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Cordell Cleare Poised to Join Storied History of Harlem-West Side Senate District


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(l-r) Basil Paterson, Carl McCall, Brian Benjamin, Cordell Cleare


Cordell Cleare recently received the Democratic nomination to replace Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin in the State Senate after his appointment by Governor Hochul. Cleare is almost certain to win the special election that will be held with the general election on November 2. 

She will succeed the legacy of Constance Baker Motley, Basil Paterson, Carl McCall, and David Paterson, some of the prominent senators who have represented the district. Combining much of Harlem with the Upper West Side and other adjacent neighborhoods, the district has a rich history of noteworthy senators.

It was not until 1953 when Julius Archibald became the first African-American to serve in the New York State Senate. (Edward Johnson, a former slave, was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1917.) Archibald won a narrow victory in the 1952 primary, a margin of just 207 votes against incumbent Harold Panken, who was backed by the Tammany machine including the African-American Carver Democratic Club led by J. Raymond Jones.

Whites constituted 48% of the district’s voters at that time, but Archibald, who was a leader in the NAACP running on a civil rights platform, squeaked to victory with a coalition assembled by the West Side reform leader Robert Blaikie with support from anti-Tammany Congressmen Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

Archibald’s slim victory in the primary sent a clear message to the party leadership: an African-American should represent Harlem in the Senate district it shared with the West Side. That has been the case in every election since that historic breakthrough in 1953.

The Tammany leaders promptly regrouped and easily won the nomination for one of their own, James Lopez Watson, who swamped Archibald in the 1954 primary. Watson served in the State Senate until 1963, when he decided on a judicial career and was elected to the Civil Court — a judicial seat first held by his father, James S. Watson, who in 1930 was the first African-American elected judge in New York. President Lyndon Johnson subsequently appointed the younger Watson as the first African-American on the United States Customs Court, now called the United States Court of International Trade. The courthouse at One Federal Plaza is named in Watson’s honor.

Watson’s election to the bench created a vacancy to be filled by a special election in February 1964. Like Cordell Cleare’s nomination, the district committee of the Democratic County Committee was sharply divided along club lines. The Carver Club of District Leader J. Raymond Jones supported Constance Baker Motley, who was Thurgood Marshall’s deputy at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. To the surprise of many, however, the committee voted to nominate Noel Ellison, the African-American president of the Riverside Democratic Club.

Controversy ensued when it was disclosed that Ellison, whose main support came from the white members of the committee, had been convicted of running numbers from his dry cleaning store. Democratic County Leader Edward Costikyan intervened when he learned that there were irregularities at the nomination meeting and persuaded Ellison to decline so the committee to fill vacancies could nominate Motley.

Constance Baker Motley already had a distinguished career bringing desegregation cases in the federal courts, including ten arguments before the United States Supreme Court. She became the first African-American woman in the State Senate, but her Senate service was cut short by her election as Manhattan Borough President in 1965, the first woman elected to that post.

Her term as borough president was also short-lived because President Lyndon Johnson appointed her as judge of the United States District Court, the first African-American woman to serve in the federal judiciary. She served in that court, eventually becoming Chief Judge, until her death in 2005.

Basil Paterson was elected to succeed Constance Baker Motley in 1965. As a young lawyer, he became active in the Carver Democratic Club and became a favorite of J. Raymond Jones. Paterson worked hard to protect the interests of Harlem and played a key role in stopping Columbia University from building its gym in Morningside Park.

In 1970, he gave up his Senate seat to run for lieutenant governor on Arthur Goldberg’s ticket; Rockefeller won handily. Ed Koch appointed Paterson as deputy mayor in 1978 and Governor Hugh Carey appointed Paterson as the first African-American secretary of state of New York in 1979.

Sidney von Luther, a Harlem union and civil rights leader won the seat with the support of the Riverside Democratic Club in a three-way primary in 1970 and was reelected in 1972. Senator von Luther proudly identified himself as “a gadfly” and once challenged Senator Martin Knorr of Queens to a duel.

The New York Times quoted von Luther, “there are certain sacred principles that have to be defended and somebody has to appoint themselves as the conscience of that goddam bargaining place.” His Senate colleagues retaliated in the 1974 redistricting by moving a big chunk of Morningside Heights from the district and replacing it with a larger piece of Harlem.

Carl McCall, a business partner of Percy Sutton, was also a familiar figure in reform circles. McCall received support both from the Harlem leadership as well as West Side reformers and cruised to victory in the 1974 primary. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the United States delegation to the United Nations with the rank of ambassador. In 1993 McCall became the first African-American to serve as state comptroller and was re-elected twice. In 2002, McCall received the Democratic nomination for governor, but lost to George Pataki.

Leon Bogues won the special election to replace Carl McCall in February 1980. Bogues had been the chairman of Community Board 7, which covered the West Side, but he was also successful in gathering support from the Harlem leadership. Bogues was re-elected three times and served until his death in 1985.

David Paterson was elected to the seat held by his father following the death of Leon Bogues in 1985 and served until 2006, when Eliot Spitzer tapped Paterson to run for lieutenant governor. David Paterson became governor on March 17, 2008 following Spitzer’s resignation. 

Bill Perkins, well known in both the West Side and Harlem parts of the district, was elected in 2006. He had served seven years in the City Council and was a champion of the lead paint laws that addressed that serious housing problem. Perkins was one of the few elected officials to endorse Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential primary and was chairman of Obama’s campaign in New York. Perkins returned to the City Council in 2017.

Brian Benjamin was elected in 2017 to succeed Bill Perkins and was reelected twice. Governor Kathy Hochul appointed him lieutenant governor when she became governor following Andrew Cuomo’s resignation.

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Douglas A. Kellner is a partner in the law firm Kellner Herlihy Getty & Friedman LLP. He also serves as Co-Chair of the New York State Board of Elections. Kellner chaired the Manhattan Democratic Senate District Committee nominating meetings in 1981 and 1985.

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Everything is Connected: New York City’s Climate Crisis Demands a New Way of Thinking


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Mayor de Blasio surveys damage from Ida (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


When the long tail of Hurricane Ida brought record rainfall to our region earlier this month, public officials claimed they were blindsided by the damage that resulted. While it’s notoriously difficult to accurately predict rainfall, the devastating societal impacts of the storm were not a surprise to those who follow these issues closely.

An inundated transit system, flooded homes in lower-income neighborhoods, residents trapped in basement apartments. These tragedies were foreseeable, in part, because the city has consistently failed to effectively link its climate adaptation strategy to a social equity and environmental justice strategy. 

These recent events are a stark reminder that disasters are not “natural.” They are a function of a system that fails to protect everyone equally, and those in the most economically precarious positions are also the most vulnerable to climate-related hazards. We simply must do more to address the intertwined challenges of climate change and social justice before subsequent stronger storms wreak even more havoc. 

Unfortunately, New York City is woefully under-prepared for the climate crisis. Eleven city residents perished as a result of Ida’s floodwaters. It is our civic duty to heed this wake-up call and assure that those lives were not lost in vain.

Complacence, fiscal limitations, and politics are some of the root causes that stymie efforts to adapt in real time to a changing climate. But more than any other factor, we have continually failed to heed nature’s most important lesson, as ecologist Barry Commoner succinctly summarized in his 1971 book Closing the Circle: “Everything,” Commoner explained, “is connected to everything else.”

This single rule, had we ever stopped to consider it, might have helped us avoid the climate quagmire we find ourselves in today. But it can still help us now.

There has been much talk since Ida about how the city needs to more effectively deal with stormwater, refine its emergency alert systems, and protect residents of basement apartments. Yes! Yes! And yes! But we are destined to fail if we view these as standalone problems with unitary solutions. Instead, we need to embrace and harness complexity instead of ignoring what we know to be true: your zip code and your income, more than any other factors, also determine how vulnerable you are to disaster

As an urban planner, I was trained to think of cities as complex systems, but for a long time those just seemed like hollow academic concepts. Three years ago, I was in the Netherlands trying to better understand how the Dutch have so famously built a thriving, vibrant, livable nation on a marsh that sits mostly below sea level. One afternoon a Dutch engineer grew exasperated by my pestering questions about technical remedies and dressed me down.

“You’re asking the wrong questions,” he told me. “You can always solve a water-related problem with engineering. That’s the easy part, just spend enough money and you can fix anything. But if you don’t use that opportunity to solve a social or economic or environmental sustainability problem at the same time, then you’ve squandered the money the public entrusted to you.” 

My friend the engineer, it turns out,  perfectly encapsulated everything New York has failed to do in addressing our climate-related challenges. Sure, rain gardens and bioswales have been installed around the city, trees are being planted, and agencies are implementing the City Council’s Unified Stormwater Rule requiring developers to address stormwater risks when they build. 

But these piecemeal solutions must also be part of a holistic and comprehensive plan to rethink how we do almost everything in the city, from economic development, housing, and transportation to how we build our parks and schools, what we do with our waste, and where we get our power. A veritable alphabet soup of city agencies will need to rethink what they do and how they do it and collaborate in ways that they have never done before. Most importantly, every decision, no matter how small, will need to be considered through the dual lens of risk mitigation and social justice. This, indeed, is the stated purpose of Mayor de Balsio’s signature OneNYC plan. But despite its pretty pictures, OneNYC, like many of the mayor’s other signature initiatives (looking at you, Vision Zero), has led to few meaningful changes in how the city actually operates. 

And those old ways of doing business are anachronisms. In 2019 the city’s Charter Revision Commission failed to advance a proposal to require the city to adopt a comprehensive planning mandate, so the city will continue to pretend that land use and development decisions are wholly separate from decisions about school siting, infrastructure, and transportation. Instead, the city’s antiquated Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) will continue to minimize community input into impactful new real estate developments and fail to connect these projects to any kind of long-term strategic vision for the kind of city we want to see.

Thousands of other U.S. communities have long understood that these issues must be addressed holistically, and this mindset is critical if we want to be more strategic about confronting future climate risks. Council Member Justin Brannan, in fact, introduced legislation back in 2019 to require a citywide waterfront resilience plan. Along with colleagues like Costa Constantinides, Brannan has also been a real leader in pushing the city to recognize and address its vulnerability to climate change. But these are just the first steps, and what we need is not only new and better plans, but a wholesale reimagining of how the city operates, including a true commitment to social and environmental justice.

New York’s climate change adaptation efforts need to heed the lessons that other communities, and even the federal government, have already begun to internalize. A week after taking office, President Biden put forth the Justice40 initiative creating a direct link between the nation’s investments in climate change mitigation and the effort to empower disadvantaged communities. 

These efforts are not silver bullets, but they are a start. In New York City, we hear a lot of lofty rhetoric, but the pace of true change feels glacial, while the societal toll from climate change continues to accelerate. The city’s myopic and siloed approach to climate change adaptation results in contentious battles like the one currently playing out over the city’s East Side Coastal Resiliency project, and is why even seemingly simple climate justice solutions like equitably distributing safe bicycling routes seem unattainable. 

Massive public investments and politically difficult regulatory decisions will need to be part of New York City’s efforts to address the perils of climate change. Just as importantly we will also need to remake our entire governance apparatus, acknowledging once and for all that risk mitigation and social justice are inextricably linked and foregrounding these intertwined goals in every single decision we make. This evolution won’t be easy, but anything less squanders the painful lessons of Ida and every disaster before it, warnings we ignore at our own peril.

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Donovan Finn is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Design, Policy and Planning in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University. He is also a proud resident of Jackson Heights, Queens.

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The Next City Government Must Make New York Safer for Its Oldest Residents


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Older New Yorkers (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


As we grow older, few things are more essential than feeling safe in our neighborhoods. 

For older adults, public safety is more than fighting crime; it’s about maintaining independence and a quality of life and dignity. But currently many New York neighborhoods fall short of creating an age friendly environment where older adults can thrive. There’s work to do, but fortunately our city is experiencing a moment of unprecedented change that represents our best opportunity to make New York a safer, more equitable place to age.  

From adopting age-friendly design principles to supporting neighborhood services as we all age, the incoming mayoral administration and City Council will have the opportunity to reimagine a New York City for all ages. That’s why we are proud to support the comprehensive policy agenda released by LiveOn NY and Hunter College’s Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging, which provides fresh and innovative  ideas for how the next city government can go beyond policing to make all neighborhoods safe and secure places to age.

For older New Yorkers, public safety includes the community-based services that provide a lifeline to core services such as nutrition and health management support. These human services provided by local non-profits like ours have kept older New Yorkers safe throughout the pandemic, making thousands of vaccination appointments, delivering nutritious meals, and fostering socialization. Unfortunately, for too long, the city has fallen short in making meaningful investments in aging services as well as the human services sector at large. It’s time the city truly supports and fully funds the organizations and workers who continue to show up everyday to support older New Yorkers.

Beyond increasing support for direct services, a safer city also requires significant work to ensure all New Yorkers have a safe place to call home. Today’s tight rental market, old housing stock, and lack of affordable housing conspire to make it difficult for older New Yorkers, particularly those on fixed incomes, to remain housed while making ends meet. We’ll need the next city administration to double down on increasing the production of affordable senior housing with services, as well as support housing programs that can accommodate the changing needs of older residents.  

Public safety also means remaining safe from falls, which are the fifth highest cause of death among people age 65 and older. Walkable streets with equitably located resources and accessible transit options, all give older adults the freedom to engage and contribute to the surrounding communities. Fall prevention starts with investing in street lighting and sidewalk maintenance to eliminate tripping hazards like cracks, litter, and snow, and making crossing areas safe for pedestrians. Tragically, older New Yorkers are struck and killed by vehicles at nearly three times the rate of younger people. Let’s commit to create safer areas for New Yorkers by prioritizing walkability and expanding the city’s Vision Zero program. 

To build a city for all New Yorkers, our transportation modes must adapt to the needs of people with different levels of physical ability. Currently, only one in four subway stations have key accessibility features. Whether you’re an individual with a mobility limitation or a parent with a stroller, accessibility features such as elevators and ramps are critical to not only preventing falls, but to unlocking all that New York has to offer. It’s time for the state and the city to work together to make our subway system more accessible.

For those that rely on Access-a-Ride, there are also ready-made improvements to be made. Namely, it’s critical for the city to expand its successful e-hail paratransit pilot program across the five boroughs. 

Of course, while housing, nutrition, services, and an age-friendly community are key to ensuring New Yorkers can age safely, preventing crime directed towards the older population will remain critical. With the recent attacks on Asian Americans, we see clearly that too often violent crime is perpetrated against older adults and those in marginalized populations in particular. We, as a city, must come together to fight hate and discrimination in all of its forms. From funding local non-profits to build community, to bolstering mental health programs that have proven success, we believe a holistically safe city is possible.

New Yorkers are counting on the next mayoral administration and City Council to make our neighborhoods better and safer places to age. Growing older should build momentum in our lives, rather than slow us down. It’s time to invest in the future of aging in our city. Community-based social services organizations like ours with decades of experience working with older adults stand ready to help the incoming city government make the right investments for our communities.

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Donna Atmore-Dolly is Executive Director of Allen Community Non-Profit Programs. Anderson Torres, PhD, LCSW-R, is President and CEO of R.A.I.N. TOTAL CARE.

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The Next Mayor Can End New York City’s Rat Problem; Here’s How


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NYC rats are a problem (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


New York City is inundated with rats! Dirty, dangerous, destructive rats that are also very aggressive. The phrase “Brazen as a New York City rat” has a solid foundation in reality. Mostly we tolerate rats because we think there’s nothing much to be done about them. A few traps, some poison, maybe a new garbage can, but, typically, not much beyond such meager efforts.. 

It seems that Ida, the recent historic storm, did manage to drown a large number of rats. However, such events are rare enough, maybe even still so in this era of climate change, that we may not be able to depend on them as methods of addressing our city’s rat problem. 

Also, mayoral candidate and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams became infamous for his approach to addressing the rat problem: drowning them in a stew of deadly chemicals. After Adams put his method on full display, some commented on its cruelty. It may be cruel, but it’s also likely ineffective. The rate at which rats reproduce is too fast for drowning them to make much of a dent in their census. What if there’s a more effective way to get rid of all, or almost all, rats in the city? The solution is simple and reasonable, and partly, already exists.

The rats are here for food, and no city feeds rats as often or as well as New York. Three times a week every building in the city places plastic bags full of food waste on the sidewalks, plastic bags that are accessed by rats with ease. 

My wife and I -- beginning empty nesters, since our daughter is now away at college -- no longer walk after dinner if it’s a night when garbage bags are put out for collection. Rats darting across the sidewalk and running in and out of bags were more than enough to discourage us. My wife, a social worker in East Harlem who knows several families in public housing, said the rat problem there is much worse than what we see in our Carnegie Hill neighborhood. 

Many of the buildings, particularly in public housing high-rises with large numbers of tenants, generate huge quantities of food waste that is easily accessible to rats. As a result, rats are in the garbage areas of the buildings, in the buildings themselves, in individual apartments, and even, horribly, sometimes in children’s beds biting them. It’s that bad!

Yet the solution to this terrible problem is simple: stop feeding the rats.

The city already has in place a pilot program that allows business improvement districts (BIDs) to apply to have their waste and recycling placed in sealed containers before being picked up by sanitation workers. This is a good start, but we need to go much further and fast. 

What we should do is pass a city ordinance requiring all residential and commercial buildings to place their food waste on sidewalks in bins that are rat-proof with secure lids. If an ordinance were  passed forbidding anyone from putting food waste on the sidewalk for collection, unless it were in a rat-proof bin with a secure lid, that would go a long way toward solving our rat problem.

Achieving the same end, but even better, would be an ordinance mandating composting: a mandate that food waste must be separated out and disposed of in rat-proof bins. The city had a trial composting program for selected buildings, which was suspended due to fallout from COVID-19, but it’s back up. With that program going again, but mandating composting city-wide, the vast majority of food waste from the entire city would be kept away from rats, while at the same time serving as composting material for the program and accomplishing green goals.

New York lags behind other cities in composting food waste, and rat-proof disposal in general. We must catch up. 

It will be necessary to give building owners and managers, business owners, and others time to implement rat-proof disposal of their food waste. It may take a few months or more, but if it is mandated and the right city support is there, before long everyone would be doing it, just like almost everyone separates recyclables now. If we separate recyclables, we can also separate food from other household waste.  

In addition to prohibiting food waste on the sidewalk, unless in a rat-proof bin, no one can be permitted to keep food waste on their property if it is outside, and not in a rat-proof bin. Since rat-proof bins will be required for putting food waste on the sidewalk, those same bins could be used to store food waste on the premises between collection days. Further, the city would have to make sure that disposal bins in the subways, parks, on street corners, and on other municipal properties are rat-proof. Otherwise, the rats will simply migrate to those food waste bins that are still accessible. 

If rats' food supply is suddenly cut off, could this cause a desperate reaction leading to them running helter-skelter across the city looking for food? There will be some reaction for certain. But this plan would not be implemented overnight. Before the entire city was composting all food waste, some months would pass. And likely it would be a year before everyone was in compliance. During that time, the rat population would decrease as less food was available and would continue to decrease as the city moved toward complete compliance.

Further, as rats were being denied food waste, various traditional methods for killing them would become more effective than previously because they’d be hungry enough to eat the poison or go for the food in traps. That is not the case now. 

Currently, there’s a lot going on in the city. The Delta strain is on many people’s minds. The city is still struggling with around 10% unemployment. And there’s been an uptick in some types of violent crimes. Maybe, some might say, this isn’t the time to focus on the city’s rat problem. But New York City can and must do many things at once, always. Adopting this program to eliminate our rat problem, and make the city more livable and walkable in the process, wouldn’t by any stretch mean it couldn’t still deal with other issues. Quality of life issues, like the current rat invasion, must be addressed -- just ask those who have to share their homes and beds with rats, or those dissuaded from going for a walk due to the piles of trash on the streets and the rats that enjoy them.

It will take a concerted effort by residents, building owners, managers and supers, businesses, city government, and others to make sure there is virtually no food waste accessible to rats anywhere in New York. It’s a goal we can achieve. In fact, we are on the right track with the city’s composting program as well as the pilot program, mentioned earlier, which allows BIDs to place their waste in sealed containers. The idea behind my proposed ordinance is to expand these efforts to include virtually all food waste in the city. That way, there will be little or no food for rats, and the city’s composting program will be a success: a real twofer. Let’s do it!

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Michael A. Lewis is a professor of statistics and economics at Hunter College’s Silberman School of Social Work and the CUNY Graduate Center. On Twitter @MichaelALewis10.

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New York Must Act to Protect Transgender Incarcerated People


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Lights honoring transgender New Yorkers (photo: Mike Groll/Governor's Office)


When I learned that a transgender woman was incarcerated with men on Rikers Island last week, it hit close to home for me. I know from experience what it feels like to be a transgender woman in jail surrounded by men. It's a mix of trauma, fear, and humiliation.

There are far too many stories of transgender women being treated horrendously in America’s prison system that go untold. When we talk about mass incarceration in the United States, transgender people have a unique place in the conversation and must be included in the discourse surrounding decarceration. 

Transgender women in particular are notoriously profiled and harrassed, resulting in a disproportionate rate of incarceration in our community. One out of every five transgender women have been incarcerated at some point in their life. For Black transgender women, 47% have experienced incarceration — that’s nearly half of all Black transgender women in America.

While incarcerated, transgender women are nine times more likely to face physical and sexual violence. The humanitarian crisis for incarcerated transgender people didn't begin last week when a group of lawmakers toured Rikers Island — it has existed for centuries in the shadows.

The topic of transgender people in sex-segregated jails is a conversation people usually shy away from. It has only relatively recently been discussed by policy-makers. In 2012, the Federal Bureau of Prisons released guidance that gave instructions to house transgender people in facilities that comport with their gender identity. But in 2018, the policy was effectively reversed by the Trump administration. Currently, transgender people in federal prisons are housed according to their sex assigned at birth. As a result, correction staff regularly place transgender people in solitary confinement as a way to segregate us from the general population. 

In New York City, we know what solitary confinement means for transgender people. We remember the tragic death of our sister Layleen Polanco, a personal friend and transgender woman who died at the hands of negligent correction officers at Rikers Island.

Solitary confinement, which is merely an obfuscating term for torture, will never keep transgender incarcerated people safe. Neither will housing transgender people in sex-segregated facilities that don’t match their gender identity. What we need are trans inclusive policies that consider the safety of each individual.

The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), passed by Congress in 2003, was meant to address the high prevalence of sexual assault among transgender inmates. Although it applies to federal, state, and local prisons and jails, many jails refuse to comply with its provisions, and it is narrowly tailored to address instances of abuse from both correctional staff and fellow incarcerated individuals. Crucially, PREA does not include provisions for trans related medical care nor does it mandate that trans people's identities be respected and affirmed while incarcerated.

Several states, including New York’s tri-state neighbors New Jersey and Connecticut, have taken matters into their own hands by passing laws that implement trans inclusive jail policies. Unfortunately, New York has yet to pass such a law. Which begs the question: why do we afford transgender people in New York protection from discrimination on the basis of gender identity almost everywhere except in our jails?

Countless transgender women incarcerated in county jails across New York share stories of being misgendered by staff and refused hormone treatment and grooming supplies that are consistent with their gender identity. Trans people's inability to live as our true selves can severely impact our mental health. Self mutiliation and suicide attempts are not uncommon for incarcerated transgender people who are refused access to gender affirming care.

To be very clear, the ultimate goal should be to reduce our prison population. But right now New York needs a uniform policy to address the treatment and placement of incarcerated transgender people. We do ourselves a disservice by having a patchwork of policies that vary across each county.

In a perfect world detention facilities would have exclusive transgender housing units. But a major capital investment in new jail facilities is counterintuitive to decarceration and unlikely to happen. Therefore, it should be the norm to place transgender people in facilities that align with their gender identity. For the anti-trans activists who may be against this idea, you should know that there is no evidence to suggest that transgender women are a threat to cisgender women. In fact, it is transgender women who are more at risk than any other demographic in jail. We must also be mindful of the fact that there are transgender women who choose to be in facilites with men. That conversation is valid too, and a trans person's views regarding their personal safety must be prioritized.

We can look to Steuben County for inspiration on how to develop trans inclusive policies in our jails. There, transgender inmates are by default housed according to their gender identity as a result of a recent legal settlement. In addition, Steuben County correctional staff must now respect transgender inmates’ prefered prounouns, provide searches by correctional staff whose gender matches the identity of the inmates, and provide transgender people with trans inclusive care, such as hormone replacement therapy and tolietries consistent with their gender identity. This model can easily be applied across the state.

Thankfully, the answer has already been spelled out for us in the Gender Identity Respect, Dignity, and Safety Act, a bill that would essentially apply the Steuben County model across New York. When lawmakers return to Albany, this bill should be high on their list of priorities to pass. The lives of transgender incarcerated people depend on it.

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Elisa Crespo is the Executive Director of the New Pride Agenda, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization. On Twitter @elisacresponyc.

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The Deadly Context and Ominous Consequences of The Texas Abortion Law


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Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, the author (photo: Rodneyse Bichotte/Facebook)


Abortion is a matter of life and death for a woman. Those who are pro-choice like me know that access to safe abortion care can prevent a woman from losing her life, and restrictions can - and are - ending it. And for Black women like me, who know what it’s like to lose a child because of maternal healthcare inequities, this is a nightmare that’s only going to get worse.

Women pioneers fought tirelessly to grant us suffrage, reproductive freedom, and other essential rights. But today our rights are being stripped away and we cannot let that happen.

Access to safe, quality, and unbiased health care for pregnant Black women has always been challenging -- and now access to a safe abortion, a woman’s civil right, has essentially been eliminated in Texas. With the Lone Star State outlawing abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, in the midst of another spike in covid with the Delta variant, risks to women’s health -- in particular Black women’s health -- have been further exacerbated.

Data shows there has already been a longstanding Black maternal healthcare crisis.

Last year, more than 700 women in the United States died during childbirth and the maternal death rate among Black women was three times the rates for white and Hispanic women. Maternal mortality is worse in the United States than in any other developed nation in the world. The majority of pregnancy-related deaths are thought to be preventable.

I was almost one of the victims of pregnancy-related death. 

Almost five years ago, a prestigious university-affiliated New York City hospital turned me away after doctors discovered I was three centimeters dilated and experiencing preterm labor. Shortly after I was told to leave, my water broke, and I delivered my son Jonah prematurely at a local community hospital. My baby was one of the more than 20,000 infants that didn’t make it that year, and I almost lost my life too.

At all stages of health care, women -- especially Black women -- deserve better care and protection of our rights.

Despite Black women making up just 13.4% of the U.S. population, almost one-third of the women affected by the Hyde Amendment -- which prohibits the use of Medicaid funds for abortion care except in the most extreme cases -- are Black. "There has been a growing body of research that is showing that structural racism is playing a role with regard to these disparities," said Dr. Wanda Barfield, director of the CDC's Division of Reproductive Health.

This isn’t just about saving lives. It’s about taking away rights and decision-making power from the people to whom they rightfully belong.

It’s unconstitutional and inhumane. But, even though the Supreme Court declined to block the Texas law it did so without ruling on whether it is constitutional, allowing it to be challenged.

Access to reproductive health care is everything when it comes to saving the lives of women, overwhelmingly so in the case of Black women.

Texas’ law does more than just take choice away from women; it puts a bounty on the heads of every woman and family seeking an abortion in the state, and allows private individuals to enforce the law. If we look at other countries as a guide, or even our own history, the Texas abortion law won’t stop most women from having abortions, even though it strips their legal rights and puts their lives more at risk. It will mainly stop women who can’t afford to access abortion care from getting it safely, leading to the preventable deaths of more women.

This is part of a national attack on women.

The Republican-dominated Supreme Court of the United States has opted not to intervene, effectively reversing Roe v. Wade in Texas and opening it to reversal elsewhere. But this is ‘settled law,’ as Justice Brett Kavanaugh claimed at his 2018 nomination hearing, before flip-flopping earlier this month. And, the risk of other conservative states using the legal loophole Texas is exploiting is real. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to reverse Roe and nothing short of an attack on women and our rights.

But, the Texas abortion law isn’t the first threat to abortion access. Since Justice Kavanaugh’s appointment, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case known as June Medical, which illustrated that reliance on courts and precedent alone is not enough, legislative interventions are also needed to protect our rights.

Meanwhile, in stark contrast, Mexico’s Supreme Court -- in a heavily Roman Catholic country -- has ruled that criminal penalties for abortion are unconstitutional.

With the worst maternal mortality rates in the nation, how can there be legislators in the United States out there claiming to be “pro life” as they exacerbate this crisis?

As the new Chair of the Task Force on Women’s Issues in the New York State Assembly and a Black woman who has faced pregnancy-related death, I am committed to reversing this cycle of morbidity for all women. I’m focused on ensuring that Black pregnant women aren’t dying at an alarming rate well above the national average and that all women have the right and access to abortion care.

In the New York Legislature, I passed a bill requiring hospitals to treat women in preterm labor. I’ve introduced several bills to expand testing for conditions like the one I had, barbarically termed an “incompetent cervix,” which are known to lead to preterm labor.

Several of my colleagues have also taken steps to address the significant racial disparity of Black women dying at a higher rate. New York City Council Member Vanessa Gibson announced more than $400,000 in Council funding to combat high rates of infant and maternal mortality in the Bronx.

Democrats across the country need to follow suit.  

If our nation had equitable health care and defended women’s rights on par with that of other developed nations, we could prevent the loss of life without controversy. We could let women and their doctors make choices that are best for them, and we could save lives.

We need to fight to preserve the lives of women who are facing increasingly worse odds in labor and the delivery room. Governor Kathy Hochul, in response to Texas’ backwards law, announced that New York will implement a public information campaign to affirm abortion rights, curb the spread of misinformation, and make abortion care more accessible via telehealth.

And as the first woman to lead the Brooklyn Democratic Party, I’m calling on Democrats from across the nation to hold Republicans accountable for stripping away our rights and causing the senseless deaths of women and their children.

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Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn is the New York State Assemblymember for the 42nd District in Brooklyn and the first woman to chair the Brooklyn Democratic Party. She is Chair of the Assembly’s Task Force on Women’s Issues and Task Force on Minority- and Women-Owned Businesses. She sponsored the Jonah Bichotte Cowan law and now sponsors two bills -- A8048 and A7741 -- related to prenatal testing. On Twitter @AMBichotte.

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Baby Bonds Are Great, But We Shouldn’t Make Kids Wait


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Kids back at school (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


Coinciding with the start of the school year, New York City parents got some good news last week when Mayor de Blasio launched the city’s first universal baby bonds program. Starting this year, every public-school kindergartener will receive access to a college savings account seeded with $100 from the city.

This is great. Making college more accessible and affordable, especially to low-income students, must be a major policy goal and will certainly help overcome the widening wealth gap. 

But money now is better than money later and more can be done to help kids throughout their childhood, years before they enter college campuses. 

No doubt, the benefits of baby bonds are clear. Children with even a small savings account are three times more likely to enroll in college and more than four times more likely to graduate. And with average student loan debt soaring to $30,000 per graduate, leveling the playing field by helping kids pay for college will give students opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t have had. More than this, expanding college access will reap plenty of residual effects on health, safety, and economic stability for communities in the long run. 

All these benefits are great, but why make kids wait until they turn 18 to reap them? Instead of delaying gratification, we should be giving families direct cash assistance now so that they avoid a life of poverty and are even more prepared to enter college when the time comes to take the money out of their college accounts. After all, students from low-income families are 10 times more likely to drop out of college than students from high-income families. Helping families out of poverty now will pay dividends in ensuring kids are able to enter and stay in higher education. 

No matter your thoughts on our campaign, as an advisor on Andrew Yang’s run for mayor, there was one policy we undoubtedly got right: cash relief for poor families. Under our plan of providing up to $2,000 annually to the city’s 500,000 poorest residents regardless of immigration status, the city would have reduced deep poverty by 60% according to an independent study.

Time and again direct cash assistance programs have proven to be a game changer in uplifting people out of poverty. And cash stimulus checks from the federal government during the pandemic were shown to have significantly improved Americans’ ability to buy food and pay household bills and to have reduced anxiety and depression. Research has shown that cash transfers also have stimulative effects with recipients spending 44.5% of the federal check amount back into the local economy within just 10 days.

Direct cash assistance isn’t new. Social Security checks lift 15 million elderly Americans out of poverty every year and form one of the most effective anti-poverty programs the United States has ever devised. Due in part to the pandemic and the popularization of the concept of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), policymakers are coming to understand that simply giving poor families the cash they need to provide for themselves and make sound financial decisions is more productive than the old ways of complex -- and costly -- food stamps and housing voucher programs, which often kept people poor and perpetuated problematic ideals of who is “deserving.”  

The truth is New Yorkers should be entitled to a suite of modern policies targeted at uplifting them. That is why it is encouraging to see Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams’ plan to expand the city’s Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program, which would cover nearly 900,000 New Yorkers with household incomes up to $50,000 a year. EITC on the federal level has been shown to improve children’s educational and financial outcomes as adults. Under an Adams mayoralty, these direct cash credits to families will go a long way in helping families and children over the course of their lifetimes. 

Whether it’s UBI, EITC, or some other acronym, the goal should be the same: getting cash into families' pockets today so that they can equip themselves with the tools to succeed. And while college savings accounts are fantastic, our policymakers should make sure kids are getting everything they need to help them now, not just when it comes time to go for college. 

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Erika Tannor is a political consultant at Tusk Strategies. On Twitter @erikatannor.

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As the Future of Roe Hangs in the Balance, New York City and Albany Must Act to Protect Abortion Access for All


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Gov. Hochul leads a press conference on abortion rights (photo: Don Pollard/Governor’s Office)


In response to the recent ban in Texas and upcoming Supreme Court case, Governor Kathy Hochul declared New York a safe harbor for abortion care at a rally on September 13. Hochul noted, rightly, that the state has an obligation to fully implement the 2019 Reproductive Health Act (RHA). To that end, she directed state agencies to launch public information campaigns directed at patients and providers about their rights and responsibilities under the RHA.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand followed by voicing her support for the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would codify a right to abortion care into federal law, just as the RHA does in New York State.

These pronouncements of solidarity with people in Texas and other legally restrictive states are welcome first steps. As the right to safe, legal abortion nationwide hangs in the balance, however, reactive measures are no longer enough—if New York is to become a safe harbor for abortion, officials at every level of government must champion bold, proactive policies that pre-empt attacks from the powerful anti-abortion movement.

First, they must make abortion, and all forms of sexual and reproductive health care, accessible to all New Yorkers. 

In 1994, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective defined reproductive justice as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”

For decades, the fight for reproductive justice in City Hall and Albany has been relegated to a small handful of electeds and constituent activists. Access to abortion care isn’t simply a “women’s issue,” but City Hall and Albany continue to treat it as one. Marginalized New Yorkers, particularly the Black birthing people at the forefront of the reproductive justice movement whose communities are disproportionately affected by our collective inaction, know that abortion access is a social, economic, gender, and racial issue.

In New York City alone, there are at least 11 “crisis pregnancy centers,” which are fake health clinics that use lies and unauthorized medical practices to dissuade vulnerable birthing people from getting abortions. Anti-abortion extremists in Queens are now allowed, thanks to the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals, to terrorize New Yorkers who try to access or provide reproductive health care in clinics.

While our city became the first in the nation to provide direct funding for abortion, the $250,000 that the City Council has set aside the last two budget cycles for the New York Abortion Access Fund isn’t nearly enough to cover the up-to-$3,000 cost of abortion care for low-income and uninsured New Yorkers, let alone out-of-state birthing people. 

These are some of the many hurdles New Yorkers face in accessing abortion care, and abortion care is only one piece of the larger problem. Systemic racism in health care for pregnant and birthing New Yorkers, inadequate postpartum care and early childcare, stigmatizing, outdated sex-ed, the proliferation of gender-based and sexual violence—we could go on—are just some of the others. In the spirit of reproductive justice, we cannot talk about shoring up abortion access in New York without also talking about the persisting inequities in all facets of sexual and reproductive health care.

Now that we face an impending national crisis, one that many marginalized communities have already been facing for years, New Yorkers are looking for ways to join the fight. Using our collective experience, knowledge, and skill sets, we’ve put together a non-comprehensive action guide that outlines steps New York elected and government officials can take, at every level and in almost all offices, to truly make New York a safe harbor for abortion care.

The guide also includes graphics and call transcripts that everyday New Yorkers can use in their activism.

Finally, it’s past time for New Yorkers to elect more reproductive justice advocates to office.

The anti-abortion movement has spent millions to help elect extremists who champion their cause in state legislatures and city governments across the country. Yes, greater gender representation, as seen in our first woman Governor, and New York City’s first women-majority City Council come January, could result in more substantive gender representation in New York politics as well. But simply electing more women to power doesn’t necessarily ensure those political leaders will focus on reproductive justice. As it stands, champions of reproductive justice are still largely on the outskirts of political power.

The country faces the biggest threat to Roe v. Wade in decades. It’s incumbent on New York to set the example for other progressive cities and states that could face an influx of out-of-state patients seeking abortion care. We must elect candidates to office who are committed to making that possible. If we succeed, we can show purple and red cities and states, particularly those on the verge of securing Democratic wins in their legislative or executive offices, that reproductive justice advocates can run and win. 

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Astrid Aune is a community organizer and 1L at CUNY School of Law. Elizabeth Adams is a Legislative Director at the New York City Council, formerly served as the Director of Government Relations at Planned Parenthood of NYC and was a candidate for City Council in Brooklyn’s 33rd District. Jessica Madris is a freelance reporter and writer covering gender policy, particularly at the local level, with an MPA in Urban Social Policy and Gender and Public Policy and experience in city government and politics, and a postpartum doula in Brooklyn.

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Preventing Student Suicide in New York State


ed murrow joins

High school students (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)


This month, as our children return for another pandemic school year, there has never been a more important time to have an honest conversation about mental health. 

As a member of the New York Assembly Committee on Education, I have heard from countless parents and young people about how the pandemic has exacerbated the pre-existing psychological strains of depression and anxiety. These come on top of the pressures youth have faced for years, from navigating identity issues to combating bullying. 

Unfortunately, kids, families, and schools don’t always have the training or resources to cope with these challenges or pinpoint when they become dangerously unmanageable. It is long past time to equip our schools with the tools they need to provide appropriate mental health resources, support at-risk populations and, most critically, prevent suicide.

Students today are significantly more likely to report poor mental health compared to previous generations. Between 2007 and 2016, pediatric emergency room visits for mental health concerns rose 60%. Suicide is now the second-leading cause of death among young people ages 10 to 24, and LGBTQ youth are especially at-risk. Of the nearly 40% of transgender Americans who report attempting suicide, 92% have done so before the age of 25. 

Preventing youth suicide isn't just an intellectual issue for me. I tried to take my life as a young person. Looking back, I recognize that I was facing profound stress related to identity and isolation. Thankfully, I made it through that dark period and have gone on to lead a meaningful, successful life.

For me, having a support system was key to my mental health recovery. Kids can express vulnerability when surrounded by people they trust. That’s why I have introduced the Student Suicide Prevent Act (A7762), which will give schools the support they need to reach students of all experiences and backgrounds. It provides a framework for teacher training, mental health resources, and policies and procedures for suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention. The legislation draws on national models while creating space for schools to tailor information to align with local needs.

Right now, 19 states require suicide prevention training for school personnel, and 13 states specify that this training take place annually. New York is one of 15 states that encourages, but doesn’t mandate, such programming. Our lack of leadership has important consequences: a third of our schools do not have suicide prevention policies in place, and only 2% of existing policies specifically address LGBTQ youth.

Teachers are often resources for kids who feel isolated. They spend hours every day with their students and develop deep relationships by offering advice and helping them build self-esteem. As a result, they are often the first, and the ones best able, to see when our kids need extra help. 

Their insight is especially important because not everyone who is suffering withdraws or disengages from school activities -- what we commonly associate with signs of struggling. I was the president of my high school class, but I still needed help.

Talking about these issues, from both a policy and personal standpoint, is hard. I’ve never publicly shared my story before. But I know that open and honest communication is a necessary step to break the cycle and better help our youth. With the right policies in place, we can give youth the support they need to navigate challenging times, recognize their own strength, and see a better future ahead.

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Assembly Member Danny O’Donnell represents parts of Manhattan. On Twitter @Danny_ODonnell_.

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Rethinking New York's Role in City Diplomacy


Mayor UN

The Mayor at the UN (photo: Rob Bennett/Mayor's Office)


This week, New York City is welcoming the return of foreign dignitaries, NGOs, and representatives from all over the world for an in-person United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) high-level week. It’s the world’s premier global affairs engagement. A combination of ministerials, side events, and of course the General Debate, this year’s high-level week will focus heavily on accelerating COVID-19 recovery efforts and aggressively addressing climate change and its ravaging impact.

Notably, world leaders will also come together to address the past year’s racial reckoning in the United States and around the world at a timely meeting, "Reparations, racial justice and equality for people of African descent," recognizing the twentieth anniversary of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, and the subsequent signing of the Durban Declaration, which calls on countries to take concrete measures to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance.

Having supported and led planning efforts for several UNGA high-level weeks as a U.S. diplomat at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, high-level week has always been one of the most exciting, adrenaline-filled weeks of the year, and it is what makes being part of the diplomatic corps in New York so special.

This is a unique opportunity for countries large and small to have their say and shape the outcomes of collective action on the most important challenges we face as global citizens. It is also a crucial opportunity to advance the health, safety, and prosperity of New Yorkers, as hosts, to this significant diplomatic event.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and International Affairs Commissioner Penny Abeywardena have already set an important tone for the event by requiring vaccination for all those who wish to enter the United Nations halls and providing the resources to make it happen, a necessary and critical step to ensuring this year’s high-level week does not become a super-spreader event. 

While the focus this week will be on the parade of presidents and prime ministers in New York City to advance their national and international agendas, we should not forget that New Yorkers have a stake in the success of these diplomatic engagements. There are incredible opportunities to deepen New York’s footprint on the world stage and to influence international policy that benefits New York and New Yorkers. In fact, it is high time to elevate the critical role of cities and states in our diplomacy and foreign affairs.

New York City, as host of the United Nations and epicenter of world finance and investment, is uniquely situated to become a leader in city diplomacy in this ever-evolving global arena. As New York engages in pandemic recovery efforts in 2021 and beyond, it will be crucial for the next mayoral administration, City Council, and state leadership to consider expanding engagement in international affairs as a means to support local success and take advantage of the many opportunities for New York to reclaim its leadership on the world stage.

There are several areas where current and incoming leadership for New York City — the Mayor, Comptroller, City Council, Governor, Attorney General, State Legislature, and others — can meaningfully expand New York’s global footprint in meaningful ways, while also including local communities and centering equity as a primary part of the effort.

1. Climate Change
Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams announced last week a trip to the Netherlands to explore the Dutch experience addressing climate change. This is subnational diplomacy at its best, bringing local leaders and expertise together in one room to share experiences and come up with viable solutions.

New York City has a unique lens and experience to present: mitigating climate change while fighting for climate justice, as it has become clear that the communities hardest hit by climate change have been the most marginalized. The devastating impact of Hurricane Ida on New Yorkers was a serious wake-up call to the acceleration of climate change; New York can advance its expertise and response by engaging globally.

2. Public Safety and Security
Cities can play a critical role in addressing hate and terrorism. The rise in violent white supremacy and anti-government hate, including that which the world witnessed in our nation’s capital on January 6, is a local as much as it is an international phenomenon. Moreover, it is exactly the kind of issue that can be addressed via a city diplomacy approach, working with local police, community leaders, and subnational and international actors to share common approaches and lessons. The Strong Cities Network can be a useful arena by which to approach.

3. Public Health
Look no further than the COVID-19 pandemic to understand the need for local responses to global health crises and the role that individuals, countries, cities, and states can play in averting global health challenges. From mask wearing to reopening schools to business practices, subnational diplomacy can improve perspectives and practices on public health. 

Long gone are the days of conventional diplomacy that only existed between the foreign ministries of nations. This is because global issues are local issues, and thus, our diplomacy needs to be more people-centered and influenced by events happening on the ground. From equitable vaccine distribution during a once-in-a-generation pandemic to forging bonds with cities around the world in arrangements like C40 Cities, to mitigate the adverse impact of climate change, counties, city and state legislators, mayors and governors now sit at the nexus of global and local policy.

There is no better example to point to than the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate the impact of city diplomacy on everyday lives. Under the Trump Administration’s isolationist policies and its failure to command a federal response, it was up to city and state leaders to step up to the plate, engaging in ways we hadn’t before, including with international actors. I was one of them.

As State Committeewoman for the 85th District in the Bronx, I developed a mutual aid group alongside neighbors in the East Bronx and partnered with my local community and elected officials to obtain and distribute PPE, including distributing supplies that were received from abroad. And I was so proud to see our mayor and commissioner for international affairs accept the donation of 250,000 masks from the United Nations to support New York City health workers during the height of the pandemic in March 2020. These efforts had real impact on New Yorkers’ lives — in some cases it meant life or death.

Next Steps
Leadership in addressing climate change, local development, domestic terrorism, public safety, and food insecurity are as local as they are global and require the expertise of people on the ground, as well as the expert diplomats who convene and help create national and international policies on these issues. Imagine the collective experience, awareness raising, and impact that New York City could have when these forces are combined?

Specifically, city and state legislators, mayors, governors, and other local officials can level up their contributions to the global dialogue and play meaningful roles in building partnerships, sharing experiences, and making tangible progress on global issues; and Congress and the State Department can help bring this to fruition by establishing a city and state office for subnational diplomacy, and providing the necessary resources and support for cities to take on global engagement more intentionally.

Passing ”The City and State Diplomacy Act” introduced by U.S. Congressional Representatives Ted Lieu (D-CA), Gregory Meeks (D-NY), and Joe Wilson (D-SC) would create the Office of Subnational Diplomacy. The new office, within the State Department, would be the connective tissue between the State Department and mayors, governors, and local officials across the country to more effectively address issues of global concern by facilitating local expertise.

City diplomacy is the X-factor for effective 21st century global engagement today. This is because, at its core, subnational diplomatic actors are closest to the challenges and have the local insights and experiences to help solve them. The fact of the matter is this: city diplomacy is happening – local leaders are engaging with their international counterparts in new and innovative ways. The question is how much the State Department and New York will be intentional in their pursuit to best apply those engagements to promote our values and policy priorities. And New York has a unique opportunity to be at the center of this evolving city diplomacy landscape and be a part of this defining moment in our history. Let’s not squander it.

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Emerita Torres is a former U.S. Diplomat (2009-2019), State Committeewoman for the 85th district in the Bronx, and Senior Research Fellow at The Soufan Center. On Twitter @EmeritaTorresNY.

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Ending New York's Love Affair with Life Sentences


fishkill prison

Fishkill (photo: ©2021 Google Maps)


After being in maximum security prisons for approximately 30 years, one day I found myself in a van headed toward a medium security prison called Fishkill Correctional Facility. 

Looking back then, I remember seeing “Greenhaven,'' the maximum-security prison I was leaving behind and its imposing thirty-foot high fortress walls with guards patrolling the towers. Greenhaven has one of the largest populations of convicted people serving various kinds of sentences. More than half of the approximately 1,500 people there are serving life sentences.

In the upstate rural communities, “Lifers,” as they are called, are seen as golden calves for the local economies.

It’s part of why one out of every three people in New York state prisons has a life sentence, giving the state the third largest percentage of lifers across the country. Lifers tend to maintain a lock-step comradery as part of the larger prison landscape. Many carry the unpleasant reality, bred of common awareness, that the others “doing time” will inevitably be released and that their ability to reach that same moment may never be forthcoming.

This contextualization may help you understand the intrinsic familial bond that most Lifers seem to share. It may also help to explain why tears suddenly began to flow, and an overwhelming sense of sadness overcame me, after I turned around and saw Greenhaven’s 30-foot wall. It unexpectedly dawned on me that I was leaving behind family, individuals with whom I had shared harsh and at times precious memories over the course of many years.

This may also help to explain why then-Governor Andrew Cuomo's act of granting clemency to Paul Clark and five other Lifers whom I left behind at Greenhaven affected me so dearly. I took a long exhale as I learned the news. Paul's release, for one, made me recall the fateful day I looked back at the Greenhaven walls. That grim reminder made me aware that there were many more “Pauls” that I had left behind, who have worked to help others and have experienced an inner transformation that is worthy of a chance to be reunited with their family. 

In his final week in office, with no political capital to lose, Governor Cuomo finally decided to grant executive clemency to six individuals convicted of violent crimes. These individuals had been incarcerated between 30 to 50 years, and were just languishing in harsh prison conditions. Well established data concluded that these men belonged to a vast pool of individuals who have the lowest recidivism rate. The travesty of this gift, however, was that there was not a single woman, countless of whom have undergone the very same transformations, included amongst those granted clemency. 

Executive clemencies were never intended to be the only path to freedom for people who have changed or the sole mechanism in place  that recognizes a bad act is not determinative of the trajectory of a human life. Nor is it apt to address the plight that concerns one group in particular that has significantly increased as the older overall prison population has declined: an elderly prison population with life sentences. There are two pieces of legislation before New York state lawmakers that would bring a lot more justice, hope, and humany to New York.

The first being the Elder Parole (S.15A/A.3475A) bill. This Act would vest the Parole Board with the authority to recall elderly people 55 or older who have served 15 or more years in prison for a parole interview, on a case-by-case basis. The second bill, the Fair and Timely Act (S.1415A/A.4231A), would focus the Parole Board’s attention on who a person is today, and not solely the worst thing they ever did.

After half a century of cultural punishment that produced excessive sentences, deficiencies in medical parole and executive clemencies, and the shrinkage in Parole Board releases, it’s time for New York lawmakers to pass these two bills immediately.

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Anthony Dixon is Director of Community Engagement at the Parole Preparation Project. On Twitter @ParolePrepNY.

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