what is going on, and then further move to empower these tenant associations and these leaders to make the decisions for their developments that make the most sense.
Ben Max: Quick question that connects your current work chairing the City Council criminal justice committee and a potential federal role. Do you believe that it's time for a federal receivership of the city's jails, especially those on Rikers Island? Do you think that it's time to do that? I saw your colleague Keith Powers in the City Council says it's time for that, there's some others I think that believe that. Do you think there should be a federal takeover of the city's jails?
Carlina Rivera: There is a humanitarian crisis unfolding in Rikers Island, period. I think it is receiving national attention and the conditions there for the incarcerated and officers alike are completely unacceptable, and it's dangerous. I do not see a plan from the city to tackle these issues in the next few months, and I feel that the receivership is imminent. If, and again, we've asked in multiple hearings, I encourage people if you have the time, take a look at the hearings that we've had in the Council in trying to hold the Department of Corrections and of course this mayoral administration accountable for the lack of reform, and hopefully more transparency as time goes on. And recently, they announced an interagency task force, which sounds like a plan to make a plan, and that is just not the spot that we are in.
So unless they can really turn it around and come forward with actual reform and a plan to which I hope ultimately close Rikers Island, but to at least get conditions up to the point where we do not have, we are not at vigils or reading news about people who have died within the facilities themselves, then this administration should get on board in choosing a receiver and getting on board with federal intervention that they themselves could participate in terms of the discussion. There are only two options and I do not see the plan coming together, and it looks like federal intervention is on its way. So we have a few conversations ahead of us in terms of what to expect from leadership, but we are just not seeing it right now and we just had another person pass away. It is just in a very, very dangerous, harmful place, and we have to do something.
Ben Max: We're in our last few minutes here with City Council Member Carlina Rivera, who is now a candidate for Congress in the new New York 10th congressional district, which includes parts of downtown Manhattan, parts of downtown Brooklyn, and a whole bunch of other neighborhoods in Brooklyn that I won't list off right now because some of them are part of one of my last couple questions here. Coming back to the race here, you said something earlier about being the cannon in the race with the real sort of constituency and base. I think Assemblymember Niou would probably take some issue with that. I think former Mayor de Blasio would probably take some issue with that, although he's obviously got lots of challenges in his old backyard where there's a lot of disillusionment with his leadership, but he's hoping to win people back, and maybe others in the race as well. But as you look at this new district, there's a really interesting sort of demographics here. Very clearly, just by the voting age population, the total population in the district. White voters are likely to be a sizable majority of the voters here. They're very much going to be mostly liberal to pretty darn progressive in some of these neighborhoods in both Manhattan and Brooklyn. Then you've got heavily Latino neighborhoods and communities in both Manhattan and Brooklyn parts, heavily Asian communities in both Manhattan and Brooklyn parts of the district, and then you have more conservative white communities in parts of the district like out in Borough Park. When you're thinking about those three to four big groups there, and again, these are broad brushes, but congressional districts are huge. Are there any ways that you're thinking about sort of issues that matter the most to certain constituencies and certain communities that you would almost be able to say, ‘I know that the Latino communities, some of which you currently represent in Manhattan, and those in Brooklyn that are part of this district, the Asian communities, again predominantly Asian communities care about certain issues at the top of the list, et cetera, et cetera?’ Do you have thoughts on sort of that approach to the groups within this larger group and how you're going to sort of talk to these different constituencies?
Carlina Rivera: Yeah, of course. Sometimes people ask me, what are Latino issues? What are women's issues? We have the same issues as everyone else, and that is that people want a more affordable, livable city. I have very deep roots in this community. I've worked with all different sorts of stakeholders, even people who might be on kind of the opposing end of an issue. It's so important to have that conversation to understand and broaden your perspective. And I've been navigating these dynamics for years and throughout my career.
I'm about outcomes that lift everyone and I have a record of doing that even before I became a City Council woman. I worked on a project called the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, that's Essex Crossing now, and that was a very big issue for the Lower East Side. That was 40 years of history, nearly 2,000 families displaced, many of them Puerto Rican. And finally, there was a conversation that was going to be had about what to do, which was pretty much largely just parking lots. And that conversation of like, well what do we want? The people that have lived here, the people that lived through this displacement. What do we want? Well, we wanted affordable housing because that was the right thing and the justice part of it was so important. Open space, making sure that there was local hiring, having a seamless transition for the Essex Street Market vendors to go from one market to another with the same rents, but more amenities, because that market was so important, symbolic of the community's history, and because there's such a diversity in some of the kiosks and and the shop owners in there. And then of course, making sure there was a right to return for those families that were displaced many, many years ago, which was in and of itself another challenge, and how do some of these families prove that they actually live there? They have to go find baptism records and old report cards, and there were some great organizations on the ground that helped people do that. And you know, those issues unite all of us. I bring up Essex Crossing because it's an example of lots of people wanting lots of different things, and the community coming together to say, ‘Here's what we can agree to, and here's how we have to move forward.’ And when I think about just kind of like my past and why I think I understand the issues, just so acutely and so personally, I know what it's like to live in this city day in and day out, and I think what what gives me a lot of pride are the things that we have all been through together and how we've recovered as a community and as a city, whether it's 9/11 recovery and taking care of those workers, whether it’s the Essex Crossing project, whether it's Hurricane Sandy relief.
When I first ran, it was a crowded primary too and this is the council race. It was an exciting time for me as a first-time candidate. I won a crowded six-week primary with over 60% of the vote. When I first ran, I delivered for the community, I won my second term with 74% of the vote. And that is because I'm out there, I'm in the streets, I'm talking to folks, people know me, I went to school here, I played basketball here, I've won a couple softball championships here. Every milestone in my life is here and I know the struggles that everyday New Yorkers face because I lived them myself. This is so much more than just a job to me. It's about taking care of the communities that raised me, and that's what we do for each other as New Yorkers.
Ben Max: [Longer outro…] Carlina Rivera, thanks for taking the time and be well.
Carlina Rivera: Thank you. Thanks, talk soon.
***
by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
@tweetBenMax @GothamGazette
|
Tweet |
